The Northern Virginia Daily

Article date: July 1, 2005

 Interest building for old Avtex site

Officials: Planning on business park ‘moving along’

 By: William C. Flook

A section of the once blighted Avtex Superfund site now appears to be a hot commodity. 

The Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority is coming closer to securing a developer for a planned 160 acre business park, according to Executive Director Paul Carroll.   Some firms that had expressed interest in the site are returning for a second visit and requesting more information, which Carroll said is a promising sign.

“It means the original efforts we had were successful, it’s brought them back for round two,” he said.

Front Royal’s location as a “dual gateway” to the capital region and the Shenandoah Valley makes it particularly attractive, Carroll said.

As part of the EDA’s Royal Phoenix project, a firm would buy the land and turn it into a mixed-use development focusing on technology and hospitality.

Spiros V. Antoniadis, vice president of North American Realty Advisory Services, which has been contracted by the EDA to market the business park, said the company is now “talking seriously” with about seven different potential developers.

“There is definitely interest, and I would say it’s moving along pretty well,” he said.

Of those firms, each has requested additional information about the site, and three have returned for a second visit.  Eventually, that list will probably be whittled down to three or four, he said.

Carroll said the EDA board of directors eventually wants to have letters of interest from a few groups, one of which would be chosen as the site’s developer.

The business park is included in the total 440 acres of the former rayon plant, which was shut down in 1989, three years after it was declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Also planned for the site is a 240-acre conservancy park and a 30- acre soccer complex, which officials recently broke ground on.

The EDA approved a marketing plan for the business park in April, and North American soon after began seeking out a potential developer.

Many of the firms that have expressed interest have experience with “brownfield” sites.  According to the EPA, brownfields are “real property, the expansion, redevelopment or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.”

By the time the developer would begin work on the land, it will be “a clean piece of ground,” Antoniadis said.  Experience with polluted land might not be necessary, he said.

The Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and FMC, the only company to once own the plant that is still in business today, have spent years removing pollutants from the site.