Love the Crozet Gazette.
Crozet needs a beneficent dictator. At least for the Square, parking, transportation. Read the whole article at The Crozet Gazette to get some sort of understanding about the forces and complexities at work.
And a roundabout at Jarmans/Tabor/Crozet Ave/Library Ave, while we’re at it.
Also –
This solution is shown in the plan for downtown offered by retired landscape architects Warren Byrd and Susan Nelson (local residents) who offered it (free, as good citizens), with an explanation of its hows and whys, to the Crozet Community Advisory Committee last August. That meeting is the only occasion in the memory of your editor when the CCAC responded to a presentation with spontaneous applause. It was appreciation for an elegantly simple resolution of a difficult location to build on. For a report with plan illustrations, see the September 2015 issue of The Gazette.
For more background on the above-referenced August 2015 CCAC meeting, see the recap. Notably there, “Warren Byrd acknowledged that the Master Plan should be malleable, and adapt.”
– Also, apparently kids smoke pot.
Mayor? He/she would be called a mayor…with a Town Council. Ya, ya, AC would Never allow that…an incorporated town. I would bet Crozet could force such a change. Never understood why it was called The Square. Never looked like one to me. It is really a wide street. Traffic pattern changes sound good to me.
Why do you parrot a Gazette? The most interesting part of this is that they want to get rid of the Crozet Christmas Tree for two parking spaces?? This tree has already been cut down once and it did not go over well… This is a good example of fixing a problem that does not exist. They have already narrowed Crozet Ave and they are worried about traffic?? A four lane highway lined with 15 foot sidewalks (and, bike lanes) will not bring them anymore business. All it would do is destroy another part of Crozet. It is also looking like the
developers are not going to do anything to the lumber yard
until someone gives them money. This was already tried and failed but, these things take time…
Sure, the Barnes site is such an attractive aspect of ‘Historic Crozet’! Let’s not change a thing. Maybe the new owner could attract a major Hollywood movie: ‘Blue Ridge Zombie Apocalypse’ Use the whole site on condition they pay to remove all buildings and put in road net.
The owners of the Barnes Lumber property have had 7 months to clean up the whole site. Cleaning it up has zero to do with getting the county planning commission and BoS final approval for their phased plans (drawings). It is a true shame that volunteer fire people had to paint over the profane graffiti, because the owners of the property should have cleaned up and removed those buildings within 60 days after closing on the purchase of that property (Closed in Feb.). Call it a sign of community good will and caring about what it looks like. And if you notice in the article.. that Frank Stoner and his partners have not secured any funding to actually do anything with the property, since they acquired it in February. All they have is pictures to share so far. I am sooooo glad, I didn’t get my company to buy part of that land and get stuck in that quagmire of posturing. Enjoy the glacial pace of real change in commercial development in downtown Crozet. An excellent example of just doing it… and doing a great job.. example ?… Piedmont Place.. which looks great. 🙂
I don’t know Frank Stoner at all. I have attended several DCI meetings where he has discussed progress getting the site rezoned as something other than a Zombie Lumber Yard. I don’t know what he and his partners paid for it, and I don’t care. If I were him, I would invest as little as possible Until I got my rezoning from the County. Just curious, how many years did it lay, abandoned, and deteriorating, before he bought it…and nobody seemed to mind that it was derelict?
The Barnes Lumber property was purchased in 2014 (at a public auction from a bank that foreclosed on it) and the internal 1.8 acres near the tracks was purchased from CSX in 2015. That private company (with Frank) have owned that property (most of it) since 2014. My company offered cash to buy the CSX plot from Frank’s company in 2015, but his conditions were ridiculous (price was fine). The bank that foreclosed on it, let it lay abandoned, deteriorating AND so are the current owners. I and many other people in this community mind that the owners (who ever they are at any specific time) does not care enough to spend alittle money on cleaning it up. Believe it or not.. it might attract actual tenants to fill all those buildings on these “drawings”. You completely missed my points, Arthur. 🙂