Builder withdraws plan for 26-home subdivision at Short Pump-area crossroads

The proposed layout for the subdivision at Pouncey Tract and Shady Grove roads. (BizSense file)

Despite a vote of confidence from the county planning commission, an area homebuilder has pulled its plan for a new subdivision near Short Pump ahead of a deciding vote from Henrico supervisors.

Schell Brothers has withdrawn its proposal for about two dozen homes at the intersection of Pouncey Tract and Shady Grove roads. The board of supervisors had been scheduled to consider Schell’s request for a rezoning for the project at its regular meeting today (Tuesday).

The company in March had secured the support of the Henrico Planning Commission, which voted 5-0 to recommend approval. Three Chopt Supervisor Misty Roundtree, who represents the board on the commission and whose district includes the project site, was absent from that meeting and did not cast a vote.

Since then, the rezoning request had been deferred three times from the supervisors’ docket. According to a staff report prepared after the commission’s vote in March, county planners generally supported the plan but believed that Schell could enhance proposed buffers between the subdivision and the roads and provide more assurances that certain trees on the property would be preserved.

Planners specifically encouraged adding berms to the buffers to help protect and add privacy for the homes. They also urged Schell to preserve existing trees along the roads, as had neighbors and other residents in the area who spoke in the commission’s public hearing or at two community meetings held in November and February.

“Should the applicant address these items, staff could fully support this request,” the report said.

In the hearing in March, Hirschler attorney Jeff Geiger, who represented Schell, said the trees would need to be removed to meet county and state requirements for a stormwater basin that was planned to be located beside wetlands in the northeast corner of the site.

Geiger said the site would need to be graded so that stormwater runs toward the basin and infiltrates the soil as required. Schell had proffered to plant evergreen trees on the site, but Geiger said it couldn’t commit to preserving existing mature trees due to the stormwater requirements.

“We are working to provide the quality of development that we can with the regulations that are provided,” Geiger told the commission, according to meeting minutes.

Reached Monday, Roundtree said she did not know why Schell opted to withdraw the proposal. Tricia Smith, the company’s Richmond division president, did not return a call Monday seeking comment.

Roundtree said she did know that Schell had elected to not proceed with purchasing the site, which it had under contract. The 9-acre lot at 4700 Shady Grove Road is owned by Hilton Davis Jr. and has been under his family’s ownership since 1980. The county has assessed the property at $1.8 million.

The 26 homes were planned to range from three to six bedrooms and 2,000 to 3,500 square feet in size. Smith told BizSense in March that the homes would be similar to some that Schell has built in HHHunt’s River Mill development near Virginia Center Commons.

A holdout among the residential sprawl between Short Pump and Wyndham, the property is in a corridor that continues to see development interest. To the south, developers Robert Babcock and Lawrence Liesfeld have secured approvals for 32 four-story townhomes at Pouncey Tract’s intersection with Liesfeld Farm Drive.

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