Month: November 2013

Last week, members of the Charlottesville Planning Commission got their first look at a nine-story, 240-unit student housing complex planned for the corner of West Main Street and Roosevelt Brown Boulevard, across the street from the UVA Medical Center’s trauma center, and they weren’t thrilled.

The $50 million project—for now referred to simply as 1000 West Main—includes plans for ground-level parking and retail, an on-site fitness center, and a rooftop pool. It would require a special use permit; by right, builder and eventual property manager Campus Acquisitions (CA) would be restricted to seven stories and about a fifth as many units.

If it moves forward, the project would become the third high-density mixed-use student housing complex within two blocks of the western end of the corridor that connects Grounds and Downtown. Both the Flats at West Village, which will have 595 beds in eight stories, and The Standard, planned to rise six stories and have 240 rooms, have won approval from the city.

The commissioners’ reaction to the third successive special use application was tepid at best. Some cited concerns over its proximity to the hospital, and the way the imposing L-shaped building would look from the street. But their strongest objections had to do with the new project being too much of the same thing.

“Quite honestly, I don’t know why you want to do this,” said Commissioner John Santoski. “I’m starting to feel we’re maxed out on the kind of student housing we want to have there.”

The commission also questioned the company’s estimated price point, a hefty $700 to $900 a bed. UVA might be perceived as a rich university, said Commissioner Lisa Green, but “a lot of students are really struggling.”

The company said it knows its market, and that more student housing on underutilized West Main is exactly what the city asked for a decade ago.

“We have studied this market exhaustively, examining data about the low vacancy rates at all the existing apartment complexes in the area, and are absolutely convinced that the demand is there, particularly in a location that is so close to the University,” said CA’s Senior Vice President of Acquisitions Stephen Bus in an e-mail interview. Charlottesville took steps to prepare for that demand in the mid 2000s, he said, when it was zoned to allow for taller buildings that could accommodate high-density housing. A short building boom around 14th Street followed in 2006 and 2007—Wertland Square, the Grand Marc, the “V”—which sated demand for a time, especially once the financial crises put a damper on residential growth.

But now, the city is facing an inadequate housing supply and an influx of 1,500 more students within five years, Bus said, so “you are really looking at just keeping pace even with the three new projects under construction or proposed along West Main Street.” The expanded volume of student apartments would also lift pressure on affordable family units elsewhere in the city, he said.

Bus said it’s not a feeding frenzy, as one commissioner put it, but rather the market giving the city what it wants and needs.

“What is being proposed with these three projects is precisely what was envisioned for West Main, to bring people, vitality, and economic opportunity to a street that is universally seen as an important street that has unfortunately stagnated for decades,” he said.

So is CA being unfairly scrutinized just because it was the last project in the door?

“I think the planning commission has a legitimate concern about the impacts they see coming from that much student housing,” said Jim Tolbert, the city’s director of neighborhood development services. “It’s the cumulative effect of all those rooms.”

But there’s no denying the city’s own comprehensive plan marks that stretch of West Main for housing—and height.

“The plan says we want higher density there. It doesn’t get into who it is that lives in those areas,” said Tolbert. As for whether the project would oversaturate the city with luxe student living space, “I’d never believe these guys would spend tens of millions without doing the adequate market research,” he said.

And it’s clear that to developers, UVA’s student body looks like a goldmine.

“They may all show up as a demographic that has no money. The reality is they don’t, but mommy and daddy do,” said Tolbert.

Bus pointed out that it’s not just developers that will benefit from the next collegiate housing boom. UVA is actively seeking the kind of students who would want to live in a high rise like the one CA is planning. “Other premier institutions, including many Ivy League schools and medical schools, are constructing new housing to continue to attract high-caliber students—so we do not necessarily think of it just in terms of ‘high end,’ it is new housing built to meet the market expectations of residents, students, and parents who have options in where to work and where to attend school,” he wrote.

Of course, Charlottesville’s coffers would benefit, too. Bus said the project would generate an estimated $500,000 a year in city taxes.

For now, the company is going back to the drawing board, adjusting its site plan ahead of a meeting with the Board of Architectural Review this week and another round in front of the Planning Commission in December. But there’s a high degree of confidence on CA’s side. When asked if the company would go ahead with a smaller, by-right version of their building if its special use permit is ultimately shot down, Bus made it clear that scaling down wasn’t the game plan.

“The SUP proposal now before the Planning Commission, with adjustments pending, will be the highest-and-best use of the site and provide the greatest benefit for the community,” he said.

Last Saturday would have been a quiet day in Southwood, the mobile home park off Fifth Street Extended just south of Charlottesville, if not for the leaf blowers.

About a dozen residents of the neighborhood—home to 1,500 people, the majority of them Latino—gathered in the morning to clear a heavy carpet of oak leaves from Southwood’s two small green spaces before tackling the backyards of a couple of seniors.

Since Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville bought the 100-acre community in 2007, the group has been gearing up for a massive overhaul, an unprecedented ground-up redevelopment that will see Southwood’s 350 deteriorating trailers replaced with permanent housing beginning in 2016. Saturday’s beautification effort might seem like window dressing, but Habitat’s leaders see it as proof their grassroots community-building approach is working.

Eventually, the cleanup crew took a few minutes to rest on their rakes and consider the changes they’ve seen come to their neighborhood. Jose, Marvin, and Ismael—the three men, who spoke through a translator and asked to be identified by only their first names—said the arrival of the Boys & Girls Club and city bus stops have been a big help.

But the residents said they’re worried about still being able to afford Southwood once the big changes begin.

So is Dan Rosensweig, Habitat’s executive director.

“We know what we can do, because we did it at Sunrise,” said Rosensweig. Habitat turned the Belmont trailer park into a permanent mixed-income neighborhood of brightly painted townhomes and a small apartment building last year. Nine of that neighborhood’s 16 families elected to stay, a ratio Habitat saw as a success. But Southwood is 20 times the size of Sunrise, and a large portion of its 1,500 residents are believed to be undocumented immigrants, which would complicate their path to homeownership—Habitat’s central goal for its partner families.

“The question is, can we do it at the scale of Southwood?” Rosensweig said. “That’s what keeps me up at night.”

To get there, Habitat is moving slowly and deliberately, trying to build trust and get Southwood residents to buy in. When the organization bought the trailer park in 2007, conditions bordered on unlivable. Fires regularly broke out in homes hot-wired to the electrical grid. Trying to map how the units were hooked up to the existing sanitary infrastructure was almost impossible. “Some are on septic, some are on sewer, some are on both,” he said. Gloria Rockhold, director of Creciendo Juntos, an outreach group serving the local Latino community, said failures and overflows were common. Sometimes you’d find yourself walking through sewage. “It would be oozing up out of the ground,” she said. “It was unbearable.”

Rockhold, who has helped coordinate social services in the neighborhood for a decade, said Southwood was seen as dangerous and crime-ridden. “The police would say, ‘Don’t drive there by yourself. We’ll be happy to drive you,’” she said.

A lot has changed in six years. The streets and sewer lines are in better shape. The seemingly simple act of compiling a list of residents and getting neighborhood registration stickers for their cars has brought a sense of order and oversight. “With time, it became so much better,” said Rockhold.

But as Habitat has moved toward redevelopment, it’s avoided creating an image of itself as Southwood’s savior—or its private police. From the start, Rosensweig said, the group has tried to identify what’s working in the community and build from there, something sociologists call an asset-based approach.

At times, it can make Rosensweig sound relentlessly optimistic: Instead of calling Southwood the region’s poorest neighborhood, he refers to it as Albemarle County’s biggest opportunity to improve and expand its affordable housing stock. But he says the philosophy has helped Habitat build trust with residents over the last year and a half, during which staff has conducted two long survey interviews with at least one member of each family unit in Southwood—700 heart-to-hearts about what people want their community to be and what they can afford. Consider that a lot of residents are understandably wary of a nebulous plan to scrap their homes, 90 percent of which are resident-owned, and that most of the interviews require a translator, and you start to realize why Habitat puts such a heavy emphasis on relationship building.

“Forget about the squishy stuff, about it being the right thing to do,” Rosensweig said. “Until you have that trust, you can’t then take the next step toward communal planning. And unless you have that communal effort, you’re not going to do anything. You can shoehorn it. You can stuff it into a box. But you’re not going to create a mixed-income development that works.”

Richard Beverly, a Southwood resident for more than a decade, sees the potential benefits as bigger than houses on solid foundations. It’s about pride of place.

“People think of Southwood, they think of people who are no good,” he said over the roar of a neighbor’s leaf blower. “But you’ve got very good people here. For whatever reason, this is where they are. Everybody’s story’s different.”

He’s willing to stretch his pennies a little further and work with his neighbors, he said, if it means he can buy a home he’ll be able to pass down to his daughter.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re all going to have to do it together,” he said.