SNOW HILL – County officials approved the rezoning of four properties off Route 611 this week.
On Tuesday, the Worcester County Commissioners approved rezoning requests for four properties west of Route 611. The parcels, all near the former Pine Shore Golf property, will now go from E-1 estate zoning to R-1 residential zoning.
“The applicants contend there is a mistake,” said Phyllis Wimbrow, deputy director of the department of development review and permitting.
The four rezoning applications concerned properties owned by Dean and Joan Jenkins, Ray and Jean Shanley, Donald and Deborah Bounds and William Waterman II. According to J. Carroll Holzer, attorney for Dean and Joan Jenkins, the properties were zoned R-1 when zoning was established in the mid-1960s. During the 1992 comprehensive rezoning, however, they were changed to E-1. That classification was retained during the 2009 rezoning.
In submitting their rezoning applications, the property owners contended the E-1 classification was a mistake because the county’s comprehensive plan called for the elimination of that zoning district entirely. Holzer said that while the commissioners had opted not to eliminate it themselves, they had “suggested they would be amenable to having it done on a case by case or piecemeal basis.”
Holzer said in 2016 the commissioners had done just that, rezoning one applicant’s E-1 property from to R-1. He stressed that kind of change would be in line with the comprehensive plan.
“It would be consistent with what the county’s comprehensive plan requested,” he said.
Wimbrow said R-1 would be the most appropriate designation for the properties in question. The county’s planning commission concurred and provided each of the four rezoning requests a favorable recommendation.
The commissioners voted unanimously to approve each of the rezoning requests.
Following those votes, they also agreed to instruct the development review and permitting department staff to begin the sectional rezoning process for the Route 611/Route 376 neighborhood.
According to Ed Tudor, director of the department, there are numerous other properties in that area that still have E-1 zoning.
“Instead of a comprehensive rezoning, it’s looking at a section,” Tudor said of the process.
He added that while resource protection areas would not change, zoning of the remaining E-1 parcels could be addressed.
