New developer, Gallifrey Enterprises, plans Scottsville Road neighborhood

A new neighborhood may be coming to an approximately 13-acre property in Albemarle County at the intersection of Galaxie Farm Lane and Scottsville Road.

Nicole Scro, founder of Gallifrey Enterprises, and Kelsey Schlein, a land-use planner for Shimp Engineering, recently presented the project to the 5th and Avon Community Advisory Committee.

“The first step in this process is this community meeting. Staff hasn’t done a full review of the application,” said Megan Nedostup, who is the county’s principal planner for the project.

Galaxie Farm would be Scro’s first project as a developer. Formerly an attorney for Williams Mullen, Scro founded Gallifrey Enterprises in September.

The development would include a maximum of 130 units with a mixture of single-family detached homes, two-family properties, townhomes and one block that could include a multi-family apartment building.

“I’m very pleased to see detached houses,” said Paul McArtor, who lives in the neighboring Avinity development. “I’m also a Realtor — I have four buyers that would probably be very interested in detached houses. I was very happy to see that, so we weren’t just the townhouse side of town.”

The current zoning for the property allows one dwelling unit per acre, but the county’s Comprehensive Plan suggests three to six. Scro said she mixed the Comprehensive Plan’s land-use classification for the parcel with the classification for the neighboring parcels owned by Avinity, which the plan suggests could include up to 34 units per acre.

In return for the higher density, the development team would make 15 percent of the dwellings affordable to families making 80 percent of area median income.

“What would be great is if we can offer an affordable home to a [family with young children],” Scro said, in response to a question about the development’s impact on public schools. “If we’re going to try to attract that homebuyer, then we’ve got to think about [school overcrowding].”

Scro also has offered to build part of a road imagined in the Comprehensive Plan in return for 1.5 acres of adjacent county land. The road would include sidewalks and a bike lane and would be lined by trees); a park would go on the county land. Two housing blocks also would extend onto the new acreage.

The road would end in a cul-de-sac, so the county could connect the road to Founder’s Place and Mill Creek Drive in the future.

After the development team left, county Supervisors Rick Randolph said he was on the Board of Supervisors’ Property Committee and that the committee would carefully consider in the next few weeks whether the exchange of land would make sense. He said current users of surrounding properties — including Tandem Friends School, Monticello Fire and Rescue and Cale Elementary School — might want to expand onto the county land.

“The only direction [Cale Elementary] would be able to go would be east, and this property lies right there. I don’t think we would see a new school. I think we would probably see an expanded Cale with additional facilities,” Randolph said.