The Eastern Panhandle faces rapid growth and rising prices. We asked GOP state Senate hopefuls what they would do about it

CHARLES TOWN –  Where fruit trees grew and dairy cattle grazed a decade ago in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, today stand McMansions, drive-thrus and shopping centers.

The region, once known for its prized apples and peaches, now has more in common with the concrete and asphalt jungles of northern Virginia  than the rustic Mountain State.

Rolling hills and fields have sprouted supermarkets and townhouses. Small towns now feature rush-hour gridlock.

For years, longtime residents have felt the pressure — the rising prices, the congestion and the sprawl. Now, even recent transplants from the Washington D.C. area see it.

In downtown Charles Town, about 50 people crammed into what used to be an Italian restaurant to discuss what they view as the newest threat to what little agrarian life remains: solar panels.

Jefferson County, one of only two counties in the state that doesn’t have a coal seam, is now having companies move in and plant solar panels, finally joining the rest of the state in energy production.

Where some see new jobs, a role for West Virginia in a clean energy future, and a way for farmers to supplement their incomes, others worry about fire risk, soil contamination and decreased property values.

For the most part, those who spoke were among the gentrifiers who’ve flocked to the area in search of cheaper property taxes and rural life.

“We moved here for the agriculture,” Steven Welch, an expat from northern Virginia, said. “Who is benefiting from this? Nobody moved here for this.”

The West Virginia First Alliance, an informal slate of area conservative candidates, organized the town hall, empathically asking the crowd to vote in the primary.

“The primary is the election” was the motto of the night.

Sen. Patricia Rucker was among those at the town hall. Herself a suburban D.C. transplant, the Republican is now running for her third term in the state Senate.

She’s styled herself a rebel, an insurgent against the mainstream Republican Party. In Charleston, she’s sponsored a number of bills supporting private schools and homeschooling and opposing abortion rights . She’s an outspoken vaccine skeptic , proponent of locally grown foods and holds stellar ratings with the gun lobby .

During a reporting trip in mid-April to her district in Jefferson and a part of Berkeley counties, not one person brought up abortion, guns or education as a concern. Instead, residents told Mountain State Spotlight they’re worried about the cost of living and how the area can handle more people moving there.

This year, she’s facing a primary challenge from Del. Paul Espinosa, a more traditional, Chamber of Commerce-backed Republican. The life-long Jefferson County resident doesn’t just enjoy the support of business. High profile state senators, like Senate President Craig Blair and Finance Chair Eric Tarr, are voting with their campaign donations as well.

Much of his 12-year legislative career has been spent on lowering taxes, reforming education and making the state more business friendly.

The primary election is not the end of the line for whoever wins. The Republican nominee will face Democrat John Doyle, a former delegate with a career spanning four decades in total.

Another longtimer in the area, Kay Phalen, walks the Rosemont neighborhood in Martinsburg on a breezy afternoon in mid-April. Phalen’s roots run deep in the city. Her mother worked at the old sock factory a few blocks away that’s now being renovated into luxury apartments.

She’s excited about the changes in town. After all, new people means more money floating around the community. But she’s also concerned about the history of the area being destroyed in the process.

Phalen said developments destroy farms, overpriced restaurants fill old buildings and suburban sprawl threaten historical monuments. She gets excited when she tells the story about how locals rallied to save a WWI Doughboy monument in downtown.

“This is my history. I grew up here. You come in and want to knock it down,” Phalen said.

Rucker says balancing the history of the area against economic growth is important. She said the area’s smalltown charm is what attracts folks there in the first place. A big part of that is protecting the farmland by loosening up restrictions on farmers markets and passing legislation to expand agro-tourism, she said.

Rucker and Espinosa both voted in 2021 for a bill that would extend tax credits for historic properties, a big win for the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia.

We asked Espinosa about these issues , along with asking questions from readers. He didn’t answer.

On a Sunday morning in Martinsburg, Amanda Robinson is tending to her flowerbed. Living in Berkeley County for over 20 years, she’s seen the newcomers and the changes.

But what she hasn’t seen is the sewer, the roads, the water and schools keep up with the growth.

“When you take farmland and turn it into 600 houses and you don’t add anything to the infrastructure of the area, it puts a massive strain on everything,” she said.

The rapid changes in the area has strained every public service. Tens of thousands of more people now live in Berkeley and Jefferson counties, but they still largely travel on the same roads that were built decades ago. Other parts of the state are having difficult conversations about school consolidation, but in these districts, new schools are being built. The student bodies grow so  quickly that trailers are added as extra classroom space.

Rucker said while she supported legislation to improve roads and other vital infrastructure, her biggest concern is having workers in the area to do those jobs.

Thanks to the decades of D.C. prices and West Virginia wages in the 16th District, Berkeley and Jefferson counties have become training grounds for teachers, road workers, correctional officers and other key personnel. They work a few years, then hop the border to Maryland or Virginia for thousands of dollars in extra pay.

“I have supported locality pay, which is a big issue,” Rucker said. “We can’t keep DHHR staff, we can’t keep basic services staff, we can’t keep DOH staff because they can get paid so much more outside of our state lines.”

Rucker co-sponsored a bill in 2023 that would’ve had state agencies set locality pay for higher-cost-of-living areas like the Eastern Panhandle.

That same year, Espinosa was a co-sponsor on a bill that would’ve established a commission to study locality pay.

Both measures died in the House.

On a Monday morning, owner David Dinch and his sons are pitching trash bags out of a white stand with red pinstriping. For nearly a quarter of a century, Jules Frozen Custard has stood in the same spot in Inwood, between a set of railroad tracks and the edge of a shopping center parking lot.

While it outlived the Musselman Apple Packing plant down the tracks in the center of town, it’s still younger than the Dining Room, a blue plate special joint a few blocks over.

Down W.Va. 51, crews shove piles of dirt in what used to be a corn field, making way for an addition to a new shopping center.

For Dinch, the struggles of maintaining a business are real. Taxes and the rising cost of styrofoam cups are on his mind.

“We’re a small ice cream shop — we’re in the business of making people happy,” he said. “It’s harder by the day, it’s harder by the season, because it just seems things go up, everything goes up.”

Mountain State Spotlight also heard from a young couple who is unable to move out of a grandmother’s basement because housing isn’t affordable. A pawnshop clerk talked about treading water to keep his place. A school photographer is hustling around Berkeley County, trying to drum up customers with candy bars.

According to Zillow, the average home value in Charles Town is $373,000, about $210,000 more than the state-wide average.

Last year, Gov. Jim Justice signed into law the BUILD WV Act, which gives tax breaks to developers who build affordable housing within certain districts. Both Rucker and Espinosa voted in favor of that bill. One of the areas set to benefit is the Eastern Panhandle.

But Rucker said subsidized housing is going too far, saying she doesn’t “want to interfere in the free market.” Asking other parts of the state – which face harder economic times – to supplement the relatively affluent Panhandle is unfair, she added.

“I really, really hesitate to ask for help from the rest of the state,” Rucker said.

Meanwhile, the people with money keep flocking. For a coffee shop owner like Libby Powell, that might mean more business. But she sees a lot of problems that are coming with that.

“We have the growth, but we don’t have the infrastructure,” Powell said. “We  don’t have the grocery stores to handle it. We don’t have the stores, the restaurants to handle it. We don’t have a downtown Main Street to handle it.  We’re still kind of stuck back in time. And all these people are moving into our community.”

The Eastern Panhandle faces rapid growth and rising prices. We asked GOP state Senate hopefuls what they would do about it appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.