Criglersville site going on Web

Officials plan to advertise the former Criglersville Elementary School property on a regional real estate Web site.

Montague, Miller and Company Managing Broker Bud Kreh has volunteered to list the Route 670 site on two separate Multiple Listing Service systems – which are databases of properties for sale used by real estate agents.

Madison County Board of Supervisors Chairman Eddie Dean said that although the county is advertising the Old Blue Ridge Turnpike property, it does not mean the supervisors have definitively decided to sell it.

“We cannot list something with a definite statement that we will sell it,” because any offers that come back to the board would then have to be considered during a public hearing, Dean told The Eagle during an Aug. 1 phone interview.

The goal of listing the property is to “get the best information so we can make a decision,” the supervisors chairman said. Information that would be useful to the supervisors includes how much people may be willing to pay for the property, what portions of the property they would be interested in buying and what type of zoning the potential buyer would like the property to be, according to Dean.

“We haven’t really decided anything…we just want to see what kind of attractions we can get,” he said.

In October 2007, the board of supervisors voted to advertise for Realtors to market at least a portion of the Route 670 site, although at the time they said they had not yet decided which sections of the land they would be interested in selling. County officials chose to work with Kreh, who is also a member of the Madison County Planning Commission.

The Madison County-based real estate agent told The Eagle that he was asked to help the county expose the property to as many potential buyers as possible.

In addition to posting the property on some other real estate Web sites, Kreh said he will include the Criglersville property in the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems database – the largest Multiple Listing Service in the U.S. – which covers Madison County and other Northern Virginia counties, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware. The property will also be included in the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors database, which covers areas toward the south to Lynchburg.

Individual sellers are not allowed to advertise properties through these systems themselves – only a licensed real estate agent can list properties, according to the MLS Web site.

Dean said the listing would reference the entire approximately 5.7-acre county-owned property – which includes the former school, which was last regularly used during the 2002-2003 school year, although it was used regularly as a community center up until 2006, two vacant homes and the only public athletic field in the northern part of the county.

If the county receives an offer for the property, county officials will first present it to the board during closed session, according to Dean. If the supervisors consider the offer adequate, they will schedule a public hearing regarding the possible sale, which is required by law to be advertised for two weeks beforehand in The Madison County Eagle.

Although Dean said the supervisors have not yet discussed what specific dollar amount they would deem substantial enough to consider as an offer, “if it was $1, we’re not going to bring it to a public hearing,” he said.

Earlier this year, the board hired Dewberry, an engineering and architecture design firm in Culpeper, to survey the former school property to determine the location of the property lines on the land in order to find out the exact acreage of the site and boundaries with neighboring properties and roadways. The supervisors contracted Dewberry to perform the survey for $4,900, with the option of preparing a boundary line adjustment plat in the future for an additional $2,300 if requested.

Dean said that the surveyors did not report a significant difference in the previously estimated acreage of the two-parcel property. However, it was determined that parts of the former elementary school building are on both parcels, which means that if the supervisors decided to sell the property and keep a portion of the site, they would need to make some boundary adjustments, Dean said.

In August 2007, the board considered selling the property along Old Blue Ridge Turnpike to a nearby church for $100,000, although it had been assessed at $509,100 in 2004. (The most recent reassessment numbers, released in late 2007, put the property’s total assessed value at $854,000.)

At the Aug. 14, 2007 public hearing regarding the proposed sale, some county residents reportedly criticized the supervisors for only advertising the property in a small-sized Madison County Eagle legal notice and not marketing it to a wider audience.

Other residents at the hearing suggested the county keep the property, saying it needs the athletic field and that the site would make a good Robinson River park or fulfill some other needed civic use.

The supervisors consequently rejected the offer in response to citizens’ concerns regarding the proposed sale.

County representatives have said that there are significant hurdles involved with using the property, which has been publicly owned for about a century, in its current state. The former school building – which officials say has a faulty water and septic system and was previously estimated to cost between $600,000-$650,000 to bring up to code – sits on the land, which includes non-conforming lots (pieces of property that do not satisfy regulations included in the county zoning ordinance).