“Project Air Station,” Isle of Wight County Economic Development’s codename for the first occupant of the Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park’s long-planned third phase, will be bigger – and colder – than originally planned.

Air Station General LC, the Virginia Beach-based developer of the project, is now proposing a 240,000-square-foot cold storage distribution facility rather than the originally envisioned 130,000-square-foot cross-dock warehouse.

County supervisors last year voted to approve exceptions to the county’s highway corridor overlay district requirements to permit the original concept to have half of its then-proposed 140 loading bays face Walters Highway. On Sept. 24, the county’s Planning Commission gave a unanimously favorable recommendation to Project Air Station’s latest request for another exception that would allow the use of corrugated metal for its exterior facade.

The company contends controlling the interior temperature of the building requires  a light-colored metal exterior wall with insulated foam installed adjacent to the interior walls.

An illustration of the changes shows the revised design would no longer have loading bays facing Walters Highway.

“We connected with a local distributor of cold storage,” Kevin Lefcoe, representing Air Station General LC, told the commissioners.

Lefcoe said the facility’s 150-foot setback from Walters Highway and existing vegetation, along with planned landscaping and fencing, will largely hide the site from the view of passing motorists.

Lefcoe described the facility as “a 240,000-square-foot refrigerator” that will “support not only local farming” but also distributors that use the Port of Virginia.

“Very little produce and refrigerated products come through the port right now, so the Port Authority, which we’ve consulted with, is very bullish on our project,” Lefcoe said.

Air Station General is under contract to purchase the 135-acre parcel currently owned by Isle of Wight’s Economic Development Authority. It’s the same site where, in 2019, county supervisors attempted to lure a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice correctional center.

Much of the land surrounding the Project Air Station site is wetlands.

Plans to develop the Shirley T. Holland park’s third phase began in 2013 when supervisors rezoned 969 acres as “conditional limited industrial.” In 2019, an environmental study determined much of Phase III to be wetlands due to the presence of loblolly pines, a tree the Army Corps of Engineers reclassified as a wetland plant in 2012. The Project Air Station site is one of the few Phase III parcels that remains buildable.

County officials last year estimated Project Air Station would employ 250 people and that the facility would see roughly 50 tractor-trailers per day. Lefcoe said those estimates are largely unchanged under the current cold storage plan, which he said would employ a minimum of 200 employees.

The facility will likely house 10 to 15 separate companies leasing 10,000 to 20,000 square foot spaces, he said. The facility would operate “mostly at night,” Lefcoe said.

The Planning Commission’s favorable recommendation will go to the supervisors on Oct. 17 for final approval.

If approved, the revised plans won’t break ground until next year. In May, the EDA reinstated its lease of 36 acres at the site to Carr Farms through Dec. 31.