Planning Commission endorses Mill project

The Waynesboro Planning Commission unanimously endorsed plans Tuesday to redevelop the 41-acre former Crompton Mills property along the South River.

The City Council is expected to approve the plans for the development, to be called The Mill at South River, at its Aug. 24 meeting.

City staff have recommended that the council approve rezoning the site, with nearly 500,000 square feet of buildings on it, from industrial to a mixed-use, planned-use development. At a public hearing, just two people spoke; both favored it.

“I look at this application, and say, I mean, ‘I love these people,’ ” said David Bihl, Planning Commission chairman. “They’re wonderful, and the last thing I want to do is make it harder for this application to be successful.”

Commissioner Terry Short, while supportive of the project as a “no-brainer,” said there should have been more opportunity for commissioners to question developers and city staff about the project prior to Tuesday night’s meeting, when commissioners were expected to vote on it.

“The economic benefit to this development is so substantial that some of these things that people are going to see every day don’t get addressed,” Short said.

In June, Beverley Shoemaker, of Stephens City, along with her representatives, announced plans to rezone the $2.5 million Crompton property. The project, valued at $40 million to $48 million, would represent one of the most ambitious brownfield redevelopment proposals in state history.

The Crompton site has been noted for its cultural importance to Waynesboro and has been described as a role model for adaptive redevelopment and historic preservation.

Bill Hume, president of Interactive Design Group of Roanoke, architects for the project, said 450,000 square feet of the buildings on the site would be preserved, including the old boiler house. Plans call for that to be turned into a riverfront restaurant. Just 100,000 square feet of the property would be residential in nature.

The site is both in a floodway and a floodplain. To mitigate that, Hume said the site’s plans call for raising windows and door openings to buildings by at least one foot above the base flood elevation.

Hume has said the project’s completion, to take several years, would roughly correspond to its “code of development,” which governs the project’s future land use through the creation of seven blocks that denote allowable uses for each but allow developers flexibility to adapt to changing market demand.