The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors will vote on a rezoning request that would change about 225 acres in the town of Hurt to industrial use at its regular Tuesday meeting at 7 p.m. The land, currently zoned agricultural and residential, is adjacent to the Southern Virginia Multimodal Industrial Park in Hurt.
The board of supervisors submitted a petition for this rezoning, and the county’s planning commission recommended its approval at a Jan. 6 meeting.
The 224.24 acres are located on or near U.S. 29, Main Street and Pocket Road in Hurt, according to County Administrator Dave Arnold, who introduced the item at the planning commission meeting.
Just over 28 acres included in the request are currently zoned residential, and the remaining almost 196 acres are zoned for agricultural use.
The board will vote on whether to rezone this land for heavy industrial use, “to allow the properties to be used for advanced manufacturing,” Arnold said.
This is a faster process than usual, as there is typically about a month between a planning commission vote and a board of supervisors vote. Normally, this vote would go to the board in February.
The parcels are adjacent to existing industrial areas, said Matt Rowe, the county’s economic development director, at the planning commission meeting.
“The thought process … is to make that all one contiguous single-zoned area for advanced manufacturing,” Rowe said. “When you look up the definition of advanced manufacturing, it’s CNC machining, it’s electric and robotic types of manufacturing, it’s types of industries that provide good, sustainable, long-term wages.”
The county’s comprehensive plan, which is undergoing a rewrite process, designates the future use of these 225 acres as industrial and medium- to high-density residential. The land owners of those parcels are in support of the rezoning, Rowe said.
The Southern Virginia Multimodal Park is an approximately 800-acre industrial area on a former textile mill site. Burlington Industries, previously called Klopman Mills, employed about 1,300 people in the Hurt area, Rowe said. It closed in 2007.
Rowe said that he’s gotten several calls from residents asking whether a data center or power plant is planned for this land, should the rezoning go through.
The site doesn’t have enough gas or electrical infrastructure to support either of those types of development, and there’s not yet a specified user for the site, he said.
“There is no interest to locate a data center or a power plant on the site,” he said. “Not only is the board not interested in that, but the actual infrastructure itself doesn’t support it, so it’s just not feasible on the site.”
Nine residents spoke at the meeting, expressing concerns about environmental consequences, impacts on property values for neighbors, and the loss of the county’s rural identity.
The planning commission unanimously recommended approval for this rezoning. The county staff also recommends approval, according to the planning commission’s meeting agenda packet.
The meeting will be preceded by a work session at 4 p.m.
Also in Pittsylvania this week, the finance committee will meet at 4 p.m. Tuesday, the industrial development authority will meet at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and the community policy and management team will meet at 2 p.m. Thursday.
In Danville, the city council will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a work session, and the board of building code appeals will meet at 1 p.m. Friday.