Chesterfield seeks public input on Midlothian Turnpike from Chippenham to Johnston-Willis (2024)

Every once in a while, Chesterfield County‘s assistant director of planning Steven Haasch says, it makes sense to take a hard look at the front door of your home, to make sure it’s in the kind of shape you want.

And that’s what the county has just launched for a roughly 4-mile stretch of Midlothian Turnpike between Chippenham Parkway and Johnston-Willis Hospital, with its Eastern Route 60 Corridor Plan project.

The county is asking the public to weigh in on the future of a stretch of U.S. 60 that connects fast-growing western Chesterfield, Powhatan and points west to Richmond. Much of its intensive commercial development dates to the 1970s.

It’s more than a highway, though, county planners say.

“You know, the Route 60 corridor is the front door to a lot of neighborhoods,” Haasch said.

The county’s own front door, by Midlothian Turnpike’s intersection with Chippenham Parkway, right at the county-city line, is already getting a remake. The old Spring Rock Green shopping center is down and a new mixed-use development, Springline at District 60, is replacing it.

On the other side of Midlothian, Shamin Hotels plans a $75 million hotel and conference center near the new Stonebridge Recreation Center and Richmond Volleyball Club facility that county officials say are examples of new kinds of uses that might revitalize a stretch of decades-old shopping centers.

Shopping centers’ future

“This corridor kind of rose to the top, I would say because mostly we have some really good momentum happening,” said principal comprehensive planner Andrew Noxon, who is leading the corridor planning effort.

On the other hand, “There are a lot of shopping centers that, you know, you don’t see all of them surviving in their current form forever, with what we’re seeing with how the retail and personal office market has been going these days,” Noxon said.

“A lot of people are working from home and shopping online ... it’s made a lot of businesses close down over the years and maybe new businesses are thinking of going online instead of building brick-and-mortar stores,” he said.

“So we’re just thinking ahead of what could happen with some of these shopping centers,” he said. “We also have the bus line that just started operating in January. And GRTC is actually working on a study of bus rapid transit along the corridor. And so those things all kind of came together and made us really realize that we need to jump on this corridor.”

Starting with outreach

The new corridor plan he is working on is starting with outreach to the community, in the form of an online survey and a recent community meeting.

The survey’s four questions are as open-ended as planners could think of: tell us what’s great about the area, what issues you see, what could enhance it and what your concerns are.

“I would say we’re willing to hear pretty much anything you have to say. Because a lot of what they can tell us could impact what we do with this plan. It doesn’t have to be just about development. It doesn’t just have to be about traffic. It could be about a lot of different things. Could be about how our community looks and relates to that. Could be we don’t have any sidewalks to get to that. Could be really anything,” Noxon said.

In addition, he and county planning staff will be visiting property owners, to get a sense of their plans, concerns and hopes.

More town halls are likely.

And residents can always call or email in.

The county has also hired a consultant to conduct a market study to evaluate what kind of uses are really viable in this area.

Rethinking what’s possible

“You know how I was talking about a lot of shopping centers possibly not surviving. So what else can go there and take their place or what else kind of uses should you look at? We know residential is hot, I mean residential is developing everywhere. But is that all? Are there some other considerations for use ... something we don’t have yet or something we haven’t thought of?” he said.

Through the summer and into the fall, county planners will try to digest all that into a draft plan. Depending on how the public reacts and if the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors approve, the draft plan would provide guidelines for the decisions county officials will make about specific zoning requests, site plans and permits.

The county’s 2022 Comprehensive Plan Modernization Project replaced what was then the 25-year-old outdated Eastern Midlothian Plan by integrating the area into the Countywide Land Use Plan. The 2022 project was the spark that helped launch development right at the Chippenham interchange, Haasch said.

“Just like with your front door, your house you want it to pretty much be inviting,” he said. “And you know that the Route 60 corridor is an older corridor and deserves some love and attention, to make sure it reflects the quality of the neighborhoods that are back there,” he said.

But when people take the Midlothian exit off Chippenham or the Powhite Parkway, “if what they see is blighted, older, you know out of date, disrepair, commercial things, they’re gonna have a negative opinion of those neighborhoods.”