Collegiate Times

Land deal

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors approved a land exchange with Montgomery County Public Schools on March 23.

The land that Tech receives will be used for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the land that MCPS receives will be used for a new elementary school. The exchange, while approved by the Board of Visitors, still needs to be finalized by the state.

The land that Montgomery County will acquire, if approved, is located on Prices Fork Road, up the road from the current Prices Fork Elementary School. The land the university would acquire is located on the opposite side of the US 460 bypass from Tech's main campus.

All parties involved emphasize that this is no donation or sale - it is simply an exchange. The university will exchange the 20 acres of land on Prices Fork Road for the 16 acres of Heth farmland. The county did, however, purchase that Heth farmland from the Virginia Tech Foundation for $1 million.

Elizabeth Reed is Tech's director of real estate management.

"The location of the land that we are giving makes it perfect for the school because it's near what will be the old location. This is truly a like exchange," Reed said. "The board approved the resolution to exchange the land, but it hasn't been finalized. We still need to get state approval from Richmond to finalize the deal. We'll be sending the information to them within the next month."

"It's a great location, right off of the road, concerning water, electricity, gas and other utilities," said MCPS Facilities Manager Dan Berenato. "It's just right off Prices Fork Road, so we can build it without an access road or anything. It is of good size with beautiful views, and we want to take advantage of that."

Montgomery County used a GIS system to look for undeveloped plots of land. After approaching a number of different land donors and beginning discussions, none worked out. MCPS came to Tech more than three years ago, asking to purchase a piece of land for a new school to be built - a new Prices Fork Elementary School.

The current Prices Fork Elementary School location houses about five mobile units, in order to accommodate the demands of high capacity. This new school will hopefully alleviate the problem there, as well as at the nearby Kipps Elementary School.

"The county came to Tech looking for land near the Prices Fork community for land for a new school. Tech has agricultural property there, and they asked if they could purchase that land. We basically said we really want to help, but what we need is land, and we don't want to just give it up because we need all the land we have," said university spokesman Larry Hincker.

It was originally extremely difficult for the county to locate land in order to make an exchange with the university. However, the Virginia Tech Foundation was holding property, which the county ended up purchasing.

Then, an exchange was made and Montgomery County received the 20-acre parcel that it wanted out on Prices Fork Road.

The Virginia Tech Foundation serves primarily to manage the university's endowment, as well as many "gifts" that are given to the university. With a lot of experience in managing properties, the foundation was holding this piece of land when MCPS found it. The land, and its surrounding area, was once owned by the Heth family, and it was donated to the university in the '90s.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is said to be very happy with the property it will receive from MCPS. The college plans to use the land for crop growing, as it is contiguous to the university and has great conditions for agriculture.

"We're going to farm the new land, primarily for corn crop. It's an even exchange, and it'll work about even. The only possible issue could be crop yields," said CALS Director of Operations in Martin Daniel.

The land will add to the amount of farming land that CALS has on campus, as well as off.

"We have a variety of different pieces of land around the campus, and the other closest cropping area would be between the Corporate Research Center and the Dairy Farm, which currently grows alfalfa crops," Daniel said. "Most of the crop lands that we work are producing feeds for cattle down at Kentland Farms. We have other lands that are used for research and teaching purposes, too."