The Eastern Route 60 Corridor Plan Is on Hold, and the County Has Not Said Why

In the spring of 2024 Chesterfield County asked the public what should happen to four miles of Midlothian Turnpike between the Richmond city line and Johnston-Willis Hospital. It held a community meeting, ran a survey that drew 418 responses, and presented the findings to the Planning Commission that July. County agencies reviewed a draft in the summer of 2025. Then the county's own Active Projects page began saying the plan is on hold.

This post sets out what the Eastern Route 60 Corridor Plan was meant to do, how far it got, and the fact that two county sources currently describe its status in incompatible terms. It also explains what governs the corridor in the meantime, which is the part that actually affects a property owner there.

The objectives are the county's own, and they describe a corridor the county considers to be underperforming. In summary form: revitalise and redevelop aging commercial property, add landscaping and public green space, improve bicycle and pedestrian connectivity, explore transit-oriented development, increase connectivity between neighbourhoods, diversify the economy, and coordinate land uses with a future Bus Rapid Transit route on Midlothian Turnpike.

That last one is the tell. A corridor plan written to coordinate land uses with a future rapid transit route is, among other things, a plan about density and where it goes.

This is worth stating plainly rather than resolving, because the county has not resolved it. The Active Projects page says the plan is on hold. The Planning Commission's 2025 Annual Report says drafting of a plan document is well underway and anticipates completion in 2026. Those cannot both describe the same state of play, and no county document explains the gap.

We are not printing a reason for the hold, because the county has never given one. We are also not printing the date it went on hold, because no source establishes it. Anyone who tells you the plan was absorbed into the zoning rewrite or into PlanMod, or that it was cancelled, is telling you something the record does not support.

The Northern Route 10 Corridor Plan is a 3.5-mile corridor plan launched in the same cycle. It went to public input in the spring of 2025 and the Board of Supervisors approved it in late August 2025. The Eastern Route 60 plan, started earlier and covering a longer stretch of a busier road, never reached a hearing.

This is the practical half. With no adopted corridor plan of its own, a rezoning in the eastern corridor is judged against the countywide Comprehensive Plan and the zoning ordinance adopted in the 2025 rewrite, which took effect January 1, 2026.

That is a real difference in treatment along one road. Property owners inside the Midlothian Community Special Area Plan, which is Section 11.4 of the Comprehensive Plan and covers the village to the west, have adopted design guidance written for their stretch of the corridor, and a Village Overlay in the zoning ordinance that applies it parcel by parcel. Owners in the eastern four miles have the countywide documents and nothing corridor-specific. The 1998 plan that used to serve them was folded away in 2022; its replacement is on hold.

Springline at District 60, at 7100 Midlothian Turnpike, sits inside the Eastern Route 60 corridor plan area. It was rezoned before any of this: case 21SN0697 took 41.9 acres from General Business (C-3) to Regional Business (C-4) with conditional uses, recommended by the Planning Commission 5 to 0 on March 15, 2022 and approved by the Board of Supervisors 5 to 0 on April 27, 2022, with maximums of 300,000 square feet of office, 215 hotel rooms, 125,000 square feet of retail, 125,000 square feet of sports and entertainment, 10,000 square feet of community and public use, 1,100 multifamily units and 125 townhouse or stacked units.

The detail that matters here is which plan it was judged against. At the time, the site's Comprehensive Plan designation came from the Eastern Midlothian Land Use Plan and read "Regional Mixed Use". That is the 1998 plan whose successor is the document now on hold. Springline was approved under the plan the Eastern Route 60 Corridor Plan was meant to replace.

Note also what it is not inside: the Midlothian Community Special Area Plan, whose boundary lies further west. That is what makes Springline useful as a bellwether rather than as a precedent: it was already rezoned, its development and revitalisation are well underway, and it is a catalyst for further development in the Special Area Plan to its west, demonstrating in the eastern corridor the kind of density and mix the village plan contemplates. The largest new mixed-use investment on this end of the Turnpike is being built and occupied while the land-use framework around it waits. Chesterfield Economic Development is itself a tenant on the site. We have covered the Springline rezoning and The Mondelle, its 11-storey hotel, separately.

PlanMod, the Comprehensive Plan rewrite, goes to a Planning Commission public hearing on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, with a Board of Supervisors decision targeted for December 2026. Its draft reduces residential density countywide.

For an eastern Midlothian Turnpike property owner, that is the live lever. A corridor plan on hold changes nothing this autumn; a countywide density reduction adopted in December would change what the corridor's aging commercial parcels can become, and it would do so without the corridor-specific plan that was supposed to accompany it.

The corridor's extent, acreage and on-hold status are from the county's Active Projects page; the 418 survey entries, the July 16, 2024 work session and the statement that drafting is well underway are from the Planning Commission's 2025 Annual Report. The Springline case number, vote tallies and approved maximums are from the Planning Commission agenda of March 15, 2022 and the Board of Supervisors minutes of April 27, 2022, and the site's Regional Mixed Use designation under the Eastern Midlothian Land Use Plan is from the same case file. The Northern Route 10 approval is dated to the Board of Supervisors meeting of Wednesday, August 27, 2025; both sources place the vote that Wednesday without printing the date. A second description of the plan area, running from the Richmond city line to Pocoshock Creek and covering about 1,400 acres, is attributed to a county release of June 3, 2024 that we were unable to relocate on the county's site, so the Active Projects figures are used instead. No news account printed the Springline case number. We could not read the current zoning ordinance text directly, because the county's ordinance host blocks automated access.

The Midlothian Business Alliance's community affairs contributors include volunteers who serve in county appointed positions, including on the Chesterfield County Planning Commission, which heard the Springline case discussed here and which held the work session on this corridor plan. This post reports the public record and takes no position.

Last updated September 17, 2026.