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The Northern Virginia Daily Article date: January 26, 2006 Panel is pushing for deal at Avtex Agreement would develop 160-acre business park
By
William C. Flook The Front Royal- Warren
County Economic Development Authority is pushing to
complete an agreement by the end of February with a firm that
will purchase and develop a large chunk of the Avtex Superfund site,
according to Chairman John LaBarca. “We’re
going to try like the dickens to get there,” he said. The EDA is currently working to ink a contract with Bethesda, Md-based Lerner Enterprises, in
which the firm would take on the redevelopment of the
160-acre business park on the Kendrick Lane site. The business park and the
adjacent 240-acre conservancy park are part of the EDA’s
“Royal Phoenix” plan for the property, which formerly
housed a massive rayon plant. The panel voted unanimously in October to
enter into negotiations with Lerner over another developer. Per
company policy, Lerner does not comment on active negotiations
“particularly at this early stage,” said Will Clark,
feasibility manager for the firm. Lerner is the largest privately owned owner and developer in the Washington area, managing more than 20 million square feet, Clark said. The
redevelopment of the site is contingent upon the
completion of the cleanup, however, and only a small portion of the
entire property has so far been approved by the
Environmental Protection Agency. Many agencies, along with FMC
Corp., the only owner of the plant that still exists, have been involved in
the cleanup, which has spanned years and cost
millions of dollars. Clark
points to the work of the EPA , the Army Corps of Engineers
and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, as well as the involvement of 10th District Rep. Frank R. Wolf and Sen. John Warner, which ensures “that this marquee project will be well documented and supervised.” “When
delivered, this will not be a Superfund site– it will e
a clean parcel of ground suitable for development,” Clark
said. FMC’s
portion of the cleanup is on schedule, according to site
manager John Torrence. FMC has removed sewers and
completed the majority of soil sampling in the northern half
of the parcel that will house the business park. On the
southern half, FMC is finished soil sampling, and
sewer removal is scheduled to begin in February, he said. For the
first phase of development, Lerner has offered $2.5 million
for the initial 26 acres, plus the current EDA administration
building, LaBarca said. That may result in the EDA being a
tenant until it can relocate. Development will need to occur in chunks as the EPA signs off on particular parcels. Torrence
said cleanup will likely be completed first on the
northern half of the property. Lerner
and FMC will be meeting in the coming weeks to examine
what cleanup work has been done, what work remains and the
time line for finishing it, Torrence said. Meetings involving Lerner are also planned between the EDA, Wolf and Warner, LaBarca said. |