CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Repairs of the collapsed Fray Road, the roadway that connects the Advance Mills Village neighborhood to the rest of the county, have been completed faster and less expensively than originally expected.

Earlier this month, the repaired culvert was completed and the roadway was paved and reopened, said resident Geoff Goss.

“It is finished now,” Goss told Cville Right Now. “They just, within the last couple of weeks, paved over it and it’s done. We all have full access outside the neighborhood now.”

A section of the road collapsed on July 19 due to heavy rains that caused flooding and high water, severing the private road and cutting off the 32 residences in the development from the rest of the county. Because it was a private road, no state money or repairs would be headed to Advance Mills.

Some estimates for a long-term repair ran close to $500,000.

The people who lived there would have to foot the bill.

Goss launched a GoFundMe page on behalf of the homeowner’s association which generated over $18,000 in contributions toward the repair work.

Another Advance Mills resident made contact with a contractor who agreed to not only fit the work in much sooner than other companies, but also gave the neighborhood a far more reasonable price on the project, Goss said.

The residents each paid “several thousand dollars per household,” Goss said, but that bill was reduced by “hundreds of dollars per household,” by the GoFundMe donations.

Since July, access in and out of the neighborhood had been mainly achieved via an emergency road cut through one resident’s property. (Goss said that road is now blocked off but will be maintained in the event of a future emergency.)

“The main takeaway is, when we had a big problem as a community, there weren’t a whole lot of resources like you might expect, to step in,” he said. “The people who stepped in were the community members themselves. And not just our community, but the community at large. It was very heartening.

“We all stepped up and made it work.”