The area highlighted in purple is where the additional 300 units would be built in Albemarle County’s Brookhill development. Photo via Riverbend Development.
When Albemarle supervisors approved a rezoning of 277 acres north of Polo Grounds Road in November 2016, Riverbend Development got the green light to build up to 1,550 residential units and develop 130,000 square feet of commercial space.
Eight years later, Riverbend has asked Albemarle for permission to build 300 more homes as part of a plan that will likely result in significantly less non-residential space.
“This request is made in recognition of the ongoing housing crisis in our region and the need to construct more units at a variety of price points and especially more units that are affordable to households in the area,” reads a narrative filed earlier this month.
This application follows another one made last year by Great Eastern Management Company to allow for an increase in the number of units there from 893 to 1,548. Public hearings for that change have not yet been scheduled. The developers of the Albemarle Business Campus on Fifth Street Extended are also seeking to trade out commercial space for more residential.
All are responses to a housing policy Albemarle supervisors approved in July 2021 that calls for ways to “increase the supply of housing to meet the diverse housing needs of current and future Albemarle County residents.”
The amendment to Brookhill’s previous rezoning requires a new traffic study, which describes the changes to the commercial space. According to that document, the new plan halves the proposed amount of retail to 50,000 square feet and office space is no longer proposed.
So far, Riverbend has completed 595 of the 1,550 units allowed according to Abbey Stumpf, the county’s director of communications and public engagement.
The new units will be built in what had been billed as a town center during the rezoning. At one point there was a proposal to build an ice rink but that project never materialized, despite an active fundraising effort.
The binding “code of development” for the project requires a minimum of 50,000 square feet of non-residential to be constructed in the town center. The new study indicates a 20,000 square feet brewery tap room is planned.
The study indicates the mix of residential units will be changing as well. The original rezoning anticipated 550 single family homes but the new study only anticipates 120. There would be 700 townhomes instead of 200 and 960 apartments instead of 600. The new study reflects that a congregate care facility has already been built.
At some point, Riverbend will be required to hold a community meeting for the public to learn about the plan before it goes to the Planning Commission. That has not yet been scheduled.
The amendments also come at a time when work has resumed on a Comprehensive Plan that is being updated to guide the county to accommodate projections from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service that Albemarle will have over 155,000 people living there by 2050.
Many residents of the Village of Rivanna growth area have protested the idea that residential density be more than one acre per unit, prompting some members of the Board of Supervisors to explore swapping out the land with other places in the county.
Many residents of the Village of Rivanna growth area have protested the idea that residential density be more than one acre per unit, prompting some members of the Board of Supervisors to explore swapping out the land with other places in the county. Supplied photo.
A delay in the completion of a new comprehensive plan for Albemarle County means adoption won’t happen until at least summer 2025, a time when half of the Board of Supervisors may be up for re-election.
Among other things, the update, known as AC44, will reaffirm rules about what can be built in Albemarle and where.
“Currently, the development areas are approximately 37 square miles, or 5 percent of county land, and the rural area is 95 percent of county land,” says Tonya Swartzendruber, a planning manager in Albemarle.
Virginia code requires localities to update their comp plans every five years and Albemarle’s document was adopted in the summer of 2015. The county began what was to have been a two-year review in late 2021, but staff put the project on hold earlier this year to make the document easier to read.
The Board of Supervisors has decided the current boundaries will remain in place for now, but staff inquired earlier this month as to whether the update should direct them to review conditions every two years to see if there’s enough land to support additional people expected to move here over the next 20 years.
Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, the youngest and newest member of the board, said he supports monitoring land use trends but is open to expanding the growth area. He was elected last year with no opposition.
“At some point, if our growth patterns do not change, I think the whole board recognizes that the development area will have to change,” Pruitt said at the October 16 BOS meeting. He suggested the county identify a new place where dense development could occur rather than “nibbling at the edges.”
Supervisor Ned Gallaway’s Rio District seat is one of the three up for election next year. He pointed out that the county’s growth area around Glenmore in eastern Albemarle is developing at about one unit per acre because of opposition from people who live in the area.
“If we’re not getting the density out of a Village of Rivanna, can we get that density back somewhere else that’s reasonable without necessarily changing the 5 percent?” Gallaway asked.
First elected in 2017, Gallaway has never faced an opponent on the ballot.
Diantha McKeel’s third term as supervisor for the Jack Jouett District expires at the end of 2025. She supports Gallaway’s idea.
“If we can look at somehow … trading land without expanding but looking at where there are possibilities to do some trade where it’s actually going to happen,” McKeel said.
The final seat up for election is that of Jim Andrews, who was unopposed in his 2021 race for the Samuel Miller District. He cautioned anyone against thinking expansion is inevitable.
“It may be that a shift of development areas may be the more appropriate way in which we handle this initially,” Andrews said.
Supervisors Ann Mallek and Bea LaPisto-Kirtley were both re-elected in 2023 and both faced opposition. LaPisto-Kirtley said she doesn’t think the boundaries need to be adjusted for decades.
“I think we need to make use of what we have,” she told her colleagues.
Mallek said she was willing to have as many meetings as possible to complete the Comprehensive Plan.
“We’re going to have to keep stirring the pot until we get it just right,” Mallek said.
The county’s growth advisory committees will get the new information on AC44 at a joint meeting on October 30 in Lane Auditorium.
The proposed apartment building at 1609 Gordon Ave. will include nine units. Image via Design Develop.
The future of land use in Charlottesville will be determined parcel by parcel as property owners make decisions about whether they will build units that are required to be sold or rented at levels below the market value.
The relatively new owners of 1609 Gordon Ave., an LLC who bought the property in December 2021 for $600,000, have decided not to pursue affordability when replacing a two-story 1963 apartment building with a three-story structure with nine units.
That is one unit less than would trigger the city’s mandate that 10 percent of units in non-residential neighborhoods comply with affordability requirements. This is known as inclusionary zoning.
“Rents for affordable homes are set relative to the Area Median Income (AMI), the household income for the median household in a region,” reads a portion of the Affordable Housing Plan adopted by Charlottesville City Council in March 2021.
The maximum monthly rents are established in the city’s affordable dwelling unit manual and must be reserved for households with incomes below 60 percent of AMI. At that level, the current monthly caps are $1,416 for a two-bedroom, $1,582 for a three-bedroom, and $1,732 for a four-bedroom. Developers must submit a form showing how they will comply with the rules, but the Gordon Avenue project is exempt and does not have to provide any information about projected rents.
Located in the Venable neighborhood, 1609 Gordon Ave. has the RX-5 designation that allows for as much density as can fit within a seven-story structure, as long as 10 percent of units are affordable or the developer contributes to a city fund. The new rules increased these amounts substantially to $368,303 for a two-bedroom unit and $547,339 for a three-bedroom unit.
The new zoning eliminates the role City Council plays in such developments, but the Board of Architectural Review still has to sign off on the design. It had an initial review on Tuesday, October 15, a discussion that had nothing to do with affordability but everything to do with how the new structure will fit in with the surrounding architectural design control district.
That district has been changing with certificates of appropriateness, having recently been approved for a new four-story apartment building at 1532 Virginia Ave., a three-story sorority house at 503 Rugby Rd., and a three-story apartment building at 605 Preston Ave.
But one remaining question is whether anyone will take advantage of the higher densities allowed and submit to the inclusionary zoning. Charlottesville’s Housing Advisory Committee will discuss potential proposals on Wednesday, October 16. These include measures to provide tax rebates to subsidize the cost to the developer.
Meanwhile, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority continues to proceed with a plan to purchase more units across the city and use federal housing vouchers to subsidize their cost. In September, the CRHA Board agreed to spend $2.8 million to purchase three more properties, comprising more than a dozen units, around the city.
The conceptual rendering above is of Afton Scientific’s expanded manufacturing operations in Albemarle County. Founded in 1991, the company makes technology that can safely create small batches of pharmaceuticals for clinical trials. Image via Scott Collins, Collins Engineering.
Albemarle County’s campaign to grow the biotechnology industry showed a major sign of progress earlier this month when one company announced plans to invest $200 million into an expansion project.
“We want to expand our manufacturing to make sterile medicines, put in clean rooms, and create really, really great jobs,” said Afton Scientific’s Tom Thorpe during an announcement at the county’s headquarters off Avon Street Extended.
Thorpe founded Afton Scientific in 1991 to make technology that can safely create small batches of pharmaceuticals for clinical trials. In late August, Afton Scientific paid $4.25 million to a subsidiary of Coran Capshaw’s Riverbend Development for the 6.78 acres in the same industrial park for the expansion. The property is just to the south of the Charlottesville border and overlooks Moores Creek.
According to the trade organization CvilleBioHub, there are at least 75 companies in the area related to the biotech industry, with more than 1,950 employees. Afton Scientific is pledging to add 200 more jobs and will use resources from the Virginia Partnership for Economic Development to find skilled workers.
Albemarle first identified the biotechnology field as one of its targeted sectors in a 2012 study that also prioritized defense, information technology, and financial services.
“Afton Scientific started in our community 30 years ago and we couldn’t be more proud of this business, of this industry being in our community today,” said County Executive Jeff Richardson.
One of Afton Scientific’s neighbors is Lighthouse Instruments, another industry representative. Its website describes the company as “the leading global provider of optical-based, non-destructive headspace analysis systems and analytical services.” That means they’re also involved in the pursuit of making medicines safer.
Virginia’s secretary of commerce and trade was on hand for the announcement and said the Charlottesville area is becoming known as a hub for the industry.
“In Charlottesville, just in the last year, we had more than $400 million of federal research grants,” said Caren Merrick. “We’ve also had more than 90 million in equity investments in our startups.”
But are there enough people in the area who can provide the labor? To answer that question and prepare for the future, CvilleBioHub is seeking state funding for a study of what workforce programs are needed. In addition to private sector jobs, there will be a need for people who can work in the many laboratories that will serve the Manning Institute of Biotechnology that’s currently under construction at the University of Virginia’s Fontaine Research Park.
“What do we need to be preparing our workforce for now so that we can serve the growth that’s anticipated as a result of the things that are happening?” said Nikki Hastings, CEO of CvilleBioHub at a recent meeting of the Albemarle Economic Development Authority.
The EDA helped negotiate some of the details of the Afton Scientific expansion, including access to the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. The secret deal went by the code name Project Olympian.
If the project proceeds, the hotel at 218 W. Market St. would replace a shopping center that includes The Artful Lodger, The Livery Stable, and several other businesses. Photo by Eze Amos.
A New York-based developer who had planned to build a nine-story apartment tower on the site of a downtown Charlottesville shopping center has sold the property for $5.75 million.
Jeffrey Levien’s company Heirloom Development bought 218 W. Market St. in June 2020 for $4 million, but sold the property in mid-September to Cavalier Hospitality LLC. That entity is based out of Glen Allen, Virginia, and has not yet filed new plans for the property.
However, Levien says he will still be involved in the development of a hotel as a partner.
“I just couldn’t make the economics work for residential under the new zoning code,” Levien says.
Under the inclusionary zoning rules in the city’s new Development Code, one of every 10 units in any new development in non-residential areas must be guaranteed to be rented or sold to households below specific incomes. No such requirement would be necessary for a hotel, something that is an allowed use under the zoning that went into effect this past February.
Levien pursued the residential project at 218 W. Market under the older rules, which required a special use permit for additional height and density. City Council approved a permit in September 2020 despite concerns from former mayor Nikuyah Walker that the project did not address the need for affordable housing.
In August 2023, council agreed to a permit amendment to allow for a modification of the building’s massing. As part of that approval, Levien agreed to build a minimum of eight affordable units on-site or off-site with two units to be reserved for households making less than 50 percent of the area median income. That was above the minimum requirement but not enough to satisfy the concerns of City Councilor Michael Payne.
This spring, Levien brought a preliminary design to the Board of Architectural Review for a hotel with a design from Richmond-based NBJ Architecture. That body looked favorably on the concept, but it did not receive an official submission. No plans have been filed since.
So far there have only been a handful of new projects filed under the new zoning, which is intended to make it easier to build more housing units across the city and to eliminate the role of City Council in making decisions about what gets built.
One of these new projects, at 1609 Gordon Ave., would see an existing house razed to build a new structure with nine units. A 10th unit would need to be affordable.
Another new development at 2030 Barracks Rd. would see 12 affordable units built alongside 12 market-rate units.
Levien’s first development in Charlottesville was a luxury 56-unit apartment building that also redeveloped the buildings that contain Blue Moon Diner and a former convenience store. That project broke ground in 2018, nearly two years after council granted approval.
Another project that has not yet moved forward is the replacement of the University Tire building next door, at 612 W. Main, with another apartment building. Levien says he still plans to proceed with that project, which was approved by council on a 4-1 vote in October 2019. A final site plan has been approved but no building permit has been authorized.
If it proceeds, the new hotel would replace a shopping center that includes The Artful Lodger, The Livery Stable, and several other businesses. The BAR has approved a permit for demolition pending the issuance of a building permit.
Neighborhood Investments purchased this half acre lot in Fifeville for $2.24 million, the latest high-profile purchase in the Cherry Avenue area. Photo by Sean Tubbs.
As planning and negotiations continue over a grocery story at 501 Cherry Ave., major transactions continue to take place in the Fifeville neighborhood.
On September 9, the firm Neighborhood Investments paid $2.24 million for an undeveloped property between Roosevelt Brown Boulevard and Ninth Street SW. There have been several development projects associated with the land, owned by the Piedmont Housing Alliance, on two occasions.
The Piedmont Housing Alliance sold the 0.56-acre property in March 2016 for $1.19 million. The previous owner filed a site plan amendment in 2020 for 24 residential units and about 11,000 square feet of commercial space, which was never approved. Since then, Charlottesville City Council has adopted a small area plan for Cherry Avenue that discouraged tall buildings in order to preserve the character of surrounding neighborhoods.
As a result, the city’s new zoning code classified the undeveloped Ninth Street lot as Commercial Mixed Use 3, which sets a base height limit of three stories but an additional two stories are allowed if the project has affordable units that qualify it for bonus space. That is different from other corridors in Charlottesville, such as Barracks Road and Fifth Street Extended, which allow up to 10 stories to encourage shopping centers to redevelop at maximum density.
Richard Spurzem of Neighborhood Properties said in an email he was not sure if he would proceed with the existing site plan or start fresh.
This past March, Ronald McDonald House of Charlottesville bought a former auto repair business at 316 Ninth St. SW for $700,000. The nonprofit owns two nearby lots and has not yet decided how it will use its new property.
The city’s public housing agency is planning to purchase two properties several blocks away on Fifth Street SW to preserve them for affordable housing. There are multiple buildings at both locations, and the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority wants to buy them for $2.2 million.
“The acquisition of this portfolio will allow CRHA to preserve the naturally occurring affordable housing units while giving CRHA the ability to redevelop the property to provide additional housing units soon,” reads a resolution adopted by the CRHA Board of Commissioners on September 23.
The acquisition continues a trend of CRHA purchasing property, including several Fifeville properties that were part of a $10 million purchase from Woodard Properties in August 2023, to expand its portfolio.
Meanwhile, single-family homes still sell at a premium in Fifeville. On September 4, 2024, a two-bedroom house at 223 Fourth St. SW sold for $585,000, well above the 2024 assessment of $376,000. There’s also an accessory dwelling on the property.
On September 18, a single-family attached home in the Orangedale subdivision at 705 Prospect Ave. sold for $296,500. That’s over 39 percent above the 2024 assessment of $212,900.
No matter the development, the leadership of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association want all projects to align with the values enshrined in the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan.
“We encourage developers to come talk with residents directly at our monthly meetings so that we can work together on upcoming projects and make sure residents are informed,” read a statement sent in response to a question from C-VILLE.
A dearth of fresh food in Fifeville means all eyes are on 501 Cherry Ave. Photo by Eze Amos.
There are no places on Cherry Avenue or West Main Street where residents of the Fifeville neighborhood can walk to buy fresh ingredients to prepare nutritious meals, but Aleen Carey doesn’t want you to call the area a food desert.
“A desert is a naturally occurring state,” said Carey, the co-executive director of Cultivate Charlottesville. “Not having any grocery stores or Black-owned businesses or the food access that the community wants, that is not naturally occurring. That is man-made. So instead of a food desert, we call it a food apartheid.”
That term was coined by New York food justice activist Karen Washington to draw attention to the interconnections between access to food and other socioeconomic and health inequities.
Cultivate Charlottesville formed in 2020 when local organizations Food Justice Network, the Urban Agriculture Collective of Charlottesville, and the City Schoolyard Garden merged to put a more intentional focus on those interconnections at the local level.
Borrowing a phrase from food justice activist Karen Washington, Cultivate Charlottesville’s Aleen Carey says the lack of access to fresh produce in Fifeville has caused a “food apartheid.” Photo by Eze Amos.
The nonprofit is active on many fronts including administering the city’s Food Equity Initiative, trying to secure new garden space in Washington Park—and assisting with a broader effort to bring a community grocery store to Fifeville. Woodard Properties, the new owner of 501 Cherry Ave., agreed in September 2023 to provide space for one as part of a rezoning.
But to make the idea a reality, the community will have to organize.
Buy back the block?
Carey was one member of an August 24 panel discussion at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, an event the Fifeville Neighborhood Association organized for the public to learn more about the opportunities on Cherry Avenue.
Deanna McDonald of RN Heartwork is partnering with the Fifeville Neighborhood Association on the effort to increase awareness of the space.
“I come to this project as it relates [to] health equity, food equity, and food security,” McDonald told the crowd of about a hundred people.
For decades, Estes Market at 501 Cherry Ave. served as a place to buy fresh food, but people who lived in the area in the late 20th century said the market played a much larger role.
“Estes was more than just a grocery store,” said Sarad Davenport, a longtime resident of Fifeville who served as moderator of August’s Buy Back the Block event. “It was a community center. In fact, I learned how to play chess in Estes’ parking lot.”
Once a booming grocery store, Estes Foodliner stands now as a shell of its former self. Photo by Eze Amos.
Davenport is the host of “Can I Talk To You, C-Ville?,” a series of programs put on by Vinegar Hill Magazine including one held September 23 that illuminated more details on the status of negotiations for how the space might be operated as a grocery.
Dorenda Johnson has lived in the neighborhood for 55 years and remembers more than just Estes Market.
“I can remember on Fifth Street there was Bell’s Store and Allen’s Store and down the street on Cherry Avenue was Estes [IGA],” she said. “All of those neighborhoods around those stores were predominantly Black neighborhoods and it was bustling and busy.”
Andrea Douglas, the Heritage Center’s executive director, said there was a time when ownership of commercial businesses was more diverse in central Charlottesville.
“There were seven grocery stores run by Black people in this community,” Douglas said.
One of those, at 333 W. Main St., was run by George Inge, whose establishment was a pillar of the community from 1891 to 1979 (and stands today as Tavern & Grocery restaurant). The structure built in 1820 survived the razing of Vinegar Hill and Garrett Street while many others, like Allen’s Store, did not.
According to research conducted by journalist Jordy Yager, Allen’s Store opened on Sixth Street SE in 1944 and closed when the property was taken by eminent domain as part of the Garrett Street urban renewal project in the 1970s, leading to the creation of what would become known as Friendship Court. Its owners, Kenneth Walker Allen and Dorothy Mae Murray Allen, would later relocate their business to the Rose Hill neighborhood in the space that is now home to MarieBette Café and Bakery.
Douglas said efforts to bring a new grocery store to serve the neighborhood is part of a long movement to restore what was lost during urban renewal.
When she was a child, Johnson said she would spend her days in Tonsler Park walking to and from what is now Prospect Avenue. Her parents worked hard to buy their own house, as did so many others.
“Now when I go through those neighborhoods it’s very discouraging and I see it’s no longer the predominantly Black neighborhoods,” Johnson said. “We have $700,000 homes that were bought for barely half of that. What would our parents say?”
After Emancipation, many people enslaved in Albemarle County and on plantations, such as the Oak Lawn estate on Cherry Avenue, would settle in a Charlottesville that was growing in the late 19th century.
“After the [Civil] war, a number of folks who were enslaved there moved into what is the Fifeville neighborhood,” said Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor of religious studies at UVA.
This included figures such as Benjamin Tonsler, who had been born into servitude in Earlysville in 1854. After receiving an education in Hampton, Tonsler returned to Charlottesville and became a leader in the community along with Inge. Another group, called the Piedmont Industrial and Land Improvement Company, was formed in the last decade of the 19th century to promote Black ownership of real property. They did so through the Four Hundreds Club, an informal group of Black families belonging to the middle class, who purchased lots of land priced at $400.
“There is a direct connection between emancipation, personal economy, land ownership, entrepreneurship, and food security,” Schmidt said. “How to put those pieces together that have been shattered is the question that we’re dealing with now.”
Redeveloping the Estes Market
Woodard Properties bought 501 Cherry Ave. in August 2022 for $3.5 million, the latest in a series of purchases the company has made in the area in recent years. Woodard is partnering with the Piedmont Housing Alliance to build 71 apartment units that will be rented to households with incomes below 60 percent of the area’s median income.
One condition of a rezoning granted by City Council in September 2023 is that a portion of the property be set aside for the Music Resource Center as well as an area that would be reserved for a very specific reason.
“Owner agrees to reserve a minimum of 5,000 square feet of commercial space at the Property for lease to a small grocery store or neighborhood grocery store that sells fresh produce,” reads binding language in the rezoning agreement. “The space will be reserved exclusively for a grocery store use until the issuance of any certificate of occupancy for the Project.”
Anthony Woodard, CEO of Woodard Properties, says that means the space will be held for someone to either buy or lease it from the company. Anyone who wants to operate a grocery would need to come up with the funding to get the space ready.
“We are building a commercial shell for a grocery market, which would not include interior construction, furnishings, or equipment specific to the grocery’s operation, because a grocery operator has specific needs that they know best,” Woodard said in an email.
Woodard said the total cost is estimated at around $50 million to construct the two buildings that make up the project.
The City of Charlottesville continues to review the preliminary site plan for the project, an iterative process designed to make sure that the building will be up to code.
The grocery store at 501 Cherry Ave. was once a bustling centerpiece of the Fifeville community. “In fact, I learned how to play chess in Estes’ parking lot,” says resident Sarad Davenport. Photo by Eze Amos.
City Council has signaled a willingness to provide $3.15 million in direct funding for the housing portion of the project over the next two years. The Piedmont Housing Alliance applied this year for $1.285 million in low-income housing tax credits but did not make the cut in a crowded field of applicants.
Sunshine Mathon, executive director of PHA, said there are alternative funding options that might allow construction to get underway within the next 15 months.
“We have other funding pathways we are pursuing that I am optimistic about, and would allow us to still start construction in 2025,” Mathon said in an email. “Everyone on the team is working diligently to make this happen.”
Woodard said that to cover the full costs, rent will likely need to be higher than market rate unless an operating subsidy can be identified.
Davenport cautioned against rushing ahead too fast with the project without doing true community engagement.
“Sometimes you can think you are doing the right thing but you haven’t really listened to people, and then you end up doing something that’s catastrophic and you look 40 years later and it’s like, that was a tragedy,” she said. “It did more harm than good.”
Elsewhere on Cherry Avenue
Woodard Properties owns a good portion of Cherry Avenue, having slowly acquired real estate along the roadway over the years. That includes the Cherry Avenue Shopping Center, which the company purchased for $1.9 million in April 2021, and the undeveloped parking lot across the street, bought in July of that year for $1.55 million. The Black-owned Royalty Eats catering company operates out of the shopping center and served food at the August 24 event. Woodard said there are no plans to do anything with these locations beyond what’s already been done; the company refurbished the shopping center soon after purchasing it.
The Salvation Army owns two properties on Cherry Avenue, including its storefront and a lot where a fast food restaurant used to stand. There are three stand-alone convenience stores in addition to a fourth inside the Cherry Avenue Shopping Center. Each store is owned by a different entity and none offer fresh produce.
The fog over the future of 21st-century Fifeville cleared a little in October 2023 when the University of Virginia purchased the 5.2-acre Oak Lawn estate belonging to the Fife family, whose name has been appended to the whole neighborhood. The UVA Health system will soon begin a community engagement effort for the future of that property as well as land to the north, which it purchased in August 2016.
As part of the Memory Project initiative, Schmidt and her students have researched the Oak Lawn estate and found that James Fife enslaved at least 22 men, women, and children by the time of emancipation. More than 100 years later, expansion of the UVA Medical Center displaced people who had settled in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Gospel Hill, a neighborhood that no longer exists, reducing the number of people who could walk to places like Estes Market and other Black-owned businesses.
“Land use and food security are tied to one another and that means listening to the community and folks in the community who remember what things were like when there were these hubs,” Schmidt said.
Carey said one purpose of both Cultivate Charlottesville and the Food Justice Network is to ask people what it would take to achieve food equity. She said that will take Black ownership.
“As we’re talking about 501 Cherry Ave. right now, and who might own that building or who might own the business there, one of the key pieces is, will that be a person of color?” Carey said. “Will that be somebody Black who can restore some of that community wealth building to the area?”
The Fifeville Neighborhood Association is seeking to educate the public on three potential models for ownership of the store. One would be a traditional model where the business owners take on all of the risks of the enterprise.
Another would be a nonprofit model, and a third would be a cooperative-ownership model where members of the store would govern its operations. To that end, a group called the Charlottesville Community Food Co-Op is being formed.
Mathon is hopeful the grocery space can become part of the residential development, a value-add that could attract additional funds for the overall project.
“I am working actively to pursue resources for the grocery as I see a direct positive benefit to have the grocery onsite for our future residents,” he said.
Neighborhood skepticism
Many in the Fifeville neighborhood are dubious about why a new apartment building is planned for 501 Cherry Ave. They’re also wary of the name attached to the project.
“Just the name Woodard … It is not a name that a lot of people think much of, me being one if I’m being honest,” Johnson said. “You just constantly see take. They just seem to take. They’ve infiltrated all of those neighborhoods.”
Johnson said nearby residents already suffer the impacts of traffic congestion and a new apartment building will make things worse.
“Cherry Avenue from anywhere between 3pm and 6pm. is a total nightmare,” Johnson said, adding that many continue to have fears Tonsler Park will be taken for private use.
At the moment, the city’s Parks & Recreation Department is soliciting feedback for future amenities for the park, which is owned by the City of Charlottesville. The current year budget for the Commonwealth of Virginia granted $250,000 to the city to assist with the Tonsler Basketball League, now run by former city councilor Wes Bellamy.
Schmidt said part of the conversation needs to be about returning to the spirit of the Four Hundreds Club and making sure there’s an effort to keep Black property owners in place and stop the turnover that has been occurring for decades.
“We also need to have a conversation about who’s selling these,” Schmidt said. “We have folks in the neighborhood that you remember that were pillars of the community but their children don’t live here any more. And when mom and dad die, they come back to settle the estate.”
According to Schmidt, one solution would be to establish incentives for sales to community organizations like PHA. The Piedmont Community Land Trust, a local nonprofit that works to secure affordable housing options in the area, has been purchasing properties in the Orangedale section of the neighborhood to offer homeownership opportunities.
Carey said she is not an expert on housing, but said these conversations are crucial to finding solutions.
“There are three different things going on Cherry Avenue right now: if you’re looking at the park, if you’re looking at 501 Cherry, and if you’re looking at Oak Lawn,” Carey said. “How do you have a conversation that pulls those together so things aren’t done individually?”
Carey said that should include conversations with other neighborhoods affected by the same pressures such as Rose Hill, Ridge Street, and 10th and Page.
City Council adopted a small area plan for Cherry Avenue in March 2021, the same meeting at which they adopted a new affordable housing plan. The small area plan called for an analysis of renovations and teardowns of existing stock, but it’s not clear if the city has conducted that work. The new zoning code designates the road as Commercial Mixed Use 3 in part because of the advocacy of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association.
Following publication, Woodard Properties sent a comment: “We are excited to be working with the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, Piedmont Housing Alliance, and Music Resource Center on this special project that will provide not only healthy food, but also youth programming and affordable housing to Fifeville. This project builds on our commitment to be one of the problem solvers in Charlottesville and the Fifeville neighborhood.”
Albemarle County has made at least $4.5 million in investments to help hundreds of units in Southwood remain affordable to households with income below 60 percent of the area median. Image: Atlantic Builders.
The recent purchase of the Cavalier Crossings apartment complex on Fifth Street Extended by an Alexandria-based investment company prompted one member of the Albemarle Planning Commission to tell his colleagues the county should be investing in “social” housing.
“If we can think about how we can put county resources toward public goods, which to me includes UVA Health wage workers being able to afford to live here, then that’s progress,” said Nathan Moore, representative of the county’s Rio District, at the August 27 commission meeting.
In 2021, both Albemarle and Charlottesville adopted new housing strategies to increase the number of affordable units. While the city’s plan for affordability calls for spending $10 million a year on construction or maintenance of housing, the Housing Albemarle plan does not set a specific target. Still, county supervisors have authorized several investments.
“Since 2020, the county has invested $17.7 million into projects which have served around 3,000 households in one form or another,” says Stacy Pethia, Albemarle’s assistant director of housing.
Last week, Pethia told a citizen advisory panel that while the county prioritizes housing funds for those on the lower end of the income spectrum, there’s a need for housing for all levels in a community where the federally defined annual median income is $124,000.
“There’s a range of people that qualify for affordable housing and most of those people are the ones [whom] we rely on every day,” Pethia says.
In fiscal year 2024, Albemarle contributed $3 million toward the construction of Southwood Apartments by Piedmont Housing Alliance, $1.5 million to Habitat for Humanity for their Cardinal Hill apartments at Southwood, and $700,000 to the Premier Circle project underway by Virginia Supportive Housing. Another $311,655 went to the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program to help rehabilitate existing homes.
The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors agreed to contribute another $2 million to the housing investment fund in the current fiscal year. A decision about where that money should go will be made in the future.
On Wednesday, September 18, the Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on the county’s intention to apply for $6.5 million in federal funds, including $5 million to establish a revolving fund for loans to developers who build affordable housing units. The supervisors will also ask for $1 million for a fund to entice property owners to rent out units to people with housing vouchers to overcome any stigma that a tenant receiving assistance might face.
Albemarle administers 345 federal housing vouchers.
“It can be difficult sometimes for families to find a landlord that will accept their voucher,” Pethia says.
Albemarle is also seeking $435,000 in funds for construction of a future multifamily development, but it is currently unclear where that project might be.
As for Cavalier Crossings, The Bonaventure Multifamily Trust paid $20.5 million for the 144-unit complex and plans to renovate units to charge higher rents at market rate. Some leases have not been renewed as work gets underway.
The purchase did not require any legal notice, as none of the units were built with public money and no public funds are being requested by the new owner.
The 12-story Verve is one of two large student apartment buildings planned for construction within close proximity to the University of Virginia.
Photo via ESG Architecture and Design.
The governing body of the area’s largest landowner will meet this week with five new members, at least one of whom has significant experience in real estate. Governor Glenn Youngkin’s latest appointees to the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors begin their terms at a time when two private, recently approved student developments are moving toward construction and while UVA seeks to provide more housing for students.
“UVA has committed to expanding its current first-year residency requirement to require all first- and second-year students to live on-Grounds while enrolled at UVA to better support students in their transition to University life, and as residents of the broader Charlottesville community,” reads a May 2024 solicitation for firms to partner to build the housing.
At the same time, two large private developments near UVA continue to make their way through the finer details of the city’s permitting process.
On Tuesday, the Charlottesville Planning Commission formally approved a site plan for the Verve, a 12-story student apartment building to be constructed in the heart of central Grounds. Several dozen apartments at the intersection of Jefferson Park Avenue and Emmet Street will soon be demolished to make way for the new building, which will have 442 units, according to the site plan.
City Council approved a rezoning in January for the Verve despite opposition from UVA officials, who argued the tall building would diminish UVA’s architectural character. The plans were submitted in time to qualify under the city’s old zoning rules, which required significantly fewer units to be designated as affordable. In this case, the developer will contribute $6.8 million to the city’s affordable housing fund rather than build units that are price-controlled.
Earlier this month, the Charlottesville City Council granted approval of another technical step for a 10-story student apartment building at 2117 Ivy Rd. that was approved under the old rules. That project comes with a $3.25 million contribution to the city’s affordable housing fund and required council action to waive a requirement to build sidewalks on all road fronts.
“The waiver request is only for the easternmost portion of the property’s frontage on Copeley Road,” said Dannan O’Connell, a city planner. He added that they will build sidewalks on Ivy Road and a portion of Copeley Road.
Meanwhile, UVA is planning to build up to 2,000 bedrooms for undergraduate students at both the former University Gardens as well as on Ivy Road. The Afghan Kabob restaurant will be demolished to make way for what UVA calls the Emmet North site.
Because UVA owns those parcels of land, the city will not collect property tax revenue but they will for both the Verve and 2117 Ivy Rd. UVA officials want the first units to come online for the fall of 2027.
One of the new members of the Board of Visitors is David F. Webb of Virginia Beach, whose day job is vice chair of development firm CBRE’s Capital Markets Group. Webb is now a member of the Buildings and Grounds Committee, which will meet on Thursday. One item on their agenda is a discussion of student housing.
The developer of 303 Alderman Rd. will be among the first to take advantage of the new
zoning, if and when this single family house is demolished to make way for six townhomes. Photo by Sean Tubbs.
The waiting game continues for a lawsuit filed earlier this year that seeks to nullify Charlottesville’s new zoning code.
A group of residents filed suit against Charlottesville in January alleging that city officials failed to follow state guidelines to study the impacts higher residential density allowed in the Development Code would have on transportation infrastructure. The land-use rules were rewritten shortly after City Council adopted a new Comprehensive Plan on November 21 that called for more housing across the entire city.
“A comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance must be submitted to [the Virginia Department of Transportation] for review when [they] will ‘substantially affect’ transportation on state-controlled highways,” wrote attorneys with the firm Flora Pettit in a filing with Charlottesville Circuit Court in late August.
This spring, Charlottesville responded with a motion seeking to dismiss the case arguing that the plaintiffs do not have the right to sue, and added they cannot prove they will be harmed by the new rules.
After a 90-minute hearing in late June, both sides filed written closing statements to inform Circuit Court Judge Claude Worrell’s eventual opinion. Lawyers with the firm Gentry Locke argue the suit should not proceed to trial.
“Plaintiffs do not like the policy choices in the new zoning ordinance,” the Gentry Locke attorneys wrote in their recent filing. “The City followed the process in enacting the NZO. The Plaintiffs, therefore, rely on strained legal theories and ignore facts in their effort.”
Attorneys for the city also argue that Charlottesville followed the rules when submitting the mobility chapter of the Comprehensive Plan to VDOT, a key claim made by the defendants.
“Plaintiffs cannot now—more than two years after the fact—fault the City for failing to double-check VDOT’s work product,” the closing argument continues.
Flora Pettit attorney Michael Derdeyn represents those plaintiffs, as well an anonymous group that previously sought to overturn the Comprehensive Plan based on many of the same arguments. He argues that VDOT review should have been based on the theoretical maximum of new housing units that could be built under the new code.
“There can be no question that the City failed to comply with its obligation,” Derdeyn wrote.
That will be up to Judge Worrell to decide, and a ruling will be issued at some point in the near future.
Meanwhile, developers have slowly begun taking advantage of the provisions in the new code that allow more density without asking City Council for permission. That includes six units planned to be built at 303 Alderman Rd., a property that had been zoned for single-family residential but is now in the Residential B district.
Another plan, submitted for land behind the Meadowbrook Shopping Center, will be the first to take advantage of bonus rules if units meet the city’s affordability guidelines.
A firm called Greenshire Holdings has filed a major development plan to build 24 units on what is now an 0.83-acre lot at 2030 Barracks Rd. The materials sent to the city include a request to subdivide the property into two lots with 12 units to be built on each.
No traffic management plan would be required because the total amount of construction is under the 50,000 square-foot threshold that would trigger one.
