Plans for a shopping center near the intersection of U.S. 501 and Lakeside Drive in Lynchburg are forging ahead, but don’t expect construction to start any time soon.
Lakeside Centre developers publicized a Department of Environmental Quality draft permit for the 124-acre project last week. The draft calls for filling in more than 5,300 feet of stream and less than an acre of wetlands. Proposed stream mitigation could cost more than $3.7 million.
The move, developers said, is an effort to get all permitting and site plans ready for when the economy turns around.
“We’ve not given up on the project by any means. We have too much invested, and it’s a premier location,” said Ray Booth, one of the developers.
The parcel is located near where Tomahawk Creek and Burton Creek converge to create Blackwater Creek. On the parcel are a number of springs that feed into the stream. Plans call for directing the spring water into pipes and fill in the land, Booth said.
Whenever construction is slated to affect a stream, developers either must pay fees to a state-wide mitigation fund or improve a specified length of other streams to make up for the loss.
Lakeside Centre developers considered paying to fix up sections of Blackwater Creek, but Booth said it may be more financially feasible to pay the fees than do the work.
“It appears, which we haven’t got good cost estimates yet, it’s more expensive to mitigate Blackwater Creek, which is what … everybody wants us to do,” Booth said. “But if you can’t control the water upstream, if you get a big flood, it will wash out what you do.”
The draft permit calls for developers to purchase 6,344 “stream credits,” each costing $585, said Mark Bushing with DEQ.
Booth said developers are working with a leasing agent, but “what we’re being told by all the major retailers is that they’re not willing to make a commitment until everyone is confident that the economy has turned around.”
From the time those retailers commit to a big box-type store, it typically takes two years to opening day, Booth said. “They’re telling us it will be sometime late next year or the following year before they are willing to make a full commitment.”
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