Each Sunday, the Roanoke Times includes a special real estate section listing rentals, homes, business properties and land available in the NRV. The front inside page often has a feature story about home improvement success stories, industry statistics or new developments. If you don't get the paper or browse through the inserts, you can miss it -- and those articles are not included on the newspaper's website.
So it was curious to read in this publication that "The Fralin Companies continues to expand its interests in Christiansburg, this time with Ivy Ridge, a community that will be built on the western boundary of Fralin's New River Village." Interesting. The property has not yet been rezoned from agriculture to residential.
The developer "acknowledged he heard their (New River Village residents) concerns about traffic." Returning to the drawing board after it was withdrawn by Fralin, it came back before council including a plan this article states "will reduce traffic to the new community more than 75% in the short run and 100% in the long run" proffering to limit building only 20 homes initially.
A new entrance, with signage, would be built connecting the community (Ivy Ridge) to Route 114/Peppers Ferry Road before more were built to help address traffic concerns from a connecting subdivision.
At the Town Council meeting May 19th, citizen comments consumed most of the evening. Where's the right-of-way to Route 114? The owner of a temporary construction easement said he didn't know anything about a permanent access. Residents were scrambling for the few copies of a new plat sheet. It was stated a possible, future access might be acquired from an adjoining property, but wasn't a done deal.
That adjoining property is the site of the future home of a church where Councilman Jim Vanhoozier serves as a deacon. When citizens were skeptical about promises being speculative, Councilman Mike Barber asked if, ...if the request was approved and the developer didn't deliver, would they be happy if the access road was then closed. That scenario wasn't well received, especially since most people know landlocked property can be protected by easements of implication, necessity or prescription.
The developer claimed nearly $15 million in direct benefit to the local ecnomy would come with the houses, ranging in price from $160-$225,000.
The town's Planning Commission has twice approved related applications for rezoning this land, which was denied by council once before. Town Council is expected to vote on this application and site plan at their June 2nd regular meeting. The article gives the appearance that this decision is a done deal.