The Warren Sentinel

Article date: April 07, 2005

 Bidding adieu

Avtex focus moves toward redevelopment

By: Roger Bianchini

The Avtex redevelopment Advisory Committee’s final report on its endeavors over 30 months of existence was given to a largely appreciative group of “stakeholders” at the Warren County Government Center on Tuesday evening.

The mood of the event following a half hour of socializing over an ARAC meeting’s characteristic picnic-style spread of food seemed to be one of shared achievement for past efforts and optimism about the 467-acre Superfund site’s next step toward an anticipated rebirth as an economic and environmental showcase for what can be achieved when governments and communities work together.

Earlier in the day at the morning board of supervisors meeting in the same room the Avtex stakeholders gathered in Tuesday night,  ARAC Chairman Ray Grimm retraced not only his group’s steps, but also the evolution of Avtex itself.  He recounted how the plant, build in the late 1930's by American Viscose, a subsidiary of a British company gearing up for war, had become a state of the art facility, as well as one of the world’s largest manufacturing plants for the production of what was then known as “artificial silk”.

That product, later known as rayon, made Avtex one of the largest contributors to the Allied war efforts in the 1940's.

“Unfortunately the sweet smell of success turned into the stench of pollution,” Grimm told the supervisors.

“We are extremely gratified as to how our direction has turned out and I think we’ve laid the groundwork for a superb EDA group to take this all on,” Grimm said following the delivery of Tuesday evening’s final ARAC report.

Grimm summed up his emotions by saying he believes Avtex will become “a great facility for our community, for Warren County and Front Royal.”

That is a far cry from how the site was perceived as it languished through the first half of the 1990's following its 1989 closing by Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry for ongoing state water control board violations polluting the Adjacent Shenandoah River.

Others present Tuesday evening shared Grimm’s enthusiasm.

“The groups involved- the town council, ARAC,  the board of supervisors, EPA, and their contractors, FMC and their contractors - they’ve made my life really easy.  They did the hard work and the ability to work together was fantastic.  It’s because of that work that we are ahead of schedule,” Front Royal- Warren County Economic Development Executive Director Paul Carroll, who took over his position last year, said .

Carroll noted during his remarks Tuesday night that the company contracted to develop a marketing plan for the 160-acre Avtex Business Park, North American Reality Services, was two months ahead of schedule.  He reported that the marketing plan will be presented to the EDA board for a vote at its April meeting.  He also said a great deal of early interest was being exhibited by some targeted businesses.

Carroll singled out the Superfund project overseer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for its cooperation in moving things along as the EDA spearheads a transition from emphasis on remediation of the environmental disaster site to redevelopment of it.

And while federal bureaucracies aren’t often acknowledged for their momentum, Carroll pointed out, “They’ve been fantastic, in fact they’re the ones who said as soon as you get [this marketing company] on, the sooner we can work with you and development can take place.”

“Once we know what it is they want to do then we can try and work with them and adjust our schedule so that we can help meet their needs.  With a firm plan in place we have a better chance of doing that,” EPA Project Manager Bonnie Gross said.

Gross said she has been impressed with the evolution of the cooperative efforts of local, state and federal agencies in moving the Avtex project forward.

“I didn’t have a vision, per se, going into it because it’s the first time I had entered into a process like this. The reality is that people are wanting to take ownership of this project now and that makes a huge difference in what we can all accomplish together and I think when everybody has a stake in it and wants to make it work we can find ways to do that.  And we’ve gotten out of cleanup being the primary focus and now it’s how we can make cleanup work with redevelopment,” Gross said.

Gross said the notion that the Avtex project will become an EPA model for such cooperative processes is already occurring.

“People from EPA headquarters have come down and they’ve been to some of the multi-stakeholder group meetings and the openness we’ve tried to achieve to let people in on what we were doing, to see what we were doing.”

Gross credited cleanup partner FMC Project Manager Doug Bement for his work in making the site accessible.