It's more complicated. The guy who was city manager at the time wanted to make his mark as a pro development kinda pol apparently.
I know the folks who made money off of the bigass rock pile and they weren't particularly political, just happened to own one of the last large tracts of land in a city that can't annex into the county, thanks to VA laws.
The idiot savant city council fell for it. Part of that was jealousy of Bristol, TN. Part of it was their thinking they could swindle a few bucks off the deal. And part of it was a desperate development company that was losing their ass and needed badly to do some kind of deal no matter what the actual chances of it working were.
Looks like their most memorable accomplishment will be the bankruptcy of one of the few remaining independent cities in the state of VA.