Old Trail to feature “town center” in residential development

Residents in one of the largest developments in Albemarle County will soon be able to eat and work out closer to their homes, developers announced on Tuesday.
Old Trail — set against a backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Crozet — will feature a “town center” in the midst of residential development. The center will include 85,000 square feet of com-mercial and office space, including a coffee shop, three restaurants and fitness center along with individual offices. The Old Trail community has about 135 occupied homes, but the large development could have up to 2,600 townhouses, homes and apartments in the next 10 to 15 years. Developers said in an interview they are hoping to build about 100 units per year.
Gaylon Beights, the president of Beights Devel-opment Corp., which is developing Old Trail, said during Tuesday’s ground-breaking that it is close to final deals with tenants but doesn’t want to announce specifics before deals are inked.
With red clay and con-struction equipment behind him, Beights thanked a long list of people and announced the town center, which he said he hoped would be completed in 10 to 12 months. Children played in a mound of dirt with toy shovels as a handful of residents and well-wishers gathered across the street from construction equip-ment.
“There have been a lot of folks anxiously waiting for this to happen,” said Michael Guthrie, the CEO of Roy Wheeler Realty Co., which works with Old Trail. “The thing that’s really missing is a place where people can [bump] into each other.”
Old Trail is an example of the kind of development Albemarle promotes — where shopping and travel can be done within a development instead of spilling cars out onto congested roads.
Duane Zobrist, a former planning commissioner who lives nearby, said the new retail and shopping center would be a boon for resi-dents who have been wait-ing on the promise of shop-ping within walking dis-tance. But he said it could detract from the county’s efforts to focus growth and new business opportunities in downtown Crozet. Offi-cials are working on a plan for downtown they hope will make it easy for busi-nesses to locate there, as well as putting in county tax dollars to make it more attractive. Plans include a new library and streetscape beautification project.
“It makes the redevel-opment of downtown slower,” Zobrist said. He added that the new devel-opment and town center in Old Trail is good for the county. “Does it get any better than this?” he said, gesturing to the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in front of him.
Susan Stimart, Albe-marle’s business develop-ment coordinator, doesn’t think the new shops in Old Trail will detract from downtown. She said she’s happy it will bring more employment opportunities.
“Crozet downtown has got tremendous history and existing business charac-ter,” Stimart said. “I just don’t see them as being competitive, I see them as being complementary.”
Old Trail has 28 single-family homes for sale rang-ing from $499,000 to $1.2 million. Nine townhouses are also for sale, ranging from $249,000 to $429,000.
“The market is clearly slower,” Beights said. But, Beights added, that can also be a sales pitch: “When times are good, builders push their prices too high. I believe in the cycles of the market. Today’s the time to be buying.”