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Isle of Wight County’s Economic Development Authority expects to close by the end of June on its sale of EDA-owned land for the Tidewater Logistics Center multi-warehouse complex on the outskirts of Windsor, according to Economic Development Director Kristi Sutphin.

The EDA remains under contract to sell an 83-acre parcel for $2.5 million to The Meridian Group, which proposes to build four warehouses totaling 726,000 square feet on 154 acres of farmland and forestry fronting the four-lane Route 460. The EDA land will be combined with two non-EDA parcels owned by Hollowell Holdings LLC.

The EDA paid $2.3 million to acquire the land from HRFT Inc. in 2008, according to Isle of Wight County’s GIS tax map.

Isle of Wight County supervisors voted 3-2 over opposition from Windsor-area residents in March to approve light industrial zoning for the project, nine months after rejecting a larger concept that had called for five warehouses totaling 1.2 million square feet.

The site is on the opposite side of Route 460, also known as Windsor Boulevard, from the existing Cost Plus World Market distribution center in Phase 1 of the county’s Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park.

Sutphin told the EDA board on May 20 that the project had submitted its subdivision plat to Isle of Wight County’s Community Development Department on May 15. The plat would subdivide the 154 acres into seven parcels – one for each warehouse, one for the historic Henry Saunders house, one for Ennis Pond and one for a 14.9-acre public park with walking trails where the fifth warehouse would have been.

Sutphin said the developer is proposing to create an association to maintain the park. 

The project has for the past two years divided the community, with supporters saying it will bring millions in tax revenue and hundreds of jobs without increasing the demand on Isle of Wight’s school system that would come with residential development, and opponents saying it will bring constant noise and traffic. The approved plan would increase from 6 feet to 9 the height of a 60-foot-wide landscape berm that would buffer the site from the adjacent Keaton Avenue and Lovers Lane neighborhoods, and include a 10-foot-tall sound wall on top of the berm.

A fiscal impact analysis by the Hampton Roads Alliance, a regional economic development organization, had estimated $8.7 million to $9.5 million over 10 years from real estate, personal property and machinery and tools taxes based on the five-warehouse concept, and projected the four-warehouse version would produce a 10-year total of $7.7 million through 2035 from a combination of the three local tax sources. The Alliance expects the project to generate between 250 and 500 new jobs, down from the 1,200 permanent full-time positions Minneapolis-based Hickey and Associates in 2023 had listed in an economic impact study prepared for Meridian based on the five-warehouse concept.