Former Anderson & Associates Project Manager Chris Hornung grew up in Stafford County, one of Virginia’s fastest
growing communities. Now, as project manager for Silver Companies’ 2,400-acre
Celebrate Virginia project, he is back on his home turf, overseeing the region’s most
significant development project yet and one that strives to preserve the ecological and
cultural environment.
Celebrate Virginia is a mixed-use development in Fredericksburg that includes the East
Coast’s largest power center, a tourism hub, a golf resort, an office campus, and the
National Slavery Museum. The power
center, Central Park, will become the largest retail development in Virginia upon
completion. The 310-acre commercial city is already home to more than 2 million square
feet of retail, restaurants, and entertainment venues.
A component within Celebrate Virginia’s tourism campus that especially excites Chris, a canoeist, is the planned eco-tourism
center on a 133-acre easement along the Rappahannock River. Silver is donating the land to
Fredericksburg as water-source protection. The center will offer canoeing, guided
fly-fishing, kayaking, and other outdoor sports.
Silver Companies designed Celebrate Virginia so development won’t intrude on the
river. To help Silver keep that commitment, A&A
conducted a viewshed analysis and 3-D computer simulation of what a canoeist would see.
Using animations, Silver tested and set standards for building heights and setback
distances from the river.
"If you float the Rappahannock, you won’t see Celebrate Virginia," Chris says.
Although A&A performs a wide range of
services for the Silver Companies, including site design, transportation planning, utility
design, and the production of marketing materials, Chris
says it is the only firm that has demonstrated the capability to perform viewshed analyses
and simulations.
Four major Civil War
battles were fought around Fredericksburg; Union and Confederate earthworks
constructed in 1862 and 1863 are visible on Celebrate Virginia property. "After
performing exhaustive archaeological investigations to identify cultural resources on the
property, we have executed an agreement with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources
that will protect these sites forever," Chris
says. "A walking trail will interpret their construction and the important part they
played in history."
