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Market Leader Profile

Virginia Business
June 2004

How did you get started in the business?
Early in my life I was very entrepreneurial, starting a small business in high school that wasn’t in real estate but did help me in later years. There were many country stores around Fredericksburg, and I would wholesale merchandise out of my car, offering all kinds of sundry items to these small merchant stores. When I went into the real estate business, I started in rural land development. … Those country store merchants actually became bird-dogs for me, helping identify who wanted to sell property.

Today, my father and I market our businesses under the name “Silver Companies.” It’s really just a marketing name and over the years I’ve always had my separate business, and my father has had his. We’ve always had a very close relationship and in later years worked together on several commercial projects.

What does your company do?
I started out retailing country property that we would buy in hundreds or thousands of acres. Land was very cheap and we would cut these properties up into five-, 10- and 20-acre parcels and sell them to individuals (to build a house on). We went through a couple thousand acres each year. We stayed in the retail business for about 15 years.

About that time Spotsylvania was running water and sewer in the county, and I went into the lot development business, developing lots for builders. Fredericksburg in those days was mostly a small builder market and these builders were putting up 10 homes a year. The large community developers just didn’t exist there. But we sold a lot of lots to a lot of builders. Today we’re still very active in the residential land development area, doing projects as small as 100 lots but also larger communities as big as 3,000 lots. We’re also very involved in putting together what we call active adult communities, for residents 55 and older. They run from about 800 units to 3,000 units. Now we mostly work with large national builders — that’s our primary business in the residential end.

Can you give us an update on your Celebrate Virginia project?
The project began with the Central Park development on 310 acres my father bought sometime in the early ‘80s. Then we assembled another 2,100 acres adjacent to Central Park that we call Celebrate Virginia. The first section of Central Park is part of Celebrate Virginia and includes a golf course (Cannon Ridge at Celebrate Virginia). Every section has an individual name like a subdivision of Celebrate Virginia, including Central Park at Celebrate Virginia. That is all being done so people will understand that these are components of the larger project.

Central Park was the first phase. The next section of Central Park is what we call a tourism campus where people will come to visit anywhere from Washington, D.C, to Williamsburg, using Celebrate Virginia as their home base. We have started the first of several hotels (a Hilton Garden Inn) and expect to have about 500 new hotel rooms open in the next 48 to 60 months. We’ve also started construction of a new 100,000-square-foot convention center for exhibitions and shows that will also draw tourists and is a prime draw for bringing other businesses to the region. And of course we gave a site to Gov. L. Douglas Wilder for the National Slavery Museum, and he is making good progress.

There will be an eco-center along the river where you can fly fish, raft or canoe. We’re also building a gondola that will take you from the Fredericksburg side of the river next to the conference center to the golf courses and a re-enactment area. That’s the site of the Mud March where 40,000 soldiers camped trying to cross the Rappahannock River during the Civil War. You’ll get to hear that whole story and there will be some re-enactment there.

Originally, all 2,400 acres (including Central Park) was zoned and we got an amendment to allow 245 acres to be an active 1,200 - 1,400 unit adult community, which has been sold to Del Webb.

What changes have you seen in Virginia over the past 30+ years?
Most of my experience has been in Fredericksburg and the surrounding counties. There has been rapid growth in the region, and as counties have become more aware of the growth and the cost of the growth, it has been more difficult to get entitlements for projects. Unfortunately you do not see as much regional planning and cooperation as there should be, but there has been a lot of conversation about it.

The other big change is that the Fredericksburg region is accepted as being part of the metro D.C. area. I now see a change in the way people are “reverse commuting.” That’s the reason for a big portion of the Celebrate Virginia project in Stafford County being an office park. We feel that the product (suitable office space) has not been provided in the southern corridor. There are about 800,000 to 900,000 employees who live within 30 minutes of Stafford, and moving their business there would shorten their two-hour commute to 30 minutes or less.
I also see a lot of local elected officials who were not born in the area. They have moved to the region and become very active and involved. And I think to bring some new blood into the area is a good thing.

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