After almost four years of work by Albemarle County planning staff, the Board of Supervisors (BOS) has signed off on a 20-year vision of what future growth and development will look like in the county. Dubbed AC44, this Comprehensive Plan focuses on how and where growth will occur in both the 5% of land designated as Development Areas and the other 95% reserved for Rural Area use. An eleventh-hour suggestion by county staff to allow citizens to apply to have their land use designation changed outside of regularly scheduled plan updates caused frustration among some Crozetians.
“The county’s discussions constantly focus on the expansion of our growth areas,” said long-time Crozet resident and former Planning Commissioner Tom Loach during the public comment section of the BOS’s October 15 meeting. “This includes swapping rural areas and using the same sleazy method of exploiting the master planning update process to force unwanted expansion of our growth areas. If implemented, this plan will be death by a thousand cuts that will destroy both our rural and development areas.”
Crozet is one of five designated Development Areas in the county, and planners project that 31,000 more residents will settle into these areas by 2044. AC44 says that accommodating this growth will require redeveloping buildable land at increased density (a greater number of dwelling units per acre), encouraging housing “infill,” and other strategies such as reducing requirements for parking, minimum lot size, and street frontage for new developments…