How the Midlothian Community Special Area Plan Shapes What Gets Built in the Village

If you own a building in the Village of Midlothian, or you are thinking about putting one up, one document explains more about what you can do with it than any other. It is not the zoning map. It is the Midlothian Community Special Area Plan, adopted six years ago, and most people who are affected by it have never read a page of it.

Here is what it says.

The plan opens with history, and the history is better than most places get to claim. The Midlothian coal mines were the first recorded commercial coal mines in the United States. Coal was dug here before 1730, and during the Revolution it supplied the cannon foundry at Westham. In 1804 a turnpike ran from Falling Creek to the ferry landing in Manchester, and by 1808 it was the first lengthy road in Virginia paved with gravel. In 1831 the first railroad in Virginia carried Midlothian coal to the docks.

By the Civil War the village had a miners' hospital, a large company store, shops, taverns, a Methodist church and a Masonic lodge. After a deadly explosion in the Grove Shaft in 1882, mining here wound down and ended in the early twentieth century.

The plan's vision statement is one sentence, and it is trying to hold both halves of that story at once: "Midlothian is a modern village with traditional style."

This is the part worth being precise about, because it is the most common misunderstanding.

In the plan's own words: "The Land Use Plan does not rezone property." It guides future land use decisions. It does not change what you are allowed to do under your existing zoning, and it does not interrupt a legal use already in place. When a rezoning case comes forward, the plan is the yardstick the Planning Commission and the Board measure it against — but on its own it moves nothing.

The plan draws a core and treats it differently from the rest. It runs along Midlothian Turnpike from the Norfolk Southern railroad line on the north and west to Falling Creek on the east, and south to Woolridge Road. All three area public schools sit inside it, along with the Midlothian Library and Fire Station 5.

The intent is "a vibrant village-style mix of residential, commercial, office and public spaces all designed in a cohesive, pedestrian-friendly manner," with Route 60 carrying a Main Street feel. One line in particular shapes what gets built: at least the first floors of new buildings along Midlothian Turnpike should contain non-residential uses.

On height, the plan recommends two to three stories in Mixed Use areas and one to three in Medium High Density Residential, Corporate Office and Neighborhood Commercial. Mixed Use can go beyond three stories but not past five, and only where a project provides defined open space beyond what the ordinance requires and steps its height down toward single-family neighbors. Buildings fronting the Turnpike should step back their upper floors to avoid what the plan calls a canyoning effect, and any building 200 feet or longer has to include a pedestrian pass-through.

Two sub-areas get their own protection. Along Westfield Road, new development should be small-lot single-family, duplexes, triplexes or accessory dwelling units — explicitly "not townhouse or multifamily." Along Coalfield Road, new development has to match the scale and design of the houses next to it, with buffers where higher density meets single-family.

The transportation section is the one that will eventually be visible from a car window. The plan calls for narrower lanes, a landscaped median, a shared-use path on the south side and wide sidewalks on the north, buildings set close to the street with hardscaped public space in front, and a consistent 35 miles per hour through the village. Behind the Turnpike it lays out a grid of interconnected public streets to be built as development occurs, so that not every trip has to use Route 60.

The plan came to the Board of Supervisors as item 15.F on December 11, 2019, the last public hearing of a meeting that ran until four minutes past midnight. Senior Planner Joanne Wieworka presented the revised draft and put the changed numbers on the record: residential density lowered, capped and defined at a base of eight units per acre with a ceiling of twenty, new implementation items on transportation and schools, and a recommendation to form an Implementation Committee once the plan was adopted. She described fourteen implementation projects in all, five of them priorities — the committee itself, a strategy for school impacts, a Midlothian Turnpike corridor study, a stormwater drainage study, and turning the design recommendations into an ordinance.

Thirteen residents spoke, and they did not agree. Some asked the Board to defer or deny, raising density, water supply, traffic and the character of existing buildings. Others asked it to adopt, arguing that implementation was where the real work would happen and that the plan made development harder rather than easier. Former Midlothian Planning Commissioner Reuben Waller spoke in favor.

Supervisor Steve Elswick framed the plan the way the document frames itself, calling it a guide rather than a rubber stamp, with infrastructure, traffic and density still to be worked out case by case through the zoning process. Chair Leslie Haley, whose district it is, noted that the effort had begun four years earlier and that staff had taken in more than 3,000 comments. She made the motion; Clover Hill Supervisor Chris Winslow seconded it.

The vote was 5-0 — Haley, Elswick, Jaeckle, Winslow and Holland. No amendments or conditions were added from the floor.

A plan describes. An ordinance requires. Twenty-one months after adoption, on September 22, 2021, the Midlothian Special Design District took effect, applying the plan's design recommendations to office and commercially zoned property in the village. Its standards were specific:

The Planning Commission recommended those standards on June 15, 2021 as case 20PJ0121, and the Board of Supervisors adopted them 5-0 on September 22, 2021, effective the same day.

Those rules are no longer in force. The county's rewritten zoning ordinance, Chapter 19.2, took effect January 1, 2026 and replaced Chapter 19.1 entirely. The Midlothian Special Design District was consolidated with five others — Bon Air, Chester, Ettrick, Matoaca and Rockwood — into a single countywide Village Overlay at Section 19.2-22, which applies to Neighborhood Business, Corridor Commercial and Employment Center property inside the mapped village boundary.

Four differences matter most to anyone planning a building in the village:

The plan itself did not change. Section 11.4 of the Comprehensive Plan stands exactly as the Board of Supervisors adopted it in 2019. What changed is the ordinance that implements it. A plan and an overlay are a pair: the plan sets out what the community should become, and the overlay is the enforceable half that makes it happen on a given parcel. The Village Overlay now fills the role the Midlothian Special Design District used to fill, as the regulatory partner to Section 11.4.

A good deal carried over. The Village Overlay keeps 50 percent masonry on the first two stories of road-facing facades, main entrances facing the street, storefront windows and entrances at least every ten linear feet, a 400-foot maximum building length, and a 12,000-square-foot cap per story on individual non-residential uses. It adds a requirement that buildings over 30 feet fronting a public road step back at least ten feet at the second or third floor. And it still names Midlothian Turnpike, Woolridge Road, Charter Colony Parkway, Coalfield Road, Winterfield Road and Westfield Road individually for the sidewalks and bike facilities each is to receive.

If you have wondered why a building put up on the Turnpike between 2021 and 2025 sits close to the road with its parking behind it, the design district is the answer. What the village looks like from here is a question for the new overlay.

Last updated September 16, 2026, to reflect the zoning ordinance rewrite effective January 1, 2026. The Special Area Plan itself is unchanged.