When the Rivanna Village at Glenmore came before the Albemarle County Planning Commission in March, neighboring residents showed up in force. Many expressed concern over the density of the project—521 units and 125,000 square feet of commercial space on 93 acres—and whether it might open up the possibility of even denser development down the line for the county’s most modest growth area, the Village of Rivanna.
 There isn’t much land left to be developed in the Village of Rivanna growth area. A master plan in the works is trying to influence its growth over the next 20 years. |
Ironically, the day after the Board of Supervisors approved the rezoning, the county sent its first e-mail about the Village of Rivanna’s master plan—a master plan many residents had been begging for to help avoid the sort of rezoning that just went through.
Compared to the other growth areas in the county, the Village of Rivanna is easy to miss. It has no old main street like Crozet, no mass of commercial space like 29N or Pantops, and lacks the higher density apartment complexes of the urban ring surrounding Charlottesville.
But it is a growth area nonetheless, its 1,700 acres home to roughly 1,900 people (as well as a golf course and a fire station), and it’s next in line for a "master plan." The plan is still in the early phases—two community meetings have been held to get citizen input, and the earliest a draft of a plan would come about would be the spring of 2008. The Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission has been hired as consultants on the project.
In the meanwhile, the Planning Commission last week recommended approval for 153 more housing units on 144 acres for an expansion of Glenmore—more land that won’t get much benefit from "master planning."
Some undeveloped land lies just outside the boundaries of the growth area. Staff says the master plan will examine that surrounding area for potential boundary expansions, but is unlikely to go so far as to recommend it.
If any boundary adjustments are recommended, Planning Commission Chair (and supervisor candidate) Marcia Joseph says the logic should be airtight and statistically justified. "We’d better be very cautious and we ought to have sound reasoning why we think these boundaries need to be expanded."
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