Year: 2014

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A Fun Crozet Weekend – 26 May 2014

One of the challenging things about living in Crozet is making time to take advantage of the things to be done!

Picking strawberries at Chiles Orchard on Saturday …

A nice bike ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway …

If I hadn’t been at an open house for a cool farmhouse near downtown Crozet, I’d like to think we would have made it to polo at King Family Vineyards … but not to worry – they’re having it next weekend too.

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The past Week on Facebook – 5-25-14

I don’t particularly like Facebook, but I recognize its value to the community and sometimes a quick post on Facebook is better than a quick blog post so as not to flood everyone’s inboxes. I might start doing this type of post more often – what do you think?

21 May – I asked what Delegate Steve Landes thought about the “storm troopers” at last year’s Lock’n Festival. (no response. (Edit: I’ve sent a followup email as well and will call tomorrow morning)

21 May – There was an earthquake centered in Powatan; many in Crozet felt it. (I did not, but my wife did)

22 May – Crozet Safety Corps reported a peeping tom in Park Road/Westhall.

“We have another report of an adult male peeping into a window of a home in Crozet’s Park Road/ Brookwood neighborhood. This person was described as a white male peeping into a bedroom window between 9:30 and 10 p.m. last night.

23 May – I asked if anyone had anything to add to the Crozet Calendar.

25 May – I asked what folks are doing in Crozet on this phenomenal weekend. So far, strawberries at Chiles and polo at King Family are popular.

Notes:

– You don’t have to have a Facebook account to see what’s posted there.

– You can follow RealCrozetVA on Twitter (usually the fastest for “breaking” things like the earthquake and derecho and power outages)

– You can receive RealCrozetVA in your email.

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CCAC Meeting – 15 May 2014 – A More Typical Meeting than Usual

This (putting together this story and last night’s meeting) took a lot longer than usual. Storify (the awesome service I use to aggregate the tweets) wasn’t functioning as usual, so I had to manually pull in the tweets.

– More discussion on Barnes Lumber development
– Rutherfoord hotel aiming for late Spring 2015 opening
– Streetscape is moving forward
– Library is kicking butt
– CCAC is going to try to meet again before the Albemarle Planning Commission hearing about Barnes Lumberyard on 17 June.

As usual, please click through, scroll all the way to the bottom and work your way up. And then get involved and ask questions.

Update 16 May 2014:

Frank Stoner with Milestone sends this:

Thanks for the summary. People need to remember that this part of the process is only about identifying the transportation corridors and figuring out general land use patterns. The real planning process won’t start until the rezoning is completed so I don’t know how people could already surmise that our plan won’t be pedestrian friendly. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the successful redevelopment of downtown will require full community engagement on several critical questions that are not addressed by the existing master plan. They are as follows:

1 – What will downtown Crozet’s identity be? What will make it a desirable destination? What should it look and feel like?
2 – How will people get there ? The Library Avenue extension needs a connection back to 240 near downtown to provide adequate circulation within the downtown commercial district?
3 – What businesses do we want to locate downtown and how can we make it an attractive place to locate businesses?
4 – How will we provide adequate parking for the DCD and still promote compact, pedestrian friendly development? DCD needs a long range parking plan.
5 – How will we build and maintain quality civic and green space in the downtown district?

I’m hopeful that we can work side by side with the CCAC and the rest of the Crozet community to address these important questions because, without consensus and solutions to these, the rezoning, with our without the SUP won’t bring the stores, businesses and residents that we need for downtown to be successful.

Frank

Update 2:

This is a 10mb pdf of the most recent comments from Albemarle County Staff. If you’re curious to read/learn more, go to Albemarle County’s great County View and search by either application # – SP201400001 or as I did it, “PLApplication ProjectName Contains:” = Barnes. Continue reading “CCAC Meeting – 15 May 2014 – A More Typical Meeting than Usual”

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Crozet – Connect with your Nearby Neighborhoods with Nextdoor

Now’s a good time to remember to watch out for each other …

This is not an ad. But it is a suggestion about a way to connect neighborhoods.

If you haven’t used or heard of Nextdoor, it’s a site/service that is geo-fenced and is designed for communication with neighborhoods. But they also have a pretty neat feature called “nearby neighborhoods” that would be awfully useful for, say, reporting a peeping tom or an attempted break-in.

Nearby Neighborhoods is a feature that gives you the ability to have conversations with neighbors who live in nearby neighborhoods. Here are some great reasons to post to your nearby neighbors:
• To share information about suspicious activity that might affect several neighborhoods.
• To find a lost pet that may have wandered into an adjoining neighborhood.
• To rally neighbors from multiple neighborhoods to address civic issues.
• To spread the word about events like a local theatre production or neighborhood garage sale.
• To ask for advice or recommendations from the widest range of people in your community.

Please note: Self-promotional messages are inappropriate and may result in member suspension. The most important thing is to be sure that your post is truly relevant and useful to your nearby neighbors.

Really, consider signing up your neighborhood.

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CCAC Meeting – 15 May 2014

Agenda for this week’s Crozet Community Advisory Council meeting after the break. Who’s going to be live-tweeting this meeting? Please? Catch up on last month’s meeting.

From the coming Crozet hotel to Streetscape updates to the Crozet 4th of July Celebration planning to #4, this is (as most are) likely to be a useful and important meeting.

4. Open discussion/ brainstorming regarding ideas for future commercial development in Crozet and what types of businesses we would like to see.* One addition to this I’d like to see is “and be economically viable.” It’s nice to want things, but an entirely different mindset to want something that will be profitable and feasible.

Continue reading “CCAC Meeting – 15 May 2014”

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Bark Avenue is Closing

Bark Avenue is closing.

I received this email over the weekend:

“First off I would like to thank all of you for trusting the care of your dogs to us at Bark Avenue. It has been a privilege to make them look and fell better. I will be retiring due to health issues and regretfully will be making July 15th the last day that I will be providing grooming services. I would like to sell the business and if anyone is interested I will stay to train the new owner. If I do not sell it then I will be closing the doors. I have given this much thought and I have come to love so many of your dogs…unfortunately this decision is necessary. Whether I leave or someone keeps it going, I will keep you informed. Again, thank you so much for your support.”