Court Opinion

ID: 9571281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:30:28.238248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:46.090807
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE LACY,
concurring.
Different standards for determining the validity of comprehensive zoning ordinances and piecemeal downzoning ordinances have been established in our prior opinions. In Board of Supervisors v. Carper, 200 Va. 653, 107 S.E.2d 390 (1959), we considered a single zoning ordinance which amended Fairfax County’s comprehensive zoning law. The ordinance applied to the entire western two-thirds of Fairfax County and required a minimum of two acres for residential home development. If the landowner aggrieved by the ordinance was to prevail, we required that he prove that the ordinance was “clearly unreasonable, arbitrary or capricious, and that it bears no reasonable or substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.” Id. at 660, 107 S.E.2d at 395.
Subsequently, in Fairfax County v. Snell Corp., 214 Va. 655, 202 S.E.2d 889 (1974), we examined an ordinance which was (1) initiated by the zoning authority on its own motion; (2) addressed to a single parcel and an adjacent parcel; and (3) reduced the permissible residential density below that recommended in the master plan. Based on these characteristics we determined that the zoning ordinance at issue was piecemeal downzoning rather than a comprehensive zoning ordinance like the one considered in Carper. Id. at 658, 202 S.E.2d at 893.
We then considered the validity of piecemeal downzoning using the following standard:
*418[W]hen an aggrieved landowner makes a prima facie showing that since enactment of the prior ordinance there has been no change in circumstances substantially affecting the public health, safety, or welfare, the burden of going forward with evidence of such mistake, fraud, or changed circumstances shifts to the governing body. If the governing body produces evidence sufficient to make reasonableness fairly debatable, the ordinance must be sustained.
Snell, 214 Va. at 659, 202 S.E.2d at 893.
In this case, then, prior to applying the standard of review, we must initially determine whether the ordinance in issue is a comprehensive zoning ordinance or piecemeal downzoning. Application of the Snell criteria to the August, 1986 ordinance which downzoned VLIA’s property, demonstrates that the ordinance is piecemeal downzoning.
The ordinance affecting VLIA’s property was initiated on the motion of the zoning authority and addressed a single parcel. Although VLIA’s land is located south of the Green Line, included in each comprehensive plan indicating non-urban development, planned unit development was repeatedly authorized by the zoning authority. As recently as 1985, with adoption of a new comprehensive plan superseding the 1979 plan, VLIA’s property retained planned unit development zoning. Just one year later, however, the zoning authority reduced the density standards for VLIA’s property by downzoning it. and contemporaneously amending the comprehensive plan to remove the PUD designation. The trial judge characterized this action as “pure argument, for polite language, to say that the downzoning ordinance complied with the then existing land-use plan for that area of the City.”
The status of the ordinance which downzoned VLIA’s property is not altered, even when considered in conjunction with the other ordinances enacted on August 26. The ordinances taken together affect roughly only two percent of the city’s land area. The city considered approximately 325 separate parcels, but downzoned only half of the parcels considered. While the downzoned parcels represented 25% of the city’s land zoned for development, as pointed out by the majority, half of the rezoned 3,500 acres — the Sandbridge tract — consisted of marshland which could not be developed. Finally and most telling, similar parcels were not treated *419similarly and the city offered little or no justification for this divergent treatment.
While the factors enunciated in Snell are not exhaustive, the circumstances of this case fit squarely within the three criteria set out in Snell and, therefore, require a conclusion that the ordinance downzoning VLIA’s property alone, or in conjunction with the other ordinances enacted at the same time, constituted piecemeal downzoning.
The city admitted that there had been no change in circumstances affecting the health, safety, or welfare of the public; thus, it could not justify downzoning VLIA’s property on that ground. Neither is there any evidence of fraud or mistake. Therefore, under the test set out above for reviewing the validity of a piecemeal downzoning ordinance, the ordinance downzoning VLIA’s property is void.
I further concur in the majority’s conclusion that VLIA is not entitled to interim damages. VLIA relies primarily on the recent United States Supreme Court case, First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, California, 482 U.S. 304, 310 (1987), which decided that the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, requires “compensation as a remedy to ‘temporary’ regulatory takings - those regulatory takings which are ultimately invalidated by the courts.” The Supreme Court assumed, as did the lower courts, that the regulation deprived the landowner of all use of his land and therefore clearly constituted a “taking.” While the Court authorized compensation for “temporary takings,” it left the issue of whether or not the regulation actually deprived the landowner of all use to be determined on remand. Id. at 321. Here, VLIA was not deprived of all use of its land. In the absence of a “taking” for which compensation is required under the United States Constitution, First English is inapposite. In emphasizing that the case was confined to its facts, the Supreme Court acknowledged that it was not dealing with “the quite different questions that would arise in the case of . . . changes in zoning ordinances.” Id. at 321.
Finally, compensation is not required under the Constitution of Virginia. Article I, § 11 of the Virginia Constitution protects private property from being “taken or damaged for public uses, without just compensation.” An unconstitutional, taking or damage did not occur in this case because the owner was not deprived of the *420use of or right to sell the land. Diminution in salability or potential market value does not rise to the level of a constitutional taking or damage to the property. Bartz v. Bd. of Supervisors of Fairfax County, 237 Va. 669, 673, 379 S.E.2d 356, 358 (1989).