For a small liberal arts college in rural Virginia, Hampden-Sydney College owns a significant chunk of land—over 1,200 acres to be exact. The campus scene familiar to most—roughly 300 acres of “intensely groomed land”—is a small fraction of the property owned by the school. Recently, the school has decided to further expand by purchasing a neighboring piece of property: the Exxon gas station on the corner of Interstate 15 and State Route 133. Curious as to why the school would be expanding in a pretty unstable economy, I paid the self-proclaimed historian J.B. Potter ’11 a visit.

“The college likes to expand; land is always a good investment,” claimed Mr. Potter. He went on to mention the grand expansion of the school as it added over 600 acres just a couple of years ago and that the school is planning on getting rid of the gas station to make way for something new. Our quick conversation ended with Mr. Potter’s suggestion that I talk with the finance office for more accurate details.         

Several days later, I stopped by the office of Mr. Norman Krueger, the school’s Vice President for Business Affairs and Treasurer. “The property came on the market for the first time since 1930,” he starts. And because of its “strategic location” the property has always been on the school’s radar. Then recently the family that owned the property came to the college. Mr. Krueger then walks over to his file storage wall where rows of neatly organized brown binders of different projects are displayed. A few seconds later, he pulls out the Exxon file and shows me some of the studies done on the property prior to the purchase. “First, we had to do all the environmental studies,” he comments, passing me a laminated document full of graphs and data confirming the careful analysis done on the piece of land. The school first made sure there were no serious contaminations left by the gas station. 

I proceed to ask Mr. Krueger what the whole process of acquiring land looked like and what the status of ownership is. He responds by taking me through chain of people it goes through: “after the approval of the Environmental Committee, it goes through the President, Building and Grounds Committee, and finally the full Board of Trustees who came to the decision on November 6th, 2009.” The school owns the property and is currently leasing it to the Exxon station. 

I asked what the future plans for the gas station are. “There have been several propositions, but none have been approved, of course.” Some of the proposed plans included a brick entrance wall; one on the side of Finch and the other on the area the Exxon station stands. Another proposal is to turn it into a park or green area to make the campus more “welcoming.” Whichever the case maybe, the college is sure to have a new face, and students might need to travel longer to refill their tanks—to the Sheetz in town, perhaps.

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