Environmental and Natural Resource Site Development Support
Confidential Commercial Real Estate Developer • Mechanicsville, VA
Solution Overview
Client:
Confidential commercial real estate developer
Business Challenge:
- Redevelopment of a site with on-site wetlands and sensitive environmental receptors
Solution:
- Customized natural resource evaluation, mitigation, and permitting services
Results:
- Completion of the project with minimal impacts and in half the time estimated, saving the client time and money
Challenge
The client’s plan included redevelopment of the site as a discount grocery store. Given the site location and natural setting, this developer needed a firm with expertise in natural resource evaluation, mitigation, and permitting, who also maintained an excellent relationship with regulatory agencies.
Solution
Apex Companies provided customized natural resource evaluation, mitigation, and permitting services at a 50-acre commercial parcel in Mechanicsville, Virginia.
Our services included:
- Field delineation of on-site wetlands
- Mitigation site review and feasibility study
- Functional assessment/Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act assessment
- Perennial stream determination
- Nutrient offset evaluation and support
- Threatened and endangered species evaluation
- Historic resources evaluation
- Alternatives analysis
- 401/404 Permitting with Virginia and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
- Agency coordination for natural and water resource components of the project
Apex performed a delineation of Waters of the United States (WOTUS) and a Resource Protection Area (RPA) determination/perennial stream determination for the property which determined the limits and extents of jurisdictional boundaries, limits of RPA buffers, and better defined the connectivity of WOTUS on the property, thus reducing or eliminating the impediments that were faced when a competitor evaluated the property.
Results
Apex worked with the client and client’s engineer to reduce impacts from one acre to less than 0.1-acre of impact to WOTUS and reduce the permit project area to less than 0.2-acre based on intended development of the commercial parcel. The reduction in impact and project area reduced the scope of the agency’s reviews, eliminated the need for compensatory mitigation, and ultimately reduced the permitting timeline and follow‑on requirements by at least six months. The permit was obtained in less than 45 days.
Apex was able to reduce the natural resource evaluation and permitting timeline to less than six months, when a previous competitor was on a one- to two-year timeline. The reduction in timeline, impacts, and avoidance of RPA buffers provided our client with a significant reduction in fees and back-end costs, providing a significantly shorter permitting timeline which allowed our client to focus on other critical path issues. Apex was able to save the client time and money, making the project more successful than the client had ever expected.