CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Residents of 10th & Page, Rose Hill and other nearby neighborhoods are raising concerns over plans by the Dairy Market’s developers, Stony Point Development Group, to expand the property.

The 10th & Page Neighborhood Association will be hosting a community meeting on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Jefferson School with Stony Point President Chris Henry. The meeting comes as the development group submitted a final site plan to the city for review in mid-June, unbeknownst to the local neighborhood association, the group stated in a letter it sent to Henry on Aug. 12.

This expansion would be the third phase of the Dairy Central property and would add 400 additional units, including both a hotel and apartments. The project was first approved by the city in 2018, but new phase was put on hold indefinitely by Stony Point after a previous community meeting in July 2023.

James Bryant, Vice President of the 10th & Page Neighborhood Association, told Cville Right Now the developments that have already been added, including the mixed-use apartment building 10th & Dairy, located behind the market, has already had a negative impact on local residents. He said he and Vizena Howard, the President of the 10th & Page Neighborhood Association have already felt the impact as local homeowners in the neighborhood.

“We’re already seeing our taxes going up, our homeowners insurance going up,” he said. “So, we see it up close and personal, and I’m saying to the renters, ‘you all need to get engaged in this,’ I said, ‘because the folks who own your property, if this moves forward, the high taxes is going to be trickled down to you all.'”

Bryant said the association is also concerned with plans to destroy or displace the laundromat, which he described as a necessary service for many in the neighborhood who do not own a washer or dryer. Bryant said the laundromat is currently slated to be moved across the street, and the association is advocating for the developers to keep it a part of the project, closer to its current location.

Stony Point met with neighborhood association leaders from 10th & Page, as well as nearby Rose Hill, in December and April to discuss this most recent expansion. Byrant and Howard were in attendance, with Bryant recalling they were “caught off-guard” when Henry and his team presented plans for the upcoming expansion at the December meeting.

At that meeting, Bryant said he told Henry he’d need to bring his plans before the entire community, to which he responded by saying, according to Bryant, “Oh, you’re just trying to see me get beat up.”

“You can’t count this and check a box that you had a meeting with the community leaders, because you did not,” Bryant said. “Because I sat there and I told you.”

In the Aug. 12 letter, the 10th & Page Neighborhood Association listed a number of steps Stony Point could take to assuage the group’s concerns. Those included the establishment of a community advisory committee for the project, giving the Old Trinity Church at the development site to a non-profit organization, establishing a $2 million community fund and committing to building affordable housing along West Street.

Cville Right Now reached out to both Stony Point and the Dairy Market for comment on this story but did not receive a response.

Ultimately, Bryant believes that is this recent expansion will “forever change” the local neighborhoods, and that the project does not align with the storied history and culture of 10th & Page and other nearby, historically Black neighborhoods in Charlottesville, which he believes are being targeted by local developers.

“We know the history,” he said. “This is not something we had to read in a history book. We have lived the history, and I’m telling you, this will forever change the neighborhood, and we feel like no one cares.”