4 hours Ago By By Mickey Powell For The Northern Virginia Daily
FRONT ROYAL — Clarke County officials hope easy access to the Virginia Inland Port will help lure companies to a business park planned at a former prison site nearby. They acknowledge competition, though, from a similar park already under development in Warren County. Wednesday morning, about 20 county officials visited the port — along U.
S. 340/522 near Front Royal — to learn about its operations. Among them were members of the county’s Economic Development Advisory Committee, Industrial Development Authority, Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.
The former Camp 7 prison site is along the same highway just six miles to the north in Clarke County, near White Post. In July, the IDA adopted a resolution to buy almost 41 acres of the site from the Virginia Department of General Services for $100,000. Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) also is purchasing some of the land to build a new regional headquarters.
The Virginia National Guard is using the remainder. The Clarke County Business Park, off Jack Enders Boulevard at the edge of Berryville, has almost reached its capacity. Clarke officials say new sites must be made available for prospective larger businesses and smaller industries that could grow the county’s tax base.
The inland port is operated by the Virginia Port Authority, based at Hampton Roads. Cargo is brought by rail 200 miles to the port for shipment — mostly by truck — throughout Northern Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and beyond. As part of a $15 million state investment, 40% more rail capacity recently was added to the port, said Chris Gullickson, the authority’s director of development and transportation.
A total of 17,820 feet of track is now at the 161-acre facility. In addition, new rubber-tire gantry cranes have been installed to increase the efficiency of rail loading and unloading, Gullickson pointed out. Cargo can be shipped from the port to 75% of the nation’s population within two days, added Scott Rhodes, director of breakbulk, offshore wind and inland terminal operation for Virginia International Terminals LLC.
“When your cargo hits the port, we want it out within 48 hours,” Rhodes said. Basically, Virginia International Terminals is a private company that operates port terminals on the authority’s behalf. That way, labor contracts can be negotiated without violating the General Assembly’s long-standing restrictions on dealing with unions, according to the website virginiaplaces.
org . Various area companies — including Trex, Rubbermaid and Valley Proteins — use the inland port as do prominent retailers with stores in the Northern Shenandoah Valley, said Carrie Chenery, principal of Valley Pike Partners of Staunton. Her firm assists the port authority with government relations matters.
Rhodes said the inland port handled about 31,000 shipping containers last year and has the capacity to handle 40,000 annually. Port officials weren’t able to immediately say how much tonnage that translates into. They measure cargo using “twenty-foot equivalent units,” or TEUs, which are standard measuring units for shipping containers.
However, the inland port has a 78,000 TEU capacity, officials noted. Considering that farming is Clarke County’s economic mainstay, White Post District Supervisor Bev McKay asked what agricultural products go through the inland port. Soybeans, logs and lumber are the main ones, responded Emily Dodson, its manager.
County Administrator Chris Boies asked about Warren County’s involvement with the port. Chenery replied that the county and the port communicate mostly through the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the state’s business and industry recruiting arm. Warren officials tell prospective companies about the port and that it’s advantageous for the area to have it, she said.
Clarke officials didn’t go onto the port’s grounds for safety reasons. Instead, they viewed its operations from large windows in a meeting room on the second floor of the office building. They saw cranes lift storage containers from railroad cars and put them onto flatbed trucks.
“It’s pretty fascinating, to say the least,” McKay said. “They get the job done,” said Clarke County Planning Commission member Frank Lee. “I’m amazed,” said Gwendolyn Malone, his colleague on the commission.
If Clarke officials promote the port’s close proximity, “it will be beneficial” in attracting companies to the former prison property, Malone predicted. The port is surrounded in Warren County by various companies including food processors, a plastics fabricator, an automotive paint and surface coating manufacturer, warehouses and a Dominion Energy power plant. Under development on a 53.
57-acre along Baugh Drive near those companies is the Interstate 66 Industrial Park. Unlike many industrial parks developed by localities, this one is being established privately by Colliers International, a commercial real estate brokerage firm, and Equus Capital Partners Ltd. Construction on a shell building is expected to start in the second quarter of 2025, a webpage indicates.
“We have some competition,” Clarke County Planning Commission Chairman George Ohrstrom said upon seeing the park site. Michelle Ridings, Clarke’s director of economic development and tourism, agreed. Still, “competition is not a bad thing,” Ridings told The Winchester Star.
“It gives multiple sites for people to investigate.” Whether a prospective company chooses the former prison site or the I-66 park would “depend on what they’re looking for,” Boies said. For instance, a company might look favorably on the county’s plans, with Frederick Water, to extend water/sewer service to the Double Tollgate area, Ridings said.
Yet the I-66 park site, which is three miles from that highway, already is connected to “industrial grade” utility systems, including water/sewer, electricity and natural gas, its webpage shows. Perhaps a company could somehow benefit from being close to the National Guard or REC, Boies said..
