This letter is certainly way too late to the game regarding the storage unit facility on Route 250 and Miller School Road, the site of which is already rumbling with construction; however, I was only alerted to its progress by the small image on the bottom right corner of March 2024’s cover, which prompted me to look into the recent history of the project and its approval. The first renderings submitted in 2021 were nothing less than shocking. That this developer would have even sought permission for such an over-scaled, architecturally depressing, insensitive building on a prominent site that welcomes locals and visitors to the Crozet area in the first place says everything one would need to know. The small number of people who bother to contemplate the beauty, or lack thereof, in our everyday built surroundings should be grateful that the Albemarle Architectural Review Board wisely chose to flag 17 issues to the developer, whose ensuing redesign was certainly a step in a better direction…. Although one can’t help but wonder if anyone from the attributed architect in Northbrook, Illinois, or the Birmingham-based developer Merchant Retail Partners has ever spent more than a quick site visit in Crozet; it would at least give context to ‘a few gables and plastic sash windows’ being an apparent solution to the board’s request for more authentic expression of our area’s regional architecture.
Where are our town’s visionary developers? The ones who might see something other than pure profit to be had in proposing decisions that permanently alter the area’s appearance, sense of place, and (rapidly eroding) rural identity? Have any of our local millionaires and billionaires who play in the property game considered building something different than one might find ringing a Northern Virginia commuter suburb? A legacy seems like the one thing no one has considered building. Instead, the gateway to Crozet will now be a storage facility; a perfect metaphor for America›s seeming inability to prioritize a meaningful sense of place in our rapidly suburbanizing landscape. A sea of empty boxes, in an empty parking lot, staffed by no humans, creating no jobs; an anonymous plastic repository for superfluous plastic things.
Sense of place is not eroded in an instant. It is eroded over time, bit by bit. And projects like this are never a sign of movement in the right direction. In 20 years, after the possibilities for profit from Crozet’s population influx became all too tempting, when Crozet gets its first Target, and a few strip malls with mobile phone and mattress stores, I can only hope this somewhat unhinged plea of mine might resurface. It would make for an interesting primary source or class discussion, perhaps in the University of Virginia’s Architectural History program, where I received my own master’s degree this past spring.
Regardless, the construction equipment plows on. I wish you all a happy storing of your excess possessions when the facility has been completed.
Spencer Gervasoni
Greenwood
