Information Charlottesville

The first meeting of the Albemarle Planning Commission begins tonight at 6 p.m. and two of the items on the agenda are public hearings to clear the way for a hotel on Pantops on U.S. 250 just to the west of the Rivanna Ridge Shopping Center. 

The matter went before the Pantops Community Advisory Committee for an update at their meeting in November. Andy Reitelbach is a senior planner with Albemarle County. 

“The applicant has submitted this application to request to amend the application and proffers associated with two previous rezonings,” Reitelbach said. 

The amendments are needed to allow the use of a hotel, which was not anticipated in the rezoning that created the Rivanna Ridge Shopping Center. 

“The project is in the Rivanna Magisterial District and the parcel is a little over 2.6 acres in size,” Reitelbach said. 

The plan had not changed since it was before the CAC at a community meeting in January. One aspect of the plan is that left turns onto U.S. 250 will not be permitted. Justin Shimp is the civil engineer for the project. 

“As some of you are all aware VDOT is getting ready to put up a median up Route 250 all the way from the Wawa up to the top of the mountain and that will restrict our ability to make a full l left turn out of our site,” Shimp said. 

The Albemarle County Planning Commission meets virtually at 6 p.m. and has two new voting members in Fred Missel and Luis Carrazana. Missel is director of design and development at the University of Virginia Foundation and Carrazana is the associate architect of the University of Virginia. (meeting info)

For more information, read Pantops CAC gets a look at the Overlook Hotel from last January on Information Charlottesville.

The MACAA issue will not come back on the consent agenda but will instead come back for a discussion and to allow the applicant to further address concerns raised at the meeting. 

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