Supervisors to weigh in on Short Pump apartment, retail proposal
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The Henrico Board of Supervisors is expected Tuesday night to consider a developer’s request to rezone a nearly 10-acre site in the Far West End to allow construction of a mixed-use residential community.
The request from Pouncey Place LLC would rezone 9.75 acres at the southeast intersection of Pouncey Tract Road and Twin Hickory Lake Drive from business usage to R-6(C) residential usage, with conditions, to allow for a maximum of 295 apartments in three total buildings (each three or four stories in height), as well as four retail buildings.
The apartments would average about 800 square feet in size, according to the Blackwood Development Company, while the retail buildings would range in size between 3,600 square feet and 6,000 square feet. The community also would include 452 surface parking spaces and 24 garage spaces.
The Planning Commission voted 5-0 to endorse the plans.
The new development is expected to produce far fewer public school students than typical apartments would, according to Henrico Schools planners. They cited three examples of similar mixed-use apartments nearby – The Flats at West Broad Village (a 339-unit complex that produced a total of nine K-12 students); Penstock Quarter at Libbie Mill (a 350-unit complex that produced two students); and East 51 at Rocketts Landing (a 156-unit complex that produced zero students) as evidence that schools in the area should not be affected by the new development.
A traditional 295-unit apartment complex in the Three Chopt District, however, would be expected to produce about 73 elementary school students (which would further overcrowd Colonial Trail Elementary, whose membership already is over capacity by 15 students), about 30 middle school students and about 31 high school students, planners wrote.
Short Pump Middle School and Deep Run High School could accommodate those new students, according to current projections, planners wrote.
Planners also projected that the new development would produce about 4,130 daily vehicle trips.
