City Council’s May 4 vote to award “The Mark at Charlottesville” a necessary Certificate of Appropriateness for construction cannot be reversed, City Attorney John Maddux explained at the Council’s first regular meeting of the month July 20.
The planned, seven-story luxury apartment in the historically Black neighborhood of Fifeville has drawn condemnation from local residents, who claim the project would “loom over” the rest of the neighborhood and worsen local traffic problems. According to residents, it is also the latest in a series of disruptive luxury student housing projects that will raise living costs and transform their community into a “suburb” of the University.
The Council effectively greenlit The Mark at a regular meeting May 4 when it voted to award LCD Acquisitions — the developer based in Athens, Georgia — a “Certificate of Appropriateness” to construct the project next to two historic cottages. The Council’s vote overturned a prior decision by the Board of Architectural Review, which had ruled that The Mark would be impermissibly out of scale with the two small cottages as per the BAR’s established design guidelines…