The Mathews County Planning Commission is expected to decide whether to support a proposed rezoning of the county-owned East River Boat Yard at its March meeting, which will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the historic courthouse on Court Street. The boat yard is located at the end of Mill Lane, Bohannon.

The rezoning request was made by the Mathews County Board of Supervisors during the commission’s January meeting. Supervisors voted to consider rezoning the site from residential waterfront to business waterfront in December after receiving a request from Billy Hooper of the Williams Wharf Oyster Company asking that he be granted a seven-year lease in order to develop the publicly-owned site for use as an oyster hatchery.

Supervisors decided that the rezoning would be beneficial in order to allow the site to be considered for any of the by-right uses in the B-1 district except those that are denied in a proffer statement. Any conditional uses proposed for the site would require a...