“Put on your white hat,” developer Wendell Wood told business partner J.P. Williamson moments before a March 5 work session on Hollymead Town Center, a proposed development that will sit behind the Harris Teeter and Target stores on Route 29N, looming high on a hill above it all. Convened to address a request to rezone 47 acres that would allow for 1,228 dwelling units, 104,000 square feet of retail, 179,000 square feet of office, and an 80,000-square-foot hotel, the work session was a follow-up to a Planning Commission meeting held in December where developers were urged to revise plans for the Center’s main street (called Meeting Street).
 This proposed connector stood no chance after J.P. Williamson donned his white hat at the county Planning Commission meeting. |
Just days before Tuesday night’s meeting, Wood and Williamson were apprised of a new wrinkle: VDOT and the Places29 Master Plan were recommending that a new road be built to connect a planned extension of Berkmar Drive and Meeting Street with Lockwood, which runs parallel to Meeting. Planning staff sided with VDOT/Places29, “given that a Lockwood Connector is the only road that could take through-traffic around the core of the Town Center to Timberwood Boulevard and Airport Road in a direct manner and given that the traffic modeling for Places29 suggests that a through-road alternative to Meeting Street is necessary to accommodate future traffic volumes.”
Williamson, white hat intact, approached the podium and laid out his case. The Lockwood Connector would run right through a currently designed commercial center. A redesign would be a setback, and worse, would cost money. At first, Commissioner Eric Strucko was skeptical.
As these were only plans, surely a recommendation from VDOT/Places29 should be heeded.
Commissioners Calvin Morris and Duane Zobrist protested. “This is unfair to Mr. Wood,” Zobrist complained. Chair Marcia Joseph weighed in: “This follows a pattern of basing our planning around traffic.” Nods all around. A connector as proposed would encourage additional volumes of traffic, she argued, convincing Strucko. The connector was denied.
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