As the University continues to grow in all directions, its presence is increasingly being felt by the city.
Though the University owns enough land to meet its immediate expansion needs, using such resources often requires removing existing tenants from their businesses on University property.
To facilitate construction of a temporary core laboratory facility on Main Street, the University is planning to tear down a nearby Papa John's once its lease runs out by the end of the year.
Similarly, to support the hospital's current expansion, in 2002 the University purchased and removed two well-known nightclubs including Trax, a two-decade old music venue where the Dave Matthews Band once regularly played.
"Everything that's run-down, they're picking up," said Elizabeth Coles, a fiscal tech senior in the Medical School and executive vice president of the staff union at the University of Virginia.
For those who will staff the new structures, finding affordable housing in the nearby Charlottesville can be difficult, Coles added.
"What about affordable housing for employees who are going to be servicing these buildings?" she said. "This is more or less forcing middle-income people to move into the suburbs."
While it is common for many professors to commute from neighboring counties such as Louisa and Fluvana, Coles said, the relatively high transportation costs for hourly employees can be prohibitive for such a commute.
Despite the city-wide efforts of Charlottesville's Housing Policy Task Force, City Neighborhood Planner Mary Joy Scala agreed that affordable housing often is not readily available near the University.
"A lot of student housing is going in that area, different than what they're going to need," she said. "Nothing I have seen in that area could be considered affordable housing."
With the University health systems precinct creeping down Main Street, Scala said the city also is looking for innovative ways to maintain its dwindling tax base, such as keeping retail space on the ground level of future University additions in the city.
Still, even with expansion plans in the works, many see practical limits to the University's ever-growing footprint.
Scala said there is an informal boundary along 10th Street past which the University is unlikely to expand.
University Board of Visitors Member Mark J. Kington agreed.
"I don't know of any immediate plans to go racing down Main Street," he said. "The city is very supportive of what we are doing."
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