"In the heart of a 25-acre parcel abutting the Meadowcreek Golf course lie the remnants of Charlottesville’s wastewater treatment plant.

The circular ruins of a portion of the plant are ensconced under a blanket of rocks. Rusted pipes stick out of the rubble, the sole reminder that up until the 1960s the property housed a city sewage facility.

The swath of land is one of the largest undeveloped parcels in Charlottesville, and city officials have some lofty ideas of what to do with the site.

But there is a big hurdle: The city no longer owns the land, having sold it more than a decade ago. And the current owner has little interest in parting ways with the prime piece of real estate.

“I’m not anxious to sell it right now,” developer Frank Stoner said. “That would not be high on my list.”

City officials are interested in partnering with a nonprofit developer, such as Habitat for Humanity or the Piedmont Housing Alliance, to build a 150-unit, mixed-income community with a good amount of affordable housing on the parcel.

The city is proposing developing 50 houses for families who earn less than 50 percent of the area median income and an additional 40 units for work force housing, which is usually reserved for teachers and public safety officers. To make the venture profitable, the city would like to build 40 market-rate houses and 20 “high-end market” houses overlooking the golf course.

“This is an opportunity to look at getting much needed affordable housing, but to put it in an area where people of mixed incomes live together,” said Jim Tolbert, director of Charlottesville’s Neighborhood Development Services.

Selling the site

In the mid-1990s, the city was looking to unload the property to a developer who would clean up the site and build middle-income housing, boosting the number of moderate-income homeowners in the city.

Stoner beat out several other developers with a plan to build a mix of approximately 150 townhouses and single-family homes, a portion of which would be reserved for low-income residents. He paid the city $230,000 for the property and agreed to pay for the environmental remediation of the site, which to date has cost in excess of $330,000 and is ongoing.

Yet nearly 11 years later, Stoner has yet to break ground on his project. And that has angered several members of the City Council, who believe that Stoner has not lived up to his end of the bargain. If city officials had known that a decade later no housing would have been built, they might not have sold the parcel to Stoner, Councilor Kevin Lynch said.

Lynch believes that Stoner “has clearly violated the spirit if not the letter of the contract,” though he acknowledges that there was no time clause in the contract for Stoner to build his 150-unit project.

“The parcel was originally sold to [Stoner] on very good terms with the written expectation that it would be developed for housing,” Lynch said. “It’s now been over 10 years and that hasn’t happened.”

Buyback sought

Lynch said the city should be able to buy back the property for its purchase price and an agreeable amount of interest.

Stoner retorts that he paid fair market value for the site, has not violated the contract and insists he is trying to move forward with his project.

“It’s a wonderful piece of property and we would love to get into development. The sooner the better,” he said.

“Regulatory obstacles”

What’s holding up the project, Stoner said, is a series of “regulatory obstacles,” most prominently the lack of access to the property. Though the site is in the city, the street that leads to it - Pen Park Lane - is a small road in Albemarle County that would need to be expanded before the houses could be built.

“Right now we don’t have access that is safe and appropriate,” Stoner said.

According to Stoner, the intersection of Pen Park Lane and Rio Road has been labeled “substandard” by the Virginia Department of Transportation. Adjacent properties would have to be taken by the county in order for the intersection to be widened, something the county has been reluctant to do thus far, Stoner said.

Albemarle officials could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Stoner hopes the issues with the intersection are resolved soon so he can proceed with the project.

“It’s not fun to sit on property that you have a bunch of equity tied up in and can’t do anything with,” Stoner said.

No talks yet

To date, city officials have yet to sit down with Stoner and discuss their idea of repurchasing the property. During a work session last week, officials broached the idea of using $500,000 in unallocated affordable housing funds to buy back the site, but have yet to decide whether it is a path they want to pursue.

Now that the city has publicly stated it would like the property back, Stoner wonders how officials would treat a construction application from him.

“If I submit a plan tomorrow, is the city prepared to approve it?” Stoner asked." (Seth Rosen, The Daily Progress, May 27, 2007)