SUFFOLK
The proposed CenterPoint development was approved in a 7-0 City Council vote Wednesday night despite concerns about increasing traffic on a crowded roadway.
If Suffolk did not approve the rezoning request to allow the development to go forward, another Hampton Roads locality would have picked up the project, council members said.
"Regardless of whether we improve this or not, we're going to get that traffic anyway," said Councilman Joseph Barlow. "We're going to have to address that problem whether we get the benefits of it or not."
With 5.8 million square feet of space planned for 13 buildings, the CenterPoint development would be one of the region's largest warehouse and distribution centers. It's expected to
generate about $3 million in real estate taxes, and according to CenterPoint developers, would create about 2,900 jobs.
The project also is expected to add about 10,700 daily trips to the already-congested Holland Road corridor by the time it's done.
"The elephant in the room is Holland Road," said Neil Doyle, an executive vice president for CenterPoint Properties, based in Oak Brook, Ill.
The developer's engineers have estimated that it would cost about $54 million to widen a three-mile stretch of the road from four lanes to six. A study by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission put the figure closer to $94 million, which the company disputes.
CenterPoint has promised to put as much as $3.46 million toward the design of the road and says the development would account for 3 to 7 percent of the road's traffic. The company is proposing an additional $6.5 million in other infrastructure improvements.
The city has no funding dedicated to improving the road.
In their presentation to the council, developers echoed the message they delivered to the city's Planning Commission last month: If the distribution center is approved, the widening of Holland Road will be the kind of project ripe for federal stimulus money.
The proposal for the center has been a "catalyst for the Holland Road attention and visibility," Doyle said. "If we're talking about Holland Road here, they're talking about it in Richmond and hopefully in Washington," he said.
In addition, the design money for the road will help get the project "shovel-ready," he said.
Councilman Robert Barclay IV abstained from the vote because one of CenterPoint's consultants is a client of his law firm.
Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com
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Decay and Deterioration
From an economic development and a prosperity standpoint, I applaud the action by the city council. Of course, this will put more pressure on the Commonwealth to get back into the transportation business after a period of over a decade that has seen basically deterioration and decay instead of improvement. That degradation belongs squarely in the lap of the majority party in the House of Delegates, and in the lap of those local legislators who claim they support transportation but who won't challenge the leadership of their own party. Just because Speaker Bill Howell won't allow increased funding for transportation is no reason that area legislators in his party should simply roll over and play dead. But they have, and in the next election, it is time for a revolt; that is, we must get rid of every area Delegate in the majority party so progress in transportation can be made.