Home-Business Application Stirs Tensions in Manassas

Daniel then spent more than $800 preparing his application: providing blueprints, inspectors' signatures, a business plan, a petition signed by all of his immediate neighbors supporting his application and a copy of his certification from the Virginia Board of Nursing. Appointments would be scheduled to minimize neighborhood impact, and clients would park in his driveway. On Aug. 16, the planning commission approved Daniel's application and recommended its approval by the council.

Then came the public hearing Sept. 18. Four of Daniel's neighbors spoke on his behalf. A long line of opponents followed.

"And you know what?" said Michael Hudson, Daniel's neighbor. "I started to look at these people, and I realized I didn't know any of them."

Of the 21 residents who publicly opposed Daniel's application, two live on West Street. Many said they were against home businesses on principle, and others expressed concerns about the preservation of "a family-friendly atmosphere" in Old Town, the presence of "unknown" people in the neighborhood and the unfair "competitive advantage" that Daniel could gain by working out of his home.

After the public hearing, Devine approached Daniel's opponents in the parking lot. "I went up to them and said I wanted to understand," he recalled. " 'I don't know who you are or where you live.' And the first person to speak said, 'It's not about your lifestyle.' "

Devine was stunned. "How do people from a different neighborhood know about our lifestyle?" he asked.

The next week, when council member J. Steven Randolph (I) introduced a motion to approve Daniel's application, no one seconded it.

Daniel's application hadn't actually been rejected, because no member was willing to introduce a motion to do so. That led to a 45-minute freewheeling discourse on the city's special-use-permit code, with council members ultimately voting to refer the issue to its Land Use Committee for further study -- leaving Daniel in the lurch. That same night, someone scrawled anti-gay graffiti on the car window of one of Daniel's supportive neighbors, escalating tensions further.

If the council votes on Daniel's application at next Monday's meeting, at least three of the council's six members said they are likely to vote against it. One is Jackson H. Miller, the Republican candidate for the 50th District of the House of Delegates, who introduced the motion to approve another massage therapy business a year earlier.

"I've had a mixed record on home businesses," Miller said. "I'm opposed if neighbors are opposed. That's been my standard," he said, noting that he voted with the council earlier this year to reject an application for a home-based optometry clinic.

But that standard seems like an arbitrary one to Daniel. "If they would have told me from the very beginning, 'We do not allow this,' it would have been fine with me," he said. "I would have never started the process."