Early next month, Stafford County residents will have an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed construction of another large warehouse near the Courthouse Road interchange.
On Tuesday, Stafford’s planning and zoning director Jeff Harvey asked supervisors to consider rezoning 32 acres wedged between Interstate 95 and Wyche Road to accommodate a 250,000-square-foot industrial building that would eventually be used as a warehouse or a distribution facility. Harvey said the new facility would maintain a 60-foot forested buffer facing Interstate 95.
But news of another warehouse coming to an already bustling and ever-growing interchange drew some criticism.
“As is becoming a standard nowadays, the citizens are getting clued in on these things very, very late,” Falmouth resident Alane Callandar told supervisors during Tuesday’s meeting. “Industrial was not my vision for Stafford Courthouse, and here we have now a new industrial site going in next to the DHL site right at Stafford Courthouse.”
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Charlie Payne, the Fredericksburg attorney representing Matan Acquisitions II LLC—owners of the new warehouse—said the facility could add as many as 1,200 vehicles per day to the area.
“It’s going to be a mix typically of multi-tenants, office and or warehouse, light manufacturing, etc.,” Payne told supervisors.
Payne said when a traffic study was conducted in preparation for the warehouse, traffic analysts factored in “what’s going to be built today and what’s to be built” in an area of the county that seems to be constantly under construction following a decision made by supervisors nearly two years ago.
In December 2020, county supervisors voted unanimously to rezone and reclassify just over two dozen acres of wooded property in Stafford’s courthouse area near the Interstate 95 interchange to become Burns Corner. That massive project, now underway, is being built as four separate quadrants that combined will make up about 26 acres that includes roughly 214,000 square feet of commercial development space, such as drive-thru and sit-down restaurants, commercial retail stores, medical offices and a day care center. A new hotel, drug store and supermarket are also planned.
Although traffic improvements in the area will eventually include additional turn and through lanes, as well as sidewalks to accommodate pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic in the area is expected to increase by 24,000 vehicles daily after Burns Corner is complete.
In addition to the Burns Corner project, supervisors also approved a 533,634-square-foot DHL shipping warehouse in the same area in March 2021. That facility is scheduled to be fully operational in December and is expected to add more than 1,800 more vehicles to the same area.
During the traffic study for the latest proposed warehouse, Payne said the facility would impact the vehicle wait time for motorists at the Wyche Road and Hospital Boulevard intersections by about 2.1 seconds. The intersection near the Sheetz convenience store is rated at a service level “E” on a scale of A through F.
Payne offered a $100,000 proffer for the warehouse and said the developers of Burns Corner will add another turn lane at the intersection at a later time during their build. Currently, the intersection only has two left turn lanes.
“We’re not actually impacting the intersection at that point, it’s when (Burns) comes online that that intersection is impacted,” Payne said. “The recommendation was to proffer or to provide a left-turn lane, well, we don’t have to provide a left-turn lane, per se, because that’s already proffered by the Burns development.”
Some local residents didn’t feel Payne’s proffer was good enough to offset the potential traffic and environmental impacts. Jeff Adams, who lives and farms in the northern portion of the county, told supervisors Tuesday they should not accept Payne’s offer but should instead put a penalty on each tree cut down on the buffer area the prospective builders say they will maintain along I–95.
Charge them “$100,000 per tree for any tree (removed) in that 60-foot area and I’ll guarantee you not a one of them will have a limb missing,” Adams said. “It’s time to turn (proffers) around and put them to your advantage and not their advantage.”
Seeking more public input on the warehouse and the impact it might have on the county, Falmouth Supervisor Meg Bohmke set a public hearing for Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. at county headquarters.
“People work during the day and I want to give people that opportunity should they wish to come out and speak at a future meeting,” Bohmke said.
