On the brisk morning of May 1, the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce assembled about two dozen people in the parking lot of the sprawling Seminole Square Shopping Center to walk to its counterpart on the other side of U.S. 29.
“This shopping center is going through a transformation and is a sign of the opportunities and progress that still rests in the City of Charlottesville,” said City Manager Sam Sanders. “The fact that we’re 10.2 square miles sometimes makes us forget that there are opportunities to still do things.”
Sanders’ comments kicked off the fourth in a series called Stepping with the CEO, a monthly gathering that gets business leaders out in the community to see potential while networking. Charlottesville native Andrea Copeland has been the Chamber’s top official since last May.
“I remember what Seminole Square used to look like and so now we see new development happening,” Copeland said.
Great Eastern Management Company is currently redeveloping the façade of a portion of the center for a new generation of businesses while working out the financing to build 352 apartments on the site of a Giant Food store that closed in 2012.
In 2018, both Albemarle and Charlottesville adopted a small area plan to guide future development around the intersection of U.S. 29 and Hydraulic. That included a bridge across the two sides of the road that also connects two localities.
“When people are moving around through this part of the city and the county, no one really pays any attention to whether they’re in the city or the county,” said Albemarle County Executive Jeffrey Richardson.
Sanders said he has heard some call the new bridge pointless because they’ve not seen anyone cross it, but he said it will save lives.
“What’s most important about this bridge is that they don’t walk across the avenue, because that’s what was happening,” Sanders said. “People were playing Frogger with their lives, crossing the major, major highway.”
The May 1 walk wound through Seminole Square before getting to the first ramp for the bridge. The western end of the bridge lands at The Shops at Stonefield and onto Bond Street, which contains a mixture of local and national stores in single-story buildings constructed in the early 2010s. The original concept had promised apartments on top of ground floor retail, but the market after the Great Recession, which lasted from late 2007 to mid-2009, curtailed interest.
O’Connor Capital bought the complex in 2017 and began building the hundreds of residential units allowed.
“We fell off a cliff with real estate,” Richardson said. “Which means you see retail with no residential. But what do you see all around it? It’s filling in.”
Lauren Carbo is one of the co-owners of cvilleSMASH, a nine-court indoor pickleball complex that opened in one of Seminole Square’s former retail spaces. She’s glad to be able to use the bridge to get to Stonefield for lunch.
“We do have members who live here in some of the residential properties that circle around Stonefield, that walk over the bridge,” Carbo said. “They don’t drive, they walk over the bridge and they come over and play.”
Carbo said more people will use the bridge as the city side gets redeveloped.
“We just need the city side of the bridge to continue its growth,” Carbo said.
The next Stepping with the CEO will be held at Monticello on June 5.
