BERLIN – County leaders approved zoning changes designed to allow for the expansion of Frontier Town and the commercial development of cropland on Route 589 this week.
On Tuesday, following public hearings in which there was no public input, the Worcester County Commissioners approved rezoning 36 acres of Frontier Town property from C-2 to A-2 and rezoning 11.5 acres on Route 589 from A-1 to C-2. The change in zoning of the Frontier Town property is expected to allow an expansion of the campground onto the area currently occupied by horse stables and paddocks.
“There’s a great unserved need for additional campsites in Worcester County,” said Mitch Parker, former owner of Frontier Town.
Local attorney Hugh Cropper presented both rezoning requests to the commissioners March 1. Cropper sought the rezoning of the Frontier Town acreage on the premise that the C-2 zoning had been a mistake. He said the property was set back off the road and abutted the existing Frontier Town campground.
“It cries out for an expansion of the campground,” he said.
In Worcester County, campgrounds are not permitted in areas zoned C-2 but rather as special exception uses in the A-2 district. Cropper said changing the zoning of the property in question would not harm the environment, effect population or impact traffic.
“The rezoning of this should decrease traffic,” he said, adding that the site would, however, impact traffic significantly if it were developed commercially.
Parker said the land in question had always been meant to serve as expansion space for the campground.
“It’s contiguous to what we already have established,” he said.
The commissioners approved the Frontier Town rezoning request as well as the one Cropper presented for the Estate of Mildred L. Parsons. The Parsons property, 11.5 acres on Route 589 near Gum Point Road, will now be zoned C-2. The land had been used for agricultural purposes since zoning was first established in the 1960s.
Cropper said the rezoning was necessary because of a change in the neighborhood. The site, he said, was an island of agricultural land in the middle of numerous commercial properties.
“It is a spot zoned piece of property,” Cropper said, adding that there was C-2 zoning on three sides of the property and residential zoning on the remaining side.
Cropper said that in recent years, the neighborhood had changed as more and more properties were rezoned for commercial uses and the nearby Casino at Ocean Downs was more fully developed.
“It’s surrounded on three sides by commercial,” he said. “It is suitable for development.”
