Center: Image courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; from top: photos courtesy Skinquarter Farm Market; Metro Richmond Zoo; Dotted Line Collaborations; Publix
Driving westward along U.S. Route 360 offers a useful, if incomplete, view of Richmond’s suburban growth: Manchester shopfronts give way in Chesterfield County to aging strip malls that fold into established subdivisions such as Brandermill and, on the opposite side of Swift Creek Reservoir, the smaller Woodlake.
The suburban sprawl is followed by pines and a more rural character as the road continues west and reaches Moseley. This area was once known as Moseley’s Junction, when its chief significance was as the point of intersection of the Farmville and Powhatan Railroad and the Southern Railway, and it has served as a sort of terminus for the current suburban westward expansion. But over the last several years, new development has pushed into the area, including the upscale housing development Magnolia Green and a planned shopping center at Otterdale Road and Hull Street Road that will feature the county’s first Publix to be built from the ground up.
Join us as we explore what one can find — and what’s to come — in this growing Chesterfield community.
Purveyors From the Past
Four miles west of the planned Publix is a place maintaining Moseley’s connection to its rural roots. From early spring through the weeks leading up to Christmas, Skinquarter Farm Market purveys fresh produce, jams, pickled products, plants and more at its indoor/outdoor market off U.S. 360.
“If we can grow it ourselves, we try to,” says owner and manager Blake Kierson. The family-run operation owns 100 acres adjacent to the market and farms another 1,000 rented acres in the area. Kierson also visits the State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as produce auctions in Cullen and the Shenandoah Valley to keep the bins stocked.
Kierson estimates that during high season, from mid-June to mid-August, as many as 400 people come through the store on a busy Saturday. “We pull into Chesterfield a little ways and Amelia, and we get a few people from Powhatan,” Kierson says of the market’s shoppers. He says he’s also seen an uptick in customers from Magnolia Green as the development continues to build out. “We can scale up if we need to,” he says about the market’s plans to keep pace with development.
In 2016, the market was joined on its lot by Jimer’s Frozen Custard, which had outgrown its home in the parking lot of a nearby gas station. “I think he’s about tripled his business since being here,” says Kierson. “There’s been some nights when he fills the lot up.”
Faith and Poverty
Now returned to crabgrass and dirt in many areas, minor railways once threaded through the Virginia countryside, hauling farm goods, lumber, coal and passengers from one town or city to the next and onward to the ports. From 1884-1905, the Farmville and Powhatan Railroad was one such line. Cutting a 92-mile path from Farmville through Powhatan and east to Bermuda Hundred on the James River, it made a stop in then-Moseley’s Junction where passengers could hop on the Southern Railway to Richmond.
The railroad struggled financially almost from the outset, earning itself the nickname “Faith and Poverty Railroad.” In 1905, it went bankrupt and was reborn as the Tidewater and Western Railroad. That operation also foundered, and in 1917, the French government purchased the railroad’s portable assets for use in World War I. Rails and ties were pulled up and shipped along with many of the train cars to Europe, though the old Moseley depot remains at 1919 Moseley Road.
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A giraffe and its calf (Photo courtesy Metro Richmond Zoo)
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Zookeeper Jim Andelin holding three cheetah cubs (Photo courtesy Metro Richmond Zoo)
The Cat’s Meow
Almost 25 years have passed since Jim Andelin and his wife, Sherry, purchased the tract just south of U.S. 360 in Moseley that has become the Metro Richmond Zoo. “We found this beautiful piece of land with rolling hills and some streams, and it was close to Route 360. It felt like the perfect fit,” explains Andelin, who says he located his search in western Chesterfield County for its proximity to Richmond and the availability of large, open spaces.
The zoo opened in 1995 and today is home to more than 2,000 animals across 180 species. Giraffes have been one of the main draws from the beginning, according to Andelin, who says the zoo is one of the only places on the East Coast where visitors can feed and pet the graceful animal.
Since 2013, the zoo has also been the site of a popular and award-winning cheetah breeding center. “We’ve had 40 cubs born in the last three years,” Andelin says. The zoo also runs similar programs for African penguins and the Diana monkey, which, like the cheetah, are endangered.
New on the horizon in 2018? An area to see the zoo’s pygmy hippos underwater, and a boardwalk in its South America section, says Andelin. Both are slated to open this spring.
Summerfest, one of the many community events at Magnolia Green (Photo courtesy Dotted Line Collaborations)
Westward Expansion
The 1970s saw the development of Brandermill, the first large-scale planned community to grow out west along U.S. 360. It was quickly followed by Woodlake on the western shore of Swift Creek Reservoir. Those projects helped push infrastructure west on the corridor, paving the way — in some senses literally — for similar communities in Moseley, such as the 1,900-acre Magnolia Green, which began building in 2007.
“A lot of [what we’re seeing now] is part of that historic growth pattern of the county,” says Steven Haasch, planning manager for Chesterfield County.
The Magnolia Green project had its beginnings in the 1980s, he says, but it lagged because water and sewer infrastructure hadn’t reached that area, and some of the road networks still needed improvement, including construction of state Route 288.
A Publix location is set to open at the new Cosby Village Shopping Center. (Photo courtesy Publix)
In October, Publix announced plans to build a 50,000-square-foot store at the future Cosby Village Shopping Center adjacent to Magnolia Green. The Florida-based company opened a location in Midlothian in November at the site of a former Martin’s, but the Cosby Village store will be the first in the county to be built from the ground up. Publix spokeswoman Kim Reynolds says the chain selected Moseley for the opportunity it provided “to be part of a larger retail development.”
Despite this growth, Haasch predicts Moseley, particularly its western edge, will retain its rural charm, “at least for the foreseeable future.” The reason? For one: sewage. Like most public sewer systems, Chesterfield’s system relies largely on gravity to convey sewage from across the county to treatment plants along the James River. But west of Moseley Road, water flows to the Appomattox River, not the James, meaning expensive infrastructure would have to be added to extend public sewers into the area. “Public sewer really is the controlling factor in residential density,” says Haasch.
Magnolia Green community pool (Photo courtesy Dotted Line Collaborations)
Not Your Mother’s Suburbs
For Richmonders moving out of the city toward Chesterfield’s far-west suburbs, schools are a common selling point.
Jennifer Case and her husband moved with their three young boys to Magnolia Green in 2016 to be in the Winterpock Elementary School district. For Case, whose oldest son was identified for gifted programs and whose youngest has Down syndrome, finding a school that would accommodate both their learning styles was important.
The Cases, who spent eight years in Church Hill before settling in Moseley, also liked that Magnolia Green offered amenities including a neighborhood farmers market, aquatic center and a planned 28-acre public park. “We lived in the city, and we loved that we could work nearby and we could walk to lots of places,” Case says. “We knew it would be different in the suburbs, but we still wanted something that gave us a similar feel.”
The county has recognized this desire by some for a more urban feel within the suburbs. The Chesterfield comprehensive plan includes “nodes” of mixed-use development that will function like town centers, according to Haasch. One such proposed node is near the planned Cosby Village.
“How we view the Moseley area is a mix of growing residential development … while trying to preserve rural lifestyles,” Haasch says. “We want to be able to offer residents of the county the choice of living in a rural area, a suburban area and even, in some cases, an urban area where we can get nice mixed-use centers off the ground.”
