Joseph Luter III’s offer in May of $6 million for the beautification of the western edge of Smithfield’s historic district is the largest single cash donation the former Smithfield Foods chairman has offered the town in decades of similar grants.

Luter’s condition that the town match the amount dollar for dollar means it’s also the highest upfront financial commitment he’s requested of town taxpayers to date.

Smithfield’s Town Council hasn’t decided whether to accept or refund the money, which has already been deposited in the town’s bank account. According to Smithfield Mayor Steve Bowman, if the town agrees to Luter’s terms the money would fund a brick perimeter wall in town-owned right-of-way and brick sidewalks fronting Main Street’s intersection with Route 10 where Luter’s son, Joseph Luter IV, is developing the 267-home Grange at 10Main mixed-use development.

Bowman, who has acknowledged a 35-year friendship with Luter, said at a June 4 council meeting that the former chairman “expects someone else to have skin in the game” before putting his money toward a cause. 

A Smithfield Times analysis of Luter III’s prior grants to the town, and his ask of the town in each instance, confirms Bowman’s assertion was indeed the case more often than not spanning more than 40 years of public-private partnership proposals.

1979-81

Civic center

Luter offer: $250,000

Town cost: $300,000 (withdrawn)

 

 

Among the earliest examples of Luter III’s conditional philanthropy came in 1979 when Smithfield’s Town Council voted to accept an offer “in principle” by Luter III to provide land and up to $250,000 to fund a “civic center” on Commerce Street, a precursor concept to what eventually became the Smithfield Center the town completed on North Church Street in 2000.

The council, which had voted in 1980 to enter into a contract with Luter’s Waterfront Land Corp. and Smithfield Packing Co. committing up to $100,000 in town funds for the project, voted to contribute an additional $200,000 in 1981 but rescinded its vote days later.

The reversal sparked a legal challenge by Waterfront Land Corp. and Smithfield Packing, which a judge dismissed in favor of the town a month later in March of that year. By April, the council voted 4-3 to officially kill the project after the lowest bid came in $100,000 more than budgeted, at $624,600, and was estimated as of that month to cost $766,000 ($2.5 million in 2024 dollars) in total with paving and an upgraded roof.

1988-99

Main Street beautification

Luter offer: $$500,000

Town cost: $325,000 (total from June 13, 1990, and Feb. 28, 1996, reporting)

Luter III, in 1988, made a “challenge grant” in which Smithfield Packing Co. and Gwaltney Ltd. of Smithfield would each contribute $100,000 to revitalize Main Street with brick sidewalks and historic-style lamp posts if local businesses would match the amount. Luter also funded the bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin on the sidewalk in front of The Smithfield Times office and one of Thomas Jefferson that now stands outside the Smithfield Center.

Historic Smithfield, a nonprofit formed by Main Street businesses, ended up surpassing the goal at $250,000.

Town government, according to the Times’ reporting from 1990 when the beautification project began, had agreed to contribute $75,000 per year over the next three for a total of $225,000. Isle of Wight County, according to the Times’ reporting in 1992, had contributed its own $225,000 share. Smithfield Foods, as of that same year, had upped its contribution to $250,000 to match what Historic Smithfield had raised for a phase spanning Main Street’s 100 to 200 blocks.

By 1996, when a second phase to extend the brick sidewalks and lamp posts west of Institute Street and down Wharf Hill began, Historic Smithfield and the town had collectively raised $719,000 for the work, the Times reported that year. Of the total, $419,000 came from federal funding through the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. According to the Times’ reporting on Feb. 28, 1996, the town and Smithfield Foods each contributed $100,000 for the second phase that year, with a third $100,000 jointly raised by Historic Smithfield and the Gwaltney Trust.

The entire project had been estimated at $800,000 as of 1990 but wasn’t completed until 1999, according to 2002 reporting in the Suffolk News-Herald, by which time the total cost had risen to $2 million, which in 2024 dollars would equate to $3.7 million, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

1994-96

Clontz Park

Luter offer: 5.7 acres (valued at $373,500 as of 2023)

Town cost: $1

Luter III, in 1994, offered the town the use of a fishing pier he’d constructed at a 5.7-acre parcel fronting the Pagan River, which Luter had reclaimed following a fire that burned the town’s first slaughterhouse on the site. Luter had privately funded the construction before making his offer, which rather than requiring a financial match by Smithfield saved the town money it otherwise would have spent to build its own public fishing pier where the Pagan meets Cypress Creek. The Town Council accepted Luter’s offer and scrapped its plans to build its own pier.

Luter’s only condition, according to the Times’ reporting from April 6 of that year, was that the town agree to maintain the pier. Five months later, in September, Luter asked that the park be named for his stepbrother Robert Clontz, an avid fisherman and wildlife artist who’d died that year at age 52.

Smithfield Foods officially deeded the land, now valued at $373,500, to the town for $1 in 2010 to allow it to apply for a grant of just over $250,000 from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission to construct a public boat ramp.

The boat ramp, which opened in 2019, ended up costing the town roughly $1 million, according to the Times’ reporting from that year.

The town, in 2023, used a portion of the federal COVID-19 pandemic relief money it received from the American Rescue Plan Act to rebuild the pier to be handicap-accessible and demolish an old gazebo at the site. The town’s budget includes $3,000 in annual maintenance costs for Clontz Park.

1997-2000

The Smithfield Center and Smithfield Little Theatre

Luter offer: $2.7 million ($1 million for center; $1 million for theatre, $700,000 for brick wall)

Town cost: $2.5 million

The council authorized then-Town Manager Peter Stephenson in October 1996 to make a $570,000 offer on a shopping center located on North Church Street where The Smithfield Center now stands, intending to demolish and transform the site into a parking lot and public park in hopes of luring Smithfield Foods, which had relocated its headquarters to Norfolk a year earlier, back to its namesake town.

It worked. By 1997, the world’s largest pork processor had broken ground on its adjacent Commerce Street campus.

By 1998, the town had spent roughly $100,000 on environmental remediation and another $150,000 on demolition at the former shopping center, in addition to a $750,000 purchase price for the land, for a total of just over $1 million, according to the Times’ reporting on March 11 of that year.

By the same date, Smithfield Foods had donated $700,000 to the town to build a 4-foot-tall brick wall along North Church Street and Luter Drive, similar to what’s proposed for the town right-of-way fronting the Grange.

In 1999, Isle of Wight’s Board of Supervisors had voted to commit up to $510,000 toward the Smithfield Center. By Aug. 11 of that year, Luter had offered $1 million on behalf of Smithfield Foods for the center, and the town had budgeted just under $1.5 million of its own money for the project.

By March 2000, the council voted to award a $2.6 million construction contract to a Williamsburg-based contractor. The Smithfield Center was nearly complete by November of that year.

By November 2001, the brick Smithfield Little Theatre that replaced the old Cotton Gin Theatre demolished that summer had opened with a production of “1776.” The Times’ reporting from that month listed the final cost of the theatre at $1 million donated by Luter III.

According to the town’s 2024-25 budget, Smithfield spends roughly $150,000 to $250,000 annually to maintain The Smithfield Center, which generates just under $200,000 annually in rental income.

Luter Family YMCA expansion

2001

Luter offer: $1 million

Town match: $500,000

The same year the new theatre opened, Smithfield Foods donated $1 million to aid in a $2.4 million expansion of the Luter Family YMCA that adjoins the Blackwater Regional Library’s Smithfield branch and the second-floor Smithfield campus of Paul D. Camp Community College. All three  are housed in the county-owned former Smithfield High School on James Street.

Luter’s donation coincided with Smithfield’s Town Council voting to contribute $500,000 toward the project and Isle of Wight County supervisors voting to put up another $250,000.

South Church Street beautification

2003-2012

Town cost: at least $400,000

Luter match: $2.5 million (Luter and Smithfield Foods)

Smithfield Foods committed $1 million in 2003 toward a proposal to add brick sidewalks to South Church Street, the scope of which had been expanded by 2006 to encompass the 100 block of North Church Street in front of the town’s circa-1939 firehouse, and had received a cumulative $2.5 million from Smithfield Foods and Luter III, according to the Times’ reporting from that year.

By 2008, the town had committed $400,000 for brick sidewalks spanning the half-mile distance from Church Street’s intersection with Luter Drive to the historic district’s eastern terminus at the base of the Cypress Creek Bridge by Smithfield Station. As of July 2 of that year, the town had already paid out $294,398 in design costs and $170,000 to bury power lines, and had committed $335,000 to upgrade water lines for upcoming phases of the work.

Nearly $3 million in additional funding had been raised as of the same date from private donations. The town had also secured just under $1 million in state and federal grants requiring a 20% to $196,000 match from the town or other sources.

By Jan. 7, 2009, town officials had decided against replacing the cast iron water mains to save an estimated $250,000.

By 2012, the year the work was largely finished, the council had voted to open a $1 million line of credit with Farmers Bank, now TowneBank, to cover the remaining cost of the beautification project and purchase a mobile command vehicle for its Police Department. The town’s then-treasurer, Ellen Minga, told council members in July of that year that the majority of the costs would be reimbursable through Virginia Department of Transportation funds and private donations to the South Church Street beautification project, as well as a grant to fund the police vehicle.

2007-2010

Windsor Castle Park

Town cost: $300,000 upfront, $100,000 to $200,000 annually

Luter match: $5 million

Smithfield purchased the 208-acre Windsor Castle Park from Newport News developer Lewis McMurran in 2009, five years after McMurran proposed building a 445-home development dubbed “Villages at Windsor Castle” in 2004.

Luter III, in 2007, had offered $5 million toward the project. According to the Times’ 2009 reporting, the town closed on the sale in March of that year, agreeing to pay McMurran $3.8 million for 163 acres. McMurran, in that sale agreement, donated the 18th century homestead built by Smithfield founder Arthur Smith IV and just under 46 additional acres to the town.

Luter’s donation funded $3.5 million of the purchase price, leaving the town to come up with the remaining $300,000. Luter placed the remaining $1.5 million in an escrow account slated for the building of footbridges and pedestrian trails.

In 2020, the town completed the restoration of the manor house and outbuildings at $2.9 million, 42% under the project’s $5 million budget, according to the Times’ reporting from January of that year. Of the total, $1 million was a donation from Smithfield Foods. The town pledged another $2 million but ended up spending only $1.3 million. Other sources of funding included a $350,000 pledge from Smithfield VA Events, the nonprofit that organizes three annual festivals held on the manor house grounds.

The park, according to Smithfield’s 2024-25 budget, brings in just under $100,000 annually from the rental of kayaks and the manor house, which the town rents out as an event center, while costing $100,000 to $200,000 in yearly upkeep. The Windsor Castle Park Foundation, a 2013-founded nonprofit, separately raises and maintains funds to promote and benefit the park.

2016-2018

Luter Sports Complex

Luter offer: $5 million ($2 million in 2016, $3 million in 2022)

Town cost: $1.7 million ($775,000 land purchase, $1 million in 2022)

In 2009, Luter III offered $1.3 million to add up to six baseball and softball fields, originally intending that they be built at Windsor Castle Park for use by the Smithfield Recreation Association. The idea morphed into what became the 2018-opened Luter Sports Complex.

By 2016, Smithfield’s Town Council had purchased the 110-acre property on West Main Street for $775,000, according to the Times’ reporting from that year.

Two years earlier, in 2014, former Smithfield Foods CEO Larry Pope pledged to donate $1 million toward the project. Luter himself pledged an additional $2 million in 2016 toward the concept, contingent on Isle of Wight County putting up $250,000 and the park including a brick entrance wall with signage naming the complex for his father, Joseph Luter Jr.

County supervisors agreed to their end of the bargain and in 2017, a year before the $4 million complex opened, signed an agreement with the town giving the county two free events per year for community activities in exchange for Isle of Wight’s contribution.

According to the town’s 2024-25 budget, the sports complex brings in roughly $33,000 annually in rental fees, Roughly  $128,000, is budgeted for Luter Sports Complex’s upkeep in fiscal year 2024-25.

In 2022, the council voted to accept an additional $3 million from Luter III to expand the sports complex and commit $1 million in matching funds.

2022

Smithfield Farmers Market

Luter offer: land and $1 million

Town cost: $1.4 million

Two years prior to offering his $6 million, Luter III had offered land and $1 million in 2022 toward moving the town’s farmers market, currently held weekly on Saturdays in the parking lot behind the Bank of Southside Virginia, to an indoor-outdoor brick structure at the Grange that would anchor the mixed-use development’s commercial phase.

His 2022 offer was conditioned on the town and Isle of Wight County each committing up to $1.4 million, which both governing boards agreed to contribute in October of that year.

A May 29 letter from Bowman to Luter III states the latest $6 million offer and town match would fund four priorities of the former chairman, including co-locating the farmers market within the Grange, adding a streetscape with trees and signage, extending brick sidewalks and facilitating parking at the Grange for Main Street Baptist Church, located opposite Main Street from the 57-acre site. Plans to move the farmers market to the Grange, add brick sidewalks and facilitate parking for Main Street Baptist have been in the works since before the Grange received council approval in December for mixed-use zoning.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:16 a.m. on Aug. 9 to correct that Historic Smithfield raised $250,000 for the first phase of the Main Street Beautification project, not $560,000, which was the total raised by Historic Smithfield, Smithfield Foods and other donors as of 1992.