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Petitioner further argues in favor of the conclusions by
Hearn and Tidwell that a commercial rezoning was unlikely by
pointing to a zoning dispute involving a nearby church. The
dispute arose when officials from the church proposed to
construct a church in an area with an existing residential zoning
classification. The county zoning commission denied the
requested change, citing an unacceptable increase in traffic
within the residential area surrounding the proposed location as
the basis for its denial. The church officials ultimately
prevailed, however, when a State court reversed the zoning
commission and ordered a rezoning. Petitioner argues that this
dispute clearly indicated that the zoning commission was
generally inclined to deny rezoning requests involving land in
the vicinity of parcel A. Accordingly, petitioner contends,
Hearn and Tidwell were both justified in reaching their
conclusions with regard to the zoning of parcel A.
Petitioner further argues in support of the conclusions
advanced by Hearn and Tidwell by pointing to what it refers to as
a 200-foot buffer zone extending the length of parcel A along
Cahaba River Road, which was created when the city of Birmingham
partially annexed parcel A in 1985. Petitioner contends that the
existence of this buffer zone, which remained under the control
of the county zoning commission, in effect, served to make any
likely commercial rezoning of the portion of parcel A within the
corporate limits of the city of Birmingham irrelevant because the
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