HAMPTON — A local realtor has purchased a 23-acre section of land once used by the former Virginia School for the Deaf, Blind and Multi-Disabled in Hampton.
The land sale was made in November by Phenix Industrial LLC, managed by Garrett Realty Trust, for $908,000, according to city property transfer records. Greg Garrett, who owns the Newport News-based company, said Phenix Industrial will be the future name of either an industrial distribution center or a manufacturing facility that would bring high-paying jobs to the area.
“It could be as innovative as a wind power park. It would not have smokestacks or smells or noise or outside storage of granular materials," Garrett said. “We think this will actually be the catalyst … to a major improvement to the entire Shell road corridor over the next decade.”
“This is my old high school district. I have tons of friends who have lived all their life here,” said Garrett, who graduated from Hampton High School. “I am very, very sensitive to do something that will revitalize Shell Road (corridor).”
Any site plan would need to go before the Hampton Planning Commission for review and the Hampton City Council for final approval.
The school opened in 1909 originally as the Virginia School for Colored Deaf and Blind Children. The land used for the school was donated by black landowners near the turn of the 20th century, according to Daily Press archives. Integrated in 1964, the state shuttered it in 2008, after it relocated the program to its facility in Staunton.
Most buildings on the near 75-acre site have been razed, but a few structures remain standing.
The property is ripe for redevelopment, considering its location — at the intersection of Old Aberdeen and Shell Roads — and its proximity Copeland Business Park and Interstate 664. In 2017, the City Council amended the city’s land use plan to allow for business and commercial uses on the site.
“It’s 18 miles from the port, we are by Interstates 64 and 664," Chris Carter, vice chairman of the Hampton Planning Commission, said. "Hampton and Newport News are blue-collar cities. We are about manufacturing and tech jobs.”
The city’s Economic Development Authority owns roughly 50 acres, a purchase it made for $2.5 million back in 2010. Richmond-based law firm Williams Mullen served as the trustee for Old Dominion Land Trust that owned the 23-acres which Garrett purchased. Some of the acreage is wetlands.
“It’s a fantastic location," Chuck Rigney, the city’s economic development director, said last October. “Whoever owns that 23 acres has first seat at the table with us because we do believe that the best course of development over there is going to be some commercial, industrial-type park.”
Hampton had community meetings since the school closed to gather input from residents. At one time, the Hampton Redevelopment and Housing Authority had a plan for mixed-use development of single-family houses, townhouses, apartments for the elder and retail stores, but it never happened.
Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-247-4832, lvernonsparks@dailypress.com
