Eagle Village Drive To Open In Days

The new connector road between Mary Washington Hospital and Eagle Village is expected to open for traffic in the next four or five days, said UMW Foundation CEO Jeff Rountree.

Rountree was among a dozen local officials at a Route 1 Corridor Businesses meeting at the Fredericksburg Area Chamber of Commerce this morning. Rountree said there was about a five-week delay in opening the road because of weather conditions impacting the asphalt schedule. All the road needs is a top coat and striping. He said hospital employees tell him it was always easier for them to go to Central Park because of the traffic, but this connector road will certainly benefit Eagle Village businesses.

"There's no doubt that's going to have a very positive impact on businesses there," he said.

Sweet Frog, a frozen yogurt business, is preparing to open this week in Eagle Village, Rountree announced. Also, the Eagle Village Hotel will be a Hyatt hotel with about 93 suites and studios. He said he hopes the foundation will award a bid in April.

"Unless we hit a snag, we should be under construction in late May or early June," he said.

Rountree said Country Cookin', a buffet-style restaurant, signed a new lease and that business plans to rebuild itself.

"That's a very good tenant of ours," he said. "They serve a niche clientele and do very good business."

Rountree also mentioned the $55-million, 100,000-plus-square-foot campus center project at the University of Mary Washington is in the design phase and they are reconfiguring the project to fit into budget. He said the design phase should finish in September and construction should start in May-June 2013. He said the building will compliment the community with meeting space and a bookstore. This is a public-private project between UMW and the UMW Foundation, which will sell the campus center to UMW when it is finished.

The Convergance Center that Rountree said will be shoehorned between the UMW Library and Alve Hall in a ravine is a "neat project." The 76,000-square-foot, $40-million project connects Information Technology, teaching and learning into one building that will also house UMW's data center. He said it is a very unique building that this area does not have. Both projects are green construction and will be LEDE certified.

The Convergence Center is scheduled to open in Fall 2014 and the Campus Center is expected to open in the 2015 school year.