Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.
The smokestack at the Birchwood Power Plant is demolished in King George County last June.
The owner of the property that housed a power plant wants the land rezoned to allow industrial use.
Kristofer Parker thought he had missed something when he read a company’s application to rezone almost 700 acres of land—much of it from agricultural to industrial—at the former Birchwood Power Plant and on surrounding parcels in King George County.
Then, Parker, chairman of the King George Planning Commission, realized there wasn’t anything to miss. In 244 pages of applications and supporting documents, the Birchwood Power Partners never specified what industrial use they have in mind for the former plant and land around it.
“This is unprecedented that we get an application for this large of a rezoning with such an open-ended potential use on the backside,” he said. “You have to understand that coming before the county and asking for something with such an open-ended, ‘Trust us on this,’ it’s a lot to ask.”
Ann Neil Cosby, a land-use attorney who presented the rezoning request, couldn’t even tell the planners if Birchwood will be the end owners.
“They may or may not be,” she said, much to the distress of disgruntled people in the audience. “We don’t know what the use would be, right now, it would just be industrial property. I think that’s, sort of, unfortunately the situation.”
It’s not clear if Birchwood plans to provide any more details when it meets with the King George Board of Supervisors on Thursday. Birchwood had asked the county to defer the public hearings until another time, Cosby said, but a company representative will attend the meeting, planned at 6 p.m. Thursday in the boardroom of the county administration building.
The Birchwood Power Plant’s billowing smokestack had been one of the most iconic images of the Fredericksburg region from 1996, when the plant opened, to summer 2021, when the 402-foot “stack” was brought down by a demolition company. The coal-fired facility suffered the same fate as similar plants nationwide which closed when demand dropped.
The 14-story plant was decommissioned last year and the structure was torn down and carted away. An aerial view shows that a few small outbuildings remain, but most of the site is flattened.
The closure left Birchwood owners with 211 acres that can’t be used for anything but a power plant, Cosby told the planners. That was the only use King George approved for the land in 1991.
As they pondered the next move, Cosby said the owners looked to King George’s Comprehensive Plan—long-range policies about future growth and development—and realized the area on State Route 3 is intended as an industrial hub. The plant is next to the King George Regional Landfill and the King George Industrial Park.
In a spirt of wanting to “help out” the county, Birchwood wondered if “might it not make sense to have an assemblage of other properties?” Cosby asked. The lawyer said the company secured land rights—or potential land rights—to seven other parcels belonging to four individuals and one company.
Birchwood requested that all the forest and farmland—in the Route 3 area near Sealston Elementary School to beyond the landfill, with some acreage on each side of the road—be zoned industrial. While the company didn’t note what it had in mind, it said wouldn’t allow asphalt or concrete plants; lumber mills; truck terminals; salvage yards; commercial materials recovery facilities; and commercial sand and gravel extraction.
Birchwood’s request was complicated and the discussion, convoluted at times. The matter involved seven public hearings—one to rezone half of the existing Birchwood plant property from agricultural to industrial and another to terminate the special exception permit that allowed the power plant, but keep the intake facility that draws water from the nearby Rappahannock River.
There were five separate public hearings pertaining to parcels owned by other people.
The Planning Commission didn’t approve any of the requests. Some of its decisions, such as those that would have involved changing the borders of settlement districts in the Comprehensive Plan, were voted against unanimously. Others had split votes and one was even tied, as Planner Ross Devries, especially, favored projects that would bring more of an industrial base to the county, provided they were closer to existing industrial sites.
Most residents spoke on the overall project instead of piecemeal rezonings—and all but one person who attended the meeting or provided written or online comments opposed the rezoning. Many expressed sentiments echoed by the planners.
Resident Bob Baird, a Realtor who’s active with tourism and historical events, said “offering a blanket approval for industrial zoning without further definition is like buying a pig in a poke.”
Planner Jason Williams likened it to Birchwood asking for a blank check.
Resident Darryl Breintenstein, whose property abuts one of the parcels involved, said he knew something was up, based on a letter he received about the rezoning. But like the rest of the people in attendance, he didn’t know any details.
“If you want comment from us and you want support, tell us what the plan is,” he said. “If you can’t tell us, I don’t support it.”
Planner Gary Kendrick said he’s never seen a proposal like this in almost 20 years on the commission, which advises the Board of Supervisors on land-use matters. The supervisors make the ultimate decision on whether a rezoning is approved.
“I’ve never had an applicant come in and ask for a rezoning just so it would increase the marketability of their property,” Kendrick said. “Right now, I’ve got a map with some pretty colors on it and (the attorney saying) Well, it could be anything. Anybody could own it.”
Debbie and Todd Fairfax were the only residents to comment during all seven public hearings, and as she said, they continued to “beat the drum” about the lack of information and what she described as Birchwood’s goal to simply make more money. She said the company, which is based in Delaware, wouldn’t have to deal with any of the ramifications such as land or water contamination, but the people who lived around there would.
“Frankly, this is disrespectful of your time and our time for them not to give you information but to keep asking you to please make a decision to zone something industrial,” she said. “Once you zone something industrial, pretty much the sky is the limit.”
The Fairfaxes and Sean Fogarty, a Fawn Lake resident who opposed the massive Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center in his county, said the Birchwood group might be saying they don’t know what the plans are for the property but information elsewhere said otherwise.
They quoted from the website of PJM, an organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in 13 states, including Virginia. According to PJM’s website, Birchwood filed applications last year for a new 35.7 megawatt capacity solar power generation facility, projected to go online in October 2023. Three other applications are for battery storage projects that would be in service by December 2023 and June 2027.
Even Birchwood announced in April 2021 its plans to build a 50-megawatt solar plant combined with a 190-megawatt energy storage facility at the site. At that time, J-POWER USA owned the facility and planned to use the King George plant “to increase our renewable portfolio and continue our efforts to build a cleaner sustainable energy future,” CEO and President Mark Condon said.
Cosby acknowledged that Birchwood applied with PJM for the solar farm and battery storage facilities—but so have many others, creating a backlog in how quickly PJM can study the request and negotiate an agreement.
“There is no agreement right now and studies have not been done and all those parcels are not included,” she said. “I can’t say this would never be used for solar but … there’s a lot of other steps that would take a very long time for that to happen. And so Birchwood really had to come up with an alternative.”
And that’s as much as she offered about what the alternative might be.
Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.
I've been lucky enough to be a newspaper reporter for more than 40 years, covering everything from human-interest stories to medical news, farming to fracking, personal columns to county government.
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Two more central office positions within Spotsylvania County Public Schools became open this week.
John Hollis said the discovery was mind-blowing, but now he's got to figure out a way to use his "gift" to help others.
A Chesterfield County man accused of killing the mother of his young child Tuesday in southern Stafford County was arraigned Wednesday.
The Spotsylvania County School Board on Thursday evening voted to send a letter to the Virginia Board of Education indicating that it intends …
The Spotsylvania School Board on Friday approved the creation of a new full-time public relations position, to be funded by money saved from o…
The Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors agreed to hold a public hearing on a proposed change to the agreement with Kalahari, the company …
Several people were injured Friday when a church bus driver lost control and struck some trees in Caroline County, police said.
A Stafford woman who was babysitting a 4-month-old boy when he died in her care in 2019 was ordered Thursday to serve 16 years in prison.
A Maryland man was arrested Thursday on charges stemming from a home-invasion robbery in Spotsylvania County on May 5 in which the victim was …
The smokestack at the Birchwood Power Plant is demolished in King George County last June.
The owner of the property that housed a power plant wants the land rezoned to allow industrial use.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.