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The land in Southampton County that has become known as the Camp Parkway Commerce Center has been sold.

Three parcels totaling 435 acres located along Camp Parkway and on either side of Delaware Road were sold for $11.4 million on June 27 by VOS LLC to Southampton Lance LLC, a Delaware company that was formed June 26.

Franklin Southampton Economic Development Inc. President and CEO Karl T. Heck shared some details on the transaction, noting that Southampton Lance is essentially a land company.

“It’s something that Lecangs set up to hold this particular property,” he said, explaining that Lecangs is a logistics company that operates for a lot of other companies, including FedEx, UPS, Walmart, Wayfair, the postal service and more.

Lecangs is also a subsidiary of Loctek Ergonomic Tech.

“They’re Loctek’s shipping company, for lack of a better word, but they also work for other people,” Heck said.

The address listed for Southampton Lance is the same as that of Loctek Ergonomic — 6475 Las Positas Road in Livermore, California.

“Lecangs is incorporated in the United States,” Heck said. “Their parent company is not.”

The listed headquarters for Loctek Ergonomic Tech is China.

“(Loctek’s) stock is listed on the Shanghai stock exchange,” Heck said.

As stated at Loctek.us, the company creates ergonomic office furniture, designing and manufacturing sit-stand desk risers, height-adjustable desks and monitor arms etc., and provides ergonomic and wellness solutions.

“Lecangs did sell a warehouse in California, so that’s where the initial genesis of this is,” Heck said. “And that’s all public. They sold a warehouse in California, and they’re using that money to build a new warehouse on the east coast.”

And that new warehouse is planned for Southampton County in the Camp Parkway Commerce Center.

This project is made possible by a rezoning that took place in 2016 amid some controversy.

The Southampton County Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 on July 5, 2016, to approve a request to rezone a 438.71-acre parcel of land on Camp Parkway from A-2 (agriculture) and R-1 (residential) to CM-1 (conditional limited industrial) with proffers.

The decision followed a public hearing in which 23 community members spoke in favor of the rezoning, and 20 spoke against it.

Jerusalem District Supervisor Dr. Alan W. Edwards was the lone member of the Board of Supervisors to vote against the rezoning.

Edwards, who is now chairman of the board, also sits on the Southampton County Planning Commission, and he shared his thoughts on the Camp Parkway sale during the Planning Commission’s July 13 meeting.

He noted that the purchasing company plans to make the Camp Parkway Commerce Center “a very huge storage area.”

“Now I think most of us feel that that’s not appropriate there,” he said. “It does very little good for the county as far as tax (base). … We get most of our money off of machinery taxes. No machinery there.”

He said, “I can tell you that a lot of us on the Board (of Supervisors) have gone to our representatives (at) the state and national level, and we want more information on this company. This company looks like it’s a Chinese company that came from California. They have their plant in California up for sale for some reason.”

Heck confirmed that he found the facility at 6475 Las Positas Road in Livermore, California, listed for sale on LoopNet, which is an online marketplace for commercial property.

Edwards said, “My philosophy, and I think if you look into it, every Chinese company is owned by the Chinese Communist Party — that’s it, that’s the bottom line. You don’t spit on the ground in China without the Chinese Communist Party letting you do it. So that’s what we’re up against, and of course, (here,) they’re not too far from the biggest naval base in the world.”

He noted that China has purchased 400,000 acres of farmland in the U.S., and he made clear his significant concern about the existential threat that China poses to the U.S.

He said he thinks the Chinese company’s expected operation at Camp Parkway is a very inappropriate thing to do.

“It’s going to be a disaster,” he said. “It’s going to be 1,500 trucks in and out of there for 24 hours. That’s what they’re predicting. Not 500 — 1,500. Not 150. And you’ve got residential areas there. You’ve got a school there, and you’ve got a church over there, and so that’s the bottom line on the whole situation the way we on the board see it.”

“It’s very discouraging to me,” he said of the sale to Southampton Lance. “We on the board, we’ve known it for a couple of weeks, and it’s just really taken us by surprise. We never thought that something like that would happen.”

He suggested putting the matter on the agenda for the Planning Commission to “come up with a feeling on that.”

Jerusalem District Commissioner and Vice Chair John “Jack” T. Randall said the Camp Parkway land is zoned for the purpose of industrial work, “and it’s not going to change. So now we need to be proactive with the Comprehensive Plan to make sure that we’re protecting the community as best as we can.”

At-Large Commissioner Lynette Allston also spoke out about the importance of the commission doing what it can to protect the people living around the Camp Parkway land from the impacts of significant truck traffic and industrial development.