Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9405310109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TRINITY LENGTH: Long
\ Nora Sprinkle laments the decline of the Botetourt County orchard that has been a part of her life for nearly five decades.
"It's a sad situation," she said. "The apple business has gone down, down, down."
And with property values going up, up, up during a decade-long building boom, some orchard owners, including the Sprinkles, are selling out.
"It's progress," the 70-year-old woman admits reluctantly. "That's what it is."
Her son, Ray, who doubles as orchard manager and a real estate agent, recognized the trend about six or seven years ago.
"We knew that selling would be the next step," he said.
With Valley View Mall and the Roanoke Regional Airport within a 15-minute drive from the southern part of the county, Sprinkle said it became inevitable that people would be looking to settle here.
When public water and sewer became available about 10 years ago, home buyers in the Roanoke Valley started finding the county more attractive.
During the 1980s, the county's population jumped by 7.4 percent to 24,992, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Lower taxes, less congestion and a slower pace of life were the drawing cards.
Cloverdale, once a haven to apple production, is dotted by motels, fast food restaurants, and subdivisions with names like Apple Tree Village.
Now, the sprawl of real estate development is rumbling northward along U.S. 220, weaving its way along side roads and heading toward Fincastle.
Ray Sprinkle said the sprawl is the product not only of real estate demand, but also of an unhappy and less profitable decade of business for orchard owners.
Sprinkle said the choice to sell did not come easily.
"There is a little farmer in everybody," he said. "The grass roots of this country is agriculture."
The realities of modern-day governmental regulation is another matter.
During the past decade, orchard owners have been forced to provide upgraded living quarters and worker's compensation for migrant workers. Temporary laborers now can collect unemployment at the orchard owner's expense.
Coupled with skyrocketing insurance costs, Sprinkle said, those factors cut deeply into the apple orchards' profits.
"I saw the changes coming," Sprinkle said. "I didn't want to be a 45-year-old man that needed to change careers and couldn't."
And then the government cracked down on orchards' use of Alar, a chemical that Sprinkle said helped keep apples on the trees and sped their growth so they could be sent to the market in late August.
Without Alar, he said, the growing season was prolonged to late September. By that time, apples from the states of Washington, Pennsylvania and New York already were flooding the market.
Regardless of the downside of the orchard business, the financial realities of skyrocketing real estate prices would have made the prospect of selling attractive.
Land that once sold for as little as $200 an acre is now drawing $30,000 to $35,000 if properly developed, Sprinkle said. If a house is built, the property value jumps into the $125,000 range.
Steven I. Wampler, the county's commissioner of revenue, is paid to notice things like that.
Last year, he said, the county's real estate tax base jumped over the $1 billion mark for the first time. From 1991 to 1993, the county's taxable real estate jumped $250 million, although Wampler admits that increase includes a reassessment.
Still, the value of the building permits issued since 1980 reflect that $250 million worth of new construction has taken place. That includes more than 2,500 residential units.
In the first three months of this year alone, county building permits totaled about $9 million.
Wampler said he doesn't expect any slowdown as long as the economy remains reasonably stable. Botetourt County has about 1,000 vacant lots ready for housing.
With four main arterial highways - Interstate 81, U.S. 220, U.S. 460 and U.S. 11 - Botetourt County will continue to flourish as a bedroom community for Roanoke, Wampler predicts.
Those factors also are helping the county attract industry.
Allen Layman, whose family runs orchards near Daleville, said those factors have caused his family to cut back on their orchard operation. They've reduced their number of trees in recent years and also closed down a dairy farm that is now being sold as a subdivision.
But Layman said his family won't take a fire sale approach when it comes to selling its land for real estate development. The orchards have been too good to them, he said.
"Our land is valuable," he acknowledges. "It will always be valuable. I don't see anyone past my generation working in apples."
The Laymans, unlike some other orchard owners, have other means of making a living. Family members are the majority owners of the Roanoke & Botetourt Telephone Co. They hope to venture out later this year into wireless cable television.
Layman no longer counts the orchards among the family's moneymakers.
He tells the story of a farmer who won $1 million and was asked what he would do with it.
"He'd keep on farming until he lost it all," is the punch line.
And that reality is coming home these days to Botetourt County orchard owners.
"If you're losing money doing it," Layman asks. "Why do it?"
by CNB