Month: August 2008

Devin Schneider is proudly sporting dark khakis, a blue tie and a big smile the morning of July 31. It is an important day for him: He is drug-free and has been for a whole year.

Roughly a year ago, Schneider was arrested for possession (he would not tell this reporter the substance) while studying at the University of Mary Washington. He pleaded guilty and was admitted to the Charlottesville/Albemarle Drug Court Program, where he submitted to daily drug tests, made weekly court appearances, attended intensive substance abuse rehabilitation and got a full-time job.

Schneider struggled at the beginning, getting sanctioned for using alcohol, thus prolonging his stay in the program. But one night, as clichéd as it may sound, his life changed when he met Jimmy.

James E. Crenshaw III helped inspire Devin Schneider as they both quit drugs and alcohol to avoid jail time for drug offenses.

“Jimmy and I were in the same treatment group, and he needed a ride home, so I drove him and we just clicked,” says Schneider. James E. Crenshaw III is a fellow graduate of the program, and, unlike Schneider, was an inspiration to drug court officers from the start. Crenshaw kept an eye on Schneider, pushing him to stay positive and encouraging him to follow the strict rules. They became close friends and depended on each other to stay sober.

Crenshaw’s stellar performance was attributed to his determination to be a good father and son. His drug court officer shared his journey, praising his courage to admit he felt isolated, alone. At a very early age he started smoking marijuana and his use only increased with time.

Now he wants to go back to school and get a degree in computer science. “I plan on staying out of trouble and catching up on my child support,” says Crenshaw. He is currently working as a full-time cook at the local IHOP.

On July 31, they both stood tall in front of a packed courtroom receiving praises from Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire and featured speaker, Bob Gibson, former Charlottesville reporter and current executive director of the Sorensen Institute.

The drug court program is an alternative to incarceration, and a more successful one at that, says Jeff Gould, drug court administrator. Schneider and Crenshaw were among the four graduates of the program, which enrolls 45 to 50 people. Gould is proud to say the program is not only more efficient in recovery rates than incarceration, but also in its cost: The state spends on average $22,000 on a year of incarceration versus a quarter of that in drug court. In this year’s General Assembly session, House Republicans made an effort to cut funding to the program, though drug court ended up escaping the legislative scalpel.

After graduating, Crenshaw and Schneider walked out of the courtroom hugging family and friends. Both graduates are already planning their future.

“I am going back to Mary Washington and [will] study economics,” says Schneider. “But my dream is to be a sports journalist.” Crenshaw’s dream, on the other hand, involves traveling—if not physically, at least in his thoughts. “I want to go on an island and hang back in the sun.”

Worked for the library for: 3 years

Resides in: Albemarle County

Job title: Circulation assistant. Downing checks books in and out, organizes books on the shelves, and issues library cards.

Best of times: Being around others. “I’m able to help people. I love to see the children in here over the summer. It’s better that they’re here—they could be doing anything else.”

Worst of times: People’s complaints against others using the library. “People don’t remember that it’s a public library and not private. They’ll come up and complain that they don’t like that there are people at a table in the back who are homeless sitting there. That actually annoys me.”

Amanda Downing

Strangest moment on the job: Finding unusual items on the bookshelf. “Sometimes when I’m shelving a book, I won’t always find books. I’ll find maybe a loaf of bread.”

If she were a superhero, she’d be: A superhero from her own imagination, Bookbinder. “I’d be able to move books without using a cart, be able to be the bookmobile without wheels.”

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An Albemarle County report lays out a need for more light industrial zoning, and Will Yancey is proposing a business park on the outskirts of Crozet that would add 150 acres of light industrial. Yet Yancey is smashing against a well-established county principle that opposes expanding the growth areas.

Light industrial is a broad zoning classification that includes everything from auto body shops to biotech manufacturing. Over the last 12 years, Albemarle County has seen significant shifts in its workforce, losing thousands of manufacturing jobs while gaining hundreds of positions in fields like computer design, company management and electronic shipping. The recent real estate boom, with its emphasis on residential and retail, led to higher rents and, in some cases like Willow Glen, rezonings of light industrial land for housing and stores. Assuming a 3.5 percent annual growth rate, county staff projects a need for 300 additional acres of light industrial land by 2026.

Will Yancey is proposing a 148-acre business park in the wedge between Interstate 64 and Route 250, but the idea failed to captivate the county Planning Commission because it’s outside the Crozet growth area. The boundary extends to Route 250.

Yancey is enthusiastic about his plans for a new business park in the wedge of southern Crozet between I-64 and Route 250, and will choose whether to submit a comprehensive plan amendment for the project by September.

“We have had very preliminary and informal talks with a number of local businesses, many who seem interested in exploring the possibility of using our site should it be approved,” says Yancey via e-mail. He says that the business park could keep light industrial users in the county “rather than relocating with their tax dollars to a surrounding county as many have done recently.”

Yancey’s idea would likely be applauded—if it were sited a few hundred feet closer to Crozet. The land, owned by members of the Yancey family, lies behind the Yancey Lumber Mill and just outside the Crozet growth area. Largely for that reason, the proposal was met with skepticism by the county Planning Commission during a work session July 30.

“We need to identify land for light industrial development in the growth area and to try to find ways to economically allow land to be used for that purpose,” says Commissioner Jon Cannon. “But my view is also that there’s a strong presumption that land be identified within the existing growth area.”

Almost 30 years ago, as a way of reducing sprawl, Albemarle County supervisors drew lines around 5 percent of county land where they wanted to see growth; the rest was called “rural area,” where development would be discouraged. Even though it is in between two major highways and near water and sewer hook-ups, Yancey’s proposed business park is officially in the rural area.

In the past 16 months, the Board of Supervisors has held firm against two rural area rezonings—one for an indoor soccer complex off Polo Grounds Road, the other a sports entertainment center just south of Pantops—despite the fact that they were both just outside the growth area. The Board passed a resolution of intent to expand the growth area by 30 acres in 2006 for Wendell Wood after he sold land to the National Ground Intelligence Center, but as it became part of the delayed Places29 Master Plan, that still hasn’t won final approval.

This time around, even supervisors who are firm believers in keeping set growth area boundaries aren’t ruling out Yancey’s idea just yet. “I’m inherently reluctant to expand the growth area,” says Supervisor David Slutzky. “On the other hand, if a persuasive case can be made that we don’t have enough light industrial and the location makes sense, it’s conceivable that I may support it.”

Ann Mallek, the Board’s newest member and whose district includes Crozet, suggested to Yancey that he tie it to the Crozet Master Plan update, which comes up this year. In terms of expanding the growth area, “I’m not keen on it in general,” says Mallek, though she says she’s open to looking at it. “There’s lots of things about that location that make it very different from other places in the rural area. That whole process is something that we have to be very deliberate about.”

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After Fred Scott sold Bundoran Farm in 2006 for $25.8 million, a bunch of suits from New England came to town with some big promises for the development of 2,300 acres of southern Albemarle land that many feared would start sprouting McMansions. Developers from Qroe Companies soothed the neighbors: Rather than maxing out the roughly 160 potential development rights, the company would build on only 88 parcels. Moreover, the housing sites would be tucked out of view from Plank Road, and at least 80 percent of the land would be protected, placed in interlocking conservation easements to protect farmland. Cows would still dot the fields instead of gaudy houses.

More than two years later, Qroe has been more or less true to its word. Though the company ended up carving out five more parcels than originally planned, Bundoran still has a working cattle farm and orchard, and it is still the home to the Albemarle County Fair. Despite the fact that Qroe has built two miles of new road, fair attendees last week saw few signs that they were in the midst of a large development project.

The first new house at the Bundoran development is designed by Russell Versaci to fit into the landscape. “Quite a lot of what we do is to visually hiding homes,” says David Hamilton, Bundoran project manager. “We don’t build a big brick wall with a country lion out front.”

The first new house at Bundoran Farm is nearing completion, on a site hard to spot to passersby. David Hamilton, Bundoran’s project manager, says that he was warned that people would build super-large, 6,000-square-foot homes on the properties that would max out the building sites.

“What we’ve found is that in fact people are building generally more modest homes,” says Hamilton. “This one is slightly over 3,000 square feet, but it’s on one of the nicest lots at Bundoran. It’s going to be jaw-droppingly beautiful, but it’s not what anyone would call a McMansion.”

Sales have not been particularly brisk. “Everybody’s heard that there have been challenges in the real estate market locally and nationally, and we’re not immune to that,” admits Hamilton, though he says that he’s proud of Bundoran’s performance relative to peers.

Hamilton says they have sold 11 lots to 10 buyers. Prices have ranged from $310,000 for a small lot to $1.2 million for 38 acres, according to county property records. Hamilton estimates that about half are local buyers and about a quarter from New York or New England and about a quarter from elsewhere in Virginia. “What we’ve found is virtually everybody here either went to school here, or their kids went to school here, and they got stuck.”

Any lessons learned during the company’s first Southern project? “It’s a very challenging time for Virginia agriculture,” says Hamilton, pointing at expensive diesel (“There’s no Prius tractor,” he notes) and expensive corn for cattle. “We thought the farmer was in great shape relative to many of the farms we deal with in New England. There’s all kinds of threats to Virginia agriculture now. When farming is uneconomical, that’s when farmers sell their land to developers for not the best practices always.”

He did learn one more lesson: “When you’re going through the Planning Commission process, don’t get behind Biscuit Run.”

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As a way of exploring whether the idea of transferable development rights (TDR) has a place in Albemarle County, “stakeholder” talks got underway last week. David Slutzky, the county supervisor who has been hawking the idea since fall 2006, is still enthusiastic about the possibilities, and he spent most of the first meeting laying out his version of a TDR plan.

“We will have five or six meetings and see where we are,” says Slutzky. In early 2007, he brought his “strawman proposal” to the Board of Supervisors, but pulled it after few other supervisors showed interest.

David Slutzky is still pursuing the idea of transferable development rights, this time with about 30 stakeholders.

The basics of Slutzky’s TDR program are that, in exchange for rural area downzoning, a landowner in the rural area could sell his development right to a developer to use in an expanded growth area, thus clustering growth near existing infrastructure and preserving open space. Farmers sell the development rights without selling the farm, developers build by-right without having to go begging at public meetings, and the county doesn’t lose its countryside to sprawl. The major difficulty rests in setting up a market that actually works for all parties involved.

With only five meetings scheduled and such a large group, it will be difficult to find consensus on such a complicated proposition. Thirty to 40 people showed up to the first meeting. Those “stakeholders” include property rights advocates, like Forever Albemarle and the Farm Bureau; environmentalists from the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC); members of the real estate development community like Chuck Rotgin and Dave Phillips; and a slew of others.

“It’s a very smart and engaged group,” says SELC’s Morgan Butler, one of the attendees, “so if this idea can be crafted into something that might work for the community, it seems like a good group of people to be working on it.”

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