UVA\’s Blue ridge hospital site stagnates

Property values for the 45 or so historic buildings at UVA Foundation’s Blue Ridge Hospital site are dropping fast as land values in the area off Route 20, south of Charlottesville, continue to rise. This means adaptive reuse of the buildings on the 140-acre property may become even less worthwhile for UVA.
    According to the most recent County assessment from May 2005, the land is worth $6,771,900, up 158 percent from $2,628,900 in 1996. The buildings are worth only $467,500, down 97 percent from $16,388,200 in 1996. The structures now account for less than 7 percent of the total property value.
    “The land is getting so high in value that the buildings are not contributing anything,” says Bruce Woodzell, Albemarle County Assessor. “It gets to the point, economically speaking, it would be cheaper to tear them down and build new.”
    This is bad news for historians who want to see the former tuberculosis sanatorium and surrounding buildings preserved. Among the noteworthy sites, the Wright Building, built in 1926, housed tuberculosis patients until 1978. People sometimes spent years on the sleeping porches, napping until they recovered or died. The stone chapel is in decent shape, and is a likely candidate for renovation. Other properties include the Lyman Mansion, circa 1870s and the oldest place at the site, and the old dairy, which provided fresh milk thought to help TB patients.
    The site has been a thorn in UVA’s side since 1978, when the State turned it over to the UVA Medical Center. Bypassed as the site for the new hospital complex in the 1980s, the State finally turned the mostly vacant property over to the UVA Foundation in 2000.
    Deciding what to do with the property since then has been slow going. A deal with Monticello for a 95,000 square foot visitor’s center fell through in 2002. In a December 2004 Inside UVA article, UVA Vice Prez and COO Leonard Sandridge said UVA was seeking private developers to work with them on the site. If none could be found, UVA would consider turning Blue Ridge Hospital back over to the state.
    UVA spokesperson Carol Wood says that is no longer the case. UVA is not considering selling to the State or private developers, she says, and they’ve got ideas for a research park after UVA architects complete an historical assessment. There is no timeline or budget for the research park.
    Professor Dan Bluestone, an architectural historian at UVA, told C-VILLE in 2003 that the situation was “demolition by neglect.” With almost no headway on potential projects, this may be the case. And the longer UVA waits, the harder it will be for the historic structures to stack up against the soaring value of land near Monticello.