Looking good doesn’t come free.
Chesterfield County might soon raise property taxes on about 370 commercial properties along Midlothian Turnpike to pay for a $340,000 facelift of the 1.5-mile stretch between 400 feet east of Johnston Willis Drive westward to 500 feet west of Alverser Drive.
The Chesterfield Board of Supervisors will decide Oct. 28 whether to increase the property tax rate by 2 cents per $100 of assessed value. The increase would create an estimated $140,000 annually to landscape and maintain the roadway improvements.
If approved, next spring landscapers will plant flowers, shrubs and trees along the median. The special tax district will be in effect for the next 10 years.
“The board will be favorably inclined unless the constituent population opposes it,” said Midlothian Supervisor Dan Gecker. The affected section of Midlothian Turnpike is in his district and that of Clover Hill Supervisor Art Warren.
The annual maintenance cost will be $68,000. The cost does not include irrigation, which will require use of water trucks, but does pay for replacing the sod or reseeding where necessary. Chesterfield County has agreed to front the necessary funding until the extra tax revenue catches up to the implementation cost.
Later, it will be decided whether additional plantings should be added alongside the road’s edges.
Another possible phase includes sidewalks, which are figured to cost $1.4 million. “The truth is that sidewalks are a long way off because of the cost,” Gecker said.
The idea of improving Midlothian Turnpike’s medians began last year by the Greater Southport Association, an organization of businesses primarily in the southeast quadrant of Midlothian Turnpike and Courthouse Road.
Many of those businesses are concerned about the potential for offices and retail to relocate and move westward toward the Watkins Centre at Route 288.
“This area is [economically] healthy today, but we need to keep it that way,” Tom Jacobson, the county’s director of revitalization, told about 25 business leaders at a meeting of the Midlothian Initiative to Revitalize Rights of Way last week. MIRR is a committee of the Southport Association.
The proposed area for the tax district includes several blocks on either side of Midlothian Turnpike and is supported by three major property owners: Chesterfield Towne Center, the Johnston-Willis campus of CJW Medical Center and the Holiday Inn Koger Center.
The project has become more modest since proposed by MIRR last fall. Back then, it called for a special tax district to raise $1.7 million for streetscape improvements with sidewalks and beautifying medians along Huguenot Road and Koger Center Boulevard as well. Sidewalks would likely have required securing easements.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is cutting in half the number of times it plans to mow Midlothian Turnpike this fiscal year due to reductions in state funding.
This story first appeared in the Chesterfield Observer, which is an RBS news partner.
Excellent project – who can be against beauty? The cost is minimal to those properties in the project area; 2 cents works out to $200.00 per year for a property with a tax assessment of $1,000,000.00. We want it to look beautiful for everybody: the public, customers, clients, vendors, everyone!! Civic pride in our part of the world, Chesterfield County. It is my understanding, having attended many of these MIRR meetings, that water trucks and watering the plantings are budgeted into the project. The public meetings produced positive results: support and no one had any real opposition. The promise of a sunset to the project of ten years was firmed up at these meetings. The feeling was to try it and if it’s a real success then it can be continued. If it’s a dud, it’ll be gone in ten seasons. We all feel better if our properties look nice – this is our “front door”. And I do have property that will be assessed for this project if it approved by the board of supervisors on October 28th. It’ll dress us up real pretty!!
Another government boondoggle! First they spend taxpayer money on Rt. 288 and the Watkins Center to entice “offices and retail to relocate and move westward”, and then they spend more taxpayer money to attract them east again! Idiotic. This beautification effort will end up just like the expensive pig lipstick Chesterfield County is spending on Cloverleaf Mall — a disaster. The problem is systemic sprawl largely caused by governent meddling in development patterns. A few flowers…or $340,000 worth of flowers — won’t fix it. And the idea to spend $1.4 Million on sidewalks? Absurd. Have you ever seen anyone but the idigent walking on sidewalks when they do put them into such people toxic but car friendly environements? This is one case where it you build it, they WON’T come.
This is a good idea this part of Route 60 is starting to look a little ratty and some of the side roads are getting badly pot holed like it has seen better days. The sidewalks would be a very good idea to open it up to Pedestrains. It is common to see one or two people braving the river of metal to walk or ride a bike along Route 60 in this section. It would be nice if this acted as a extension of the Village’s fast growing sidewalk system. There are several sections of built sidewalks in this area around the Mall and if they are linked up it would be nice sidewalk system. The best part of all is that we don’t have to depend on Vdot which right now can’t take care of this section and that the tax dollars raised here for this project will go back locally to the people who pay it. The nice things about the sidewalks if they are built right they can last 50 to 90 years.
I am perpetually dismayed at the roadways in the proposed area as well as others in the region. Most roads around here look derelict, much as the “slums” did when I was a kid here in Virginia. There are weeds growing in the pavement, both in gutters and on concrete medians. Expensive plantings on Huguenot, Genito and Robious Roads go untended most of the time. I haven’t seen a simple street sweeper in years, and the detritus from sanding during the cold months and plant matter from the rest of the year just piles up year after year, and it makes an excellent growth substrate for weeds. I am a proponent of low maintenance roadsides as it seems we can’t afford to take care of what is already planted. I think our roadways make this region look second-rate and they are an embarrassment to me when visitors come. Why can’t they just be CLEAN?
Oh—One more thing—Why does this county put in sidewalks where no one walks, and yet neighborhoods with lots of kids and walkers can’t get them? I’ve been told it’s because of density requirements. Well, where’s the density going out Charter Colony past the high school to Woolridge Road? Another weedy, ill-maintained, unnecessary project. Who got paid to do THAT?