Construction will begin next week on a $10 million Waynesboro road project that will open up the new city business and industry park to potential suitors.
Finally, right?
The two-lane, 1.6-mile Waynesboro Southern Corridor, which will run roughly parallel to Interstate 64 between exit 94 and exit 96, will extend Shenandoah Village Drive east to Lyndhurst Road, follow North Oak Lane to the South River, then cross into the Nature’s Crossing Technology Center to connect eventually at South Delphine Avenue.
The new road, which will take two years to complete, has been, in effect, 12 years in the making, as part of the slow road to development of Nature’s Crossing Technology Center, which has been taking forever to spring from the dirt following the politically controversial purchase of 170 acres of agricultural land back in 2011.
City leaders dawdled for several years over what to do with the $3.475 million of scrub brush that was spent to purchase the land from the political allies of former Mayor Frank Lucente, with Lucente himself saying in 2015 that he couldn’t support efforts to partner with VDOT to build the access road needed to open up the property for development out of concern that it “may not prove profitable.
Even as the do-little political leaders dragged their feet, work was done at the staff level to keep things moving forward, pushing the road project into the VDOT Six-Year Improvement Plan in 2013, and leading to the state transportation agency approving the project to qualify for SMART SCALE funding in 2016.
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Chris Graham
