On Friday, September 10, four bands will perform on the patio outside Daily Grind Coffee House & Cafe in the Promenade Shops, across from Short Pump Town Center, to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Featured acts include Rod & Elana Hymer, Jimmy Catlett, Mark Slomski and Mystr Treefrog. The event is free, but collection cans will be placed on tables to raise money for the Foundation and their Walk To Cure Diabetes event. The first act begins at 6:30 p.m. and music runs through 9:00 p.m. More information can be found on the Daily Grind website.

On Saturday, September 11, Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a nationwide nonprofit created by a former Richmond resident, will hold what they’re calling “Richmond’s Biggest Bake Sale.” Volunteers will sell cookies at the Short Pump Walmart at Broad and Pouncey Tract from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Six Carytown retailers and two Midlothian businesses are also participating. Through local bake sales across the country, Cookies for Kids’ Cancer provides support for individuals, communities and businesses to help fight pediatric cancer. In recognition of Pediatric Cancer Month, all money raised during Richmond’s bake sales will be doubled through a matching grant by Glad Products. More information is available on the Cookies For Kids’ Cancer website.

Moseley Architects, no stranger to design work with Henrico County Public Schools, worked to make the school as environmentally friendly as possible, beginning with the construction process itself. Contractors employed low-emitting materials including the paints, sealants, coatings and composite woods. They also installed low-flow plumbing fixtures that use 40% less water over standard fixtures.

Outside the building is a bioretention stormwater pond and an underground rainwater tank for the reuse of as much water as possible. Bike paths and racks encourage alternative transportation to and from adjacent neighborhoods and preferred parking and drop-off zones are provided exclusively for low-emissions and fuel efficient vehicles.

At full capacity, Holman Middle School can comfortably accomodate 900 students and 60 staff members. The school will provide relief to the nearby overcrowded Short Pump Middle School and will draw predominately from the Wyndham Forest, Twin Hickory and Innsbrook developments, mostly west of Interstate 295 and north of Interstate 64. A map of the current attendance boundaries for Holman Middle School can be found on the HCPS website.

Casa Grande is situated in the outparcel that originally housed Bottoms Up Pizza, followed by Paradise Pizza, a short stint by the same owners and management of Bottoms Up. Owner James Jones broke ties as a franchise of the Shockoe Bottom location after repeated customer comments that the Short Pump location’s pizza wasn’t held in the same regard as the original restaurant, despite the fact that, according to Jones, all pizza ingredients used were identical.

John Rolfe Parkway, a segment of which recently opened to compensate for the old Three Chopt Road route and alleviate traffic, still lacks a way for drivers to get into West Broad Village without merging onto West Broad Street and fight throngs of traffic. That’s about to change with a new entrance.

The new entrance and exit to the mixed use development will be located behind the Short Pump Station shopping center which houses Petco and Trader Joe’s, to name a few tenants. West Broad Village’s new developer, E/Class Partners, is constructing the entrance to help with traffic flow.

Ease of ingress and egress and a cohesive flow of traffic between developments are some of the many requirements of the County of Henrico’s West Broad Street Overlay District, a special strategy area set up by County planners and meant to help encourage high quality development standards from Interstate 64 to just west of Short Pump Town Center.

Examples of connected planned developments include the roads around Short Pump Town Center. The mall is linked to the Towne Center West development to the west and to the Downtown Short Pump shopping center to the east via a series of two lane access roads.

The plan also calls for limited access to and from commercial developments near established residential neighborhoods. In keeping with this standard, West Broad Village’s original developer, Unicorp National Developments of Florida, agreed not to provide any access to the development from Three Chopt Road.

No word on when the new entrance will open to traffic.

Residents say Doverton Road, which was closed September 1st, caused motorists to speed between their neighborhoods, which will obviously cease now that the road has been dead-ended in two locations. Others say John Rolfe Parkway will ultimately bring more traffic to their communities overall and cause longer commute times for residents who will now have to navigate their way through other neighborhoods in order to get to main roads such as Pump Road and Ridgefield Parkway.

Interact: Do you live in the affected areas? Leave your comments about the roadway division below.

The vandalism incident occurred at the school in June. Henrico General District Court Judge James S. Yoffy sentenced Fowlkes to nine months in jail. He must also pay $100 for each charge and just over $200 for cleanup costs.

Fowlkes appealed his conviction but remains in jail. He faces a hearing September 1 for the alleged burglary incident.

The female victim in the Wellesley case was grabbed by Coburn on a jogging trail on Park Terrace Drive between Lauderdale Drive and Three Chopt Road on June 10, 2010. She fought back and Coburn fled the scene in a small light colored pickup truck with a Washington Redskins sticker on the rear window.

On Tuesday, two separate exposures occurred within minutes of each other in the area of River Road near the Collegiate School where Coburn drove up to the victims in a silver Toyota RAV 4, engaged them in conversation, exposed his genitals and began engaging in lewd sexual behavior. The victims were able to obtain the tag number of Coburn’s vehicle, leading to his arrest.

Through the investigation, Coburn was identified as the suspect in the three cases by Henrico Police. Warrants were obtained and Coburn was taken into custody in Appomattox County, where he resides.

Coburn is suspected in other exposure incidents which are still under investigation.

While many residents have offered up suggestions such as making the Pouncey Tract or Pump Road signals stay green longer, it may not be that simple. According to VDOT spokeswoman Dawn Eischen, there are a number of factors that complicate the situation.

“If we were to give more green time to side streets, the result would be gridlock conditions on Broad Street, other side streets and business entrances would become blocked by traffic congestion, the I-64 ramps and westbound Broad Street through lanes would become blocked with stopped vehicles, and there would be major congestion on Interstate 64 in both directions as drivers attempt to access Broad Street,” Eischen said.

Other suggestions such as adding turn lanes to Pouncey Tract Road at West Broad Street also aren’t likely happening anytime soon. “Any adjustments to turn lanes or adding additional lanes at the Broad Street and Pouncey Tract Road intersection would require VDOT to purchase property from businesses at that intersection,” says Eischen. “That would significantly increase the cost of intersection improvements and cause major impacts to those businesses.”

According to recent statistics, West Broad Street carries as many as 86,000 vehicles per day in Short Pump, which is more than Interstate 95 just south of Ashland. Eischen says light cycles for vehicles entering West Broad Street from side roads will become even shorter in order to keep traffic flowing. The good news is that the signals do in fact adapt to traffic volumes.

Signals along the Broad Street corridor operate in “traffic responsive mode” which means the system constantly evaluates vehicle volumes and patterns at numerous locations to determine and implement the appropriate traffic signal timing plans, which can be activated in under two minutes. Eischen says the system responds automatically to weather events, unexpected variations of school and business schedules, holiday traffic and accidents. She says the entire light cycle at the Broad and Pouncey Tract light is between 100 and 114 seconds and no lengthening of that cycle is expected.

The intersection of West Broad Street and Brookriver Drive, named the second most dangerous intersection in Henrico, will have signal timing adjustments, though. Those are expected to be complete by October 2010.

The intersection’s best hope are new roadways to provide relief, according to VDOT. “We anticipate traffic along the Broad Street corridor will experience some relief once the North Gayton Connector is complete,” Eischen says. “VDOT will re-evaluate signal timings and make adjustments wherever needed after this project is complete.”

Recent developments have caused a significant amount of new traffic on West Broad Street as well. According to VDOT statistics:

• 12,000 additional vehicles per day from Town Center West
• 12,000 additional vehicles per day from The Corner at Short Pump, including the new Kroger
• 14,000 additional vehicles per day from developments near Three Chopt Road
• 31,000 additional vehicles per day from West Broad Village

Other notable increases include traffic volumes on Pouncey Tract Road just north of Broad Street exceeding 31,000 vehicles per day and Broad Street between Gayton Road and Route 288′s daily volumes increasing from 16,000 in 2003 to more than 28,000 in 2007. A recent 24-hour vehicle count taken on Monday, March 7, 2010 shows 24,223 vehicles using Broad Street on that day.

Do you have ideas or suggestions to help alleviate traffic throughout Short Pump? Leave them in the comments below.

The store would be only the second doughnut shop in Short Pump since the opening of Daylight Donuts in Innsbrook in June.

Upon further examination, the squad discovered the backpack contained electronic equipment and food, but detonated it as a precaution around 3:15 p.m.

There’s no word on the origin of the backpack, but police deemed the contents safe, detonating only as a precaution.