Back to the drawing board for Windy Knoll, a 3.15-acre site in Crozet’s growth area that the planning commission and neighbors said was too dense.
Seven Development will try a third time to create a plan for a 3.15-acre site in Crozet’s growth area after both the Albemarle Planning Commission and neighbors said the plans for Windy Knoll were too dense.
“When you actually stand on the northern part of this property, I don’t understand how it’s possible to say that 12 to 14 townhomes on less than an acre of buildable land is consistent with the surrounding neighborhood,” said Julianne Price, an adjacent property owner.
When Seven Development first filed a rezoning for the project, it originally showed 22 units. A second request reduced the number of units to 18.
The most recent plan calls for four townhomes on the southern part of the property, with a 14-unit multifamily building on the northern end.
Price and others opposed the latter structure at a public hearing on February 10.
“The subject property is also approximately 550 feet from the Blue Ridge Shopping Center, which is zoned Highway Commercial, and approximately 600 feet from Clover Lawn Shopping Center, which is zoned Planned Development Mixed Commercial,” said county planner Syd Shoaf.
Both centers are designated as “village centers” in the recently adopted Comprehensive Plan, and the subject properties are designated as “neighborhood residential density,” which allows for a range between three and six units per acre. The Windy Knoll plan comes in at the higher end.
Civil engineer Justin Shimp, representing Seven Development, said this is an infill project, allowing the county to add more homes in a place where people can reach other destinations without driving.
“What you’re going to find is we will be back here more and more often with projects like this because without expanding the development areas, the remaining land is going to be infill projects,” Shimp said.
Leonard Ozar lives just south of the development. He said the density is too high and infrastructure is not sufficient to support more people.
“I know three people on my block alone that have already moved,” Ozar said. “They’ve moved out and said we’re not going to deal with this. I’ll be number four.”
Michael Crenshaw lives closer to Claudius Crozet Park and asked the Planning Commission to approve the project because the county needs housing, especially four units guaranteed to be affordable.
“This is a style of housing that we need,” Crenshaw said. “If we’re not going to expand the development area, and if we’re going to work within the existing development area, there’s not that much more land to work with.”
But the president of the Liberty Hall Homeowners Association asked the Planning Commission to recommend denial.
“The Crozet Master Plan calls for infill that is compatible in scale and design with the existing neighborhood fabric,” said Nadia Anderson. “This layout compresses 14 attached units into a narrow band directly behind existing single-family homes with a minimal buffering or transition.”
White Hall District Planning Commissioner Lonnie Murray said he had sympathy for those concerned about the 14-unit block, but said more single family homes would be too few homes.
“It does seem like this is inconsistent with the neighboring properties,” he said. “I think if you had a little bit less density, you could have more room for some buffering.”
Samuel Miller District Planning Commissioner Karen Firehock said all of the easily developable parcels are gone, and that scrutiny must be applied to the “weird” ones that are left.
“I think that it’s our job as a Commission to take extra care then to make sure that as we infill, we do so thoughtfully,” Firehock said.
When it was clear there were not enough votes to get a recommendation for approval, Shimp asked for a deferral.
“I’m happy to take another stab at it to try to address some of these concerns,” he said.
The project will come back at a later date.
