Toy Lift 2013

This coming Friday December 6, 2013 is Toy Lift. This event is in its 26th year helping children in Albemarle, Charlottesville and surrounding counties. Kidslift.org will give you more information about the event. This year for the first time, Old Trail Village Center will be a satellite collecting toys from 9am-6pm.

There will be volunteers there collecting the toys and sending them to our Toy Land to be sorted and distributed Saturday and Sunday. If you have a few minutes on Friday, stop buy and say hello.

 

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Also, from an Old Trail email:

On December 6th from 5 – 8 PM you can stop by Trailside Coffee and visit several local vendors who will have their wares on display and available for purchase. A portion of the proceeds from the evening will be donated immediately to Toy Lift – which will have a donation drop off site operating all day on the 6th right across the street, here in the Village Center.

 

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145 More Homes Coming Behind Western Ridge and Westhall?

Propoosed new neighborhood - Westlake Hills

Update: The Newsplex did a nice story on proposed new development One clarification: the new development could help or hurt the Crozet community. My greatest personal concern is that the new development seems to have its sole access via Park Road. Go to the end of this post for an excerpt from a relevant discussion in 2006.

The question is … will the Eastern Avenue be part of this process? (I think it should be)

145 more homes could be coming to the area between Western Ridge and Foxchase and Westhall. This sort of development has wide-ranging ramifications and potential impacts:

– school populations and balancing
– loss of natural landscape (which all new neighborhoods tend to do)
– infrastructure – will there be any improvements? i.e. – roads, bicycle paths, connectivity?
– more housing inventory which could be a good thing, depending on what houses will be built (remember, I’m a Realtor)
– more traffic on 240

See the location of the proposed Westlake neighborhood on Bing.

Update: Laurie Shannon has an excellent comment on RealCrozetVA’s Facebook page: (bolding mine)

Seems a bit of a squeeze. I cannot imagine that many more houses coming out through existing neighborhoods would be a good, safe, or appealing reality. If the entire landmass that is Crozet becomes residential homes then the things that attract people to Crozet – keeping land/home prices so stable – will be gone and people will no longer desire – and pay – to live here. The view of the mountains, the expanses of open land – already depleted – and the country – not full on suburb – are very fragile and once gone cannot be brought back.

If you’re interested, go to Albemarle’s GIS site and search for these Parcel IDs – 05600-00-00-095A0 and 05600-00-00-095A0 and 05600-00-00-095a0


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Westlake Hills Subdivision in Crozet – Plat Continue reading “145 More Homes Coming Behind Western Ridge and Westhall?”

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Amtrak in Charlottesville – One Person’s Experience

Thank you to Stephen Goadhouse for this guest post:


Charlottesville now has an affordable option for traveling by train to Washington, DC.  It is a new route on the Amtrak Northeast Regional service.  After my first experience with the Northeast Regional, I highly recommend it as a great way to visit the big city.  Read on for the nitty-gritty and a little soap boxing.


Let’s Have An Adventure!

For several years, I heard about this interesting attempt to bring usable and affordable rail service to Charlottesville.  It was fun to fanatasize about taking the kids to the National Zoo on a Saturday, all by rail travel.  Well, the train is real and, for now, the fantasy is gone.  The train’s weekend schedule only gives you an hour or two to spend in DC before having to come back, but if you spend the night in DC (I hear good things about using Priceline.com) you’d have about 26 hrs to enjoy there.  The weekday schedule is much more useful; you have from about 12n to 4p. So, with a desire for adventure, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and book a day trip.

 

The train station in Charlottesville is accessible by car, bus and even bike (there’s a nice bike rack next to the station).  It costs $5 per day to park your car there, which is not really that bad – its downtown afterall.  Being the cheapskate I am, I decided to park in my UVa spot instead and I took the #7 CTS bus.  Had there not been a chance of rain, I would have opted for the bike.

 

A few quick words about Charlottesville’s CTS bus service.  I’m impressed.  It’s free with a University ID but would have only been $0.75 otherwise.  How did I know which bus to take and how much it would cost?  Google maps, my dear.  Charlottesville somehow makes their bus schedule available to Google.  You simply go to Google maps and get directions.  Make sure to pick the By Public Transit option. 
Continue reading “Amtrak in Charlottesville – One Person’s Experience”