Afton Mountain could be a showplace off I-64
Published: June 21, 2009
On Afton Mountain, picture this: A hotel that builds with the respect of the surroundings (Best Western comes to mind), a restaurant with good ol’ fashioned home cookin’ (Mrs. Rowe’s is a good example), the Virginia Artisans Center, the Made in Virginia Shop, a nice visitors center, a small but modern gas station and a shop that sells items of the Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Location, location, location.
Right off Interstate 64, between the Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway and between I-81 and Staunton and Charlottesville! Do you think it would be difficult to get these businesses to locate up there? I don’t think so. They’d be jumping at the chance.
Eminent domain, the power of the state to take private property for public use with the payment of compensation to the owner. If this is not a classic case where eminent domain should be put into practice, I don’t know what is.
It should be obvious that on this present course, nothing will happen. All this should be set in motion as soon as possible. No one’s home will be removed by calling upon eminent domain in this case.
I call upon our local officials to get the ball rolling and make the top of Afton Mountain the showplace it deserves to be. We need to be good stewards of the land, and this would be a good way to do this instead of the travesty that is there now.
Barry Galbraith
Waynesboro
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Reader Reactions
Having a functioning hotel and restaurant(s) in that Rockfish Gap location is a great idea. The financial benefits would affect the entire region, and people have been begging for it for a long time.
Having the government to seize somebody’s private property, however, does not appeal to many of us. We may wish that the owner of the delapidated properties at Rockfish Gap would do something positive there, but property seizure is a habit that we probably don’t want our gov’t to have.
A public campaign to Revive Rockfish Gap could be effective, but it would take a lot of work, and the property owner may not respond. However, if I was that property owner and I was hearing a large public outcry for me to ‘get moving,‘ I think I would very much want to satisfy that call.
I’d volunteer to work on such a positive public campaign.
I too think there could be so much more. It is a lovely spot and should show case Waynesboro, the Blue Ridge and Skyline Drive. It doesn’t do that now, maybe one day it will.
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