Supervisors ask what possibilities there are for the county-owned property located between Cooks Corner and Saluda.
History
Middlesex County purchased the Latimore property in 2006 to build a sewage treatment facility that would have discharged into the marshes of Urbanna Creek. The project was later abandoned.
The county then purchased in 2022 adjacent road frontage land that would provide better access into the property and create better development potential.
County Administrator Matt Walker said that at the 2025 MCBS retreat conducted in the spring supervisors encouraged staff to look into ways to create a public/private partnership to develop the property.
Zoning
Middlesex County Planning Director David Kretz reported that the land is zoned village community, which allows for many types of usages, including single and multi-family dwellings, offices, grocery stores, restaurants, bed and breakfast lodging, and retail shops with 5,000 square footage or less.
“The interior of the property is beautiful with high knolls that would make for great residential housing,” said Kretz. “The location does offer some challenges, however, in that there are several deep ravines. There is enough flat land in the front and on the highway that would make for desirable commercial development.”
Water and sewer
Middlesex County Engineer Chip England said the property does have drawbacks when considering water and sewer. If Middlesex Water Authority (MWA) water lines were run from Cooks Corner just to the front of the property it will take 4,400 feet of pipe costing upward of $1 million, he said. “Then there is the cost of running waterlines into the subdivision,” said England.
He also said it would take a Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) special exception policy to run sewer lines from Saluda to the property to hook into the Saluda Sewage Treatment Plant. England questioned whether HRSD would consider covering the cost.
HRSD Saluda service area lines run the same as Aqua Virginia water service lines. The closest Aqua Virginia/HRSD water/sewage service line to the Latimore property ends right next to the Virginia Department of Transportation building on Route 33, a good mile away.
HRSD has a long range plan of expanding the Saluda sewage district said Administrator Matt Walker, “but it is a good 17 years away from coming and we are going to need a developer who will take on water and sewer.”
Hartfield representative Bill Harris agreed that the property has challenges but that the private sector (developers) will tell us if it is possible to create a successful development on that land.”
Economic development
Economic Development Authority (EDA) Executive Director Trent Funkhouser said, “We need to be realistic in that Middlesex is not growing.”
Funkhouser said that King William, New Kent, Gloucester and West Point have the infrastructure in place that encourages development. “We have to ask ourselves, why are people moving to those areas and not here,” he said. “We need to consider what’s possible and not what’s probable. I do not know of a developer who will take on the cost of this type of water and sewer project.”
RFP
“What this RFP will be is a gauge to determine what the private sector will do with this property,” said Walker. “It might be nothing but it is certainly worth seeing if someone wants to take it on.”
Walker said that a Deltaville developer, “who has built some beautiful residential subdivisions” has shown some interest in this project. “We won’t know until we put it out there what might happen,” he said.
Bill Harris said, “We will learn a lot just by doing this.”
The board voted 5-0 to have the county administrator send out RFP’s.
