Celebrate Virginia fills house
                   Crowd urges more time; Stafford planners delay
 

                   By KELBY HARTSON
                   The Free Lance–Star
 

                   A crowd of Celebrate Virginia opponents last night
                   urged the Stafford County Planning Commission to
                   take more time to study project-related rezoning,
                   and commissioners followed that advice.

                   “The proposals are just not clear here tonight,” said
                   James Martin, who lives near the 1,170 acre parcel
                   planned for the massive project. “I think the thing
                   needs to be pondered a little more and get more
                   information.”

                   Barry Clark agreed. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions here,” he
                   said. “I just think we ought to rethink this a little bit.”

                   Before a packed board room, the
                   commission unanimously delayed a
                   decision on rezoning rural land
                   stretching from the Rappahannock
                   River to U.S. Route 17 under the
                   new Recreational Business Campus
                   zone.

                   Members plan to revisit the matter
                   during an Oct. 6 work session. 
                   The rezoning would allow the
                   developers, the Silver Cos., to mix
                   offices, recreational uses, convention
                   centers, hotels, homes and retail
                   stores on the land.

                   The rezoning request does not detail
                   precisely what will be built.

                   Tom Sablon, a North Stafford
                   resident, walked to the podium
                   wearing a shirt declaring, “Stop
                   raping Stafford’s natural beauty.”
                   Below that was a circle with the
                   words, “Silver Companies,” with a
                   black “X” slashing through it.

                   “Stafford is getting to be an ugly
                   place,” Sablon warned. “We should
                   have developers paying dearly for
                   what we hold dear.”

                   Yet Tim Taylor, executive director
                   of the Fredericksburg Regional
                   Chamber of Commerce, said he
                   supports the rezoning. “It bolsters
                   commerce, it will create jobs and it
                   will expand the tax base,” he said.

                   The Silver Cos. already got approval
                   for a rezoning along the
                   Fredericksburg side of the
                   Rappahannock River for the project
                   last year.

                   That portion of the project calls for hotels, restaurants, museums, shops
                   and recreational facilities.

                   Stafford’s new Recreational Business Campus zone mandates that retail
                   uses can consume no more than 10 percent of the land, in this case 117
                   acres.

                   The county’s Comprehensive Plan—the blueprint for future
                   development—recommends agricultural uses for the land, with one home
                   per three acres, or 390 homes.

                   Stafford Planning Director William Shelly recommended approval of the
                   rezoning, citing potential for increased income for the county. The
                   Stafford Board of Supervisors, and not the Silver Cos., filed the request
                   for the rezoning.

                   A consultant for the Silver Cos. estimates the project will add $10.4
                   million yearly to county coffers when the project is finished in 25 years.

                   The current real estate tax revenue for the rural land is $5,200 annually.
                   Judson Honaker, vice president of Silver Cos., noted that Fredericksburg
                   has earned millions in tax revenue from Central Park, another Silver
                   venture, in the year or so that Stafford officials have debated the
                   Celebrate Virginia plans.

                   “The county’s had to raise tax rates in recent years quite a bit,” he said.
                   “The county leadership recognizes that if they don’t want to raise taxes,
                   they’d better start attracting economic development,” Honaker said.