The entire council turned over when Matt was elected. The elected body had rezoned a huge property for commercial development, thinking they were preventing the construction of over a thousand new homes that would have brought new residents with school age children. Instead of being hailed as heroes, the public was outraged they had given a developer carte blanche. The irony is that Celebrate VA ended up with way more than a thousand new homes and is apparently going to get more. The fatal flaw in the council's 2002 action was to not aggressively pursue a new interchange. Infrastructure is destiny, not zoning. The developer said he would talk to the governor about an interchange and the council stupidly thought that was enough. It wasn't and subsequent opportunities to get that interchange have slipped by. Celebrate VA still struggles.
The entire council turned over when Matt was elected. The elected body had rezoned a huge property for commercial development, thinking they were preventing the construction of over a thousand new homes that would have brought new residents with school age children. Instead of being hailed as heroes, the public was outraged they had given a developer carte blanche. The irony is that Celebrate VA ended up with way more than a thousand new homes and is apparently going to get more. The fatal flaw in the council's 2002 action was to not aggressively pursue a new interchange. Infrastructure is destiny, not zoning. The developer said he would talk to the governor about an interchange and the council stupidly thought that was enough. It wasn't and subsequent opportunities to get that interchange have slipped by. Celebrate VA still struggles.