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With 3,100 housing units, Biscuit Run will be the largest residential development Albemarle County has ever seen. But that’s not the development’s only superlative: The 20-page, 11,000-word proffer statement, which details $41 million worth of promises to help offset its cost to the county, is also the largest the county has ever seen, and Mark Graham, the county’s executive director of community development, is concerned about whether he has the staff to make sure the county’s getting what was promised.
"I hope what we’re seeing is an outlier," Graham told the supervisors on the September evening they approved Biscuit Run. "If what we’re seeing as a result of the cash proffer policy is a shift in the complexity of proffers in this direction, I’m going to have to be coming back to you in some future time that either we’re reducing our work plan or we’re asking for additional staff."
It’s up to the county to enforce proffers. Many of the proffers for Biscuit Run are tied to certain points—when the 500th building permit is issued, for instance. That’s the point when, among many other things, the Southwood connector road has to be finished, the private transit service has to come online and the fire department must get $875,000. The county already has one staff member solely devoted to tracking proffers using a database.
"If Biscuit Run is going full steam out there, we could have 20 different people who are working on that project in some manner," says Graham, working on everything from inspecting roads to verifying park plans. "It’s a big complex project."
Once the development is underway, it has the potential to get even more complicated in terms of ownership. Now, the county only has to go through Hunter Craig and other investors. But proffers go with the land, not the developer, and in 10 years, the 828 acres could be owned by various homebuilders and homeowners.
"Even if you own a house already, and a developer hasn’t done something in there they’re required to do, you’re in violation of the proffer just the same as the developer or the builder who hasn’t satisfied that," Graham says.
"It is probably safe to say that by the time it is a completed home," says Steven Blaine, the attorney representing Biscuit Run developers, "that the risk has all been put in the proper place so that the homeowner does not become responsible for a proffer to build a road or what have you."
John Merrithew, assistant planning director in Loudoun County, says that proffers take a significant bite out of staff time there. "I think it’s quite a bit of work," says Merrithew. "Right from the beginning, you obviously get into a lot more detailed discussion of your application when you create the proffers." In Loudoun County, which has seen several residential developments on the scale of Biscuit Run, two staffers are devoted full time to tracking proffers, and traditionally one attorney deals exclusively with proffers.
Graham notes that several other approved Albemarle developments haven’t hit their stride and will require a lot of oversight: Old Trail, Belvedere, North Pointe, Albemarle Place. "We’re just now starting how to deal with those proffers," says Graham, who hopes a storm isn’t brewing. "We hope it’s the calm before a nice, gentle wind."
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