Aerial view of the Rountrey neighborhood and amenity center at sunset

Land planning & rezoning in Central Virginia

What land planning covers here

Residential communities

Layouts for townhomes, single-family subdivisions, condominiums and apartments — determining yield, access, open space and phasing against the ordinance. Townhome communities are a growing share of this work because they fit more homes on a parcel.

Commercial and office

Planning for commercial, office and service developments, including access, parking, circulation and the constraints a site imposes on all three.

Industrial parks, facilities and data centers

Layouts for industrial parks, individual facilities and data center campuses, where truck movement, utility loads and buffering to adjacent properties drive the plan.

Church planning and development

Master planning and phased development for congregations, including the parking, traffic and land-use case that goes with it.

Rezoning applications

Preparing and filing the application, the exhibits and the supporting material to change a parcel's zoning classification.

Land-use case representation

Representing clients through staff review, the planning commission and the governing body, including the public hearings.

Feasibility and yield studies

The early answer to the only question that matters before closing: what will this parcel actually hold, and at what cost? It commonly includes a stormwater study: what type and size of stormwater management facility the site will need.

Land planning and rezoning across Central Virginia

Land planning is working out what a parcel can become. How many units or how much floor area it will actually hold once setbacks, buffers, floodplain, stormwater, access and topography have been considered. Whether the current zoning permits what you have in mind, and what it would take to change it if it does not.

It usually starts as a consulting question. An owner or buyer calls to ask what a property can hold, and the planning answer comes before anything is engineered. A well-designed layout at this stage can greatly reduce the time needed for engineering, review and construction.

Rezoning is the other half. Changing a parcel's classification in Virginia means planning staff, a planning commission, a governing body and public hearings where neighbors speak. It is a political process with a technical case underneath it, and both halves have to hold.

We prepare those applications and we appear at the hearings. Knowing how a particular board has treated similar cases is not a substitute for a good application, but it tells you what a good application has to answer.

Every locality reads a plan differently

Henrico does not read a plan the way Chesterfield does, and neither reads it the way the City of Richmond does. Setback rules, buffer requirements, submission checklists, what staff will flag and what a particular board cares about politically — all of it varies, and all of it is knowable if you have filed there long enough.

Local requirements differ, so the relevant project information should be discussed early. Read about the firm.

Planning hands off to engineering

Once the layout is settled and the zoning permits it, the same office engineers the plan set and runs the survey work underneath it. Surveying and land development engineering are all done in house, so nothing gets re-explained to a new firm.

Civil engineering and site plans Boundary and topographic surveys

Rezoning and land-use questions

How does rezoning work in Virginia?

You apply to the locality to change the zoning classification of a parcel so it can be used for something the current classification does not allow. The application goes to planning staff, then to the planning commission, then to the governing body — a board of supervisors or a city council — with public hearings along the way. Neighbors will be notified and some of them will come and speak. It is a public political process as much as a technical one, and the case has to be built for both audiences.

Will you represent us at the public hearing?

Yes. We represent clients in land use cases before the counties and the City of Richmond, which means preparing the application, working through staff comments, producing the exhibits, and appearing at the commission and board hearings to present the case and answer questions. That representation is a distinct service from drawing the plan, and it is often the part that decides the outcome.

How early should a planner be involved?

Before you buy, if you can. The question that decides a project's economics is what the land will actually hold under the current ordinance, after setbacks, buffers, floodplain, stormwater and access are accounted for. That number is frequently lower than the one in the listing. A concept layout done before closing costs a fraction of what it costs to discover the answer afterward.

What if the county says no?

Sometimes the honest answer is that a proffer or a condition will fix it, and sometimes it is that the use does not belong on that parcel and the application should be reshaped before it gets voted down. A rejected case is harder to bring back than one that was never filed in that form. We would rather tell you that at the start.

Do you do church and institutional planning?

Yes. Church planning and development is long-standing work here, and it has its own shape — a volunteer board, a phased build-out as funds allow, parking and traffic questions neighbors care about, and a rezoning or special-use case in the middle of it. We have handled that process many times.

Ask what the parcel will hold. It is the cheapest question you will ask all project.

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