Crozet, the small village to the west, has ambitions.

Two decades ago it was known mostly for Mint Springs Valley Park and Crozet Pizza, the quirky, family-owned restaurant that was recently selected as one of the top 51 pizza parlors in the country by USA Today. Since then, however, the village with a population around 3,000 has grown in stature, welcoming the ambitious Crozet Master Plan in 2001, Starr Hill Brewery, Old Trail Village, the production of the Hollywood film Evan Almighty (which included the construction of an “ark” and visits from giraffes and elephants), various other popular eateries like Cocina del Sol, Jarman’s Gap, and the Mudhouse; the Crozet Music Festival, the Blue Ridge Shopping Center anchored by a Harris Teeter, an ACAC, and the brand-spankin’ new $10 million Crozet library soon to be built.

Charlottesville’s reputation as an attractive location over the same period, no doubt, has led to an interest in Crozet, which still remains relatively undeveloped, a new frontier that might harken back to Charlottesville’s earlier days, when UVA students weren’t even sure where the Downtown Mall was, and before we started making those number-one-places-to-live lists.

Indeed, that was the idea behind Old Trail Village, the ambitious 260-acre mixed use ‘village” with a town center, green space, a golf course, and beautiful houses nestled in a valley with spectacular views. However, while Old Trail has had some success, a drive through shows it to be (more)

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As platoons of volunteers uncover the old bones of the Rock Hill gardens, the historic Park Street estate that’s now the overgrown back yard of the Monticello Area Community Action Agency (MACAA), also unearthed has been the property’s complex history as a genteel country estate, a unique experiment in landscape design, a segregation era school, and a victim of growth.

The restoration effort has been largely organized by former City Council candidate Bob Fenwick, who, along with other preservation-mined folks, wanted to draw attention to the property so that the City and the FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, follow through on an agreement, according to a May 2010 memorandum, to restore the garden and add it to the park system as part of the new 250 interchange project.

“It’s important as the home of the violin playing brother of Jefferson’s master builder, James Dinsmore’s, and as (more)

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For decades, “Protect the rural areas” has been the veritable mantra of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. That spirit has helped anyone driving on U.S. 250 west of Charlottesville view grazing cows instead of the clustered subdivisions that been popping up around Crozet, a designated growth area. But sometimes the ideals of the Comprehensive Plan collide with reality.

Take, for instance, the strip of U.S. 250 between Western Albemarle High and Interstate 64. Long dotted with commerce, it includes gas stations, an auto body shop, a chain-fenced equipment storage yard, the Moose Lodge, and a lumber mill. And yet it’s zoned rural.

That’s why when Will Yancey tried to a build a light industrial park behind the heavy industrial R.A. Yancey Lumber site two years ago, he (more)

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It seems like a simple question: How much will taxpayers pay to make Biscuit Run a Virginia park?

Nearly a year after the state’s under-the-wire purchase of the 1,200-acre tract that had been slated to become Albemarle’s biggest subdivision, the would-be developers and state officials appear to have successfully deflected inquiries about the value of tax credits that made the deal possible— even as the Virginia state senator who penned the legislation establishing such tax credits now calls the secrecy “disturbing.”

Meanwhile, tranquility-quashing plans remain to build 100 houses within the new park’s perimeter.

Such revelations come as sources point out that the 850-acre Panorama Farms– a recreation-ready tract owned by a family eager to protect scenic terrain from development– was passed over for the honor of becoming Albemarle County’s state park. Yet, it’s the secrecy surrounding the Biscuit Run deal that has drawn fire from both sides of the political spectrum.

“It ought to be transparent,” says State Senator Creigh Deeds, who served as patron of the land preservation tax credit system that became law a decade ago. “People ought to be able to judge for themselves whether its a good deal or not.”

In a rare occurrence during politically polarized times, conservative radio show host and former Republican city councilor Rob Schilling agrees.

“It would be one thing if the developers just decided they weren’t going to build it,” says Schilling. “But for the state to get involved, and then start wheeling and dealing behind closed doors? I don’t think that makes many people very happy.”

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Located south of Charlottesville, sprawling Biscuit Run farm was purchased in 2005 for a record-shattering $46.2 million by a group of investors called themselves Forest Lodge LLC. Publicly headed by developer Hunter Craig and including Dave Matthews Band manager Coran Capshaw and at least one member of the Dave Matthews Band, the team justified the gasp-worthy price by the promise of a 3,100-home development inside the County’s designated growth area. The plan promised— in addition to giving the developers a return— to give Albemarle $41 million in proffers (deal sweeteners such as money and roads) in addition to a 400-acre park and a permanently expanded tax base.

But as the real estate market tanked in the years following the purchase, Forest Lodge found itself shouldering an immense debt load and unable to move forward on the development. By November 2009, Bluefield, West Virginia-based First Community Bancshares alerted shareholders that the Biscuit Run loan was in “early stage delinquency” but assured that it was “adequately secured” by the large tract of undeveloped land.

Were wealthy developers about to get bailed out by high-level politicians? (more)

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Albemarle police say they’ve identified the source of the bullet that randomly struck a Glenmore woman in her backyard, and point to unnamed target shooters more than half a mile away. It’s a painful reminder of how far bullets can travel.

“You should always have a backstop,” says Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding, who recently taught a hunter safety class. “It doesn’t help the cause of hunters to have someone shooting irresponsibly.”

The shooting occurred around 8pm Sunday, August 29, when 61-year-old Justine Joscelyne was watering nandinas at her Darby Road residence in the gated Glenmore subdivision. Pierced in her right breast and suffering both an entrance and exit wound, she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released later that evening.

Albemarle police spokesman Lieutenant Shawn Schwertfeger says the alleged shooter was part of a group of four sharing a shotgun and a rifle at a makeshift firing range in the yard of a residence in the 3700 block of Richmond Road. And although no slug was recovered, Schwertfeger says he believes the stray projectile came from the rifle.

Virginia has laws that prohibit shooting across roads or at houses, with increased penalties when (more)

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When a delegation from Winneba, Ghana visited Charlottesville several weeks ago, one city official criticized those who might “poo-poo” the idea of a fourth sister city as a waste of tax payer money. An appropriate phrase, as it turned out, because the African delegation visited Worrell Water Technologies, a company known for turning sewage into fresh water.

In 2007, Worrell Water built one of its “Living Machine” waste-water treatment systems— featured in a 2009 Hook cover story entitled “The Tao of poo”— in Tema, Ghana, one of more than a dozen such systems the company has installed around the world.

What’s a Living Machine? Well, imagine a man-made, turbo-charged tidal wetland. Basically, waste water is pumped and filtered, and monitored by microcomputers, through a series of cells that use plants in porous gravel to cultivate natural microorganisms that eat up the waste. The cells continuously fill and drain, mimicking the tidal action of estuaries.

Whereas the earth only has two tidal cycles a day— nature’s way of flushing the toilet— the Living Machine replicates that cycle 10 to 12 times a day.

“It was my second visit to Worrell Water this past year,” says Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, who tagged along with the Ghana delegation, “and I am definitely (more)

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Albemarle County’s longest-serving chief executive, Bob Tucker, announces his plans to retire at the end of the year after 20 years of managing the employees and steering growth into designated areas.

Georgia-born Tucker came to Albemarle in 1973 as its assistant planning director, and even then, containing sprawl was his mission. “Directing growth and development into defined growth areas to maintain those rolling hills, keeping agricultural activities active, and keeping those cows and horses in the pasture” are  among the accomplishments of which he’s most proud.

Albemarle just picked up another AAA bond rating from Moody’s, and Tucker is also proud of the county’s sterling credit rating. “When we got it the first time from Standard and Poor’s, we were the smallest county in the country to have it,” he recalls. “It’s the same as getting an Academy Award.”

Number three on his list of top achievements as county exec is snagging the former Wachovia building, which became the 5th Street County Office Building. “I grabbed it a quickly as possible and saved $7 million,” he brags in his own modest way.

Even for a CEO who’s been well-regarded by— and has outlasted many of— the county’s elected Boards of Supervisors, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Tucker, especially in the tightened economy with its reduced revenues, while trying to maintain the services a best-place to live demands.

“The most difficult time of my tenure has been the past three years,” he admits.

Supervisor Rodney Thomas lauds Tucker’s people skills. “He could walk (more)

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The neighborhood already reeling from getting declared a no plow zone in December just got another unhappy surprise when residents learned that they can no longer park at the end of their cul-de-sac. Now, some residents of this south-of-downtown neighborhood say they don’t know where they’ll park.

“I have a roommate, a 23-year-old nurse who works nights,” says resident Maurie Sutton. “She’s going to have to walk through a neighborhood that isn’t safe.”

And safety isn’t the only concern at Roy’s Place, (more)

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“Building, but not sprawling” was the headline of a recent UVA Magazine story on the school’s $308 million build-a-thon this year— in the face of a recession and UVA budget cutting. But next year one massive project will dramatically alter West Main’s streetscape (something UVA has long been threatening to do): the $141 million, 7-story, 200,000 square foot Barry and Bill Battle Building at UVA Children’s Hospital, which is scheduled to go up on a temporary parking lot beside the 12th Street Taphouse from 2011-2014.

The new building, which will serve as an outpatient surgery and (more)

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What will the world be like in 2050? George Mason prof Jack Goldstone says there is a “population bomb” coming that will drastically change the world. Find out what he’s talking about at the Miller Center on Monday, March 8 at 11am

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Like so many of the estimated 78 million Baby Boomers circling the retirement ages, Charlottesville residents Don and Lynne Gardner began to think about where and how they wanted to live as they grew older. At age 70, Don had begun battling memory loss, and he required dialysis. And Lynn, a 65-year-old registered nurse, was beginning to worry about the basement stairs her husband insisted on negotiating to get to his beloved workbench.

They had raised two sons in their 38 years in the Hazel Street house, but Lynn began asking herself hard questions: “Could he continue to navigate the basement steps or the second floor and the numerous stairs? How safe was it for us to stay?”

But they didn’t need assisted living, and they weren’t thrilled about (more)

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In an event attended by dozens of movers and shakers including Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley, Governor Tim Kaine visited Monticello Friday, January 8, to announce his administration’s success in securing more than 425,000 acres of Virginia land for conservation, particularly lavishing praise upon the previous owners of 1,200-acre Charlottesville-area residential development-turning-state park Biscuit Run.

Kaine thanked numerous agencies for helping the state purchase the property in southern Albemarle County for what he called the “bargain scenario” of $9.8 million on December 31. Still unclear, however, is the appraised value of the land, for which Biscuit Run owners will be entitled to a 40 percent tax credit, an additional— but unrevealed— cost to taxpayers.

“We owe a debt of gratitude,” Kaine said of the Biscuit Run deal, “and it starts with the landowners.”

Biscuit Run was purchased in 2005 by Forest Lodge LLC, a consortium headed by developer Hunter Craig and including members of the Dave Matthews Band, for a reported $46.2 million. It was planned as the site of some 3,100 homes, but with the economy tanking— and an estimated carrying cost of more than $300,000 per month— Forest Lodge seemed to be running out of money back in November when Bluefield-based First Community Bank told shareholders a $34 million loan was in  “early stage delinquency.” Less than two months later, with the state’s purchase of the property, it wasn’t clear how— or if—the bank would be repaid, nor was it clear what the property is now actually worth.

Developer Richard Spurzem says he believes the actual current value of Biscuit Run is closer to $20 million– less than half the speculators’ purchase price— and he points out that while $9.8 million is indeed a bargain price, (more)

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With at least part of its $34 million loan already declared in “early stage delinquency” by the lead lender, Biscuit Run’s conversion to a state park may leave several banks with millions in losses.

In a November 6 federal filing, Bluefield-based First Community Bank notified its shareholders of the potentially massive problem but assured them that the loan was “adequately secured” by a “large tract of undeveloped land in Virginia.”

What First Community may not have counted on was Governor Tim Kaine’s eagerness to add new parkland or on the generosity of Biscuit Run owner Forest Lodge LLC, a consortium publicly headed by Hunter Craig.

Craig spent several years before County staff winning the right to eventually develop 3,100 homes on the 1,200-acre tract in southern Albemarle. On December 30, however, Craig’s group sold the land to (more)

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Quite a few additions to our physical landscape in 2009 took a long time to materialize, and others could take a longer time still. Was it worth the wait? And are they worth waiting for? We’ll let you be the judge as we present some On Architecture highlights from 2009.

We’re calling this first photo the “On Architecture Photo of the Year” for the way it brings together two controversial projects in 2009. Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, with City Councilor Satyendra Huja beside him, stood in the shadow of what has become Charlottesville’s most famous unfinished building, the $31 million Landmark Hotel, as they presided over a May 29 dedication ceremony for the $7.5 million Downtown Mall re-bricking project. The hotel’s financier, Halsey Minor, and its developer, Lee Danielson, dreamed of a luxury hotel towering over the Mall’s new Halprinian bricks, complete with a roof-top restaurant with spectacular views. But Minor and Danielson had a sudden falling out, and Minor an alleged falling short, leaving us with a very tall eyesore. Will the hotel get built in 2010? Minor has vowed to finish “that damn hotel because I started it,” but that appears to be as likely as Minor appearing, as he once put it, on the cover of the Hook with wings and a halo.

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New Martha Jefferson Hospital

At an October 14 “topping off” ceremony, the final steel beam was secured on the new 500,000-square-foot, $275 million Martha Jefferson Hospital on Pantops Mountain. As part of the ceremony, over 300 workers stood at attention along each floor of the building while MJH president James Haden hoped for their continued safety and thanked them for their hard work. The hospital, which Haden said was 40 percent complete at the time, is scheduled to be finished in 2012. Meanwhile, MJH’s old location on a 14-acre tract  along Locust Avenue will be developed into a $170 to $200 million mixed-use development.

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Sacajawea gets a plaque

On June 10, close to a hundred people gathered at the foot of the Lewis and Clark statue at the intersection of streets called Ridge, Main, and McIntire to dedicate a plaque to Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first American expedition to the Pacific coast. It was a response to concerns that Sacajawea’s representation, crouched beneath the two men in bronze, underplayed her importance to the expedition. The City invited two of Sacajawea’s descendants to write the text and attend the ceremony.

“When I saw this statue I was very sad, but you are leading the way, Charlottesville,” Rose Ann Abrahamson, Sacajawea’s great-great-great niece, told the crowd. “I believe this expedition had divine intervention, because we are all here together.”

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Fry’s Spring Service Station

The city’s only historically protected gas station, the circa 1931 Fry’s Spring Service Station, ended its more than 70-year run of car care when sold in April to Fry’s Garage LLC in McLean for $800,000. Run by owner Jimmy Houchens for more than 40 years, it made the Virginia Landmarks Register in 2007 for its Spanish colonial-meets-Jefferson exterior and its Art Deco bathrooms. But a family dispute held up its inclusion in state and national historic registers.

“I’ve been here since I was a baby,” Kristy Houchens, 37, told the Hook at the time of the sale. “It’s an icon. It’s kind of the end of an era.”

Meanwhile, the old service station begins a new era as a restaurant/coffee place/sports bar, according to the folks at the nearby Fry’s Spring Exxon, who say a guy named “PK” has been busy renovating the building. By press time, attempts to reach the owner(s) had been unsuccessful, but you can be sure we’ll keep trying.

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The Gleason

During an open house reception in August atop the downtown ACAC for the topping off of the six-story, 122,000-square-foot Gleason condo building, one of the only planned downtown towers to actually get built, a rainbow after a sudden summer squall appeared to be a good omen. Not counting the new National Ground Intelligence Center and a few behemoths at UVA, it’s the biggest building ever constructed in Charlottesville. As it nears completion, more than half of its 38 condo units have been sold at prices ranging from $339,000 to $1.2 million.

Developer J.P. Williamson admitted the credit situation was grim, but said the demand for downtown residential space remains high. The simple trick for success, he said, was abandoning the old development model that got us into this mess.

“That speculative development model for mixed use condominium buildings— which never really existed in Charlottesville— dominated markets like Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Miami,” he said. “The classic speculative model— option a property, market it, hope to close acquisition and construction financing at the same time with limited equity model– is over.”

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Goodbye, Mr. Halprin

On Sunday, October 25, at the age of 93, Downtown Mall designer Lawrence Halprin died at his home in San Francisco. Along with Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall in 1976, Halprin designed the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC, in 1997, Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California, in 1967, and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco in 1968. Halprin received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in architecture from UVA, as well as the nation’s highest artistic award, the National Medal of the Arts.

If it wasn’t for Halprin, the $7.5 million Mall re-bricking project might have been a fiasco, as City planners, who had not bothered to consult Halprin, originally wanted to replace the Mall’s old bricks with smaller new ones, not to mention adding a cascading water fall on the east end and a “Sister City Plaza” in front of the skating rink, which they believed would be more stable. However, when the Hook asked Halprin how he felt about the renovation, the size of the bricks was one of his main concerns.

“I feel it’s important to maintain the original brick size and pattern as the ground level establishes the character for the Mall,” he said. “If the bricks need to be replaced, I urge the city to replace them with similar ones.”

Even after Halprin’s comment, however, city planners continued to push for the smaller bricks, claiming that the larger 4 x 12 bricks were made only in a factory in Nebraska and would be prohibitively expensive.

Eventually, after some public pressure, the city heeded Halprin’s advice, somehow locating 4 x 12 bricks  made in Virginia and relatively inexpensive. It was the last defense Halprin made for a Downtown Mall design he said remained “close to my heart.”

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Just as the City mulls a master plan to redevelop its public housing stock, which could cost an estimated $115.5 million over ten years and increase available units from 373 to 558, digital history students at UVA have created a dynamic visual archive of another redevelopment project— the demolition of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood, which eliminated 29 businesses, 154 dwellings, one church, and ran a four-lane road through the middle of the predominantly African-American neighborhood.

Once the center of African-American business and social life in Charlottesville, the neighborhood was razed under the federally funded Urban Renewal program of the 1950s and ’60s by a largely white, poll-tax-paying voting class that narrowly approved destroying the “blighted” neighborhood and relocating its residents, many to the public housing developments, such as Westhaven (which the city now wants to redevelop.)

Using deeds, maps, photos, oral histories, and other archives, students have painted (more)

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Elected officials, county staff, and media turned out to celebrate the 16-year career of Sally Thomas, the woman who was elected to the Albemarle Board of Supervisors as a write-in candidate in 1993 and who retires this week. Thomas was lauded by her colleagues December 14 at a County Office Building reception.

Brian Wheeler, a journalist-policymaker wearing his chairman of the Albemarle School Board hat, thanked Thomas for her role as his “mentor,” while other attendees praised hard work, studious preparation, and commitment to the community and her constituents in the Samuel Miller Magisterial District.

Though some of Thomas’ work appears to be suddenly unraveling these days— such as putting growth in the growth area (if a massive south-of-town subdivision Biscuit Run conks out) and building a giant reservoir (again, if Biscuit Run conks)— voters have known Thomas as an eager enforcer of the ‘neighborhood model’ for development.

Even while greeting well wishers, Thomas stopped to take a reporter’s question about Biscuit Run, which exemplified Thomas’ commitment to “smart growth” but whose developer now appears eager to cut his losses and donate the land as a state park— in an effort, Thomas says, to obtain tax credits.

“It’s too bad” says Thomas, “It was our most thoroughly developed neighborhood plan.”

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When visiting dignitaries tour The Lawn at UVA, says Richard Guy Wilson, Chair of the University’s Architectural History Department, they are often struck by how “wrong” everything looks. Indeed, as Wilson points out, the Lawn’s Pavilions are a clash of architectural styles that are perhaps more noticeable to those unfamiliar with Thomas Jefferson’s brand of genius.

“Sorry, I have to say. This is the way it is,” says Wilson. “Jefferson knew the rules of architecture, but he broke the rules.”

And he broke them, Wilson explains, to create an architectural experience for students that would teach them as much as their professors did.

“The experience of the buildings around them was as important as what was being said in the classes,” Wilson says. “It is a matter of how the space it used. It is a public communal space.”

Recently, Wilson and University Architect David Neuman discussed the (more)

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Although there have been many big plans for the revitalization of West Main Street, including a streetcar, a multi-story mixed use building, and several ambitious UVA expansion projects, a new business group deplores the current state of West Main— particularly the dust that rises daily from the pot-holed parking lot surrounding the Amtrak station.

Calling the lot a “blight on the Midtown landscape” as well as a “health hazard,” and “an environmental travesty,” the newly formed Midtown Association calls on the private owners of the Amtrak parking lot to pave it.

“The history of this situation between the City and the property owners borders on municipal negligence and professional irresponsibility,” reads an Association statement. “Something has to be done.”

In the 1990s, the City pushed Norfolk Southern Corporation to sell the parcel to Gabe Silverman and Allan Cadgene in hopes of fostering a public-private partnership whose (more)

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With rocks already starting to slide down terrain so steep it’s easier to climb than walk, a man who survived mountain-ripping Hurricane Camille 40 years ago now worries that a neighbor’s logging project could do what Camille couldn’t: bring the surface of Dudley Mountain crashing down through his home.

“When I see this,” he says gesturing to the logged property above him, “I get irked.”

Maupin says he’s worried— especially with hurricane season here— that a severe rain could cause cause the felled forest above him to liquefy, as happened in Nelson County during the 1969 mega-storm that killed 126 people.

And Maupin’s further irked at what he calls a “lackadasical” attitude by the county and the forestry department in enforcing laws about logging and land clearing, and he says that (more)

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Like so many first dates, this one took place at a coffee shop– Café Cubano, to be exact. But like many a romance, this one also includes its share of fireworks— including worries that letting a group of growth watchdogs write stories for the daily newspaper could skew coverage.

The cash-strapped Daily Progress had been eyeing Charlottesville Tomorrow’s form, and admired the nonprofit’s passion for covering government meetings. And Charlottesville Tomorrow, mired in the internet-only zone, couldn’t help but be excited about getting read by a much larger audience.

The pair’s backgrounds were so different. How would the parents of the growth watchdog feel (more)

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