Final approval has come through for a $30 million state loan for Stafford County to buy Crow's Nest.
Now it's up to the Board of Supervisors to negotiate the purchase of the 4,125-acre environmentally important peninsula. The board will also have to figure out a way to squeeze an additional $30 million loan into the county's limited capacity for new debt.
Supervisor Kandy Hilliard, whose district includes Crow's Nest, said the board will discuss the loan in closed session at its next meeting on Tuesday. She said she doesn't know how the board will manage the negotiations or the added debt, but she is confident supervisors will find a way.
"I remain committed to figuring out how to get this property preserved," she said. "We are not just talking about what happens right now. We're talking about Stafford's long-term future. Not just 10 years or 20 years from now, but 50 years or 100 years from now."
Stafford County has been trying to raise money to buy Crow's Nest for a natural recreation area all year--ever since negotiations fell through between K&M Properties of McLean, which owns the peninsula, and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, which had wanted to buy it.
Supervisors decided last August to apply for a loan from the Virginia Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund. The State Water Control Board, which administers the fund, approved the county's application on Thursday. The county is now eligible to borrow up to $30 million and pay it back over 20 years with a 3 percent interest rate.
Statewide, the fund lends between $80 million and $200 million a year to local governments and other groups for projects such as wastewater treatment plant upgrades that will keep pollution out of state waters.
Four loans have been approved for land acquisitions since the General Assembly added that provision last year. Stafford's $30 million loan is the largest the program has made to date for land.
Now that the loan is approved, it must be processed. That will take at least several weeks, according to Bill Hayden, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
It could be early spring before the county gets the money.
The loan money can be combined with cash that state and local agencies have already earmarked for Crow's Nest.
In 2002, $5 million from a $119 bond issue for state parks and natural areas was set aside to buy Crow's Nest.
That money is still available, said Gary Waugh, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
"The fact that we've taken $5 million out of the bond for natural areas and made that available makes it our No. 1 priority," Waugh said.
Waugh said other money could also be added to the pot.
"We're looking at a [U.S.] Fish & Wildlife Service grant" of $1 million, "and we've been talking to The Nature Conservancy about how they can become involved," Waugh said.
In addition, the Stafford Board of Supervisors has chipped in $100,000, and the Trust for Crow's Nest has raised another $100,000.
Stafford County public school students have even helped out, raising several hundred dollars toward the purchase.
But it still may not be enough.
Clark Leming, the Stafford County real-estate attorney representing K&M, has said that his client has other offers on the table for the property that are closer to $50 million.
K&M is "pleased and willing to consider any offer for the purchase of Crow's Nest or a portion of Crow's Nest, provided that the offer represents the market value of the property," he said.
While negotiations to sell the land continue, K&M is also working on a subdivision plan that would carve the 4,125-acre peninsula into no more than 1,000 lots of at least an acre each, Leming said.
The county hopes to buy the peninsula so developers won't be able to disturb the area's fragile ecology. Crow's Nest, between Accokeek and Potomac creeks in eastern Stafford, is home to many species of migratory birds, rare plants and at least two endangered species.
Paul Milde, who runs a grass roots preservation organization called SaveCrowsNest.com, said he thinks Leming may be overvaluing the property. It can't be that attractive to developers, he said, because one developer, luxury home builder Toll Brothers backed out of a contract to buy the peninsula earlier this year. And a wildlife watchdog group, Defenders of Wildlife, has threatened to sue any developer whose projects on Crow's Nest lead to violations of the federal Clean Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act or the state's Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.
"Considering a little more than a year ago it was $25 million, today $30 million should be sufficient," he said.
Milde also said he was concerned about possible plans to bundle a referendum on buying Crow's Nest with other bond questions about schools and other county facilities.
He said he'd prefer voters to have an opportunity to vote on each project separately.
Another grass roots preservation group dedicated to preventing development of the area heralded the loan's approval.
"The biggest hurdle to saving Crow's Nest has always been funding," said Cecelia Kirkman, spokesman for Save Crow's Nest. "The approval of this low-interest conservation loan removes that hurdle. Now there's no excuse to keep the Board of Supervisors from moving forward and working to purchase and preserve all of Crow's Nest."
To reach RUTH FINCH: 540/720-1622 rfinch@freelancestar.com