We urge the Albemarle Board of Supervisors to deny the RST development proposal for Ashwood Boulevard at Rt. 29.  An earlier petition was developed and sent to the Planning Commission - with over 600 signatures - and some changes and improvements were made, but some aspects are now even worse. 

This Hasty Highrise Housing proposal continues to have a wide range of issues - it is simply too dense, with too many tall buildings in too small a space (and requiring waivers to County policy in order to proceed), grossly out of scale with the surrounding community, and with a new entry tying in to Ashwood Boulevard very close to 29 that would create a mixing bowl intersection with potentially significant traffic safety issues and long morning back-ups for the residents of Forest Lakes South who use Ashwood Boulevard on a daily basis. Incredibly, the developer’s traffic study claims there will be no appreciable impact on traffic, from adding all these RST units, on top of the added traffic coming onto Ashwood that will be associated with the Brookhill development as it gets built out.

 Other issues include potentially overcrowding local schools that are already close to capacity (and in some cases, like Baker-Butler, over capacity) and creating storm water runoff problems like we had suffered before with Lake Hollymead and even now are seeing with the Timberwood Townhouse project next to Arbor Lake.  It would set a precedent for added dense development up and down Route 29 – a prospect that every resident who has commented on this proposal finds unappealing.

We applaud the developer's interest in providing a substantial component of affordable housing, which has been make prominent in recent version of the proposal.  We support this need in the County, and are not opposed to general development of this parcel – not a single resident who has participated to date has said otherwise. 

But: the approach to providing it here is unprecedented:  in dense high-rise buildings with minimal green space and amenities (one Planning commissioner deemed it ‘warehousing’ - likening it to failed big city housing projects a generation ago) and no special design considerations to help ensure a livable, desirable experience – especially in a post COVID world.  In this rush for approval, this Hasty Highrise Housing project has had no community input, no involvement of planners, architects, designers, or other outside experts, no outreach to learn from other communities, no path to home ownership, and no input from the people who might live there. 

There currently are ongoing efforts to address area zoning classifications, determined long run needs for new schools, and to develop the many details of a newly enacted Affordable Housing policy.  It makes no sense to approve any proposal at this time - especially one that has so many open questions and implications for our future.

Albemarle deserves better.  If it's worth doing it;s worth doing right – especially as it would be on our doorsteps for a long time.  And so it should not be rushed through at this time.  Deny the RST proposal and send it back to the drawing board.