Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate

The DailyProgress has a story today about how Eco-friendly homes are the hot new thing.  The idea is to use less pollutant and more sustainable (easily replacable by the earth) materials when building a home.  There are three major development projects in Central Virginia underway that the article mentions that will use these principles:

The Belvedere project off East Rio Road in Albemarle County will eventually be a community of 700 homes that are certified as energy efficient. The developer, Stonehaus, broke ground on the project May 10.

South of Charlottesville, in North Garden, a 2,300-acre property called Bundoran Farm is being developed into an environmentally friendly community, in which 90 percent of the land will be conserved.

And in Zion Crossroads in Louisa County, a Utah developer is planning a 650,000-square-foot outlet mall, with office, retail and restaurant space. The project will include green building aspects, including solar power, recycled building materials and preservation of the 119-acre site’s existing wetlands.

This is such a Charlottesville thing to do.  I wonder to what extent this is happening nationally?  When sustainablility gets cost neutral, that’s when these efforts will really start to make a difference.

Per The Daily News Record, there is a really interesting zoning decision before the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors.  A company that owns Endless Caverns wishes to develop it into an RV park (the website already reads “Endless Caverns and RV Resort”) and is seeking a special use permit on the land zoned agricultural.  Near-by residents, as is their custom, oppose the plan.

The interesting bit is the news today that the Caverns owners hired a Private Investigator who claimed to be a professor and interviewed neighbors and the newspaper trying to find out who opposed the group.  Having that secret exposed isn’t going to win them much local goodwill.

The nearby residents are arguing (site & pdf overview) that there are environmental issues, traffic concerns, & neighborhood character concerns but their most promising angle is the zoning / land use one. “residents who oppose the expansion say they gave the county several documents supporting their claim that an RV resort is not a good use of land zoned general agriculture.”  That’s probably true.  Rockingham county has been really pushing development and incenting folks to bring in outside money, so depending on what the company intends, this may be unstoppable with the current board.

Stultz said she hopes to have a decision on the site plan by April 1. The Rockingham County Board of Supervisors will reconsider the special-use permit, which was tabled in December, whenever it’s ready, she said.

Per the Waynesboro News Virginian, some protected wetlands may be paved over to build some houses.  The county ruled against the developer (Countryside Investments) but they were given more time to come up with a better arguement.  Poor drainage and increased flooding are prime concerns for the project. In a shocking development, neighbors are opposed to the new construction.

A couple of facts I didn’t know:

• City officials cannot take the value of the wetlands themselves into consideration when evaluating development plans
• Permitting wetlands construction is a power left solely to state and federal authorities

So much for local control.