THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409170105
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Long : 186 lines
GRANT HUNEYCUTT'S childhood home, a few miles north of downtown Suffolk, stands on a small hill overlooking Route 10, commanding a view of the road slicing northward through the surrounding farmland on its way to Chuckatuck and Smithfield.
Huneycutt, 47, remembers that 40 years ago the seven-mile stretch from Pruden Boulevard/U.S. 460, to Kings Highway/Route 125 in Chuckatuck was mostly open land, farms and a few small country stores.
Wildlife was plentiful, and traffic was light.
``At night you could look out for a half-hour, or an hour sometimes, and not see a car,'' Huneycutt says.
These days along the road the cars outnumber the wild turkeys, and deer venture close to parking lots. The Route 10 corridor, for years considered a sleeping giant, slowly but steadily has drawn new businesses and residences, with more to come.
Huneycutt is owner and president of Nansemond Heating & Cooling Inc., and he has broken ground on a $1 million facility on Route 10, about two miles north of his current office and warehouse.
His company has been on Route 10 since the mid-1970s, when Huneycutt leased a former grocery store building to house his fledgling business. Fifteen years ago, he built his current facility, a one-story, brick-fronted office and warehouse, on Route 10 on land he bought from his father.
When business doubled in the past two years, he knew it was time to expand. After several months of looking in Isle of Wight County and in Suffolk, he found what he wanted, right down the road on the edge of Chuckatuck. Forty-five employees will work from the new 23,000-square-foot building, expected to be completed by the end of January.
Huneycutt's new building will be near Virginia Power's Chuckatuck district office, a 20,000-square-foot facility, which opened on 70 acres last April. More than 150 employees from the former Suffolk and Portsmouth offices work there.
Virginia Power picked the location because it is near the center of the district's service population, an area that includes almost 92,000 customers in Suffolk, Smithfield, Windsor, Franklin, Portsmouth and parts of Chesapeake, Surry and Isle of Wight and Southampton counties.
``We tried to locate close to where the growth was going to be, in the northern Suffolk area,'' Virginia Power District Manager Bob Hayes says, adding that the peaceful, fairly rural nature of the site was a bonus.
``The quiet makes you feel comfortable being here. But one of our employees who had worked in Portsmouth before said she knew she was in the country when she saw a bear on her way to work.''
How long that rural atmosphere will survive along the Route 10 Corridor is anybody's guess. While it won't become a Glitter Gulch overnight, development seems to be moving ahead steadily - as a reporter's informal tour along Route 10 will indicate.
Huneycutt's neighbor on the south side of his property will be Meadowbrook Farms, a wholesale greenhouse operation moving from Kings Highway in Chuckatuck. The greenhouse, a barn and a ``head house,'' or large potting shed and office, are under construction at the new site.
Owners John Saunders and William G. Saunders IV chose the Route 10 location for business as well as sentimental reasons.
``The new site is more accessible and more visible to the public,'' John Saunders says. ``We also have deep roots here because the Saunders family has been in Chuckatuck for more than 60 years.''
Benjamin F. Oliver, 75-year-old owner of Oliver's Pools, has opted to keep his businesses on Route 10 since he came home from World War II in 1945 and opened his first venture, the Red Top grocery, farther down the road.
``I am looking for Chuckatuck and Suffolk to meet one day,'' he says, ``and I am going to be in the middle of it.''
The area's mix of tranquillity and convenience attracts businesses and prospective residents, but it has a more practical appeal for Mitchell Norman, regional manager of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Now based in Virginia Beach, Norman would like to relocate his office to the Route 10 vicinity because 75 percent of the agency's work involves lakes in the Suffolk area, he says. The current Nansemond Heating & Cooling location would be ideal, he adds. ``It is one of several possible sites we are considering in the Chesapeake-Suffolk area.''
A shimmer of Hollywood glamour once hovered around Route 10 when Atlantic Film Studios opened in 1988 just south of Reids Ferry. Originally, the project was to include a riverfront community of luxury homes and a golf course centered on the studio complex. The project, dissolved in 1991 when the economy stalled and land prices dropped, has been revitalized recently.
On Oct. 1, Atlantic Studios Corp., a portion of the original Atlantic Film Studios group, is to take possession of the sound stage building and begin production work on TV commercials and industrial and military training films, as well as some feature films. Carl Akers, vice president of finance, says the company also hopes eventually to move its video distribution division, Atlantic Entertainment Ltd., from New York City to Suffolk.
Also coming to the Atlantic Studios complex are the Virginia Social Services Child Support Enforcement offices, civil engineers Rountree and Associates and Ehrenfried Technologies Inc., which manufactures fitness equipment.
Wayne Rountree, owner of Rountree and Associates, a civil engineering consulting firm, grew up on a farm where Obici Hospital now stands, just north of downtown. He has watched the Route 10 Corridor develop, and he moved his office there, confident of the area's continued growth.
``I knew the land here was going to go, but it is going faster than I expected.''
About 10 miles up Route 10, just north of the Suffolk line, the 99-acre Isle of Wight Industrial Park jumped off to a fast start five years ago but then faltered.
``We had the first phase just about sold out, and then the economy soured,'' Fleta Baggs says. ``We have had some biggies look at us, but people are afraid of the economy because you can get whipsawed pretty quickly.''
Baggs is part owner of the private industrial park as well as an associate broker with A.L. Stephenson Realty, the project's marketers. Two companies, Christian and Pugh Inc. and Gibson Mechanical, have opened in the park, and Baggs says interest in buying is picking up again.
Commercial growth requires a strong residential base. Since 1988, the Route 10 area closest to downtown Suffolk has welcomed a variety of housing starts. Burnetts Mill, a lakefront community of starter homes opened in 1988, offers both modular and stick-built homes.
Burnetts Landing, the development's newest section, opened in Marchand offers homes at an average price of $89,000. When the development is completed, it will include about 350 homes.
On the west side of the highway, a planned-use development known as King's Landing includes King's Landing Apartments, 120 low- and middle-income apartment units; Wexford Downs, a townhome development that eventually will include more than 100 townhomes; and Berkshire Meadows, a single-family development by a variety of builders.
The first three phases of Berkshire Meadows and Crown Pointe at Berkshire Meadows - totaling 127 home sites - are almost filled with homes in the $80,000-to-$120,000 range.
Site work on phase four of the development is scheduled to begin Monday, when Providence Development Corp. starts work on 100 more homes similar to those already in Berkshire Meadows. Clay Temple, vice president of construction for Providence, says a fifth phase of 230 homes is planned to begin in the spring.
Just north of the Reids Ferry bridge, on the site of the pre-Civil War Nansemond Brick Factory, developers of a community of all-brick, custom-built homes hope to attract buyers ready to move up from their starter homes. Set on the deep water of the Western Branch of the Nansemond River, Riverside Estates offers 70 wooded lots averaging about a half acre for homes starting at $170,000.
The residential component of the original Atlantic Film Studios project has been partially taken over by a group of investors who hope to develop Hill Point Farm, an upscale subdivision and golf course just south of the film studio office complex. They have retained William E. Judah of Ultra Management Inc. to do a feasibility study on the project.
Judah, a former development manager for the Greenbrier project in Chesapeake, sees great potential for the Route 10 Corridor as a ``mini-Greenbrier.''
He noted that the area's attractiveness is enhanced not only by its proximity to major highways but also by water restrictions in Virginia Beach and a relative lack of developable land in Chesapeake.
For Joyce Lawless, the Route 10 area had a more personal attraction. A native of a small Indiana town, Lawless, 28, had lived in Virginia Beach for seven years. She is a real estate agent with Leading Edge Realty.
``I was homesick, and this was similar to where I grew up,'' she says.
A year ago, Lawless, her husband and two children moved to Berkshire Meadows, where she became a sales manager for Crown Pointe development.
``This is right between town and country,'' she says, ``and I can look right across the way and see cows.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
ROUTE 10 ON A ROLL
[Color] Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Improvements are being made along the Route 10 corridor. The
two-lane road will become four lanes, like this segment between
Reids Ferry Bridge and Brady's Marina.
Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Grant Huneycutt, owner and president of Nansemond Heating and
Cooling on Route 10, checks the plans for his new, bigger building
just down the road.
Rick Landis, left, and John Nanney are supervisors at Virginia
Power's Chuckatuck office, which opened in April on 70 acres along
Route 10.
Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Joyce Lawless plays with sons Daniel, left, and Jonathon at their
home in Berkshire Meadows, a residential development on Route 10.
The area reminds her of the small Indiana town of her birth.
King's Landing includes 120 low- and middle-income apartment units
on the west side of Route 10.
Staff map
K. NEWMAN/Staff
by CNB