Several neighbors brought action against city and developers seeking declaratory judgment and injunctive relief from city’s decision to rezone parcels from residential single-family to mixed-use planned unit development to enable construction of 24 townhomes.
The Roanoke Circuit Court sustained defendants’ demurrer and dismissed complaint with prejudice. Neighbors appealed.
The Court of Appeals held that:
- Planning commission had the implied authority to reschedule consideration of rezoning application from one regularly scheduled meeting to another regularly scheduled meeting;
- Planning commission reasonably exercised its implied authority when it rescheduled consideration of rezoning application;
- Planning commission that rescheduled consideration of rezoning application from one meeting to another was not required to comply with advertising requirement of statute which became effective after the first meeting but before the next;
- Developer’s nonsubstantive changes in rezoning application did not require planning commission to readvertise its consideration of the application;
- Townhome development project satisfied city zoning ordinance’s definition of a mixed-use development or planned unit development;
- There was no conflict between state land-use statute and city ordinance authorizing a mixed-use planned unit development district; and
- City produced sufficient evidence of the reasonableness of its rezoning decision to make the question fairly debatable, such that its decision was not arbitrary and capricious.