If you’ve driven Waterman Drive lately, or looked at the quarry from the Park View side of town and wondered what happens to it, the city’s records have an answer. It’s the largest residential project on Harrisonburg’s tracker right now, and almost nobody has heard of it.
Quarry Heights
The City of Harrisonburg’s development tracker lists this project as Quarry Heights, at 85 Waterman Dr, tax map parcels 036 T 1, 036 T 5, and 037 C 3. Its status is Under Site Plan Review, a status it has held since mid-August and still shows as of September 15, 2026.
It is a residential project of 630 units: 56 single-family homes and 574 townhouses.
To be clear about which quarry: this is the Waterman Drive quarry on the west side of the city, between Park View and the farmland toward Mount Clinton Pike. It is a different site from the one off Country Club Road that I wrote about in the data center post.
The aerial above is the Virginia Base Mapping Program’s most recent public imagery of the site. It shows the quarry as it is today, not a rendering of the project.
The concept plan the city approved
Concept plan by Valley Engineering for Waterman Investments, from the City of Harrisonburg Planning Commission packet (October 2024). The layout is conceptual and was not proffered, so the built version can differ.
The land
The site plan covers three parcels totaling about 129 acres, with Aichus LLC listed as the owner of record. The full Quarry Heights rezoning covered about 161 acres across 51, 75, and 85 Waterman Drive plus parcels on West Market Street and Brickstone Court, and the quarry itself becomes a roughly 35-acre lake at the center of it.
This one did go to a hearing
Unlike most of what’s on the city’s tracker, Quarry Heights was not a by-right project. Waterman Investments took five applications through the Planning Commission on October 9, 2024, and City Council held its public hearing on November 26, 2024. The rezoning from R-1, R-2, B-2, and M-1 to R-5C and R-8C passed on December 10, 2024, along with a Comprehensive Plan amendment and three special use permits.
What the approval allows, per the city’s staff report and the signed proffers:
- No more than 953 dwelling units across the whole 161 acres
- No more than 300 apartments (the rental section, planned near West Market Street)
- No more than 653 townhouse, villa, and single-family units, of which at least 45 must be detached single-family homes
- The developer’s own plan at the time described 653 townhouse and villa units, 264 apartments, and 48 single-family homes, everything except the apartments intended for sale
- Proffers cover the quarry-lake safety and access, tree buffers, a public trail network, clubhouses, bus shelters, EV charging, and a list of road improvements
The 630 units on the tracker today (56 single-family, 574 townhouse) are the R-8C portion at 85 Waterman Drive, which is the first site plan submitted. The apartment section would come through as its own site plan.
Where this sits in the pipeline
Citywide, the tracker shows 48 projects under construction (709 housing units), 30 with plans approved (919 units), and 11 under site plan review (927 units). Quarry Heights alone is two-thirds of that last number, and it hasn’t even filed the apartment section yet.
Those stages are not equivalent. Units under construction are the ones that will reach the market in the near term. Site plan review is years earlier, and some projects at that stage never get built at all, so treat 630 as a ceiling rather than a forecast. Even so, a project this size is the kind of thing that changes the supply picture in Harrisonburg for a decade, and it’s worth watching. I’ll update this post as the status changes.
Source
City of Harrisonburg development project tracker and Real Estate and Ownership GIS, read directly from the city’s published data on September 15, 2026, plus the Planning Commission staff report, concept plan, and signed proffers in the city’s public agenda packets for the October 9, 2024 Planning Commission and November 26 and December 10, 2024 City Council meetings. Project names come from the city’s record and are not confirmations from the owner or developer named. Status can change.
Seeing something go up near you and wondering what it is? Send me the cross streets and I’ll look it up in the records.