Downtown Crozet is ready to return to the limelight, and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors is willing to approve a rezoning plan that property owners, consultants and the Planning Commission thinks could take it there.
The new mixed-use zoning is an effort to get away from the suburban strip mall design and give developers more choices and greater density. Building heights would range from a minimum of two stories up to six stories with a special-use permit, and parking would be relegated to the back of a property to make for more attractive pedestrian paths. Overall, it upzones roughly 53 acres of land centered along Crozet Avenue and Three Notch’d Road.
 Crozet’s downtown as it stands now. The rezoning will bring buildings closer to the street, encourage mixed-use projects and grant developers up to six-stories with a special-use permit. |
While downtowns across the country have experienced a renaissance in the past 10 years, Crozet’s town center has had increasing competition from businesses located on Route 250. The planned community Old Trail, with up to 2,275 residential units, will add up to 250,000 square feet of nonresidential space to the Crozet growth area—its shopping center, anchored by a Harris Teeter, is currently under construction.
Planners and residents hope that the upzoning will give downtown the leverage it needs to blossom. The county is continuing to invest in “streetscape” upgrades for Crozet that bury utility lines and improve sidewalks in order to make the area more attractive to pedestrians.
“What this does is gets downtown back on a par with its competitor commercial area in the growth area,” said Mike Marshall, publisher of the Crozet Gazette, at a June 4 joint public hearing of the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. “If you don’t rezone it, everybody’s going to go out to the highway.”
Once known for its fruit crops and processed food production, Crozet has more recently become an employment center for Musictoday, a growing music merchandizing company founded by Coran Capshaw, who also helped start another downtown operation, the Starr Hill Brewing Company.
One major project, Crozet Station, is in the works for downtown that would kick off the mixed-use melee. In the first phase of a reworked retail center on Three Notch’d Road, Architect Bill Atwood has designed 30 residential units to go above the existing Great Valu grocery store. Later phases are expected to redevelop the current site of the popular restaurant Crozet Pizza.
“Overall, I think that it’s great to get away from the suburban model,” says Ashley Cooper of Atwood Architects.
The Planning Commission recommended approval for the downtown rezoning. Even though it was a joint session, the supervisors, though willing, couldn’t vote to approve the rezoning until staff reworked some details to allow for more flexibility, something Cooper and others think will be vital to its success in encouraging redevelopment.
The only supervisor to raise objection to the rezoning was David Slutzky, who worried that the rezoning might kill Crozet because of unintended consequences. Once the rezoning goes into effect, by state law, the county assessor must reassess the land of the residential properties to reflect their presumably higher market value. That means higher taxes, which could force some residents to sell early.
“I really am impressed with all of the dialogue that took place that gave rise to this very detailed vision for what downtown Crozet should look like,” said Slutzky. “My bigger concern is for property owners who are being upzoned and would have to pay a significantly higher property tax if we pass this. I think we push some people out of their properties.”
Slutzky suggested instead making a detailed master plan. Taxes would stay the same until a property owner wanted to develop. At that point, the owner would have to get the Board’s approval for rezoning, which would add uncertainty, and would be subject to proffers.
“I think that the problem is that we’re greedy,” said Sandy Wilcox, a real estate developer who owns a downtown Crozet property. “You’re figuring out all the ways to get proffers and this and that and why you can’t get a residential property and leave it alone without taxing it away from them, it’s ridiculous.”
About 10 residential properties would be affected. One residential owner objected to being included in the rezoning, and was taken out.
All supervisors except Slutzky are expected to approve the rezoning at the Board’s June 11 meeting.
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