About a half dozen supervisors, school board members and architects broke ground Monday on Chesterfield County’s new west area elementary school, which has a placeholder name until officials can formally name it.
The school’s future site lies at the end of a cul-de-sac in the middle of a wooded area. A new middle school with a similar name — still under construction and set to open in August 2025 — lies adjacent to it. And a high school is slated to go in nearby. It’s all part of the Upper Magnolia Tract, an area that could see rapid change in the future.
“After 2008, when the [real estate] market crashed, we didn’t have the movement,” said Kevin Carroll, the Matoaca District supervisor. “Now, we have the movement in home sales.”
The Chesterfield County Planning Commission is slated to debate some of those changes Tuesday: a proposed 200-unit single-family development along Duval Road; adding sidewalks around the Oasis Townhomes development off Fox Club Parkway; and a 194-townhouse proposal just on the other side of Hull Street Road from Oasis.
Residential real estate near Upper Magnolia has been dormant — until now.
“Some of these developments have already been approved for construction back in the late 1990s,” said Steve Paranto, the Matoaca school board member. “The developers sat on it for a while. And when they saw the population move and started building — it’s smart business. But the problem we have with that now is trying to play catch up.”
The west area elementary school will be the 41st elementary school in the county. Officials hope that by the time it opens in fall 2026, the district can keep enrollment below 90% of its 1,000-student capacity.
Three other important developments have been in the works in the area: widening Hull Street Road along the southern border of the zone; extending Powhite Parkway; and potentially luring a factory to the Upper Magnolia area.
In 2022, Intel announced the area was among five finalists for a new chip factory. But that semiconductor site went to New Albany, Ohio, instead. The Chesterfield site lacked infrastructure to handle the buildout, something officials are now trying to rectify with the help of $38 million in state grants.
The county planning commission is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. Tuesday, when it will discuss the Duval development among other topics.
