A question from a reader:

“Good morning, Jim.  I am curious if you or any or your readers might have information about who has been running fiber-optic cable along Mint Springs Road over the past week.  I live in Emerald Ridge, above Mint Springs, and can see where the cable extends to the entrance of my neighborhood.  I would love to replace my spotty DSL connection with fiber service.  Keeping my fingers crossed.”

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The folks in this Facebook group do.

Personally, I think Crozet is still a small town. Not as small, but still a nice small town.

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“Would you please let your readers know that Blue Ridge Beads & Glass is offering Beading and Stained Glass Classes in Crozet?  We have a schedule of classes and will teach by appointment as well.  Our website has the complete schedule and description of classes.”

Sure.

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via email -

Final Plans for PARC Project Near

With the help of community professionals volunteering their time and expertise, Crozet Park has been able to turn a multi-year, multi-phase 1.2 million dollar facility into a two year, $600,000 project yielding us an indoor aquatics and recreation center by September of 2012. To date, community professional have come together to donate their time and services in preparation of the facility. Phil Kirby, Crozet resident and senior executive of Barton Malow has been instrumental in allowing the recreation facility to become a reality, donating all services, including general contracting and guaranteeing the project for $600,000 dollars.  Kirby is ready to start construction later this month pending the remaining $200,000 being secured through funding from the Albemarle County Parks and Recreation Department.

Thanks to the community and donors, the Crozet Park has recently raised the $400,000 needed to put a dome over the Crozet pool and provide year round aquatics. If all goes as planned, at the January 11, 2012 Board of Supervisors meeting, an additional $200,000 will be received from the County for the needed renovations to the community building.  This is funding that was initially allocated to the Park in 2008 to put in tennis courts, basketball courts and trails.  With the early fundraising successes of the PARC project, Park Board members met with County staff in late 2010 and determined that the money might be better spent completing the PARC recreation building.  If the recreation phase were completed concurrently, there would be an enormous savings in construction and the PARC would be able to provide numerous recreational and fitness opportunities. This would also create a center that would become a hub for programming tennis and basketball.  

Meetings with County staff proved positive regarding this transfer in funds, and in the past year PARC committee members have been working with Bob Crickenberger of Albemarle County Parks and Recreation toward a successful transfer of these funds to the PARC project.  However, tennis, basketball and trails still need to be given a place in the park and the Crozet Park Board will be responsible for replacing the funding for these facilities in a fashion that meets County requirements. With the help of our district supervisor, Ann Malleck, the Park Board has been working actively to come to an agreement that both satisfies the County requirements and makes it possible for the Park to fundraise for these facilities.  

In response to this opportunity, and in a matter of months, $68,000 has been raised for tennis, thanks to the efforts of Lynda Harrill, the Quickstart Tennis coordinator.  This spring, the goal is to start with 3 Quickstart Tennis courts and continue fundraising to complete 2 additional adult courts that easily double as Quickstart courts as needed.  Through a joint venture agreement, the PARC will be operated by the Piedmont YMCA who will also provide programming opportunities for these amenities as they are built.

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From Steve Landes’ email newsletter:

Del. Landes Town Hall
January 7, 2012, Saturday, 9:30-11:00 a.m.
King Family Vineyard, Carriage House
6550 Roseland Farm, Crozet, Virginia

Get involved and track what Delegate Landes is doing in Richmond.

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Looking pretty good.

I saw people walking on it too.

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Henley has a wind turbine! Congratulations to everyone at Henley Middle School who worked for so long to accomplish this.

I’ll update this story as the news reports on it.

As promised … the Newsplex has a story up about it .

Update 2: Charlottesville Tomorrow has a thorough account and background about the renewable energy center.

Interesting discussion also at my personal Facebook page.

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“Crozet” is hard to define – Understanding Crozet is sometimes difficult, particularly when you’re looking to move to Crozet. Some define Crozet as “the 22932 zip code“. Some define it as broad as “past Ivy“.

At Nest, we have been slowly releasing our Live Where you Love video series … we have decidedly not overtly branded these as we intended these videos to be for you rather than explicit marketing for us.

(for my clients, this is how I define it – the Brownsville and Crozet Elementary school districts.”)

Have questions about Crozet? Ask me. I live here.

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I wrote at RealCentralVA about a bunch of the places nearby to get Christmas trees – from the Boy Scouts in the Great Valu parking lot to AM Fog to Ralph’s Christmas Trees in Nelson. We’ve heard great things about Ralph’s so that’s where we’re going this weekend.

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Huge thanks to Chuck Johnston for tweeting some of the highlights of the meeting. I’ll be writing about some of these things in the coming days and weeks, but wanted to get these up this morning. Some of the tweets reference troubling trends.

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And it’s looking good.

Now … when’s the rest of it going to close?

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Looking at some market stats for Crozet (as defined by the Zip Code, 22932). Bullet points first:

- I’m no longer making comparisons beyond three years – the “boom/bubble” years are irrelevant. What matters now is where we are, where we were recently and where we’re going.

- Active Listings: Still too many houses on the market in Crozet. Until some of this inventory is sold, we’re still going to struggle with declining prices, high days on market and short sales and foreclosures.

- New Listings: Declining. This is good. See the remarks for “Active Listings”

- All Pendings (under contract homes): Higher than this time in 2010 and 2009; this is a good thing. More homes under contract will hopefully lead to fewer homes on the market, leading to real estate market stability.

- New Pendings: Up. Good.

- Sold Listings: Up, year over year. This is a good thing. We’re on a slower pace than this time last year, but that’s ok. If we can build stability slowly, we’ll be ok.

Keep in mind that these statistics are top-level analysis for the Crozet real estate market, inclusive of town homes, (as in, the Highlands and the town homes in Old Trail) single family (as in Laurel Hills, Parkside Village) and new construction and resale homes.

All real estate markets are local. There are subtle and stark market differentiations within even Crozet – based on community offerings (the pool in Western Ridge is nice), proximity to downtown Crozet, proximity to the Old Trail town center, etc.

If you’re thinking about selling, do your due diligence. If you’re considering buying, do your due diligence. There’s a lot to learn on both accounts. If you have questions, please feel free to leave a comment or email me.

Lastly, this is my state-mandated Disclosure (and it’s the right thing to do): I happen to be a real estate agent who lives in Crozet, works in Crozet, Charlottesville and all the surrounding areas, and think that this information is relevant to the readers of RealCrozetVA.

Click any chart to enlarge

All data is pulled from the Charlottesville MLS and is reasonably accurate.

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I’m debating asking our representatives, Ann Mallek (Supervisor), Barbara Massie Mouly (School Board) and Steve Landes (Delegate) Five Good Questions.

If you could ask each of them a question or three, what would they be?First question:

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October 5 is International Walk to School Day.

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Remember the Walk to School grant for the part of Crozet near Crozet Elementary?

So did a concerned parent who asked the County for an update, and received this response.

From Jack Kelsey with Albemarle County:

Regarding the Safe Routes to School Project, the short answer is that it’s being designed by David Anhold & Associates and I’m expecting a progress print this week.

The long answer is that a lot has transpired to get us to this point. Our original plan was to provide this simple design in-house, we hired a surveyor, and had the project area surveyed.  We were in the process of addressing VDOT’s environmental requirements (required by all projects funded by VDOT), when VDOT informed us that we could not do the design in-house due to the project being funded by the grant.  

The design fee was expected to be small and well below the procurement limit where we may request 3 fee proposals from consultants, then choose one and move on with design.  However, VDOT’s procurement rules required this project have a public advertised “request for proposals”, formal interview of the candidates by a committee, selection and negotiation of the fee, and lastly VDOT’s approval of the selection process and chosen firm. Fortunately at that time we were just completing our procurement process for civil engineering “on-call” design services contracts.  We had to submit our procurement process information to VDOT for review and did receive approval to select from our new “on-call” consultants.  

This took time, but far less than then going through a formal project specific “request for proposals”.  We provided Anhold Associates with a project scope and requested a fee proposal.  The fee was reviewed/approved, a project order routed for signature, and a notice to proceed was issued 10 August 2011.

I hope this information is helpful.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

Jack M. Kelsey, PE
Transportation Engineer
Office of Facilities Development
County of Albemarle
401 McIntire Road
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902-4596
(434) 872-4501 office; ext 3376
(434) 760-1272 mobile
(434) 972-4091 fax
jkelsey@albemarle.org

Also:

The award was announced in 23 April 2010, but the required VDOT-County agreement wasn’t approved by VDOT until 25 August 2010.  What needs to be kept in mind is that with State-Federal grants there are inherent processes and procedures that must be followed, so a portion of this time is allotted to these tasks.  However, overall the time frame is conservative to allow adequate time to get the project scheduled and completed.

As for our schedule, we plan to have the plans, plats and bidding documents completed by the end of the year.  Then have the right-of-way/easement dedication acquired this winter.  The construction will then be publically bid late winter/early spring 2012.  Construction could then begin in spring 2012 and we estimate it will take about 3 months to complete.

Update 3 October 2011: Aaron Richardson at the Daily Progress has an update on this story.

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via press release:

UNCLE HENRY’S FAVORITES PLAYS OLD TIME STRING BAND MUSIC AT GREENWOOD COMMUNITY CENTER WITH BRAD SAYLER CALLING

The sound of old time string band music and dancing feet will be heard Saturday night at a country dance to raise money for groups in Albemarle County that provide life-saving support and are working to keep our community healthy. Uncle Henry’s Favorites, one of the South’s premier old time string bands, will be playing tunes at the Greenwood Community Center from 7:30 pm to 10:30 on Saturday, Sept 24. The dance is sponsored by Ann Mallek to celebrate our community’s commitment to volunteerism and citizen engagement. The event will be fun for the whole family, whether you come to listen to music or to dance. Admission at the door is a donation of your choice to the Crozet Fire Dept., the Western Albemarle Rescue Squad, the Earlysville Volunteer Fire Company or the Crozet PARC.

The lively sounds of the fiddle, mandolin, banjo and bass will be accompanied by the entertaining calling style of Brad Sayler. Brad has called dances for over 30 years and knows how to get people at any level of experience up and dancing and having a good time. While playing traditional music, Pete and Ellen Vigour, Jim Childress, and Mark Beale continue to please crowds with new shows. Jim and Pete take turns with the fiddle and guitar, Ellen plays the mandolin and various musical instruments, while Mark provides the bass accompaniment. Pete also frails the 5-string banjo for the old dance tunes. Uncle Henry’s Favorites has won rave reviews, including an appearance on national public radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and second place this year in the Traditional Band category at the Clifftop Appalachian String Band Music Festival.

And the tunes will be played for a good cause. “Our citizens are actively engaged in many community volunteer groups, and this service and dedication is a large part of what keeps our County thriving”, says Ann Mallek, Chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. “All Albemarle County citizens appreciate the work of these organizations, and an old time dance will be a fun way to celebrate and provide much-needed funds.” The four organizations that will receive donations from admission to the dance are all-volunteer groups. The Crozet Volunteer Fire Department, the Western Albemarle Rescue Squad and the Earlysville Volunteer Fire Company, serve Western and Northern areas of the County, have saved countless lives over many years, and provide support to neighboring counties. Another beneficiary of the evening is the Crozet PARC, working to build an affordable year round swimming and fitness program for families in the western part of the county.

Cider and baked goods will be available and the event will be fun for the whole family. There will be chairs for those who just want to enjoy the music. But if you want to dance, all dances, such as the Virginia Reel, will be taught – so don’t let inexperience keep you from attending. This band and caller promises experience isn’t necessary to have a good time at a country dance. For more information, contact Ann Mallek at 996-6159.

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1. Preparations for Crozet Trails Day on October 15th are going well. Please see the updated website for more information.

2. Registration for the CTDay 5k trail run is now open (see link on website). Save $5 by registering by Sept. 15th.

3. Even if you aren’t in the race, plan to come to Old Trail Village between 8-10am on CTDay. There will be lots of booths, goodies, live music, and raffle items. Plus, you can cheer on the runners and participants in the 1-mile fun run!

4. Please plan to participate in the Pedestrain Challenge from 10-2 on CTDay. Collect raffle tickets and win great prizes.

5. We need volunteers for both events. Pick a time slot and sign up here.

6. We will be having a trail workday this Sunday. Meet at Crozet Park at 8:30am. Wear good shoes, bring water, and be ready to clear some trail. Dan will bring tools, but if you have a weedeater that you want to use, feel free to bring that (with safety glasses, please).

5K CTC Flier (PDF)

CTC Pedestrian Challenge and 5k Trail Run (PDF)

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Get ready. Monday, Jarmans Gap will close for 45 – 60 days.

With water main work finished, installation of box culvert can proceed

CULPEPER — Closure of Route 691 (Jarmans Gap Road) in Crozet will begin September 12, following yesterday’s completion of underground utility work that had caused several delays.

VDOT will close Jarmans Gap Road between Route 1209 (Haden Lane) and Route 1201 (Blue Ridge Avenue) on September 12 and begin installation of a new box culvert in Powells Creek. The work is expected to take 45-60 days.

During the closure, motorists will be detoured from Jarmans Gap Road south on Route 240 (Crozet Avenue) to Route 250 (Rockfish Gap Turnpike) to Old Trail Drive and back to Jarmans Gap Road. School buses will use the same route.

More information about the project can be found on VDOT’s web site.

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If anyone out there feels like donating* some time to RealCrozetVA, I’d really appreciate some help with the back end of RealCrozetVA. Email or call me if you have the time.

I’ve been unable to upload files to embed in posts for quite some time and my workaround has been to embed pictures and files using third-party services such as Flickr and Scribd, but with the uncertainty surrounding yahoo! (and therefore flickr), I need to look to the future and fix the site.

* “Donate” because RealCrozetVA has been hosted by the wonderful folks at Blue Ridge Internetworks gratis for the past couple years.

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Learn more at the Crozet Trails Day site:

When: Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Where: Crozet, Virginia (5k will start and finish at Old Trail Village Center, Pedestrian Challenge will be town-wide)

What time:

8:30 am- Crozet Trails Day 5k, followed by a Fun Run/walk(REGISTRATION OPENING IN LATE AUGUST!!)

8:00-10am- Information booths, vendors, and raffle ticket sales at Old Trail Village Center

10am-2pm- Pedestrian Challenge throughout Crozet

3pm- Raffle drawing and fireside Trails Tales (Old Trail Village Center).

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Mark your calendars – Race to Nowhere at Crozet Methodist Church.

I recommend we all go – so that we can see and affirm that we’re not alone in recognizing that our educational system has failed. And then we can figure out what to do about it.

Watch the video then read this at RealCentralVA.

When:  Friday, September 9, 2011
Time:  7-9 p.m.
Where:  Crozet United Methodist Church Sanctuary
Sponsor:  Coalition for Childhood

Advanced tickets sold on line for $10.00 or at the door for $15.00.

Update from the comments:

Did you know about the Bartleby Project?

“The Bartleby Project begins by inviting 60,000,000 American students, one by one, to peacefully refuse to take standardized tests or to participate in any preparation for these tests; it asks them to act because adults chained to institutions and corporations are unable to; because these tests pervert education, are disgracefully inaccurate, impose brutal stresses without reason, and actively encourage a class system which is poisoning the future of the nation.” Read John Taylor Gatto’s full statement on the Bartleby Project (it’s long).

Update 2: Seth Godin writes –

Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.

…

As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers??
?
As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.?

?The post-industrial revolution is here. Do you care enough to teach your kids to take advantage of it?

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Question from a reader:

Hey Jim, didn’t find anything in realcrozetva, any idea what they’re doing at the library site?? Are they actually working on the library or parking lot? thanks in advance!

It’s the library’s temporary parking lot, will be gravel and should be completed very soon.

View Crozet, Virginia in a larger map

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Western Albemarle has a bike rack this year:

Crozet Elementary’s is starting to fill up regularly.

I haven’t been to Brownsville or Henley this year to see if they have bike racks.

With nearly 25% of Albemarle people qualified as obese, one would think people would want to encourage more exercise.

For some context as to how far our society has devolved in 30 years:

So anyway, I ran across this very interesting checklist of items to assess whether or not your child is prepared for all-day first grade. This book was first published in 1979, so I have to say it comes across as quite dated at times. So let’s take a look, shall we? The idea here is that about 10 yesses out of this list of 12 would indicate readiness for 1st grade.

1. Will your child be six years, six months or older when he begins first grade and starts receiving reading instruction?
…
6. Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels?
…
8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?

- hat tip: Free Range Kids blog

* This is one of the last times hat I will write about walking or biking to school. The community is aware of the need to walk or bike to school, they are aware of the impediments, and it’s ultimately up to them as to whether they want to encourage their offspring to be independent and able to recover from a sweaty back.**

A 30 min walk is really no problem – I think it is more that the kids are used to AC and do not want to get sweaty/stinky walking to school. Backpacks do really make your back very wet under even moderately warm temps or if you sweat a lot.   I know they use anti-persperant but that doesn’t address your back/chest/face etc.

** I am intentionally selecting a specific sentence from the above comment in order to make it more broadly relevant.

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I was all set to throw several charts up after the fold, but when I started checking the data in our new beta software, it wasn’t right. Darn it.

So … the Crozet real estate market right now boils down to this:

- New construction in Crozet is doing quite well.

- Existing homes are competing with new construction, buyers can be, and are being choosy and are often choosing new construction.

- If you’re looking to sell our home in Crozet: Price.It. Well. My advice since 2008 remains true:

– Advice for buyers – do your due diligence, be patient, save your money in the meantime.?

– For Sellers – as I said last year – do not attempt to chase the market down. Beat it down. (ask me for advice)

Briefly:

- Homes under contract are about the same as last year at this time.

- New listings coming on the market are down markedly; this is very good – the fewer homes on the market, the better chance for existing inventory to be sold.

- Sold homes are up slightly.

Download reports:

Crozet Real Estate Market Insight (pdf)

Crozet real estate market detailed report (pdf)

* For these reports, “Crozet” is defined as “the 22932 zip code” whereas in the past (and when I’m searching for homes and describing Crozet for clients, I describe “Crozet” as “The Brownsville and Crozet Elementary School districts.

As always, when I write about the Crozet real estate market, I disclose that I am a real estate agent. I live in Crozet. I write these to inform and educate. If you have any questions, please contact me. Heck, if you want to search for homes for sale in Crozet, go here.

** Days on Market and Sold to Original List Price ratio are so easily gamed and manipulated that they are *wrong*. Sold to OLP ratio *demands* individual analysis to account for re-lists, expired and re-lists, etc. Average is probably closer to 80%. Some are 100%, some are $60%.

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via email from the Crozet Trails Crew:

To mark the 45-day countdown to Crozet Trails Day 2011 (cue fireworks and kazoos), we will be having a workday this Sunday, beginning at 8:30am.

We will be working on a section of the WAHS cross country trail (where the 5k will be held). We’ll meet in front of Trailside Coffee (they open at 8am!) and then walk or carpool close to the trail.

I’ll bring tools, but feel free to bring a weed-eater if you want to. Please wear long pants, good shoes, work gloves, and bring water.

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