THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996 TAG: 9610030274
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 34 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANDREW PETKOFSKY, RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
LENGTH: 113 lines
Allen Ball's office is a trailer parked in a wonderland of woods, fields, ravines and salt marshes that covers thousands of acres between the York River and Interstate 64 near Toano.
Ball's job is to transform that wilderness into a community, Stonehouse, that's planned during the next 20 to 30 years to grow larger in area than the nearby city of Williamsburg and support a population of 10,000 to 12,000 residents.
``The scale of this project is pretty astounding,'' said Ball, recently named executive vice president and general manager of Stonehouse L.L.C., the developer.
With road construction under way and the first of the new community's two planned golf courses already open, Ball said, construction of a sales center and the first homes is expected to begin by early spring.
The development inevitably will change the miles-from-anywhere character of northwestern James City County, which contains most of its property, and adjacent New Kent County, which contains some.
But Ball said his company, a joint venture of Dominion Resources Inc. and Chesapeake Corp., is taking an environmentally friendly approach that will leave up to 65 percent of the property as open space and keep homes and commercial development in harmony with the rugged terrain. He said the company considers the property's ample wildlife, a riot of plants and animals, to be an asset.
``I've seen foxes, deer, bobcats - everything - on this site,'' he said. ``If I can get people out to look at this site, they fall in love with it. It really is an incredibly gorgeous piece of Virginia countryside.''
Its sheer size - twice the acreage of the Kingsmill resort - will make Stonehouse a community with its own character and even shopping centers and schools. Ball said that character will be shaped by the market trends that take place during the next two or three decades.
Developers hope its central location - 38 miles from Richmond and 35 miles from Newport News - will make Stonehouse a desirable bedroom community for commuters. Ball said the golf and nearness to Williamsburg also will attract retirees and second-home buyers from Washington and other mid-Atlantic population centers.
The ``phase one'' section set for construction in the spring covers about 1,020 acres in James City County on terrain also occupied by the new Legends golf course.
The 800 residential units planned for the section will include patio homes targeted at young families, some town houses and golf-oriented ``cluster'' homes, Ball said.
Two types of lots for single-family homes also will be available. One type will be large lots of 1 1/2 to 2 acres. The second will be a neighborhood of 75-foot-by-130-foot lots reserved for homes built by one of the ``recommended builders'' that Stonehouse will designate.
Ball said homes in the first phase may run from $120,000 and $130,000 for townhouses, and up to $300,000.
Along with the sales center and about 25,000 square feet of commercial space, the developers will build a neighborhood of model homes early in the phase-one construction, Ball said.
They also will build a community center that eventually might be expanded to include a day-care and arts center, and an upscale bed and breakfast lodging of 12 to 15 rooms for prospective residents and golf vacationers.
Guidelines for custom-built homes will not dictate a particular architectural style, Ball said, but will require that designs be in harmony with the environment.
Residents in phase one will enter Stonehouse through the current entrance road off Route 30 near the Toano exit of Interstate 64. As subsequent phases are built, however, the development will get an additional entrance that will require a flyover across the interstate about halfway between the Toano and Norge-Croaker exits.
The overall plan also includes a provision for a future I-64 exit between Toano and Norge-Croaker.
According to documents filed with James City County, the development eventually will include sites for an elementary school, a middle school, a police or fire station, a public library or recycling center, several parks and numerous neighborhood recreation facilities.
Such amenities would be needed in a development that could bring an increase of 25 percent or more to the county's current population of about 40,000.
Under current zoning, the development also could include up to 3.5 million square feet of commercial space, which would be comparable to the space of three or four large shopping malls combined.
Running through all that planned development is an extensive system of marshes, streams and other wetlands that form a York River tributary called Ware Creek. The creek was once slated to be dammed and turned into a reservoir, but federal regulators vetoed the project on environmental grounds. A final court ruling killed the reservoir plan in 1994.
They pointed out in court documents that the wetland system's wildlife population includes nearly 60 bird species, an 81-nest great blue heron rookery, 23 species of fish, 16 species of reptiles and amphibians and seven species of mammals.
Stonehouse's developers initially envisioned the reservoir as a centerpiece of the development, but the undisturbed wetlands system is in many ways a more exciting setting. The contrast of high ridges and heavily vegetated marshes should add drama to the residential and commercial sites as it already does for the golf course.
The plan for later phases of development includes a waterfront community on bluffs overlooking the York River and Ware Creek and, possibly, a marina on the river.
For drinking water, the developers have obtained a permit to drill a well that will supply the first phase. Sewage will be handled through Hampton Roads Sanitation District facilities south and east of Williamsburg on the Peninsula.
A main already has been extended to the Stonehouse site, county officials said, so the only sewage provision in the early stages of Stonehouse will be collection and pumping capabilities.
Ball said his own attitude as a developer was formed while working for eight years as an executive for the company that developed South Carolina's Kiawah Island, a 10,000-acre, multi-use community distinguished by a sensitivity to the environment.
``We're doing our best,'' he said, ``to do the same with Stonehouse.''
KEYWORDS: PLANNED DEVELOPMENT PLANNED COMMUNITY WILLIAMSBURG by CNB