Daleville Town Center’s perking up

Starting construction on a major residential, retail and office complex just as a major recession strikes doesn’t exactly sound like fortuitous timing.

But it has turned out that way for Daleville Town Center, its developers say. Fralin & Waldron broke ground on the 118-acre mixed-use development in 2006 — just as the economy was beginning its slide.

The development progressed, but at a lagging pace — a couple of retail spaces opened, three houses were built, and a medical complex.

“We’re still feeling the burn from that,” said Steve Claytor, F&W’s vice president of development.

But the pause allowed Claytor and F&W President Andy Kelderhouse to recognize that what the market really wants in Daleville isn’t necessarily what they had in mind.

Today, the development is perking again.

One-hundred and twenty apartment units in a $12 million complex are under construction, with some to be occupied as early as November. There’s a new coffee shop in the development, and a new restaurant is set to open any day now. There’s a push to build a new YMCA on the site, and there’s already a busy outdoor music venue.

Ironically, Kelderhouse said, if it had been under way sooner, things would be worse.

“If we’d been three years earlier, I think there would be a lot of dark buildings out here,” he said

The idea was to make a new “place” in Botetourt, where people can live, work, socialize and find most of what they need within walking distance, a manifestation of the New Urbanism movement in development.

The county has several towns, but none is so compact or complete that residents can live in such an urban fashion, Claytor said. Daleville Town Center was designed to provide that kind of living in a county that’s otherwise alternately rural or suburban bedroom community.

New Urbanism dates to the 1970s and is a reaction to the segregation of housing developments from retail and other uses.

It’s essentially a call to return to old-fashioned village-style development, with a discernible center of life — a kind of downtown — with shops, restaurants and offices, all within walking distance of residential areas, said Susan Piedmont-Palladino, a Virginia Tech architecture professor and coordinator for urban design at the school’s Washington/Alexandria Architecture Center.

It’s defined by a mix of housing types that promotes a variety of types and ages of people and a healthier and more environmentally friendly kind of living, because it’s intended to be pedestrian friendly, Piedmont-Palladino said. It’s also supposed to promote civic identity.

Some consider such developments going into former green spaces like farms — or orchards, as with Daleville Town Center — to be just another kind of sprawl.

Others, Piedmont-Palladino said, say it’s at least “less bad than the old suburbs.”

Developers have become attracted to New Urbanism because such developments, while more complicated than a subdivision, are compact so they need less land, and the infrastructure is more efficient, according to Piedmont-Palladino.

But there’s no particular sequence for developers to follow in building out such a development — no set order to adding the ingredients of homes, apartments, shops, restaurants and offices.

Daleville Town Center began with a retail and office building whose first tenant was a lighting shop, followed by the offices of Fralin & Waldron.

Three higher-end single-family homes were built and sold. They have assessed values ranging from $345,000 to more than $700,000, but that part of the development has largely stalled. One new home is under construction now.

Two years ago, the LewisGale Imaging Center and other doctors’ offices opened there.

But for most of its existence, Daleville Town Center has lacked the kind of substance and character that might make it feel like a place.

During that fallow period, though, Claytor began to recognize a pent-up demand for apartments in the county. Kelderhouse thinks the down economy made people re-evaluate their housing choices and open their minds to renting.

Moreover, there’s a relative dearth of rental housing in Botetourt County. Just a handful of small apartment buildings — with 15 to 20 units in the largest of them — exist in the county, said Botetourt County Commissioner of Revenue Rodney Spickard.

“There’s practically no supply of multi-family,” Spickard said. “There’s not any in the range that they’re building for sure.”

The 120 apartments were always part of the master plan. They weren’t next on the list, but the market drove Claytor and Kelderhouse to move them up.

“It gives us people living here. That enhances the livability of Daleville Town Center,” Claytor said.

Already, they say, they have deposits for about 40 units, with tenants ranging from young professionals to older empty-nesters. Most will be two-bedroom units. Rents range from $849 to $1,249.

Penny Felts and her husband, Scott, had no idea about the apartments when they opened Land of 1,000 Hills Coffee Shop in the development in June.

The couple have done mission work in Rwanda for years and decided to open a franchise of the coffee company, which benefits Rwandan coffee farmers.

“We think of it as more of a mission than a business,” Penny Felts said.

As it turned out, Williams Lighting was moving out of its space at Daleville Town Center.

Claytor and Kelderhouse told the Feltses, “You’re exactly what we want.”

“I loved the community part of it,” Penny Felts said. “I feel like they really believe in that concept.”

From the first week the shop opened, “it was chaos,” she said. Business hasn’t slowed down. Felts said she’s almost afraid of what it will be like when the apartments come online.

Meanwhile, the coffee shop is also paying off for its neighbor, a gift shop called WillowPod.

Jennifer Aylor, WillowPod’s owner, said the shop scraped by for two years. The lighting shop attracted mostly contractors who didn’t have much interest in the soaps, knickknacks and fine chocolates she sells.

She held on, though, out of faith in Claytor and Kelderhouse sticking to their vision for the development.

“They’re after different,” Aylor said. “They’re after progressive, independent businesses.”

That faith is finally paying off. Since the coffee shop opened, her monthly revenues have doubled, she said.

Kelderhouse said despite a desire to move the development along, they’ve resisted allowing just any businesses in. For the restaurant space in the original building, he and Claytor passed on five proposals before arriving at Stephanie Rogol and her idea for the Town Center Tap House.

The development’s first restaurant couldn’t be too narrowly focused, so Rogol has fashioned a menu of sandwiches, salads and pasta dishes complemented by a large wine list and 40 beers on tap. Kids will eat free on Tuesdays to keep the place family friendly.

Rogol, who owns Sharkey’s restaurants in Blacksburg and Radford, was looking for another place to expand when someone suggested Daleville.

“Where’s Daleville?” she asked. She’d never heard of it.

But she met with Kelderhouse and Claytor. “I bought totally into their vision,” she said.

“It’s not really a leap of faith. ... To me, it’s a no-brainer,” Rogol said.

Taken together, the apartments and the shops begin to add up to a pattern of living, which Piedmont-Palladino said is crucial to a New Urbanism development’s success.

When you have a few neighborhood spots that help residents say “This is my place,” it begins to feel like something more than a subdivision or apartment complex, she said. “You begin to design a daily life for people.”

Kelderhouse and Claytor imagine residents passing through the coffee shop before work, and stopping by the tap room for a drink at the end of the day.

The proposed YMCA, which would also be in Daleville Town Center, would only add to that circuit, Claytor and Kelderhouse said.

Local and YMCA leaders are still studying whether a Y is feasible, and construction is probably years off, but Claytor and Kelderhouse believe it could be a game-changer for the development.

“It becomes an anchor,” Kelderhouse said.

Beyond that, Claytor and Kelderhouse aren’t sure what’s next for the center. Single-family homes will be slow, they expect, and office space has been hard.

“We haven’t seen the outside investor come and say, ‘I’d like to build this,’ ” Kelderhouse confessed.

But they still envision uses like a bank, a convenience store, a boutique grocer and a boutique hotel and conference center.

Whatever is next, they say, they’ve learned to listen to the market.

“We’re not going to get ahead of the market,” Claytor said. “At this point, we’ll get there when we get there.”

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