Developer Joseph Luter IV is no longer the owner of eight residential lots at Washington, James and Clay streets.

According to Isle of Wight County land transfer records, Luter’s holding company, JWL34 LLC, sold all eight lots in September that had been created from Luter’s purchase of 1.5 acres of formerly town-owned land. All eight are now under the ownership of JVC LLC, a holding company owned by Vincent Carollo.

The sale price for all eight lots is listed at $590,000. Land transfer records from June previously recorded the May sale of a 0.14-acre lot fronting Washington, also to JVC LLC, for $110,000.

He’d purchased the land, excluding the buildings the town leases to Smithfield’s Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter and to The Children’s Center, for $225,000 in 2021. 

Over the past three years, Luter has also invested an undisclosed amount of money to extend the formerly dead-end Clay Street of Washington to connect to James and build a 13-space parking lot for the VFW. The Town Council voted in July to accept the completed extension as a town-maintained road.

Luter’s conceptual plans from 2021, which had dubbed the development “Luter Acres,” had called for four detached homes and four duplex units, which as of 2022 were projected to sell for $450,000 to $550,000.

“My company has purchased and closed on the residual lots at Clay, James and Washington streets,” Carollo said.

Carollo, however, declined to provide further details on his plans for the eight unbuilt lots.

Carollo owns multiple properties throughout Smithfield and Isle of Wight County, including Anna’s Restaurant, the Smithfield Commons shopping center next to the McDonald’s on South Church Street, the former James River Christian Academy campus on Benns Church Boulevard that now houses Hampton Roads Classical, and at least two houses.

Luter IV did not immediately respond to the Times’ request for comments. He’s also the developer of the larger, 267-home mixed-use Grange at 10Main development the Town Council approved last year for 57 acres at the western edge of the town’s historic district at the corner of Route 10 and Main Street.

The 2021 sale agreement for the 1.5 acres included a condition requiring the town to put the $225,000 Luter agreed to pay toward extending Main Street’s brick sidewalks into the commercial phase of the then-proposed Grange, which would be anchored by a building designed to house the town’s farmers market, a restaurant and six separate retail spaces.