Any number of residents want Culpeper’s farms to prosper, its rural landscapes to stay intact, and tourism to grow.
Some of them just banded together to form the Culpeper Alliance for Balanced Growth, to advocate for those outcomes. The alliance describes itself as a group of Culpeper citizens and organizations who are passionate about the future of their community.
“We are local business owners, farmers, residents, civic leaders, and organizations joined in the belief that future development and growth in Culpeper must be balanced between industrial and rural industries,” the group says in its mission statement.
“This requires vision, resolution, and thoughtful discourse on how to plan for growth. We care about the county’s tax base, jobs, supporting farmers and businesses, and our service districts—all while preserving the beauty of Culpeper County. We have come together to support balanced growth, while preserving the county’s rich historic and agricultural heritage.”
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On Tuesday, interested community members assembled at Old House Vineyards near Stevensburg to meet like-minded people and discuss their concerns. More than 50 people attended the two-hour “Culpeper Conversations.”
The gathering was hosted by the Brandy Station Foundation, Burgandine House, Friends of Culpeper Battlefields, Friends of Culpeper History, Friends of Cedar Mountain Battlefield, Citizens for Responsible Solar, Culpeper Battlefield Tours LLC, Journey Through Hallowed Ground and Piedmont Environmental Council.
Culpeper County native Andrew Gutowski, one of the alliance’s founders, said residents and groups formed the alliance because they’re concerned that Culpeper officials are too focused on supporting big businesses, not on promoting a broad-based rural economy.
“The spot-zoning of agricultural land in Stevensburg for Amazon data centers demonstrates that the county’s leaders are not respecting the wishes of Culpeper citizens and are acting in a manner that corrodes Culpeper’s special rural character,” Gutowski told the Culpeper Star-Exponent. “The alliance supports the growth of agritourism and heritage tourism—the primary drivers of local job growth—and, at the same time, supports the development of data centers in the county’s designated technology zones.”
On April 5, critics of Amazon’s Stevensburg development were unable to persuade the county Board of Supervisors to reject the data-services company’s proposal and steer it toward building its 445,000-square-feet project—the size of two Walmart Supercenters—in one of Culpeper’s tech zones. Now, a Brandy Station landowner proposes three data centers covering nearly a million square feet within a tech zone in the historic village, part of a battlefield study area.
Speakers at Tuesday’s meeting at Old House Vineyards, on another part of the Brandy Station battlefield, said there is plenty of common ground between economic development, parks, tourism and historic preservation.
Heeding the county’s Comprehensive Plan is key to generating more revenue through agritourism and heritage tourism while attracting more businesses and revenue with smart placement of industry, data centers and solar power plants, alliance members said.
“What we have here is very fragile,” said Gutowski, a historian and a developer. “We need to preserve the real beauty of Culpeper. It has to be looked after, day to day. Little changes can accumulate and change the character of our community.”
Some kinds of development, depending on the sites, “might not be best for the community,” he said.
Gutowski urged creating a balanced economy that builds on Culpeper’s rural character, supports local businesses and bolsters the county’s hospitality and tourism industries. He noted that wineries, specialty farms, agritourism and rural-route cycling already contribute significantly to local commerce.
He noted a recent op-ed column in the Star-Exponent by Ed McMahon, chairman emeritus of Main Street America. The town of Culpeper, spearheaded by Culpeper Renaissance Inc., is part of the nation’s Main Street network.
“The Main Street approach ... works because it focuses on creating better places,” McMahon wrote. “This is important because the link between quality of place, and the ability to attract and retain residents and talent, is becoming increasingly clear.
“Most small communities never will attract the equivalent of an Amazon headquarters, and the strategy of throwing money at big business simply is unrealistic for most smaller cities and towns,” he continued. “A better, more realistic approach is rebuilding a strong downtown and investing in the creation of a great place.
“This approach helps existing businesses. It creates diverse, durable local economies,” McMahon wrote. “And it means taxpayers end up investing in themselves rather than subsidizing big businesses.”
Paige Read, the town of Culpeper’s economic development and tourism director, said heritage tourism is a primary economic driver for Culpeper, with 33 percent of visitors reporting that “history and heritage” were their main reason for visiting over the past 12 months.
“Development and preservation are not mutually exclusive,” Read said. “We can strive for balance.”
Culpeper County’s relatively large economy, with fewer than 55,000 residents, is dominated by small businesses built around consumers and the hospitality industry, with many women entrepreneurs, she said.
“We are very fortunate to be able to build an economy on tourism and recreation” given that they don’t require big public spending for schools and other facilities, Read said.
Culpeper’s tourism sector will grow stronger with the creation of Culpeper Battlefields State Park, recently approved by the Virginia General Assembly, she said.
Culpeper’s rural vistas, historic sites and cool eateries already draw a steady stream of visitors from the D.C. area, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, the Carolinas, Ohio, Florida and Texas, Read said.
“Now we’re going to have new product to share with them, our new state park,” she said. The park, which includes preserved ground on Culpeper’s Cedar Mountain and Brandy Station battlefields, is expected to open in 2024. It should improve access to recreational sites for local residents, too, Read noted.
The economic-development director said she recently met in Richmond with new leaders in the Youngkin administration who will be involved in crafting the park’s master plan.
“They’re excited to hit the ground running,” Read said.
“In a couple years, we will have the Culpeper state park and bring its stories and recreational access to all that are interested,” she said, to applause.
The park will induce visitors to stay longer and spend more money in Culpeper, Read said.
Friends of Culpeper Battlefields President Chuck Laudner said Culpeper County is “on the precipice” of realizing the dream of its long-desired state park.
Local residents and the American Battlefield Trust “invested a lot in preserving separate little pieces of hallowed ground that were threatened or for sale,” Laudner said. “After 30 years of that, Culpeper has an assemblage that’s almost continuous and is grand. Take decades of work, stitch those pieces together and you have something special.”
“Or you can rezone something and have data centers at the base of Hansbrough’s Ridge, a national historic register site,” he said, alluding to Amazon’s plan to develop a horse farm in Stevensburg. “One benefits everybody--everybody. One doesn’t, and that’s what we’re confronted with. That’s why we’re here.”
Laudner, a Midwesterner who works for the American Battlefield Trust, admitted that he is a Virginia transplant.
“But I’m invested in Culpeper, invested in this idea that has been built for years and years,” he said.
Six landowners who live next to Amazon’s Stevensburg site are asking a court to vacate the county supervisors’ rezoning of Magnolia Equestrian Center’s tract for the data centers.
Piedmont Environmental Council President Chris Miller noted that his regional group recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with an event at Clark’s Mountain in Orange County, overlooking Culpeper’s Rapidan River valley.
That gathering celebrated decades of work by “thousands of families committed to conserving this beautiful place, Miller said.
What happened at Amazon’s Stevensburg site on State Route 3, across from some of the Culpeper state-park land, is part of a pattern that other Northern Virginia counties are seeing with data-center developments, he said.
Limited-liability corporations set up by Amazon and others hunt for a county’s lowest-cost lands with access to power and fiber-optic cables and get them rezoned, Miller said.
He said he hopes the new alliance can reach out to Google, Amazon and other tech giants, convey the threat some of their projects pose to national heritage, and persuade them to change course.
The Wilderness Walmart controversy in eastern Orange County, which persuaded Walmart to move a Supercenter farther west on Route 3—away from the Wilderness battlefield—is a precedent for that, Miller said.
“Let’s not give up, and let’s reach the decision-makers,” he said. “Arguing with (Virginia development lawyer) John Foote about this in court is only a first step.”