Skip to content
Washington County’s Board of Supervisors is slated to hold seven public hearings on zoning issues at Tuesday’s meeting.
That includes a request by Jerrod Funk to build a golf practice facility on Funk’s nine acres off State Route 75 (Green Spring Road) near the Green Spring community.
If the Board of Supervisors grants final approval, the facility would include an indoor facility and nets to keep golf balls “from going off the property,” said Stephen Richardson, the zoning administrator for Washington County, Virginia.
“I’ve had a golf business in this area for 19 years. It’s been in Kingsport,” said Funk, a longtime member of Washington County.
Funk described his plan as a putting green and “small driving range” at the May 22 meeting of the Washington County Planning Commission in Abingdon, Virginia.
People are also reading…
“It’s just a little place to hit some golf balls,” Funk said.
Yet, the business would not be open to the public, Funk said. “This would be strictly for clients that I currently work with.”
Funk focuses on junior golf and has coached the Abingdon High School golf team, he said. “I specialize in the development of junior players to go to college.”
The planning commission voted unanimously in favor of grading a zoning request for Funk – with conditions that this facility would have no lighting, no amplified sound and be only operated during daylight hours.
In another matter, the planning commission spoke in favor yet voted to table a request by Two Eagle, LLC, to construct a 30-acre campground just off Lee Highway near I-81 Exit 7 at Forsythe Road.
“This particular property, years ago, was a driving range,” said Richardson. “These folks are asking for an RV-park campground.”
As proposed, the campground near Mellow Mushroom would include a swimming pool, dog park, tennis court, pickleball court, general store, bathhouse and laundry facility, Richardson said.
The campground site is not far from Beaver Creek and the Bristol Virginia city limits. Still Richardson said, “It’s all out of the flood hazard.”
The west side of the proposed campground adjoins a nearly 100-acre site that was recently sold at action to Jim McGlothlin, the developer of the Bristol Casino, near the intersection of Lee Highway and Clear Creek Road.
On another side, the campground adjoins Sugar Hollow Park, Richardson said.
Planning Commission Chairman Christina Rehfuss called the campground “a great idea.”
Commissioner Dulcie Mumpower echoed Rehfuss and other commissioners, however, when she said the print was too small to read on the plans submitted for the campground — especially “for a development of this magnitude.”
Mumpower said, “I have not been able to have the information that I need in order to make a fair decision.”
Additionally, Mumpower said she was “not comfortable” with the proposal.
“It’s a large, large development — 150 campsites,” she said. “I just need to see in writing the master plan of what exactly they plan to do.”
Mumpower said the developers have a “good concept.”
But she made a motion to look at the campground further at the next planning commission meeting, slated for June 26.
Even though the planning commission voted to look further at the plan, it would still go to the Board of Supervisors for review at Tuesday’s meeting, according to Richardson.
In another request, the planning commission voted to approve a four-acre site for Green Valley Poultry Farm to place solar panels on its property near Wyndale Road.
The planning commission voted in favor of the request but asked that the panels be limited to a five-acre site, be used only for Green Valley and that a decommissioning plan be submitted, Richardson said.
