ROANOKE, Va. – The highly debated Brandon Ave apartment project is shut down after a 4-3 vote at the Roanoke City Council meeting Monday night.
City council turned down the request for rezoning of the land. The lot is zoned as a single-family district but developers submitted a request to rezone the land for a multi-use planned development district.
The hope was to build 54 apartments and 15 townhomes. Dozens of residents voiced their concerns about the project, including developer and former councilman John Garland, who opposed the development project when first presented to the council in 2017.
“It has all the markings of a bad project. Floods, rain, storms, density, traffic any way you want to measure it, it’s not a good project. It can be a good project there, this just isn’t it,” he said.
A second option for the land which was presented to the council could be to build 12 single-family homes each with its own driveways onto Brandon Ave. In the land’s current zoning, this development would fit the single-family district.