Tag: Planning & Development

C-VILLE Weekly’s planning and development coverage features regular stories on Charlottesville and Albemarle County real estate and local government actions.

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Undeveloped land on major highway into Charlottesville up for grabs

The four lots for sale form part of a triangle of undeveloped land along Fifth Street, a four-lane highway in between I-64 and downtown Charlottesville. Photo via Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors.

Charlottesville’s new zoning code, which went into effect in February, opens up potential for a much more urban landscape with higher buildings and increased residential density. The updated rules provide a new lens to speculate what might happen with some of the last undeveloped parcels across the city. 

Earlier this month, signs were placed at the edge of several wooded plots of land on Fifth Street in Charlottesville just to the north of the Beacon on North residential community. 

“This prime piece of real estate offers convenient access to public water and sewer, making it an ideal choice for your dream home or investment project,” reads the listing offered by Sherri White of the Hogan Group. 

In all, White represents four lots, with three owned by the same family. The parcels were the property of Ammon and Shirley Brown since at least 1994. Both have since died and the land is now split between six of their surviving children. 

Two of the Brown lots measure 0.33 acres and a third is 0.23 acres. Each is listed at $180,000. Carroll Gibson, the owner of the fourth lot, decided to sell at the same time. 

“I think their hope for these properties [is for them] to be purchased at the same time,” White says. “This could actually provide the city with a great opportunity to provide more affordable housing.”

The topography of the land illustrates some of the real-world obstacles that perhaps explain why the land is not yet developed. For instance, there is a 25-foot decline from Fifth Street to a relatively flat portion on which structures could be built. 

However, whatever land is available to be developed is in the new Residential Mixed Use 5 district which allows unlimited density. The old zoning would have limited the parcel to a certain number of units before the City Council would need to grant a special use permit. 

The new rules converted all legislative approvals to technical ones, which now would require a developer to work with the city to develop a way to get in and out of the site. 

Another consideration is Lodge Creek, a tributary of Moores Creek. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality considers the waterway impaired for bacterial health, but property owners along its run have added buffers to help prevent sedimentation. 

“The zoning doesn’t have anything on small streams,” says James Freas, Deputy City Manager for Operations. “Depending on the specifics of a given site, other state and local laws might apply.”

Elsewhere on Fifth Street, there are other undeveloped parcels which may one day yield more apartments or businesses. One of them is a 5.89-acre property owned by an entity called Renaissance Place between the multifamily Blue Ridge Commons community and the highway. 

The City of Charlottesville and the Virginia Department of Transportation are also in the early stages of identifying projects to solve safety issues on Fifth Street. Council agreed to lower the speed limit on the road to 40 miles per hour in 2021 after a series of well-publicized fatal crashes.

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Albemarle staff refining process for county master plan update

Photo via Skyclad Aerial.

Albemarle County has spent the last two and a half years updating its Comprehensive Plan, a document required by state law for each locality to guide “adjusted and harmonious growth of the territory.” 

For four and a half decades, Albemarle has used that plan to designate the vast majority of land in the county to be rural areas where intense development is discouraged and generally not allowed. As of the last plan update in 2015, growth is to be concentrated in the urban ring, U.S. 29 North, and Crozet. That’s about five percent of the county’s 726 square miles. 

The current update goes by the name AC44 and had been expected to be completed by this fall. Two of four phases have been completed so far with input from hundreds of county residents, the Planning Commission, and elected officials. 

“We processed this feedback and took the time to develop a structure to improve the clarity of the resulting document,” says Abbey Stumpf, the county’s manager of communications and public engagement. 

This now results in a timeline that will see a public hearing and approval next year after another round of community engagement in the fall. But first, the PC was asked on July 9 whether they support what staff calls “refinements” to the process. Among these are a transition away from chapters for “plan elements” as well as fewer goals and objectives. 

The number and clarity of objectives concern the Piedmont Environmental Council, an advocacy group that has worked to keep growth area boundaries intact since they were formed. 

“It is not clear how the previously prepared draft goals will be revised into a single goal and whether or not some goals have been eliminated and new ones proposed,” says Rob McGinnis, Senior Land Use Field Representative for PEC. 

McGinnis says PEC is also concerned that there has been no direct engagement with the public over the summer while the staff has been working on a draft plan. 

The head of a pro-business group with much experience watching planning in Albemarle said he welcomes the new timeline. Neil Williamson of the Free Enterprise Forum says he hopes the refinements will lead to a more focused document with less room for interpretation of what the county wants the future to be. 

“In the past, the comp plan was an amalgamation of all public comment received rather than a statement of direction from the elected body,” Williamson says. “We may not agree with all of the goals, objectives, and actions planned, but [we do] applaud making the hard choices that show direction rather than making everyone happy and saying nothing.” 

Localities are not required to make major changes in their Comprehensive Plan. After some years of review, Fluvanna County has opted to re-adopt their 2015 plan with a few modifications. Greene County took a similar approach whereas Nelson County hired the Berkley Group to write a new document.

However, Albemarle has experienced much more change than those localities. Since 1980, the county’s population has more than doubled from 55,783 to an estimated 116,148 in 2023 as calculated by the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA. 

Work on Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan update had been expected to wrap up this year, but staff has taken extra time to finalize plan goals. Community input will begin in the fall with possible adoption by next spring or summer.

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Density opponents argue in court that city didn’t follow state rules

The zoning map adopted by Council in December 2023 sets up a future with more housing, but the plaintiffs in the case (three of whom are on Rugby Road or Rugby Avenue) argue the city should have done more study on the impacts of the additional density. Image via City of Charlottesville.

Will opponents of Charlottesville’s new zoning code get a court trial to argue against recent rules? 

That answer will not be known for at least several months following a 90-minute hearing last week on a motion from the city for Circuit Court Judge Worrell to dismiss the case. 

Charlottesville City Council adopted a Development Code last December that allows more homes to be built on all properties within city limits. At the lowest level, parcels that used to be restricted to one unit can now have at least three. 

On January 16, a group of residents filed a suit arguing their property values would be harmed by the additional density and alleging that the city did not perform a rigorous study of its effects on transportation infrastructure as required by Virginia law.

“The city failed to do what the General Assembly told them to do,” said Michael Derdeyn, a Flora Pettit attorney hired by the group, at the hearing. “The process was flawed.” 

Derdeyn says a court trial would allow evidence to be submitted to prove the city did not send enough information to the Virginia Department of Transportation on the impacts that additional density might have. 

The city responded that the opponents sought to use the courts to achieve what they could not do through the legislative process. 

“The new zoning ordinance (NZO) identified a significant problem, which was a lack of affordable housing,” said Greg Haley of the law firm representing the city, Gentry Locke. 

Haley said the new zoning was adopted as part of the Cville Plans Together process, which includes Council’s adoption of an affordable housing plan in March 2021 as well as a new Comprehensive Plan in November 2021. He said the zoning puts into practice values the council sought to adopt. 

“It allows multifamily units in all zoning districts,” Haley said. 

A major priority for Council was to distribute housing production across the city, but the study showed that the actual process would be “inherently incremental” and not rapid, Haley said. An inclusionary zoning analysis in the summer of 2023 estimated that 1,300 new units could be built over three years.

“You have conclusions from staff that the infrastructure is sufficient,” Haley said. 

A trial would not be warranted because the legislative body offered multiple forums for disagreements to be aired. 

Derdeyn said the city’s rate of change analysis only looked at residential neighborhoods and did not study the potential impact on existing mixed-use corridors, where residential density is now unlimited with no maximum cap.

“They didn’t analyze the other parcels,” Derdeyn said. “They looked at part of the puzzle. They didn’t even look at the whole city.” 

This is the second time Worrell has presided over a hearing involving these same issues. In August 2022, he dismissed three of four counts in a previous suit to overturn the Comprehensive Plan. At the time, he ruled the plaintiffs could not bring the case forward because they could not demonstrate any harm had been done to them through adoption of the plan.

Derdeyn said that harm is now demonstrated and the case should go to trial. 

“Your honor said we had to wait until the zoning,” Derdeyn said. “The ordinance passed and now we are here.” 

After a 90-minute hearing, Worrell made no decision and invited both attorneys to submit closing arguments. He plans to follow up with a written opinion. 

“Suffice it to say, it’s an interesting argument,” Judge Worrell said. 

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Southern Development seeks permission to build affordable units for 240 Stribling—at a different location

Southern Development seeks a rezoning to allow for eight affordable units slated for a project on Stribling Avenue to be built at the company’s Flint Hill community instead. Photo by Sean Tubbs.

When Southern Development Homes won a rezoning in Charlottesville to allow for the construction of 170 dwelling units on Stribling Avenue, the idea was that all of the required affordable units would be built on the 11-acre site in Fry’s Spring. 

As part of the rezoning in late April 2022, Southern Development agreed to designate 15 percent of the units as affordable to households with gross earnings of less than 60 percent of area median income (AMI). Under the city’s definitions, that’s classified as “low- and moderate-income.” 

A new request from the developer seeks to add the definition of “very low-income household,” reserved for families who earn between 30 percent and 50 percent of AMI. But the amendment also requests permission to build at most eight of those units elsewhere so that they are available to potential residents sooner. 

“Assuming the final site plan approval proceeds in a timely manner, construction of new homes [at 240 Stribling] is still likely to be no less than two years in the future, and possibly more,” reads the narrative for the request. 

Southern Development also points out that construction is underway at its Flint Hill project, which is also in the Fry’s Spring neighborhood. Tree-clearing has begun for the 60-unit community built between Moseley and Longwood drives. 

Under the Flint Hill rezoning, granted in April 2020, eight affordable units are required to be built and the new request transfers the obligation to build—at most—eight of 240 Stribling’s 26 units to the Flint Hill project. That would create up to 16 units there, with at least two of them reserved for the “very low-income” category. 

Southern Development is working with Habitat for Humanity to build those units. 

“We’ve had some amazing recent partnerships with them at Burnet Commons and Southwood,” says Charlie Armstrong, vice president at Southern Development. “They will definitely be building eight Habitat units at Flint Hill and we want them to build 16.”

Meanwhile, the city continues to work on the design for infrastructure to support the Stribling project. The council’s original vote to rezone was conditional upon the city entering into a public-private partnership with Southern Development to upgrade Stribling Avenue with sidewalks. The road currently lacks walkways and drainage. The city has created drawings and a final version is expected to be ready for public review in July. 

This will be the first rezoning under the city’s new Development Code. Southern Development is not asking for any other changes to the rezoning beyond the affordability provisions.

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University credit union moving ahead with plans for new headquarters on Fifth Street Extended

A rendering of the future UVA Credit Union headquarters to be located at 1201 Fifth St. SW just over the line in Albemarle County. Image via Glave & Holmes Architecture.

One of the area’s oldest financial institutions is preparing for the future with plans to move its headquarters from Albemarle’s central urban area to one emerging in the south. 

In 2026, the UVA Community Credit Union will move from 3300 Berkmar Dr. to a large six-acre tract at 1201 Fifth St. SW at Interstate 64’s Exit 120.

“To ensure handicap accessibility, we’ll be demolishing the existing building and constructing a modern Jeffersonian-style structure, with occupancy targeted for summer 2026,” reads the 2023 annual report for the Credit Union. 

Founded in 1954 with service restricted to employees of the UVA hospital, the Credit Union has steadily expanded. In 2021, a charter update spread its potential membership to Lynchburg in the south and to Harrisonburg in the north. The expansion paid off: The Credit Union welcomed more than 80,000 new customers in 2023. 

The Credit Union bought the six-acre property in October 2021 for $8.9 million from the Christian Aid Mission, which has since moved its headquarters to 1807 Seminole Trail. The existing building was constructed in 1986 to be the headquarters of Virginia Power’s western division. Christian Aid bought the property in September 1997 for $3.6 million. 

The Credit Union recently sold the building that contains their branch on Arlington Boulevard as well as two other properties for $10.5 million. The purchaser is the University of Virginia Foundation, which tends to continue to rent to existing businesses until it’s time for UVA to use the property. None of their other branches are currently listed for sale. 

The northern portion of the property abuts Moores Creek and serves as part of the route for the Rivanna Trail. 

The Credit Union plans to demolish the existing building and construct a new two-story structure with almost the same footprint as the present one with 41,086 commercial square feet. The Albemarle Architectural Review Board will take a look at the plans in the near future. 

This section of Albemarle County has been steadily growing with the opening of 5th Street Station in late 2016 after being rezoned for commercial development in March 2008. Since then, traffic volumes have increased and there are several transportation projects in the works. One of them could be the conversion of Exit 120 into a diverging diamond. Albemarle Supervisors endorsed that plan last week. 

While there are no residential units associated with this project, Albemarle classifies this area as Neighborhood 5, one of Albemarle’s designated growth areas. There are 1,453 dwelling units approved but not built as of April 1. Most of those units are in the Southwood Mobile Home about a mile to the south down Fifth Street Extended. 

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Not-so-tiny change

So far, Louisa has received one application for a tiny house, a 10'x32' Tiny Timbers house that will be built on the site of the applicant company. Photo by Tiny Timbers.

A recent change to rules about what can be constructed has cleared an obstacle for those who wish to live in a very small living space. At least in Louisa. 

“State building code now identifies tiny homes and has a regulation,” says Toni Williams, a member of the Louisa Board of Supervisors. “It’s just a house. It’s just a small house.” 

Louisa and many other localities across Virginia have prohibited tiny houses mostly on the basis that Virginia’s building code did not have any official provision for them. The code is updated every three years, and the new version of the code that went into effect in January now officially defines these as structures less than 400 square feet. 

Earlier this month, the Louisa Board of Supervisors removed a definition of “tiny house” from the definitions in land-use regulations. That means they can now be built in any zoning district where single-family houses are allowed. 

“Tiny homes must be placed on permanent foundations as part of the building code, so if you have a tiny home and it is on wheels then they would call that maybe like a camper,” Williams says.  

Williams said Louisa previously was wary of allowing the structures out of concerns about how many could be parked on a site if they’re on wheels. 

The building code has the same minimum construction standards but allows for deviations. A normal house must have a minimum ceiling height of seven feet, but a tiny house can be 6’8″. Bathroom ceilings can be as low as 6’4″. The code now allows for a loft with a minimum of three-foot height to be used as habitable space. 

Placement of such structures would still be regulated by minimum lot sizes. 

Since the Planning Commission heard the item in May, Louisa has received one application for such a structure, a 10’x32′ Tiny Timbers house that will be built on the site of the applicant company. That will now be handled internally and requires no approval by elected officials. 

Petersburg-based Tiny Timbers prices its units between $78,500 and $87,500. Tiny homes on foundations will take longer to build than those on wheels, but those would be regulated as a recreational vehicle. 

Charlottesville’s building code official says the city has also already seen construction of tiny homes.

“The most common [ones] that we see here in the city are when they are stick-built on site like a typical house or dwelling,” says Chuck Miller. If they’re manufactured elsewhere, they have to comply with Virginia’s Manufactured Home Safety Regulations. 

An official with the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development says it is up to each locality to determine how to proceed. 

“Enforcement of building codes is done at the local municipal level and the state primarily serves as a training arm as well as conducting the periodic updates of the building codes based on national codes and standards,” says Thomas King, a code and regulations specialist.

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Change order

The Building and Grounds Committee will discuss the new Center of the Arts to be built in the Emmet-Ivy corridor (in yellow), the new home for the Fralin and Kluge-Ruhe art museums. Image by City of Charlottesville.

The University of Virginia has more influence and control over Charlottesville’s future than any other entity in the community. At this moment, UVA has more than a billion projects under construction, according to the packet for this week’s meeting of the Board of Visitors. 

The agenda of the Buildings and Grounds Committee is a good place to see what might be happening next. Rather than meeting at their usual Thursday afternoon time, the panel will convene Friday morning. This change comes because a “leadership discussion” is scheduled for the full 17-member board on Thursday and will be followed by a closed session.

Since becoming University president in August 2018, Jim Ryan has put a priority on building connections with the greater community. The President’s Council on UVA-Community Partnerships has led to several initiatives, such as a commitment to provide land for between 1,000 and 1,500 affordable units in the community. 

Another initiative in the Great and Good Strategic Plan adopted during Ryan’s tenure is to house all second-year students on campus. UVA recently announced plans to build up to 2,000 beds for this purpose on either Emmet Street or Ivy Road, with the first units planned for 2027. 

On Friday morning, the Buildings and Grounds panel will get an update on the 2024 major capital plan and will review the plans for a new North Grounds parking garage.

“This is a thousand-space structured parking deck which is going to be located at the northwest corner of Massie Road and Copeley,” says Michael Joy of the UVA Office of the Architect. “It will be adjacent to all of the competition venues and the John Paul Jones Arena.”

Joy says this will allow UVA to eliminate surface parkings for future development. Some of the apartment buildings at Copeley Hill will be demolished to make way for the parking structure. 

New projects to be added to the capital plan include the renovation of an engineering research facility on Observatory Mountain, a project called the Darden Global Innovation Nexus, and expansion of a child care center on Copeley Road. The lattermost project would see capacity grow from 115 children to a total of 285. 

Other new initiatives will have a big impact on Charlottesville’s Fifeville neighborhood. Last year, UVA purchased the Oak Lawn estate for $3.5 million, having already purchased several properties a block to the north in 2016. Planning studies are proposed for both.

“The Grove Street planning study will consider program options for these two sites, which are likely to include UVA Health and neighborhood clinics, community uses, and parking in a mixed-use format,” reads a description in the B&G packet. 

Written material for the Oak Lawn property hints at a future child care center on the 5.2-acre parcel. 

The buildings panel will also approve the location and design guidelines for the new Center of the Arts to be built in the Emmet-Ivy corridor. This would be the new home for the Fralin and Kluge-Ruhe art museums as well as the music department. There will also be a 1,200-seat auditorium. 

“Design is in the early stages and there will be ongoing funding efforts both
with the Commonwealth and with
philanthropic donors,” says Joy, who is a non-voting member of the city planning commission. 

Also on the full Board’s agenda this week is a trip to the new football operations center, which will be named for Molly and Robert Hardie, the co-owners of Keswick Hall who made a large gift to support the Virginia Athletics Master Plan.

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Public space

At the core of the 22-point Downtown Mall Action Plan is the idea of the Downtown Mall as a public space. Photo by Stephen Barling.

As the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Downtown Mall approaches in 2026, the city of Charlottesville is looking to make some improvements. The Downtown Mall Action Plan presented to city council outlines stakeholders’ priorities and suggested next steps, with a focus on the Mall as a public space.

“The goal was not to resolve, or even identify, every issue related to the Mall, which will be an ongoing process for the City,” reads an excerpt of the report, “but to begin to serve as a starting point for that process.”

The plan is the culmination of over a year of discussions by the Downtown Mall Committee, comprising more than a dozen local business owners, residents, nonprofits, students, and city leaders. 

The report’s 22 recommendations are split into organizational, programming, and amenity categories. Four items of particularly high priority are: to have staff consistently on the Mall to bolster cleanliness and safety, to implement the Tree Management Plan, to create a lighting plan and guidelines that account for safety and aesthetics, and to “re-imagine the outdoor café spaces.”

“These four priority items, I think, [are] just a place of where do we start first,” says Greer Achenbach, Executive Director of Friends of Charlottes­ville Downtown and Downtown Mall Committee member.

At the core of all 22 action items is the idea of the Downtown Mall as a public space. When landscape architect Lawrence Halprin designed it in the early 1970s, there was significant emphasis on the Mall as a place for the community. Recommendations—including the installation of a permanent public restroom, increasing and improving public transit to the area, reconsideration of outdoor dining spaces, the restoration of Halprin chairs (movable wooden-backed seats designed by Halprin himself), and the addition of more public seating—are all aimed at improving the utility of the Mall as a communal space.

With more than a year spent considering the various elements of the Mall and its role in the community, it is now up to the city and other local actors to move from discussion to implementation.

“These are not new ideas; a lot of these things have been talked about in the community for a long time,” says Achenbach. “I’m just so thankful that we’re all getting together to specifically write it down and make a plan on how to make it happen.”

Many of the Downtown Mall Action Plan’s recommendations closely align with the goals of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown, and Achenbach anticipates working with the city on implementation.

“What I have learned over the past year is that we have a special amenity out there that has a lot of passion associated with it,” said City Manager Sam Sanders at the conclusion of the action plan’s presentation and discussion by councilors on May 20. “One of my priorities is … to recognize the Mall as the amenity that it is for the entire community.”

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Filling in 

The view looking north on 10th Street NW with a rendering of the bulk of the proposed six-story building. Image by GRIMM + PARKER.

Details are now known for the first of three UVA-initiated projects to build between 1,000 and 1,500 affordable housing units in the community. 

“This is a project being pursued by the University’s real estate foundation at the northeast corner of 10th Street and Wertland,” says Jeffrey Werner, the city’s preservation planner. “There are some opportunities here for architectural creativity.” 

UVA President Jim Ryan announced the general goal in March 2020, but work stalled during the pandemic. Three sites were selected in December 2021; they include the redevelopment of a faculty housing site on Fontaine Avenue and space at the North Fork Research Park. In all cases, developers will lease sites that will be owned by UVA’s foundation. 

The two-acre site in the center of Charlottesville is currently a parking lot and a three-story apartment building owned by the foundation. In February, UVA selected a partnership consisting of the Boston-based Preservation of Affordable Housing and the National Housing Trust. 

“Our goal is to design this in context and collaboratively with the University of Virginia with the surrounding community and [to create] something that is financeable,” says J.T. Engelhardt of NHT, an organization that co-owns Kindlewood with the Piedmont Housing Alliance. 

Under the city’s new CX-8 zoning, the developer could have gone as high as 11 stories. But on May 21, members of the Board of Architectural Review saw a six-story structure that would take up much of the two-acre site. 

“We’re assuming somewhere between 150 and 190 affordable rental units,” says Liz Chapman of Grimm + Parker, a local firm hired to actually design the building. “That … range is largely driven by wanting to work with community stakeholders to understand the types of residential units these should be.”

For instance, should they be built for individuals or for families? 

Under the initial plan, vehicles would enter the 80-space parking garage on 10th Street, the same street that retail spaces will face. 

Chapman asked BAR members to identify what architectural cues the project should take and whether there were nearby examples of adequate public infrastructure for pedestrians. 

BAR member James Zehmer pointed out that 10th Street is a very busy road and suggested the designers move the garage entrance to Wertland. 

“I think this wants to be part of West Main because of the massing and size, but we need to respect there’s a much more residential neighborhood behind it,” Zehmer says. 

Chapman said the preliminary idea is to build the structure as a concrete podium with wood construction because that’s the most feasible way to cover the costs. An internal courtyard would provide the outdoor amenity space in something referred to as a doughnut. 

Planning Commissioner Carl Schwarz says he understands the reason for the design, but he doesn’t like that it looks like a fortress. 

“It does feel like it’s walled itself off a little bit,” Schwarz says. “It makes a safe public space for the residents, but it’s not very welcoming to the neighborhood.”   

BAR member Cheri Lewis encouraged the designers to create a way for vehicles to drop people off at the new building. 

“You can’t stop on 10th Street,” Lewis said. “There’s no way. And I don’t think you can turn very easily without being backended anyway, so maybe there’s an opportunity there.”

In the near future, the redevelopment of Westhaven could mean additional affordable units. City Council has morally committed at least $15 million to the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

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Neighborhood remodel?

The single-story office structure within the yellow boundaries will be redeveloped as a four-story mixed-use building with up to 15 apartments. Line and Grade via Albemarle GIS.

Twenty-three years ago this week, Albemarle Supervisors officially adopted a policy called the Neighborhood Model to encourage construction of a more urban fabric in the county’s designated growth areas.   

“We were proud of the tremendous efforts put into developing the Neighborhood Model by a committee of local residents and staff,” says Sally Thomas, who represented the Samuel Miller District at the time. “It was ‘smart growth’ before that was a common moniker.” 

Since that time, developers have gotten approval from the Board of Supervisors by demonstrating how their projects satisfy twelve principles intended to avoid suburban sprawl by using land more efficiently. Albemarle also created master plans for each area to signal to property owners what the local government would like to see happen. 

Dr. Jay Knight operates his dental practice on a one-acre parcel on Woodbrook Drive near the intersection with Berkmar Drive in a building constructed in 1996. 

“Our building pretty much needs to be updated at this point,” Knight says. “I have been thinking for some time about redesigning the office and the building and thought it would be a great idea to also be able to have some residential components with the property.”

According to the plans drawn up by the firm Line and Grade, the one-story building would be demolished to make way for a four-story structure with a footprint of 6,698 square feet. 

“Currently the plan is for ground-level dental office space with three stories residential above, at up to 15 units,” reads the narrative for the application written by Line and Grade. 

Knight is a native of the area who says he appreciates Albemarle’s work to limit development into the rural area to attain what he described as a “great harmony.” This property is designated in the Places29 Master Plan as “urban density residential.” 

However, comprehensive plans are advisory and landowners must comply with zoning. The current classification for this property is commercial (C-1) so a special use permit is required for residential use. Two special exceptions to building placement rules are also requested to allow the site to be reused. 

The property is adjacent to Agnor-Hurt Elementary School, and plans show an easement for a future pathway to the school should the county decide to build one. Knight said that came at the suggestion of planners in Albemarle’s Community Development during a preliminary meeting before the application was filed. 

Albemarle has amended its Comprehensive Plan several times since 2001, including the addition of the Housing Albemarle plan. This plan has a clear goal for developers: More places to live are required for the county to support anticipated population growth. The Places29 Master Plan, adopted in 2007, called for an extension of Berkmar Drive north, and VDOT has plans to connect that roadway to Airport Road where it joins the UVA Discovery Park. 

Another principle in the neighborhood model is to provide residential density in places where there are sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, and public transit. People who live in the space would have access to at least one Charlottesville Area Transit route. Knight said residents could walk to the Rio Hill Shopping Center for groceries and could easily make their way to jobs. 

“I think a concept like what we’re talking about would really fit in,” Knight says. 

The permit and the special exceptions will need to go through the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. Knight hopes to be able to move to construction between two and five years.