Unanimous Vote Against Biscuit Run

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 28, 2007 in Development. 4 Comments

The Planning Commission unanimously rejected Biscuit Run at last night’s meeting, Charlottesville Tomorrow reports. (Local media outlets left before the meeting ended.) Of the 27 members of the public who spoke at the meeting, only four supported the enormous proposed development. Significant factors in the decision appeared to include the need for significant upgrades to the sewer line (which simply can’t handle thousands of new people), the major expansion to transportation infrastructure that would be required, and some more traditional concerns like proffers, school capacity, etc.

Now comes the fun part: the Board of Supervisors. That’s because the Planning Commission’s vote is simply a recommendation to the BoS, who can choose to accept or reject the recommendation. A unanimous recommendation is tough to ignore without looking bad, but it’s hardly unheard of. Muddying the waters, three members of the BoS are up for reelection, and no industry gives quite as generously as developers.

CPC Stockholders’ Coming Windfall

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2007 in Business. 10 Comments

More on the topic of the CPC looking to sell a big chunk of their downtown holdings, in the form of an interesting financial revelation from Hawes Spencer at The Hook:

In the mid 1990s, says Spencer Connerat, who was a young banker at the time, he was fascinated when Jim Berry and Hovey Dabney– his bosses at Jefferson National Bank (now Wachovia)– began buying CPC shares for themselves. During 1996 and 1997, Berry and Dabney divided up shares as they became available, each purchasing blocks of shares ranging from 1,485 to 29,690 at prices of $1.00 and $1.05 per share.

[…]

According to our calculations, the per-share dividend just on the sale of the Water Street asphalt lot could be nearly $20.

The city sold off its three major parking lots, counting on CPC — masquerading as a non-profit — to provide for its parking needs and all the while CPC’s major stockholders appear to have known that the business was little more than a real estate investment for them, and that eventually that parking would turn into office buildings or condos.

City to Consider Free Buses

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2007 in Transportation. 12 Comments

Some city officials are interested in making the buses free, Henry Graff reports for NBC 29, a move that would surrender $400,000 in annual revenue but surely result in more widespread use of CTS. The process of paying slows things down, and having to pay adds a layer of mystery to the system for those who have never ridden the buses. Beginning yesterday the buses became free for anybody with a UVa ID, and the next step would be to try a fare-free month and see what come of that.

Police Blow Up Envelope, Cylinder

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2007 in Crime and Education. 13 Comments

Janitors discovered an envelope and a “cylinder” at Henley and Brownsville this morning, the middle school and elementary school separated by a parking lot in Crozet, across from the street from WAHS. (Which is confusing. Were they in the parking lot between the two? Was the envelope at one school and the cylinder at another?) They contacted police, who got the bomb squad and the FBI involved. Parents were asked to keep students at home, and those kids who had already showed up were ushered over to WAHS. Late this morning the bomb squad did what comes naturally to them: they blew up said envelope and cylinder.

No doubt Jim Camblos is preparing to press charges against some poor kid for the crime of leaving a thank you note and a tin of cookies at her principal’s door.

Biscuit Run Price Tag: $222 Million

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2007 in Development, Taxes and Transportation. 14 Comments

People very rarely believe me when I point out that Albemarle County actually loses money on each new resident. “But,” they say repeatedly, followed by a mention of a revenue stream that a) has been accounted for and b) doesn’t add up to much. Charlottesville Tomorrow points to a great example of this: the cost of Biscuit Run. The county’s Fiscal Impact Analyst wrote a memo about the total costs of the development that considers the cost of all additional services and additional revenue via taxes and contains this alarming conclusion after looking at both an optimistic and a pessimistic scenario:

The numbers generated by the two scenarios that I ran indicate that, if the County approved [Biscuit Run], the differential net annual fiscal impact would be $4,399,000-$6,665,000 = -$-2,266,000. That number means that, annually, the County would be $2,266,000 worse off approving [Biscuit Run] than denying the proposal. [A twenty-year analysis] in the former reveals a deficit of $88,665,000 while, in the latter case, there exists a deficit of $134,578,000. The difference between those two numbers, $45,913,000, means that, over the course of the twenty year period, the County would be $45,913,000 worse off approving [Biscuit Run] than denying the proposal. […] After taking into account the [developer’s] cash proffers, the new differential would equal $25,213,000 so, over the course of the twenty year period, the County, according to CRIM, would be roughly $25,213,000 worse off approving [Biscuit Run] than denying it.

So this new development may well cost the county $134 million. All of that is on top of the $88M in improvements required to 20 South, Avon, and Old Lynchburg just to handle the additional traffic. For reference, the entire annual budget for the county is just north of $300M.

Even if we wanted to take a vote to see what percentage of Albemarle wants to pay more taxes in order to add 5,000 new residents to the county (and I guarantee you that wouldn’t pass), it wouldn’t matter: the county isn’t given the power to stop developments like this, and a majority of the BoS wouldn’t consider stopping Biscuit Run. How we deal with growth is broken. Totally and utterly broken.

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