Belvedere rezoning to add more residential units deferred until December

Unlike Charlottesville, Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission play an important role in deciding what can be built where.

The county’s zoning code describes what can happen on a given property. Developers can seek rezonings and Virginia law requires a locality’s Planning Commission to recommend what elected officials should do.

Sometimes proposals are not quite ready to go before the Planning Commission at a public hearing. That was the case on October 28 when the developers of the Belvedere community in the county’s Rio District sought an amendment to an existing rezoning. The site is now owned by Greenwood Homes.

“It is essentially changes to proffers from the original rezoning as well as adding some townhouses,” said Michael Barnes, Albemarle’s planning director.

A proffer is something that the developer agrees to do as a condition of the rezoning. In this case, proffer #4.2 required them to give a 100 foot strip of land along the property boundary along the Norfolk Southern railroad for a future extension of the North Free State connector road. That road is no longer one of the county’s top transportation priorities.

Large rezonings often include a Code of Development which describes what will happen where.The strip of land is within Block 8 and the developer seeks to amend Block 8 which has a maximum density of 33 units. All of Belvedere was to have a maximum of 775 units and so far 742 units have been constructed.

“With this rezoning modification, the total density within the NMD portion of the Belvedere property will increase to a total of 887 units,” reads a narrative in the rezoning last revised on June 3, 2025.

In exchange, Greenwood Homes is now offering to build additional transportation connections.

“The additional road and shared-use pathway provides additional routes for fire/rescue through the development and a connection down to the Albemarle County greenway parcel,” the narrative continues.

This item will come back before the Planning Commission on December 9.

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