New construction and fire code

[Ryan Braman]

I purchased a property in Lexington, VA with two houses and a vacant lot this January. The vacant lot is 'landlocked' behind the two houses and bordered by neighbor houses on the other three sides. There are two alleys that I have legal access to, that lead to this lot. I've been driving F-250 trucks with equipment trailers down these alleys to get to the lot, so you have an idea of scale...the city also sends its trash truck down these alleys to pick up the resident's garbage bins, as another indicator of their size. More on that later..

These houses and this lot have been empty for years, and the neighbors and other properties on the alley have become accustomed to them being empty. One neighbor even put their kids playset up on the empty lot. When they got word that that I was planning to build they got pretty upset. Two of them approached my construction manager and tried to argue that it's unbuildable because I don't have access. Another argued that one of the alleys is actually his driveway, even though city GIS clearly labels it alley XX and shows it running to my lot, turning a corner, and joining the second alley.

Fortunately my dad gave me some great advice to run a title search on the alley prior to purchasing. And we found references as far back as the 1800s and as recently as 1964 on deeds for the vacant lot and other houses along the alley that clearly show my lot has access.

I called the city planner to get the ball rolling but three separate neighbors had already called. This is a small town, I'm new and the other three are long time residents...there is a probability they know the planner already. After I gave the planner the deeds that proved legal access, he checked with the fire marshall, and determined that the alleys are not wide enough to be "fire apparatus access roads." They sent me the three page section of VA State Fire Prevention Code that indicated I needed to be within 150 ft of a road that was 20ft wide.

I'm not trying to get one up on anybody and I for sure don't want to be a sore loser, but I get the sense that the planner/fire marshall are being pressured to not let me build. There are other landlocked properties nearby that have homes on them, in fact one is on one of those alleys. Couple of other questions ('what about driveways, they're not 20 ft wide?' 'I'm 150 ft from a different road, why didn't you look at that?) but looking broadly for two things:

1) Anybody else run into zoning / planning issues where you felt like there was sort of an entrenched opinion you had to work through, how'd you do it? This is my home now and I don't want to stir the pot more than is absolutely necessary, but I get the sense that conciliatory attitude or not, at least 2 of the 3 are going to fight me on this to the bitter end.

2)Anybody build new construction where you had to deal with this 'fire apparatus access road' requirement? Any wisdom gleaned from that experience you can share?

Many thanks!