While the county is still catching up with the explosive growth of the 1990s and early 2000s, planning staffers said, there’s an imbalance favoring the western part of the county around Midlothian when it comes to new growth. At the same time, there are older communities, some along parts of the Jefferson Davis corridor, that have their own character that should be preserved but also revitalized, they said.

To address all this, those planning and revitalization staffers responsible for crafting the revisions that are then vetted by appointed and elected officials said they are applying suburban revitalization concepts in ways they haven’t before.

“I’m excited about it because if we adopt this, it’s a leadership position in the state. Not a lot of folks are doing suburban revitalization. A lot of localities that are doing revitalization are urban and it has to do with transit, main street revitalization, which we can learn from for corridor revitalization,” Planning Manager Steve Haasch said.

Supervisor Steve Elswick of the rural Matoaca district declined to answer questions about the recommendations because he said the board “has not had a work session with staff on their thoughts and recommendations. I will wait until we hear firsthand their recommendations.”