Letters to the editor

Lamenting the
“Automotive Mall”

In the August 8 edition of C-VILLE, in the Opinionated column by Mayor David Brown [“We’re No. 1! How do we keep it that way?”], he talks of why Char-lottesville is such a wonderful place to live, listing as one of the reasons the “bustling pedestrian mall.” If he is so proud of the pedestrian mall, why has he allowed three of the six streets to have vehicular cross traffic, so that it is no longer a pedestrian mall? So much of the Mall space has been rented to street vendors and restaurants that at times it is difficult to walk at all. Families can no longer allow their children to run free without worrying if they will be hit by a car crossing the Mall. Families going to the Discovery Museum cannot permit their children to go ahead. What used to be the envy of a lot of communities across the country is no longer. So don’t call it a pedestrian mall when it no longer is.

Not-so-smart growth

In an interview, Arin Sime voiced his opposition to the smart growth and water protection policies in Albemarle County that are working to make the region as a whole a great place to live [“Libertarian Arin Sime on county development,” Development News, August 15]. Before Mr. Sime advocates letting developers have a free-for-all in Albemarle County, perhaps he should take a tour of Northern Virginia or Hampton Roads, two regions that have long been afflicted by the blight of poorly planned growth. In both of these areas people pay some of the highest taxes in the state, spend hours every day commuting on crammed highways, have rivers where no one can fish or swim and reservoirs that are almost too dirty to drink from.
    Clustering and similar initiatives exist because they work effectively to reduce the number of roads and minimize development’s impact on natural areas, yet Mr. Sime opposes them for no articulated reason. Private conservation easements are great, but without a coordinated plan for development they merely preserve land in a Swiss-cheese style, which can actually make sprawl worse by forcing it to spread out further away from population centers like Charlottesville. Mountain overlays are also important, serving to protect our drinking water by preventing erosion in steep areas where it can do the most damages to our rivers and reservoirs.
    Mr. Sime claims that he wants to focus on individual landowners, but his policies will really put power in the hands of a few big developers who are responsible for a vast majority of development in Albemarle County. While some of these developers will act in the best interests of the community, many are more interested in maximizing profit at the expense of the community, or live outside the region and therefore have no vested interest in protecting Albemarle County’s way of life.
The ideas that Mr. Sime proposes have already been demonstrated to be detrimental to communities. I see no reason why the Charlottesville area should fail to heed the lessons that other communities have been forced to learn the hard way. If we want to preserve our unique community, and its natural resources, we need to act to ensure that development benefits everyone, not just a privileged few.

Kids for nuclear power

Energy activists come in all shapes and sizes.
    In addition to anti-nuclear activists in attendance at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Environ-mental Quality meetings on August 16 [“Lake Anna plants set for public input,” Government News, August 8], there is a strong pro-nuclear voice in attendance called the North American Young Genera-tion for Nuclear. While we agree that renewables and conservation are important, they are simply not enough to meet the demands of our ever-increasing population and eliminate our dependence on polluting fossil fuels.
    Nuclear energy in the United States and North America has a long record of safety and reliability. It produces massive amounts of clean energy for a tiny fraction of the waste that is emitted by fossil fuels. What’s best is that the “waste” from nuclear energy is 95 percent recyclable.
    A true alliance for clean energy would recognize the valuable part that nuclear has played and will continue to play in the future. That’s probably why Greenpeace founder Dr. Patrick Moore now supports nuclear energy.

Respect the code!

In the August 15 issue of C-VILLE, Mr. Will Goldsmith reported on the denial of a preliminary site plan request by Estes Street Partners for a four-storey development [“City planning commission rejects Fifeville project,” Development News]. I applaud the planning commission’s action, and would like to clarify some facts presented in the article.
    I strongly believe that Estes Street Partners brought this decision upon themselves. If they had worked more constructively with the neighborhood and the City, they would not find themselves in this position. Theirs is the story of would-be developers brought down by their own arrogance.
    The zoning code only allows two storeys and 15 units “by right” for a residential development on this site. But Estes Street Partners wanted to maximize their profits by building four storeys and 30 units. They could only do that by: 1) getting a “special use” permit, or 2) making the development mixed-use.
    Last fall, they tried to get a special use permit, but the City deferred (not denied, as reported) the application, because the proposal failed to meet any of the characteristics required by the Cherry Avenue corridor zoning. It did not encourage dynamic street life. It did not de-emphasize parking facilities. It did not encourage mixed-use development. It was not appropriate in scale to the neighborhood. It did not minimize the impact of parking facilities. It did not create landscaped areas for pedestrian use. It did not encourage alternative forms of transportation. It did not encourage neighborhood-enhancing economic activity. It did not encourage neighborhood participation. In other words, it did nothing to respond to the intent of the zoning code. So the planning commission told Estes Street Partners that the special use permit would be deferred until the developer was willing to meet with the neighborhood and respond to the code.
Estes Street Partners was unwilling to do either. They have been unwilling to change any part of their plan, and they have been unwilling to work with the neighborhood, because they (mistakenly, I think) believe that this would mean compromising the profits that they hope to make from the project.
In their most recent request to the planning commission, Estes Street Partners tried to get around the code by inserting 835 square feet of “commercial space” (1.89 percent of the total area) in order to claim that the project was “mixed use.” In other words, they renamed their sales office as commercial use in order to try to build their 30 units of profit-making condominiums. This was a cynical insult to the City, the commission, the neighborhood, and the code itself. The project still does nothing to respond to the intent of the zoning code.
The developers tried to claim that their proposal was now “by right” development. This is nonsense. Their proposal has twice the density of a “by right” development. It remains completely unchang-ed from the special use permit application. It is still a request to build twice the allowed number of residential units while disregarding every aspect of the intent of the code.
The planning commission was absolutely right to deny approval. This would-be developer has shown nothing but disrespect for the City in this process. Until they change their attitude, they will continue to bring only disgrace upon themselves and their partners. I sincerely hope that they will reconsider their approach, since many in the neighborhood, myself included, support development (and even density!) on this site—but only if it respects the interests of the entire community and the language of the code.

CORRECTION

In last week’s edition of 7 Days, due to an editing error and a reporting error, we mischaracterized two aspects of BP Alter-native Energy’s acquisition of Charlottes-ville company Greenlight Energy, Inc. Greenlight is a developer of large wind energy projects, but not other alternative energy projects. In addition, BP intends to invest $8 billion into a range of alternative energy businesses, not just Greenlight, over the next decade.