With fewer tourists coming through its doors, the visitor center on Route 20 will shut down on October 1. So what does this mean for the 11,000-square-foot building located at the base of Piedmont Virginia Community College? With enrollment up at PVCC, the institution would seem well positioned to use it, and, turns out, it may have to.
The building has a complicated ownership structure. Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Foundation leases the building from Albemarle County and, until June 8, housed its visitor center on the site. The Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau (CACVB) subleased a portion of the building for a local visitor center and gift shop. The death knell for CACVB’s center was essentially rung when Monticello decided to build its own $55 million, 40,000-square-foot visitor center up the mountain near its ticket office, which will partially open in November. Without Monticello to anchor the Route 20 visitor center, visitation dropped to 998 in August, down 90 percent from the previous August.
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A deed restriction means that PVCC could soon be flying its flag at the Route 20 visitor center. |
“Our visitation is still doing really well Downtown,” says Allie Baer of CACVB. “We’re doing pretty well compared to other localities around the state and really around the nation.” (Recently relocated to the transit station, the Downtown visitor center saw visitation go up in August to 5,156, a 74 percent increase over August 2007.)
But back to the building on Route 20. It was constructed by the state but conferred to Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville in 1984 so that it could be leased to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. To simplify financial matters, the city gave its portion to the county with the stipulation that when the lease with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation expired, the city would get back its half share.
City Council and the Board of Supervisors have to hold public hearings and jointly decide on the fate of the building, but their hands are tied by a deed restriction. In conferring the deed, the General Assembly limited the property’s use to “the promotion of education, historic preservation, conservation and display of historically significant artifacts associated with Monticello, and for the operation of an information center and gift shop for visitors in the area.” Otherwise, the legislation demands that the building go to the State Board of Community Colleges. Which means PVCC might very well end up with the building. Calls to the college were not returned by press time, though PVCC President Frank Friedman told The Daily Progress in May that the community college wants the facility for a workforce development center.
None of this can be worked out until Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s lease runs out—a date in dispute. The foundation contends that it’s up January 31, while the county says the lease isn’t over until August 31.
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