Growers look beyond Limestone farmland
Source: The Huntsville Times, by JOHN PECK
April 28, 2008
Interchange, potential industrial site having impact on property owners
TANNER - Tom Strain Jr. can stroll into his nursery fields and straddle the Athens/Huntsville city limits. Strain and his brothers, Nick and Corder Strain of S&S Nurseries, are among the latest Limestone County property owners to have their land annexed into Huntsville.
A future Interstate 65 interchange at Tanner and prospects of a major automotive plant at a Tennessee Valley Authority industrial site nearby have large landowners such as the Strains contemplating their future and marveling that the two cities now touch.
Encroaching development has area growers wondering when rooftops will replace row crops in fields they've farmed for generations.
"Everybody's thinking about it," Strain said Friday as he crunched across some dusty corn stubble to check on a stand of cherry trees. "Something big is going to happen out here."
Strain, a fourth-generation nursery operator, said annexing into Huntsville came with mixed emotions. Part of their farm where the brothers grow field stock - 65 acres - was already in Athens when a major annexation by Huntsville pushed Huntsville's city limits to an edge of the farm in unincorporated Limestone.
The pending I-65/Tanner interchange and the potential growth from the industrial site persuaded them to put the remaining 200 acres of that field in Huntsville. Strain said the family concluded that annexing into Huntsville would be best in the long term, even though it meant city taxes.
"Being born and raised in Athens in Limestone County, it was a decision that wasn't easy to come with," he said. "The reason we made the decision was strictly a business one and the fact that the City of Huntsville has the sewer, the $50 million bond issues every few years, the concentration on infrastructure. It's all farmland now.
"Once that interchange comes in, it will be hard to farm with the value it has. We feel like we made the right decision."
Their nursery is just west of I-65 and south of Browns Ferry Road. The 200 acres just annexed into Huntsville is on the Huntsville side of I-65 off Dogwood Flats Road just south of Browns Ferry. A previous Huntsville annexation of nearly 3,000 acres in Limestone included city commitments for new schools and a city park. Huntsville now encompasses more than 200 square miles, including 36 square miles in Limestone.
Tom Strain said the TVA's so-called megasite, a 2,010-acre property off I-65 near where Athens, Decatur and now Huntsville nearly touch, would be a major catalyst for growth when it eventually develops.
Nick Strain said he never imagined a day growing up when their rural farmland would be caught in that sprawl.
"It's progress," he said. "It's something we can't stop. Everything has grown around us.
"It's not the same when we were kids."
The drone of truck traffic can be heard in the distance as Nick and Tom peer across their nursery trees on the Dogwood Flats farm. The semis are streaming along I-65 past the property the TVA certified last year as an industrial site.
The megasite is among several in Alabama that the state has been promoting for an automotive assembly plant. Other sites are just north of Mobile, one near Dothan and a parcel spanning the Alabama-Mississippi line north of Meridian, Miss. German automaker Volkswagen confirmed last week that sites in Alabama, Tennessee and Michigan are finalists for a potential VW production plant.
Tom Hill, president of the Limestone County Economic Development Association, and TVA spokesman Jim Allen had no comment when asked if VW is considering the megasite. The automaker said it hopes to make a decision this summer.
