Gossip: What’s really going on in Cape Charles?

If you’ve lived here long enough, you understand that truth can be stranger than fiction, many people will lie when the truth would sound so much better, and rumors usually turn out to be true.

The Mirror is your local sounding board for all of this, either publically, or offline. This scuttlebutt is the line of demarcation for what the street knows versus public proclamations, backroom deals, and what takes place in ‘Executive Session’.

The water deal with Virginia American Water has many worried, especially some folks in Bay Creek. Word has it the Town has stopped platting new lots in Bay Creek until they study and work out the water issues. What water issues? Is there a problem with the wells, or just waiting to see what shakes out with the utility sale? There are many that now believe Bay Creek (Preserve Communities) is deeply involved in the water and wastewater sale.

The Federal Reserve is trying to fight the highest inflation in 40 years: Boosting interest rates. On Wednesday, the central bank said it is increasing its benchmark short-term interest rate by 0.5%, marking the largest increase since 2000. 

The Fed’s goal is to tamp down demand from consumers and businesses for goods and services. Higher rates make it more expensive to borrow money to buy a home, car or other needs, prompting some people to hold off on purchases. A drop in demand could help tame inflation, which accelerated to 8.5% in March, the highest increase since 1981. 

When the bubble bursts, this is going to hammer Cape Charles. While the purse is fat, many are content to just look away. Don’t want to be there when the laughter ends.

It’s already bad at Bay Creek. The golf courses are bleeding out and losing a couple of million a year. Avid golfers that used to cross the Bay to play those courses are completely disgusted with how they were chopped up to create the conservation easement scheme. They avoid the Shore like the plague now, and Bay Creek is the laughing stock of the golfing community…how the hell do you do that to world-class golf courses? It’s going to hit the fan when they start building on the remnants of the old courses.

Bay Creek residents are also concerned that Preserve is not building the amenities that they previously discussed. To alleviate some cash flow issues, they tried to start charging a fee for the exercise classes–people just stopped showing up so they had to walk that back.

Like the rest of the Shore, they are struggling to find workers.

All that fancy talk about the developer coming to create affordable housing, well there are rumors that development is tied to Preserve, and it will serve to entice workers, both full-time and seasonal. It sounds crazy, but so did selling the old Cape Charles High School, which at the time was assessed at over 1$million, for a mere $10 dollars. The Mirror asked John Hozey for the 411 on this, but we have not received a response.

Stranger than true, we know.

So it goes.