Smithfield Vice Mayor Bill Harris proposed on June 3 that the town buy right-of-way from Red Point Taphouse for a long-planned but stalled walking and pedestrian trail.

Doing so could offset roughly half of the cost Red Point would otherwise incur to connect to town water, Harris said.

The proposal marks the latest development in Red Point’s nine-month standoff with town officials over an unmet condition of the 1929 gas station-turned-brewery’s 2020 rezoning. The council voted 4-3 on April 1 against granting Red Point’s request for a special use permit that would have waived the water requirement and allowed the brewery to continue using a private well that predates the town’s annexation of the area. A month later, Red Point’s landlords returned with a counterproposal in which they’d agree to connect and cover the remaining cost if the town foots the now $32,000 estimate for extending a water line across South Church Street to a meter at the edge of Red Point’s property line.

Red Point’s former co-owners, Tim Ryan, Derek Joyner and Nick Hess, say they reluctantly agreed as a condition of rezoning to within two years pave the parking lot and connect to town water, not knowing at the time that it would cost over $30,000 to have town contractors extend the required 2-inch water connection from the opposite side of the road to where the business is located. A prior Town Council had agreed to waive the paving requirement in October. The trio sold the business to Ben and Elen Osmanson in January and in May sold the building for $350,000 to Blueocean LLC, according to Isle of Wight County land transfer records from that month.

Ryan, in past appearances at Town Council meetings, said the brewery’s revenue was hurt by the ongoing rehabilitation of the Cypress Creek Bridge, and that the water line cost would equate to nearly 100% of Red Point’s 2024 profits. Since January of last year, the Virginia Department of Transportation has restricted the two-lane bridge connecting downtown Smithfield with the east end of town to a single westbound lane with eastbound traffic diverted via Main and Grace Streets to the Route 10 Bypass. The work is scheduled to be completed this fall.

Harris, who voted in opposition in April to the water waiver, said he remains opposed to taxpayers footing the entire $32,000 cost but would be amenable to “reducing the immediate financial impact” to Red Point.

Isle of Wight County completed its 3.1-mile phase of the trail in 2021, which is intended to link Nike Park in Carrollton with Smithfield’s Windsor Castle Park. It currently stops at the corner of Battery Park Road and South Church Street by the Royal Farms gas station and convenience store.

The town plans to build its 1-mile phase down South Church Street past the side of the road where Red Point is located, and carry it across the Cypress Creek Bridge to Windsor Castle Park’s entrance by the Smithfield Station restaurant and hotel. Though the county spent $8.6 million for its phase, the town as of last fall anticipated spending $23 million, which is being driven upward by the cost of widening South Church Street to include a center turn lane. Engineers say the road is too flat to accommodate curb-and-gutter drainage infrastructure that needs to be in place before the trail can be built. Smithfield submitted the trail in 2023 for the fifth round of Smart Scale, a VDOT cost-to-benefit funding formula, but the project scored poorly.

Harris said he’d been informed by the town’s Public Works Department that the estimated cost of acquiring the right-of-way fronting Red Point is “well north of $15,000” and urged the town to make the purchase “in the immediate future.”

“The amount of money generated by that sale could be immediately subtracted from the cost of bringing the water line across South Church Street to the property at Red Point,” Harris said.

His proposal drew the support of Councilman Steve Bowman, who said a cost of $17,000 versus $32,000 “is a significant difference.”

“I would think that from a business perspective if this deal was going to go through, they could come up with that, and the only reason that I even bring this up is we’re going to need that right-of-way,” said Bowman, who also voted against the water waiver in April.

Howeer, Councilman Darren Cutler, who voted in favor of the April water waiver, said he didn’t support “using taxpayer dollars directly for a business.”

Cutler and Councilwoman Valerie Butler each drew a distinction between Harris’ proposal and the Town Council’s 5-2 vote in March to forgive half the debt the Smithfield Recreation Association owes to the town. In 2018, when the SRA that runs baseball and softball programs for children ages 5-16 backed out of plans to sell its privately owned Beale Park to pay its $300,000 share of the town’s cost of developing the newer Luter Sports Complex, the town and SRA entered a repayment agreement requiring the association to make $30,000 annual payments through 2028.

The SRA, Butler said, is a nonprofit organization, while Red Point is a for-profit business.

“It does set a precedent. … We voted on this situation and we voted no. I have never known us to have continued conversation about a situation after we’ve voted and we’ve moved on,” Butler said.

Butler, who voted in opposition in March to forgiving half of the SRA’s remaining $120,000 debt, said she “will vote against this request as well.”

The Town Council then went into closed session for just over 15 minutes at the urging of Town Attorney Bill Riddick, who said Harris’ proposal “has some ramifications that probably you haven’t thought about.”

There was no vote on Harris’ proposal or Red Point’s request for the town to foot the cost following the return to open session.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 2:49 p.m. on June 9 to reflect that Nick Hess, Derek Joyner and Tim Ryan sold the Red Point Taphouse building to Blueocean LLC in May.