A lawsuit involving the City of Charlottesville’s new zoning ordinance will proceed to trial after all.
Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Claude Worrell said in a written opinion issued Friday, Aug. 22 that the case could move ahead to trial, without making any judgement on the merits of the zoning code itself.
In January 2024, a group of Charlottesville residents sued the city over its new zoning ordinance, which the City Council passed unanimously in December 2023 and which took effect in February 2024. The suit alleges that the city did not follow the law when it passed its Comprehensive Plan in November 2021, specifically that it only sent the transportation chapter, and not the entire plan, to the Virginia Department of Transportation, and therefore the plan is void. If the Comprehensive Plan is void, the plaintiffs argue, so is the zoning ordinance based off of it.
The case was set to go to trial when, on June 30, Worrell issued a default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. The reason? Attorneys with Gentry Locke, the law firm hired by the city to handle the case, missed a filing deadline.
The decision plunged the state of development in Charlottesville into confusion, as city officials and housing developers alike worked to understand what that meant for developments already underway.
During an Aug. 13 hearing, the city asked him to reverse the default judgment, while the plaintiffs asked him not to.
In the opinion issued Friday, Worrell reversed the default judgment, according to Charlottesville Community Engagement. Worrell said in his opinion that Virginia’s court system has no power over a locality’s zoning, and no place in weighing the merits of the ordinance. But, he wrote, the courts are responsible for deciding whether a locality followed state law in creating that ordinance.
Charlottesville Community Engagement has a full report on the ruling on its Information Charlottesville website, including context for the case going back to 2022.
The plaintiffs in the case, who own property in some of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, aren’t the only ones questioning the ordinance. During a Board of Architectural Review meeting last week, residents of Westhaven, Charlottesville’s oldest public housing community, voiced their opposition to an 11-story luxury student housing apartment building that, because of the zoning map, could be built right next to their community.
The building would quite literally overshadow the redevelopment plans Westhaven residents have been working on for their own community for the past three years. During the BAR meeting, a number of city officials — speaking as residents — expressed regret at the fact that the ordinance had put Westhaven, and the 10th and Page neighborhood it is part of, in this position at all.
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