UVA Health acquired the 55-acre parcel—and an existing 365,000-square-foot building—on State Farm Boulevard for $37.7 million. Supplied photo.
In 2025, the owners of a 55-acre parcel of land on State Farm Boulevard in Albemarle’s Pantops area paid $322,947 to the county in real property taxes. For years, the site was home to an insurance company claims center but has been largely vacant since even before the pandemic.
Albemarle will no longer receive any revenue from the property after University of Virginia Health acquires the site and an existing 365,000-square-foot building for $37.7 million. The UVA Board of Visitors learned on October 29 that the site will be repurposed as a health care destination.
“If you think about that on one floor, that’s eight acres of land occupied by the building,” said UVA President Scott Beardsley. “It’s going to be retrofitted to accommodate various outpatient services and some of UVA Health’s ambulatory services as well.”
UVA’s Major Capital Plan includes $155 million for such a clinic, but that document does not identify a location.
Beardsley said the 1,200 surface parking spaces are important when moving outpatient services from the main hospital, allowing for more inpatient hospital beds.
“Easier to get in, easier to get out, more space,” Beardsley said.
As a state institution, UVA is not subject to local law, but a decades-old agreement is worth a review.
In 1986, officials with Albemarle, Charlottesville, and UVA all signed a document called the Three Party Agreement, which states that UVA would “voluntarily comply with the land use plans and regulations” in territory identified on a map as Area C.
UVA spokesperson Bethanie Glover confirmed the property is Area C.
“The current zoning allows for medical office use, so it would not be a change in use,” Glover said in an email.
As part of that agreement, UVA also agreed to create a separate real estate foundation to buy and develop land. In this case, the UVA Foundation played no direct role in the sale, but it should be noted that Samuel Miller District Supervisor Fred Missel is the entity’s Design and Development Director.
A master plan for the Pantops space will be developed over the next six months.
“This means determining which outpatient services will be located at the new facility, when they’ll move and in what order, and what needs to be renovated and also in what order, and how all of this will tie into an overall space planning process,” said Dr. Mitch Rosner, CEO of UVA Health.
Glover said that a master plan for the site could potentially include a traffic study.
One of the people Rosner thanked for helping make the purchase possible is Luis Carrazana, an associate architect at UVA who is also the chair of the Albemarle Planning Commission.
The announcement comes as Albemarle County is phasing out master plans for designated growth areas. Instead, planning staff will work on one activity center plan each year; Pantops is third in line.
This summer, the Board of Supervisors agreed with a plan to focus on the Hollymead area for the first activity center plan due to the county’s investment in the Rivanna Futures project. Now that UVA Health will be a major player on Pantops, it will bring the entity into the conversation about that plan.
“If the city and major property owners are interested in engaging over the longer term, it may work well to consider designating this activity center planning effort for the future and spend the intervening time laying the groundwork for the effort with project partners,” said county planner Ben Holt at a June 9 meeting.
