For years, Marleen Durfee, a peppy Pennsylvanian who talks a mile a minute, has been the point woman in Chesterfield County when it comes to Smart Growth.
For years, she was the lone voice in the desert crying for a stop to the wild, thoughtless development that Chesterfield’s Good Ole Boys and Girls Board of Supervisors had been fostering for three decades. Finally, in 2007, she was elected to the board with high hopes of finally bringing some sanity to county planning.
And it seemed not a moment too soon since Chesterfield’s two big growth areas — Midlothian Turnpike and Hull Street Road — were abortions of traffic congestion, overcrowded schools and too many big boxes that had a tendency to go dark.
Now, Ms. Durfee is in a tizzy. The reason is the “Green Monster,” a zombie-like project that keeps coming back to life no matter how many stakes are thrust into its heart. Back in the heyday of go-go growth in 1991, the Board approved plans for Magnolia Green with 4,886 homes that never seemed to get built.
The project was split into Upper and Lower Magnolia Green and then the big recession hit. The brakes came on in an instant, sending such megaprojects into a crash. Last spring, owners tried to auction off Lower Magnolia Green but there were no bidders. It seemed that a clearly-defined border for sprawl had finally been established at approximately Woodlake along U.S. 360 and Watkins Centre along U.S. 60 in western Chesterfield County.
Well, maybe not. It turns out that a series of developers, including Salvatore Cangiano of Leesburg who still owns Upper Magnolia Green, are considering unsolicited requests to somehow build (pick one) a new shopping mall, a research park with a D.C. university taking the lead (I hear either Georgetown or George Washington, but I have my doubts), some kind of mega mixed-use project and even a gigantic sports and concert hall on the order of Verizon Center in Washington.
To get any of these ideas done, however, the county and private developers would have to extend the toll Powhite Parkway from where it terminates at Route 288 nine miles to U.S. 360 at a tiny crossroads called Skinquarter that consist basically of a gas station that sells fried chicken and is a place you can take your deer to get it tagged after you have shot it.
In a story I did for Style Weekly, Cangiano said that the investors have come to him with the idea and that he has met with the county about it. He says the area that would be penetrated by the extended Powhite would be “strategically located” and that he doesn’t have typical development in mind, He is dismissive of what has been built around 360 as “small boxes.” Nor is he worried about finding financing in this incredibly difficult market. ” We have our own banks,” he told me.
County officials won’t say what might happen but that they are just talking. As Jim Stegmaier, county administrator, told me, Chesterfield has to keep looking because badly imbalanced growth means that the county exports 30 percent of its workforce every day.
So what’s Marleen’s role in all of this? Smart Growthers in Richmond were stunned to hear her say that she’s “excited” by the project and extending the Powhite, as she was reported as saying in Richmond’s metro daily. She told me that her idea is to remake some very bad policies that have plagued Chesterfield for years and that doing Upper Magnolia Green the right way could push the ball forward.
But she’s taking the heat. The Chesterfield Observer notes that the local Responsible Growth Alliance, an activist group headed by Durfee for two years, doesn’t really function any more. And John Moeser, a University of Richmond fellow and planning expert, says that extending the Powhite is anything but smart growth.
There are lots of arguments against doing so. For one thing, there are plenty of other spots to locate an office mark, a mall or an amphitheater, such as the troubled Cloverleaf Mall or the new but largely vacant Watkins Centre. Pushing the Powhite would stretch into virgin territory, although it could offer an alternative commuter route than crowded Hull Street (360).
Any new extension would have to be a public-private deal since the state has no money. Some firms such as Australia’s TransUrban, which runs the Pocahantos Parkway, are said to be interested in it.
The weirdest part of this strange tale is the timing. With the real estate meltdown and subprime mortgage mess having culled many weak residential projects and the commercial market taking its toll, it would seem that now is the time to start rethinking suburban sprawl. Chesterfield promised to do so since it is reconsidering its comprehensive plan at this very moment.
Where, however, do these ideas to push highways farther and farther away from urban centers into the piney woods keep coming from? Doesn’t that violate Rule One of Smart Growth? Whatever happened to Smart Growth in Chesterfield?
Peter Galuszka
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