Six months after proposing the change, Isle of Wight County’s Planning Commission voted 5-2 on March 25 to recommend a zoning ordinance amendment that would increase the minimum distance required between industrial-zoned properties and adjacent residential communities.

Limited industrial, or LI, zoning currently requires a minimum 100-foot setback from the property line for uses other than office buildings, which are allowed a 35-foot setback. The proposed language would additionally require 100-foot minimum side- and rear-yard setbacks for a single building when an industrial parcel abuts a residential subdivision of five or more lots recorded on the same plat as of July 1 of this year, and minimum 200-foot side- and rear-yard setbacks if more than one building is located on the industrial parcel.

It’s less of a change than the 300-foot minimum buffer Planning Commissioner Jennifer Boykin had requested. The commissioners have been discussing the matter since September.

Boykin and Commissioner George Rawls cast the two dissenting votes while Commissioners Thomas Distefano, Raynard Gibbs, Matthew Smith, Brian Carroll and Chairman Bobby Bowser voted in favor of the recommended verbiage.

One of Boykin’s requests did make it into the final version that will advance to the Board of Supervisors on April 17 for a final public hearing and possible vote. In October, she’d asked that developers be required to conduct a sound study. The recommended language states developers would be required to construct a sound wall or other mitigation measure as recommended by the required noise study.

The proposed language also requires a buffer of at least three rows of staggered evergreen landscaping in addition to a berm of at least 10 feet in height between any industrial- and residential-zoned parcels.

The supervisors would have the option of granting an exception to any of the listed requirements upon the recommendation of the Planning Commission. Distefano, who was recently appointed to fill the late William McCarty’s seat on the Board of Supervisors, said it’s important to him that each project is “judged on its own merits.”

Isle of Wight County Economic Development Director Kristi Sutphin told the Planning Commission in January that the then-proposed 300-foot buffer would eliminate just under 20 acres of developable land and just under 380,000 square feet of buildable area across four for-sale Economic Development Authority-owned parcels, which would translate to over $1.3 million less in EDA land sales and roughly $200,000 less per year in taxes compared to what the county would have received under the current setbacks. Sutphin, when asked by Boykin if she had any objection to the latest verbiage, said it’s “better from an economic development standpoint” but noted one for-sale parcel would still be impacted.

Sutphin told the Times that parcel is the 82-acre former Grayland Lumber property in Phase II of the Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park on Old Suffolk Road, which was depicted in a circa-2015 concept plan as housing four buildings ranging in size from 260,500 to 294,500 square feet.

“We will take another look at that property and those impacts when we get ready to develop that piece,” she told the commissioners.

The Planning Commission vote came five days after county supervisors voted 3-2 to approve the Tidewater Logistics Center multi-warehouse complex proposed for the outskirts of Windsor. The project calls for four warehouses totaling 726,000 square feet on 154 acres fronting the four-lane Route 460 adjacent to the Keaton Avenue and Lovers Lane neighborhoods. Its site plan calls for a minimum 280-foot distance from the nearest residence, a 9-foot-tall, 60-foot-wide landscape berm and a 14.9-acre public park between the warehouses and the two neighborhoods in place of what would have been a fifth warehouse.

James Villers, one of three Windsor residents who spoke in opposition at the public hearing that preceded the Planning Commission vote, called the proceeding “deja vu.”

“What’s being proposed is not good enough; we need to do better,” Villers said.

The other two – Glyn Willis and Walter Freeman – had previously spoken against Tidewater Logistics. 

“One-hundred and 200 feet is nothing; a football field is 360 feet,” Freeman objected.

Willis noted that the county’s zoning ordinance imposes a higher setback requirement on solar farms that abut residential properties than warehouses. The solar ordinance adopted in 2022 set a minimum 75-foot distance from all property lines and at least 125 feet from any residential parcels.

Isle of Wight’s existing setback requirements for when industrial uses abut houses already exceeds what’s required in Suffolk, which is competing with Isle of Wight for new warehouse and manufacturing tenants along Route 460 as the Port of Virginia completes a $1.4 billion expansion. Suffolk requires only a 30-foot all-around buffer when M-1 light industrial-zoning abuts a residential area. For M-2 heavy industrial zoning adjacent to residences, Suffolk requires only a 30-foot front-yard setback and 50-foot side- and rear-yard setbacks.