Plaza could cause traffic quandary

As red dirt is moved in anticipation of a planned new shopping center that one Albemarle County supervisor calls a “monstrosity,” nearby residents are bracing for traffic troubles.

The shopping center — Richard Spurzem’s Gazebo Plaza, near the intersection of Interstate 64 and U.S. 250 on Pantops — has some residents worried about the potential for what they call a U-turn “circus.”

When the 183,000-square-foot shopping center is completed, the Virginia Department of Transportation says it will close a break in the median of U.S. 250 where residents in the Ashcroft subdivision can now make a left or right turn to get to their houses off Hansens Mountain Road. While the turn is precarious — to make a left turn out of Ashcroft, cars have to sit in the median — some residents say VDOT’s solution could be even worse: Drivers will have to travel two traffic lights down and then make a U-turn if they want to go toward the I-64 interchange.

The same goes for traffic coming to Spurzem’s yet-to-be constructed shopping center: Coming from Pantops, for example, traffic will have to make a U-turn past the I-64 interchange and go onto Hansens Mountain Road to gain access to the stores. VDOT officials say Hansens Mountain is too close to the I-64 interchange to put in a stoplight.

Spurzem will continue with site work for at least a year, he said. He hopes to have the shopping center completed in 2010.

Spurzem lays the problem at the feet of county officials. He has proposed to build a road parallel to U.S. 250 that would go through the small Glenorchy neighborhood. He’s offered to build the $3 million road at no expense to the county, but officials say he needs a rezoning to do so.

“I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart,” he said. The road would allow him to get better tenants, but would also provide for a better traffic situation, he said.

Spurzem says he’s already tried to get a rezoning, a road he isn’t willing to go down again. He applied for a rezoning in 2002 and was rejected by the county Planning Commission. The project would have featured 800 to 900 residential units, along with some neighborhood commercial zoning.

“They made it pretty clear it wasn’t going to go anywhere,” Spurzem said. So in 2004 he went back to a plan that was approved, under a different owner, in 1980. The county rejected the plan, but a court overturned the ruling a year later.

“It took 10 years to get this far,” he said. “They told me the only thing I can do is build a shopping center.”

Aside from the rezoning issue, the county Board of Supervisors is also reluctant to approve the road because it would go through the Glenorchy neighborhood, which has about 10 houses.

Board Chairman Kenneth C. Boyd says the situation puts him in an awkward political position. While the road would benefit residents of Ashcroft, it would be to the detriment of longtime residents in Glenorchy who oppose a road that would be near their front yards. No property would need to be bought or condemned for construction, Spurzem said.

“We’re caught in between two neighborhoods,” Boyd said. “It does put me in a very awkward position.”

Boyd calls the development a “monstrosity” because it will feature a shopping center in a sea of parking, with 80-foot retaining walls lining U.S. 250. Spurzem says he doesn’t want to even build that much parking or the walls — but the county won’t allow him to change his plans without applying for a rezoning. Some of the walls would be twice the size of those at Lowe’s on U.S. 29, Spurzem has said.

“I doubt anyone would even park there,” he said recently of the extra parking. “[The county] should be more flexible and work with developers to get better projects. But they take a hard line on everything.”

Boyd said it would be difficult for the county to make an exception for Spurzem on its zoning practices, given the precedent it would set.

Colleen Bickers, an Ashcroft resident, said her neighbors are concerned about school buses making U-turns and emergency vehicles’ access to the large neighborhood. The traffic situation is already bad, she said.

“It’s much scarier to imagine the hole we’re all going to be in not being able to get in and out,” Bickers said.

Residents took the county, VDOT, Boyd and Spurzem to task at a recent meeting, packing a small gathering space. Some questioned whether Spurzem even planned to build the shopping center, or whether he is using the potential traffic mess as leverage to get county approval for the parallel road.

Spurzem assured them he was planning to build.

“There is a shortage of any type of retail space [in Albemarle],” Spurzem told residents. “This has been an incredibly long process. I’m not turning back at this point.”