Since 2003, the City of Charlottesville has been delicately balancing its efforts to grow through infill and redevelopment while at the same time keeping the backhoe from excavating its historic character. It’s an effort that a landowner at 1616 Jefferson Park Ave. is afraid the city might be getting wrong on his side of town.
 A version of the Oakhurst Circle project recently pitched to the BAR, though it’s “already obsolete,” says the architect. One of the complaints of neighbor Tom Pietro is the reduced setbacks the developer’s asking for. |
“I’m not opposed to development, but it needs to make sense,” says Tom Pietro, owner of a detached house, part of the Oakhurst-Gildersleeve architectural preservation district. It could soon be sandwiched between multiunit apartment buildings, one existing—a new Wade Apartments building at 1620 JPA—and one proposed on lots facing Oakhurst Circle.
“The city has all these historical preservation guidelines and so forth,” Pietro says. “On the one hand, they’re very much advocating for historic building and on the other, they’re allowing developments such as the Oakhurst Circle one to creep right up to a historical property.”
The Oakhurst project—developed by C-VILLE owner Bill Chapman—is a blend of infill and adaptive reuse. Two historically protected properties on Oakhurst Circle currently serving as apartments would become a bed and breakfast, while three new 12-unit apartment buildings would rise on the Jefferson Park Avenue side of the site.
The development requires approvals from City Council, but no deal-breaking objections have come up in preliminary discussions with the Board of Architectural Review. The aesthetics of the project try to balance the stucco and gables of Oakhurst Circle with the red brick and white trim of UVA.
“It’s more critical to us to do the project right than to do it quickly,” says Neal Deputy, the architect. He says the neighbors have generally been supportive in Oakhurst Circle meetings. Of Pietro’s issues, he says, “We are certainly sensitive to his concerns for encroaching development but are confident that we can work things out to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.”
“If Bill Chapman still wants to talk about what we can work out, I’m all ears,” says Pietro, “but I think I’m probably going to have to meet with the city to see what their feelings are.
“Maybe the whole block should be developed. You either preserve it, and you preserve it by giving it room to breathe, or you take it down and move it somewhere and let the block go all new and all commercial.”
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