CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – A proposed high rise building for West Main Street is rankling perspective neighbors and calling into question, again, the city’s current zoning ordinance.

Though the item was not on the Charlottesville City Council’s agenda Monday, and is apparently not expected to appear on any upcoming agendas in the immediate future, a group of residents showed up to the meeting to voice their displeasure with the proposed construction of an 11-story luxury apartment building that would tower over the Westhaven public housing neighborhood.

“It’s the fault of our city for having adopted this ordinance, because now we’re realizing it is not what we really wanted,” attorney and Board of Architectural Review member Cheri Lewis said. “I believe it was sold to us by outside pressure from professional planners from the beginning who told us that it would be our path to get affordable housing in Charlottesville. We’re going to see this over and over again, and our board with very little purview is being asked to be the backstop against something none of stood up and stopped.”

Westhaven and 10th and Page residents have packed the last two Council meetings.

Angela Carr, who attended Monday’s City Council meeting, said she is confounded by the possibility of a luxury UVA student housing building towering over Westhaven.

“I’m not against somebody giving more into the community, or trying to give back to the community, but you’ve got to think about the community while you’re doing it,” Carr said. “You’re talking about building a huge building, and so you’ll bring rich people into this building and those people will walk past windows and look down on people that are living poor. That just makes no sense.”

LV Collective, the Austin, Texas-based developer behind the proposal appeared before BAR for a “pre-application conference” on Aug. 19. It has not yet filed an application for the project.

Some BAR members during that meeting said the city’s zoning ordinance limits what they can do about a large multi-unit building, though they could get the building’s size reduced.

There’s also a petition against the project that now has more than 700 signatures, and residents showed up at Monday’s meeting with signs reading “We have not forgotten Vinegar Hill,” “No Wall, Justice For All, No Wall Over Westhaven,” and, “Community Residents Over Corporate Profits”.

“I’m 52-years old, I have family who lived on Hardy Drive from the ’70s and ’80s on up.”

“Hey, I’m the next generation, so I’m speaking for the next generation.”

LV Collective told BAR it had met with a Westhaven resident committee the month before.

But Joy Johnson, chairperson of the Public Housing Association of Residents, made it clear her organization wasn’t part of those talks.

“I do not appreciate using my name in your presentation after the fact of what you did,” Johnson said during the August BAR meeting.

Johnson said there’s been a Westhaven redevelopment site plan in the works for about three years, while claiming LV Collective started their planning in April.

“The first I heard of it, or we heard of it, was when they came to a meeting to say, ‘This is what we’re going to build’,” said Johnson, a neighborhood resident. “Well, that’s not how we operate in Westhaven. And we suggested to them that what they have done was have a meeting with the whole 10th & Page neighborhood, which includes Westhaven, to talk about the design and to show us, and to incorporate what we were doing in their plan.

“Our residents worked very, very hard to come up with a design of what their neighborhood could look like, and to just come to a meeting saying this is what we’re going to put, and it’s a big building to block us in is very, very disrespectful.”

The building plan includes what they call a Memory Walk of murals depicting a history of Vinegar Hill and the West Main corridor, once a bustling Black business and residential community deconstructed in the last century. But some Westhaven residents expressed this project does exactly what was done during that deconstruction, blocking the Westhaven neighborhood and cutting it off from access to West Main.

“What I’m pleading to you all is to please think about how Westhaven was built, how it was dug out, how we were sitting in the bottom,” Johnson said. “If you can look at our plans, some of our site plans, there is a rendering where we can show where we’re looking up, but we’re not looking at a building. We’re looking into a community that we would like to get connected to,” referring to West Main Street.

Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Coordinator Brandon Collins has been working with residents on a Westhaven redevelopment plan with five goals in mind.

“Two of the biggest goals we’ve had is how do we increase density for affordable housing, but still have a neighborhood that’s not crowded, that’s not too tall, ” Collins said. “And how do we access West Main Street in a meaningful way because that has been blocked off and the neighborhood has been secluded from access and from sight since before 1964.”

Collins said they’ve come up with a plan that expands affordable housing and expands usable open space by four-and-a-half times. But the proposed skyscraper would have a negative impact on the neighborhood.

“Now, folks who live in Westhaven have to deal with this with The Standard, and it is a psychological burden, and it’s a symbol of exclusion,” Collins said. “Adding something even taller than The Standard, no matter how much of a setback you get, it’s still going to be there. It’s still a giant wall there psychologically blocking the community from the rest of Charlottesville.”

City Councilor Michael Payne, who voted for the new zoning code in a unanimous City Council vote in December 2024, said there was a strong push when developing the new code to maintain special use permits around 10th & Page, Fifeville, Rose Hill, Kindlewood, Westhaven, and other public housing sites.

That was not to say that increased density or heights couldn’t get built, “but to give the residents a voice and have the ability for them to have what’s built match the designs they’ve spent years building,” Payne said.

Payne said that decision “was rolled back by planners who thought they knew better.” Payne encouraged residents to make their voices heard at Council meetings.

Carl Schwarz, the planning commission rep on the BAR, echoed Payne’s sentiments.

“I’m going to get myself in trouble because I can’t sit here and talk about this without admitting that I voted for this zoning on the planning commission,” he said.  “We have a housing shortage, so I’m pretty sure Councilor Payne, you might have been quoting me when I think I probably did say on this half of West Main Street is where people need to be, this is where we need density, so unfortunately… yes… I voted for this.”

Schwarz said he did, however, think the BAR would have more control over the decisions. However, the BAR has been limited because there was a concern they would interfere with the production of housing.

Lewis extended an apology to LV Collective.

“Thank you for being here because this is not an easy thing to walk into, and it’s not completely your fault,” Lewis said. “The very passionate opposition that you felt about your application, again, is not your fault, you’re walked into a maelstrom. You have been told that you applied for something that under our new zoning ordinance was by-right, and you were entitled to presume that you could build that by-right. I think we found out tonight how difficult that might be, and I’m not here to discourage you. But I want to say it’s the fault of our city for having adopted this ordinance because now we’re realizing it is not what we really wanted.”

She said the LV Collective proposal won’t be the last BAR and City Council see of this kind, because of the ordinance.

“We’re going to see this over and over again,” she said. “And our board with very little purview is being asked to be the backstop against something none of stood up and stopped.”