Wendell Wood is a shrewd businessman. When I said this to him he blanched. Shrewd has negative connotations, as in the Merchant of Venice pound-of-flesh sense, but I didn’t mean it that way.
Wood was 12 years old when his dad died. He says his father owned country stores all around the area, in Earlysville and Shadwell. According to myth (and there is a lot of it), his dad told him to buy corners. “Buy corners,” he said. Wendell did him one better. He bought the sides of the road.
Wood is a self-made man. When he was 32 he started his own bank, Albemarle Bank & Trust. “I made myself chairman and president,” he said. He bought his first land in 1960 and fell hard. “I love land,” he tells me. “Some people like to drink,” he says. “I like to buy land.”
“You’re a landaholic,” I reply. “I’m a landoholic,” he says. He seems to like the term.
A few nights later he repeats the phrase again. We were standing outside Agnor Hurt Elementary School where I had shown up for a Places29 workshop and sat down at a round table near the back. The room was filled with mostly older people and I didn’t think any thing of the elderly gentleman to my right until I noticed that he was directing the critique of the presentation. “How’s the county gonna pay for this,” the man posed. “They don’t have the money to pay for the infrastructure.” Everyone else at the table nodded.
I leaned forward to look. His name tag read “Wendell Wood.” I had talked to him on the phone a couple times but on both occasions he had seemed a bit annoyed with me. Here he was in the flesh.
I introduced myself and after the session ended I corralled him. “Can I take you over to this map,” I pleaded and he followed.
WW is a hated man. One commissioner told me that it was politically perilous to vote for NGIC and the accompanying growth expansion because the people he represents hate the developer. Sally Thomas represents the Samuel Miller District (the Ivy, East Ivy, Red Hill, and Country Green precincts) and she is clearly his foible. He obviously regards her as such. If her name comes up he foams. Even if her name doesn’t come up he usually targets her for his vehemence. “She told NGIC, ‘I don’t want you here,’” he told me on multiple occasions. “Ask her,” he demanded. He had witnesses, he said.
Most of the time, Wendell is focused on land. He is a land junkie. Since 1960, he has steadily bought property all around the area—thousands of acres—and owns literally all the land on both sides of Route 29N, from the river past the airport. He sold to Sam’s Club. He developed the land on the other side. He built the bridge that crosses over the Rivanna. He is now set to build a second bridge, this one to connect Berkmar Drive to the north. In gratitude, the county is moving the boundary lines—à la NGIC—so that the accompanying land can be developed.
Wood is often described as a “landbaron.” It’s as apt a term as a broad generalization can be. Think “Deadwood’”s George Hearst who tried to buy up much of the West. Both had no express ill intentions. They were both pragmatic. They saw something that would turn a profit.
Wood differs in that he is perhaps more pragmatic. There is no gold rush to pursue. He has systematically purchased acre after acre over four decades and has sat on them until they matured. In 1991, he paid S.W. Heischman $5 million for 15 parcels in the proximity of Route 29. That averages to around $5,347 per acre. Six years later, he sold nearly 29 acres of it to the U.S.A. for $1 million—roughly $35,000 per acre. By 2006, he sold another 47 acres—again to the U.S.A.—for $7 million at what he claimed to be less than half the value. Which still adds up to $150,000 an acre!
