PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — For the second time this month, the Board of Zoning Appeals has continued a case involving a group home in the Pinehurst community in Churchland.
Fishing Point, the healthcare affiliate of the Nansemond Indian Nation, purchased the home last September at 4533 Wake Forest Road. Fishing Point intends to operate the 3,600-square-foot Cape Cod as a group home, but opponents in Pinehurst, along with adjoining Green Acres and Sterling Point, say it will be a business and will harm property values.
Diana Williams of the neighborhood association was ready to address the board until it granted attorney Bryan Plumlee’s request for a continuance until June 25. She said the entire process has been anything but transparent.
“We were shocked because we thought that if this was going to be the use of our private property in a private neighborhood, a civilian neighborhood, that we should be informed and at least given advance notice, and none of that was done,” Williams said in an interview outside the meeting.
Plumlee declined to go on camera. However, he said the home will house eight women or fewer, but did not say for what.
“If word gets out and it already has,” Williams said, “that this community does not recognize the distinction between commercial and residential use, and will allow anybody to put a business operating anywhere.”
Neighbors say they have no beef with Nansemond Nation, rather, it’s what they see as the erosion of their community for monetary means.
“It’s not the residents. It’s not even the company,” said Jane Jackson, who lives on Wake Forest. “It’s the commercial business setting up in a residential neighborhood. There is no way that it will not lower property values. None.”
Technically, Fishing Point needs a special permit to operate a group home in a neighborhood that’s zoned residential, but Plumlee cast doubt on that as he addressed the board.
“As a federal facility we’re not required to abide by the zoning ordinance,” he said, “and your zoning ordinance recognizes this.”
