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Pantops has some fertile soil for development. Preparation work is underway for Richard Spurzem’s Gazebo Plaza shopping center, which historically has been a lightening rod for controversy. Spurzem took the county to circuit court to get the go ahead for the project. Now, Gazebo Plaza makes for a conflict between two surrounding neighborhoods: Spurzem has proffered to realign Hansens Mountain Road to provide a better entrance for Ashcroft residents, but that road would cut through the Glenorchy neighborhood, which doesn’t want the extra traffic.
“We’ve got about a year of site work left,” Spurzem says. “We’re still a couple of years away. But the opportunity to get through this road thing is not going to last very long. When I build a shopping center and the traffic is really bad and then five years from now [the county and the Virginia Department of Transportation] say we’ve got to put that connector road in, at that point they’re going to have to condemn my shopping center.”
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