Downtown Charlottesville Redevelopment Planned

Growth within Charlottesville City limits is going to get even more dense in the future, and not just along West Main Street.

It’s long been said that the area south of the Downtown Mall is some of the best real estate in the City of Charlottesville.

It’s a big plan. Bold, edgy and, in my opinion will likely result in something sometime that will look a little bit like the proposed plan. In true Charlottesville fashion,

“It’s a conceptual study, and one of the things we recommend as an immediate next step is additional study,” Pierce-McManamon responded.

This is the sort of thing that anybody thinking about buying or renting anywhere near the City of Charlottesville should at least know about, if not know. Everything will be touched by this plan – by its implementation and by the conversation about the possibility of the implementation. Thoughts of “what if” will impact property values and buyers’ decisions.

This proposal touches on everything – the economy, transportation, infrastructure, affordable housing (Friendship Court would be gone), jobs, the real estate market – everything. Keep in mind that this is a visionary plan. So far as I can discern, there is no developer in the wings pushing for this plan.

You may want to spend some time reading the linked documents – 300 plus pages – at Charlottesville Tomorrow. The historical section that breaks down the development history of downtown Charlottesville is particularly interesting.

By 1990, connectivity in the area had decreased dramatically. Although new buildings began to spring up along Garrett Street in the 1980s, the super-blocks remained. New development occurred in a piece-meal fashion, without a large-scale employer taking the place of the previous industries which had closed.

There is likely to be more discussion at cvillenews.