August 14, 2024: City Council wants full access to Meadows neighborhood from future District Avenue roundabout
Plus: Charlottesville to acquire three pieces of land for trails and parks
Actor Marla Gibbs first came to fame for her work on The Jeffersons. In 1985, Gibbs began work on a new situational comedy program called 227. The show lasted five seasons and there were 116 episodes.
In this leap year, August 14 is the 227th installment of 2024. This is the 718th edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement, which is not intentionally a situational comedy. I’m Sean Tubbs, and there will be errors but there is a also correction policy.
What #718 has to offer:
Charlottesville City Council has selected an alternate for a future roundabout at District Avenue that will route traffic through the Meadows neighborhood
That neighborhood is set to get its first park with a $100,000 purchase by the city
A very brief land use update from the University of Virginia
First-shout: Gazpacho in the Garden at Morven
In today’s first subscriber-supported shout-out: The Morven Sustainability Lab invites you to celebrate the new semester on Friday, September 6 for the annual Gazpacho in the Garden event at 5 p.m. There will be a summer meal harvested from a garden that’s all run by students at the University of Virginia. There will be family-friendly music, lawn games, and tours of the garden where you can learn something. There will be limited seating so do come prepared with picnic blankets and chairs. For ticket information, visit the appropriate page on EventBrite.
Council wants District Avenue roundabout to offer full access to Meadows neighborhood
One of the biggest topics of conversation in Charlottesville at the moment is the operations of the roundabout at Hydraulic Road and Hillsdale Drive that opened a week early on August 6.
The night before, Charlottesville City Council made a decision about the future of another roundabout planned for a third of a mile to the northwest.
“[The Virginia Department of Transportation] is looking for you to select a preferred alternative for the Hydraulic Road / District Avenue roundabout,” said Ben Chambers, the city’s transportation planning manager. “The alternatives are based around the spoke on that roundabout that leads to Cedar Hill Drive.”
Hydraulic Road is a boundary line between Albemarle and Charlottesville with Cedar Hill Drive leading into the city’s Meadows neighborhood. District Avenue is a public street constructed as part of the Shops at Stonefield development.
The Commonwealth Transportation Board has recently agreed to fund a $20 million Smart Scale project to convert the traffic signal into a roundabout.
“We are looking at two different alternatives for this roundabout,” Chambers said. “One that allows access into Cedar Hill Drive from this roundabout and one that only allows it out of Cedar Hill Drive at that roundabout.”
The latter is Alternative A and Chambers said access to Cedar Hill Drive is currently limited with no legal ability to turn left from the neighborhood onto Hydraulic Drive. Alternative B would allow access in and out of the Meadows from the roundabout.
Chambers said people who attended a June 4 citizen information meeting held by VDOT supported Alternative A because it would not allow vehicles to come through their neighborhood to get to other points in the city, a phenomenon known as “cut-through traffic.”
Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston said he understood their concerns but supported Alternative B.
“If we’re thinking about the Meadows and wanting it to be not sort of this orphan on the upper northwest corner of the city and have it as integrated as possible, then we need to have all the movements that are there,” Pinkston said.
City Councilor Michael Payne also supported Alternate B and pointed out that other parts of the Meadows neighborhood are zoned for more intense use in the future.
“The Best Buy site is zoned Node Mixed Use 8 and hopefully at some point that’s redeveloped to mix use,” Payne said. “You could have eight-plus stories of housing. That access point will be really important to residents who live there. The Meadows may continue to grow over time. Obviously Stonefield has apartments about to come online. Seminole Square has apartments planned.”
City Councilor Natalie Oschrin took the time to lament a landscape dominated by motor vehicles.
“One thing I just always think about when I look at the 29 corridor from a map or when sometimes you fly in and can see it during the day, and you can see it in this photo, just the absolute sheer amount of asphalt and space that we reserve for private car storage,” Oschrin said. “I mean, a lot of that is in the county of course and their planning decisions but it starts in the city as well.
The two planning commissions in Albemarle and Charlottesville have not met for at least five years. When Stonefield was going through the rezoning process, Mayor Juandiego Wade was a transportation planner for Albemarle County.
“This was always a question of how it was going to impact that street but I was like but, oh, that’s a city problem,” Wade said. “But I’m in this position now so I will definitely support B because I think access is king.”
A motion to recommend full access to the neighborhood passed 5-0. VDOT will hold a public hearing next spring but this project is not expected to be completed until 2029.
One historical fact to note. As part of the rezoning for what is now called Stonefield, the original developer of Albemarle Place agreed to give the City of Charlottesville $10,000 for traffic calming improvements along Hydraulic Road.
Second-shout out: Plant Virginia Natives
We’re more than half-way through astronomical summer, and every time it rains, I fight the invasive species that love to take over my yard. But as I think ahead to the fall, the winter, and the spring, I’m thinking about one resource that may help me develop a landscape more suitable to this area. I’m talking about Plant Virginia Natives!
Plant Virginia Natives is part of a partnership with ten regional campaigns for ten different ecosystems across Virginia, from the Northern Piedmont to the Eastern Shore. Take a look at the full map below for the campaign for native species where you are in the Commonwealth. For the Charlottesville area, download a free copy of the handbook: Piedmont Native Plants: A Guide for Landscapes and Gardens.
This shout-out has been with the newsletter since the beginning thanks to one Patreon supporter! Thanks to that person!
City Council approves three acquisitions for parkland and trails
Charlottesville’s elected body took three actions on August 5 to increase the amount of parkland within the city including a pocket park in the Meadows neighborhood.
“One of my goals when I was hired was to make sure we had geographic equity in our park systems and it occurred to us and actually Locust Grove technically did not have parks,” said Chris Gensic, the city’s trails planner.
Gensic said there weren’t many lots to pick from in the neighborhood but a 0.22 acre property on Cedar Hill Drive owned by Weber Property Management was identified and available for a purchase price of $100,000 and the source would be the capital improvement program.
“It’s an empty grassy lot and what we would do with the acquisition is put it in the community’s hands with the purchase, go back to the neighborhood and say, what would you like to see?” Gensic said. “The intention is a pocket park. Do you want a playground or not? Some benches? Some trees? What kind of things do you want?”
Another acquisition will be a triangular piece of privately-owned land consisting of 0.542 acres to the south of three single family homes at the western end of the city’s centrally-located park.
“The triangle land was not acquired when McIntire Park was created but it is a piece of land that we are looking to purchase to complete the 250 Bypass trail system,” said Chris Gensic, the city’s trails planner.
The city will use $50,000 in grant funds from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation as well as $5,000 in city funds. The VOF gets their money from a $3 fee that comes from most deeds recorded in the state. This purchase will also trigger the fee to be levied in the city because the land and five acres of McIntire Park will be put under an open space easement.
The third acquisition approved by City Council is a $10,000 purchase of an acre that straddles Albemarle and Charlottesville. The seller is Rialto Beach LLC, the developer of a nearby planned unit development. Gensic said this will help the city eventually complete a greenbelt trail around the city’s borders.
“The current owner is still the developer and has offered to sell the piece of open space,” Gensic said. “We’re not buying any stormwater facilities. We’re only buying the creekside land and so this one is a $10,000 purchase which is a pretty standard price for pieces along the greenbelt in a floodplain that are not buildable.”
Gensic said he has been in discussions with Albemarle County about the purchase and there are no objections.
“It will allow us to build an [Americans with Disabilities Act] shared-use path that will connect Belmont Park to the north of this heading west over to Jordan Park where we also just built a nice new bridge heading west toward Food Lion and those places,” Gensic said.
The funding for this project is also the capital improvement program.
A brief land use update from the University of Virginia
Meetings of the Charlottesville Planning Commission offer the chance for the public to hear about items happening at the University of Virginia as there is one non-voting representative on the body.
Michael Joy has been serving in the position since the beginning of the year.
“We have an upcoming Board of Visitors meeting in September and it is a relatively light agenda in regards to the Buildings and Grounds Committee but there will be an update to our historic preservation report,” Joy said.
Joy also had updates on construction including work to build a new parking garage at the Fontaine Research Park to support additional buildings such as the Manning Institute of Biotechnology. He said excavation and blasting work for the project is complete.
“That is all completed ahead of schedule and it is on track to be done in little over a year, so the fall of 2025 will be when that parking garage will be operational,” Joy said.
In March, the Buildings and Grounds Committee approved the schematic design for another parking garage at North Grounds. Joy said the design has advanced and UVA will pursue the project as a design-build delivery project.
As for the three affordable housing projects being built as part an initiative at UVA. He said the work at Wertland Street is moving forward first with a second project on Fontaine Avenue at the Piedmont site following afterward.
“This was done in order to not have the two projects compete for the same associated tax credits,” Joy said.
The Board of Architectural Review took a look at the Wertland site in late May as I reported at the time.
Joy also added that UVA’s work to plan for the future of both the Oak Lawn estate purchased last year and the Grove Street properties purchased in 2016 will both be handled by the UVA Health system. The Board of Visitors agreed in June to allocate money toward planning studies for both.
More from the Planning Commission meeting from August 13, 2024 in future editions of the newsletter.
Reading material for #718
A dangerous Charlottesville intersection could become more crowded, Sean Tubbs, C-Ville Weekly, August 14, 2024
Virginia Tobacco Commission considering second round of energy grant requests, Charlie Paullin, August 14, 2024
#718 is a little shorter than usual… or is it?
There are only three stories in this one as I’m on vacation but also felt the need to get these two stories out. I have more information from the August 5, 2024 meeting to get to, but really wanted to get these two out. Sure the decisions didn’t happen yesterday, but these projects also won’t be complete for a while either.
This section of the newsletter will also be brief as I have somewhere to be that does not involve work. By now anyone who reads this far knows I’m going to say something about how I need paid subscriptions to keep this going, and how much I think “this” is valuable.
Paid Substack subscribers feel “this” is worth paying for and today is a great day to become one if you’ve not already. There are well over 3,100 people on the Substack and 650 people are paying me to keep doing this work. I’d like to keep going, but as I continue Year 5 I have to determine how long I can do this and whether I can save up to pay for my old age.
In any case, if you do pay through Substack, Ting will match your initial payment whether it be $5 a month, $50 a year, or $200 a year. Questions? Let me know.
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