West Main property waits for purpose

The developer seeking to build a nine-story complex at the corner of West Main Street and Ridge-McIntire has backed out, with the landowner saying the city’s stingy approval process eventually did the project in.
“The city will not let us do anything with it,” property owner Russell Mooney said. “We’ve been fighting it for three years, trying to get the city to agree to let us do something with it, and they would not.”

City officials, however, say they had been pleased with the potential for the project to complement that part of town, but could not take further action without specific plans.
“There is not much we can do other than to wait for him or others interested in developing that corridor,” city spokesman Ric Barrick said in an e-mail.
The City Council had given its support for the proposed mixed-use tower in 2007 and granted a coveted rezoning so it could be built, and the Board of Architectural Review granted conditional design approval in July 2008. But several design elements at that time still needed to come back for final approval.

City officials say they have not had any contact with developer Bob Englander or Mooney for the past year and a half. No site plans were ever submitted for the BAR to review, according to planners, a step necessary because the property is in a local historic district.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” city planner Nick Rogers said.
Now the 1.03-acre spot is up for sale for $4.8 million.
The twist is the latest for a corner property that Ryal Thomas says is so prime that one could sell bubble gum on a stick there because of the throngs that pass by daily.
“The spot is everything,” said Thomas, owner of Ryal’s Furniture at 301 W. Main St. in Charlottesville.
The visibility and high traffic led Thomas to set up shop about nine months ago in the location, a stone’s throw from downtown and a site that the city has been trying to get redeveloped in the hope that it will help revitalize West Main.

But can 301 W. Main St. ever be transformed? Despite the city’s desires to see something new built, for years nothing has happened.
The economy has played an obvious role in hindering new construction in recent years. Yet even before markets tumbled, a CVS proposal for the land was shot down because of design issues and despite months of back-and-forth discussion that took place between developers and the city’s Board of Architectural Review.
A few shops — Ryal’s and Random Row Books — have made the corner patch their home, and during the day customers can be seen coming and going from the local businesses. Mooney said he does not particularly want to sell the land, but he cannot afford to keep it largely empty.
The city most recently assessed the property to be worth just more than $1 million, and Charlottesville’s real-estate tax rate is 95 cents per $100 of assessed value.

“The taxes on that property are tremendous, and we cannot afford to keep it unless we obtain a little income from it,” Mooney said.
City Councilor Satyendra Huja said he thinks a development with residential and commercial uses would work on the site but it is difficult to predict what design concept would eventually succeed without seeing plans.
“It is hard to approve something you don’t have,” he said.