Albemarle County officials are exploring a public-private partnership to fund and build the Eastern Avenue Connector, a road and bridge that would link Eastern Ave. at Westhall Drive southward across Lickinghole Creek and down to Cory Farm Road. The Connector concept has been a transportation priority in Crozet’s Master Plan for many years, as it would provide an alternative path between Rt. 250 and central Crozet that would directly address Crozet’s traffic woes.
Following the Virginia Department of Transportation’s (VDOT) announcement last summer that its estimate for the project had jumped from $24 million to $40 million, county staff have been consulting privately for almost a year with representatives from Riverbend Development to outline a potential partnership to get the Connector built for substantially less. Details about the ongoing negotiations were first presented in an anonymous post based on unnamed sources in local citizen group Crozet United’s online newsletter in May.
The county’s communications office has confirmed for the Gazette that preliminary discussions about a public-private partnership (P3) to construct the Eastern Avenue Connector have been underway since last year under the internal moniker Project Heron, named for the tall wading birds that frequent Crozet’s Lickinghole Basin. Lance Stewart, director of the Facilities and Environmental Services department—the office responsible for executing capital projects (including transportation projects)—described the evolution of Project Heron.
“For a typical project that is partially funded by VDOT, we generate an estimate and work through them,” said Stewart. VDOT had committed about $8 million in state Revenue Sharing funds for the Connector and the county had matched that amount, but the total was not even in the ballpark of VDOT’s revised estimate.
“We were pretty confident in our [the county’s] most recent estimate for the project at roughly $23 million,” said Stewart, “but last year VDOT developed a new tool to estimate transportation construction costs and came in at $39.5 million [for the Connector]. This was coming at a time when our five-year capital projects budget, in addition to other transportation projects, included building three new schools. So, our Community Development planning staff made a statement that we wanted to pursue alternative means of project delivery.”
Around the same time, Stewart said, county staff were approached by management at Riverbend Development—a firm that has been seeking to develop property adjacent to the future Eastern Avenue Connector alignment in a plan called Oak Bluff. Riverbend broached the idea of a P3, pointing as an example to the Hillsdale Drive roads project it constructed next to Whole Foods in Charlottesville that runs parallel to Rt. 29. The developer commissioned a design for the bridge portion of the Connector from Collins Engineering that took into account county and VDOT requirements.
Stewart said the partnership would have potential benefits for both sides. “For the road project, we were going to need soil [for infill and leveling], and for their development project, they would need to move some soil,” he said. “So, there were economies of scale and savings associated with that, and they would have to construct parts of the Connector anyway for access to the development. So, there was an opportunity for them to potentially leverage some public funds to accomplish what they need, while we leverage private funds for our needs, and together there would be cost savings for both parties.”
Deal or No Deal
Documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request showed that by the fall of 2023, the two sides had agreed on a preliminary, non-binding “term sheet” that outlined a P3 between the county and Riverbend. The terms stated that the county would pay $15-17 million to Riverbend and acquire the necessary easements for the project, and Riverbend would plan and manage construction of the Connector, providing the county with 2.2 acres of right-of-way dedication, 33,000 cubic yards of dirt, and a new stormwater facility in the process.
Riverbend drafted a schedule that estimated the timing of permits, road designs, and construction over a roughly two-year time frame, including county approval of Oak Bluff in June. The potential accord was originally envisioned as an Economic Development Agreement for the county, following the model of the Whole Foods project, but that approach turned out to be a nonstarter.
“Up to that point we had had limited attorney input into the plan,” said Stewart. “But once we got into more of the details with our attorneys about the avenue we were pursuing, it was determined that this didn’t meet the standards of an Economic Development Agreement because there’s no clear improvement to business, specifically. So, I started doing research into other communities who had adopted guidelines for partnerships related to transportation projects.”
Project Heron appears to have reset in March when the county Board of Supervisors adopted a set of guidelines under Virginia’s Public-Private Transportation Act (PPTA), which will now govern the county’s process for forming transportation project partnerships with private entities. Though recent correspondence indicates that Riverbend management is still interested in a deal to build the Connector, the county will have to follow a strict set of steps to evaluate proposals from any potential partner going forward.
The PPTA guidelines require county staff to first identify opportunities for transportation-related partnerships, and then to prepare a “Finding of Public Interest” document that must be approved by the Board of Supervisors or the County Executive. “Whether projects are unsolicited or solicited, we’ll need a Finding of Public Interest,” said Stewart, “which is a couple-of-page statement that assesses the public need and the risks that may be involved with moving forward with this project, and why it benefits the public. It would be our intent to present the statement to the board for approval so we can also outline to them the process’s next step, which would be the generation of a Request for Proposals [RFP].”
The Connector construction project will be a solicited project in which any potential partner can respond to the publicly available RFP. “That document would detail what we’re looking for in terms of the ultimate outcome of the project, how much funding we might be able to commit, and the base principles of a future agreement,” said Stewart. “We would post it and would give some amount of time, probably at least a few months, for potential partners to absorb that and respond.” A selection committee, consisting of the County Executive (or his designee), Stewart, and the Planning and Finance directors would then be formed to evaluate the proposals.
Stewart said that Riverbend’s original Collins Engineering design has been discarded, as any respondent to the RFP would provide their own plans. “Those drawings were an internal reference, a starting point, as we developed the project,” he said. “Our RFP would include a level of detail about how the road should work—two lanes each way, street trees, sidewalks of a certain width—that we expect to be incorporated.”
Vested Interests
Some Crozet residents are concerned about a potential conflict of interest between the county and Riverbend due to the developer’s pending zoning approval for Oak Bluff. The development proposes 134 units on 33 acres situated between Rt. 250 and Westhall Drive in two sections on either side of Lickinghole Creek. The site is bordered on its west side by the hoped-for Eastern Avenue Connector, and Riverbend has suggested it will build a small portion of the road near Westhall Drive to provide resident access.
The development is projected to add 1,100 daily car trips to local roadways, and neighbors have demanded for more than a year that the county prioritize constructing the Connector to provide adequate outlets for traffic before approving Oak Bluff. Despite their concerns, Project Heron’s tentative timetables show the development being approved up to two years before the road would be built.
A group of twenty neighborhood leaders from Westhall, Cory Farm, Liberty Hall, and Westlake Hills wrote a letter on May 30 to the members of the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors, and Community Development staff expressing concerns about Project Heron. The neighbors asked several questions about the project’s secrecy and the basis for its lower cost estimate, and particularly questioned whether the Connector project is “commingled” with Oak Bluff’s pending rezoning application.
“Emails between Riverbend and the County on the [P3] state that the ‘approval of the Oak Bluff rezoning plan’ will be ‘concurrent with the road design, in ‘June 2024’,” read the letter. “This gives the appearance of a potential quid pro quo, which is also supported by the fact that Riverbend opted to take their rezoning application straight to the Planning Commission prior to receiving [an updated report] from County staff.” The developer will present its request for a zoning approval at the Planning Commission’s August 13 meeting.
In response to Riverbend’s first zoning approval submission in 2023, Alberic Karina-Plun in the Transportation Planning department said the Connector was critical. “Transportation staff views this infrastructure improvement as critical for this development to be realized, and cannot recommend approval of this development without the bridge because of traffic and safety concerns,” wrote Karina-Plun in the county’s staff report.
The staff report is a recommendation only and is not binding on the Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors, but the concern does represent an obstacle that Riverbend will have to surmount to gain approval for Oak Bluff. “It sounds to us like the developer is offering to build the Connector as a solution to its transportation issues in Oak Bluff, but will gain approval for the development long before it will actually have to honor its commitment to build the road,” said Bill O’Malley, Westlake Hills resident and signatory to the letter.
County officials insist that their negotiations with Riverbend on the Connector project and Riverbend’s pending zoning approval are entirely separate issues and one does not depend on the other. “We don’t have the authority to require them to build the full extent of the bridge [in the zoning approval process],” said Stewart, “and their application does not include building it. The [Oak Bluff] zoning approval is in the hands of the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors based on staff’s recommendation. The PPTA process is how we hope to find a partner for the road project.”
Rights of Way
A more general question underlying all of these details is under what authority did county officials spend a year negotiating an agreement on a transportation project with executives at Riverbend Development without informing county citizens. Interim Communications and Public Engagement Director Abbey Stumpf responded by explaining the purpose and scope of county employees’ work.
“Each department head is professionally responsible for finding ways to implement the priorities and projects set by the county government,” said Stumpf. “They have latitude in this process, within the limits of the budget, to explore and propose potential options for implementation including cooperative efforts between the county and local or state agencies and with private parties. These proposals are then discussed with the County Executive’s Office and other stakeholder departments and may eventually be presented to the Board of Supervisors for consideration.”
Stumpf also clarified that department heads do not have the authority to enter into agreements that bind the county or the Board of Supervisors—though the board can delegate that authority to individuals, such as the County Executive, under certain circumstances—and their meetings do not have to be public. “According to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, only meetings of public bodies (e.g., Board of Super-visors, Planning Commission, Board of Zoning Appeals) must be publicly noticed,” she said. “Meetings between county staff and members of the community or private entities do not need to be publicly announced.”
Stewart noted that the Board of Supervisors was not aware of Project Heron, either. “We’ve not advised the board informally or in closed session, nor any individual board member about this work,” he said. “What we’ve said to the board has been said publicly.” White Hall Supervisor Ann Mallek declined to respond to questions about Project Heron for the Gazette.
“Effectively, this is a new process for us,” said Stewart. “Under the PPTA, there’s a whole new template and legal background to the RFP document that we’ll try to blend with our existing models, and we’ll develop a new procurement method tailored to our needs and this specific project.”
Stewart said that he hopes to present the Finding of Public Interest document to the board at its August 7 meeting, which would pave the way for an RFP to be issued sometime this fall.
