Eminent domain still on table for road

Charlottesville has avoided going to court to get about 1.5 acres for the start of Hillsdale Drive Extended, but there are differing thoughts on whether private land could be condemned in the future to move the project along.

“I guess that’s always a possibility,” Councilor Julian Taliaferro said, referring to using eminent domain to seize private property.

The entire Hillsdale extension will run from Hydraulic Road past Greenbrier Drive in Albemarle County and is seen by local officials as a parallel road that could relieve traffic pressure on the busy U.S. 29 corridor

The portion of the $30.5 million Hillsdale connector that will begin at Hydraulic Road and run adjacentto the planned Whole Foods will be built by the store’s developers.

Because it was private property, the city needed to obtain the land for the public road that will eventually weave around the businesses in the Seminole Square shopping center and connect to the existing Hillsdale Drive in the county.

The land’s fair market value was settled on just before the City Council took up a resolution that would have moved condemnation proceedings forward and opened the door to eminent domain.

Ivy resident Michie Bright, who co-owned the coveted city acreage, would not comment on the negotiations. City officials also would not release how much the land cost until a formal agreement has been signed.

Officials tout broad support

After the first section is constructed, work would move north as the road would make its way through Seminole Square. And as work on both sides of the road in Charlottesville and Albemarle County gets under way, officials say they are committed to making sure the project will be done as imagined, despite the narrow path the road must follow.

“There’s a lot of parties that want to see this road get built,” Mayor Dave Norris said. While some residents who use the nearby Senior Center have previously expressed concern about the connector, Norris added that even environmental groups such as the Southern Environmental Law Center support the road.

“I think it bodes well for it to be completed and for obstacles to be overcome,” he said.

Many say it is unlikely that property condemnation would be used, even in light of Regal Cinemas’ plan to expand its theater that sits in the approved path.

The city has a sparse record of invoking eminent domain for projects. It was successfully used in 1999 when trying to get land next to Moore’s Creek and near Azalea Park, but that has been the only instance in roughly the last 10 years.

In 2002 and 2003, there were discussions of using the measure to get property near the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, but the matter was resolved before it went to court.

City spokesman Ric Barrick said comparing the Whole Foods land situation with that posed by the Regal Cinema 4 would be “apples and oranges.” Regal, he said, owns the land where the movie theater is located, whereas the Whole Foods would merely be a tenant on a 14.3-acre parcel that has been assessed by the city to be worth nearly $9.8 million.

Officials also said that Seminole Square property owners are eager to move the road along.

“It’s a project where the landowners in that area have agreed to give a good part of that right of way to that project,” county Supervisor Dennis S. Rooker said.

Chuck Rotgin, the principal of Great Eastern Management, which oversees part of Seminole Square, also concurred that landowners are willing to work with local officials.

“We have agreed to be very cooperative when it comes to the needed right of way for our sections,” Rotgin said in an interview.

No agreements have been written because it is too early in the project’s stages, Barrick said.

Business cooperation

According to the Virginia Department of Transportation, $18.6 million of the total project cost has been set aside for right-of-way acquisition. But Rotgin said he believed those costs could amount to much less considering that the shopping center’s property owners are willing to cooperate.

But Barrick said the city has not heard from Regal since it announced expansion plans in May. Referring to the chosen Hillsdale Drive Extended alignment, he said, “There’s very little wiggle room.”

“I would hope we could come to some resolution on that,” Taliaferro said.

Norris said the city and county would not push for a road that would serve only as a driveway for the 40,000-square-foot grocery.

“Obviously, there’s a much longer piece of the road that will follow, hopefully,” Norris said.

David L. Slutzky, chairman of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, said the city and the county have a continued interest in expanding alternative modes of transportation and incorporating more parallel roads such as the Hillsdale connector to take traffic off U.S. 29. With developments such as the 65-acre Albemarle Place coming, he said, “it’ll help to have Hillsdale.”

Alleviating congestion

Traffic counts for the intersection at Hydraulic Road and U.S. 29 stand at about 61,000 vehicles per day, and it has been estimated that Hillsdale Extended would take 10,000 vehicles off the road daily.

Juandiego Wade, a county transportation planner, said it was expected that Albemarle Place would generate between 30,000 and 31,000 vehicle trips daily.

Julie Culbreath, a spokeswoman for Albemarle Place developer Edens & Avant, did not provide specifics on how many vehicles the residential and retail center would add to the area’s main artery.

“Albemarle Place has a lot of moving parts,” she said, adding that details would be finalized in the future.

The current alignment for Hillsdale Drive Extended was approved in March 2005 by the City Council, well before any plans for the Whole Foods or the bigger Regal came to fruition. The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in support of the Hillsdale project one month later.

Norris said that Hillsdale is different than many other joint road projects, in that both localities support the connector for their own purposes. This would not be another Meadowcreek Parkway or an Eastern Connector, he said.

Slutzky lumped the U.S. 29 western bypass in with those two projects.

“I don’t see the Eastern Connector anytime soon,” he said. “Not on my watch, not in my district.”