The people spoke. The developer listened. 

Joseph Luter IV’s smaller Grange at 10Main mixed-use development on the edge of Smithfield’s Historic District merits Town Council approval.  

The town Planning Commission gave its endorsement last week of the project, which now will have roughly 115 homes compared to a way-too-large 267-unit plan rammed through with just three votes while the Town Council was shorthanded in 2023.

That vote, along with the Town Council’s 2022 approval of the humongous Mallory Pointe subdivision, caused voters to clean house in 2024, ousting two members who had been handpicked by the local growth machine and electing a slate of candidates that ran on a promise to better control residential development. 

While elected and appointed representatives of the growth machine continue to pout about the election outcome and work to undermine those who are heeding the electorate’s mandate, Luter, to his credit, responded with grace, class and a palatable project that drew no citizen opposition at last week’s public hearing.

“From the beginning we wanted this project to be supported by the majority of people in Smithfield,” he said in a written statement read aloud during the hearing. “In November, they spoke with their votes and they wanted to see slower, more contained growth. We heard them.”

The new plan requires just two exceptions to the town’s zoning ordinance. One is a waiver of yard setback requirements, the other to allow townhomes taller than 35 feet.

The plan still includes a commercial phase that would house the town’s farmers market, a restaurant, office and retail space, and a hotel.

At the same time the Town Council gives zoning-related approvals for the revised Grange, it should insist on long-overdue clarity and details about proposed public financing of the farmers market.

The county Board of Supervisors last year blindly transferred $1.4 million to the Isle of Wight Economic Development Authority, which supposedly will act as landlord and fiscal agent for the market structure but has yet to give elected leadership a written plan for how the partnership will work.

Even one of the EDA’s own members, Amber Wells, described the proposed partnership among the town, county and EDA as “very vague” prior to the EDA board’s vote last year.

For the Grange to move forward with a farmers market as its signature infrastructure, details must be provided now to the Town Council and, in turn, the taxpayers who are being asked to finance it.