On May 19, a team of great folks at Sands Anderson and our special guest Karen Harwood conducted a webinar on the State of Vested Rights (in Zoning), 2010 — the first installment of an ongoing series called the Sands Anderson Land Use Forum.  We’ve been busy!  (This will explain, in part, the length of time since my [...]

Did you feel it? HB 1250 has been approved by the Virginia General Assembly. And with it, a major shift has occurred in the law of vested rights.  Vested rights is a legal principle arising from common law under which a developer can acquire the property right to develop a specific project despite a change in zoning which would no longer [...]

BIG BOX MUST COMPLY WITH HISTORIC OVERLAY IN ABINGDON The latest vested rights decision in the Commonwealth has been passed down from Judge C. Randall Lowe of the Twenty-eighth Judicial Circuit, sitting in the Washington County Circuit Court.   The case is Commonwealth-Abingdon Partners, L.P. v. Town of Abingdon, Case No. CL08-47.  You can read the [...]