Chickahominy Falls has filled out over the years off Route 1 in Hanover just north of the Henrico line. (Images courtesy Cornerstone Homes)
Nearly a decade since planting the seeds for the project, Roger Glover is about to see his farm-centric Chickahominy Falls development through to full bloom.
Glover’s Cornerstone Homes and Crescent Group development recently secured approval for a 60-acre expansion of the 55-and-up residential development that he said will be the so-called agri-community’s final section.
The expansion increases the community to nearly 250 acres and makes room for an additional 169 units, bringing the total count of primarily single-floor homes to 637, according to Hanover County documents.
The 60-acre expansion area, outlined in red, is northwest of the existing development.
County supervisors OK’d a rezoning for the expansion at their meeting in late March. Glover said the next six to nine months will be spent on subdivision and development plan approvals, with construction and sales on the homes that will finish out the community likely starting in mid-2025.
Roger Glover
For Glover, who’s been developing homes for baby-boomers and retirees for two decades, seeing Chickahominy Falls through to completion marks the full realization of what’s proven to be his most involved “active adult” community yet.
“It is exciting and certainly very fulfilling and rewarding,” Glover said. “Being at this for 25 years, this clearly has been a community where I’ve seen the most people come together and have the most fun and live, I think, the happier lives of any community we’ve done.”
Initially planned for 400 homes on 150 acres, Chickahominy Falls started sales in 2018 after initial zoning was approved for the land that included the former homestead of the family of Frank Hargrove Sr., a former Virginia delegate.
Located along Holly Hill Road just south of Cedar Lane, off Route 1 just north of HHHunt’s River Mill community, the development blends suburban living with organic farming via the 10-acre Woodside Farms and Market, a four-season, professionally managed community farm.
The 10-acre Woodside Farms and Market operates year-round.
The community has been expanded two other times over the years, Glover said, and this final section of homes will include additional community amenities, including the introduction of ever-popular pickleball courts. A pool and recreation hall with meeting rooms and classrooms also is planned.
“These expansions have happened because of adjacent property owners wanting to sell their property,” Glover said. “One of the homeowners ended up essentially trading her house and property for a brand-new house in Chickahominy Falls. That was cool.”
As of the beginning of this month, 390 homes have been sold at Chickahominy Falls to date, with an average price of $528,000 and more homes currently under contract. In addition to Cornerstone Homes, builders in Chickahominy Falls have included StyleCraft Homes and Boone Homes. Glover said Boone will also be building in the last section, the bulk of which will be built by Cornerstone.
Townhomes in Chickahominy Falls initially ranged from about 1,600 to 3,000 square feet in size, and units currently for sale start at $400,000.
As the development has grown, so have some of the homes. Cornerstone sold one of its model homes last year for $845,000, and Boone’s highest sale to date there came in at over $1 million.
A reoriented community map shows the final section highlighted.
Glover said the remaining homes will be similar to what’s been built in Chickahominy Falls so far. The final section will also include a new product involving alley-loaded homes fronting a park – a design called a paseo that’s gaining popularity. A larger version is planned for Markel | Eagle’s Avenlea project near Short Pump.
“It’s a little different than what you typically see,” Glover said of the concept. “Rather than just having all the front doors and garages lined up on the street, we’re setting up more of a park, where people can open up their front door and see a mini-park in front of their house, and maybe a little more neighborly walk around the neighborhood with everybody out on their front porch tipping glasses a lot.”
As it’s built out, Chickahominy Falls has received recognition both regionally and nationally. Last month, it won a platinum award for Best New Home Community at the National Association of Homebuilders’ Best in American Living Awards in Las Vegas. It previously won a silver award for Best Community Amenity for its Farmhouse clubhouse.
Existing amenities at Chickahominy Falls include a pool, pond and walking trails.
Since starting in 1998, Henrico-based Cornerstone has built more than 2,500 homes in 55-and-up communities Glover’s developed around Richmond and elsewhere in Virginia, as well as in North Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana.
While he’s been at it for a quarter-century now, Glover said he’s not planning to slow down and considers Chickahominy Falls a highlight that he’s eager to replicate.
“It’s shown me that what we’ve done, with continuing to find ways to improve what we’re doing and to create these unique and different experiences for folks, there are still plenty of boomers that are reaching retirement, so I absolutely want to continue and find ways to make it even more enjoyable,” he said. “It is a little bit hard to replicate and make it scalable, but that will be my (goal) going forward. It’s something you definitely want to try to figure out a way to do again.”
Missed opportunity to share that the Fall Line trail will pass just west of Chickahominy Falls, a perfect compliment to this development that will provide an active transportation connection to Ashland and the Virginia Center Commons area by a paved trails network.
Yes! That information is not included in the article, but we are working with the Fall Line Trail team and are planning for a connection.
I think that this is a great neighborhood and happy to see it expanding a bit. It’s a great location and I like the mix of rural and suburban elements. I do think that it’s terrible that the county allowed for those warehouses to be built across the street. They really take away from the aesthetic of the area. Farming on one side of the road, warehouses on the other. Yuck!
I could be wrong but I believe the warehouses were already zoned before the residential. It was not that the county “allowed” them to build them, but that the property owner had the right to build them according to zoning and the law.
We could not agree more! The county allowed the warehouses without any public opinion based on the need to provide shovel-ready commercial sites. It is very unfortunate.
Pretty interesting concept, all-in-all. Glad to see more 55-plus housing becoming available in Hanover (and for that matter, all across the metro region). A personal aside to share: I haven’t paid much attention to how much this part of the county has continued to fully suburbanize. When I saw Cedar Lane I started looking for – and found – the small group of three houses on legacy property on the north side of Cedar Lane just east of the already built-out portion of the overall development that belonged to my family. One the three houses was my grandparents’. The second… Read more »
Interesting concept, but why do all new developments have to remove every mature tree in the yards? I’m assuming it’s because it’s more profitable. This has become the norm, but it didn’t used to be.