Category: Growth

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Restore N Station Hearings in June

From a comment:

Two important public hearings for the proposed ReStore ‘N Station are coming up and it is critical that people attend these meetings if they are concerned about the size and character of a huge gas station/truck stop proposed for Route 250 West. If approved, this would be the second largest gas station in the County, serving both cars and semi trucks Interstate 64.

Please take some time out of your schedule to attend these meetings. It is crucial that the County know that citizens are paying attention to their decisions regarding this project. Here are two hearings where your attendance is needed to:

·        Show your support for the adjoining neighborhood’s attempt to scale back the size and use of the project;

·        Note your concern about a large project like this proposed to be built near three schools on Scenic Route 250.

1) Tuesday, June 1 at 2 p.m. for a Board of Zonings Appeals (BZA) Hearing and

2) Tuesday, June 8 at 6 p.m. for a Planning Commission Public Hearing

Don’t feel like you need to speak at these meetings, just showing up is important! this could be your neighborhood and you would certainly want other Albemarle County citizens to stand up for you. You also might have children going to one of the nearby three schools and are interested in showing support for scaling back the size of the project.

(from email by Mary Rice)

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At the very least, couldn’t they come up with a better name than “Restore N Station”?

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Restore N Station On Hold?

The Newsplex is reporting:

Plans for a proposed gas station in Crozet remain on hold until June after a group of residents file an appeal. No decisions were made on whether plans for the RestoreNStation would move forward during the Albemarle County Planning Commission meeting Tuesday night.
“Under state law, when you appeal it stops any other process that might further a determination,” says Chief of Zoning Ron Higgins.


View Crozet, Virginia, USA in a larger map

Background reading:

– Public Hearing on 20 April
– Gas Station coming to 250 in Crozet
– Close-Knit Free Town is Feeling Squeezed

Learn more at the County of Albemarle’s site:

PROJECT: SP200900034 RE-STORE’N STATION PROPOSED: Use of more than 400 gallons of groundwater per site-acre per day for convenience store. ZONING CATEGORY/GENERAL USAGE: HC, Highway Commercial – retail sales and service uses; and residential use by special use permit (15 units/ acre); EC Entrance Corridor – Overlay to protect properties of historic, architectural or cultural significance from visual impacts of development along routes of tourist access SECTION: 24.2.2.13, Uses permitted by right, not served by public water, involving water consumption exceeding four hundred (400) gallons per site acre per day. Uses permitted by right, not served by public sewer, involving anticipated discharge of sewage other than domestic wastes. COMPREHENSIVE PLAN LAND USE/DENSITY: Rural Areas – preserve and protect agricultural, forestal, open space, and natural, historic and scenic resources/ density ( .5 unit/ acre in development lots) ENTRANCE CORRIDOR: Yes LOCATION: US 250 (Rockfish Gap Turnpike) approximately 1,600 feet (0.3 miles) west of Western Albemarle High School TAX MAP/PARCEL: Tax Map 55B Parcel 1 MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT: Whitehall  

By the way, I am marketing a great house on Free Town Lane. 🙂

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Crozet Community Advisory Council – Thursday 15 April

If you live in Crozet, you really should consider attending some of the CCAC’s meetings … it’s where you can learn and give input about Crozet’s growth and development.

A reminder that the Crozet Community Advisory Council’s (CCAC) monthly meeting is this Thursday, April 15, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Meadows (off Route 240, south of town).

Everyone is encourage to attend.

Continue reading “Crozet Community Advisory Council – Thursday 15 April”

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Time to Wake up the Bedroom Community Citizens of Crozet!

Editor’s Note: Leslie Burns was kind enough to answer my call for someone to write about last week’s Crozet Community Association meeting.

A handful of Crozet Citizens showed up last Thursday to hear what is happening in our town at the Crozet Community Association gathering. Who are these folks? Why, they are your neighbors… hoping to pull together and grow community involvement. You might not have heard about the meeting or paid much attention to the small signs announcing it that were posted around the main intersection of town. But maybe it is time to start showing up at these association meetings…they only meet five times a year. It is not a huge commitment to make. That was one of the issues that came up at the meeting- how to reach out and connect the many neighborhoods and people living out there that have the health of our town in mind.

Here’s the dilemma. No tax revenues = no new funds to support the type of cultural and much needed improvements (think Library, road improvements, sidewalks, etc.) that are at the very heart of the Master Plan of Crozet. So where do the revenue hungry turn when it is time to welcome developers of light industrial business parks? The easiest places to access are usually given the green light for development first and we have a light that we should examine closely before we let it change on us. Some of the locations recently designated by our leaders for ideal growth are a few major intersections of highways with Rte 64.

It was announced tonight at the Crozet Community Association meeting that there is going to be a Master Plan review and meeting on Thursday, January 21st whose purpose (for one) will bring to light an idea that at least one person in our community claims will supply the revenue generating light industrial growth that Crozet (by way of our growth-area designation in the county) is destined to support. Where is this development to occur? The proposed development of land equal to the size of two Fashion Square Malls, sits quietly by the intersection of 250 and 64 at that sleepy little intersection that is the gateway to our homes and schools right now. Imagine a Waynesboro type intersection right next to our lovely pastoral village. Is this what you moved to Crozet to get close to?

If “Intersectionville” is the very name of the town you want to live in you may well get it, unless you show up to exhibit your commitment to an alternative way of life. The vision of retaining the downtown area and building it up to support sustainable and healthy growth alongside the tracks and within walking distance of community services already in place, will become nothing but a memory if the car and semi-truck driven sprawl is allowed to go in where it is proposed.

If you have an opinion to voice please show up on Thursday night on the 21st at the Field School auditorium (Old Crozet School on Crozet Ave.) at 7:00 PM. Meet some new neighbors and bring some neighbors that you already know. Meet some of the planning department representatives that have been actively involved in our master plan-consistently showing up to hear what YOU have to say. Listen to what is proposed to develop around us and become an active part of the small town that you moved here to enjoy. If you let others make your decisions for you- you are going to have to live in a world that someone else created for you and your children. Government is here as a tool of the people. If we do not interact, speak-up and have a hand in the sustainable design of our town here- it will not be a tool in our hands- but in the hands of those that would profit from business-as-usual sprawl. If the vision for Yancy Mills Industrial park and surrounding areas is not of a sprawling build out- let that be shown clearly to us.

Here’s the challenge… People that live in Crozet can affect how and where that revenue-creating light industrial growth is to occur by becoming the community that we claim we came here to be part of.

You want that small town feel? Now is your time to shine on Thursday- January 21st.

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Crozet Public Meeting – Thursday 21 January

Editor’s note: this email was sent out by Tim Tolson in Crozet:

Also, I want to alert you to a VERY IMPORTANT CROZET AREA MEETING next Thursday, January 21st at 7:00 PM at The Field School. This meeting is about the huge proposed industrial park at the Intersection of Route 250 and I-64, slated to be at least TWICE the size of Fashion Square Mall.

Please attend this meeting, YOUR input on this proposed project, that would expand the Crozet Growth Area, is essential.

The Yancey family has submitted a Comprehensive Plan amendment to rezone 84 acres on the southeast corner of the Interstate 64/Route 250 intersection to ‘light industrial’ for the construction of an industrial park that would contain from 1.1 million to 1.8 million square feet of buildings.

On January 21 at 7 p.m. at the Field School (the Old Crozet Elementary School across from the current Crozet Elementary School), the public will have a chance to react to a county study on light industrial land in the County, and give county staff you input regarding the study, which will include a section that addresses this proposed rezoning. This study will first be presented to the Planning Commission two days prior, on January 19.

As Mike Marshall, editor of the Crozet Gazette said in this month’s issue: “… [the] adoption of the Yancey proposal would likely shift the economic center of Crozet to Rt. 250 and result in a commercial highway build-up at the Interstate similar to what we see happening in Waynesboro, and many other Virginia towns that have sadly lost their traditional walkable downtowns to sprawl. Avoiding those mistakes was the whole point of planning in the first place. Crozet has plenty of light industrial space yet and a capacity for more. But the outcome of this question is fraught with politics and money. Crozet is at, as Churchhill would say, a hinge of fate.”

Pro or con, we need your voice on this matter. The Board of Supervisors last week adopted an “action plan” that included the following item regarding the Yancey property – “Yancey Mills and 250 East Corridor from 1-64 to Shadwell Store – The report on available light industrial zoning should be expedited and a report on the possibility of expansion of this type of zoning in these areas should be brought back to the board in the first quarter of the year for discussion and possible action.”

Full report available on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s News Center under the title: “Supervisors adopt pro-business “action plan””

Please attend this meeting if you can! We are counting on the people of Crozet and friends in other parts of the to give county staff and supervisors their feedback about rezonings on Route 250.

Please feel free to call or email me (contact info listed below) if you have questions or need directions to the Field School.

Thanks and I hope to see you on January 21 at 7 p.m. at the Field School in Crozet!

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Crozet Gazette Pulls No Punches

Read the whole thing at the Crozet Gazette.

The decision of the departing Kaine administration to bailout the investors in Biscuit Run, the largest subdivision ever approved in Albemarle County, and turn it into a state park will add to growth pressure in Crozet once the housing market begins to revive, which, we nonetheless hope, comes soon.

The addition of Biscuit Run’s 3,100 houses to the Albemarle market with better proximity to Charlottesville meant homebuyers had an attractive alternative at a time when county policies were aiming growth on Crozet and claiming that it could handle a population of 24,000. In those days Biscuit Run promised to vent some of the steam away from western Albemarle.

It’s hard to imagine that if the Commonwealth actually thought it needed a state park in Albemarle that it would have hankered for the 1,200 acres Biscuit Run sits on.

My favorite part?

And about that $9.8 million: hasn’t Crozet been told for the last 12 years that there is no VDOT money to pay for Jarmans Gap Road improvements, and more recently that there is no funding possible for Crozet library ($6.3 million), the number one priority library on the state library’s list of construction projects?

Thus the poor Virginia tax payer now has to pay to master plan and then operate in perpetuity a state park he had no idea he wanted, in a place he probably would not have picked, and to make up millions in tax revenue that was forfeited in the form of credits.

Well Said.

Update 8 January 2010 – Quite a bit of news coverage today centered on Biscuit Run’s dedication as a state park.

Biscuit Run State Park Opponent Says Deal Unfair to Albemarle County Residents – WCAV

Crozet Refocuses After Biscuit Run – NBC29

Biscuit Run Protected as Parkland – NBC29

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VDOT Takes on Old Trail Drive

Thanks to Channel 29: (bolding mine)

A new Albemarle County Board of Supervisor’s resolution calls for a nearly one-mile stretch of Old Trail Drive in Crozet to be accepted into the state road system. Part of it was accepted into the system 2009, so this will complete the process.

…

“Old Trail Drive, in its entire length from Jarmans Gap Road to the other connection point at Route 250, has always been intended to be a pretty major traffic thoroughfare in Crozet,” she said. “The Crozet master plan presents it that way.”

There have been discussions over the years on RealCrozetVA about the accessibility of Old Trail Drive, and now it’s officially a public road. Great.

Related reading:

VDOT helps builders and citizens adjust to new secondary street standards

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Light Industrial Plans and a Walkable Crozet

It’s easy to get indifferent and bored with the Crozet Master Plan, because it’s always “someone else” doing it … that “someone else” could (and should) be you.

From Charlottesville Tomorrow:

Albemarle County officials gathered more input on potential changes to the twenty-year Crozet Master Plan at a forum held Thursday evening. The Crozet community continues to weigh in on modifications to the county’s first ever master plan, originally approved in 2004, which is now getting its first five-year review.

Mike Marshall, chair of the Crozet Community Advisory Council, welcomed an audience of about 40 residents to the third of five planned community forums on different aspects of the master plan. Marshall said he didn’t think there would be much controversy about the matters on the evening’s agenda, however he foreshadowed concerns about the Yancey Mills Business Park proposal.

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On transportation, residents said they wanted a reexamination of a frontage road proposed by staff to run parallel to Route 250 in front of Brownsville Elementary and Henley Middle School. The County’s Community Relations Manager, Lee Catlin, said she also heard residents express a high priority for trails and pedestrian connections that would allow people living in Western Ridge, Highlands to get into downtown Crozet.

Mike Marshall said a pedestrian connection was also needed between downtown Crozet and Old Trail Village.

“We now have two economic centers that really are within walking distance, that are trying to emerge and get stronger,” said Marshall. “We need to make it plain to people that you can walk there.”

After the fifth community forum is held in February, a summary of recommendations from staff and the public will be provided to the planning commission in March. The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to start its review of the Crozet Master Plan revisions in June.

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Question from a Commenter – What has Crozet lost?

Rob asks:

There is talk of all that crozet has lost–and I’m sure much has been lost with all of the rapid growth of the last several years. But growth, and it’s associated losses will continue with or without master plans or streetscapes. Shouldn’t the conversation be about what are the Specific losses, and how best to plan growth to mitigate those specific losses?

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Crozet Master Plan Forum – 19 November at Field School

The Crozet community is invited to attend public forums on the five year revision of the Crozet Master Plan.

The next forum will be held:

Thursday, November 19, 2009

7:00-9:00 p.m.

Old Crozet School/Field School

The public forum is being held by County staff and the Crozet Community Advisory Council.

This month’s topic is Downtown Crozet, focusing on:

– Promotion of the vitality of small businesses in the central Crozet business district (Downtown)

– Addressing public infrastructure needs (such as sidewalks that connect neighborhoods to downtown and parking)

– Boundaries of Downtown, potential historic district

Participants will have an opportunity to hear a presentation and provide comments and suggestions.