County officials and representatives from engineering firm Kimley-Horn hosted a Design Public Hearing on August 11 at The Meadows Community Center in Crozet about the latest Eastern Avenue South Connection project. The project is in the beginning stages of a new process to find a workable plan to build the bridge/connector in southern Crozet. Albemarle Facilities and Environmental Services (FES) staff have bundled two county bridge projects—the other is on north Rt. 29 as part of the massive Rivanna Futures layout—and hope to attract potential designer/builders that can derive efficiencies from tackling them both.
A representative of one such firm who attended the meeting was Todd Minnix, assistant director of transportation for Rinker Design Associates (RDA), who was enthused about the plans. “We’re one of the engineers in pursuit of a contract to design and build these projects,” said Minnix. “This one is bundled with the Boulder Road project for Astra Zeneca, and they’re both very similar. When you get the designer and builder working side by side you can have efficiencies in the process, getting plan approvals from the state and county and being able to start construction before we have the 100% plan.
“Right now, we’re submitting statements of qualifications,” said Minnix. “There may be ten firms that submit those and they’ll weed it down to three, and then they’ll give us parameters like the bridge has to be a minimum of this long, how many vehicle and bike lanes, and where are the right-of-way limits. In Crozet it will be a typical roadway bridge span with sidewalks and bike lanes [whereas the Boulders Rd bridge will be a box-and-culvert design], and it has to be high enough to get a 100-year flood through. We’re here tonight to try to get a feel for what people’s concerns may be.”
Craig Krupp, a senior project manager at Kimley-Horn, described the current vision for Crozet’s part of the plan. “The project is 3,000 linear feet from Westhall to Rt. 250,” said Krupp. “We’re going to have intersection improvements at Westhall Drive and Eastern Avenue, a major stream crossing at Lickinghole Creek, and intersection improvements at Cory Farm Road and Rt. 250. It’s a two-lane roadway with five-foot bike lanes, a six-foot grass buffer, and five-foot sidewalks behind that on both sides of the road. On the bridge, the bike lanes will be seven feet wide, two feet wider than on the road [as the bridge will not have grass buffers].
Blake Abplanalp (left), Rivanna Futures Program Manager for Albemarle County, and Craig Krupp, Senior Project Manager at Kimley-Horn, at the Eastern Avenue South Connection design public hearing in Crozet on August 11. Photo: Lisa Martin.“As far as traffic analysis, we’re looking at 1,700 vehicle trips per day in the opening year [2030], and up to 2,400 trips by 2050,” said Krupp. He also described steps in the environmental analysis, including identifying wetlands and streams, looking at threatened and endangered species, and a process for evaluating the floodplain, dictated by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
At the end of the presentation, Krupp encouraged the audience to go over to the display boards mounted around the room and to pose their questions to the various Kimley-Horn representatives there. That was not a satisfactory approach for the audience members, many of whom called out, “No.”
Attendee Erin Houlihan asked that the Q&A portion of the meeting be conducted as a group. “I think a lot of us would like to hear the questions asked by our neighbors and your answers to those, as we probably have a lot of questions in common,” she said. Krupp declined that path, noting that sometimes it becomes hard to hear in that format, and promised that every question and answer will be reported on the county website. Houlihan tried again, but the presenters stood firm and the audience relented, breaking into a dozen or more side conversations.
Following the current Request for Qualifications phase, three short-listed proposers will prepare extensive technical specifications as part of a Request for Proposals process, designing the project to about 60% of completion and submitting about 800 pages of requirements. Those proposals will be due in January of 2027.
Steve Hoffmann, principal project manager in the county’s FES department, said that all comments and questions from the public and the county’s responses must be reviewed by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) before being published. “Rather than responding to individual comments now, the County will provide a full public record once all comments have been evaluated, discussed, and addressed as required,” said Hoffmann. “We anticipate releasing this public record [on our website] in September, following VDOT’s review.”
