Isle of Wight County supervisors voted unanimously on Nov. 21 to accept a $2.2 million Virginia Department of Transportation grant that would partially fund a roundabout on Turner Drive.

VDOT’s six-year plan includes an additional $972,000 through Smart Scale, the state’s cost-to-benefit funding formula, for the project. The supervisors’ vote commits the county to funding the $4.5 million, or 60%, remainder of the roundabout’s and related turn lanes’ estimated $7.6 million cost.

The vote comes despite Smithfield and Isle of Wight having yet to finalize a cost-sharing agreement for the $4.5 million. The current proposal, on which Smithfield’s Town Council has yet to vote and contends is too high an ask of town taxpayers, calls for Smithfield to pay up to $2.3 million, or 51%, by an estimated 2027 construction start date to cover its proportionate share of of the traffic projected to traverse Benns Church Boulevard’s intersection with Turner by 2029.

Jamie Oliver, who heads Isle of Wight’s transportation division, said the agreement approved Nov. 21 is solely between the county and VDOT. Discussions between the town and county concerning the $4.5 million remainder cost are ongoing.

The vote came 20 days past a stated Nov. 1 deadline to accept or decline the state grant. Had the supervisors delayed the matter further, they would have risked the Commonwealth Transportation Board voting to reallocate the awarded $2.2 million to another jurisdiction.

“There’s plenty of people waiting in line that would love to grab that grant money,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Joel Acree. “… The other part would be when you go back to the table and say, oh, about that grant money that we didn’t want or need or whatever a few years ago, whether it’s five years or whatever, we’d like it now. I can’t imagine that’s something that goes over very well when you’re competing with other people, particularly cities and other localities that may be in a position to put more money on the table.” 

Isle of Wight applied for the VDOT grant in 2023. Plans for the roundabout originated in 2022 when VDOT denied Miami-based Frontier Development’s request to allow left turns onto Turner from a Wawa gas station and convenience store proposed for the southeast quadrant of the intersection. That same year, Isle of Wight’s Planning Commission recommended approval of the now-stalled Wawa conditioned on its developer submitting an alternative intersection design.

A 2029 master transportation plan for Benns Church and Turner shows the roundabout facilitating access to multiple developments proposed within a half-mile radius of the intersection.

“This intersection needs to be improved, we know that. … So it’s a way for us to get our state tax money back into our locality,” Acree said.

The $2.3 million cost share Smithfield has yet to approve would include $902,654 to account for expected 2029 traffic tied to developments outside its half-mile radius of the intersection such as the 2023-approved 267-home Grange at 10Main development slated for Route 10 and Main Street and the 2021-approved 812-home Mallory Pointe development under construction off Battery Park Road. The remaining $1.4 million is tied to the residential and commercial phases of the 2023-proposed but not yet approved “Promontory” development, which calls for 262 homes and five commercial parcels at the southwest quadrant of the Benns Church and Turner intersection on the town’s side of Turner.

The county would bear its own share of just over $1 million to account for traffic from new developments outside both the town and the half-mile radius of the intersection, and the impact of a new school that’s proposed to be built within the next few years on land opposite Turner from the current shared Smithfield High School and Smithfield Middle School campus.  

The 615-home Sweetgrass development county supervisors approved over the objection of the county Planning Commission earlier this year for the northeast quadrant would bear a $541,592, or 12%, share of the $4.5 million remainder, and the proposed Wawa and a 17 1/2-acre commercial development by Hampton-based Harrison and Lear slated for a farm adjacent to The Oaks Veterinary Clinic would collectively be on the hook for just under $500,000, or 11%.

Isle of Wight has already received written commitments from Frontier Development, Sweetgrass developer NVR and Harrison and Lear. County staff say Smithfield could negotiate its own cost-sharing agreements with developers on its side of the town-county line, though Town Attorney Bill Riddick contends a 2016 change in state law allows Smithfield to accept such cash payments only if voluntarily offered by a developer, and then only if there was evidence showing a direct causal link between a specific development and the need for the roundabout.