VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A giant pile of concrete rubble near Virginia Beach’s Town Center is set for a facelift.
Virginia Beach city council members voted unanimously to transform the site off of Witchduck Road into a new luxury apartment complex.
People who live and work in the area say the junkyard is a major eyesore. Real estate developers at The Breeden Company are now working to clean the site up and replace it with modern apartments.
“Get rid of it! Get rid of it! It looks no good just sitting there. And we ride by every day and look at it," said resident Lewis Flight.
The pile of concrete rubble sits on the north side of I-264 along the Witchduck exit in Virginia Beach.
“Oh yes. This is just a big eyesore," Edward Joseph Marengoni said. "I thought they were going to get rid of it a year or so ago."
It’s not much to look at and residents say they want it gone.
“It’s been there for certainly a long time. I think it’s time to clean it up and do something with it," Moises Wilson said. “It’s just another day of looking at it, wanting to see what it’s going to turn into. The fruition of it.”
A transformation for the pile of rocks is on the horizon.
Virginia Beach city council leaders gave The Breeden Company the green light to transform that pile of concrete junk into a new luxury apartment complex.
The company’s executive vice president, C. Torrey Breeden said they plan to transform the site into a 438-unit mixed-use apartment complex. But first, they’ve got to clean up the junkyard.
“It’s a monumental task from here forward," Breeden said. “Now the challenge is to finish getting the site cleaned up and getting all those buildings taken down, all that junk taken out, all that rubble removed. Not all the rubble is clean so it has to be tested for environmental purposes and then cleaned up as we go forward.”
Breeden said it could take as long as a year to clean up the site.
“There is so much to cleaning up a junkyard," he said. "There are hundreds and thousands of machines and buckets and broken down tractors, and all that stuff has to be sorted through and parceled out. Then the rubble itself has to be ground up, made usable for somebody somewhere else, and hauled off in trucks.”
A promotional video for the site says the apartment complex will have one to three-bedroom homes across six buildings centered around a clubhouse and pool, BBQ area, fitness center, and a bark park.
“I think that will be the best thing for them to build apartment buildings right here like they did on Witchduck," Flight said. "Now that community built up, it looks nice, people love to move in. So I think that would be really nice.”
The Breeden Company calls the site the "122 Mac" project. Breeden said the project will likely cost more than $100 million.