Crozet's community blog
I’m always curious as to who’s giving what to whom. And we can thank VPAP for tracking the money for us (if you can, donate to VPAP if you can; I give a little bit every year).
No analysis to offer here, other than to check out the candidates, and be sure to vote.
It might be just me, but the 2023 White Hall Board of Supervisors election feels somewhat consequential; we’ll see.
We need infrastructure – not just roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, but internet as well.
“Our main agenda item will be a discussion with the Albemarle County Broadband Accessiblity and Affordability Office about broadband internet use and needs in the Crozet area. I haven’t received any materials that they’d like us to review ahead of time, but if I do, I’ll circulate them before the meeting. We’ll also hear updates from the Crozet Trails Crew and from our Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors liaisons.
Two other Crozet-related items that I wanted to pass along:
Interesting to think that we might be seeing even less inventory this year in Brownsville + Crozet school districts.
Our market is driven largely by the school calendar, whether that’s Albemarle County schools, private schools, or UVA.
It’s been an interesting 2023.
It’s been a challenging year(s) for buyers in the Charlottesville area. While it’s been this way for years, the past three years have been exceptionally hard.
Questions? Ask me. 434-242-7140 or [email protected]
| January | February | March | April | May | June | |
| # in 2023 | 5 | 11 | 25 | 27 | 27 | |
| # in 2022 (217) | 13 | 10 | 27 | 31 | 33 | 28 |
What is the Crozet real estate market doing right now?
The best answer is the one I’ve said for most of my career – I’ll tell you in 18 months what happens tomorrow, combined with “I don’t know, but I’m trying to figure this out.” No one knows with certainty, but I think I have a reasonably educated and experienced prognostication.
In 2017, I wrote a story laying out an answer to this question for Charlottesville, and for Albemarle. The logic and rationale remains the same, but the numbers have changed.
So have prices.
In Crozet, getting to “good enough” might take longer, or shorter, than you might like.
There comes a time in every home search process (and often the home selling process) where one says “this is good enough.”
Arriving at the point of whatever you want to call it – concession, compromise, acquiescence, acceptance, or, to use a positively-connoted descriptor – satisfied – is hard.
via email:*
It’s that time of year again – for the Crozet Independence Day Parade, Celebration, and Fireworks. It all starts with the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department (CVFD) parade at 5:00 PM at Crozet Elementary School and goes down Crozet Avenue through downtown Crozet to Claudius Crozet Park. The celebration begins at Claudius Crozet Park after the parade, where there will be live music by local band Iam Gilliam and the FireKings. And the event culminates at 9:30 PM with a stupendous fireworks show. Additional details at: http://crozetcommunity.org
The Crozet Independence Day celebration is the work of many volunteers and we need your help for just an hour or two. Below is the website to sign-up to help with the Crozet Independence Day Celebration (CIDC) Saturday, July 1, between 5PM to 10PM. There are a variety of tasks and time slots. Most of the time slots are only an hour – so there’s lots of ways to help and still enjoy the event.
To volunteer, please click here
When you sign-up it will ask for your name, email and, optionally phone number. No one else can see your email and phone. We promise we won’t share it. It’s helpful for us to have it if something happens and we need to let you know about a last minute change.
We urge church groups, civic and neighborhood associations to sign-up. Crozet Trails Crew already has volunteered to staff one spot the whole evening! Let’s see which group can have the most volunteers! If you’re with a civic group or non-profit, when you sign-up, put that group’s name in parenthesis after your last name.
We also need help with monetary donations for the event, especially the fireworks. You can mail a check payable to: Crozet Board of Trade and send it to: CBT, P.O. Box 261, Crozet, VA 22932. Please put “CIDC donation” on the memo line.
OR you can contribute right now, online, by clicking on this link.
Please put “CIDC donation” in the Designation box.
Donation levels are explained here
With your help, we can make this Crozet Independence Day celebration the best ever!
Questions? Please email Tim Tolson at [email protected]
Note: There are no pets allowed in the event and we’ll provide designated smoking areas and ask that you only smoke in those areas.
The event is sponsored by the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department, Crozet Community Association, Crozet Board of Trade, Claudius Crozet Park, Crozet Lions Club, and several other area churches and citizen volunteers.
*Minor edits for formatting and link embedding.
I’ll pay someone to livetweet this meeting.
Thank you for your interest in the Oak Bluff Development. Our team invites you to a follow up discussion regarding the project. At the meeting, we will cover design updates and welcome additional feedback from the community. We appreciate your comments thus far and look forward to seeing you at the meeting!
Details
Date: June 8
Time: 7 pm
Location: Brownsville Elementary Cafeteria
Notes: Please enter through the side door of the building that faces Route 250
My two cents:
We need housing. We need infrastructure.
Kelli: You make a bold assertion in your article: “Sometimes NIMBYs have a point.” What do you mean by that?
Jerusalem: A single development can’t balance all of the concerns people have about housing. If the question is “Should we allow this block to turn into duplexes?” community members who support the idea of building more housing in general might respond, “Why here?” And that response could be informed by reasonable concerns about housing that are broader than what that single development project entails. They may have concerns about gentrification, or about open space, or about the types of housing that are currently available.
If I’m representing a city, and I’m trying to convert one hotel into homeless housing, it’s not going to respond to green-space concerns. It’s not going to be able to speak to that, or to senior housing, or to teacher housing, or anything like that. Similarly, if you’re trying to build a new condo development in an area where increasing numbers of rich young people are moving for jobs, that’s not going to respond to the needs of people who have different kinds of concerns. And because no individual developments can check every single box, many projects end up falling through.
Kelli: So what you’re saying is that when hyperlocal political players are given too much power in these development plans, the bigger picture of a municipality or state’s housing needs can get lost. And this can end up sabotaging progress in actually building the new housing that people want and need.
Jerusalem: Exactly. We live in a pretty segregated society, both by class and by race, and on a variety of other different measures. When you restrict a development discussion to a very hyperlocal level, then you can’t have necessary conversations to balance the wants of various interest groups. If you’re dealing with a very rich, white area whose residents are wedded to their exclusionary zoning, they’re always going to resist giving up their space for, for example, homeless housing. And even if these people want homeless housing to exist in general, they have no power to make that occur somewhere else. The only power they have is to exclude it from happening in their own place.
When you expand the development process beyond a very hyperlocal level, then you can actually have broad conversations about what the state needs, and not just what this one locality says they want because they happen to live there right now.
Wouldn’t it be great to have more art in Crozet?
I commented the other day about the potential for a new mural in Crozet, and was reminded of the murals in the IGA/Great Valu/Crozet Market shopping center.
The day I noticed they were being painted over, I rode my bicycle through and took some pictures; they’re not great photos, and I’m hopeful that someone else took good pictures, but at least I got a couple to remember the art.
More public art makes for a happier place to live.
Related Instagram post and Facebook post.
When I think about it, I dig into the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors’ agendas to see what Crozet-specific information is being discussed. Why? Because I live here, and, knowing this stuff helps me better represent clients buying or selling in and around Crozet.
Anything jump out at you in their agenda?
I was talking to a friend recently and while I’ve never been a Scout, I do carry a Swiss Army knife and a bandana at all times, I also recognize that community needs groups like the Scouts. In-person community, friends, skills all matter, and the more off-screen interaction we can foster and encourage, the better.
Learn more at beascout.org, enter their zip code, and find the unit closest to them.
Just to give you a little background on Scouting in the area, I am the Cubmaster for Pack 79 in Crozet. We are a full-family Cub Pack, meaning we have had girls and boys from age 5-11 in the pack ever since the BSA allowed girls into the program in 2017. We are a fairly large pack, with 64 currently on our roster after crossing over 14 scouts into troops last month. We meet monthly as a pack and the kids are further divided into dens by year in school. We go camping a few times per year and also have annual events like the Pinewood Derby and Blue and Gold banquet. We march in the Crozet Independence Day and Christmas parades, and perform community service throughout the area.
After Cub Scouts, those continuing on to Scouts BSA (what we used to call Boy Scouts) will find a troop to join. Troop 79 (boys age 11-17) is also active in Crozet with around 40 boys. Up until recently, Pack/Troop 79 were chartered with Crozet United Methodist Church. Because of the fallout from the recent bankruptcy/reorganization plan for national BSA, the UMC has decided to cease chartering units nationwide, although CUMC has graciously still allowed us to meet there. The Pack has also been meeting regularly at Crozet Park since the pandemic began. The park has been a great partner in giving us space to meet under the pavilions, where we were able to meet outside and practice social distancing at a time where anywhere inside wasn’t really an option.
There are a few other Scouting units in the area as well: Pack 114 meets at Ivy Elementary (former Meriwether Lewis) and Troop 114 at St. Paul’s Episcopal church in Ivy with over 50 active youth. We now have an all-girl BSA troop (3125) that was founded when girls from our pack crossed over from Cub Scouting into Scouts BSA. They have exploded in number from 4 to 16 (or maybe more– every meeting there seems to be a new face) in one year. They meet alongside Troop 114 in Ivy.
Youth aged 14-20 are able to join an older Scouting program called Venturing. Over the mountain in Waynesboro, a new Venturing Crew has formed and many of the older Scouts in Western Albemarle have joined the Crew. Venturing is less about advancement and more about high adventure and leadership.
As you can see, Scouting is very much alive and well in our area!
I am happy to explain more or answer any questions you may have. On a somewhat related note, I recently featured some of our camp staff from nearby Camp Shenandoah on our council podcast. I was captivated by the stories they had to tell, and the dedication they have to carrying the program forward for other youth to enjoy.
Water is a big topic, and one that will become of greater interest in the coming years.
#CCAC0523
The Crozet Community Advisory Committee will meet next Wednesday, May 10, at 7 pm in the large meeting room at the Crozet Library. (If you can arrive a few minutes early to help set up the room, it will help ensure that we can start promptly at 7.) I’ve attached the agenda and the April meeting minutes.
Our main agenda item will be an update from the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority about their Crozet-area projects. I’ve asked them to share their meeting materials ahead of time, but they’re not quite ready. I’ll circulate those when I get them.
We’ll have time for some committee business. We’ll debrief the Oak Bluff community meeting and talk, more generally, about our procedures for holding future community meetings. We’ll also have time to discuss our summer meeting schedule and potential topics for those meetings. We will also circle back to an idea we discussed several months ago: tracking previously discussed development projects. I’ve attached a PDF version of a document we can use to divvy up and track those projects.
Lastly, we’ll be electing officers for the upcoming year. We have three positions available: Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary. Please let me know before Wednesday’s meeting if you’d be interested in taking on any of those roles–or if you have any other items you’d like to add to the agenda.
Attachments below
Yes, it’s a press release, and yes, the Crozet Arts & Crafts Festival is one of the best things about Crozet.
Also yes, yes you should walk or ride to the Festival rather than driving. 🙂
CROZET, VA Over 130 Artists and Exhibitors are coming to Crozet Park for the 43rd Annual Crozet Spring Arts and Crafts Festival! Recognized as one of the region’s leading fine arts and craft shows, the Crozet Arts & Craft Festival will be held rain or shine on Mother’s Day Weekend, Saturday and Sunday May 13 & 14, from 10 am to 5:30 pm on Saturday and 10 am to 5:00 pm on Sunday. The event is family and pet-friendly.
Top artists from across the country vied to be a part of this bi-annual event. From a large pool of creative candidates, a panel of talented and professional artist jurors chose the best in each arts category. Many new artists will join the seasoned and returning favorites of the past. This year’s exhibitors will bring to Crozet an array of stunning jewelry, trendsetting apparel and leather, magnificent artwork, photography and exceptionally crafted glass, ceramics, sculpture, and more. Festival guests will find something for almost every taste and pocketbook, ranging from affordable gift giving to heirloom investments.
Saturday May 13
10a-11a Vicky Lee
11:30a-12:30p Gina Sobel
1p – 3p Tara Mills
3:30p-5:30p Wicked Olde
Sunday May 14
10a-11a BRIMS
11:30a-12:15p Skyline Country Cloggers
12:30p-2:30p Koda & Maria from Chamomile & Whiskey
3p-5p The Judy Chops
An appetizing selection of Food Trucks will be complemented by local beers and wines. Spring specials this May include wine tasting from noon-2p on both Saturday and Sunday with Knight’s Gambit, Hazy Mountain Vineyard, and Grace Estate Winery. Other attractions include live artisan demos, family photography mini-sessions, and a make-your-own bouquet station. The children’s area includes beloved musical guests Kim and Jimbo Cary, Bounce Play n Create, The Bluebird Bookstop, art activities, and more!
The Crozet Arts and Crafts Festival takes place at Crozet Park. Located just off the Route 64 bypass, take exit #107 west of Charlottesville. Crozet Park is a beautiful, community-owned non-profit park and the beneficiary of the Art Festival. The event is rain for shine and tickets can be purchased online or at the gate.Children 12 and under are free and parking is free. Tickets are available here.
Detailed event information is available here.
Volunteer opportunities are available here.
