Second homes are growing in Eastern Shore’s fields

by Robert Burke
Virginia Business
June 2005

They still grow tomatoes on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. And cucumbers and string beans and corn, which all thrive in the sandy soil here and long growing seasons. For generations, crops like these have been a key export from this rural peninsula, earning it the nickname of “Virginia’s Vegetable Garden.”

Today, though, the Eastern Shore seems to be making a name for itself as an importer — of well-heeled home buyers. Rising at the peninsula’s southern tip is the 1,729-acre Bay Creek Golf and Marina Resort, a high-end development spread along the west side of the peninsula where two creeks meet the Chesapeake Bay.

The Bay Creek project is being done by longtime Virginia Beach developer Dickie Foster’s Baymark Construction. Paul Galloway is co-developer with Foster of the marina and the Marina Villages at Bay Creek project. Though far from completed (about 800 of a planned 2,700 housing units have been sold), Bay Creek may soon come to define the Eastern Shore’s new identity as a playground of sorts for the well-off.

That wouldn’t tell the whole story, of course. Agriculture is still a huge part of the region’s economy, with close to 130,000 acres in production.
Watermen still fish and crab as they have for generations. And manufacturing accounts for about a fifth of the region’s 20,000 jobs. Still, for a region that slumbered for so many years — largely ignored by the big metro regions to the north and south — the change is striking.

In May last year, for example, 84 lots next to Bay Creek’s new marina went on the market and triggered a virtual stampede. The lots sold in less than three days for a total take of nearly $21 million. “Phones were ringing, and there were contracts flying back and forth,” says Josephine Mooney, Bay Creek’s marketing director. “It was very, very hectic.”

The growth around Cape Charles and elsewhere on the southern end of the peninsula is spurring local leaders to review their land-use plans. In Northampton County the Board of Supervisors has begun reviewing its comprehensive plan and may tighten its zoning ordinances to steer developers to the land in the shore’s small towns, says board Chairman Richard Tankard. “The comprehensive plan really does emphatically say we’re going to stay a rural community,” he says. “What we don’t want to do is just become a bedroom community for Hampton Roads.”

Other housing projects are scattered up the peninsula, with some clustered at the north end of Accomack County near Chincoteague. The changes get a mixed reaction from the people already here, says Greg Manter, director of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Economic Development Commission. The flow of new money and new people is helping invigorate some of the small downtowns, and businesspeople are glad for that, he says. But “the idea of sprawl and just gobbling up farms, there are a lot of people that don’t like it.”

But sprawl is usually the label slapped on the cookie-cutter subdivisions that pop up on the rural fringe of urban areas, for buyers that want more house for less money. The Eastern Shore’s geography tends to foil that formula. Hampton Roads is the nearest metro region for most residents but it’s across the 23-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a $17 roundtrip. Not exactly a cheap commute.

Instead, many new properties here are second homes or retirement homes. Bay Creek properties in particular are luxurious vacation getaways that come at a price: bayfront lots in a part of the development called The Colony, for example, cost between $400,000 and $715,000. For that kind of investment, there are extras. The Bay Creek project plan includes two golf courses — an Arnold Palmer-designed course opened two years and a Jack Nicklaus course will be completed in the fall. There is also a deepwater marina, shops and restaurants, and a high-end spa is being planned.

The houses are designed to evoke places far beyond Tidewater Virginia. Some mimic the architecture of the British West Indies, while others “will be reminiscent of Nantucket, Charleston and Savannah,” says Oral Lambert, Bay Creek’s director of resort development and a former COO for the city of Virginia Beach.

Many of Bay Creek’s buyers are from the Northeast, and a quarter are from Hampton Roads, Mooney says. But many others who may not be able to afford Bay Creek are buying in the Eastern Shore as well, in places such as Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club on 2,000 acres on Chincoteague Bay.
Many of the buyers are the same people who spurred the development of the Outer Banks, people from New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania, says Joseph Caffrey, a business broker who works with Coldwell Banker Harbour Realty. The residential growth is starting to catch the attention of major retailers, which for now have a limited presence here. “We’ve been getting a fair number of inquiries” in the past few months, including nibbles from national chains, says Caffrey. “So we’re on the radar here.”

Despite the influx of new home buyers, boosters of the Eastern Shore’s economy have been somewhat nervous. The Department of Defense is picking which military installations can be eliminated or merged with other locations in its Base Realignment and Closure review. The U.S. Navy Surface Combat Systems Center at Wallops Island just south of Chincoteague was a potential target but was not on the Pentagon’s initial list of cuts.

According to a study released in December, the Navy’s Wallops Island operation contributes more than $58 million annually in wages and spending in Accomack County and millions more to nearby localities in Maryland.

Steve Habeger, a former director of the surface combat center, was not surprised Wallops Island base was spared. He says the facility “is both unique and vital...The worst threat that our Navy faces is somebody shooting a missile at your ship that flies very low and very fast,” he says. The Wallops site is good for designing defense systems. “You can’t do that in Kansas. You’ve got to have real water and real surf.”

In fact Habeger thinks that when the final cuts are made next fall, Wallops could actually benefit by picking up additional work now handled by other military bases. Habeger organized the Eastern Shore Defense Alliance, a group of local residents that commissioned the economic-impact study. “I just believe in the process, and I don’t think they’re going to make foolish decisions,” he says.

But the Navy’s Wallops Island center is relatively isolated from the rest of the Eastern Shore, which, despite the land rush in some areas is still mostly a flat, open countryside dotted with small towns. What’s more, many of the small towns are themselves isolated from the region’s economic energy because they lack a public wastewater system.

The fact that infrastructure or geography keeps some people out, though, suits others just fine. Steve and Rosalind Lotharius own the North Street Market in Onancock, a charming bayside town with a thriving downtown. The couple moved here from Madison, Wis., about three years ago after their daughter headed off to college. They bought a storefront building and opened a gourmet market.

In March they moved to a bigger building down the street. “It’s been a tremendous success,” says Steve Lotharius. “We’re very proud of it.”
They also recognize that the rising tide of outsiders is changing the place they fell for. “It’s very much of a double-edged sword,” he says. “How many more people do we want to come here?”