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Building Infrastructure in Crozet?

Jarmans Gap in 2011

Jim’s comment: please comment with questions/thoughts/corrections/clarifications. We’re in this together.

Crozet and VDOT infrastructure thoughts, from NextDoor*

Post after post after post: Everyone blames the county for the lack of infrastructure. That is patently false. I’ve lived in Crozet for almost 20yrs, I have heard the same complaints. 20yrs later…the same complaints and misdirected ire continues.

Take a peek at the Culpeper district planning.

Do you see Crozet anywhere in that list? Just the 240/250 intersection. Other than that…nothing. Why?

1) Because the 500 people complaining on ND day in and day out are not making their voices heard by state officials.

2) Most people do not understand just how difficult it is to build out infrastructure. You want sidewalks on Park Rd? Tabor St? The state, not the county, will have to negotiate with every single landowner along those roads to obtain rights of way easements, or they will have to use eminent domain. THAT is not going to be popular among of the owners along those roads.

1) The infrastructure never comes before building. So that means the county will need to deny all building permits. That will be quickly litigated and overturned as plaintiffs will point to prior approved permits and rezoning as permissible for their particular application.

2) “We have and will continue to reach out to state officials.” I disagree that actually happens. What I see are 500 posts about county meetings, CCAC meetings etc.

Can you point me to single post along the lines of “Hey Good/Deeds is hosting a townhall, lets get 500 Crozet residents down there to discuss why VDOT won’t build proper infrastructure?”

Can you point me to a single post along the lines of “Hey VDOT is hosting a meeting lets get 500 crozet residents down there to discuss why VDOT won’t build proper infrastructure?”

I’m fairly certain you can’t. I on the other hand can point to no less than 100+ posts (on Nextdoor) about county meetings, despite the fact the county has little to no authority. This is by design, it is baked into the Virginia state constitution. Just google Dillon Rule.

As my grandfather loved to say: that dog is barking up the wrong tree.

FYI: If Crozet were to incorporate, the newly formed “City of Crozet” Would obtain that legal authority to truly regulate growth and build out infrastructure. But that would require new taxes and the City of Crozet would need to levy a hefty real estate tax and provide tax relief based on income thresholds, so the tax targets those mostly responsible for the uncontrolled growth: Those living in developments. (me: what if Crozet became a town?)

However that tax proposal would be vehemently opposed by the very same people that created the situation in first place. 😉

*Note from Jim – copy/pasted from Mark McCardell’s comments with permission, and only changes made by me were to add links, and to add a ‘ here and there.

More from me: If Crozetians really want to have an effect on growth, etc in Crozet, organize and go to Board of Supervisors meetings. CCAC is about as effective as NextDoor. Go to the BoS meetings, and go again, and again, and again, and again. And again.

Continue reading “Building Infrastructure in Crozet?”
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Money, Money, Money — White Hall Supervisors Race – June 13 2023

Bicycle tracks through new construction red dirt; if only we would prioritize moving humans rather than cars

I’m always curious as to who’s giving what to whom. And we can thank VPAP for tracking the money for us (if you can, donate to VPAP if you can; I give a little bit every year).

No analysis to offer here, other than to check out the candidates, and be sure to vote.

Ann Mallek’s site is here.

Brad Rykal’s site is here.

It might be just me, but the 2023 White Hall Board of Supervisors election feels somewhat consequential; we’ll see.

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CCAC Meeting – 14 June 2023 – Broadband Update

Climate change-fueled haze from the Canadian fires - 8 June, 2023

We need infrastructure – not just roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, but internet as well.

From Joe Fore, CCAC Chair:

“Our main agenda item will be a discussion with the Albemarle County Broadband Accessiblity and Affordability Office about broadband internet use and needs in the Crozet area. I haven’t received any materials that they’d like us to review ahead of time, but if I do, I’ll circulate them before the meeting. We’ll also hear updates from the Crozet Trails Crew and from our Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors liaisons.

Two other Crozet-related items that I wanted to pass along:

  • In April, we heard from Tim Tolson of the Crozet Community Association about the Crozet Independence Day Celebration, which will take place on Saturday, July 1. Details about the day’s events are available here. Of course, this phenomenal community event doesn’t occur by magic; it relies on Crozetians who are willing to contribute their time and money to help make it happen. The above link includes information about how to donate and how to volunteer for a 1-hour slot to help with set-up and clean-up. I hope you’ll all consider doing both.”

Agenda and draft minutes after the break

Continue reading “CCAC Meeting – 14 June 2023 – Broadband Update”
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When Do Homes Come on the Market in Crozet?

number of new listings in Brownsville + Crozet and % of total (217)

Interesting to think that we might be seeing even less inventory this year in Brownsville + Crozet school districts.

Our market is driven largely by the school calendar, whether that’s Albemarle County schools, private schools, or UVA.

It’s been an interesting 2023.

As I wrote on RealCentralVA:

It’s been a challenging year(s) for buyers in the Charlottesville area. While it’s been this way for years, the past three years have been exceptionally hard.

  • Continued low inventory
  • High prices
  • Higher interest rates than a generation of buyers have seen
  • 42% of American homeowners don’t have mortgages
  • The baby chasers are having an impact on the market

Questions? Ask me. 434-242-7140 or [email protected]

JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJune
# in 2023511252727
# in 2022 (217)131027313328
* single family + attached, resale, Brownsville + Crozet, excluding new construction

What is the Crozet real estate market doing right now?

The best answer is the one I’ve said for most of my career – I’ll tell you in 18 months what happens tomorrow, combined with “I don’t know, but I’m trying to figure this out.” No one knows with certainty, but I think I have a reasonably educated and experienced prognostication.

number of new listings in Brownsville + Crozet and % of total (217)
number of new listings in Brownsville + Crozet and % of total (217)

How many homes will come on the market that will fit you?

In 2017, I wrote a story laying out an answer to this question for Charlottesville, and for Albemarle. The logic and rationale remains the same, but the numbers have changed.

So have prices.

In Crozet, getting to “good enough” might take longer, or shorter, than you might like.

There comes a time in every home search process (and often the home selling process) where one says “this is good enough.”

Arriving at the point of whatever you want to call it – concession, compromise, acquiescence, acceptance, or, to use a positively-connoted descriptor – satisfied – is hard.

Related posts

Questions?

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Crozet Fireworks Needs Our Help

Crozet Fireworks.

1 July 2023

via email:*

It’s that time of year again – for the Crozet Independence Day Parade, Celebration, and Fireworks. It all starts with the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department (CVFD) parade at 5:00 PM at Crozet Elementary School and goes down Crozet Avenue through downtown Crozet to Claudius Crozet Park.  The celebration begins at Claudius Crozet Park after the parade, where there will be live music by local band Iam Gilliam and the FireKings. And the event culminates at 9:30 PM with a stupendous fireworks show. Additional details at: http://crozetcommunity.org

The Crozet Independence Day celebration is the work of many volunteers and we need your help for just an hour or two.  Below is the website to sign-up to help with the Crozet Independence Day Celebration (CIDC)  Saturday, July 1, between 5PM to 10PM. There are a variety of tasks and time slots. Most of the time slots are only an hour – so there’s lots of ways to help and still enjoy the event.

To volunteer, please click here 

When you sign-up it will ask for your name, email and, optionally phone number.  No one else can see your email and phone.  We promise we won’t share it.  It’s helpful for us to have it if something happens and we need to let you know about a last minute change.

We urge church groups, civic and neighborhood associations to sign-up.  Crozet Trails Crew already has volunteered to staff one spot the whole evening!  Let’s see which group can have the most volunteers!   If you’re with a civic group or non-profit, when you sign-up, put that group’s name in parenthesis after your last name. 

We also need help with monetary donations for the event, especially the fireworks.  You can mail a check payable to: Crozet Board of Trade and send it to: CBT, P.O. Box 261, Crozet, VA 22932.  Please put  “CIDC donation” on the memo line.

OR you can contribute right now, online, by clicking on this link. 

   Please put “CIDC donation” in the Designation box.

Donation levels are explained here

With your help, we can make this Crozet Independence Day celebration the best ever! 

Questions? Please email Tim Tolson at [email protected]

Note: There are no pets allowed in the event and we’ll provide designated smoking areas and ask that you only smoke in those areas. 

The event is sponsored by the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department, Crozet Community Association, Crozet Board of Trade, Claudius Crozet Park, Crozet Lions Club, and several other area churches and citizen volunteers.

*Minor edits for formatting and link embedding.

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Oak Bluff Community Meeting – 8 June 7pm

I’ll pay someone to livetweet this meeting.

via email.

Thank you for your interest in the Oak Bluff Development.  Our team invites you to a follow up discussion regarding the project.  At the meeting, we will cover design updates and welcome additional feedback from the community.  We appreciate your comments thus far and look forward to seeing you at the meeting!

Details

Date: June 8

Time: 7 pm

Location: Brownsville Elementary Cafeteria

Notes: Please enter through the side door of the building that faces Route 250

My two cents:

We need housing. We need infrastructure.

This is a relevant story from The Atlantic, and the accompanying discussion with the author is insightful:

Kelli: You make a bold assertion in your article: “Sometimes NIMBYs have a point.” What do you mean by that?

Jerusalem: A single development can’t balance all of the concerns people have about housing. If the question is “Should we allow this block to turn into duplexes?” community members who support the idea of building more housing in general might respond, “Why here?” And that response could be informed by reasonable concerns about housing that are broader than what that single development project entails. They may have concerns about gentrification, or about open space, or about the types of housing that are currently available.

If I’m representing a city, and I’m trying to convert one hotel into homeless housing, it’s not going to respond to green-space concerns. It’s not going to be able to speak to that, or to senior housing, or to teacher housing, or anything like that. Similarly, if you’re trying to build a new condo development in an area where increasing numbers of rich young people are moving for jobs, that’s not going to respond to the needs of people who have different kinds of concerns. And because no individual developments can check every single box, many projects end up falling through.

Kelli: So what you’re saying is that when hyperlocal political players are given too much power in these development plans, the bigger picture of a municipality or state’s housing needs can get lost. And this can end up sabotaging progress in actually building the new housing that people want and need.

Jerusalem: Exactly. We live in a pretty segregated society, both by class and by race, and on a variety of other different measures. When you restrict a development discussion to a very hyperlocal level, then you can’t have necessary conversations to balance the wants of various interest groups. If you’re dealing with a very rich, white area whose residents are wedded to their exclusionary zoning, they’re always going to resist giving up their space for, for example, homeless housing. And even if these people want homeless housing to exist in general, they have no power to make that occur somewhere else. The only power they have is to exclude it from happening in their own place.

When you expand the development process beyond a very hyperlocal level, then you can actually have broad conversations about what the state needs, and not just what this one locality says they want because they happen to live there right now.

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Remember the Crozet Shopping Center Murals?

Wouldn’t it be great to have more art in Crozet?

I commented the other day about the potential for a new mural in Crozet, and was reminded of the murals in the IGA/Great Valu/Crozet Market shopping center.

The day I noticed they were being painted over, I rode my bicycle through and took some pictures; they’re not great photos, and I’m hopeful that someone else took good pictures, but at least I got a couple to remember the art.

Photos of the art that used to be in the Crozet Shopping Center

More public art makes for a happier place to live.

Related Instagram post and Facebook post.

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Albemarle Board of Supervisors Meeting – 5-17-2023 –

Bicycles and train in Crozet

When I think about it, I dig into the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors’ agendas to see what Crozet-specific information is being discussed. Why? Because I live here, and, knowing this stuff helps me better represent clients buying or selling in and around Crozet.

Anything jump out at you in their agenda?

Here’s what I found

  • Looks like they are updating the Beaver Creek Dam Supplemental Watershed Plan Agreement
  • The VDOT/Albemarle County FY 24-29 Secondary Six-Year Plan Public Hearing looks interesting.
  • So does VDOT’s May report. Looks like the very-much-needed 240/250 Roundabout will be advertised for bids in Winter 2024.
    • I’d be curious to see what current traffic counts are.
      • During construction, VDOT proposes to close Route 680 to through traffic between Route 250 and Route 802 (Old Three Notched Road) with a posted detour. Traffic would be detoured via Route 240 to Route 802 for about two months.  
      • Approximately 7,000 vehicles use Route 240 near the intersection, according to 2017 data. The traffic count on Route 250 is about 10,000 vehicles and Route 680 carries about 580 vehicles per day.
    • “I-64 Exit 107 Park and Ride” to be advertised in 2024.
    • “Rte. 680 Browns Gap Turnpike Bridge Replacement over Lickinghole Creek” will be advertised in 2025.
  • Completed Studies
    • “250/1815 Old Trail – Pavement Markings – Crosswalk markings to be installed Spring 2023.”
    • “1815 Old Trail at Bishop Gate Ln. – Pavement Markings – Mid-block crosswalk and ADA ramps to be installed Summer 2023.”
  • Studies Under Review
    • “Route 240 at Music City Today and Starr Hill Brewery – Pedestrian Crossing – Field investigation complete; Plans have been finalized, estimated cost approximately $153k” – my comment: how in the world is this not a priority?
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The Scouts and Crozet

Sugar Hollow

I was talking to a friend recently and while I’ve never been a Scout, I do carry a Swiss Army knife and a bandana at all times, I also recognize that community needs groups like the Scouts. In-person community, friends, skills all matter, and the more off-screen interaction we can foster and encourage, the better.

Learn more at beascout.org, enter their zip code, and find the unit closest to them.

From Adam Sowers, Cubmaster, Pack 79:

Just to give you a little background on Scouting in the area, I am the Cubmaster for Pack 79 in Crozet. We are a full-family Cub Pack, meaning we have had girls and boys from age 5-11 in the pack ever since the BSA allowed girls into the program in 2017. We are a fairly large pack, with 64 currently on our roster after crossing over 14 scouts into troops last month. We meet monthly as a pack and the kids are further divided into dens by year in school. We go camping a few times per year and also have annual events like the Pinewood Derby and Blue and Gold banquet. We march in the Crozet Independence Day and Christmas parades, and perform community service throughout the area.

After Cub Scouts, those continuing on to Scouts BSA (what we used to call Boy Scouts) will find a troop to join. Troop 79 (boys age 11-17) is also active in Crozet with around 40 boys. Up until recently, Pack/Troop 79 were chartered with Crozet United Methodist Church. Because of the fallout from the recent bankruptcy/reorganization plan for national BSA, the UMC has decided to cease chartering units nationwide, although CUMC has graciously still allowed us to meet there. The Pack has also been meeting regularly at Crozet Park since the pandemic began. The park has been a great partner in giving us space to meet under the pavilions, where we were able to meet outside and practice social distancing at a time where anywhere inside wasn’t really an option.

There are a few other Scouting units in the area as well: Pack 114 meets at Ivy Elementary (former Meriwether Lewis) and Troop 114 at St. Paul’s Episcopal church in Ivy with over 50 active youth. We now have an all-girl BSA troop (3125) that was founded when girls from our pack crossed over from Cub Scouting into Scouts BSA. They have exploded in number from 4 to 16 (or maybe more– every meeting there seems to be a new face) in one year. They meet alongside Troop 114 in Ivy.

Youth aged 14-20 are able to join an older Scouting program called Venturing. Over the mountain in Waynesboro, a new Venturing Crew has formed and many of the older Scouts in Western Albemarle have joined the Crew. Venturing is less about advancement and more about high adventure and leadership.

As you can see, Scouting is very much alive and well in our area!

I am happy to explain more or answer any questions you may have. On a somewhat related note, I recently featured some of our camp staff from nearby Camp Shenandoah on our council podcast. I was captivated by the stories they had to tell, and the dedication they have to carrying the program forward for other youth to enjoy.

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CCAC Meeting – 10 May 2023

Morning in Crozet

Last month’s CCAC meeting was interesting. I’m curious how many people will attend this week’s meeting.

Water is a big topic, and one that will become of greater interest in the coming years.

#CCAC0523

via email, from Joe Fore, CCAC Chair:

The Crozet Community Advisory Committee will meet next Wednesday, May 10, at 7 pm in the large meeting room at the Crozet Library. (If you can arrive a few minutes early to help set up the room, it will help ensure that we can start promptly at 7.) I’ve attached the agenda and the April meeting minutes. 

Our main agenda item will be an update from the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority about their Crozet-area projects. I’ve asked them to share their meeting materials ahead of time, but they’re not quite ready. I’ll circulate those when I get them.

We’ll have time for some committee business. We’ll debrief the Oak Bluff community meeting and talk, more generally, about our procedures for holding future community meetings. We’ll also have time to discuss our summer meeting schedule and potential topics for those meetings. We will also circle back to an idea we discussed several months ago: tracking previously discussed development projects. I’ve attached a PDF version of a document we can use to divvy up and track those projects.

Lastly, we’ll be electing officers for the upcoming year. We have three positions available: Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary. Please let me know before Wednesday’s meeting if you’d be interested in taking on any of those roles–or if you have any other items you’d like to add to the agenda.

Attachments below

Crozet-Community-Advisory-Committee-Meeting-Draft-Minutes-from-April-12-2023Download
CCAC-Community-Meeting-Project-Tracker-CommunityMeetingsDownload
Crozet-CAC-Agenda-May-2023-5.2.2023Download

In a near-first, we have a copy of the presentation *before* the meeting.

20230510-CCAC-Crozet-ProjectsDownload