Gateway Crossing

The Gateway Crossing Area Plan was formally adopted by the Board of Supervisors as an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan in 2016. 

The Plan recognizes the importance of the area as one that defines many visitors' first impression to the County. Not only does the plan set a vision and list of goals to improve this area, but also a path forward to achieve those goals. The vision for the Gateway Crossing Area is of a walkable district with a mixture of uses including housing and locally-serving shops and offices to the west of Interstate 81, and both local and highway-serving shops, hotels, and services to the east of Interstate 81. New sidewalks, greenways, bicycle lanes, and a local street network would knit the area together and better connect it to the Roanoke Valley region.

Gateway Crossing Overlay

The plan is realized through the Gateway Crossing Zoning Overlay, a regulatory framework that encourages pedestrian-oriented design. This overlay does so by incentivizing development supportive of a variety of access, increase in density, opening the area to new types of developments, and reducing many regulations found in the existing ordinance. While the vision is set and the regulatory framework has been adopted, it comes down to the community—both business owners and residents—to achieve that vision.

The Gateway Crossing Area at exit 150 is the primary entrance into the County from the south. It is the center of growth and development in Botetourt and, as such, needs the tools to encourage responsible and attractive development patterns. The Gateway Crossing Overlay, approved at the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors Meeting on September 27, 2022, is an additional chapter in the County's zoning ordinance that intends to do just that, by providing an overlying set of standards promoting walkable, pedestrian-oriented design that creates a sense of place rather than a disjointed and disconnected series of individual developments. 

This zoning overlay is an opportunity instead of more regulation. There is NO new tax, taxpayer cost, or budget associated with the zoning change.