"We look forward to serving our new customers soon."
That's the line Publix gave a Richmond television station on September 9, when the grocery chain confirmed it had signed a lease for a new store at the corner of Woolridge and Old Hundred roads. If you live in Foxcroft, that corner isn't an abstraction. It's the intersection your HOA lists as the neighborhood's own access point to I-288, the route most residents already use to get anywhere that isn't Hull Street.
The announcement is real. The store is not close. Two separate construction projects are stacked on top of each other at that intersection right now, and only one of them has anything to do with groceries.
What Publix Actually Signed Up For
The lease is for a store of a little over 50,000 square feet at a development called the Shoppes at Old Hundred, on roughly 18 acres at the southwest corner of Woolridge and Old Hundred. The developer, Morgan Company, describes it as sitting in "one of the fastest-growing residential corridors in Chesterfield County," and the plan includes about 15,300 square feet of additional retail space plus two outparcels for restaurants or other businesses. Publix itself expects to employ around 140 people at the location.
None of that is under construction yet. Morgan Company's own release states that construction on the Shoppes at Old Hundred is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2027, with the project finished in the third quarter of 2028. A signed lease means a location is locked in. It does not mean a building permit, a groundbreaking, or a stocked shelf. For Foxcroft, the honest timeline is a wait of roughly two years before there's anything to actually shop at.
The Project That's Already Underway
While that retail site sits untouched, the road in front of it is a different story. Chesterfield County has been working for years to close the gap in Woolridge Road between Route 288 and Old Hundred Road, the last piece needed to make Woolridge a continuous route through western Chesterfield. In November 2025, the county's Board of Supervisors approved a $42 million contract with Wagman Heavy Civil to build that 1.25-mile segment, part of an overall $54.3 million project funded mostly through the Central Virginia Transportation Authority.
That contract started in December 2025. It's been under construction, in other words, since before this year's Publix announcement even happened. The finished project calls for a four-lane divided road, a traffic signal where Woolridge meets Route 288, a roundabout where Woolridge meets Old Hundred, and a shared-use path and sidewalk running the length of the new stretch. County officials have described it as the connective piece linking Midlothian to the Moseley area, closing a route that residents have been asking about for years.
The county even built in a financial incentive for early delivery: Wagman becomes eligible for a bonus payout for every day it finishes ahead of schedule, starting sometime after November 2027. That detail matters for one reason. It tells you the county itself doesn't expect this to wrap up quickly. The earliest the incentive window even opens is more than a year from now.
Two Timelines, One Intersection
| Project | Started | Status as of September 2026 | Expected completion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woolridge Road extension (Route 288 to Old Hundred Road) | December 2025 | Under construction | Incentive window for early finish opens November 2027 |
| Shoppes at Old Hundred (Publix-anchored retail center) | Lease signed September 2026 | Not yet under construction | Construction begins Q2 2027, project complete Q3 2028 |
Lay those two rows next to each other and the overlap becomes obvious. Sometime in 2027, Foxcroft residents will likely be driving past an active grocery store construction site on land that borders an active road construction site, both accessed from the same stretch of Old Hundred Road the neighborhood already relies on. The road work started first and, by the county's own framing, isn't guaranteed to be done even by the time the shopping center breaks ground.
Why This Corner Carries Weight for Foxcroft Specifically
This isn't a story about county-wide growth in the abstract. Foxcroft's own description of itself points straight at this intersection: the neighborhood sits off the Woolridge Road corridor, with access to I-288 by way of Old Hundred Road. That's the same Old Hundred that's about to have a roundabout built into it, on the same Woolridge that's currently a construction zone between Route 288 and that roundabout's future location.
Other projects nearby have leaned on this same stretch of road as a selling point for future residential growth. A 443-unit townhome and condo development proposed northwest of Otterdale and Old Hundred roads is tied to the same Woolridge extension, and its developer agreed to pay Chesterfield County $1.6 million toward road improvements and another $1 million toward a drainage crossing over Tomahawk Creek as part of that approval. None of that changes what Foxcroft residents experience day to day, but it's a sign of how much is converging on this single corridor at once. The road isn't just getting finished. It's becoming the spine that several new developments are counting on.
What Doesn't Change While All This Is Happening
None of the construction touches what already makes Foxcroft function as a neighborhood day to day. The clubhouse, pool, two tennis courts, and four playgrounds that the HOA maintains are all inside the subdivision, untouched by anything happening at the Woolridge and Old Hundred intersection. The Foxcroft FAST Fins, the neighborhood's summer swim team, still competes out of the community's own yards pool as part of the Chesterfield Aquatic League, and that season runs on its own calendar regardless of what's happening a few hundred yards away on Old Hundred Road. Families whose kids walk to Cosby High School or attend Woolridge Elementary and Tomahawk Middle aren't affected by a retail lease signed in September or a road contract that started last December.
What does change, gradually, over the next year or two, is the drive out. Anyone using Old Hundred Road to reach Route 288 should expect a construction environment there through at least 2027, with a second construction phase for the retail center layering on top starting around the same time the road work is targeted to wrap. The Publix opening, whenever it lands in 2028, will be the finish line for a process that's already well underway. It just isn't the starting gun everyone assumed it was in September.
If you're trying to figure out how any of this touches a specific property near that corridor, or you just want a straight answer about what's changing on your commute, the team at Rick Cox Realty Group fields these questions from Foxcroft neighbors regularly and is happy to walk through what we know so far.
