There was a small article in yesterday’s Times Dispatch regarding the move of Dominion’s operations center from Innsbrook to I 295.
When Dominion applied for the special use permit for its Tredegar St. headquarters back in 2001, approval was given because they promised to move their operations center with “hundreds of jobs” from the county to Tredegar Street. A neighbor showed photos of flooding at the Tredegar site, and neighbors pointed out that it was absurd to think that they were moving their operations center with a fleet of vehicles and fueling infrastructure to this site beside the river with limited access. But the City’s Planning Commission rubber stamped the bogus plan anyway. When neighbors met with Dominion as recently as two years ago regarding the 2nd Street connector, the Dominion representative still maintained that they have the right to build in the future the huge tower that was supposed to be the new operations center!

Hopefully, Church Hill will fare better than Oregon Hill has in fending off rapacious, private development that goes against existing planning and steals from the public river view sheds. It should come as no surprise that many of those forces supporting the high rise project against Church Hill are the same as who are supporting the flawed Shockoe stadium proposal. City government should recognize the difference between good, popular development projects that enhance residents’ quality of life vs. bad, dishonorable development projects that are based on greed.