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Articles/Publications

THE CAPE CHARLES PRINCIPLES

The Principles for Development of the
Port of Cape Charles Sustainable Technologies Industrial Park

By the people of Cape Charles and Northampton County
Recorded by William McDonough & Partners, April 6,1995

  1. The Sustainable Technologies Park will seek to provide support for industrial, job creating opportunities to:
      2.  
    • Support existing local enterprises 
    • Attract new ecologically compatible enterprises 
    • Create new ecologically compatible industries 
    • Offer a national model for environmentally sound coastal development 
  2. The design of the park will encourage the revitalization of the historic residential , commercial and industrial landscape of Cape Charles. The sense of place embodied by historic Cape Charles, with its culturally-rich landscape, architecture, and society provides the keystone for the responsible future development of the town. Buildings, sites and the overall park will be designed and developed to enhance the town’s historic character. By working with the historic landscape, the community aims to discourage ruinous sprawl on surrounding open and rural land. 
  3. The town and the park will serve as a model for preserving and advancing the Eastern Shore’s traditional settlement pattern of compact villages and towns surrounded by productive land and water. Consistent with this development pattern, the town of Cape Charles will be reestablished as an integrated employment and residential center for the region. Suburban settlement patterns which sprawl across the landscape and strip along highway corridors are alien to the Eastern Shore and are a threat to its economic, environmental and social well-being. Therefore, Cape Charles and Northampton County will seek to preserve US Route 13 as a limited-access highway, and will seek to focus development within compact villages and towns. 
  4. The park will seek to create "family wage" local employment, training, and opportunities for advancement. The design, capitalization, construction, and occupation of the park should seek to achieve local training and employment during every phase. Local companies which assist citizens in saving energy and water will be encouraged immediately, to begin the entrepreneurial activity in the community, consistent with the goals of the park. 
  5. All designs should attempt to be ameliorative or restorative of the coastal watershed’s natural systems, to consider and support the fundamental hydrological and biological characteristics of the site’s natural state. 
  6. The park should evidence world leadership in coastal resource management, particularly water quality management. It will consider all scales from the entire watershed to individual water conservation as a model of conservation and remediation. It should discharge only water unavailable for reuse and in a clean and safe condition. 
  7. As part of a comprehensive resource management program, the park will implement "Industrial Ecologies" and "Zero Emissions" protocols, and establish recycling and composting facilities for the region. 
  8. Through the information and technologies fostered by the park, the community will seek to become more reliant on natural energy flows. The citizens of Cape Charles have adopted the concept of becoming the "Solar Town." 
  9. The park will serve as a model of integrated agricultural and industrial growth and will foster technologies/enterprises that add value to seafood and agricultural products and by-products. 
  10. The park will encourage walking and bicycling as a convenient, healthy, and efficient mode of transportation. This will be accomplished through pedestrian-scale layout and design of park facilities, and through a system of walkways and bikeways within the park and throughout the town. Direct walking and bicycling connections will be developed with the historic town, with future residential neighborhoods, and with regional motor, rail, and water transportation, both public and private. 
Reprinted by permission from the Port of Cape Charles Sustainable Technologies Industrial Park.

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