The incomplete Landmark Hotel is going up for auction, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29. A federal bankruptcy court will sell it off, to satisfy $2.8M in construction costs unpaid by Halsey Minor, who ran out of money shortly after the steel framework of the building went up a few years ago. Minor’s one-time partner, former Charlottesville developer Lee Danielson, claims a billionaire backer is going to help him win the structure at auction, presumably to finish building the boutique hotel. The auction, if it happens, would likely be held in three months.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Archive for the 'Development' Category
The area’s first housing complex for the chronically homeless will accept its first tenants in a couple of weeks, Graham Moonmaw writes in the Daily Progress. The Crossings, at the corner of Preston and Fourth, has sixty units, half of which are meant to house people who are medically vulnerable and have been homeless on a long-term basis, and the other half are for people with annual incomes below $27,250. They’re studio apartments, just 360 square feet apiece, and are equipped with basic furnishings, a simple kitchen, and a bathroom. The city bought the real estate two years ago, for $1.55M, and has sold it to Virginia Supportive Housing for the same amount, with no payment due for thirty years. (The Richmond-based organization runs similar facilities in Richmond and Hampton Roads.) The city will provide $170k/year to subsidize it—$130k from federal funds, $40k from the Charlottesville Housing Fund—and Albemarle will contribute, as well. The building will have six staffers on site most days, and has all of the security amenities of a modern apartment complex.
Sixty-nine percent of area people believe that some kind of a Route 29 bypass is necessary, according to a survey (PDF) commissioned by Charlottesville Tomorrow and conducted by UVA’s Center for Survey Research. The survey asked a wide range of questions of its 1,096 respondents in Albemarle, Charlottesville, Louisa, Fluvanna, Greene, and Nelson about topics including infrastructure, open space preservation, developer proffers, growth, and traffic. Just over half of respondents believe that traffic is a “major problem,” and 67% believe that elected officials should consider alternatives to the Western Bypass to see if they’d be cheaper and more effective than building a major new road.
You might recall that Habitat for Humanity had proposed swapping some land with Biscuit Run to establish athletic fields, but doing so required that the General Assembly authorized the Department of Conservation and Recreation to make the exchange. Del. David Toscano introduced just such a bill, HB1113, and it passed the General Assembly yesterday. There’s no reason to think that Governor Bob McDonnell will veto it. That means that Albemarle County and DCR will be free to negotiate a land swap with Habitat, creating a six-acre park adjacent to Southwood Mobile Home Park.
According to some research by Samantha Masone for The Hook, Charlottesville is cherry-picking the data on which they base real estate assessment values. The city recently reported that taxable property assessments are down by just 1.22% for the year (PDF). In calculating that number, city assessor Roosevelt Barbour, Jr. rightly excludes all “invalid” transactions—that is, all transfers of property that are not based on market forces, such as a parent selling a house to a child. Also excluded? Foreclosures and short sales. By Jim Duncan’s math, such sales make up 20% of those in the area and, perhaps not coincidentally, those distressed properties almost inherently go for very low rates. Masone took a random sample of houses to see whether they made the cut for calculating the city’s 1.22% decline, and found that twice as many transactions represented a decrease in value as the inverse, but only a quarter of those at-a-loss transactions were counted as valid by Barbour’s office. This might help to explain the gap between the claimed 1.22% decline and the decline of 32.1% measured by Nest, the local real estate agency.
Whether this is a common practice (and whether it is legal or ethical) is a question that is not explored by Masone, and is worth considering. I’m unclear on whether this has any immediate effect on individuals’ real estate taxes. While assessments of individual properties don’t appear to be impacted by this practice, the information that is presented to City Council to determine whether the tax rate should be adjusted is quite a bit rosier than reality—a difference of 31 percentage points could well be the difference between a rate cut and holding the current rate steady. And that, of course, affects all city property owners.
Sideblog
UVA graduation is this weekend (May 20th). Consider yourself warned. #
Theodore Roosevelt’s Albemarle retreat, Pine Knot, is looking to become more well known and accessible. #
Tablet computers are working out pretty well in city schools. #
VDOT got seven bids for the Western Bypass, but they’re secret until one is selected in June. #
One small car part is the sole evidence of who killed a Waynesboro woman in a hit-and-run on Saturday. The community at Jalopnik figured it out—it’s from the grille of a 2003 Ford F150 XL. #
Does the city have the power to set the speed on the bypass so ridiculously low? Several people argue that it does not. #
Council has again shot down the police department’s request for funding to put CCTV security cameras all along the Downtown Mall. #
A little light reading: Charlottesville’s charter. These are the rules, set by the legislature, under which C’ville exists. #
The plan for Shoppers World has been made public. Stein Mart and DSW will moving in to the complex recently vacated by Whole Foods. #
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Archive for Sideblog »
Charlottesville Blogs
- Battle of the noodle: Allied heats up recycling rhetoric against Van der Linde Dave McNair
- People watching pick: Baggby’s Dave McNair
- Canterbury meets Katie Couric at UVA graduation The Rev. James Richardson
- I Want to Live in Upperville Brendan Wolfe
- Could a Mid-Week Farmers’ Market Work in Crozet? Jim
- Virginia’s General Assembly and the New Voter Identification Law Walker Richmond
- Graduation blessings The Rev. James Richardson
- “However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.” jmrlblog
- Baggby’s – still my favorite “cool” view of the Charlottesville Downtown Mall (2012) RuthK
- This Day (L’édition paranoïaque) Brendan Wolfe
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