A family hoping to build a house on a rural road in Carrollton has received final approval from Isle of Wight County supervisors to proceed.

Earl Griffin, owner of 13.5 acres on Vellines Lane, wants to sell the land to Portsmouth couple Ryan and Kathy Bugg, who plan to construct a single-family home on the site.

Griffin’s request to rezone the land ahead of the sale from rural agricultural conservation (RAC) to conditional rural residential (C-RR) had drawn opposition at an April meeting of the county’s Planning Commission from neighbors who feared the change in zoning would open up the possibility of a larger housing development in the future. According to county staff, while a straight rezoning to rural residential would allow for more than just a single-family home based on the size of the lot, the conditions in the conditional rezoning would limit the parcel to one house with the possibility of no more than two additional homes via family-member transfers.

According to Beverly Walkup, who retired as the county’s planning and zoning director in 2016 and who appeared on Griffin’s behalf at the Planning Commission meeting, the land was subdivided using an “agricultural exemption” that included a prohibition on single-family homes despite their allowance under RAC zoning, which is why the rezoning was needed.

Vellines Lane resident Richard Castle, who’d been among those in opposition at the Planning Commission meeting, said at the supervisors’ public hearing on the matter that he now had “no issue” with the rezoning, and that he and his neighbors were now “all for it.”

“They were rightly concerned, but they just didn’t understand,” said Griffin’s attorney, William H. Riddick III.

According to county staff, were the Buggs to use the optional two family-member subdivisions in the future, they would be required to submit a subdivision plat for county approval.