Ellis Farm – Care4Suffolk

Cluster Development

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 04:40:31 +0000

The City of Suffolk touts Cluster Developments as a way to conserve environmentally sensitive areas, but is it just a developer give-away in disguise?

The idea behind a Cluster Development is to build homes closer together to free up more land for open space or to preserve wetlands. Normal city codes have regulations on minimum lot sizes and road frontage requirements. However, in a Cluster Development, many of those regulations are waived to allow a developer to build houses closer together.

If a developer has 100 acres and could normally build 300 houses on that land, this allows the developer to condense the housing portion and put those 300 houses on 70 acres and then leave 30 acres undeveloped. That all sounds reasonable and when seen in this light, it does seem to provide more open space.

However, if that same developer has 100 acres, but he would be prohibited from building on 30 of those acres of that land due natural impediments or because of local, state, or federal regulations, he would have to reduce the number of houses he could build. He would have 70 acres and he would have to abide by the city codes that dictate lot size and road frontage. He would not be able to fit those same 300 houses within that 70 acres with those restrictions and he would have to build fewer houses.

Cluster Developments allow the developer to use all the land that is part of the parcel to determine density, even if some of it can’t be built on. The city then waives the normal city regulations for lot size and road frontage. Thus, the cluster development allows the developer to build more houses than he would otherwise be able to build.

This happens a lot in Suffolk. It is happening with this Manning Road rezoning (Public Hearing on Wednesday at 6pm at City Hall). The developer has 113 acres, but that land has a railroad cutting off a huge chunk, it has a perennial stream, open water and wetlands. In all, there are 49 acres that the developer can NOT actually build on.

These are not 49 acres he is choosing to leave open. He has no choice because he can’t build within 100 feet of the water because it is a drinking reservoir and has a required buffer. This 100 foot buffer also follows the stream that bisects his property. In addition, he has no legal right to cross the railroad tracks that divide his property. In reality the developer has 64 acres that he can actually build on.

The city allows the developer to include the non-developable land in the calculation for density. Additionally, the city allows a density of 2.9 houses per acre for the residential zoning of RLM, which the developer is asking for in this rezoning request. The current zoning of A (agriculture) would only allow him to build at most 5 houses on the land. The total maximum number of houses that can be built on 113 acres at a density of 2.9 is 327 houses. He was asking for 300, but has since reduced it to 270 houses. But remember, he can only build on 64 acres. Those 270 houses will be squished onto those 64 acres at an actual density of 3.9 houses per acre!

That 64 acres is about the same size as the neighborhood across the street. That neighborhood was rezoned in the late 1980s back when the city was concerned with large density on parcels that abut drinking reservoirs. That neighborhood has 76 houses with a density of around 1 house per acre. If this Manning Road parcel is rezoned, it would share a zoning category with the other neighborhood of RLM. However, the density differences are 1 house per acre in the old development versus 4 houses per acre in the new proposed development. The old neighborhood is NOT a cluster development. Which development will have more negative impacts on the environmentally sensitive wetlands and drinking reservoir?

The city knows that higher density negatively impacts the water quality of the drinking reservoirs, which in turn can negatively impact the health of the citizens. They know this and used to avoid this type of density. Those days are gone.

Now the city and the developers think they are fooling us by saying cluster developments help preserve environmentally sensitive areas. It isn’t true. It is allowing the developers to put higher density on these parcels adjoining these environmentally sensitive areas that nature and existing regulation would otherwise curtail.

It turns out, cluster developments are just another tactic to help developers at the expense of the environment and safety of the citizens.

Mayor Duman Claims Developers are Listening

Care4Suffolk — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:25:47 +0000

During the November 2025 City Council meeting, after the Manning Road Rezoning Public Hearing, Mayor Duman stated:

“It’s quite evident that the developers are listening. We are listening.” Then he goes on to talk about how “we have done exactly what we need to do” and how the developer is doing what he can do “to the extent that he is capable of doing what he can do and still be able to move his project forward.”

Is Mayor Duman seriously saying that this is the best we can expect from developers in Suffolk? Let’s review the Manning Road issues to see what we can expect from the city and the developer:

In 2022 the developer, Bob Arnette, provided a traffic study for Manning Bridge Rd instead of Manning Rd. The analysis stated:

And this:

If you are familiar with the site location on Manning Road, you know how ludicrous this statement is. This would mean all cars head south from the site on Manning Road and go the long way (about 4 miles!) to catch Holland Road 3 miles WEST of the Manning Rd/Holland Rd intersection.

This was approved by city staff!!

By 2024, he provided a new traffic study, but this one is also NOT for Manning Road. Instead, the developer used existing city data for the Grove Ave/Holland Rd intersection.

The developer has NEVER done a traffic study on Manning Road. Yet this traffic study was also accepted by the city.

He did have an engineer go out there and measure the road and it shows the same thing we have been saying for 3 years – the road is narrow! The lanes are well below the state standard and the developer’s plan is to slap some asphalt on the narrow shoulder, adding inches and in some cases a couple feet of asphalt. The road will still below the state standard. This will not expand the road space itself. It will just pave from ditch to ditch and guardrail to guardrail. There is no engineering report that actually states if that will make the road safer or if it is even feasible. Why is City Council even considering allowing a developer to make substandard improvements in exchange for a large development.

I guess this is the ‘listening’ that the mayor is talking about?

The school proffers have decreased by $1.2 million. In 2022, the developer was offering $1.9 million for Kilby Shores Elementary and $1.2 million for Forest Glen Middle Schools.

Now he is only offering $1.9 million for Kilby Shores and nothing for Forest Glen.

The City has recently come up with a ‘new method’ of determining school proffers – developers no longer need to count ‘uncommitted’ developments, which is any development that doesn’t have a submitted site plan.

Uncommitted houses have gone through the rezoning process, so they can be built by-right at any time just by submitting a site plan. These houses will be built at some point AND will impact our schools and roads, but by NOT counting them, the developer gets to save a lot of money. He is off the hook for the extra proffers, but that money will have to come from somewhere. It will be passed on to taxpayers.

Maybe THAT is the listening the Mayor is referring to?

This developer does NOT have a right to rezone this property. He took a risk and engaged in speculative development, which has the potential to make him a lot of money. If this doesn’t get passed, he can just sell his land like everyone else does when they no longer want the property they own. Sometimes when you speculate, you lose.

If this passes, everyone that lives on or off of Manning Road will be subjected to the tripling of traffic which will greatly increase the chance of a serious accident. It is already a dangerous road that has seen fatalities. Adding more traffic means there will be more accidents and more risk to the safety and lives for our family, friends, and neighbors, not to mention the 300 new families that will be added.

City Council can say NO to this project. It is perfectly reasonable for them to say that they value the rights of the current property owners to safely enjoy and live in their homes, and that the desire, not right, of the developer to make a profit is not a good trade-off for the city and its citizens. They represent us, not him.

If the developer, the city and City Council are actually listening then they will know that what we are opposing is a development that will predictably DECREASE the SAFETY of the current residents. If City Council truly represent the people, they will put our safety above the profits of the developer.

Suffolk’s Most Dangerous Road

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 16:12:20 +0000

It isn’t an exaggeration to state that Manning Road is one of the most dangerous and deadliest roads in the City of Suffolk.

The number of accidents, injuries, and fatalities are tracked and the data is available on TREDS (Traffic Records Electronic Data System), one of Virginia’s most effective and innovative information technology tools in the nation to identify and address road safety concerns. The Virginia Office of Data Governance and Analytics has ADT (Average Daily Trip) data available on the Virginia Open Data Portal (most recent data for Suffolk is from 2022).

Below is a chart that shows the comparison of accidents on various roads in Suffolk.

Click on Image of Chart to Enlarge

Manning Road is the location of the proposed Lake Pointe development that will add 300 single family homes and an estimated 2,772 vehicle trips per day. This will bring the ADT from 1,600 to 4,372 trips per day, nearly tripling the amount of traffic.

The chart includes a comparison with Grove Ave because Grove Ave is the location of the traffic study that the developer used instead of conducting one for Manning Road. The developer, with the agreement from city staff, has stated that it is a reasonable substitution. The Grove Ave accident data is from Grove Ave, Northbrooke Ave, and all side streets within that neighborhood combined.

It is expected that busier roads will experience more accidents. Busy roads have much more traffic. To give us a better idea of the safety of a road, we can divide the average number of accidents per year by the average number of vehicle trips per year. This gives us a rate, in this case a very small number because fortunately most drives do not end in an accident. This rate allows us to compare busy main roads to more rural roads and to neighborhood roads. It is similar to how in baseball, they use a batting average instead of the number of hits a batter has had. The batting average is the number of hits divided by the total number of times the player has been up to bat. In this case, the comparison is the number of accidents in a year divided by the total number of vehicle trips.

If you want to know how much more likely it is to get into an accident on Manning Road versus Grove Avenue, you can take the Manning Road Accident Rate and divide it by the Grove Avenue Accident Rate:

Manning Road Accident Rate / Grove Avenue Accident Rate = Likelihood of Accident

0.0000223347 / 0.0000008934 = 25.0

A trip down Manning Road is 25 times more likely to experience an accident than a drive on Grove Avenue. Below is a Comparison Chart that compares the likelihood of an incident to occur on Manning Road compared to other selected roads in Suffolk.

Click on Image of Chart to Enlarge

What this data is telling us is that if you are a driver in Suffolk, you are more than twice as likely to get in an accident while on Manning Road than when you turn onto Holland Road. That seems counterintuitive because there are far more accidents on Holland Road than Manning Road, but there are also thousands more cars traveling on Holland Road every day. For every 1 driver on Manning Road, there are 20 drivers on Holland Road.

Manning Road is one of the most dangerous and deadliest roads in Suffolk. When you turn down Manning Road from Holland Road, you have just increased your chance of dying in a car accident by 20 times. You are 17 times more likely to die on Manning Road than Main Street and 11 times more likely than when driving down Bridge Road. Let that sink in.

When someone from the Manning Road neighborhood tells you that they live on a dangerous road – believe them. The facts support this. It is in fact one of the most dangerous roads in Suffolk.

When the Manning Road neighborhood tells you that this road is far too dangerous to add 300 houses which will almost triple the traffic – believe them. Approving this development is likely to result in more deaths.

There is no plan in the city’s CIP or 2045 Comprehensive Plan to make any improvements to Manning Road – nothing to make the road safer. This development would be about a mile south of the Holland Road/Manning Road intersection. That is a long way to go on one of the city’s deadliest roads. There are no sidewalks, no shoulders, and the lanes are narrow, too narrow to fit large vehicles. Until the city makes improvements to Manning Road to make it safer, no rezonings should even be considered, let alone approved.

This is about preserving lives. Residents of the Manning Road area already risk their lives driving this deadly road daily. The city must not compound this risk by tripling the traffic on Manning Road – one of Suffolk’s most dangerous roads.

Public Comment for Lake Pointe

Eryn Siegel — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:14:26 +0000

Edit: I did receive a phone call from a very helpful lady in planning and she has fixed the issue. My comments do now appear. But, I already went through all the trouble to make a post, so I am keeping this up for anyone who wants to check them out.

I wrote a public comment for the Lake Pointe rezoning (RZN 2024-00013 – formerly Ellis Farm) and submitted it to the city for it to be included in the published public comments. I attached my comment as a pdf document, as I have many times before. This time the pdf was not included. Instead, there is a link that takes me to jot form (website) and asks me to log in. I do have a call and an email into the city, but just in case they can’t get this resolved, I want to make my comment public. I pulled together a lot of data on the road safety and I want to make sure people have access to it. Below are my comments and the accompanying documents:

To Suffolk Planning Commissioners:

The location of RZN 2024-00013 Lake Pointe (formerly Ellis Farm) at 464 Manning Road is not a suitable location for this project.

There are serious concerns that a development of 300 homes, in this location, will exacerbate road safety conditions that are already a daily hazard for those in the Manning Road community, putting citizens at additional risk for harm and their lives in jeopardy.

There are several issues when it comes to the Traffic Impact Analysis submitted by the developer for the Lake Pointe rezoning. The study focused solely on traffic and failed to mention the many geometric design insufficiencies of Manning Road. The study also failed to provide remedies for these safety concerns. Additionally, the traffic study failed to analyze traffic on Manning Road, and instead used a different road which is wholly dissimilar to Manning Road.

Hazardous Conditions on Manning Road

There are grave concerns regarding the safety of Manning Road. Since 2020 there have been 87 reported accidents on Manning Road, including 52 injuries, and 2 fatalities.

On October 1, 2021, a pedestrian was struck by a car on Manning Road and killed. On February 21, 2020, a man died when his truck hit a downed tree on the causeway. A man died when his vehicle, driving down Manning Road on December 30, 2011, ran off the road, hit a ditch and rolled over. Another man was airlifted to the hospital when on May 9, 2014, his truck overturned in a head on collision.

Ask anyone that lives on Manning Road or the surrounding area and they will tell you about times their cars were side-swiped by large vehicles traveling the opposite direction, about being run off the road by a vehicle that could not fit in its lane, or an accident caused by lack of visibility on this rural road.

According to Mayor Mike Duman, during his pre-council meeting on Facebook Live on Sept 16, 2022 (mark 29:48), “Manning Road… yeah, Manning Road’s pretty much a nightmare. I can’t drive it. I can’t drive Manning Road sober, nevertheless if I had a beer.”

Manning Road is a narrow, winding country road. It originally functioned as a rural secondary road. According to the 2035 Suffolk Comprehensive Plan, “many existing roadway segments located within or adjacent to the focused growth area boundaries were originally built as rural secondary roads. These facilities generally have narrow lanes, little or no shoulders and open ditches for drainage. Right-of-way widths may be as narrow as 40 feet. Even though the two lanes provided may be considered adequate for capacity purposes, the geometric configuration of these facilities is not adequate for serving existing or forecasted traffic volumes as the surrounding landscape changes from a rural to suburban and urban character.”

The Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan removed this language from the new plan, but it still admits that: “It is still common for the roadways in the rural sections of the City to have narrow road widths, narrow-to-no shoulders, and open drainage facilities adjacent to the travel ways.”

Also note that Virginia ranks 15th among U.S. states with the highest number of fatalities on rural roads, according to a 2019 report from TRIP, a national transportation research group. The Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan looked at 5 years worth of crash data in Suffolk, between January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2023, and found that there were a total of 48 fatalities during that five year stretch. Two of those fatalities were on Manning Road.

The causeway through Speight’s Run Reservoir is susceptible to flooding during hurricanes and storms. This prevents residents (this would include any at the Lake Pointe development) from heading north on Manning Road. Manning Road can flood about 2 miles south of the proposed development as well and on Manning Bridge Road, the next closest intersection south of the proposed development. This area has a lot of water in and around it. With heavy rains, not only does Speights Run Reservoir overflow, but these supply streams south on Manning Road and on Manning Bridge Road can overflow onto the road, trapping residents.

The causeway has other safety hazards. It curves causing limited visibility and has numerous trees that hang dangerously over the road. These trees can, and have, come down onto the road during storms. One incident resulted in the death of a resident. Due to the reservoir’s unique nature of being owned and maintained by the City of Portsmouth, but located within the City of Suffolk, Portsmouth often neglects the required maintenance of this area. Overall, this causeway is a hazardous stretch of Manning Road. It is also located between the proposed development and Holland Road (the closest main intersection). Manning Road has no sidewalks and nowhere for pedestrians to walk safely.

Another area of concern is the intersection of Wilkins Drive and Manning Road (approximately one tenth of a mile from the Holland Road/Manning Road intersection). Mostly, drivers traveling to and from the proposed development would enter Manning Road either from Holland Road or Wilkins Drive. Wilkins Drive T-junctions with Manning Road right at the apex of a curve on Manning Road. This severely limits the visibility from Wilkins Drive as vehicles try to enter Manning Road at this location. The lack of visibility, combined with the narrow lanes, no shoulder, and ditches right along the edge of the road, makes for a dangerous intersection.

Geometric Design

The City of Suffolk classifies Manning Road as a collector road with a “purpose of providing access between arterial highways and local streets”. To function as a collector road, the design standards, according to VDOT Road Design Manual, require that the road lanes should be a minimum of 11 feet with shoulders. VDOT recommends 12 foot lanes in agricultural areas. The adjacent property is active farmland. Currently, lanes on Manning Road are only about 8 ½ feet wide and the shoulders are dirt with drainage ditches (3 feet deep) within 2 feet of the road surface. There are no clear zones (4 to 10 feet of unobstructed paved shoulders) on either side of Manning Road as required by VDOT criteria. There are numerous existing trees, telephone poles, mail boxes, and other items within this required clear zone. With an existing lane width of 8½ feet, most commercial trucks do not fit within the lanes, as most commercial trucks are 9 to 10 feet wide. Fire department vehicles and other first responder vehicles are also 10 feet wide, making them too large to fit in their lane on Manning Road.

Manning Road is designated a collector road, but its geometric design is severely under any state standard and therefore can NOT safely accommodate the additional traffic of a large development like the one in this application.

Please see attached diagram entitled: Diagram of Minimum Safety Standards for a Collector Road drawn by one of our engineers to demonstrate the geometric design of Manning Road compared to the geometric design standards for collector roads based on state standards. The difference is extreme. See also UDO appendix D – Typical Sections for Suffolk’s minimum requirements.

Traffic Impact Study

The traffic study provides no data on Manning Road, neither at the site of the proposed development, nor at the Manning Road/Holland Road intersection. All data comes from the Holland Road/Grove Avenue intersection just down the road on Holland Road from the Manning Road/Northbrooke Avenue intersection.

From the traffic study: “Current traffic volume data for the existing Manning Road intersection were not available. City staff provided September 6, 2022 turning movement counts for the Holland Road and Grove Avenue intersection. As the Grove Avenue signal shifts to the new Manning Road / Northbrooke Avenue intersection, it was agreed that shifting these traffic volumes to the new intersection was a reasonable assumption.”

The problem with using the Grove Avenue data is that Grove Avenue is the entrance to a residential development area with the only entrances/exits being Grove Avenue and Northbrooke Avenue (see attached map). You can see the neighborhood circled in yellow on the map entitled Comparison of Manning Road vs Grove Avenue. Now compare it to the map at the bottom of the page. That same neighborhood is still circled in yellow (at the top), but you can now see the full length of Manning Road. In addition, major intersections have been circled in red. On the Grove Avenue & Northbrooke Avenue map, those intersections are the Grove Avenue/Holland Road (Rt 58) intersection (the one that had the traffic study data) and the Northbrooke Ave/Manning Road/Holland Road (Rt 58) intersection which has recently been completed by the city to align Northbrooke Road and Manning Road. You can see on the Manning Road map how extensive Manning Road is, measuring almost 10 miles and having major intersections at Holland Road (Rt 58), Manning Bridge Road, Copeland Road, and Mineral Spring Road. Manning Road is classified as a collector road because other roads feed into it as it feeds into an arterial highway (Holland Rd).

The speed limit on Grove Avenue is 25 mph. On Manning Road, it starts at 25 mph but by the time it gets to the proposed development location, it is 40 mph. Grove Avenue and Northbrooke Avenue are residential streets about 22 feet wide. Manning Road is a rural road that averages 16-17 feet wide.

However, the traffic impact study never addressed the traffic capacity on Manning Road itself. Nor does it address the fact that the geometric configuration of Manning Road is inferior to that of Northbrooke Avenue or Grove Avenue, both of which have wider lanes. Since January 2020, Manning Road has had a reported 87 accidents, with 52 injuries and 2 fatalities, Grove Avenue and Northbrooke Avenue experienced only 3 accidents with 3 injuries (no fatalities) for the entire neighborhood combined. There are definitely differences between these roads.

If, in fact, the average daily trips (ADT) on Manning Road equals that of Grove Avenue, as the traffic study states, Manning Road currently experiences 1,600 trips per day. The study also states that a development with 300 single family detached homes will generate an additional 2,772 daily trips. That will increase all trips on Manning Road to a daily total of 4,372. That may be within the normal limits for a collector road, from a traffic standpoint, however, that is an increase of almost three times the amount of traffic that Manning Road currently experiences. How will that translate when we consider safety. Instead of 87 accidents over the next five years, will we see more than 200? Will that result in 100 injuries and 6 deaths? This is the reality that the residents of Manning Road will experience if the City rezones this land to allow 300 homes. These will be our family members, friends, and neighbors involved in these accidents. Is the City of Suffolk ready to sacrifice these residents in the name of development?

Proffers and Planned Improvements

The traffic study mentions road improvements. The developer’s plan is to widen Manning Road at the site of the project to add two additional lanes that will allow for left turns and right turns into the existing Springfield Neighborhood and the proposed Lake Pointe neighborhood. The developer is offering no proffer to improve Manning Road north of the development for the one mile to the closest main intersection (Holland Road).

The City has no plan to improve Manning Road and it is not in the Transportation Master Plan for any improvements (a plan that is designed as a long-term, 20-year plan) which means there will be no funds available to make Manning Road safer for citizens. Widening Manning Road, including the causeway, to meet VDOT minimum standards, would require cooperation from the City of Portsmouth and the Army Corps of Engineers, because the reservoir has the added complication of being part of the protected wetlands.

The 2045 Comprehensive Plan states: “Transportation improvements are needed to accommodate growth and the continued train, truck, and car volumes that pass through Suffolk, but transportation improvement needs exceed funding.”

Additionally, the UDO states:

SEC. 31-601. – ADEQUATE PUBLIC FACILITIES.

Subsection (a)

(4) To ensure that adequate Public Facilities needed to support new development are available concurrent with the impacts of such development;

There is no plan, nor funding, to fix the design problems with Manning Road in order to safely accommodate the additional traffic that the development will bring, and thus Manning Road will not meet the ‘adequate public facilities’ needed to support this large development.

Conclusion

Manning Road has a long history of serious accidents and fatalities, including the segment of road from the site of this proposed project to the nearest main intersection. This is not hypothetical; people have died driving on this road. This development will put significantly more traffic on Manning Road, increasing these incidents, and putting more lives in danger.

Manning Road does not meet the state design standard for a collector road, despite its designation. The developer is only planning to fix the stretch of road directly in front of the development, but that leaves a mile of hazardous road to the next major intersection. The City has no plan for improvements. For these reasons, Manning Road does not meet the ‘adequate public facilities’.

Development can be positive for the city and for communities. However, development without ensuring there is first infrastructure in place can be devastating. If the rezoning and development is allowed to move forward before updating Manning Road to meet minimum state road design standards from the site of the project to the main intersection with Holland Road, there will be a huge negative impact on the community; substantially more traffic, more accidents, and more fatalities. If the City approves this rezoning request, it will be risking the safety and lives of those that live in and around Manning Road.

Road Safety in Suffolk

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:12:59 +0000

Most people in Suffolk have probably heard about the school bus that overturned on Cypress Chapel Road on October 16th with twelve children on board. According to news sources, the bus driver and 12 children were taken to an area hospital and at least one child underwent emergency surgery. While the cause of the accident is still unknown right now, we do know that this is a narrow, rural road. School bus drivers brave these kinds of roads everyday in our city and this situation highlights the risk involved.

When the rezoning application, Lake Kilby Road rezoning request (RZN2021-018), came before the city earlier this year, Care4Suffolk opposed this rezoning on the basis of over-crowded schools and unsafe roads. During this rezoning, the topic of school bus safety on rural roads came up. We wrote about this in a March post.

The developer offered to widen the road in front of this proposed development, but only to 20 feet (from 16 feet) by extending pavement right to the edge of the existing ditches. The lawyer for the developer, Grady Palmer, stated at the Planning Commission, “We understand, that’s not standard. We wish we could do standard, but we can’t do standard. But 20 feet, and the way I think about this as a lawyer, can two school buses pass each other safely on 20 feet of pavement. I think the answer to that question is yes.” (Source: Planning Commission Meeting video mark 2:39:34-2:39:55)

This Suffolk school bus was measured from its widest points: side mirror to side mirror. The bus measures almost 9 feet 7 inches.

During the City Council Meeting on August 16, Council Member Fawcett called a city employee to the podium to ask him questions in an effort to discredit our research. The city employee stated that school buses are about 8 ½ feet wide and that he did not know of any incidents involving school buses on our roads during the school year. In actuality, Suffolk school buses measure 9 feet 7 inches from mirror to mirror, the widest points. The city employee may not have known of any accidents involving buses, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been any, it just means the city didn’t bother to investigate these issues.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city and found that there were, in fact, over 56 incidents involving school buses throughout Suffolk last school year. There were sixteen incidents of buses being struck by other vehicles and eight incidents of a bus in a ditch. Accidents can happen anywhere for a variety of reasons. Collisions with other vehicles and buses flipping into a ditch are far more likely to lead to injuries. Narrow roads, with no shoulders, and steep ditches along the sides leave no room for error when something unexpected happens.

The information sheet below was provided to the city in opposition to the Lake Kilby rezoning application. It states the basic standard requirements from the City of Suffolk’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), the legal codes set forth by the city. The sheet below demonstrates the standards that the city is ignoring regarding road width and design standards for the amount of current and future traffic.

The diagram below demonstrates the road updates the developer was proffering. Developers improving roads below standards does not fix the problem of having lanes that are too narrow and ditches directly adjacent to the road.

The city may not have the funds to widen all of Suffolk’s many narrow, country roads, but it is well within their power to prevent large developments on these types of roads. That new development on Lake Kilby that just passed will be adding 200 homes and 2,000 more vehicle trips per day. Many tractor trailers already use this road as a cut-through, and many more are coming to our vicinity with new warehouses recently built and in works.

More vehicles equals more chances for accidents. If the City can’t fix the roads, for the safety of its citizens, it has two other options: require proffers from developers that will actually bring the roads up to standards or do NOT approve rezonings on these roads. The City of Suffolk needs to think of safety first; the safety of its citizens and the safety of our children.

U-Haul Truck Overturned on Manning Road

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 13:45:25 +0000

This accident happened on March 17, 2023 at around noon. A neighbor in the area reported that the driver of the U-Haul experienced wobbling in the trailer pulled by the U-Haul truck as she came around the curve and ended up in the ditch. The neighbor also reported that rescue had to cut the driver out of the window, but she believes the driver was not hurt.

This is yet another example on Manning Road, and other narrow country roads likes this in Suffolk, that these roads are not designed to handle wide vehicles. With lanes that are only 8′ wide and deep ditches on each side, when something unexpected happens, there is no room for the vehicle to make a safe recovery: there is no room for error.

Adding developments to areas like this, with insufficient roads, is irresponsible. Suffolk needs to fix its infrastructure first, if it wants to build on these roads. Otherwise, accidents like this may be an every day occurrence.

Trucks Passing on Manning Road

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 18:53:05 +0000

This is what it looks like with two big trucks try to pass each other on Manning Road. This happened right in front of Ellis Farms, where the developer wants to add 300 homes. The road is so narrow, with lanes each measuring about 8-8.5 feet, that trucks have to move off the road to make room to pass. There are no shoulders with these narrow lanes, and the road has a deep ditch on both sides down most of Manning Road. Manning has posted signs saying no thru trucks are allowed, but it doesn’t stop these big rigs from using it as a short cut or bypassing the traffic on Holland Road.

Opposition in a Box

Care4Suffolk — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:40:00 +0000

The Ellis Farm rezoning request has not gone before the Planning Commission with a public hearing yet, but CARE4Suffolk is ready when that day happens. In early September, when neighbors of Ellis Farm realized that a developer applied for rezoning of the land with the intention of building 300 houses, they gathered together to form a group to oppose this rezoning and came up with a plan of action.

When rezoning signs get posted by the city, there are only two short weeks for citizens to learn about the rezoning, gather information and research, and if they oppose the rezoning, it does not leave them much time to make a plan to oppose the rezoning. CARE4Suffolk would like share what we did to prepare for the Ellis Farm opposition.

Our first step was to contact the city and learn all we could about what the rezoning is, what the plan for the property is and where in the rezoning process it is. Next, as neighbors we started to connect with one another about this. We were emailing each other, calling, and bringing it up in conversation as we ran into each other. One of our neighbors organized a meeting to bring everyone together to figure out what we can do to stop the rezoning. She reached out to our city council member as well.

At our first community meeting at the house of one of our neighbors, where around 20 people attended, we discussed what our options are and let everyone have a chance to share their thoughts. The meeting was about 5 days before the scheduled Planning Commission meeting, so there wasn’t a lot of time. We decided to focus on two main areas of concern: overcrowded schools and traffic/safety on Manning Road. We asked for volunteers to speak before the city and two volunteers offered their help with research and writing. With this group of five, we worked the weekend to prepare the speeches and documentation to be delivered to the city the following Tuesday. We had an online petition gathering scores of signatures daily. We also had several people outreaching to the broader community to gain more support. Our plan was to have as many community members show up to the Planning Commission meeting as possible, and when our first speaker asked for anyone present who opposes the Ellis Farm rezoning to please stand up, our group would stand en masse. Our outreach was done through social media, emails, phone calls, and the monumental task of delivery flyers up and down Manning Road and the surrounding communities. We asked community members to ask their friends, family, and neighbors is Suffolk to join us.

As it turned out we were able to gather a crowd of about 50 people. We all showed up early to City Hall but the developer got wind of our opposition and requested the item to be tabled. The public hearing for the Ellis Farm was tabled for 30 days. At first we were all very disappointed and frustrated by this, but in the end it worked in our favor. Thirty days gave us a lot more time to prepare. We jumped right into preparations for the next Planning Commission meeting. One member of our group began getting t-shirts printed. Another started a website. We also decided to organize our volunteers into teams to better spread out the workload. In addition, our researchers grew in number and they had more time to perfect our arguments against rezoning. Our outreach team continued to deliver flyers, make calls, and post online. In addition, we held a series of public meeting inviting anyone in the community to come and bring a friend, to learn more about what we were planning.

CARE4Suffolk’s Blue Binder with each argument in opposition to the rezoning and each piece of documentation in its own labeled tab.

“Opposition in a Box”: This banker’s box contained eight blue binders from CARE4Suffolk, one for each Planning Commissioner, along with a thumb drive with a digital version.

From our first Planning Commission meeting we learned that emailing our substantial documentation, which was then printed by the city, and provided to the Commissioners, was not the best format to provide our detailed arguments opposing the rezoning. One member came up with the idea to organize our research into binders. Our research and writing team began to prepare these. We sorted our binders into sections, with each argument in opposition and each supporting document having its own tab to quickly reference. We duplicated this is a digital format. The week before the October Planning Commission meeting, all of our documents were due to be handed into the city. One member boxed up eight binders into a banker’s box and attached a thumb drive with the electronic version, and then delivered it to the city. We have dubbed this our “Opposition in a Box”.

By the end of the thirty days, our membership had multiplied and we began to make contacts with other Suffolk residents who were experiencing rezoning issues of their own. We began to collaborate and to share information and resources. The Lake Kilby group was scheduled to appear before the Planning Commission at the same time and their rezoning plight shared so many issues with our Ellis Farm rezoning. We decided to coordinate. We attended each other’s meeting and we shared our binder with them as well as our strategy. Our rezoning got pulled from the agenda by the developer, so we did not end up having our public hearing, but we were happy to be able to join forces with Lake Kilby and stand for them, as they were prepared to stand for us, to oppose the irresponsible rezoning on Lake Kilby Road. We are excited that the Planning Commissioners voted against recommending the Lake Kilby rezoning. We hope to persuade them to vote against rezoning Ellis Farm when we get a chance to have our public hearing.

If you are facing a rezoning request near you, and you have concerns about its impact, feel free to use any of our strategy to help your cause. Here is a link to our digital binder. It shows our arguments in opposition and the research we collected, and how we organized it all. If your rezoning concern is in Suffolk, consider completing our Rezoning Concern Form to let us know more about it.