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One of the biggest housing developments ever proposed for Staunton recently cleared a number of procedural hurdles, gaining preliminary planning commission and city council approval to move forward with plans to build 267 single-family homes on the city’s south side. But despite providing a much-needed addition to the city’s housing stock, McIntosh Village is bringing with it a whole lot of angst and hair-pulling—and, we may hope, a lesson about property rights and the importance of being aware of what’s going on around us.
The city’s tentative thumbs-up to this outsized development comes with a score of caveats and requirements, many of which any project of this size would command, but many in response to objections raised by residents of the adjacent Green Spring Valley development. That includes such understandable concerns as the insufficient number of access roads to the property and the effects on neighboring homes of the blasting that will be needed for site development, as well as more conventional worries about increased stormwater run-off and increased local traffic.
But then there are the objections that suggest, bottom-line, that the only acceptable use of the 77-acres at issue is to leave them . . . undisturbed. To not build anything. One local resident said she had moved to Green Spring valley for its “quiet, peaceful nature.” Another lamented the destruction of the area’s “natural beauty” and urged that more trees in the development be preserved and a wider buffer be required. A third declared that he was “Staunton born and bred” and that while he wanted to see the city grow, he did not want it to change. A fourth insisted that the reason the land in question had not been developed was because it isn’t suitable for development, which amounted to a snake-eating-its-tail kind of logic.
All this and more was delivered in public hearings and without obvious embarrassment at such a stunning display of entitled behavior. These were supposedly reasonable objections by one set of property owners about plans by other property owners to develop their land in conformity with existing zoning and other regulations—but what they really were was a complaint that someone was robbing them of a pastoral idyll that wasn’t theirs in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, they should have bought that land themselves . . .
. . . which is not as far-fetched as it might sound. It would, however, require more thought than the Green Spring Valley complainers exhibited. It also suggests that the neighbors of any sizeable piece of vacant land in Staunton should be asking the questions that Green Spring Valley residents didn’t: Who owns it? How much did they pay for it? What are their plans for how that land is to be used?
A first clue in this instance is the working name for the proposed development, McIntosh Village. That’s a reference to Bruce McIntosh II, a wealthy resident of Loudon County who lived in a 5,000-square-foot 1860 colonial house on 133 acres in Waterford until he died, three years ago. More than 30 years ago he sold one of this family’s two farms and invested the proceeds in Staunton and Augusta County real estate, but he never lived here. His land just sat there, idle, lulling folks into thinking this would be the status quo forever—until September of 2024, when Bruce McIntosh’s estate sold 11 contiguous parcels, amounting to slightly more than 100 acres, to Staunton Augusta Properties for a mere $500,000.
Let that sink in a moment. For less than the assessed value of just two of the homes backing onto the proposed new development, all the land for McIntosh Village—and then some—could have been purchased by the people who now are complaining that someone will be paving their paradise. Whether individually or as a group, perhaps united under the umbrella of a non-profit limited liability corporation, the people who are predicting a coming onslaught of noise, dust, earth tremors and radon gas could instead have bought their very own private park. But of course, that would have required forethought, research and planning, for which developers apparently have cornered the market. It would have meant someone looking out a window and musing, “Gee, I wonder what’s going to happen to all that empty land zoned R-2 just sitting there?”
Make no mistake: this isn’t the last time this sort of thing may happen. For all the nonsense emanating from city officials about Staunton running out of empty land, there’s still a surprising amount of it, and that’s without harping on whether it makes sense to have an ag-forestal area inside the city limits. And a fair proportion of that vacant land is owned by people who don’t live in Staunton, nor in Augusta County—people who, like Bruce McIntosh, view it merely as an investment, which is not the same as investing in Staunton.
Some of the vacant land is quite extensive, like the 34.3- acre parcel at 502 Old Greenville Road, or the 21.32 acres at 70 Carann Street, both zoned R-2 and both adjacent to the future McIntosh Village. The owner of the first parcel lives in Alabama. The owner of the second lives in Sacramento. Or consider a couple of smaller parcels, such as the vacant four acres, zoned R-2 and R-3, directly behind the city’s new J&DR Court building. That owner lives in South Carolina. Then there’s a vacant 6.3 acres, zoned R-2, at 721 Paul Street, owned by someone in Charlottesville—closer to home, to be sure, but still at a remove. How much concern will any of those absentee owners have for the sensibilities of their neighbors when the time comes to unload their property?
Are there more absentee owners? Undoubtedly, but it doesn’t appear that anyone at the city has made an effort to track them, which means we’re always vulnerable to surprises like McIntosh Village. And absentee ownership, it should be noted, can carry negative consequences for developed property, too, as reflected in recurring complaints of neglect and deferred maintenance of rental housing, especially in the West End. When someone living in another state, or even in a distant part of Virginia, owns a rental property in Staunton solely as an “investment,” there’s little incentive in an extraordinarily tight housing market to do more than the bare minimum to maintain it.
At least the folks who eventually move into McIntosh Village will have paid for the property they live in. Maybe by then their neighbors will get over their resentments and make them feel welcome.
Looking askance 