Man drops suit over city zoning

After more than a year of twists and turns, the Woolen Mills “taking by typo” saga may soon come to a conclusion.
Bill Emory, who believes that a disputed property in his neighborhood should be protected by a historic designation, has dropped a lawsuit against the city. Emory had been asking the Charlottesville Circuit Court to alter the zoning classification of the site, behind the Mary Williams Senior Center.
Earlier this year a judge threw out the case — citing, among other reasons, the fact that Emory sued the city rather than the City Council — but gave Emory the opportunity to amend his suit.
However, Emory has decided that the case has eaten up too much of his time and money, and he is no longer pursuing the matter in the court system.
“Money is certainly one issue,” he said. “Why is a citizen having to litigate to get a mapping error repaired?”
Not surprisingly, Craig Brown, the city attorney, is pleased that Emory is not proceeding with the suit.
“In my opinion the court was correct in its decision to dismiss the case,” he said. “I don’t think they had a legal basis to pursue it.”
Emory and some neighbors claim the city accidentally removed the historic protection status from the property, also known as the Timberlake-Branham house. Without that status, the Board of Architectural Review would not vet future development on the site.
Preston Coiner, who owns the 7-acre site and used to sit on the architecture board, has insisted that no error was made and that the portion of the property in question never received protected status. In the past, Coiner, who was out of town and could not be reached for comment last week, has entertained the idea of building 10 to 12 houses on the parcel.
In 1989 the then-owner divided the property, but the city’s tax maps were not updated because the site did not change hands.
There is some confusion about what happened four years later, when the city placed the site on its list of protected properties. Emory believes the entire parcel was protected, as subdividing a property does not change its zoning.
Coiner, who bought the site in 1996, insists that only the property surrounding the historic house became protected, not the second subdivided lot.
In 2001, Coiner further subdivided the property and the new lots were not added to the protected list. Two years later a citywide rezoning made the changes permanent. A letter written last year by a city zoning administrator stated that a “technical mistake” might have caused the parcels to lose their protected status, a position Coiner disputes.
After the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals took no action on the case last fall, Emory petitioned the City Council to change the property’s zoning classification — but to no avail.
Council’s vision statement “says how they want the citizens to be involved in the government process, but you’d have a hard time proving that with the city’s response,” Emory said.
Fred Payne, Coiner’s lawyer, said that “there were no merits in the case.”
While Emory has given up his legal recourse, the controversy is not over just yet. Council still has the authority to change the zoning of the property, if it so chooses.
“How likely it is that they would do that is knowable only to councilors, but that is certainly an avenue that could be explored,” said Erik Wilke, Emory’s lawyer.
Previously the council did not want to get involved while there was a pending lawsuit against the city. Now that the case has been dropped, there is a chance that the council would intervene, Mayor Dave Norris said.
“I have always felt that all parties in this matter, including the property owners and the neighborhood, would be well served by having council make a final determination,” Norris said.