When the York County Economic Development Authority paid $700,000 in March for a 30.82-acre parcel of land in the Busch Industrial Park, it received a shovel-ready tract zoned for industrial development.
Much of the Busch Industrial Park has already been developed, as has industrially zoned land throughout York County. The 30.82-acre site — located at 126 Stafford Court — is cocooned within the surrounding industrial park, interstate and York Terrace subdivision. It is zoned for industrial development, has good access to nearby transportation routes and has already cleared numerous hurdles to development.
York County Director of Economic Development Jim Noel reported to the EDA at its July meeting that a purchase agreement is in the hands of a potential developer for at least part of the land, which is zoned for manufacturing, distribution, warehouses and similar uses. As of July 31, the agreement is still being considered by the potential buyer, Noel said, declining to identify the buyer or the nature of its business.
But the buyer is not the only party that has expressed interest in the land.
The Anheuser Busch Foundation was in talks to donate the land to the Civil War Trust — a nonprofit focused on preserving Civil War battlefields — until the EDA offered $700,000 for the land, the same figure as a tax credit the foundation would have received for donating the land.
The land’s history is connected to the Civil War, when it was caught up in the Battle of Williamsburg, a May 1862 fight that left thousands dead, wounded and captured when Union forces marching up the Peninsula fought Confederates in and around Fort Magruder and the surrounding lands.
The dual nature of the land as both a site viable for industrial development in an area where that is an increasingly rare quality and as a place where part of an important historic event occurred has situated it squarely at the intersection of the contemporary need for more land and the historic need to preserve land from a struggle largely overshadowed by historically significant events from other time periods.
A Connection to the Past
In the Historic Triangle, proposed and existing development frequently intersects with history.
Subdivisions are scattered across much of the land where the first English settlers in the area ventured. The village of Yorktown and its surrounding battlefields — where American independence took a major step forward — is preserved, however almost all of the surrounding lands are claimed by either the military or subdivisions. In the Williamsburg area, where the Civil War’s Peninsula campaign forged several chapters in 1862, development abounds.
Development has already carved out much of the Williamsburg battlefield, which has had more than 2,000 acres developed since the early 1990s. But some places the battle touched remain largely as they did in 1862. A nearly 250-acre tract in Upper York County, where a significant Confederate flank was exposed by shrewd Union troop movements on the day of the battle, is still undeveloped.
The EDA site, located across Interstate 64 to the south of the nearby 250-acre tract, is also mostly undeveloped. Some power lines cut through the property, and sewer and other utility lines have been installed, but much of it remains otherwise undisturbed. The site played host to both a skirmish between the two sides on the day before the battle and a position for Union artillery to rain down fire on nearby Fort Magruder.
In May 1862, Union forces were progressing up the Peninsula and gobbling up former Confederate positions almost as quickly as the Confederates could withdraw. On May 5, the two sides clashed in the Battle of Williamsburg on land stretching from present-day landmarks Water Country USA to Quarterpath Park, leaving thousands dead, wounded or captured, and pushing the Confederates closer to their capital, Richmond.
The EDA-owned land factored into frenetic troop movements May 4, the night before the battle, according to Tom McMahon, a founder and board of directors member of the Williamsburg Battlefield Association, a group focused on preserving the remaining undeveloped parts of the battlefield.
On May 4, Union cavalry forces pursuing retreating Confederates rode deep into their lines, finding their enemies were not well entrenched.
“They forgot to man the wall,” McMahon said of the Confederates, weary from their retreat up the Peninsula. “They all went into town for a hot meal.”
The Confederates realized what happened when the Union cavalry advanced as far as Fort Magruder and the Bryan Plantation, two sites located in the area of Queens Creek and Penniman roads in Upper York County. They quickly mobilized, pushing the Union forces back.
Some Confederate forces began pursuing the retreating Union cavalry, catching them on the EDA-owned property, which at the time was the site of a small road running through marshland connected to the plantation. The Union cavalry was marching two by two along the road and into a wooded area when their Confederate pursuers attacked from the rear.
The Union forces already in the woods heard the attack and rushed back to reinforce their comrades. Over the next 20 minutes, the two sides fought a violent skirmish resulting in 20 to 30 Union soldiers killed, wounded or captured with about 10 Confederates suffering the same fate.
The next day, the EDA-owned land served as an important site for Union artillery shelling Fort Magruder, though the severe fighting constituting the bulk of the battle occurred elsewhere.
Much of the Williamsburg Battlefield has been sculpted into the suburban corridors that define Upper York County, the eastern side of Williamsburg and slices of James City County. The bulk of the forces were concentrated on land from what is now Riverside Doctors’ Hospital northwest toward Quarterpath Park.
“The most you can hope for is that you’re not going to stop all development moving forward,” McMahon said. “You hope you get the developer who has some sympathy or respect for the land they’re purchasing. In a case like this, it would be nice if they could identify or seed a little land in the marshland with a path and signage to help tell the story of what happened there.”
A Well-Situated Piece of Land
In York County, industrially zoned land that is either developable or already built out but vacant is a scarce commodity.
Noel, the county’s economic development director, characterized the land as shovel-ready. Expensive and time-consuming processes connected to installing infrastructure like water, sewer and power on the land, mitigating wetlands and analyzing the landscape are already done for the EDA-owned parcel.
That makes the land attractive to businesses looking for a new site.
“It’s the simplest and easiest way for a business to move forward with constructing a new facility,” Noel said of land like the EDA-owned parcel. “It takes out the uncertainty in terms of additional costs or liabilities, so obviously that’s more attractive to [developers]. It’s so competitive out there, particularly among localities that are trying to lure manufacturing operations that have good paying jobs and good capital investment, so you have to have a product that is ready to go because your competition does.”
Busch Industrial Park is mostly developed aside from the EDA-owned parcel and about 20 other acres of land. That usage is important for attracting new tenants to an industrial park.
“If you have an industrial park with all the infrastructure in place and there are no businesses there, it lends more unpredictability to a project,” Noel said. “Why isn’t anyone else there? When they see other businesses operating successfully there, it allays some of their fears.”
The park is also located close to Route 199 and I-64, allowing any traffic generated by development on the land quick access to transportation channels.
The purchase agreement is in the hands of the potential buyer of part of the property. Until the buyer makes a decision, the fate of the land remains unknown.
Other land exists in the county that is developable for industry, including space in the York River Commerce Park and the York Industrial Park. But those plots represent a small slice of the about 2.5 percent of county land zoned for industrial development.
Much of the industrial land in the county is already claimed by Dominion Virginia Power’s Yorktown Power Station, Plains All American Pipeline’s Yorktown Terminal and smaller users, such as the runways at the Newport News-Williamsburg International Airport that stretch into the county.
Industrial development opens new channels for municipalities to collect revenue. The real estate where a building is built can be taxed. The county’s machinery and tools tax, which is currently set at $4 per $100 of assessed value, allows the county to collect tax revenue on business property, such as furniture, fixtures, tools and more.
Revenues collected from personal property taxes and real estate taxes have climbed by millions of dollars in recent years, according to York County budget documents. But the machinery and tools tax has plummeted, from about $4.4 million in the fiscal year running from July 2010 to June 2011 to an estimated $100,000 for the current fiscal year.
The machinery and tools tax revenue has taken major hits from the closure of the Altria smokeless tobacco plant on Merrimac Trail and the Yorktown Refinery, which has since been converted to PAAP’s Yorktown Terminal.
The loss of that revenue is problematic for the county, which has also had to contend with millions of dollars of York County School Division funding slashed by the state government in the last decade.
The future of industrial development in York County is limited by the lack of undeveloped land. Of the 65,100 acres in the county, 1,650 acres are zoned industrially. Less than 1,000 acres of undeveloped industrial land remains, though the figure climbs to about 2,400 acres if economic opportunity (EO) land is counted, according to information provided by York County Spokeswoman Gail Whittaker.
While EO land allows for some limited industrial development — or full-industrial development in EO-zoned industrial parks — it primarily caters to commercial and tourist-related development.
The EDA-owned tract, however, appears poised for development. The EDA has the final say over which company gets to purchase the land, though its fate after that point is unclear.
