Different localities face same tests
DailyProgress.com | Different localities face same tests
One is a bustling zone, distinguished by a series of car dealerships, shopping centers and office buildings at the center of a growing residential area. Its roads are congested, and its backdrop often includes bulldozers, house frames and the reddish-orange dirt of cleared Central Virginia land.The other is mostly made up of the quiet, gated Glenmore community, which along with several other neighborhoods is nestled into the rural Keswick landscape. It includes horse stables and lush green hills, and it is defined by the august Glenmore clubhouse.
Both fall along U.S. 250, east of the Charlottesville city limits; both cover fewer than 2,000 acres; and both are growth areas fighting for a master plan ahead of inevitable growth. Pantops and the Village of Rivanna may have patently different landscapes, but they each include a residential base anxious to have a say in what happens around them.
I don’t know why people insist on having a “master plan” for how development is going to take place. Why doesn’t anyone ever seem to learn that these “master” plans never work? They are going to end up zoning these areas so that developers can no longer build what they want, and driving up property costs so that people can’t build homes or business. This will then necessitate government funded housing for those who can’t afford the inflated costs, and so the dependence on government handouts is perpetuated.