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Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part story examining The Meridian Group’s presentation of a revised Tidewater Logistics Center project to the Windsor Town Council and the council’s feedback. The first part can be viewed by clicking here.

The Meridian Group presented to the Windsor Town Council on Tuesday, Aug. 27, a revised version of the proposed Tidewater Logistics Center warehouse project it is trying to develop on the outskirts of Windsor.

TMG is the parent company of Meridian Property Purchaser LLC, which previously submitted a rezoning application to the county proposing a multi-warehouse complex consisting of five buildings totaling 1.2 million square feet that would have been adjacent to the Lovers Lane/Keaton Avenue neighborhoods.

Influenced at least in part by vocal opposition to this version of the project from some Windsor residents and council members, the Isle of Wight County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on June 13 to reject the rezoning application.

Windsor Town Manager William Saunders outlined the purpose of the Windsor Town Council’s Aug. 27 work session in a memo to the mayor and council.

“TMG has made what they see as substantial revisions to the project, to include removing one warehouse, moving the truck parking area away from the residences on Lovers Lane and Keaton Avenue, increasing the setbacks from those residences, among others,” he stated. “This work session is being conducted in response to a request from Tom Boylan of The Meridian Group to present the latest iteration of the plan to the Windsor Town Council for their feedback.”

The first part of this story focused on Boylan’s presentation. This second part will focus on some of the council’s questions and comments for Boylan following his presentation.

THE WINDSOR TOWN COUNCIL’S FEEDBACK

Windsor Vice Mayor J. Randy Carr asked about details pertaining to the proposed berm and sound wall and then asked if trees could be planted in the proposed common area bordering the Lovers Lane/Keaton Avenue neighborhoods to make it look like a park, which would restore it to its natural state within 10 to 15 years.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Boylan said. “I think a landscape architect could craft a plan that has shade trees and benches and more of a natural setting.”

Adams asked who would be responsible for maintenance, to which Boylan explained that if different organizations end up owning different parcels of the Tidewater Logistics Center site, the association’s responsibilities will include clearing snow and maintaining the private road, the culvert bridge, the dam, the stormwater management ponds, etc.

“This common area or any type of trail or park setting would also be maintained as a common area of the association,” Boylan said.

When asked about parking, Boylan said there was an opportunity to pull back the berm and create several parking spots but was hesitant to give a number of spots that would be available.

Windsor Mayor George Stubbs expressed concern about the lack of an acceleration lane after turning right onto Route 460.

“(U.S) 460 in a 55 mile-an-hour zone, you’re going to turn right on 460 coming out of the park and no acceleration lane? Uh, is there a problem there? I see one,” Stubbs said.

“I think VDOT should have recommended one,” Boylan said. “I don’t know why they didn’t, but I understand why it’s important. We can look at that.”

Councilman Marlin W. Sharp suggested moving the beginning of the 45 mph zone farther east.

“And we recommend that in our traffic study,” Boylan said, “but I believe that has to come from a recommendation from the county to do a speed study for the county.”

Sharp asked why the trailer parking, which was positioned away from the residential neighborhoods in the original plan, was relocated to the same side as the neighborhood.

Boylan said, “I think a couple reasons. The original plan that we had did show all the docks oriented away from the residential, visible from Windsor Boulevard, which is in the highway’s historic corridor overlay district. The revision that we made to pull everything out of the (Resource Protection Areas) RPA areas required the trailer areas to be on the northern side of Building B.”

He later told Sharp, “We asked that question as well and ran a couple iterations of how it could work and ultimately it was very, very difficult to fit that or anything close to it.”

Sharp asked about raising the berm from six feet to 20 feet. Boylan said they could explore that as well. However, he said, the thought was moving the berm as far back and eliminating buildings and reducing total soiree footage was a step in the right direction.

Carr emphasized his main concern for the residents of Lovers Lane. He stated he is not opposed to the project but feels the planning needs to protect the citizens in the nearby neighborhood.

Stubbs noted that he understands the concerns of the residents who live on Lovers Lane.

“We want to try to protect them as much as we can,” he said. “But looking at the way the trailer parking is and where it is, where the berm is going to be located, it may not be as disruptive as we may think it’s going to be, and I don’t want it to be to the residents.”

Sharp said he had a question that goes back to the purpose of the TLC project to start with.

“I understand that TMG also does mixed-use projects,” he said, “and since this property is already zoned mixed-use, I’m wondering, why this project and not something that we might not have to fight about?”

“Yeah, it’s all driven by economic factors,” Boylan said. “This close to the port is why we’re here, and we’re looking to find somewhere to develop a site that complements the port’s presence here. Residential at this location could work, but it’s not something we’re considering.”

Carr asked what Boylan anticipates in terms of the amount of traffic for the new proposed layout of the TLC project.

“I pulled together some numbers before for the revised layout, but it’s 400 trucks a day, but those are not happening necessarily overnight or anything else, just over the course of the (24-hour) day, about 400 trucks,” Boylan said.

The five-warehouse version of the project involved daily traffic of 2,350 total vehicles, including 500 trucks.

“So we’ve removed that entire building and only decreased the number of trucks by about a hundred per day?” Adams said.

Boylan said, “Yeah, I want to double-check the uses with the new layout. I don’t know if the uses have changed at all between these buildings, between what was the previous layout and what’s the new layout, if Building A is now a different use than what I had assumed before, so I may want to double-check that.”

Sharp asked Boylan a question that he had also raised at a previous meeting.

“At the (Isle of Wight County) Planning Commission presentation, you were asked if you could move the warehouse as little as five feet,” Sharp said. “You said, ‘No.’ When the Planning Commission (recommended denial of the rezoning) request, you came to the (Board of) Supervisors having moved it. That was at the point I raised the question, and now, two months later, lo and behold, one whole warehouse disappears.”

Then he asked the question: “So what’s the dynamic there?”

Boylan said, “We had to renegotiate our sales price for the land. It didn’t make economic sense to reduce any square footages further. It just came down to pure economics. There’s restrictions on both sides, and there’s a very limited stretch of developable area, and at some point, the land value just doesn’t support the (development).”

Sharp said, “As things get tighter and tighter, the practicality of this kind of a project kind of diminishes?”

Boylan said yes and noted that equity investors and lenders have a lot of opportunities across the world, and land value is the key variable here, which is why it was quite difficult to give up every square foot of the TLC project.

“It was very challenging for us to swallow that, and we’re here now because we think the project still has some sense to it after renegotiating with the county due to the increase of undevelopable area,” he said.

Adams indicated that he understood TMG had not resubmitted the project to the county yet, but he asked Boylan for his “elevator speech” explaining how this revised proposal was substantially different from what he had proposed previously.

“First, we haven’t decided to resubmit, so there’s no ‘yet,’” Boylan said. Beginning the requested speech, he said, “I think the reduction in square footage by half of the County Tract, as we call it, is a significant gesture, just reducing the overall size of the project and the massing and the scale and how it’s perceived from the community around it, pushing the buildings back to the limit with the wetlands restrictions on this side, incorporating the community use as well with the nature trail and the walking path, I think that all shows that we’re listening and want to produce a plan that everyone’s unhappy with and everyone’s happy with — it kind of meets that middle ground that’s reasonable for us to make an impact here and for Isle of Wight County as well.”

Adams later posed another question.

“With the closing of the Keurig Dr. Pepper warehouse not too far from where you’re proposing this, there weren’t a whole lot of Isle of Wight residents that worked at that facility,” he said. “There were some, and we’ve talked about those individuals, and we feel their plight, and maybe this is an opportunity for them. (Keurig Dr. Pepper) never met their employment targets for the county. How is your project going to actually help the residents of this town and the area around it rather than pulling your labor from somewhere else?”

Boylan said it is definitely going to create more need for housing.

“I think it’s a pretty tight housing market today,” he said. “I haven’t looked in a couple months, but I don’t see many houses for sale in the area. There seems to be demand for housing, affordable housing. We want county residents, we would love Windsor residents to work in the companies that ultimately call TLC their home. That’s not our decision to make. We’re here to facilitate that for them, but this project will create visits to local businesses, absolutely, coming and going from the park. And we’re hopeful that together with jobs and more demand for residential that it creates an even larger economic benefit.”

Adams noted that he and some of the other councilmen have spoken to some of the business owners in town, and they have indicated that they do not receive a lot of business from the existing warehouses in the area.

“I’m sure that some of the food places do, but the hardware store, as an example, right — these companies aren’t buying their stuff from that hardware store, they’re buying from a chain,” Adams said. “So I was just curious, in your proffers, is there any type of, ‘Hey, we’re going to have an economic impact of this amount of dollars for the local community’? Is that something that can be built into a proffer?”

Boylan said, “We could explore that. I don’t recall if Isle of Wight allows earmarking of specific town proffers. … I think it makes a ton of sense, but that’s just me. I’m happy to further explore that.”

Sharp maintained his opposition specifically to the County Site portion of the TLC project, which is the part most immediately adjacent to the Lovers Lane/Keaton Avenue neighborhoods. With the revised plan, the County Site went from featuring three warehouses to two.

“My personal opinion is moving from three warehouses to two warehouses is still two warehouses too many,” he said.

He also noted that he has done some traveling and has yet to see a warehouse complex like TLC so close to residential neighborhoods like Lovers Lane and Keaton Avenue.

Boylan said he thinks there will be more developments situated like that due, at least in part, to scarcity of developable land.

Near the end of the meeting, Boylan expressed interest in holding another town hall meeting to present the project to the public in Windsor.

Boylan had previously held such a meeting on April 22 at Windsor Town Center, and Adams recommended he utilize that same venue for a second meeting.

Carr noted that he was pleased to see TMG listening to the input coming from Windsor residents and representatives.