BOTETOURT COUNTY, Va. – Hundreds of new homes could be coming to Botetourt County.
Next week, the planning commission will hear a proposal for a mixed-use development in Blue Ridge, with green space, new housing, and commercial opportunities.
The proposal is for the former Murray Cider property. By 2035, that land could hold 400 homes. Planned housing ranges from apartments to single-family homes to cottages, and more.
Developer Dale Wilkinson said he has a six-phase plan, to ultimately create the space that will hopefully bring people together.
“Blue Ridge is a great place,” Wilkinson said. “I’ve lived there since ‘91. There aren’t a lot of areas to kind of congregate as a community, and so we hope to do small businesses and meeting spaces and community spaces.”
The project is called Harvest at Blue Ridge. Wilkinson said he’s been working on solidifying his plans for quite a while.
“We’ve really thought this through and met with literally thousands of people in the Blue Ridge area,” Wilkinson said. “We call them stakeholders, from government to business, the neighbors we’ve met with.”
Now, Wilkinson is hoping for a favorable outcome when he heads to the planning commission on Tuesday, July 10.
“Every project we’re doing at my age needs to have some meaning, it needs to have some community purpose,” Wilkinson said. “This is kind of a culmination of doing this for 35 years. It’s a project that will involve the community.”