The excitement was palpable last Thursday at the long-anticipated groundbreaking for the new Bass Pro Shops store that will anchor the Winding Brook commercial development off I-95 at Lewistown Road.
A giant toy store for grown up outdoor enthusiasts, the nationally famous chain will certainly add dollars to the county treasury, bringing thousands of visitors to the area from outside the county’s boundaries. While here, county officials know they will drop substantial bucks from which Hanover will reap its reward in the form of sales taxes. And Bass Pro and the Winding Brook development will create jobs. All of these are good things.
I’m sure the lure of fishing and hunting gear the store offers will lead me to visit often, too. It’ll be great fun.
But what struck me while watching the ceremonies last Thursday was the irony of the event.
Although the area has long been designated for development and would eventually be occupied by some retail or commercial project, Bass Pro seemed to be the perfect vehicle to demonstrate what is going to happen to Hanover County as it grows.
On the one hand, there will be another excellent emporium in which to drop one’s hunting and fishing allowance. On the other hand, as the county develops, there will be less and less area for one to use the fishing rods, boats, rifles and shotguns sold out of Bass Pro, Green Top, Gander Mountain and DeGoff’s.
Just to demonstrate these parallel but competing aspects of development, in the same week that Bass Pro broke ground, the Hanover Board of Supervisors took up consideration of how to deal with firearm noise in the county, in instances where homeowners complain of neighbors who, although they do not violate current law, touch off their firearms so regularly as to constitute a real nuisance, not to mention possible safety hazards.
Current county law stipulates that no firearm may be discharged within 100 yards of a dwelling.
Anyone familiar with weapons knows that firing a shotgun or center fire rifle generates a lot of noise, and I am sure that if I were in the affected homeowners’ shoes, I would be seeking relief too.
The county could end up either modifying its noise ordinance, increasing the size of the parcels of land on which weapons can be fired, increasing the distance from a dwelling required or using its zoning ordinance to require special exception permits for those who want to regularly use their own property to fire weapons, even in the areas outside the Suburban Service Area.
What can’t be fixed, however, is the fact that as the county’s population grows, as more residential and commercial development appears, there will be an inevitable shrinkage of land for hunting and fishing and target shooting.
No one is at fault here for what happens naturally to a prosperous county like Hanover, situated as it is close to a growing metropolitan area and along a major interstate corridor. Development will come, growing pains will hurt and even though the county may do its best to preserve rural areas with its new rural conservation districts, one can count on the fact that the fishing rods and shotguns bought at local stores will be used less and less in Hanover County in the future.
It’s ironic that those very same customers who flock to the local hunting and fishing stores will find themselves traveling farther afield (and likely more and more often outside Hanover) to put those same hunting and fishing toys to use.
But isn’t it inevitable?
