When the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning for the North Pointe development in August 2006, there was to be no more than 893 dwelling units.
This year, the Great Eastern Management Company will be asked to revisit the rezoning to add 550 new homes on land currently approved for commercial development.
“Commercial is dead and dying except for grocery stores and maybe restaurants and hotels,” says David Mitchell, construction manager for the company. “We had originally 900,000 square feet of commercial. That’s not marketable anymore.”
North Pointe is within the Hollymead neighborhood, as classified by Albemarle’s Community Development. As of July 1, only 57 of the 893 residential units had been built. According to county records, those units are among the 4,316 homes approved in Hollymead but not yet built.
“It’s one thing to get approved, but it’s another to get it designed and built,” Mitchell says. “It takes years.”
In 2006, Albemarle officials tended to discourage major economic development moves. Things have changed in 17 years, and Albemarle is planning to buy 462 acres surrounding the Rivanna Station military base as an investment in the county’s economic development future. County officials continue to investigate whether the land can support creation of a new Intelligence Community Innovation Acceleration Campus.
The county’s major land purchase did not affect Great Eastern’s plans.
“This was in the works way before,” Mitchell says, adding that he’s known for years that his company would eventually be asking for a rezoning. It’s taken a long time to build the infrastructure to support the overall development.
Now Great Eastern wants to build up to 1,548 units at North Pointe, but is not asking to increase the number of single-family homes. That means more townhomes and multifamily apartments.
“We are in the middle of construction of lots out of the first 269 of single-family and that’s going to be the extent of our single-family,” Mitchell says. “The property doesn’t lay out well for single-family beyond what we got.”
Albemarle is currently reviewing its Comprehensive Plan, and one question is whether the county should begin planning for expanding the amount of land where dense development can occur. Staff have noted that many rezonings have ultimately yielded fewer units than the maximums envisioned in the Comprehensive Plan.
Mitchell isn’t holding his breath.
“Even though the county should be thinking about expanding the growth area, it’s not going to happen until it’s full,” Mitchell says.
Just under a third of the 1,550 homes at Brookhill have been built, and there are 1,479 available units to be constructed at Hollymead Town Center.
Final site plan review is underway for 100 units at River’s Edge North. Supervisors approved up to 332 units on the site of a former mobile community, but only 306 units are going to be built.
Mitchell says he did not anticipate that the units would be built quickly, adding that construction costs and mortgage rates are still high.
