Lots of moving and shaking is going on at Rush River Commons as you enter the Town of Washington. Our new Food Pantry has its walls up and its roof on.

I had the pleasure to walk through the other day with Richie Burke and Rick Lessard to see the wonderful high ceilings and windows. This will bring in light to fresh new aisles. A walk-in refrigerator/freezer provided by a grant from the PATH Foundation will store our meat and vegetables that are donated or purchased from local farms. We will have privacy areas to interview our clients, and a new loading dock to safely unload supplies by our numerous volunteers from local grocery store donations.

I stopped at the Washington post office on Friday, Jan. 12 to pick up mail and noticed that the crew trailer at Rush River Commons, across from the post office, had been moved down the fence a ways, and that the crew had brought in more dirt. Several days ago it looked like a pond.

The Commission on Local Government, a division of the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, will hold its first hearing on the town’s boundary line adjustment proposal on Jan. 5.

The Washington Town Council approved a landscape plan and utilities application Monday for the Rush River Commons’ development as construction continues along Warren Avenue.

Some of the landscaping will now encroach onto the town-owned Leggett Lane property. Town attorney Martin Crim said he will negotiate an encroachment license with representatives of Black Kettle, the organization that owns the development, which will be responsible for maintenance of the plants.

For many in Rappahannock County, the approval process for Rush River Commons was the main game. But behind the scenes teams of engineers already were busy, wrangling with their own major task: how to build on a site that any for-profit developer in their right mind likely wouldn’t touch.