(The following story by Jeffrey Kelley appeared on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on March 14.)
PRINCE GEORGE, Va. — Out of his tiny trailer plopped down near the western edge of rural Prince George County, Warren Green has just about everything he needs to keep his business moving.
He has a laptop computer on his desk, a small fridge for storing cold beverages and snacks, a phone, files and papers and books strewn throughout. “Want a Coke?” he kindly asks a guest.
As the industrial real estate director for SouthPoint Business Park, Green oversees the operation of the 620-acre site, home to five tenants running their multimillion-dollar businesses out of gigantic warehouses.
He has space for more.
And although Green has his essentials to run the industrial park, located just off Interstate 295 and U.S. 460, there’s one more thing he could use.
It’s something that wouldn’t easily fit in his tiny trailer or fridge — and something that likely will roll into the county over the next year.
It’s also something some of the county’s roughly 34,300 residents would prefer never to see.
. . .
Norfolk Southern Railway Co., a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern Corp., plans to build an $11.3 million park in Prince George that would transfer shipping containers back and forth from trucks to trains. It’s known as an intermodal facility.
The freight center could be an economic shot in the arm for the county, increasing the industrial tax base and giving the rest of central Virginia a faster outlet to do business in a global economy.
While a grassroots group in Prince George is heavily against the facility, other residents and some rail officials say the aggregate benefit of such a complex would be greater than the problems it would create in a tiny portion of the county.
Rail lines have long been a main transport for basic commodities and high-value items such as furniture, shoes and electronics. Products and goods are placed in containers usually about 40 feet long — and put on trains to be shipped.
At the freight centers, trains stop, and the just-under-10-foot-tall containers are quickly switched to a tractor-trailer to be shipped to surrounding areas.
The process can also be reversed moving containers from trucks onto trains.
Intermodal transportation has become “a critical part of what I think is more of the future of both rail and traditional truck freight,” said Karen Rae, director of the state department of rail and public transportation.
Norfolk Southern presented its ideas for a freight center to Prince George officials in December 2003. The company told the five-member Board of Supervisors the facility would rest on two plots of land totaling roughly 219 acres.
One plot is already zoned beyond the level Norfolk Southern needs, which is light industrial use. The other plot is zoned for residential and agricultural use.
When the company announced plans to pursue the rezoning and construction, it said it had the right to move forward with the proposal under a federal law known as the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995. The legislation exempts railroads from government zoning processes if the company is constructing a facility directly related to rail operations.
In other words, Norfolk Southern could move forward without county approval of the rezoning or the facility.
“We were very up-front in indicating to them that we have such authority,” said Rob Martinez, vice president of business development for Norfolk Southern. He added that the act is not meant to sound like a “threat” to the county.
But regardless of federal backing, Norfolk Southern has decided to work with the county to get the best for everyone. It has offered numerous conditions to the county (known as “proffers” in real estate terms), including setbacks for containers along local roads, planting trees to cut down on eyesores and shielding lights at the facility.
At a county Board of Supervisors meeting last month — packed with those in opposition to the facility as well as company executives — the board decided to delay a decision on a proposal to give Norfolk Southern its rezoning and construction approval.
Board Chairman Joseph A. Leming said this month that Norfolk Southern has “not been a good corporate partner with the county or the citizens to date.”
“At every turn, they always assert the [federal legislation],” Leming said. “They have been hasty and not completed the due-diligence process.
“I am a businessman,” said Leming, a family physician. “Persons who act on incomplete or bad due diligence are called either lucky or broke.”
. . .
For Green, the real estate director at SouthPoint, the center could be a major boon to business.
“Good golly,” the 59-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel said, chuckling. “I mean I’m sitting on 295, I’m sitting on 460. . . . This is a perfect location, the perfect project in the perfect place at the perfect time.”
At SouthPoint, a park owned by Tennessee-based The Hollingsworth Cos., companies can build and lease warehouses for distribution, storage and manufacturing.
Green said he hopes companies would use SouthPoint’s offerings, boosting his business and with any luck adding more businesses to the area.
“To me, it was a no-brainer that Norfolk Southern picked this location because of the traffic patterns,” Green said.
“God created this. And it’s natural. And it’s not going to go away,” he said. “[Prince George] attracts good locations and good developments.”
While Green and surrounding companies have expressed interest in a freight center, at least one group in the county is firmly against it.
A coalition of about 70 county residents has formed R4, or Rational Residential, Rural and Related Business Future for Prince George County.
The group formed early last year and has since protested against the railroad at regular county meetings. Take a drive down county roads such as Lamore Drive and Rives Road — both areas that will see increased truck traffic — and you’ll see the wooden, hand-made signs in opposition to Norfolk Southern’s proposed facility.
R4’s “duly elected president,” Michael DeBreceny, who lives near where the facility would be built, calls Norfolk Southern a “developer” with “money-making schemes.”
“They saw a golden opportunity to make some more money,” he said.
But railroad representatives say they aren’t out to hurt anyone.
“This sort of development runs into the issues of very localized opposition versus a more generalized benefit,” said Norfolk Southern’s Martinez, who was Virginia’s transportation secretary under Gov. George Allen.
[The Board of Supervisors] might welcome having more development and economic prosperity,” Martinez said, “but then they are torn because they’ve got some constituents who are obviously very opposed.
“By going the rezoning route, we kind of put them in a bad spot,” he said.
The county vision, set forth by the board, is to make Prince George the “best place to live, learn, work and raise a family,” Leming said.
He added that if the facility were properly developed with the railroad’s conditions, “this project could advance the county vision.
The county will vote on Norfolk Southern’s proposal at the Board of Supervisors meeting on April 12.
If the county denies the rezoning of the land and the building of a freight center, Norfolk Southern plans to pursue the construction under federal law. At that point, Martinez said, there’s no telling if the company would stick to its offered setbacks and conditions.