Stafford Supervisors Defer Applying Historic Resource Overlay District to Sherwood Forest Farm
Recommendation will come back to the board in January.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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The Stafford Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to defer until January a recommendation to apply historic resource overlay zoning to three parcels of land known as Sherwood Forest Farm.
The 4-3 vote came after a lengthy discussion about weighing the rights of the property owner—who according to attorney Charlie Payne was not aware of the overlay proposal until last week—with the public’s interest in protecting a resource of national historic significance.
Chair Deuntay Diggs—who represents the George Washington district where the parcels are located—joined Vice Chair Tinesha Allen (Griffis-Widewater) and supervisors Monica Gary (Aquia) and Pamela Yeung (Garrisonville) in supporting the motion to defer until January.
Diggs said this would give county staff time to talk with the current landowner, Walton VA, LLC, and the contracted purchaser—Peterson Companies, represented by Payne—about their plans for the property, which includes a ca. 1810 main dwelling, a detached kitchen and smokehouse from the same period; a mid-19th century secondary dwelling and agricultural buildings from the mid-20th century.
Sherwood Forest Farm has ties to George Washington’s family, having been gifted to his great-grandfather William Ball, then to his mother, Mary Ball Washington, and then to his younger brother, John Augustine. It served as an observation station and field hospital during the Civil War and is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, due to the architectural merit of the main house and outbuildings.
Both Payne and a representative from Walton said that though they oppose applying the historic overlay district to the property, they fully understand its historic significance.
“We are very aware of the historic features within our property,” said the Walton representative. “We are willing to work with the county to not negatively impact those. There’s an active rezoning application that does not have any impact to the historic portion of our property.”
The application is a request to rezone 176 of the 505 total acres, east of the dairy farm and north of Route 3, from agricultural to industrial for the Forest Lane data center project. Staff said Tuesday that this rezoning request has not yet gone through a first review and is not expected to come before the Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors until next year.
Payne also said that the proposal does not “encroach on or disturb” Sherwood Forest’s historic features.
“None of those parcels are part of our rezoning,” he said. “They will remain agriculturally zoned. The intent in the future is to work with the county to preserve” the historic features, which pose a “wonderful [opportunity] for adapative reuse.
Supervisors Crystal Vanuch (Rock Hill), Meg Bohmke (Falmouth), and Darrell English (Hartwood) voted against the motion, instead wanting to see the county add the parcels to the historic overlay district sooner rather than later.
The county’s Architectural Review Board (ARB) voted in June of 2023 to recommend including Sherwood Forest Farm in the overlay district.
Linda Burdette, who is a member of the ARB but spoke during public comments on Tuesday as a private individual, said efforts to involve the county in preserving the property began as far back as 1992, with other recommendations following in 2010, 2011, and 2015.
Stafford’s cultural resource planner, Nancy Kotting, said the landowner invested “a significant amount of money into stabilizing the buildings” and earned a preservation award in 2015 for that work.
“Since that time, based on a site visit earlier this spring, there is continued deterioration,” Kotting said. “One of the slave dwellings is collapsed and we have lost one of the dairy farms.”
Burdette said the ARB’s 2023 vote to recommend applying the historic overlay district was in recognition of “[the property’s] endangered status.”
“It’s taken two years to get here and we are asking you not to walk in the footsteps of your predecessors,” Burdette said.
Kotting said she informed the property owner in June of 2023 of the ARB’s recommendation and that there was no opposition at the time. She said she was not able to make contact with the owner more recently, after seeing that the issue had been placed on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, and apologized for not remembering that she had his direct contact information.
County Administrator Bill Ashton said staff turnover may have played a part in the two-year delay in bringing the matter to the supervisors, but also took responsiblity for the delay.
Kotting told supervisors that the overlay district does not require the landowner to preserve the existing historic structures. It would require that any future additions, demolitions, or major changes that impact the historic resources be deemed appropriate by the Architectural Review Board.
“Having an overlay district is extremely important to act as an insurance policy against the unknown in the future,” Kotting said.
She added that the data center rezoning application does include “part of the viewshed” of the historic features, and that the viewshed is “a contributing resource to its significance.”
Vanuch said that the purpose of the overlay district is “to preserve the chatacter of the land [and to ensure that] any new development is compatable with the existing historical character.”
“This should have overwhelming support in my opinion,” she said.
But supervisors who supported deferring the item until January in general said that since the overlay district does not enforce preservation and since the land owner and applicant both expressed an interest in working with the county on adaptive reuse of the property, it would be worthwhile to take the time to come up with something that all parties can support.
“Let’s work together instead of using force,” Diggs said.
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