Some of the detached houses planned for the Sweetgrass development approved last year for the outskirts of Smithfield will be built closer together to avoid archeological impacts.

Isle of Wight County supervisors voted 4-1 on March 20 to approve an application by Ryan Homes parent NVR for a conditional zoning amendment that would revise the neighborhood plan to allow 40-foot-wide lots, down from the minimum 50-foot width specified in the original conceptual plan.

The supervisors voted 3-2 last year to approve NVR’s application for mixed-use zoning to construct 615 homes and up to 73,000 square feet of commercial space fronting Benns Church Boulevard at the 250-acre Yeoman Farm by the Sherwin Williams store. Of those 615 homes, 225 would be townhouses and 390 would be age-restricted detached homes.

Since last year’s rezoning vote, an archeological study identified three archeological sites that are potentially eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. NVR says some of the detached homes closer together would allow the company to minimize disturbances at the three identified sites while maintaining the same number of homes.

“We’re very excited to move away from those areas and preserve some of that open space,” said Adam Edbauer, market manager of land acquisitions for Ryan Homes.

The archeological survey the James River Institute for Archeology completed for NVR in November lists a site as “44IW0245” that bears “evidence of historic population or activity from the second half of the 17th century through the middle of the 20th” and includes a standing barn and the remains of a brick chimney, according to the Institute’s report.

Another site, “44IW0426,” includes remnants of Native American pottery and “appears to retain considerable subsurface integrity and to present significant research potential regarding Woodland-period prehistoric activity in Isle of Wight County.”

The third site, designated “44IW0429,” includes brick fragments, iron scrap and melted non-leaded colorless glass, which, according to the Institute’s report, suggests a 19th to 20th century outbuilding.

District 4 Supervisor Joel Acree cast the lone dissenting vote on the zoning amendment and during a prior vote to invoke a provision of state law that allows the board to forgo holding a public hearing on applications that do not affect the “use or density” of what was previously approved.

Acree was among the dissenting votes in the 3-2 decision in 2024 on the rezoning, taking issue with the estimated 6,685 daily vehicular trips a traffic study had estimated the project would generate. The other dissenting vote last year came from now-Board Chairman Don Rosie, who despite his earlier opposition this time voted with the majority.

Edbauer said the change will also reduce the number of roads that would need to be built, potentially reducing NVR’s construction costs and allowing it to keep down the prices of the completed homes. NVR is aiming for a price point between $350,000 and $400,000 for the detached homes built on the 40-foot-wide lots, and a slightly higher $380,000 to low $400,000s range for the remaining 50-foot-wide lots, he said.

The average sale price for a Sweetgrass townhouse was estimated at just under $259,000 in 2019 when the development was first proposed, and was still estimated to sell in the upper $200,000s as of 2022 when Sweetgrass went before the county’s Planning Commission.