Posts tagged 22902

Keeping Up With West Main – Another Hotel Coming

Just a few years ago, West Main Street was the way you got from UVA to Downtown Charlottesville. Now, it’s Mid-Town. And it’s booming.

Sean Tubbs reports that yet another project – this time a high-end hotel – is being proposed for West Main Street.  The prospective developers, Carr Hospitality, have in their portfolio Embassy Suites, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn & Suites and the Willard Intercontinental in DC.

Keeping up with West Main is nearly a full-time job (thanks, Charlottesville Tomorrow!)

So what? West Main is becoming more of an economic force in Charlottesville, adding stuff – new restaurants, new hotels, new apartments … new traffic. I suspect that this density and coming congestion will have at least two effects on the Charlottesville real estate market – 1) more will want to live close to this stuff, and I’d wager many of these will be renters of apartments rather than homeowners and 2) more will want to live away from this density and congestion.

Turns out, I’ve done a couple videos of West Main, and I thought it would be interesting to look back at a few of them:

(Click here to read the entire post)

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Fry’s Springs Downzoning Proposed Again

The perils of zoning rear their heads in Fry’s Springs.

The Charlottesville City Council has agreed to consider a request from the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association to study rezoning of three streets.

“Essentially, they are asking for the properties on Stribling, Crestmont and Shamrock to be downzoned,” said Jim Tolbert, director of the city’s Neighborhood Development Services.

Specifically, the neighborhood association has been asking for the city to change the zoning on all properties classified as R-2 to R-1S. Properties in R-2 can have up to two families, whereas R-1S allows only one. Accessory apartments could still exist, but only if the property owner lives on site.

In all, there are 213 properties in the Fry’s Spring neighborhood with R-2 zoning.

This is an interesting development, so to speak. On one hand, what’s the harm in having the conversation about downzoning (besides staff time and resources)? The harm is that by contemplating downzoning, the City is discussing changing the property rights of owners.

R-2 and R-1S zoning presumably provide affordable housing options, and by eliminating this zoning the City would presumably be eliminating some affordable housing options … but with all the apartments coming to West Main Street, maybe the City is ok with this.

Curious – do off-site owners have lesser rights than owner-occupants?

“Councilor Dede Smith, a Fry’s Spring resident, said that half of those owners do not live in Charlottesville.”

If you’re curious to see the City of Charlottesville’s zoning map, start here (the West Main study that’s there is interesting, too).

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