What is a pad site?
A pad site, as the trade uses the term, is a building site within a larger commercial property, usually for one building and one user. No Virginia statute or county ordinance reviewed here defines it. Rules arrive through how the pad changes hands: a sale that divides the parcel meets the local subdivision ordinance and its plat rules, and a lease or shared entrance brings recording and access rules.
A building site inside a bigger site, in the trade's own usage
In the way commercial real estate uses the word, a pad site is one building site carved out of, or set within, a larger commercial property: the spot where a single store, restaurant or office building goes, with the parking, drives and utilities of the larger site around it.
That is a trade definition, and it is labeled that way on purpose. None of the Virginia statutes, county subdivision and development ordinances or VDOT design manual appendix read for this answer defines "pad site", and none defines "outparcel" either. No Virginia legal test for when a piece of ground becomes one turned up in those sources.
The word does turn up in public economic development writing, in its physical sense. The Town of Hillsville's business page describes graded pads at Wildwood Commerce Park, and a GO Virginia release on the regional authority behind the park speaks of marketing "the pad ready sites of Wildwood." In both, a pad is ground that has been prepared for a building. Neither is a legal category, and no pad sizes are repeated here, because the published figures disagree.
So the word carries two ideas at once: earthwork, meaning ground graded flat enough to build on, and a unit of sale or lease, meaning a piece that can change hands on its own. The first is a site work question. Whether grading pads needs land-disturbance approval before a plat is finished is covered on land development and feasibility. The second is where the legal rules live, and the rest of this answer follows them.
Selling a pad outright creates a new parcel, and the local ordinance decides what the division takes
A pad sold in fee becomes a new parcel, and whether that division is a subdivision depends on the subdivision ordinance that applies where the land lies.
Virginia's default definition, in Va. Code 15.2-2201, treats as a subdivision the division of a parcel into three or more lots of less than five acres each, or any division that involves a new street, but only where a local ordinance does not define the word otherwise. Carroll County does define it otherwise: its Land Use and Planning office says any division of a lot or parcel is a subdivision. The plat has to be approved by the Subdivision Agent or the Planning Commission before it is recorded, and no parcel in a proposed subdivision may be sold or transferred until the approved plat is recorded.
Once a locality has adopted a subdivision ordinance, the statewide rule in Va. Code 15.2-2254 applies, with two qualifications that are part of the text:
3. No person shall sell or transfer any land of a subdivision, before a plat has been duly approved and recorded as provided herein
Va. Code 15.2-2254
unless the subdivision was lawfully created prior to the adoption of a subdivision ordinance applicable thereto.
Va. Code 15.2-2254
However, nothing herein contained shall be construed as preventing the recordation of the instrument by which such land is transferred or the passage of title as between the parties to the instrument.
Va. Code 15.2-2254
How those qualifications apply to a particular deed is an attorney's reading. What a plat is, and the approval path it follows, is set out in what a plat is. The absence of zoning in a county does not remove any of this, a point made at length in what unzoned means for a commercial buyer. Whether one specific tract, the nine acres on Coulson Church Road, can be sold off in smaller commercial lots is answered on the Coulson Church Road listing page.
Leasing a pad keeps the land whole and moves the questions into the lease
An owner who wants to keep the larger property can lease the pad instead of selling it. The land stays in one ownership, and the tenant's rights are written into a lease.
Leasing splits the pad's ownership for the term: in the federal bank examiners' terms, the owner keeps a leased fee and the tenant holds a leasehold. How a long-term ground lease is structured, financed and recorded, and what happens to the building when it ends, belongs to what a ground lease is.
Two Virginia statutes bear on the lease paper itself: Va. Code 55.1-101, on when a lease need not take the form of a deed, and Va. Code 55.1-407, on recording. Both are worked through for a long lease on the ground lease page.
Two questions stay open on any pad lease. Whether leasing part of a parcel counts as a subdivision in a given county is for that county's subdivision agent. Drafting and recording the lease is an attorney's work. Where the pad carries an operating business rather than bare ground, a sale can take in the business as well as the land, the kind of question worked through in selling an inn or lodging property.
Where that business sells fuel from regulated underground storage tanks, a change in the tanks' ownership brings its own filing with Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality, covered in selling a gas station or convenience corner.
One entrance for several pads, agreed and recorded before the permit
A pad set back inside a larger property may not touch the public road on its own. It then reaches the road across the rest of the site, through an easement and a drive shared with the other pads, and Virginia's commercial entrance rules already lean toward sharing.
For a pad, the two rules that matter work at the level of paper. Under 24VAC30-73-120 C 2, a copy of the owners' recorded sharing agreement goes in with the VDOT entrance permit application, and the shared entrance appears on the site plan or plat. Under C 4, recorded access easements and connections to adjoining undeveloped property can be a condition of the permit itself. Either way the access paper is settled before the permit, not after the pads are built.
Which highways carry the C 4 requirement as a shall and which as a may, the exceptions to C 2 and C 4, the right-in or right-out alternative, and how the ramp spacing standards push an entrance along a road near an interchange are set out in how far from an interstate exit is still commercial ground.
Carving a pad site out of a larger commercial parcel
Tell Lowell the parcel and whether the pad would be sold or leased, and he will lay out the plat, lease and entrance questions it raises before a buyer does. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Is a pad site the same thing as an outparcel?
Both are trade words for a building site associated with a larger commercial property, and neither is defined in the Virginia statutes, county ordinances or VDOT design appendix read for this answer. Because no legal definition attaches to either label, what matters between the parties is how the plat, deed or lease describes the land: a surveyor prepares the plat, and an attorney drafts the deed or lease.
Does a graded pad mean a building is already approved there?
No. A graded pad describes earthwork. A building on it still falls under the Uniform Statewide Building Code, which applies whether or not a county zones, and the county building official confirms what permit a given building requires. A new commercial drive onto a state road still needs a VDOT entrance permit, and a pad split off as its own parcel still meets the local subdivision ordinance.
Can a pad be leased before the larger parcel is platted?
Va. Code 15.2-2254 speaks of selling or transferring land of a subdivision before a plat is approved and recorded. Whether leasing part of a parcel counts as a subdivision in a given county is a question for that county's subdivision agent. Recording the lease under Va. Code 55.1-407, and how both statutes reach a given lease, are questions for an attorney.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Business and economy: Wildwood Commerce Park graded pads Town of Hillsville
- Approval for the Blue Ridge Crossroads Economic Development Authority: pad ready sites of Wildwood GO Virginia Region One
- Va. Code 15.2-2201, definition of subdivision Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 15.2-2254, plat approval and recordation before sale, with its exception and proviso Code of Virginia
- Land Use and Planning: any division of a parcel is a subdivision; plat approval before recording Carroll County, Virginia
- Va. Code 55.1-101, conveyance by deed; leases of non-freehold estates Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 55.1-407, unrecorded contracts and deeds void as to purchasers without notice Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 36-98, the Uniform Statewide Building Code Code of Virginia
- Comptroller's Handbook: Commercial Real Estate Lending, Version 2.0, March 2022 (ground leases) Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
- 24VAC30-73-120, shared commercial entrances and interparcel connections (C 2 and C 4) Virginia Administrative Code