Planning Commission Meeting   3/23/2021

Hey, Bart.

All right.

The Planning Commission, March 23, 2021, electronic meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A-16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

and will participate in the electronic meeting will be posted on the www.albemarle.org community county calendar when available.

Sure, no problem.

Mr. Clayborne?

Here.

Ms.

Firehock?

Here.

Ms.

Moore?

Here.

Thank you very much.

So let's keep moving.

Would if you raise your hand and you see none, Carolyn?

None at this time, no, sir.

Thank you.

Then moving on to the consent agenda.

Does anybody wish to pull anything from the consent agenda?

Hearing no, is there a motion to move forward the consent agenda?

So moved.

So moved by Ms.

Moore.

Is there a second?

Second by Mr. Keller.

Can we please have the roll call, please?

Yes.

Oh, excuse me.

Excuse me.

Is there any discussion?

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Yes.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you very much.

That passes.

So may we open up with our first our first runner on a public hearing and that is STA 2021-01 and ZTA 2021-01 community development fee update.

May we have the staff report

Thank you, Chair Bevins, members of the Planning Commission, Steve Allshouse, Department of Community Development.

Please bear with me for a minute while I bring up my presentation for this evening.

So last time when we met, when I was speaking to you was February 2nd.

And what I did at that meeting was outline the recent history of the CDD fees, including the 2007 fees study that was conducted, the 2008 policy that the then sitting board adopted, and that was not always adhered to in subsequent years.

And then I made mention of the last update that was done for the most part in 2015.

You might have noticed in your packet that whereas last time I was talking exclusively about Chapter 18 fees, we've included Chapter 14 and that was on the advice of the County Attorney's Office who discussed subsequent to the last meeting that because the Planning Commission does have a relationship with Chapter 14 fees that they should come under the consideration of this body this evening.

So with that, let me talk a little bit about what I'd like to discuss this evening.

I wanted to update you with the work that staff has done as of March 21st.

Much of that work has involved the comparison of proposed fees with fees that exist in other localities.

Also wanted to talk about the impact of proposed fees on development in Albemarle using some case studies that we were able to conduct.

And then finally, I wanted to discuss the remaining timeline for the completion of the fees update, and then was hoping to field some questions and get your opinion about how to move forward.

So, on that note,

And this, you've seen some of this before, but basically you're aware we've developed, staff has developed fees based on the 2008 Board Adopted Policy.

This exercise has resulted in increases of about 10% for most of the items that are existing fees.

Staff also identified several services related to architectural review, which show up in this case predominantly in chapter 18.

This led to the creation of some proposed new fees based on the relative time required to do the tasks inherent in these functions.

And then finally, we constructed a tentative estimate for a new technology fee that would help fund replacement for a county view replacement system.

One thing I would like to point out with regards to the tech fee

is that the proposed fee is based on CDD's share of the total placeholder amount that we're using for the replacement costs of a new system.

In other words, CDD users would be paying only for CDD's envisioned portion.

Staff also did, as you might recall, some outreach work.

We sent an email blast out to all email recipients.

or anyone else who's done work with the county CDD departments in the past two years, alerting them of the proposed changes and link to the documents and a feedback box.

We took comments.

We had about 700 unique visitors to the webpage, but only one person left comments.

The deadline for the comments was February 26th, and we closed that comment box down.

The second part of our outreach, as I mentioned in our last meeting, was on January 19th, we met with members of the development community.

And on January 21st, we met with representatives from the Southern Environmental Law Center and the PEC.

Now out of those meetings came two important questions.

One was, how do our proposed fees compare with other localities?

So the group desire to fee comparisons with additional jurisdictions.

And the second question that came up was, how would these fees impact development in Albemarle?

How would they hypothetically would they have impacted projects that have been completed in the county or were underway in the county?

What would be the total difference in terms of what we would be charging under the proposed fees versus what we had charged historically?

So let me go first to the comparison section

But before I start that, let me make a note here.

Fee comparisons across jurisdictions is very tricky for three reasons.

First of all, there's no standard format across jurisdictions for reporting or classifying fees, generally speaking.

So that's one thing that's actually quite difficult to parse out.

Secondly is that practices and definitions of what's included in services are not always consistent across jurisdictions.

And finally, what I found in doing this exercise was that many jurisdictions have not updated their fees in some time.

So I can talk about the fees that we're proposing in 2021, and I can compare them against other jurisdictions' fees, but keep in mind that a number of fees have not been updated in a while in these other jurisdictions.

So what we did was we looked at other Virginia jurisdictions' development-related fees,

and the jurisdictions that we looked at included Fairfax, Montgomery County, Roanoke County, primarily because they had technology fees.

Not every jurisdiction in the state has a technology fee, but these were three examples of localities that we found that did have a technology fee.

We also looked at Alexandria for ARB type fees.

You might be aware that the city of Alexandria does quite a bit of ARB work.

So we wanted to see how our proposed fees would compare against those.

And we found an example that we thought was comparable and that we tracked that.

And then finally, we wanted to look also at Charlottesville as our next door neighbor, as an example, since we are in the same metro area, we thought it was relevant to compare our fees to the proposed fees, the city's fees.

And then based on our conversations with the development community and others, we examined general fees in Hanover and RICO,

James City County, and Roanoke.

And again, these were seen as being comparable localities.

So what did we find?

Well, with the caveats I've put in mind, let me go to this chart.

And I realize there might be people watching this presentation online for whom these numbers might be a bit small on your screen and might not be perfectly legible.

This chart is taken from

attachment D, the fees comparison that's in the plan commission's packet.

So if anyone's having trouble looking and seeing these right now, they can go to the packet and look up attachment D. And what this table is showing is a truncated version of table D. In other words, on table attachment D,

I took the proposed Albemarle fees and then I looked across all the different jurisdictions we were comparing ourselves to.

And then the last column of that attachment, I took the average.

And so what did we look at?

Well, we looked at things that were common across jurisdictions.

For example, everybody does building permits.

Everybody does site plan work.

Everybody, every jurisdiction that we looked at does rezoning applications.

And everybody does subdivision, preliminary and final plats.

So with that in mind, what this column is showing is what we're proposing for Albemarle.

And again, these are common fees that could be compared across jurisdictions because everybody does them.

And people generally have similar practices with one exception that I'll mention in a minute, similar practices with the way they collect these and the way they calculate these types of fees.

Again, there is a glaring exception, which I'll talk about in a minute.

This column is showing the average of the non-Albemarle fees.

And when I say the non-Albemarle fees, what I'm talking about are the fees in Hanover, Henrico, James City County, County of Roanoke, and the city of Charlottesville.

So if I look at this table, what I'm seeing is the fees that we're proposing, generally speaking, are higher than the fees over in this column.

Why is that?

Well, the main reason, as far as I can tell, is that we're proposing these fees in 2021.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of these fees were in effect and remain in effect, but were adopted at earlier dates.

So it's not really an apt comparison, but it's about the best we can do.

For example, I can't say to Charlottesville, well, tell me what your fee would be now.

That information is not existing.

One glaring difference that you'll see between our fees we're proposing involves commercial building permits.

What's showing here is $2,000.

What's showing on the average for non-Albemarle counties and jurisdictions is 10,000.

And you look at that and you must be thinking, well, what the heck is going on?

Well, what's going on is this.

Three of the jurisdictions, Hanover, Henrico, and the city of Charlottesville,

calculate their building fees based on the stated dollar value, whoops, excuse me, based on the stated dollar value of the project.

Whereas we Albemarle and James City County and Roanoke County base our fees on the square footage of the building.

I was talking with Michael Dellinger recently about this sort of dual methodology.

And he says it's very common actually to get huge discrepancies

depending on which methodology you're using.

So keep that in mind.

If I look at the jurisdictions that charge by

Square footage, which is what our methodology is.

I see that in James City County, for example, their comparable fee would be $1,365.

The county of Roanoke's would be $3,320.

Our proposed fee is $2,050.

So in that sense, our fee looks reasonable compared to the other two jurisdictions that use our methodology for calculating that fee.

And quite a bit below this $10,000, which is being

Oops, sorry about this.

Can you still see the slides?

So let me move on having talked a little bit about our comparisons.

Let me move on now to some case studies that we looked at.

We looked at six recent developments in Albemarle County, looked at the fees that were charged for these projects, and then calculated the levels that we charged under proposed changes to existing fees, as well as all proposed new fees, including our technology fee.

For each of the six developments, we determined the difference in total actual fees versus the proposed fees.

And again, I'm going to apologize to people who might be looking at this online.

This table is probably difficult to read.

This is attachment E in the packet that went before the Planning Commission.

And I'll just, I will walk you through the various studies that we looked at.

So one of them was 990 Rio Road East.

This was a rezoning.

I think most people on the commission are familiar with it.

1538 Opencroft Circle is a house of single-family detached residents in the rural area, about 2,500 square feet.

2704 Poorhouse Road, again, is a single-family detached residence of about the same size, also in the rural areas.

810 Stargazer Lane is an affordable townhouse.

This is part of Emerson Commons in Crozet.

This 601 5th Street Landing is a commercial building.

This is sometimes called the Starbucks Project in CDD.

This is a parcel that's right next to the main parcel on 5th Street Landing, but it's a commercial building.

It's got a number of businesses in it, the main one being Starbucks.

And finally, this last one is 1576 Avon Street.

This is a commercial building that is envisioned or perhaps currently houses

and an auto body service center.

So pretty wide variety of places we were looking at.

The second column just shows you the type, which I had mentioned.

And this third column is showing the dollar value that we actually charged on all of these projects as they were moving through our development review system.

One thing I should mention just in passing is that sometimes it's a little bit difficult

to say what we charged on a particular project.

Let me explain that.

There might have been, say, a rezoning back in 1998 that got the project into, say, commercial use.

But the property might have been sold off.

Things might have happened between 1998 and the present time.

But we had to make a judgment call about what we included, and typically what we included

were fees that were identified that were directly attached to the project as it's envisioned, the project that's actually going to be built, not something that was taking place 15 years ago that never got built.

So just that little piece of information in mind, this is what we charged.

And then looking at these projects, what I did is I talked to all of our division chiefs,

Division heads, rather, and got their input about what we would be charging under the various proposed fees.

So you can see here, for example, with Rio East, we'd be proposing $10,195 down the line.

And then next, we looked at the dollar increase between these two numbers.

So for example, 999, excuse me, yes, 999 Rio Road East would have seen an increase in fees of about $1,812.

If you look at this column, you'll see the dollar increases right down the line.

Now the question comes up, how do we grab meaning from these dollar values?

Clearly everything is going up.

You can see by the original dollar amounts that in some cases in percentage terms they've been

fairly sizable.

And keep in mind these include everything.

These include the existing fees have come up by 10% in most cases.

These include anything that we would be envisioned to charge for.

That's a new fee.

And of course would include our technology fee on top of that.

So it's not necessarily the case that these all went up by 10%.

Clearly they did not.

However, one thing I looked at was the value of the project overall.

And that's what's showing up

in this column right here.

I took through the county's property records and through county view, I found what these properties were assessed for.

In this case, for example, this affordable townhouse is assessed at 308-700.

That includes both the land and the structure.

Most of these were like that.

There might have been one or two where I had to look at the assessed value of the land and then if there were anything that were proposed but had not yet been built on the land, I took the dollar value as stated for the construction portion of the project.

In any case, looking at these, you see the dollar values here for each of these estimated or actual assessed value for these projects.

And then what I did is I took this increase in dollar value, or excuse me, I took this increase in the fees, divided it by the total dollar value of the project, and got this last column.

These can be compared because they're a percentage across.

I mean, it's one thing to look at, you know, absolute dollar values, but then to look at the incremental increase given the size and scope of the project.

What this column is showing me is that on average,

The increase in fees as a proportion of the total size of the project in terms of dollars was about one-fifth of one percent.

Now, a couple of caveats.

These fees, when we collect them, are usually collected up front.

The builder, the developer, might not recoup these fees for a number of years.

In other words, there might be some carrying costs, and these fees do not reflect that, this increase, this column does not reflect that fact.

But overall, again, I want to focus on this column because this gives you an idea of the magnitude of what we're proposing.

All right, so I've talked a little bit about the comparison with other jurisdictions.

I've talked about some case studies, admittedly in a very cursory manner.

What I wanted to talk about next was the remaining timeline of what we're proposing.

and that looks like this.

Back on March 3rd, I went before the board of supervisors and gave them basically the presentation that I've given you just now.

Today we're on chapter 14 and 18 fees for March 23rd.

On April 21st, I'll be going before the board again for a public hearing on all chapters.

So that would be chapters five, 14, 17 and 18.

And then if the board adopts the fees on April 21st, the fees would become effective on July 1st of 2021.

So there'd be some time between the adoption of the fees and the actual effective date of the fees.

So with that, the only other thing I wanted to mention before I open it up for questions is this.

The Planning Commission is interested in proceeding with these fees.

I've got two proposed motions that can be taken up.

I'll be happy to come back to this slide if necessary.

And so let us sort of, oh, I can't get, there we go, OK.

Other questions?

I need to open this up a bit more.

I can only see some of my colleagues.

Let's go like this.

There you go.

I have you all now.

Other questions?

Steve, this is a great presentation, and this is probably more of a comment than a question.

But what I see this as is really just the cost of doing business.

I jotted down a couple of the figures on that one slide you had that showed the cost of the increase compared to the actual dollar value of the project.

So $36.30 on a $1.07 million project and $24,000 on a $2.3 million project.

To me, it almost seems negligible.

I mean, I hate to say that about money, but at the same time, if you're presenting this and you're able to show how maybe the technology upgrades

could show an efficiency, if you will.

So if I'm a developer, if you're telling me that through the course of my project, your technology upgrades could save me eight hours worth of work for a project manager through the course of the entire project, I mean, that's $1,200 to $1,600 right there, where you pretty much have already recouped your costs.

Thank you.

Other comments?

Steve, I was just going to thank you for going ahead and making your study much more comparative by looking at some of the other

and the counties that we traditionally use as comparables.

And I think that was very helpful.

I really appreciate your doing that and also the statistical comparison that you just ended with.

Very well done.

Other comments, questions for Steve?

I will simply add that I continue to hope

that our supervisors will do the initial investment from funds not attached to the fee increase and that the fee increase then pays for upgrades.

Since we have this interesting, it's not a windfall because it's because bad things happen to us, but we have this

So I'm going to just sort of put in a moment here that while people are lining up.

in front of the Board of Supervisors that this initial investment into technology comes from this one-time fee, but the ongoing maintenance of it comes from the technology fee so that you have an opportunity also to build a bit of a reserve so that you're always prepared for that next technology when that happens.

And I will go farther than what my colleague Corey is going to say.

Some of these costs seem to minimize.

So while you did the percentage change, I actually did the costs, the actual the fee costs against those projects.

And there wasn't, I think there was only one cost that was 2% of the project.

And so, you know, that's a mistake.

That's the wrong pipe being brought in on one floor.

and you've eaten that and you've eaten that in a big way or it's somebody forgetting to get something from a supplier.

So from my standpoint, and go back to what Corey said, the ability to sort of continue the language that we are investing to make it more efficient for you to do business in our county, I think that's the language for this.

It's not about punishment.

It's not about being lagged because you didn't ask me for my extra amount of money.

That's on you.

that you didn't raise your fees, that we didn't raise our fees.

That's on us.

But in raising the fees, how are we going to facilitate doing business in this locale?

People can go to Henrico and go to Richmond and say, it costs you $23,000 to build a building there.

It costs you this much to build a commercial building over here.

I think that's something, fees do matter when you're talking about those kinds of buildings.

And so I hopefully, I see Madam Jody there sort of shaking her head.

That's the kind of argument that I would,

I would add to that that if the fees do not keep pace with somewhat comparable to what the estimated percentage of cost is that the county should recoup, then the taxpayers in general end up directly subsidizing the developers for the project by having lower fees than are comparatively existing with comparable counties.

Dablamo accounting.

Are there other questions or comments for Christine?

I do.

I have Neal Williamson.

Neal, please unmute yourself.

Good evening, Neal Williamson.

Thank you.

My name is Neal Williamson, and I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum.

a privately funded public policy organization focused on Central Virginia's local government.

It's interesting that the last staff report provided to you on this topic was on February 2nd, Groundhog Day.

Tonight, you again have before you a fundamentally flawed proposal to increase community development fees.

Despite being told this is not a significant increase,

I am most concerned that the economic comparison based on assessed value of the project is wrong-headed.

This includes the land and improvements.

Instead, you should examine the difference between the fees.

And I think it was the fourth example of the staff's presentation.

There were some cases the combination of the increased fees and new fees would increase the regulatory costs as compared to the current regulatory costs in excess of 30%.

Yesterday on the Free Enterprise Forum blog, I wrote about the bananas technology fee and compared this with the concept of paying for a plumbing fee.

Technology is an operational cost like labor, electricity, plumbing, et cetera, that should be captured in the base fee structure.

If the average planner uses the bathroom five times during an application review,

Should there be a planner plumbing fee assessed to the application?

That's bananas.

The Bree Enterprise Forum believes the technology fee is opportunistic, used by only three other jurisdictions in the state, Commonwealth of Virginia, and should be rejected.

Now, while others have said the fee should be increased or needed because we haven't raised fees in a good while and we may be behind some other localities, I suggest we examine page 35

of Albemarle County's FY20 audited financial statement that's available on the county website.

That audited document shows the cost of services for community development actually went down by 4.26%.

In addition, this document suggests the net cost for these services, which is the cost of services less the fees paid, went down by 2.23%.

Now, I don't have an economics degree, but this armchair economist believes that the CDD is charging more for their services than they are spending by 2%, at least in this particular snapshot.

Now, the fees before you increase the cost by 10%.

Now, some folks have said this is de minimus, but I went back to that document to see what is the fiscal impact of these fees.

from the document for the year ended June 30, 2020.

Governmental activities generated $6.914 million in program revenues from users of services provided by the activity.

Thank you very much.

And in that case, I'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back.

Thank you very much.

Commissioners, what's your, what are your thoughts?

How do we move forward?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So it's been moved by Rick and seconded by Tim.

Discussion?

I can only see a bit of you.

So that's motion number one.

Okay.

So I see no hands for discussion.

Yes.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye Mr. Bivins Aye Mr. Randolph Aye Ms.

Thank you.

And I see that that's seconded by Tim.

Is there discussion?

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So that passes too.

So Mr. Allhouse, you heard from us.

You've heard comments from us.

Thanks very much.

Before I get started, I just wanted to double check so everyone can hear me and see my screen.

Great, thank you.

My name is Andy Breitelbach and I am a senior planner with the Albemarle County Planning Division.

And tonight you have before you an application for a special use permit amendment SP 2020-16 for Claudius Crozet Park.

To give you some background on this project, this is an aerial view of the site showing Claudius Crozet Park.

It is slightly to the east of Crozet Avenue in downtown Crozet, which you can see in the top left corner of this image.

Barnes Lumberyard is somewhat to the north of the site.

Hilltop Street is the street directly to the north of the park.

Park.

Park Road is the street directly to the south of the park.

And then you can see Eastern Avenue to the east on the right side of the screen.

And Crozet Park consists of three separate parcels that are contiguous with one another.

This is a slightly more zoomed in view of the park.

And you can see in the park, you can see a pond on the west side, that blue square kind of in the middle next to the star is the outdoor pool that has a dome over it for weather purposes.

And then there are several athletic fields on the eastern side of the park.

I've also identified several of the residential subdivisions that surround the park, including Agatha Ridge to the south,

Parkside Village directly to the north, Foothills Crossing in Glenbrook, which are both under construction to the northeast.

And then this is another view of the park showing the south entrance, which is slightly off center from the intersection with Agatha Ridge on the south side.

There's the north entrance to the park off of Hilltop Street, also near the intersection

Road, which is the Diden Street you can see heading toward the east at Parkside Village.

And then I've also labeled Foothills Crossing, which as I mentioned before is currently under construction.

So some background on Claudius Crozet Park before we get into the proposal.

As I mentioned earlier, it consists of three parcels that total 22.806 acres.

and it is actually a privately owned and operated park, owned and operated by Claudius Crozet parking, a Virginia nonprofit organization.

It is not a county owned park.

However, there is an operating agreement with Albemarle County with outlining certain responsibilities that the County Parks and Recreation Department has, mainly regarding maintenance of some of the public facilities, especially the athletic fields and the tennis courts.

And it is important to note that in regard to this application, the operating agreement is not proposed to be amended at this time and the existing operating agreement was included in the staff report presented to the Planning Commission as attachment six.

There is also no public funding for improvements at the park being requested at this time and so this application is not a county affiliated application it is from the private non-profit organization Claudius Cruising Park Inc.

So the existing zoning of the property as I mentioned it consists of three parcels two of them which are the larger two

are currently zoned RA or rural areas.

And that is the portions of the park with the pond, the athletic fields, the existing community center and pool, and most of the parking.

And then there is a small parcel.

It's a very narrow sliver-like parcel along Hilltop Street and Indigo Road that is zoned R6 residential.

There are several overlay zoning districts on this property, both managed and preserved steep slopes.

and then there is entrance corridor.

However, that is on the R6 zone parcel only.

on the main portion of the parks and rural areas is not a part of the entrance corridor.

Surrounding zoning districts are mainly residential, as you can see, of several various densities, R2, R4, and R6, which are two, four, and six units per acre each respectively.

And then kind of up in the top left portion of the screen, you can see where the downtown area and Barnes Lumberyard are zoned DCD and heavy industry.

and then the reason we're here tonight is that the community center and the swimming club are by SP do require a special use permit in both the RA and the R6 zoning district.

Looking at the comprehensive plan for the Crozet master plan which designates this property all three parcels as green spaces.

including all existing and proposed public parks, active park areas, greenways, institutional uses that are related to parks, those sorts of things.

And they include both public and private park areas.

And then also it's important to note there is the Cruise A Connector Trail.

proposed between Eastern Avenue to the east, going through Crozet Park and over to downtown Crozet.

And that's an important part of the Crozet master plan.

So the specifics of this proposal, as I mentioned, it is a request for an amendment to an previously approved special use permit, SP 1995-43.

And the applicant is looking to amend this special use

The proposed community center building would be a height of approximately 32 feet or two stories.

and would include a fitness center, meeting rooms and gathering areas totaling approximately 34,200 square feet.

And this, the applicant has identified would be constructed in their proposed phase one.

And then in their proposed phase two would be the additional swimming pool, the new eight-lane indoor pool in a building of approximately 12,600 square feet.

The applicant is also proposing new basketball courts to the north of the park pool and community center facilities, new pedestrian pathways and trail connections around the park, additional parking to accommodate the expansions of these uses, proposed new landscaping to provide buffering and screening of the new facilities from the nearby residential areas,

And then the athletic fields, the tennis courts, several of the existing trails, the pond, and then the existing outdoor pool will remain.

the existing outdoor pool, and then a new indoor pool.

And then the applicant is also requesting a special exception to section 18-5.1.16a of the zoning ordinance to modify the requirements for swimming club uses to allow the proposed new pool to be closer than 75 feet to the nearest property line.

As shown on the concept plan,

As you can see here, it would be approximately 30 feet.

And I think the next slide shows that better.

This is more an overall view of Crozet Park and the proposed improvements, which are mainly in the center of the park, the areas to the east with athletic fields and the pond area to the west.

Really, there are very few improvements proposed.

And then this is a slightly more zoomed in view of the concept plan showing several of the parking areas.

The darker gray rectangle in the center is the proposed recreation center with the proposed pool expansion building directly to the north of it.

And then the existing pool area and concrete deck is to the west.

And then this is a view of the

Northern part of the park showing the new basketball courts, an additional new parking area improvements to the entrance on the north side to Hilltop Street.

And then it may be slightly difficult to see, but there is an identifying figure showing that from the corner of the property line of the residential property to the proposed pool expansion is approximately 30 feet.

Regarding access and circulation on this site, there will be two proposed main entrances.

One entrance off of Park Road on the south side of the park, which is the south, which is the existing main entrance on the south side of the park.

And then the

The applicant proposed entrance off of Hilltop Street on the north side of the park and that is currently an emergency access entrance or only used for special events.

And the applicant is proposing that would be a full entrance to allow for better dispersal of traffic.

off of Park Road and Hilltop Street.

And it is important to note that any required improvements to both of those entrances would need VDOT approval at the site planning stage in order to be issued entrance permits.

And then for multimodal transportation opportunities, the applicant, as I mentioned earlier, is proposing additional trails, sidewalks, pathways throughout the park.

And this is to create connections both among the park facilities, both the existing facilities and the proposed new facilities, along with connections to the surrounding areas, the surrounding neighborhoods.

and this is to really help promote walking and biking to the park as alternative transportation modes by providing that infrastructure that would allow for safe passage to the park and around the park from those nearby neighborhoods.

And then as I mentioned Crozet Park is a designated destination on the proposed Crozet Connector Greenway from Eastern Avenue to downtown Crozet.

So this is a screenshot from the Parks and Green Systems chapter of the existing Crozet Master Plan.

You can see the Crozet Park is in the center of this figure.

And then that yellow kind of orangish solid line is the proposed greenway connecting from

Eastern Avenue, which is this teal blue colored line heading from 240 under the railroad tracks down toward 250.

And then over here is Barnes Lumberyard site in downtown Crozet.

And so it's envisioned that the Crozet Connector Trail would eventually connect from Eastern Avenue up through Barnes Lumberyard over to Crozet Avenue with a spur over

There are several recommended revisions by staff to the concept plan and application.

The applicant has identified that concession sales would be included with the park and with the new proposals, however those locations were not identified on the concept plan.

So staff has determined that those sales areas should be located on the concept plan.

The landscaping buffers and the proposed utility easements directly on the northwest side of the new building should be, the location should be modified somewhat to avoid conflicts.

This should be a concept plan.

Now there appears to be a conflict between those two elements.

And then there's some additional requested notes by CDB Division.

Looking at factors for consideration for factors favorable to this use, the proposed use is consistent with the Thursday Master Plan and the designated green space use of parks and recreation areas.

And the proposed use is located within the development areas.

Factors unfavorable is that the use is expected to generate additional

on the surrounding local street network, such as Hilltop Street, Park Road, Tabor Street, and some of those other nearby local streets.

Staff does recommend approval of special use permit SB-2026, Claudius Rosé Park, with the following conditions and provided that the previously mentioned recommended revisions that I have also listed in the staff report are made to the application prior to a public hearing from the Board of Supervisors.

So the conditions include, the first one is the standard condition for special use permits that it be in general accord with the concept plan that has been provided, identifying certain major elements of the plan, including the buildings, the recreational facilities, the pools, and those areas.

And it does allow for minor modifications to the plan to ensure compliance with the zoning ordinance at the site plan stage if the special use permit were approved.

And then several of the other, really most of the other conditions pertain to screening, lighting, sound conditions to mitigate any potential impacts that these new facilities

on the adjacent property owners and residents.

So this is just a list of them.

And then also a condition in number five, limiting sales of concessions to the two locations that would be identified on the concept plan.

And then conditions seven through eight are also additional conditions related to buffering and landscaping screening of the proposed uses from the nearby properties.

As I mentioned, the applicant is also requesting a special exception to the setback of the swimming pool and staff also recommends approval of this request again with the following conditions.

Previously mentioned recommended provisions.

And the conditions for the special exception are very similar to those in the special use permit, including the standard condition that it must be in general accord with concept plan, as well as several other conditions related to landscaping, screening, lighting, to help mitigate any impacts on

This is a slide providing suggested motions based on staff's recommendation.

And we can come back to these at the time that the commissioners are ready to make a motion on this application.

And then these are the suggested motions for the special exception request.

And I am available now or after the public hearing for any questions.

Thank you very much.

Will you give us back our screen?

There we are.

Are there questions for Andy before the questions now for Andy?

So I have Corey and then

Corey, you go first, and those of you who have questions, you can raise your hands.

Questions real quick.

One of the conditions was to not have freestanding lighting on the west side.

I think you said Andy.

And I'm just confirming, is that west the side that's closest to that big stormwater management pond?

Okay, thank you.

I have questions that I'll wait to ask but I just wanted to insert maybe a correction and I think Corey said a stormwater management pond and I don't believe that it is a stormwater management pond, it's just a pond.

Yes, that is correct.

And I will mention that the pond does actually have a water protection ordinance stream buffer around it as well.

Karen.

Thanks.

I wanted to follow up.

Thank you.

I wanted to follow up on the lighting question.

Can you tell us if the site's current lighting is subject to the most recent version of the Albemarle County Dark Skies lighting ordinance?

Or was it approved before we adopted that ordinance?

I am not sure about that.

I would think based on the age of when the original special use permit was approved, it is not under the most recent lighting ordinance.

And then I do know there was a couple of years ago, more on the athletic field side on the Eastern side of the park, a special exception granted by the board of supervisors related to lighting on the athletic fields.

Can we say on that?

Yes, thank you.

Can we say on that just for a second?

So wouldn't new construction have to apply?

It comes under the new ordinance.

I have a question for Kevin.

Kevin, on page six of the staff report, where there's a discussion about whether this project is going to have any substantial detriments.

The next to last paragraph says, although the development will generally add trips to the adjacent roadways, this addition is not expected to significantly, and I'm going to boldface that adverb, affect delays or queuing at the nearby intersections.

What does significantly mean empirically here, given the fact that there's an expectation

under the Traffic Engineer's Trip Generation Manual of 985 vehicle trips per day on this site, regardless of the time perhaps not being in sync with rush hour.

I would define significantly as something that would be

noticeable to the general public driving through there.

You know, generally, if you have if you add a couple seconds to a to a trip or to a delay at any one stop that's not

When you refer to the general public is that the general public with a bird's eye view over the project or are you the general public include neighbors

When I was referring to significantly, that was specifically in reference to delays at intersections.

So I was talking about how long someone has to wait at any one intersection.

To say whether or not a person living on that street would notice additional traffic going up, that's not really something I had assessed.

here.

I think that's just something that has to be taken, you know, in context, when you consider that number of vehicles spread throughout the day, if 985 vehicles would be noticeable by someone sitting there.

It's possible, but I'd also point out that we have a lot of development going on in Crozet currently,

and so numbers are probably changing all the time.

Yeah, and that's true throughout the county, but if we assumed an eight-hour day, 985 cars measured out over eight hours would be on average 100 plus cars an hour.

and certainly to these two neighborhoods, I would say that is highly noticeable and is a significant increase in traffic.

But thank you very much.

That helps give me an idea of where you are coming from here.

I just wanted to I'll be quick because I want us to move through this, but

I guess I thought it might be helpful to make this comment before we move through the rest of what we have.

And when I read staff support specifically about the special exception, it leaves me wanting to understand a little bit more about why the applicant's making that request.

And then when I read the applicant's narrative, I'm still left with that feeling.

And so I just wanted to mention that and I hope that

with the time that folks have, we might hear a little bit more about that.

And that's the special exception.

I guess there's only one.

Andy, do you want to comment to that right now?

Okay.

Are there other comments or questions at this point for Andy?

So I have a question for Kevin since he has a sense of how VDOT might respond to some of this.

So Kevin, in the site review, I would assume that VDOT would look to see whether or not the hoped for expansion of the northwest pedestrian alley or that's sort of the occasional road for high impact

events there, if that would be an appropriate road.

And really what I'm getting at is would they ever suggest, for example, instead of going to the northwest of the community room there to go to the northeast of the community room, which appears by the concept plan to be not only a shorter road, but a shorter road out to Indigo, but also a road that doesn't put you out immediately at an intersection.

Yeah, I suppose that

I'm trying to balance what Jenny's asking about that setback.

So that piece of property is not only right now, the applicant's asking us to consider a setback to that property and also widen it so that they're

I think that would be up to the developer to reevaluate if they weren't able to do that.

I think VDOT would probably say there's reasonable access already provided to the park.

So they're not forcing the developer to have that a second full access point.

Okay, I see Tim, but I want to ask one other question before I pass it to Tim.

So I saw in the concept plan that there was a proposed wind facility that was to the left of everything sitting sort of on that slope, and I was trying to figure out what that proposed, where's Andy, do you have a sense of what that proposed wind facility is?

So this sort of interesting little triangle, hash triangle, that sits on the slope going to the pond?

I think that's stormwater management.

So that's sort of the swimming facility.

Okay.

All right.

Well, maybe the applicant will speak to that when it's his turn, when he comes before us.

Thanks, Daniel.

That's helpful.

While we're on these more global pieces, obviously I'll have a number of questions after we've heard from the applicant and the public.

But I'm trying to think back to a project a number of years ago, and there was concern about

If the park was opened on Hilltop on a continuous basis, that there would be a de facto, there was a potential for a de facto cut through from downtown Crozet to linking up with the Eastern, is it called the Eastern Connector?

The piece that's going to go down and connect to 250.

And I wonder from a traffic standpoint, Kevin, because you're,

You're on top of these things on a number of projects and obviously you can't speak to hypotheticals for the future, but you're certainly aware of them.

In general, tell me if I'm getting to your question right.

In general, all the roads surrounding the park are all local roads with residential development all along them.

So none of them are really specifically intended to carry high volumes of traffic.

Like I said, they're local roads.

What we're trying to do with the comp plan overall and with the master plan is to build out the network so that vehicular travelers have more options for the way they can go and that disperses the traffic throughout all of those local roads a little bit better.

As you point out, Eastern Avenue is going to make a connection hopefully in the semi near future down to 250

and then that will go through West Hall and West Lake developments all the way up to Foothills and then there will be multiple connections.

from Eastern Avenue, one up by Park Ridge and one down by West Lake that connects to Park Road, both of those would make connections over towards Crozet Avenue.

So it's building out that grid system by allowing, and in my comments, my intention with the comment about dispersing that traffic would allow traffic that's coming from the north

all use the northern entrance and the traffic coming from the south and possibly places down by 250 to be using the southern entrance to the park.

So it would spread that out a little bit more rather than put all the pressure on one, which would additionally put all the additional pressure on those residential areas of say like West Lake and all of that area and surround the older neighborhoods in park like surrounding Park Road.

It does very well.

And so to go back to my point, because there would then be that opportunity for that flow through, and if there's a reason, if there's something happening on Eastern, either to the North or South of traffic flow, then that could

forced people to select that as an alternative through neighborhood.

This is very much the discussions that you have with us when we talk about new neighborhoods being built next to older neighborhoods and connectivity through that we all want to have on the one hand, but often the communities are concerned because of their perception of increased traffic, as well as the benefits that we all can see from that connectivity.

So my question really is,

If that were to become a problem in the future, could we think about ways that we might be able to lessen that now?

In other words, possibly a condition that if traffic flows increase through the park, that there would be, I don't know, speed bumps, some sort of traffic calming that would make it

Yeah obviously I agree entirely and I think that would be something that we'd probably want to talk to the developer about and we could work that out at site plan stage if we need to but right now that connection through the park isn't exactly direct

I don't think people are going to use that cut through on the parking lots to necessarily save time on anything, but I would say since it's really just going to be a private travel way through lots,

It would probably be a good idea for the developer to consider, especially where there's pedestrian crossings, but possibly raised pedestrian crosswalks in the parking lot so that they could slow the traffic and reduce that level of cut through.

I think that would be a wise thing for them to do because you will have a lot of pedestrian activity in the park and you don't want people to be able to drive fast through there.

Other questions for staff before we go?

So one thing on that other thing, so Kevin, where would a stop sign go on the southern entrance?

There is no stop sign if you want to leave the park and get on the park road.

There is no stop sign.

Well, you can get on the park road, but you don't have to stop.

Yeah, there's a requirement that any private road has to have a stop sign.

I'm sure that we could work with the Crozet Park owners and get them to install something as part of this.

Are there other questions before we open?

Okay, let us hear then from the applicant.

And the applicant, would you introduce yourself, please?

My name is Drew Holzwirth, and I am one of the park board members for Claudius Crozet Park, and I'm going to start the presentation.

Scott Collins, our engineer, will also opine.

But let me start by giving a brief background on Claudius Crozet Park because I think it's relevant for you all to be aware of.

There's a lot of confusion in the community.

But in 1958, a local resident donated 22 acres to the community.

And later that year, Claudius Crozet Park was established and incorporated as a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

Since that time, each year, community board members enter, become park board members, and then several age off.

But one of the things that's remained consistent since that time is the board members have the park's mission in mind, which is to promote the health, well-being, and enhance the general social, physical, and cultural welfare of the residents of the community of Crozet and western Albemarle County.

And in the effort, as the community has changed over those years, the Park Board has its responsibility to communicate with the community to continue to operate in that effort of our charter.

So in over the past several years, from 2014 through 2019, the Claudius Crozet Park Board conducted five surveys of the community

Two of which in 2014 and 2016 were community-wide surveys to understand what the community wants and needs were so that we could guide the design of the facility in the best efforts of the community.

Over that period of time, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors also in 2004, which is actually before that time, and in 2019, had the Albemarle County Parks and Recreation Association do a needs analysis assessment for the county.

In those assessments, Claudius Crozet Park was identified in both 2004 and 2019

as an ideal central location to have expanded recreational facilities.

As the population really has grown in western Albemarle County and the western end of the county has been developed, the needs for this type of facility really has grown.

And so we can automatically think of a park and think of the playing fields for the youth and making sure that the

Youth is engaged, but we also in Western Albemarle County, we do not have adequate facilities or facilities at all for our aging population to be active year round.

It's a beautiful place to get outside during the summer months, but as it gets cooler, our neighbors, our aging neighbors in the West become sedentary because we don't have a place like a shopping mall to go walk at or facilities where they can stay active.

So if you look at the stakeholders, the stakeholders really are all of the residents of Western Albemarle County.

In terms of the membership of Claudius Crozet Park, pre-COVID numbers, our peak had 2,863 members of the park.

And it obviously ebbs and flows with the summer swim season and different times of the year.

And our afterschool program, so an additional need that this is going to fill is

As the student numbers have grown in Crozet Elementary and Brownsville Elementary,

Those after school activities get full and currently the Claudius Crozet Park houses 29 children for after school activity.

The new Claudius Crozet Park facility, this new facility we're proposing will expand between from 29 to between 150 and 250 based upon how many children we and our operators decide to bring, but we can have up to 250

additional children housed after school.

So there are a lot of benefits.

We can talk about the pool, we can talk about the active, we can talk about the recreation, but the reality is the western end of the county has great needs for facilities for not only our youth, not only our older population, but really everybody in western Albemarle County.

In terms of communication, people have a question, what kind of communication?

In addition to the company-wide surveys, the Crozet Park Board members have presented several times to the CCA, as well as the CCAC regarding this facility, starting in 2016, as soon as the Crozet Park Board identified that we were going to move forward with this project.

In addition to that, we've had four different articles written in the Crozet Gazette.

Go ahead, Scott.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And thank you, Andy, for that presentation.

I hope that was excellent.

As Andy mentioned, this is just an expansion of the existing special use permit for this facility for the upgrades that they're looking at, not only for the building and for the recreational facility, but also for the amenities and the entire site.

And with these upgrades and these changes to the park, we've really concentrated not only on building a facility that would

have all the benefits and meet all the needs of the community, not only for the children all the way up to the aging adults, but also a way that the site could be used and people could get to the site.

And that really transferred over to the design of the pedestrian connectivity

the bikes and trail connectivities and the vehicular connectivity with the additional entrance.

So what you have really is sort of a disbursement of ways to get to the park, whether it's from the north, the east, the west, or the south, you have multiple ways to get there from the park based on the grid system.

And if I can show my, we've created a

exhibit of this, if I can show it on real quick.

I'm not seeing it.

Oh, here we go.

This is an exhibit that we showed as part of our concept plan.

It really shows the grid system around the heart of the park.

It highlights the trail connections and the grid system that sort of exists around the park.

You have the grid system with a lot of these roadways being improved from Eastern Avenue all the way out to Western Avenue to Old Trail.

And if you look at the sort of the circulars, you have a quarter mile radius, a half mile radius, and a one mile radius.

That one mile radius basically serves almost the entire Crozet area.

that has walkability to this park and that's something we really focused on and concentrate on is all these additional trails and pedestrian pathways to the park and also once you get to the park having trail connections through the park that link up the different neighborhoods.

So that's something that was really important with this whole with not only the upgrade of the facility itself but also the upgrade of the pedestrian connectivity in Crozet and how Crozet Park is really sort of inter integral in that whole system.

I also want to really touch on the special exception request that we're talking about for the pool itself.

It's good to, one thing to note is that really that section of the code when it talks about setbacks for a pool, they're really talking, if you really get down to it, they're talking about an exterior pool.

They're talking about the outside pool being 75 feet from a property line.

and 125 feet from a residence because of the noise that comes along with a pool, a facility.

You don't want a pool, you know, 25, 30 feet from a property line, an outdoor pool with the noise and the kids and everybody.

It could be a distraction.

This is an indoor pool, so all the noise is going to be contained inside the building.

And this building's no bigger than what you would find as a house.

out there in Crozet in an R2, R6, R4 district.

So it's not a height that's over towering the community and it's containing the pool within a structure so that the noise is contained and not affecting the residents.

And the pool itself, the proposed indoor pool,

is 165 feet away from the nearest residence, which is far more than 125 feet as required.

And the code, it's just about 30 feet from the property line, but we are looking to also screen, heavily screen that and plant that area, enhance the

vegetation with that.

And then one other couple of things about the traffic through the park.

Yes, we are.

We actually have on our concept plan a raised sidewalk connection that does allow that focuses on pedestrian traffic through the site, not vehicular traffic to the site.

So that's already incorporated into the design.

And that would certainly slow down traffic if they were trying to go through the site, which

Based on the grid system, there's plenty of routes.

And the stormwater management facility, the SWM, that's a sort of a water quality feature that we have behind the building, not a swimming part of the swim thing.

It's water quality that's behind the building for

the building and for treatment before it goes and gets released.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have two questions.

The first is, it's about the new buildings.

As you're aware, Rick, we've had a series of success over the past decades of public-private partnerships.

And so this facility is going to be built with a combination.

Thank you for that information, Nell.

As per the March 25, 1997, P3 agreement between the county and CCP, there was an agreement that there would be reduced fees.

Do you plan to have reduced fees here to ensure that their social equity

That is the foundation of the Claudius Crozet Park 501c3, Rick.

Okay.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Just a few questions more about the programmatic pieces of the space.

Could you guys talk about the spaces that will be included in a little bit more detail in that 30,000 square foot building?

For example, will there be a kitchen in there since you have a community center?

Is there going to be competition swimming?

Could you just talk to us a little bit about how that building will be used?

So the total square footage is 46,800 square feet of enclosed space, of which 34,200 is going to be a multipurpose gymnasium, a functional training studio, an indoor walking track, multiple group exercise studios, a community room for community meetings and gatherings,

Expanded stay and play for youth, as well as a large cardio and strength area.

And then you'll walk into a second, for all intents and purposes, one building, but a second structure, which is relegated because of HVAC, which is going to be a 12,600 square foot, eight lane competition pool.

And so we have a little bit of a swim dynasty in Western Albemarle with our Western Albemarle swim team and some other

Private swim stakeholders that swim at the pool and even older master swimmers.

And so there will be competitions from time to time, but that's not going to be the primary focus.

Thanks for the answer.

I have a couple of more pertaining to the site.

I think I saw in the documents that I guess there was lighting for the baseball fields that was done some time ago.

Will there be lighting for the tennis courts or basketball courts?

At this time on the site plan, we do not have any additional lighting outside of the lighting for the parking lot itself, just for safety.

Okay, and as a follow up question to that same area sports complex, if you want the basketball and tennis, are you guys gonna be running water out there for fountains or anything like that?

God, I'll let you take that.

I don't know.

I'm not that familiar.

Okay, great.

And then the last question is pertaining to that pond that I mistakenly called the stormwater management pond.

And my colleague corrected me and said it was an actual pond.

It looks like there's a walkway that goes around there.

Is there any kind of fencing or anything as I'd imagine with these increased facilities with more and more children in that area?

And Scott, you want me to take that?

Sure.

Okay, so this is actually one of the most actively used items in the park right now, Corey.

It's the perimeter trail that was generously donated a few years ago to Claudius Crozet Park, maybe two years ago now.

And so it is an active trail right now.

And it is, I would say the use is significant.

Anytime you go out during daylight hours, there are people walking on the perimeter trail.

It does come close to the pond, but I will be honest with you.

I do not find it to be a safety concern at all.

It's far enough away from the pond.

Thank you.

Has there been any thought given to dealing with impermeable pavement, permeable pavement versus impermeable pavement for all of the parking?

There's a great deal of surface parking.

I look at this and I think it's called a park, but it's starting to look more like a

a shopping center with a series of residential, I mean, physical athletic opportunities.

And so I just, I'm wondering how you're thinking of addressing that in terms of both dealing with the water and not having all of that runoff on these slopes.

And I know there's a tradition of the arts festival and the parking there, but historically I remember going there and much of that was parking in fields.

before it became such a major event.

God, I'll let you take that.

Sure, I'll take that.

As far as the parking lot itself, yes, we are looking at options, whether it's permanent pavers, we looked at gravel as well.

We're keeping some of the area still to remain grass.

What you want to do is, anything that's overflow parking, we try to keep as grass so that it maintains that consistency.

But when a parking space is used more than once or twice a week, it does need to be a different surface.

And we're looking at comparing asphalt, permanent pavers, different types of materials.

Now we'll come out through the stormwater management design of the final site as well.

And yes, definitely adding more landscaping and trees to the parking improvements out there that will end.

I guess I'd like to ask if you could offer a little more about the special exception and I understand the explanation that's in staff's report and that the suggestion is that

because the pool's inside, the 75-foot requirement would speak more to an outdoor pool because of noise and these sort of things.

And I understand that, but I guess I still would like to understand why, as you're programming the site,

It seems to me you might want to avoid having that exception.

And so I assume because you're asking that there's a reason why you all thought it made more sense to try to have it be that.

Sure.

Yeah, thank you, Janie.

The way it's positioned on the site, the building sort of interacts with the existing pool out there as well.

So everything is sort of built around the existing pool and the existing facility so that you can have that transfer of

and connections of the, because they're taking out the old bath house, the changing rooms, so all that kind of gets programmed in with the new facility and so the location of the new facility has to be in relationship to the existing pool and the existing pool is

you know basically where it's at.

They're also trying to preserve a lot of the green space around the existing pool, especially on the north and on some on the west and some on the east side too because a lot of that area is used during swim meets when they expand out and even during the day-to-day operations.

It's nice to have some green grass areas around the concrete

around the concrete pool platform.

So based on all that it's basically programmed to have a building in the fitness center at that south west corner of the site and sort of wrapping around with the locker rooms and then the pool being

added on to the facility.

Okay, thanks, Scott.

That helps to understand.

And then the other question I had was, and I think we may end up talking about this later, but I wanted to ask about the proposed entrance or entrance exit onto Hilltop.

And, and I guess I want to save maybe this comp some of this for later.

But I when I look at that, and

You know, I'm not a traffic engineer, and I understand from the staff report and comments that VDOT will weigh in on that that intersection and that entrance in the future if the project moves forward.

But when I look at it, it does look like I'm concerned that the intersection with Indigo and Hilltop is really close by to where that that that new entrance, the proposed entrance would be.

And so I guess that's just a comment I have that I'm concerned, but I do understand that as things move forward, if they move forward, that would be something VDOT would weigh in on.

But I guess I hoped that you all could speak to a concern that I have and what we've heard from the community about specifically that entrance and construction.

and what you would have planned for that.

And I'm thinking back a little bit to the community meeting where I feel like I heard an idea that all construction would be routed to that proposed entrance and exit.

Scott, I'll take that if that's okay.

So Jenny, one of those things.

So let me get my exact statistic here.

So from July 1 through September 20 of 2020, which was a pretty busy period, even though we were during COVID, it was a pretty busy time in the park because people were looking to get out of their homes.

We average 472 cars a day at Claudius Prese Park on our counter.

And so we have talked at length about this as a park board in terms of how do we build this facility while keeping our stakeholders active?

Peachtree baseball and softball, soccer, our pickleball players, the Crozet Gators.

Our stakeholders are many in Crozet and so how do we keep

The park open and active and also build our facility and so you know one of the conversations we had and we're happy to have more conversations is to relegate the construction traffic to the back of the park.

through the back entrance.

So we're not conflicting with the youth in the park and the activity in the park while we're building our facility because we can we can fence off that area fairly easily.

Now, if somebody comes up with a better idea where the construction traffic can come in the front of the park and we can still do that, you know, we're all ears.

But just in terms of keeping the park active and open during this project, because it is going to take we're being told from start to finish 14 months.

OK, thank you.

That's helpful.

Just kind of thinking about the impervious surface on the conceptual plan.

Is there any thought?

I mean, the basketball courts to be put in are listed as asphalt.

There's several pervious basketball court alternatives.

Does there have drainage systems and other things?

Just wanted to get your thoughts on

I'll take that Scott if you like.

So what I'll share is one of the uses that came up in both the surveys are the basketball courts that are currently in the park.

There are basketball courts that can use quite a bit, but they're not a regulation basketball court and they're kind of goals that were set up on

opposite ends of a parking lot, which is about one and a half times the length of a normal basketball court.

So it really has not been conducive of more organized games at the park.

And that was one of the feedback that we received.

And so I would be uncomfortable trying to take an activity that people really want and try to tweak a service that may not be received well by the basketball community.

But I think Scott mentioned it.

We would rather have pervious parking.

And so as we look at that parking area, our goal is not to have another enormous shopping center parking lot with asphalt.

and we are going to be sensitive to try to find a pervious way to make the park.

And so I think there's ways that we can reach your goal and what you're asking what the goal is.

The other thing that I will share is if you look at the building where we're dropping the building onto the park, it is being dropped on like an asphalt driveway and so

While we're building an enormous building, not all of the building is taking over green space.

Other questions for the applicant?

I have a couple others that are thinking, so let me just clear out my mind.

So I see that there are two play areas out there now.

There's one very complicated looking one down towards the eastern part of the park.

And then there's a small sort of petite one there right outside the present recreation center.

And it looks like in your concept plan that the small petite one goes away.

The complicated play structure that you saw, which is fantastic, by the way, was designed and built with the fact that we were taking the two existing.

So it's a new structure.

And so when Albemarle County Parks and Rec stepped up and helped us out with that playground,

They took, one was for younger children, one was for older children, and they took that and created one very nice facility.

And that's what you saw.

So we are all aware that this, the older, the one that you saw on the top of the hill playground is going away.

I've got a couple other questions.

So if we look at the new facility with

The recreation part and then the indoor pool.

Is the indoor pool at the same height, looking from outside the building, the same roof level as the recreation, even though it's one and a half stories or something like that?

Or are they the same height?

Yeah, so, Scott, you can pull up the image if you got it, but it is very similar.

There is a little bit of a break in the building, so we didn't have one large structure.

OK, that's fine.

I don't need to see that, Scott.

So then my other question, you may have heard my question about sort of I'm trying to sort of be sensitive to the fact that the owner of the property that's on sort of the northeast corner is both going to have

his or her view obstructing a bit with the building coming close to it.

Plus, if this should go forward, that probably is going to have a road next to the house where they just have people walking with dogs and bicycles and things like that, which is why I asked the whole conversation of what would happen if you pass that road over on the other side of the Crozet community building, because it seems like that person is going to be impacted the most

Scott, will you take that?

I don't know that we studied having the entrance moved to the right of the community.

We've looked at that and that is certainly an option that is not off the table at all.

And that's something that's going to be sort of flushed out during the site plan process as well.

And certainly you have that existing driveway right now that could be improved for the entrance at a

at a cheaper cost and put in a new road and turn it in.

Plus, we're also planting some trees over in that area to help screen the park in that one spot from Indigo Road.

But we can probably work on just moving some trees around and making that connection if that's the right way to go.

And that's something we'll definitely be looking at.

Yes, sir.

So just the thing is you have one property, one property owner that's

that's bearing a bunch of the burning for this new enhanced park.

And if there's a way as you move forward to sort of spread some of that burden out, that may be appreciated.

But that was one of the things that caught my attention.

It makes sense, yeah.

The other piece that you heard me mention as Mr. McDermott, you don't have a stop sign.

This is going to you, Mr. Holworth.

There isn't a stop sign coming out of the park on the south entrance.

And so hopefully working with Kevin will fix that because

That's it for me right now, unless somebody else has something that they want to go to.

Jenny, are you moving forward, or are you just... No, okay.

So if no one else has anything, then we will open it to the public, and I will then turn this part

Is there any chance we can ask Coach Dan Bledsoe, he's got to leave at eight o'clock for another commitment.

Unless he can speak from the public, but that wasn't, he

wasn't part of our plan right now.

I mean, I think we understand what your project is, and I'm not necessarily sure that your swimming coach is, he'll talk about your program, but he's not, that's not necessarily what we're evaluating tonight.

Mr. Bledsoe does have his hand raised.

Thank you for letting me guys speak tonight.

My name is Dan Bledsoe, as Drew put forth.

And for the past 12 years, I have been a teacher at Western Albemarle.

And I'm also the head swimming and diving coach.

I am here, obviously, in support of the proposed fitness and aquatics facility.

When I first started at Western, there was not an indoor swimming facility in our community.

and our team traveled to the Fairview Swim and Tennis Club in Belvidere neighborhood from 8.30 to 10 o'clock at night in order to practice.

That all changed in 2012 with the addition of the Crozet Dome to the outdoor pool at Crozet Park.

The Crozet Dome was an amazing addition to our community at large.

With the dome installation, residents of our area were able to stay local and swim in their community.

At Western, we immediately saw the impact of having a local facility in which to train.

Despite practicing in the early morning before the start of school, I saw the participation of Western team grow from 38 athletes to 58 athletes.

Those numbers have not declined and the interest in the team continues to be incredibly high.

You can tune in on Thursday to the CBS 19 to check out one of the student athletes of the week is one of our Western swimmers.

I provide those numbers to you guys because I think it's important to show that local access is vital if residents are going to participate in an activity at a high rate.

Why is this indoor swimming facility so important?

Well, Drew brought up the opportunity for exercise, low impact exercise for people of all ages, but in particularly important for older adults, an indoor pool increases the opportunity for our seniors to have access to beneficial exercise.

But more importantly to me, and I know Drew brought up the Western swim team, but more importantly to me for someone who's been involved in swimming, who grew up with a pool in his backyard,

for 50 years, that it's a public safety issue.

Data from a recent study illustrates the importance of access to a swimming pool.

64% of Black children, 45% of Hispanic and Latino children, 40% of white children have few to no swimming skills.

These deficiencies have long-term impacts.

Children who don't learn to swim become adults who don't know how to swim.

When parents have no or low swimming skills, their children are unlikely to have proficient swimming skills.

This impacts 78% of Black children, 62% of Hispanic and Latino children, and 67% of white children.

Black children ages 5 to 19 drown in swimming pools at a rate five and a half times higher than white children in the same age range.

79% of children in households with incomes less than $50,000 have few to no swimming skills.

All right, next we have

and Family Salzburg.

Please state your name and address if you're representing a group or organization, state that as well.

Hi, yes, I apologize.

This is Mickey Salzburg, not my family.

That's what the Zoom on my phone joined us.

I am a resident of Crozet and am in support of the extension of the Crozet Park

specifically from the reasons of needing good after-school care for our children.

I actually, two years ago, had to pull my children from our local schools for a year because I was not able to get into our local school's after-school care program and didn't have the transportation for them.

I am an educator on the other side of the mountain and got special permission for my children to attend school there for a year just so that I could have care for them during the school day as the school day ended way before my school day did across the mountain.

And the availability of having that many more spaces will really significantly help our community, which is growing so quickly right now.

It is so hard to get after school care.

It's a part of a lottery system and one child can get in and the other child can't.

And then you're not guaranteed any transportation if you do find someone who's willing to watch your children after school because the buses are crowded.

So I really see a huge benefit to

to Crozet expanding, especially for the afterschool and for summer camp options for our children as well.

Thank you.

All right, next we have Jacob Feldman.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jacob Feldman.

My wife, my daughter, and I live in Parkside Villages where we moved in this February.

Although we're newcomers, we walk to Crozet Park at least twice every day via Hilltop Street.

Rather than moving into

Foothills Crossing, we selected a neighborhood that valued green space and large trees.

I believe that's what makes the neighborhood on Parkside Village unique.

That's why I oppose the approval of the special use permit.

As a community member, I believe that the proposed commercial project first does not belong in the neighborhood park.

The Planning Commission has approved a site along Route 250 for the recreational facility, and the commercial establishment will

may receive up to an additional 985 visitors per day that does not belong in a neighborhood park.

Secondly, I believe the proposed commercial project eliminates green space.

It dramatically enlarges indoor recreational spaces and expands parking lots.

There is already rapidly decreasing green space in Crozet as a result of residential development.

The proposed commercial building and its accompanying parking is antithetical to preserving that green space.

With organized sports beginning, all the available fields and grassy areas are being used, even the areas surrounding the lake.

As a family not yet participating in organized sports, there are already very limited spaces available on weekday afternoons and weekends.

You can park on grass, but you can't ever get that green space back.

I would like to direct the remainder of my time to the proposed Hilltop Street entrance.

A Hilltop Street entrance for the proposed commercial project will significantly affect the neighborhood character

and safety for residents on Hilltop Street.

However, the addition of some of the 985 visitors per day from the current 472 noted over the summer on Hilltop Street is significantly noticeable to a resident.

And it's going to further increase after extending into after Hilltop Street is extended into Foothill Crossing.

In addition to VDOT's generalized traffic assessment that represents the perspective of the driver

Please consider how traffic on Hilltop Street will affect residents, given the highly unusual and dynamic impact of the rapidly growing Foothill Crossing community.

Here are some of the details regarding my concerns with the Hilltop Street entrance.

First, the increased traffic because of the commercial project is not safe for drivers.

From the intersection of Indigo Road and Hilltop Street through the current end of Hilltop Street, there are no road markings along a windy street.

These roads will become more congested and cannot safely accommodate the increased traffic following the extension of Hilltop Street into Flood Hill Crossing.

In the staff planning report summary, there is no consideration of the suitability of Hilltop Street's ability to handle the increase in vehicular traffic coming to visit the commercial site.

Secondly, the increased traffic is an endangerment to pedestrians along Hilltop Street.

Before I move on to the next person, if there's anybody that emailed me and wanted to sign up to talk tonight, now is the time for you to raise your hand and get in the queue.

And just want to make sure I get everybody that sent me an email.

Next, we have Sarah Cason.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, ma'am.

Great, thank you.

My name is Sarah Kaysen.

I'm here tonight to represent the Parkside Village Homeowners Association.

Parkside Village is the neighborhood, as you've heard, which borders the park on its northern boundary.

Our association would like to voice two concerns regarding the special use application.

Number one, the application proposes that all construction traffic use the park's hilltop street access point.

Today, this access point is gated and only used during special events.

It was stated during the October virtual CCAC meeting that diverting all construction traffic to the hilltop access point was to avoid disruption to the park's visitors who currently use the park's main entrance on Park Road.

I'd like to bring to your attention that Hilltop Street is the access route, the only access route to over 80 existing homes and is already congested with construction traffic because it serves as the access route, again the only access route for Foothill Crossing's most recent build-out phase of an additional 32 homes.

This single street, Hilltop Street, will therefore soon serve as the only access road for 112 homes.

Our board believes it is dangerous to put the additional and significant construction burden on the homeowners whose houses line Hilltop Street as well as the Parkside Village neighborhood, a burden which is unwilling to be borne by the park itself at neither its main entrance nor an existing secondary entrance on Park Road, which currently sits unused.

Therefore, we respectfully request that the Planning Commission require construction traffic to use the unused secondary entrance on Park Road.

Number two, county engineers noted concerns regarding screening between the proposed facility and our subdivision.

We greatly appreciate such suggestions from the engineers.

The submitted plan shows the removal of existing mature growth trees at the park's north boundary.

These trees are the only remaining light and noise abatement features on the entire northern park boundary, a boundary that extends nearly a quarter of a mile along residential neighborhoods.

Their imminent removal leaves no natural screening whatsoever.

It would be reasonable to question the magnitude of disturbances that could possibly come from a park.

We welcome the sounds of soccer games and pickleball, but there have been significant disturbances over the years.

For example, the noise that was created after the pool's install of the dome maintenance system, which literally shook the walls of our neighbors' homes, and one which continues today.

the lightning alarm siren that frequently goes off during hours in which it should be deactivated.

Our point, there are acceptable disturbances and there are disturbances that are and should be avoided.

We respectfully request that a screening design plan, a specific and detailed design plan be required by the county as a condition prior to granting the special use permit.

We have submitted these concerns and others to the Planning Commission via email prior to this meeting.

It provides additional details on our proposed solutions as well.

I'd like to conclude by noting that your time is up.

Next, we have Peter Thompson.

Peter, please state your name, address, and if you're with a group or organization.

Thank you, Ms.

Shaffer.

Thank you.

Good evening and thank you for your time.

I'm Peter Thompson.

I'm the Executive Director of the Center at Albemarle, formerly known as the Senior Center, here to speak on the Claudius Crozet Park and support of the need for this great community service.

The Center is a 61-year-old nonprofit organization that positively impacts our community by providing opportunities for key ingredients in holistic healthy aging, sort of a teen center for people aged 50 and better.

Similar to Crozet, we saw needs in the Charlottesville Albemarle area that we have served for 61 years.

Over 10 years ago, after extensive market research and around experiences at the center, we identified the booming need for health aging programs in the greater Albemarle, Charlottesville area.

And as was stated by the applicant, Albemarle County's need studies have been first.

We have found that what this quality Crozet Park nonprofit has found, the need for more indoor recreation spaces to meet the priorities of Albemarle County residents.

We have some great, lovely large parks in the outreaches of the county.

They only meet a small portion of recreation needs.

There's a significant shortfall of indoor recreation spaces that can be used year-round in non-daylight hours, and by larger audiences that can use our large parks.

The booming 50-plus population is particularly acute here in Albemarle.

All of us want to age here in place, and we continue to be a magnet for older adults to relocate here.

This is a good thing for Albemarle County.

to continue to meet the needs of our drawing and aging population.

Facilities that encourage active aging, like what the Clovis-Cauzay Park is recommending, are key ingredients for meeting this need.

The Center, based on the information of our own research, developed a Vision 2025 document several years ago that defined a two-pronged approach to what Albemarle and area residents need from us.

One is to build a flagship facility in the urban heart of Albemarle, Charlottesville, which became the Center of Belvidere, which opened last year.

Two, because our area has and will continue to grow both in numbers and in geographic reach, we have long planned to deliver our programs through more satellite locations.

It makes no sense for us or our community to build many versions of the center of Belvidere all over the area.

Rather, we intend to partner with other entities to deliver the healthy AG programs that we excel in.

Crozet has always been the first area we identified as having unfulfilled needs and a critical mass of residents to sustain a robust community center.

Now, the Crozet Community Center expansion is the exact type of partnership the center has envisioned.

We know that the Western Albemarle growth demands more amenities to meet our citizens' needs.

We have been communicating with Mr. Holsworth for many, many years about this exciting project and look forward to how we would be able to work together and should work together to meet the increasing demand of healthy aging programs in this area.

We envision utilizing this new facility as a place where we can deliver more of our programs in collaboration with this organization.

We are both looking forward to working together to help all our neighbors, and for the center in particular, our older friends, to remain active and healthy so they can continue... Mr. Thompson, I'm sorry, but your time is up.

Thank you.

Next, we have Mark McKinney.

Mr. McKinney, please state your name and address.

You're with an organization.

Please state that as well and your time starts as soon as you start speaking.

Mr. McKinney, I need you to unmute yourself, please.

I'm going to let Mr. McKinney wait a minute or two and we'll try to get him back.

We're going to go with Allie Pesch.

Hi, my name is Allie Pesch and I am the chair of the Crozet CAC.

And at our

at the community meeting.

There was no motion for a resolution, but I just wanted to share that the overall feedback from the CCAC members was positive.

And for the rest of my time, I'll just speak not on behalf of the CCAC, but just personally, I am in support of this proposal and

think that the community is in great need of expanded facilities at the park.

And while I am sympathetic to the next door neighbors, especially during the construction phase, and I take their concerns seriously, I think that the park board and Mr. Collins are

you know going to be good neighbors and in the end this facility is going to serve our community really well and I just I also wanted to say that while I think one of the previous speakers

referred to it as a neighborhood park.

I just want to say that the Claudius Crozet Park is the primary central public recreation site for our entire growth area.

The park board has prioritized pedestrian access for this park.

The park itself is

huge part of the Crozet Master Plan.

And just the really, if you look at the map, it's the center of the growth area.

And so as the community grows, the park continues to grow and next door neighbors just should know that if they're familiar with the plan.

And the whole comprehensive plan

prioritizes green space in the rural areas and development in the growth area.

This is a natural development of that.

I just think that it's great that the park board is taking this project on with so much private investment and just

I think that's about all I wanted to say.

I appreciate it.

Your time is up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Rashmi, I'm gonna let you say your own last name.

Please state your name, address.

If you're affiliated with a group or organization, please state that as well.

Hi, my name is, thank you for allowing me to speak this evening.

My name is Rashmi Guy.

I'm a Crozet resident.

I'm also a mom to a second grader at Crozet Elementary.

I work full time and my day does not end when school is completed for the day.

Therefore I need a safe, reliable, and affordable place to send my daughter for afterschool care.

Each year it's very stressful as there are limited options in Crozet.

Many parents in the community experience this stress as they scramble to find care and hope their children get a spot in one of the programs.

In my case,

Each year I apply for the extended day enrichment program through Albemarle County Schools and it's based on a lottery of who gets in.

Last year there were only 60 spots for our school.

I also apply through the Crozet YMCA, which is now operated by ACAC.

The morning registration opens as their spots are limited as well, and hope my daughter gets into one of those options.

Bus transportation is also important for many families so their children can get transported to afterschool care if needed.

As our community is growing, the demand for the limited coveted spots is putting a strain on working parents.

It would be beneficial if the existing programs could expand, but I know there are space and staffing limitations at these sites.

Another need is for expanded summer camp spots.

Because the cost and convenience at Crozet Park in the past has traditionally allowed families a great option to send their kids.

My daughter attended camp at Crozet Park the past two summers and enjoyed it, which allowed me to work.

These spots fill up very quickly, often within a couple of days of registration of opening during non-COVID times.

Currently, the physical indoor space of the park is limited.

I believe that expanding the park will ease the space limitations and allow for more families to utilize the care options.

Thank you.

Next, we have Pamela Beasley.

Please state your name, address,

Yes, I'm actually Alba Beese, I'm Pamela's husband.

Pamela and I live in Crozet in Parkside Village on

We have been making a lot of notes tonight and listening to what's being said, and I think that there's some exciting things about what's being proposed, but the problems we have is that I don't believe I've heard anything that's helped us in our feelings about the problems with infrastructure, especially roads.

The entrance to the park proposed on the hilltop is, I think, will be detrimental to us getting in and out of our neighborhood and for emergency vehicles to get into our neighborhood when it's needed.

Also, the addition of the 70 or 35 homes behind us in the crossings

that they're developing now.

That gives us a potential 70 cars going in and out of Parkside Village, in and out of our area and up and down Hilltop.

At least I haven't heard anyone mention the intersection at Tabor and 240.

I'll just say today, I've worked from home this morning.

Normally it takes me 25 minutes to go to my home to Charlottesville.

It took me 20 minutes to

to get from Tabor Street onto 240 and just to get there.

So the traffic is already a problem.

And I just don't know that we're really addressing that.

And there's got to be a solution because I think that the proposed project probably will add a lot of the types of things that people talked about that we need in the area for children, for senior adults, for whatever, swimmers and all of that.

All of that, the dogleg at Hilltop and High Street is just impossible to get through sometimes.

And it's gotten worse and worse over the years.

But now, right now, with the additional traffic of the construction traffic coming in and out, and that's been alleviated a little bit lately, but it's still been really hard to get in and out of our area.

I just want to make sure that you are, you know, as you're planning on this, that you're planning for ways for people to get in and out of, and right now we haven't even had people on the road that much during the pandemic, but when things open up and we're back to, you're going into work, everyone going into work like they have been, we're going to have a real problem trying to get in and out of our neighborhood.

I'm concerned about green space, that's been talked about tonight, and I'm really concerned that

that we are losing a lot of the green spaces around us.

I have further concerns about, well, I mentioned emergency vehicles getting in and out of our neighborhoods.

Not only just roads- Mr. Beasley, I'm sorry, but your time is up.

All right, next we're going to try Mark McKinney again.

Hi, thank you.

I apologize for the first go around, the technical difficulties.

My name's Mark McCanney.

I live at 5353 Park Road in the Westhall neighborhood.

First and foremost, thanks for letting me speak.

I am in favor of this project, okay?

I think this is a great idea, great plan.

We can fine tweak it with the community and CCAC down the road.

You've grown Crozet so much from a planning side that we need facilities to support this.

But I want to caveat this.

We just had a child hit on St.

George Ave.

OK, Park Road has absolutely zero sidewalks to allow the residents in West Hall, Westlake, Foothill crossings to take that avenue safely to the park.

I do not feel comfortable allowing my eight-year-old daughter, nine-year-old daughter, hours when she grows to walk through the trails in the woods out of fear of her being assaulted.

We've already had some problems at the park with some teenage boys.

either breaking into equipment or harassing younger children.

These concerns on the infrastructure, and I know that VDOT is responsible for the roads, but I want to make sure that the county

is simultaneously planning capital improvement projects to support the growth.

2019 VDOT report on average had 1,500 vehicles a day traveling on Park Road from Crozet Ave.

That number is only increasing based on the residentials that the Planning Commission is approving for the rezoning applications.

And now you grow this park to a 30,000 square foot facility.

When you complete the downtown Crozet Square, that's even more traffic coming in.

When you complete the Eastern F Connector Road to 250, that's even more traffic coming in, cutting through these neighborhoods.

Again, I want to see capital improvement projects from the county mirror the growth and to enable families to allow their children and going out on family walks or riding their bikes safely.

Let me remind you also, if you weren't aware,

In November, before we had a county stakeholder meeting with issues in the Westhall neighborhood, there was a DUI on Park Road that went through the fencing on the Crozet Park through the baseball fence and back out onto the road.

The time of day is irrelevant.

The fact is you have 1,500 cars a day traveling on this road in front of the park.

Thank you.

Next we have

Good evening, my name is Phil Kirby.

I live in Pluckside Village.

It's likely debatable the reason for all the furious stampede of development in Crozet.

Whatever it is, somehow,

That has justified allowing developers to scratch out every inch of our town's profitable real estate unsupported by infrastructure and heedless of how it affects existing neighborhoods.

Property values, safety, green space are all being negatively impacted.

Commissioners, we expected the development, but it doesn't have to be done this way.

Crozet Park's request is an example of how the urgency to develop has gone out of control.

We have been the park's neighbors for 18 years and supported on every level.

I donated time and money to the building of the dome.

So I wonder why isn't the president of the park board making the presentation tonight?

Why hasn't the park, the neighborhood associations around it to discuss the project?

Why hasn't the park provided a drawing that shows the physical scale of the building looming over its neighbors?

What happens when this for-profit enterprise fails?

Because this project, regardless of what staff's report says, will substantially change the character of the neighborhoods around it due to its physical size.

Three-quarters of an acre in footprint, over 30 feet high,

and its parking and traffic requirements that all of the commissioners acknowledged tonight.

Picture that across the street from your house or next to your house.

Would it change the character of your neighborhood?

This proposal is for a for-profit entity, a business that will invite 985 car trips every day into a residential neighborhood, not a commercial district, a residential neighborhood.

The last Planning Commission meeting I attended, the board, the CCAC staff and public participants agreed redesignating the site at 250 adjacent to Brownsville Elementary as an appropriate place for a recreation facility.

It makes sense in that location for a daycare to be closer to the schools that use it and where parking might even be shared.

I have been very upset about the way the development directly around us has been handled and become engaged in providing comment and what I learned afterward were by right applications.

I was told my comments would be important and found by right means the public can say whatever it wants, but it doesn't matter.

The applicant wants to change the exit onto Hilltop from a special event exit only to a full-time entrance exit.

They should be required to show that impact now, not with a site plan later when public comment can be ignored.

I'm sorry, but your time is up.

At this time, is there anybody else that would like to speak on this matter?

Or we will take it back.

We have one more on hand.

Hold on.

One more person.

Hi, thanks.

I'm Thomas Adej, and I live on.

Hilltop Street, 5643.

My property actually touches the park.

I can see the pond from my deck.

I do think Crozet needs better park facilities, but I think there are serious problems with this application.

I think it's, as the last speaker said, not realistic to think that this two-story

46,000 square foot building 30 feet from the street is not going to affect the character of the neighborhood with no screening.

I think that's just not plausible.

So significant effect on the neighborhood.

Absolutely.

Traffic.

I think that that will be a problem.

I think I agree with the last speaker.

The county should now require

the applicant to spell out how a new entrance would work rather than kicking that down the road.

Green space.

If three quarters of this area is to be paved, the sense in which it's green space is purely nominal.

I agree with the comment that this is going to be something that's called a park.

If the county cares about that, and they should, why not require permeable surfaces?

Why not require detailed screening?

Why not require that the applicant addresses community concerns about traffic and a new proposed entrance?

The idea that future sidewalks

and pathways internal to the park will solve traffic problems is hard to understand.

That people are gonna suddenly put their cars aside and walk to the park does not seem plausible.

So it's a beautiful little park.

The community needs these things, but traffic concerns,

nature of the neighborhood concerns, green space concerns, and commercial development in a residential neighborhood, ACACA for profit outfit.

These are all things that need to be addressed before this gets approved.

Thank you.

At this time, we do not have any more speakers with their hands raised.

Thank you very much.

So since we are back to this point where we are closing the public hearing and I don't see the applicant.

I see one of the applicants, but if you would like Mr. Collins, you have three minutes if you'd like to sort of wrap up before we come back and discuss among yourselves.

I'll take this, guys.

I'm just going to thank the Planning Commission for their consideration.

This has been a long time coming for the community of Crozet.

It's been executed with a lot of thought and detailed planning.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Holzberg.

Thank you.

to discuss.

Well, Karen, can I go to Karen first before we go to you, Jenny?

Yes, Mr. Chair.

So I want to make a number of comments.

And I know that my internet is terrible on satellite, so hopefully it will come through.

First off, in terms of the trees that would, there are substantial mature shade trees that would be proposed for removal.

And I know that there is some screening proposed

But because of the environmental values of the trees, if this development or I'm calling it a development because it's a new facility, if this additional facility and new pool and et cetera were to be approved, I think that the trees should be replaced on an inch per inch caliper basis.

So to explain that, if you

It would be common to see something such as you cut down 10 trees, you replace them with 10 small starter trees.

That would take 20 to 40 years to reach the same dimensions and provide the same benefits for shade, noise abatement, air pollution mitigation, and reducing urban heating.

So I did want to make that comment.

I'm not in support of adding the access at Hilltop because of the curvature of the road in that location.

And the fact that if you look at the road network, look farther away from just around the park, I don't believe that we get a lot of advantage in terms of traffic flow into and out of the area.

and I think the detriment to the residents is substantial in terms of adding a lot of additional traffic to a small neighborhood street.

But then I want to just make this comment and I always appreciate my colleagues' insights and so I'm anxious to hear what your thoughts are because I may change my mind after you deliberate

But at this time, I am not in support of adding this size and scale of a facility to what is a neighborhood green space.

I believe that it is not in keeping with the comprehensive plan of parks and green space that it's designated for.

I think the facility is out of scale with the park and is not in the right location for such a facility.

I don't debate at all that such facilities are needed in the Crozet area.

But I don't think tucking all of that massing into a neighborhood park is the right solution.

So my opinion differs from staff in that I find the additional 985 vehicle trips per day to be a substantial impact.

I understand that the traffic engineers look at it from how much time you have to wait at an intersection.

I'm looking at it in terms of the disturbance of the quality of life of the people who live along those streets and who did not necessarily expect to have something of that scale in the middle of a small scale residential neighborhood.

So I'm going to leave it at that for now.

I think there are other things that, as Mr. Keller said earlier, that could be done in terms of permeable pavement.

There is options for reinforced grass called grasscrete that can be used for overflow parking.

But I was really struck by the applicants talking about swim meets and different competitions and I started thinking about buses transporting teams to the site.

and it just doesn't seem to me to be the right scale of use for a small neighborhood park.

And I say that with more than 20 years of experience in doing small scale park design.

So that's where I'm coming from.

But I could change my mind and I look forward to hearing what the rest of the commissioners have to say.

Rick.

Rick and then Jenny, do you want to know?

Yeah, I would like to just, I don't want to, I want to let other people talk before I, you know, go through a couple of questions that I had that I think would be helpful about traffic, but I guess to just quickly and to add a little bit of

context that maybe I could add, having been someone who's been at the park and enjoyed the amenities that are there.

I guess I would like to add to the discussion that right now there are swim meets happening at the park and they have for years and years and years.

I'm not familiar with buses coming in.

I suppose maybe there are buses of different

groups that come for competitions.

I know the nights for swim meets are really busy, but I guess what I'd like to add to the conversation is that from my observation, a lot of these activities are already happening at the pool and the recreation areas that specifically we're talking about.

where the expansion would be and there simply is not enough space for all these things to happen at the same you know or throughout the day so you have swim team and you have water aerobics and then people who just want to enjoy swimming and swim lessons and so I think

The way I see it, the goal here is to allow for those things that are already happening to continue.

I don't think it's to create a thing to have a bunch of swimmates when we aren't already having them.

We have been for years and having all those things happening in this one pool is

has gotten to the place for years, I think, where it's really difficult to find the time to manage all that.

So I wanted to just put that out there that in my mind, I do worry that people think of this as a neighborhood park.

And it's not a park that I think is meant to only be enjoyed by a couple of neighbors.

It's very centrally located.

and it is a community park and I want to talk more and I'll let other people talk about the valid concerns that neighbors do have about impacts to them and traffic and things like this but I guess I do want to be clear that

You know, I'm reacting to the application that's before us.

And I don't know that I'm being asked to think about where there might be a facility somewhere else in Crozet.

But when I do think about that, you know, there aren't a huge amount of spots that it makes sense.

And so I do think it makes sense in my mind to expand the services at the park.

has to offer in the amenities that are there.

And just a point of clarification, because I think this was mentioned, and we got this in emails that there isn't anything approved, but there is interest in an applicant, which is completely separate from the park that's interested in the site that was mentioned.

up on 250 that's tucked back behind the schools there.

And that facility, I think their vision is to offer a completely different type of service than what I think is being envisioned here.

So I just wanted to add that as a point of clarification, and I'll let others go through their points.

But I would like a chance to ask Kevin a couple of questions about traffic.

Well, I think Rick wanted to speak and maybe others do.

Yes, please.

I want to thank Karen for channeling my my inner thoughts as well.

I have

Same thoughts about the loss of these beautiful trees.

I have concerns about the hilltop exit and the impact on that neighborhood.

I asked the question that should the commission be supportive of a car intensive, asphalt intensive recreational use in a current green space?

surrounded by residential streets and residential communities where there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the applicant has done a lot of fence mending with those communities and moving to a win-win situation.

The level of opposition from the surrounding communities to this park

with a voice or two in the crowd who supports the project has been pretty firmly uniform in opposing it.

And I also have concerns that 985 trips a day, as I indicated earlier,

earlier is a substantial impact.

What has been coursing through my ears tonight has been Joni Mitchell.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

and the other thought is this community, they don't know what you've got till it's gone when all of this green space just disappears with two very large buildings going up.

This is no longer Claudius Crozet Park.

It is the Claudius Crozet recreational facility with surrounding rounds and I really do feel

that we're being asked to look at a proposed use in a location where that use is incompatible with the location.

And that's what I've been wrestling with because I just feel there's an absence of bike facilities.

There's a lack of specificity in terms of the design of the two buildings.

There's a lack of really helpful traffic information

985, that's a huge number.

If I sat here and watched 100 cars per hour go by, then I wouldn't be living on a road or a street, I'd be living on an avenue.

And really fundamentally, I think the issue is, I don't think there's been an adequate level of consultation.

with the surrounding communities on this project.

It's well and good to have CCAC go ahead and sign on to this.

They represent the interests broadly of the Crozet community at large, but we have micro communities

to the north and south and the east and the west, and I don't see the level of consultation with them and hearing their concerns and trying to address their concerns.

Who would like to follow?

Rick.

Luis, I see your hand.

So I spent many a weekend in that park.

Both my boys went through beach free baseball, then on to Greenwood.

I coached there for many years, so I know the park well.

And I was there recently.

I hadn't been there probably in a couple of years.

And what struck me was just the amount of green that's gone from the park.

There was always a need for shade trees.

I think there's been some attempt to plant some trees, but the amount of trees that have been taken out, to me, just struck me.

I remember playing in the lower field, beautiful green backdrop.

There's a mound of dirt now.

behind that lower field.

So I do think that this development had an opportunity

to really integrate with the park, take advantage of some of the areas that were less developed and how you think about extending green space, extending shade opportunities, integrating with the traffic patterns that are in there now.

There's a lot of activity with baseball and the swimming and people crossing that driveway as you come in.

the art festival and so forth.

So I don't see in the plan right now, I understand it's conceptual, I understand you don't have a fully vetted site plan yet or design, but what I see from a conceptual standpoint as a planner and architect, I feel that it's lacking.

It's lacking from a massing standpoint and how it's integrated in articulation standpoint.

So there's a lot that can improve and I hope that the developers heed the wise counsel of this committee because they've talked about it.

They talked about sustainability elements that again are lacking.

The impervious papers to me is something that really should be

part and parcel of this project.

I didn't hear anything about cutoff lights.

I heard about lights.

What is the approach?

I think it was asked.

So in terms of nice skies and so forth.

So there's a lot that I just don't see in the conversation of this project and the concept that leads me to think that there was a sustainable approach and an approach consistent with

Who would like to speak?

I haven't visited this park, so I don't have the perspective that Jenny or Luis has.

I do have the perspective as a homeowner in Belvedere and

You know, neighbor to the center and neighbor to the soccer field house that went up in our neighborhood and understand the scale of that building next to two residences.

And I do think that that's somewhat similar in scale to what's being proposed here.

And I will say that you'd never understand the impact of it until it was, you know, actually built and it is big.

And so I think and how it

how you can see it as you even enter Belvedere to the back.

So I'm grateful for it.

And there was traffic studies done for it on how much traffic would be.

And it wasn't anywhere close to 985 trips for the soccer facility, but you do recognize and the neighbors have seen the increase, especially during the soccer times for that field.

So I'll say all that to say that the

I think it does warrant more careful consideration of where that building is put in relation to it.

I second and kind of support that the hilltop street entrance doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a traffic perspective as you look at and it's kind of hard and I say that I don't have a full picture but when I look at the

conceptual plan of when the downtown Crozet is done and how the traffic's gonna route.

You know, where I do have concerns about Park Street and Hillstop Street and having two different infrastructures and the sidewalks for the safety of people moving throughout this straight and how Hilltop dumps in the Tabor that gets to 240, just thinking about the routing.

So I do have concerns about that.

And then I have concerns about even using it for construction.

entrance.

I understand the desire to keep the park open and knowing that if you use the front park it would likely cut off access to the pond and end up walking around it.

But it does seem to be staging a bunch of construction vehicles closer to residences puts a lot of burden on those residences for that construction period of 14 months.

So overall I think that I do

I do kind of see this, I'm respectful, I do see this more of a community park than a neighborhood park.

So I think there should be, or I'm supportive broadly of having increased facilities there if they're done well and thought out with balancing the impervious nature, the placement of them, and the safety and traffic concerns that have been expressed here.

So as it stands now, I would

Someone else care to speak to this?

Well, I came into this and during the meeting, I came in with this, the idea of being supportive of the project and putting a number

and asking for a number of conditions to be added to the staff conditions for me to be able to vote for.

But I must say that Karen has spoken to my inner gut as a professor of landscape architecture who's thought about parks and park design his whole career.

And I think that just what Daniel was saying, if this is going to be a community park,

then I don't think it's the right location for the community park.

And I think that there's another sort of hidden issue that as we're peeling back history, we have a responsibility to talk about.

And that is that if this is a swim club from the 1950s, this is part of our segregationist past and our segregationist history in Virginia.

And we need to

It was good to hear the swim coach talk about the desire to expand the young people who would become involved with this.

And that might be one answer.

But when I put that together with its location in the center of a neighborhood area where I just think that what's being proposed is so changing this from what it has been historically.

that a land swap of some sort finding another area to do this kind of facility.

And then I must say finally that I just, I'm wondering about the private facilities versus the public facilities and whether this ultimately needs to be a public park.

And maybe that's what Rick was getting at with asking the series of questions that he's been about what the relationship is.

I don't have a problem with the concessionaire.

We have a number of great parks or great national parks that have had a long history of concessionaires and changing concessionaires.

So I don't share the public concern about, you know, that public-private conflict, but I'm really questioning the location as we hear these many concerns.

And it's not because of so much the surrounding neighborhoods and what they think, but

to my mind, but what is the best location for the kinds of numbers of individuals that would use this from what we've been hearing about is all the positives, the daycare, the swimming, and the broad sense of swimming from teaching the first time young person to swim up through elderly exercise classes and everything in between.

So if we decide as a group to support this, I have a list of seven or eight additional conditions or building on it.

But at this point, I'm inclined to be with Karen.

Anyone else?

Yeah, I would like to do that.

And I think that I guess I had some questions to ask about traffic stuff, but I don't know that I'm going to do that right now after hearing this reaction.

I guess a couple things I'd like to say is that I agree with a lot of the concerns that the community has brought up, particularly about traffic and Tabor, which is a street that isn't mentioned as much that feeds into all this.

So it's Taver, Hilltop, Park Road and High Street, you know, all have had to bear the traffic from development after development after development that all feed through these neighborhoods.

And I'm very sensitive to that.

And I do think there are some things that, you know, Kevin might have shared with us that would help people understand, you know, some things that are happening that would help alleviate some of those

I heard one speaker talk about extra connections being created and that more traffic comes through but also it helps traffic move away and out of those areas without having to come through only that one place.

I definitely have a different reaction to the plan itself and while I

I've struggled trying to balance wanting to know more about lighting and stormwater management and these different sorts of things that other people have communicated a desire to know more about.

I have been trying to balance what I would expect that we would find out if this moved forward at site planning and what we would want to know now.

And I appreciate that people want to know that level of detail.

So I agree that I think some of that's lacking in this, which is making it difficult for us and then possibly the community to react to it.

I guess I will say that I don't have such a negative reaction to the size and scale of the building.

because I see the need in Crozet for something like this.

And it's an enhancement of what is already being offered on site.

And I do see with parking lots and things like this, the green space disappearing.

But I also, you know, driving around over there to reorient myself and imagine this plan on this property.

You know, as much as I don't want to dismiss the benefits of having these green spaces.

But I do think

Some spaces are underutilized.

And so when I look at this, I think there's a lot happening here.

It's really probably a squeeze to get all this in.

I appreciate why that's being done.

So I think that when I look at it, I see an attempt to try to preserve some of the green space that's there, make use of some parking lots and stuff that really doesn't make sense now to create the space that the community needs.

and to Daniel's point, or wait, Luis's point about the looking through the ball fields and seeing all dirt.

That's, you know, that's residential construction.

That's not the park.

So yes, there's trees that were there.

There's more trees gone than should have been taken down.

But it is something that is a huge change in the way it looks when you're at the park.

But I think having all that development there makes me

feel the need for something like this to happen in our area even more.

And I also want to add that I think that this isn't I'm not saying this to minimize the voices that have expressed concern.

And, you know, many coming from the immediate neighbors.

But I think there's a lot of voices in the community that we aren't hearing tonight that would, you know, express a desire to have something like this.

and when I think, as a planning commissioner would, you know, where might somebody like this go?

Because I think we have a tendency to say, you know, we like this sort of idea, but it should just be somewhere else.

I don't really know where that would be, to be honest with you all.

And we're not being asked to decide that tonight.

But, you know, I do want to express that to the commission that I guess I feel like I agree that there's a lot that probably needs to get sorted out here and

There's probably more than what we can say would happen at a stage down the road.

But I am I would like to encourage the continued attempt to have this happen on this property.

Thank you.

I really like the program of the space, you know, for this site.

It seems like it's something that is definitely needed.

And so coming into this, I was certainly on board with the staff support, and now hearing my colleagues is making me waver, but I'd be in favor of trying to work something out, like Tim was saying, and have a list of conditions.

But I do agree that there's some sensitivities that are being missed.

At the same time, I feel like for the greater good, if you will, that it's a good project, in my opinion.

So that's kind of where I stand.

Does anyone else want to speak?

So I guess my sense is that I understand that the facilities that are there are woefully

overused right now with their own capacity.

And I don't know how that's going to be corrected, certainly because this is not slated to be a county park.

So I think there's always going to be a need for some sort of private nonprofit relationship and how the park does that is

something that I think is best left to the park.

That's not my role to manage the decision between that particular C3 and how they go about doing business.

My sense right now is to sort of figure out, given what they're asking us to do, whether or not I feel comfortable with it happening in this particular place, this particular manner.

And perhaps I've tipped myself that I am extremely concerned about the setbacks.

So I would say right now that I am not in support of a special exception, I will say that.

I think whether or not it's 100 and some odd feet or it's 35 feet, the 100 and some odd feet is not to the home, it's to the property line that needs to be, needs to be, we need to be, I need to be concerned with.

In the same way that we were concerned with the Yancey setback where they were

There was a movement to talk about where the machinery was to the house as opposed to where the property line was, where the machinery was to the property line.

Property lines do matter.

And that's a concern for me.

And that's a particular concern for me when there is this desire to not only come upon that piece of property with the setback exception as being a quest, but also then put a road through it.

that are parallel to that piece of property.

That's a piece that I have a significant concern about and how that road would enter high top and hilltop as a number of our colleagues have spoken about.

And so that's a significant sort of point of reservation for me.

I must say, I somewhat can appreciate how the concessionaire is trying to program what they're trying to program in that building.

and so they're looking at how do we manage the square footage here to sort of maximize the Jews and to get the number of bodies that we hope to get there in order to have the kinds of programs, certainly the programs for the individuals in the Crozet community and at the same time sort of be able to make this a positive cash flow experience for them.

Would I have liked to have seen it smaller?

Yes, because I, like everyone else, thought that that is going to significantly change the feeling of that particular community park.

But again, my question is, is that my role to be, to insert myself with the C3 and their vendor?

And while that doesn't feel like my role, it does feel like I'm concerned that this is putting

but there's probably a different solution.

So whether or not it's through Tim's emerging list or it's through, well, I don't, I should back down on that.

I don't know even how I get to a yes because I am not in favor of the setback and I'm not in favor of where it goes.

You've posed a very good question about the P3 and our role in relationship with it, but the only point I would make is that given the fact that the county has had a 36-year relationship with the CCP, the use of this area, this site, has been imbued with a county dimension for almost now

40 years.

And so I think it's inescapable for the Planning Commission not to feel

that it has a role in weighing in, not so much on the size of the buildings, that really, you know, and the scale question and character, a little bit of that is appropriate for us right here, but is it consistent with our role as a planning commission to be talking about this P3 and what is the best use on this land?

Totally.

You know, if there were not any county dimension to this, I think your point, I would agree with your point, but that's part of the reason I really wanted to go back and find out the length and depth of the county relationship with CCP and the role that the county has played all the way through there.

So this has been an ongoing P3 for Albemarle County since November, 1985.

And it will be based on the remarks this evening where there's an intention to come back to the board and ask for some financial support of this part.

36 years isn't going to be the end of it, it will continue on.

into years with 40s around them.

Well, here we are.

May I?

Please.

So I guess in an effort to move ourselves forward, I don't know if people feel like they're more inclined to, or let's say this, it feels like what I'm hearing is that there are enough concerns that people don't want to see this move forward.

And I share a lot of those concerns.

I'm not going to make a recommendation for denial because I do.

I would prefer to see a scenario in which we try to push this forward with a bunch of conditions like Tim, hopefully.

might have written down if we were to go on that path.

I've written down some.

And so that would be what I would prefer.

But I hear what other people are saying.

I share those concerns.

So if that's how people feel, then someone can make that recommendation for denial.

If people felt like what Corey was expressing, then that's how I came into this.

And that's still how I feel where we could move forward in a way that

recommended approval for something that the community needs, but try to put some expectations or things on that as it would move forward that it might become better and have a lot of unanswered questions answered.

Right.

I would just like to say, Jenny, I can't speak for Karen or Daniel or Tim on this issue, nor the chair.

But I don't think any of us are necessarily saying denial as much as we think this project can be strengthened and it can be a better proposal.

And so I would much rather see a deferral than a denial.

But yeah, I agree.

I guess I was just trying to in an effort to move forward.

Those are our options is that goes forward with a recommendation of approval.

And there's a laundry list of things that have been brought up or denial with a bunch of suggestions about things that should be improved and that have been brought up.

And then also, it's not my choice, but the applicant's choice to in the face of a bunch of things that

people are seeking clarity on and maybe some changes that there could be a deferral.

Chairman, so I'm the applicant.

This is Drew.

I think what we will do is we will pass them through through staff and then ask you to sit with staff in the close-in future to respond to them.

So we have a request from the applicant for defer.

So moved.

Well, that's really up to the commissioner making the motion.

It doesn't sound as though there's a date specific in mind at this point.

It's been moved by Jenny.

Is that second, Tim?

This is for Andy.

Tim, were you still seconding that?

Yes.

For discussion, I guess I would just add that in part of the communication that we might we would have with Andy to have the applicant have a list of all the things we've discussed here in a way that is concise and

helpful.

I think that what also might be good is we've gotten some communication from the public.

And I think a lot of that's been reflected in the comments that the applicants heard here tonight.

But there were there's new stuff that came through.

And there's a lot of really great information in there, I think that the applicant could benefit from.

So I think we should pass along all those things that wouldn't have made it into the packet.

So that they may see some of the

So noted.

So we will be asking, along with the list that we formulated, that any communications that came to us as public communications, particularly the entire package be included in that when you, Andy, and Mr. Holt's work and Mr. Collins sit down and speak, or sit down and go over this, along with Charles, Mr. Wright.

Are there other items or just other things that need to be shared to discuss people you have to love?

Luis?

Luis, did you want to?

I saw you move forward.

OK.

No, sorry.

I saw when you move forward, you usually want to say something.

So I was preparing us for.

Mr. Keller?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Yes.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Thank you.

So let's move forward.

Now, Charles, I'm coming to you.

How can we gather this information

I would suggest that the staff can get together, we can compile a list of a lot of the comments that we heard tonight.

There are several themes that went around, transportation, green space, layout.

Stormwater management, impervious surface, impact on the surrounding community, some of the traffic connections.

We'll kind of compile all that.

Does that feel like an appropriate way to move forward to working at you?

Yes.

Yes.

I'm looking at the two of you, and I'm not seeing any movement there.

I got hands up and nods from everybody else.

Yeah, fine.

Then that's how we'll move forward with that.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Holtzmann and Mr. Collins, thank you very much.

And I would encourage you to sit with staff and see if there's a way forward on this, because I think we're hopeful.

We're hopeful that this could be an added set of futures to the Crozet part.

Thank you very much.

So we are going to move on to

All right, well, I'll just take a few minutes just to let you know there's, everyone's seen there is a memo in an attached annual report for the 2020 year.

This appears to be about the time each year that this has been sent to the board.

So I've attached that for y'all to see.

One point of correction to note, there was an incorrect expiration date on quite a few of y'all's terms that was pointed out.

And we got that corrected earlier and posted an updated version as soon as that was pointed out.

So that's been corrected.

I want to just highlight a couple of quick points.

I will say, I thought, you know, we have worked through a unique time as a commission I think I've seen y'all and some, some of y'all I have never even met in person.

Some of y'all I have during one meeting so this has been an interesting year in a pandemic.

Thought I should certainly highlight this virtual world we've been in, as well as the fact that we have conducted 26 meetings throughout that 2020 year, which is quite a bit.

It's almost at the levels of the previous two years.

I wanted to highlight some of the comparisons to previous years just so it would start a benchmark, and that's something I'd like to build on moving forward so we can kind of see how we stack up in future years.

Also wanted to kind of highlight some of the unique projects that are starting to come through here, you know, and those two that I picked were Rivers Edge and Bamboo Grove, two very unique projects on very constrained properties that created really unique solutions to provide affordable housing and integrate into the natural features of that site and the surrounding neighborhoods.

And I just kind of mentioned a few other things.

And last, I really just wanted to thank the commission for working through us, working with us throughout this year.

We've had some stumbles converting to virtual and trying to figure things out, but I think we really accomplished a very productive year.

And hopefully we can get back to in-person meeting soon, but I think it was a very productive year, an effective year as we navigated over the Zoom world.

I'm happy to answer your questions on the format.

I will say there in previous years, I know a few commission members have pointed out the indicators of progress report in comparison to the comp plan.

That certainly is something I would like to find a way to continue.

But as you know, we are a bit staff constrained in trying to manage throughout this past year.

And it is a heavy lift to do that, but we certainly don't want to ignore that.

You know, we're going to hold you to that.

You know, those of us who will still be here, I don't know, you know, I'm over at the end of this year, so I don't know what's going to happen.

But there are people on the screen here that are going to hold you to that because it was a piece that was not only was it lifted up as being recognized as an excellent report, and I'm sure you've seen