When Tina Collins read the first page of the draft Small Area 8 plan for Mayfield, one bullet point in particular gave her pause.
Under a section titled “challenges,” it states that “there are vacant and aging commercial properties” in the area that includes Airport Avenue.
“It makes me wonder if anyone on the planning commission has bothered to actually drive down Airport Avenue,” said Collins, whose husband John Collins has owned and operated All Car Service for the past 43 years. “Except for the car wash and three wooded lots, every lot is occupied by a business that asks nothing from the City of Fredericksburg except to take our taxes.”
While public hearings earlier this summer drew concerns about residential displacement, Collins and another Airport Avenue business owner told the city’s planning commission on Wednesday night that the proposed rezoning to Creative Maker District directly threatens their blue-collar livelihoods.
“What you’ve planned for us is everything we are not,” Collins said of Creative Maker, a zoning designation that is generally more inclusive of commercial uses. “There’s no other conclusion than you want us gone.”
John Cooper, who has operated a mechanical services business off Airport Avenue for the past 32 years, took issue with the plan’s intention to turn the road into “a neighborhood street rather than a regional cut-through.”
“Who’s going to go down there for a bakery?” Cooper asked. “I think this is just trying to throw us out. The blue-collar worker doing work that nobody wants to see. Nobody goes down Airport Avenue.”
However, after receiving assurances from city planning staff that all of the existing uses along Airport Avenue could continue, the commission voted 6-0 to recommend approval of a comprehensive plan amendment and zoning map amendment for approximately 33 acres in the area, which also includes Dixon Street and Mayfield.
For example, while “Automotive Services” uses require a Special Use permit under Creative Maker zoning, existing businesses like All Car Service would be grandfathered in, Planning Commission Chair David Durham explained. Additionally, the same use would be permitted within two years were any of the Airport Avenue business owners to sell.
“What we’re saying here is that all of the existing uses can continue without any issue, and many of them would be permitted, right?” Durham asked Bailey Thompson of the city’s planning department.
“Right,” Thompson replied.
The areas proposed for rezoning are currently zoned either Light Industrial, R-4 Residential and Commercial Highway. No existing homes are included in the rezoning.
The Small 8 plan process began in July 2024 and has included several community meetings — including two with the Mayfield Civic Association. In response to residents’ concerns about displacement, staff revised the draft amendment to include specific language about anti-displacement measures.
For example, the city will “coordinate with Economic Development to package and promote economic incentives available to Area 8 residents, employers, and developers to ensure access and support for local investment.”
Other additions to the amendment acknowledge Mayfield’s history as an accessible area for Black residents during the Jim Crow era.
“Mayfield is locally significant for its embodiment of racial segregation in the physical landscape of Fredericksburg, as well as for the triumph of the Black community over these struggles by creating its own self-contained, self-supporting neighborhood where they could safely live and socialize,” the amendment states.
The Small Area 8 plan will next go before City Council for approval, a process that will include another public hearing.
