Citizens send mixed signals on growth

Citizens who turned out for recent meetings on where future residential and commercial growth should occur in the county indicated they wanted “more walk-able communities.” But when they placed their yellow and blue squares on the county map to show where growth should occur, they separated commercial from residential development.

Several members of the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee pointed out the disparity during their meeting last week. “People want their neighborhoods to look walk-able,” observed member Shelly Schuetz of Hampton Park, “but they’re not going to be walking to a nearby store or restaurant.”

During six community meetings, 261 citizens signed in (though some may have attended without registering) to recommend where the county should grow. At build-out at some undetermined future date, projections indicate Chesterfield will increase from its current 314,000 residents to 569,000, while also increasing its commercial square footage of retail, office and industrial development from 68 million to 203 million. Notes taken by county staff and the hired consultant team showed solid support for integrating residential neighborhoods with nearby offices and retail. A top reason for the mixed development: less reliance on the automobile.

But uniformly the citizens tended to recommend office and retail along the county’s major roads, at major intersections and as infill where it exists in Chesterfield’s more densely developed areas. Most of the residential was placed an automobile’s drive away south and west of existing planned communities. Some denser residential was also put in the infill areas.

Vlad Gavrilovic of the Renaissance Planning Group, one of the companies hired by Chesterfield to develop the plan by early 2011, noted common themes from the community meetings: more mixed-use development with higher population densities, more variety in housing types and price ranges, limiting development in rural areas, an improved road network with mass transit and more bike trails, more communities with unique designs using village concepts, revitalizing older neighborhoods, and more recreational and cultural options.

Several steering committee members expressed concern about the interrelatedness of the growth factors and wondered about how to begin the process of where and what kind of growth to recommend. Land use, the environment and utilities, for example, seemed tied together. Others questioned how the existing policies, current 22 area plans and what the marketplace would support would play into the process.

“We have to have some structure to begin the process,” said Gavrilovic.

“You can’t separate them [the factors], but you must,” said consultant Milt Herd.

“We’ll get into the tradeoffs when we start discussing what is affordable,” added Gavrilovic.

The committee then broke into smaller groups to consider growth patterns. Generally, those options included along transportation corridors (like Midlothian Turnpike), nodes (outward from major intersections) and in gradient circles (outward from Richmond). Those options left the southern and western portions of the county relatively undeveloped for farming and preservation and prioritized infill development ahead of more rural areas.

Though the plan will recommend where and what kind of growth should occur in Chesterfield, it will generally leave the rate of growth to the marketplace. The plan focuses on 2035 but is scheduled to be reviewed for updating every five years.