City solicits bids in disputed effort to sell vacant lots

The city is soliciting offers for two parcels it owns on the corner of Ridge Street and Cherry Avenue, potentially paving the way for a long-stalled housing and office project to be built on one of the only undeveloped tracts near downtown Charlottesville.
The Southern Development Group, which owns 2 1/2 acres of woodlands at the intersection, has been holding off on a mixed-use development while it has tried to acquire the city properties. Over the past three years the company has generated six different plans for the site, the latest of which calls for about 30 residential units and approximately 40,000 square feet of commercial space.
The developers have been holding informal talks with Charlottesville officials, but the issuance on Monday of a request for bids is the first public signal that the city is contemplating selling the lots.
The two parcels are       assessed at a combined $61,000.
“The process we are undertaking, as requested by the council, is an effort to be open and transparent about the parcels,” said Chris Engel, the city’s assistant director of economic development.
Engel points out that the city will consider any offer and that Southern Development Group has no leg up on the competition.
However, the proposed development has rankled many nearby neighbors, who fear it would exacerbate traffic, disrupt the historic nature of the neighborhood and adversely affect an idyllic wooded area.
Charlie Armstrong, vice president of land development for Southern Development, said the company likely would submit an offer before the May 8 deadline.
“We are still very interested,” he said.
“That corner is a key corner in the city and a great place for some new development.”
Adding the city property would result in a better project and allow the developers to preserve more trees at the back of its property that abuts residential homes, Armstrong said.
The city parcels “are definitely a great benefit to the project overall,” he added. “It allows for a presence on the corner.”
More than 100 neighbors have signed a petition opposing the project and some are now questioning the city’s decision to solicit offers.
“I don’t understand the need to sell those parcels,” said Susan Lanterman, who lives nearby. “That has never been explained.”
Lanterman fears that if the development goes forward as proposed, it would inundate an already busy intersection with more traffic. The development would have a right-turn-in/right-turn-out traffic pattern, shepherding cars onto small neighborhood streets.
“At this point it just won’t work for the neighborhood,” Lanterman said. “There aren’t the roads to support the traffic that would be put on the back roads.”
Other neighbors have expressed concern that the development would involve the destruction of hundreds of trees, which clean and absorb stormwater runoff from surrounding streets.
“It’s doing really well something that city councilors say we want more of hereabout,” Antoinette Roades said. “But any large-scale construction there would completely cancel all the benefit.”
Neighbors’ other reservation is harder to quantify: the development’s effect on the historic character of the area, which has many late-19th-century houses.
Ultimately, the decision whether to sell will be up to the council, but doing so risks a backlash from neighbors. However, Southern Development’s project is one that would help expand the city tax base and enliven Cherry Avenue.
Roades sees a potential silver lining in the request for offers: The document states that the city’s goal is a project that is “compatible with the surrounding architecture and character of the neighborhood” and “must positively contribute to the physical quality of the built urban environment.”
If Southern Development can meet those lofty goals, many neighbors likely would support the ensuing development, she said.