Within the next few weeks, the consultant that worked on Isle of Wight County’s 2020 “Envisioning the Isle” comprehensive plan expects to have preliminary growth projections through 2040 for a committee tasked with drafting the plan’s five-year update.

That committee is scheduled to meet Feb. 11 at 6 p.m. in the county boardroom.

Bethesda, Maryland-based TischlerBise estimated in the 2020 plan that Isle of Wight would see its population grow 0.83% annually, though, according to differing estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau and the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center, the county growth rate has been closer to 2% per year over the past three, making it the sixth or seventh fastest-growing county in the state.

Community Development Director Amy Ring told county supervisors on Jan. 2 that TischlerBise is working on three updated 2040 growth scenarios. One will be based on what she termed a “historical” pre-2007-09 Great Recession annual growth rate of 1.87%. Another will assume a roughly 1% growth rate and a third will assume a 3% growth rate.

State law requires counties to review their comprehensive plans at least once every five years, though they’re not required to make any changes, Ring said.

Citing an influx of proposed housing developments, county Supervisor Renee Rountree proposed in 2024 to create what she termed a “growth management” task force and had initially suggested a pause on new rezoning approvals until the then-proposed body delivered its report on the county’s capacity to absorb the influx of residents from seven new and expanded subdivision proposals in 2023 that would collectively add over 1,900 houses to the county’s northern end.

When County Attorney Bobby Jones last year advised that such a moratorium could run afoul of Virginia law, Rountree’s proposal morphed into its current form as a committee of the county’s Planning Commission with the broader scope of taking on the state-mandated five-year comprehensive plan review.

Ring told county supervisors that the 2020 plan’s 0.83% projected annual growth rate would translate to needing approximately 2,731 additional residential units by 2040 based on the 38,606 county residents recorded during the 2020 Census and an average 2.4 people per housing unit. Isle of Wight has, in three years, added 1,125 units, or 41% of the originally projected 2040 need.

There were 16,441 existing residential units countywide as of April 2020. As of July 2023 there were 17,566, Ring said, noting the county has been issuing an average of 259 building permits for new residential units per year.

There are at least 2,600 additional units planned across eight approved but unbuilt subdivisions slated for Isle of Wight County and the towns of Smithfield and Windsor.

The goal of the three growth scenarios through 2040 is to look at what impacts those growth rates could have on the county’s public facilities and operational budgets, Ring said.

County staff is separately putting together a redlined version of the 2020 plan based on edits suggested by members of the task force, which has been meeting since July, Ring said. That’s expected to be ready for the comprehensive plan review group by the end of February, she said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Don Rosie, at the Jan. 2 meeting, suggested the revised plan look into growth options for land surrounding the Franklin Regional Airport, which is owned by the city of Franklin and located in the Carrsville-centric District 5 he represents. It adjoins the 65-acre Franklin Air Industrial Park.

It’s an area “where we haven’t seen much growth” but “the potential is there,” Rosie said.

“We talk about attracting and taking some of the load off, if you will, to the northern area by doing it in an appropriate place in the southern area, where would it be appropriate and how can we best utilize those resources,” Rosie said.