The James City County Planning Commission will not issue a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors on whether to support an application that would allow adding up to 147 homes to the Kingsmill neighborhood.
The commission voted 3-3-1 after a public hearing Wednesday that drew 10 speakers and a representative for the applicant, Xanterra Kingsmill LLC.
Commissioner Tim O’Connor (At Large), who works for the Kingsmill Community Services Association, abstained. Commissioners John Wright (At Large), Robin Bledsoe (Jamestown) and George Drummond (Roberts) voted against recommending the proposal.
Applications to expand Kingsmill were initially filed in July 2013 and a plan went before the commission March. Xanterra then asked for a deferral and resubmitted a revamped plan that the commission considered Wednesday.
The new plan includes 30 townhomes, 11 single-family homes and 96 condominiums or apartments along Wareham’s Pond Road and 10 single-family homes near the intersection of Southall and Kingsmill roads. To meet a county housing policy, 30 of the condominiums or apartments are planned to be offered for sale at workforce-affordable rates. Xanterra has also proposed more than $1.1 million in payments to the county to offset use of schools, libraries and fire and emergency services.
Over the course of the process to get to Wednesday’s meeting, Xanterra has hosted six town hall-style community meetings with Kingsmill residents, and county staff has engaged in meetings and conversations to relay details of the plan to citizens. When the commission in March reviewed Xanterra’s initial plan, about 100 residents turned out and about a quarter of them spoke at a public hearing. Wednesday’s meeting had roughly 50 residents in attendance.
Michael McGurk, spokesperson for Kings-Mill United, said residents have not been vocal in supporting Xanterra’s proposed expansion, but several residents have voiced opposition.
“We’re not against Xanterra making its business here the way it wants to make business,” McGurk said, but Kingsmill residents are concerned about the proposed development. “In 30 years, will our children be proud of what we’re doing here today?”
Xanterra Parks and Resorts promotes itself as the country’s “largest operator of park-based hotels, restaurants and stores,” and is responsible for managing Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Crater Lake National Park and several others. The company also manages several Ohio state parks, cruise and tour companies and hotels and resorts. Residents said they believed Xanterra’s venture into development is uncharted territory for the company.
“This is nothing more than a bungled attempt … to see whether they can open up a new line of business,” Kingsmill resident Andrew Lloyd Williams said. “We, ladies and gentlemen, are nothing more than guinea pigs in this Xanterra experiment.”
Kingsmill resident Edward Fang came out on another side of the issue. He said while he would like development to cease, he recognizes it is not going to happen.
“I understand that development in an evolutionary way is going to happen,” Fang said, adding he considers Xanterra’s plan to be evolutionary development.
A few main concerns citizens have continually voiced, which remained the case Wednesday, regard the level of noise emitted by Busch Gardens and the Anheuser-Busch brewery, effects on access and preservation of Carter’s Grove Country Road, and consideration of neighborhood covenants that require a vote to add new homes to the homeowner’s association.
County Attorney Leo Rogers addressed concerns with the covenants, saying the issue of whether the covenants are violated would be a private matter between the homeowners and Xanterra; the county would not have any liability.
A sound study was conducted on the Busch Gardens train horn and back-up beeping for trucks at the brewery, but the study used estimated noise levels and calculated the projected noise effect on Kingsmill homeowners.
Commission Chairman Rich Krapf (Powhatan) said he believed the study to be “superficial,” but the county does not have a noise policy with any set metrics for sound levels. Krapf also said he would likely be speaking on the expansion tonight as well if he were a Kingsmill resident. Based solely on the land-use part of the application, which the commission is tasked with reviewing, Krapf said he had to support the application.
Bledsoe said she believed the proposed development was planned in the best interest of Xanterra, but the company “has gone from A to possibly M” in changing its proposal with community input. Before the vote, Bledsoe said she was on the fence about which way to go because of the difficulty in hearing neighbors say they would be affected by an unwanted development.
“You have effectively caused an incredibly powerful entity to make changes, and listen to what you have to say. … You’ve done it, and you’ve done it very effectively,” Bledsoe said.
Wright and Drummond were also swayed by citizens in voting against the proposal. Drummond represents Kingsmill’s district and he held himself to that responsibility. He remained on the fence up until the vote as well, but recognized the expectation residents had when buying into a gated community, possibly spending their life savings on a certain development that is now at risk of being changed.
Wright recognized materials given to homeowners who bought into Kingsmill when Busch Properties still owned the land. At the time, residents were told undeveloped areas would remain that way “forever,” which Wright said “constitutes an agreement” between the buyer and seller. Without the consent of current homeowners, Wright said he considered the application to be incomplete.
All six commissioners who voted on the plan said Xanterra and the Kingsmill homeowners should work together going forward, and residents should be included in the planning process. Commissioner Heath Richardson (Stonehouse) said he hoped the parties could “make a real, true olive branch.”
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- Plan to Expand Kingsmill to Go Before JCC Commission Today
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