In an early July decision, the Prince William Planning Commission rezoned part of Route 28 in Nokesville to allow for more warehouse development.
The application was two-fold. It was requested that the nearly 19 acres of land be rezoned from mixed-use village to light industrial and that an update be made to the Comprehensive Plan Amendment.
The update to the CPA would rezone the entire district from general business to light industrial. This area includes parts of Fitzwater Drive, Hooker Lane and the Norfolk Southern Railway, in addition to Nokesville Elementary School and a fire station.
Rezoning the area
The main purpose for the rezoning, staff documents state, is to accommodate limited future development in warehouses and a flex-use industrial park.
“The overall purpose of this is to revive this underutilized and dormant property along a key arterial route and allow for immediate development that will serve area small businesses, address critical warehousing and storage needs and touch upon key county targeted industry and Strategic Plan goals,” the staff document on the rezoning states.
Noah Klein, an attorney involved with the application, echoed staff statements on the necessity of this rezoning.
“From a regional standpoint, this project will serve pretty critical economic development needs. In particular, the need for light industrial warehouse flex type development in an environment where data centers [are] truly absorbing available space,” Klein said. “From a local standpoint, this project will both foster and develop small business.”
He said the goal was not to add more data center development to Northern Virginia with this project.
“The price of industrial property has gone up. Currently, we’re looking at roughly $3 million per acre. That makes traditional industrial development, which is what we’re proposing, almost infeasible,” Klein pointed out. “Not a lot is being built because all that industrial development is going in one direction.”
Klein also said small businesses and others will look for storage/development solutions farther south and out of the region.
“Industrial vacancy, because of the increasing cost, has decreased to record lows. So when you have low vacancy, the rent goes up,” he said. “Because those assets are going to go south [to] Stafford [or] Fauquier County. The rent is getting to a point that it makes it untenable for local small businesses.”
The parcel of land is surrounded by commercial, retail and services, including a 7-Eleven, Dollar General and the Nokesville Library; heavy industrial trucking and construction equipment storage; railroad tracks; early 20th century residences; and smaller-lot homes.
Klein said the specific parcel will have three buildings. Staff and the applicant went back and forth on the design of each building, requesting that they try and align the building’s exterior with Nokesville’s traditional style.
“The applicant has done a lot of things to improve [the design], but we feel that they’re not fully ideal given the context and location of the area,” Eric Griffitts, a principal planner in the county’s Planning Office, said at the meeting. “… We feel that it still could have been more ideally representing more of that rural transitional aspect.”
Klein also said this project will help the community in several ways.
“One of the very first things we heard … was the need for contractor storage. This project will help serve that goal and also, relatedly, will help local employment,” he said. “… This project also constitutes new ground-up development in Nokesville, in an environment that has not seen this type of development and investment in ages. … New investment acts as a catalyst for additional new investment and additional development. And that’s what we expect to happen here.”
The CPA update
Updating the Comprehensive Planning Amendment will allow for more industrial development opportunities in the area, staff documents state, but remove the possibility of addressing housing needs in the near future.
“The demographic analysis shows changing the long-range land use will remove 14.2 planned residential acres that would accommodate a maximum of 28 new housing units and 91 new residents,” the staff report points out. “However, [it] will add more light industrial planned areas, which are in demand due to the lack of available industrial land due to data center development in the county.”
Christopher Carroll, the commissioner for the Brentsville District, said this part of the proposal gave him pause.
“Comprehensive Plan 2040 was not approved that much long ago, and it gives me pause that we’re already looking to do CPA amendments on parcels in and around that area and setting the precedent that that area could be changed for further different uses,” Carroll said.
The rezoning and CPA were ultimately approved in a 5-1 vote, with Carroll being the only one opposed.
