It is difficult, if not impossible, to find housing in Page County that is affordable for many residents. Just ask your relatives, your friends, your neighbors. Or, read minutes of the Board of Supervisors meetings or the Virginia Department of Community Needs Assessment for Page County in which housing affordability is identified as a high priority issue.
There is something the County could do to help address this problem: Use the 59-plus-acre property on Goodrich Road in Stanley that is owned by the County Economic Development Authority (EDA) to build a housing community that would provide housing at reasonable prices for residents. In fact, the EDA had issued a notice to do a study of this idea just a few months ago. The request for the study has been withdrawn.
Now, however, the EDA has posted a notice of its intention to sell the property to a developer. And, the EDA has fast tracked the sale process without public input or input from the Board of Supervisors. Sealed bids are due on Sept. 18 and will be presented to the EDA Board on Sept. 22. Once the property is sold, the County will lose much of its ability to determine how this property will be developed.
The property is now zoned industrial, which opens it up to any number of possibilities — Is a data center out of the question? Some speculate that the developer will seek a rezoning to residential and build million-dollar homes there. Regardless, once the property is sold, our chance to use it to do something about our housing problem is lost.
This is an opportunity for the EDA and the Board of Supervisors to listen to us — the Page County public — and to take into account our serious concerns about the impact of development on people who actually live here, and seek both work and housing here.
Perhaps the EDA has the right idea about how to use the property. Let’s hear it. But let’s also have an opportunity to put other options on the table so a more informed decision in the interests of Page County can be made.
If you agree, please immediately call the EDA, the County Administrator, and your representative on the County Board of Supervisors. Let them know that you believe that public hearings on what to do with this property before it is sold are important.
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We think the BOS approach for the referenced property is the correct one. Just not for a data center. Could be using reverse psychology on that though…