Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 28, 1990 TAG: 9005280137
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-6 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MARTINSBURG, W.VA. LENGTH: Long
"I can't say I'm happy about doing it," Cushwa said. "At one time I used to be against this type of development. But I have to do it to survive. I guess you can say we're growing houses instead of apples."
Along the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle, farmland and woodland is being snapped up at a pace that has experts predicting a repeat of the boom that swept through northern Virginia a decade ago.
While the rest of West Virginia is among the nation's poorest and most economically-depressed states, its three-county Eastern Panhandle, less than 80 miles from Washington, D.C., is looking to some commuters as an attractive alternative to traffic-choked northern Virginia and southern Maryland.
Housing priced nearly half that of Maryland and Virginia is luring federal employees, retirees and middle-class workers employed at the growing number of companies moving to the area.
"After paying 21 percent interest on loans to cover [orchard] operating costs, we just decided there had to be another way," said Cushwa, 42, whose Duchess Estates features homes priced from $130,000 to $180,000.
"My father wouldn't be too happy if he was still alive," he said. "It's good for business. It's good for employment. But it gets to you when you drive through and see all those houses instead of apple trees."
Struggling orchard growers, hit hard by a drought and killing frosts this spring, aren't the only ones cashing in.
Batman Corp., headed by Iranian-born developer Bahman Batmanghelidj of McLean, Va., has purchased or plans to buy 2,500 acres near Charles Town in Jefferson County, West Virginia's eastern tip.
"Our development will include a residential area, shopping area and provide employment as well as recreation," said Batman Corp. Vice President Alex Vahabzadeh. "We want to create an atmosphere where you can work and shop with recreation like tennis, golf and horse riding."
Hap Holladay, vice president of Holladay Corp. of Washington, D.C., whose company recently bought 885 acres nearby for $7.2 million, plans 3,500 units of townhouses and one-family homes. Eighty acres have been set aside for light industry.
The building boom is fueled by land prices as low as $4,400 an acre, almost a giveaway when compared to the $340,000 an acre in neighboring Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia.
State officials say low taxes and few restrictions on development also interest executives and developers, developers and bankers.
"I think West Virginia has been ignored for quite a long time," said Henry A. Berliner Jr., chief executive officer of Second National Federal Savings Bank, which operates 36 branches in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia.
"It's more important than ever for people to live in places where they can get away from stress," said Berliner. "You used to go to the mountains or the beach to get away. Now people are saying `Look, you don't have to do that anymore. You can live here in a vacation area and drive a little farther to work.' "
Vahabzadeh said the biggest barrier to development in the area is psychological.
"If you ask people in Washington how far away West Virginia is, they typically say two or three hours," said Vahabzadeh. "They don't realize that it only takes 45 minutes to get to the Eastern Panhandle from Dulles airport."
The influx of people and jobs has transformed the area into a showcase for a financially troubled state that has had one of the nation's highest unemployment rates since the early 1980s.
"The Eastern Panhandle used to be like the rest of the state, either stagnant or declining economically," said William Miernyk, an economics professor emeritus at West Virginia University.
"You can't put a specific date on it, but the spillover from metropolitan Washington into West Virginia has been going on for some time," said Miernyk.
The transformation hasn't always gone smoothly. Rush-hour traffic jams are now common on some of the area's narrow, two-lane roads. Classrooms are filled to capacity and county officials are scrambling to keep up with demands for extended sewer lines and additional street lights and trash collection.
"One of the major problems we're having with all the growth is that the industrial park we started in 1983 is already full," said Norman Risavi, Berkeley County administrator since 1981. "And our infrastructure isn't able to handle what we have now, let alone future growth."
Risavi said county officials are working on a comprehensive plan mandated by a new state law that allows counties with greater than 1 percent annual growth to assess impact fees and other municipal charges.
The Local Powers Act was drafted by county commissioners in the Eastern Panhandle, according to Del. John Overington, a Republican who represents parts of Berkeley and Jefferson counties.
"When we have to build new schools, add to the police and fire departments, and run new sewer lines, we can either let the new people or current residents pay for it," said Overington.
The Eastern Panhandle's growing pains have been exacerbated by lawmakers' lack of understanding of the area's needs and by lobbyists for coal and other special interests, according to Overington.
The seeming lack of attention so angered Charles Town Mayor D.C. Master a couple of years ago that he called for the area to secede from the rest of the state.
Risavi said the area will be hard pressed to match the services that immigrants from Washington and Baltimore have come to expect.
Prime examples include fewer police, firefighters and rescue personnel and the inability to extend water and sewer lines fast enough for homebuilders.
by CNB