Date Archives December 2011

Life in Charlottesville – in Video

We’ve been releasing videos of life in Charlottesville and the surrounding areas.

It’s impossible to capture what life is like in these areas, but we hope that people find them representative of life in Ivy, Charlottesville, Crozet …

Life in Charlottesville video

Life in Ivy, just west of Charlottesville video

We deliberately did not overly brand these; these are for you.

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Albemarle County Could Get 4G Mobile Service

While the internet is the new infrastructure, mobile infrastructure is crucial. I’ve had clients in the Charlottesville – Albemarle area choose to not buy property because 1) hard-wired internet accessibility – fiber (very limited), or DSL or cable – is not available and/or 2) Reliable cell phone service is not available (GSM AT&T and T-Mobile) tends to be worse than CDMA – US Cellular, nTelos, Verizon, Sprint).

Charlottesville Tomorrow reports that “The Albemarle Board of Supervisors has voted to pay a consultant to determine if the county’s existing policy on cell towers will impede implementation of the next generation of wireless communications services.”

Infrastructure – wired and wireless is crucial for quality of life, competitiveness and economic development. Let’s hope the County figures this out.

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What is Rio Road Going to Look Like in 5 Years?

It’s almost like the County and City leaders don’t care about the ramifications of their collective (in)decisions.

In five years:

– The City of Charlottesville still won’t have built their portion of the Meadowcreek Parkway

– The County of Albemarle will still be approving developments with no regard for their impact on traffic, schools, water, sewer, quality of life.

– The City and County will still be unable to work together as well as they should for the benefit of CharlAlbemarle citizens.

I have long struggled with my opinions about growth in Charlottesville/Albemarle. In the nearly five years since I wrote that post, nothing has changed.

Don’t get me wrong; I love living in Charlottesville (actually Crozet, but we all refer ourselves as being from “Charlottesville”), but how can we achieve balance?

Questions:

– What infrastructure improvements are being planned to accommodate all of these new units?
– The City of Charlottesville is encouraging more employment growth (good – see CFA and Worldstrides) but not working with the County to facilitate infrastructure improvements. Why?

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