Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 18, 1994 TAG: 9405180071
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Commission members could have asked questions - Chairman Jack Via asked several times if they had any - but they held their tongues.
Town Manager John Lemley said he had no new details about the project, and Bill Matthews, the developer who has proposed it, didn't make it to meeting. Questions, the commission members recognized, would have hung in the air.
Besides, the time for questions - and perhaps answers - will be June 7, the date scheduled for a public hearing on the matter.
But if Via's remarks Monday were an indicator, Matthews might have little problem getting the town's OK.
Matthews wants to rezone approximately 10 acres from agricultural use to business use to go with 17 acres he already has.
Matthews' rezoning request - the only confirmed and official word so far about the plan - mentions only that the request is to make way for a shopping center that would be almost as big as the 450,000-square-foot New River Valley Mall. The request doesn't say if the center would be an enclosed or strip mall, or what stores would be in it.
For weeks the prevailing notion in town has been that the center would be anchored by a Wal-Mart Superstore, a mammoth combination grocery and retail establishment not unlike similar stores proposed in Roanoke and Rocky Mount.
Matthews was unavailable Tuesday, and Wal-Mart officials have said they know nothing about the plan.
Christiansburg leaders have said that while they would like to have more information about the proposal, they are not against further commercial development near the intersection of Peppers Ferry Road and U.S. 460, an area that has become the New River Valley's shopping mecca and has brought more tax revenue to the town.
Via said of the agricultural tract that Matthews wants to rezone: "It really isn't there to encourage agriculture. It's there as an undesignated area until other developments create a direction."
Noting that railroad tracks border one side of the site and the New River Valley Mall is across the road, Via offered, "It certainly lends itself to uses not necessarily residential."
The shopping center would be "on line" with the town's comprehensive plan, Via said. That area has potential for commercial development, "which is pretty close to the same thing as industrial development, in so far as creating jobs."
by CNB