$550 million development planned for Pittsylvania’s Axton area

Plans for a $550 million mixed-use development in Pittsylvania County’s Axton area include a five-story, 150-room hotel and a 180,000-square-foot shopping center anchored by a grocery store, but it’s the project’s housing component that most interests the county’s economic development director, Matthew Rowe.

“First and foremost,” he says, “it is addressing a major need … for all types of housing in our area.”

Rowe anticipates that the entire Southern Virginia region will see an influx of workers as the Caesars Virginia resort casino makes additional hires before the casino’s planned opening late this year. Meanwhile, Pittsylvania’s Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill is in contention for a lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility that could create another 1,500 jobs.

Plans for the 580-acre development, which does not yet have a name, call for about 1,800 housing units — roughly 1,500 townhouses and single-family homes and 300 apartments — plus two senior living facilities. One will be an independent care campus with 100 units and the other will be an assisted living memory care facility.

The project is being developed by Southside Investing, a limited liability company created for the project with Tony Salah, Todd Curtis, Dale Harris and Tom Gallagher as principals. Three of the four partners have ties to the region. Salah’s family has been in the Pittsylvania County area since the 1760s, and Curtis and Harris, who are also from the area, originally bought 342 acres of the Axton project in April 2022 for hunting and fishing, Salah says. Later, the team bought the remaining 237 acres. The partners became interested after learning about the 4,300 direct jobs and $1.25 billion in economic development investment the Danville region has attracted since 2018.

“We had some jaws-open moments where we’re learning about what is already in Danville and the region and what is potentially coming,” Salah says.

Says Rowe: “We made them disciples and believers.”

Southside Investing gained the necessary rezoning approvals for the project in August 2023 and is conducting pre-construction engineering. Construction could begin in the next 12 months, Salah says.

Developers say the order and speed of delivering the project’s components will depend on the market, but anticipate that the apartments will come first, followed by the rest in phases that could take 10 years to complete. 

Associate Editor Robyn Sidersky contributed to this story.