>>Three!

All right.

BILLY SHIELDS: How about a half dozen officials broke ground on Chesterfield County's future West Area Elementary School.

As you can see, there's not much around the school's site for now.

KEVIN CARROLL: After 2008, when the market crashed, you really didn't have the movements.

Now we have the movements of the home sales.

BILLY SHIELDS: There is an almost built middle school next door set to open next August, and a high school is slated nearby.

All of this is part of a rapidly changing area called Upper Magnolia.

STEVEN PARANTO: Some of these developments have already been approved for construction back in the late 90s, right?

And so the developer sat on that for a while.

And then once they started seeing the population moving, they already had the ground, so they're going to start building.

Which, you know, smart business.

The problem we have with that is trying to now play catch up.

BILLY SHIELDS: Upper Magnolia was the focus of a planning commission meeting where officials deferred plans for a 200 unit development along Duval Road.

>>Which is a request to rezone from agricultural A and residential R-12 to residential R-12.

BILLY SHIELDS:And pushed through a plan to add sidewalks around Oasis Townhomes nearby.

Other important developments have been in the works, like widening Hull Street, extending Powhite Parkway and improving roads serving the area's schools.

>>We just had a successful bidder on the blue infrastructure, its a contract of $43 million.

BILLY SHIELDS: And potentially luring a facility, like a chip factory, to the area at some point.

As for the new elementary school, it's scheduled to open in fall of 2026.

Billy Shields, VPM News.