Eroding Norge's character

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Eroding Norge’s character				July 9, 2011

In Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” it is the Stage Manager who, like a Greek chorus, steps aside from the action and keeps the audience apprised of the thematic flow of events. It is, after all, the character of the town and the foibles of its inhabitants that are developing on stage. The Manager cautions the audience frequently to pay attention, lest they lose sight of the inner workings of the plot and its at times dire message.

“Our Town,” of course could be any town or village that prides itself on its history and the folks, living or dead, who have raised families and worked there. They and their civic interactions in a sense have established the character, the very nature of the town.

Yet, as the Stage Manager might warn, unless citizens pay close attention to what appear to be innocent transformations, frequently under the guise of progress, they may awake one day to find that their town and its character have been so transmogrified by seemingly benign gradients of development as to be unrecognizable.

In their history of Norge (“Velkommen til Norge”), authors Nancy Bradshaw and Frances Hamilton note that for almost sixty years the village of Norge remained unchanged, “containing the dwellings and businesses of the settlers who came here at the beginning of the 19th century.” With the widening of Richmond Road, however, “the onslaught of new businesses changed the complexion of Norge from a cozy village to a busy thoroughfare.”

Indeed, the vestiges of that once “cozy village” are today all too few.

At the edge of Richmond Road there still stands Norge Hall, which was originally built in 1908 by a group of men calling themselves Vikings. Initially called Viking Hall, it served the village well as a town hall much like the ones the men were used to in Norway.

Farther west on Richmond Road, Halvor Anderson erected his hardware store in 1907. It is now the Olde Store in the Village.

Finally, in the 1760s, the first farmhouse was built on what was and is Hill Pleasant Farm. Gutted by fire in 1903, the house was rebuilt and eventually was purchased in 1913 by Wilbur Hunt, whose arrival from Minnesota was contemporary with that of the Scandinavians. Members of the Hunt family have owned and worked the land at Hill Pleasant ever since.

Sadly, Hill Pleasant’s long and honorable history may be about to come to an end, as one more farm in James City yields to the developer’s bulldozers and high-rise business and residential structures.

Late last month, the James City County Board of Supervisors began discussing plans for a so-called Economic Opportunity zone that might well include the Hill Pleasant property and a few surrounding areas. These zones are meant to attract both business and residential projects, though the discussions so far have tilted more toward what type of businesses should be encouraged than toward residential complexes.

The bottom line is that such zones and their businesses will toss more coins into county coffers and relieve the county of trying to preserve rural lands with its own financial resources. Both Democrats on the board consider this somewhat of a business boondoggle and an assault on rural lands, while the Republicans see it as making the county “business friendly.”

What nobody seems to be considering at this point is the degree to which all this is going to further erode the character of Norge, or what little character it has left. Smaller businesses, such as the Doll Factory, the Tumbler store and the stores that once comprised the Candle Factory complex go by the boards, only to be replaced by car dealerships, carwashes, a behemoth of a drug store and yet another Food Lion.

Like the Stage Manager, someone around here should insist that the audience, the citizenry, begin to pay attention to what’s going on. How many cozy towns will disappear before we decide we all don’t want to live in business-laden thoroughfares?