According to Albemarle County policy, water and sewer service is only supposed to be extended to property within the “growth area,” the 5 percent of county land that’s designated for development. Yet last week, the county Board of Supervisors approved two expansions of service into parcels in the so-called rural area that border the growth area.
In both instances, the Board acted unanimously. Even hardliners about growth area lines like Supervisor Sally Thomas were satisfied that the exceptions were deserved. In one case, a building permit had already been issued for a lot off 250 East where well contamination was almost certain because of a nearby gas site. The second case involved UVA’s plans for a long-term acute care hospital on its Northridge site on 250 West. The parcel was granted sewer in 1984, and the Board needed only to approve a technical change in the way it’s being provided.
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The ever-amiable Wendell Wood to Eric Strucko on the county Planning Commission: “I have to question your sincerity and what your goal is for this county.” |
But any decisions, no matter how explainable, that involve de facto expansion of the growth area are going to come under close scrutiny by several developers trying to prove they have worthy exceptions and should be allowed to develop land adjacent to the growth area.
In the past year alone, at least three projects have been proposed on the border of growth areas: a sports entertainment center just south of Pantops, a private school off Hydraulic Road, and a business park just off the Crozet exit of I-64. None of them have received much support. The first was shot down by the county Planning Commission, and the second received negative feedback at a preliminary meeting. So did the third, though it has been submitted to county planners and will likely come up for public hearing in the first half of 2009.
Yet one member of the county Planning Commission, Linda Porterfield, has supported all of these projects outside-but-adjacent-to growth areas, and she has grown increasingly frustrated with her colleagues for not agreeing with her.
“We as a county have got to try to see if we can come up with ways to help the bottom line,” said Porterfield at a September 29 work session on economic development, according to a podcast recorded by Charlottesville Tomorrow. “Let’s encourage relocation of buildings. Let’s encourage relocation of people who can bring in, if they’re retired, their retirement income. …We’ve got a lot of land. We could better use it. If we don’t have population growth, that means that people don’t want to come here.”
None of the six other members of the Planning Commission seem particularly sympathetic to the views of Porterfield, who moved to the county in 2002 and was appointed by Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier to represent the Scottsville district. At the meeting, Commissioner Eric Strucko (Samuel Miller district) adamantly defended keeping firm lines between growth and rural areas, saying he was “not going to compromise that principle simply to accommodate a relocation.”
“I’m drawing that hard line because it was too hard fought for,” said Strucko. Growth areas were created in 1980 as the rural area was downzoned, ostensibly to protect the watershed. “And before those policies were in place, we really faced a crisis in this community, and that was sprawling development going up 29, going east to Pantops. We were able to put a halt to it.”
The discussion got even more heated when Wendell Wood, who can take credit for developing much of that land on 29N, insinuated that Strucko was cutting off opportunity for everyone else. “I have a feeling that it’s like, ‘I’ve got mine, and to hell with you,’ and I resent that,” said Wood, who still owns plenty of land along Route 29 that he has tried to get included in the growth area.
“I’m getting borderline insulted with some of the comments,” said Strucko.
“And maybe you should be,” shot back Wood.
The pro-boundary line part of the Commission ended up getting the last word—at least for now.
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