Good news…found the solution to this problem.
It is related to WordPress checking the web for updates to the core code and plugins (possibly other requests, but disabling these two greatly eliminated my problem). The code clearly moves along if a response is not returned these items in 3 seconds (wp-includes/update.php).
My development server and development box are behind a proxy server which needs some additional information in order for the requests to pass through to the web.
