THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 8, 1997 TAG: 9701080403
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 51 lines
At 73, Ralph T. Frost knows he doesn't have a lot of years left to farm the land he loves.
He doesn't care if his Blackwater property is transformed from wheat fields to a horse farm after he's gone. But he doesn't want it to be used ``to grow houses.''
That's why on Tuesday, Frost and his family sold the city the development potential of their 641 acres on Land of Promise Road and 43 acres on Crags Causeway.
For $1.75 million, which the city will pay over the next 25 years, Frost, his wife and their three daughters agreed never to sell their property for residential development.
``I can die knowing that the farm is going to stay for agricultural purposes,'' said Frost, who has worked the land since 1955. ``I'd rather grow soybeans, wheat and corn than children and houses.''
The City Council Tuesday approved purchasing the development rights to the Frost land as well as 202 acres owned by Earl M. and Laura M. Tebault on Blackwater Road, and 82 acres owned by William E. and Michael W. Chaplain on Pleasant Ridge Road in the Pungo Borough.
The city will pay more than $2.5 million for the 968 acres over the next 25 years at a current cost to the city of about $420,000.
Under the Agricultural Reserve Program, which started last year, the city pays landowners with bonds that mature over a quarter-century. Property owners collect interest on the bonds yearly and then receive the principle at the end.
Landowners continue to own and farm their property and can sell it if the buyer agrees not to develop the land.
The program is intended to help preserve Virginia Beach's agriculture industry and avoid the cost of providing infrastructure to the city's rural southern area. The council has allocated $82 million to the program over the next 20 years.
Because of the current zoning in Blackwater and Pungo, only 88 houses could have been built on the nearly 1,000 acres preserved Tuesday. But council members, farmers and environmentalists pushed for the preservation program because they worry that future councils could change the zoning in the area, opening the land to suburban-style development.
Frost, who began farming in Virginia Beach with his father in 1941, said his only problem with the Agricultural Reserve Program is its pace. He has been talking to the city for nearly a year about selling his development rights, he said.
City Council members Barbara M. Henley and John A. Baum, who helped create the program, held a meeting with city staff members Tuesday afternoon to help speed up the sales process.