THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 1, 1995 TAG: 9507010672
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY KATHLEEN BUTLER, SPECIAL TO REAL ESTATE WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 153 lines
The Eastern Shore. It's only a 30-minute drive from the northern sections of Norfolk and Virginia Beach; yet, it's a region still unfamiliar to many who live on the mainland.
Bill Parr, a former Virginia Beach resident who now develops land on the Shore, wants to change that. He says if Hampton Roads residents learn all that the area has to offer, they may make it their home, too - or at least their home away from home.
``Here in 1995, we're still sort of behind the rest of the world,'' Parr says. ``I wouldn't say we're backward, but we're a step back in time from the rest of Virginia.''
The Eastern Shore is a narrow finger of a farmland surrounded by magnificent stretches of white sand beaches and picturesque marshlands. It is dotted with small towns - clusters of houses, really - fishing villages and former light industrial areas.
It's still neighborly to the point that everyone knows your name.
Strip malls and fast-food restaurants are few and far between. The largest shopping center is anchored by Kmart in the town of Exmore. Movie theaters do get first-run films - they just get them later than theaters in Hampton Roads.
The Shore is, in a word, rural.
``I had never really been in a rural environment,'' says Parr, who moved to the Shore in 1979 after graduating from Lake Taylor High School in Norfolk. ``I didn't think I'd stay as long as I have.
``I go up and down the Eastern Shore, and I know everybody. It's a very comfortable feeling to know that anywhere you go, you'll know someone. For years I struggled with the idea of going back (to Norfolk), but it's never happened.''
The Shore is a second home market primarily to residents of the Northeast, about a half-day's drive away, Parr says. Virginia's section of the Delmarva Peninsula, from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to the Maryland border, is 75 miles long and the primary residence to fewer than 50,000 people.
``Right now, the reason people are moving here is they want to buy into our environment,'' Parr says. Often, they buy land with the understanding they will build on it as they near retirement.
But Parr says he sees an increase in Hampton Roads residents who are leaving the cities for the Shore's more tranquil lifestyle. The commute, he explains, is only about a half-hour drive - closer to Virginia Beach than some areas of Norfolk - and a $10 toll one way.
``There are little pockets of Tidewater on the Eastern Shore, Parr says. ``Not enough to call it a boom, but little pockets.
Patrick Hand, a Virginia Beach builder, is one of them.
Hand recently bought Arlington Plantation, a 300-acre site on the Chesapeake Bay side, just south of Cape Charles, seven miles north of the bridge-tunnel. He plans to move his wife and two children, ages 3 and 5, to one section of the property, about 150 acres, and finish developing the rest into a 44-home subdivision.
``It is a beautiful, pristine, natural environment, and it's close,'' Hand says. ``I think kids can always learn about an urban environment, but it's hard for them to learn about nature and mother earth. I think this is a healthy environment for them to grow up in.''
The land had been purchased in the mid-'80s by a Long Island, N.Y., developer who planned to build a more than 200-lot subdivision with an 18-hole golf course to be called Virginia's Chesapeake Shores.
When New York's real estate market crashed in the late 1980s, the developer went bankrupt and the land was turned over to the bank, Parr says. Parr represented the bank as the broker for two tracts of land - Arlington Plantation and a 527-acre plot still for sale.
Hand says he and his wife had been looking for the right piece of land on the Eastern Shore for two years and had been attracted to Arlington Plantation, but at the time it was being offered as part of a larger parcel of land that was beyond their reach.
``When I learned the farm was available separately, I just never looked back, he says.
But there's more to Arlington Plantations history than the recent development deal. Arlington was built in the 1670s and became the temporary Virginia capital in 1976 when Gov. Sir William Berkley was forced to flee Jamestown during Bacon's Rebellion.
It was inherited in the mid-18th century by Martha Dandridge Custis, the widow who would later marry George Washington. The plantation was passed through the family to Martha's great-granddaughter, Mary Custis, who married Robert E. Lee. On the site are the tombs of John Custis II and his grandson John Custis IV.
In the late 1980s, an archaeological excavation of the site was undertaken by the James River Institute for Archaeology. The 10-week assessment found extensive underground remains from 1620 to 1780 on three lots.
Hand and Parr say they hope to sell the seven-acre plot - offered at $285,000 - to a preservation organization. Parr says they will also consider selling the land, which has 537 feet of deep water shoreline, for a single-family home, but that the builder would have to work within strict guidelines to preserve the historical integrity of the land.
The other Arlington lots range from $15,000 for a one-acre interior lot overlooking a pond, to $74,000 for a 0.8-acre lot with 100 feet of shore along the Chesapeake Bay, to $180,000 for a 12.6-acre lot with 300 feet of beachfront and 1,000 feet of lakefront shoreline.
Parr says he hopes to protect the beaches and land of Arlington Plantation through a homeowners association. All residents will be required to join the association and to abide by environmental and aesthetic restrictions. For example, the use of pesticides may be restricted, Parr says, to protect nearby Plantation Creek.
The development includes a 10-acre common area with a wide stretch of private beach, a wooden boardwalk and Victorian gazebo for residents' use. Hand says he plans to make the plantation his primary residence in time for his son to start school in September.
Arlington Plantation is one of the newest developments on the southern tip of the Eastern Shore, but it is certainly not the only one. Similar projects, featuring custom built homes on large tracts of land, have sprung up throughout the region.
Butler's Bluff subdivision sits on a 50-foot bluff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay and abutting Kiptopeke State Park. Nestled in the woods overlooking the bay are homes ranging from the traditional wooden Shore home with a farmer's porch to the elaborate 6,000-square-foot, custom-built Mediterranean-style house.
Just beyond Butler's Bluff and Arlington Plantation is Cape Charles, an old railroad town with one of only two deep-water harbors on Virginia's Eastern shore.
Its streets are lined with large turn-of-the-century-style homes nestled shoulder to shoulder. The town itself has seen better days - many storefronts are boarded up and some of the houses look forlorn, but Parr says the area is beginning to experience a renaissance.
``Drive down Main Street on a rainy day, and it'll make you cry, Parr says. ``But it's coming back to life now. Little signs of revitalization are here now.
As part of its renaissance, Cape Charles and the surrounding area has been chosen by President Clinton's council on sustainable development as one of three sites for a ``sustainable technologies industrial park. The park, Parr says, is designed to be a world model for how industrial parks can be designed to maximize resource use while minimizing damage to the environment.
Parr hopes projects like the industrial park and the new subdivisions will help draw both visitors and residents to the Eastern Shore.
But the region also offers prospective home buyers plenty of choices on the resale market. A farmhouse in the tiny town of Cheriton, within 10 miles of the bridge-tunnel, sells for about $125,000, he says. And there are homes and undeveloped land available all over the peninsula - in Cheriton, or the oceanside fishing village of Oyster, or the county seat of government, Eastville.
``People say I sound like a salesman,'' Parr says. ``But I swear, spend an afternoon at a plantation and you'll be hooked. It's magical.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Motoya Nakamura
Patrick Hand, left, is the developer, and Bill Parr is the realty
agent of Arlington Plantation...
Color photos by Motoya Nakamura
Water surrounds Arlington Plantation, a major residential
development in the works just sourth of Cape Charles
The traditional Eastern Shore; the post office in the hamlet of
Oyster
by CNB