Planning Commission Regular Meeting   4/26/2022

We are live.

All right.

We'll go ahead and bring this meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission April 26, 2022 to order.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Here.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

The quorum has been established.

Today, we are here to cover a number of different matters.

But the first item that we have is other matters that are not on the agenda that someone would wish to speak to.

So these are for matters that are not on tonight's agenda.

I don't see anyone.

OK.

All right.

I will close that, and we'll move on.

I want to note that tonight is a hybrid meeting.

This is a new format that we have established after COVID.

So we have people speaking in person, and then we also have the opportunity to speak remotely so people can Zoom into the meeting.

So I just need to read this brief announcement.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Planning Commission's homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.

All right, with that, we'll move on to the consent agenda on the next sheet.

Does anyone wish to pull anything forward?

So moved.

All right, any discussion?

All in favor?

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

OK, so we're going to move on to the next item for our public hearing, which is ZMA-2021-100013 Southwood Phase 2.

Before we begin, though, I want to give a few rules of order just to help us have a smooth meeting.

So normally, we have three minutes for each speaker to tell us what they came to say.

And we ask that you introduce yourself and tell us where you live.

You don't have to give us the exact address.

If you have an interpreter, if you're using an interpreter, then you may have six minutes so that you have time for your comments to be relayed to us after you've stated them.

So we'll be making sure to distinguish between a single speaker and someone who's speaking with the aid of an interpreter.

I'll also try to give options for the interpreter to interpret what we're saying back to the audience.

So we may want to just keep that in mind.

I myself often talk quickly, so I'll try not to do that.

And then the other thing I wish to ask of everyone, and this is a normal thing that we have,

which is a lot of times when someone is speaking and you wish to show support for that but you're not yourself planning to get up and speak if you like to show support you could just raise your hand we prefer that instead of cheering or clapping so you know we would like you to just raise your hand if you're in support if you don't want to support it you want to do thumbs down that's fine but we want to limit the amount of noise from the audience so that we can hear the speakers who are up at the at the podium okay

So the normal process that is for a staff report to be given.

Then we follow that with questions from the Planning Commission up here.

Then we have a presentation by the applicant.

We can then ask the applicant questions.

And then we have comments from all of you who are here to speak this evening.

We will also be going in the order of people who are here in person speaking first.

And if there are people who are on Zoom, who are online, who also are dialing in to speak, we'll do them second.

So those are the main things that I just wanted to convey.

All right, so with that, we'll go ahead and move forward with opening the public hearing.

I just need to get my presentation pulled up because this was the applicants.

Good evening.

I'm Rebecca Ragsdale, and I'm a planning manager in the Department of Community Development, and I'll be guiding us through this presentation this evening.

This is my first time back in the boardroom, so it's nice to see you all.

With me this evening are some other staff that are available to answer questions.

Kevin McDermott, our transportation planner,

Transportation Planning Manager will be presenting the transportation portion of the presentation and then Stacey Pethia is also here to answer any questions about affordable housing and grants and some of the other information we'll cover this evening.

As you mentioned, this is a public hearing.

The Planning Commission will be making their recommendation.

You may choose to approve this application, approve with conditions, disapprove, or if the item was to be deferred, that would only be if the applicants request.

But the public hearing has been requested this evening.

So we want to give you a little bit more background than we typically do.

There's a lot of

A lot of history with Southwood.

I think the applicant will primarily cover, primarily, excuse me, sometimes I tend to talk too fast as well.

The applicant will primarily cover that.

We'll give you a brief update on phase one.

The board received an update last week.

The Planning Commission last received an update in September.

And some of you were not on the commission at that time.

So we want to cover some of that background.

And then we will go over briefly the proposed rezoning of staff analysis and our recommendations.

before the applicant gives their presentation.

We talk a lot about phase two versus phase one.

This is a location map to orient everyone.

Phase one is along Old Lynchburg Road.

It's highlighted with the yellow phase one labels and then phase two.

is the entirety of the mobile home park itself.

So this will be redevelopment of the mobile home park, whereas phase one was undeveloped property at the time.

It is off of old Lynchburg Road, and then Hickory Street runs through phase two out to the Oak Hill neighborhood and eventually Stagecoach and Fifth Street, and then Biscuit Run Park is to the south.

That background I mentioned does not by any means cover the full history of Southwood even before Habitat acquired it in 2007.

But I did want to hit some of the highlights in terms of some of the key milestones of county actions that have been associated with Southwood and the support that has continued to phase one with this project.

That has included the action plan

that was put in place before the phase one rezoning was acted on and the performance agreement for phase one.

Phase one was under review for a longer period of time than this rezoning has been under review.

It was actually under review from February 2018 to June 2019 and included a number of re-submittals and work sessions.

Ultimately, it was approved in August 2019.

And we'll go over a little bit about

the highlights of the Phase 1 rezoning.

Phase 1 is 33.96 acres and was approved for a maximum of 450 units and a maximum of 50,000 square feet of non-residential and included 12 blocks, which was also inclusive of green space blocks that had a number of amenities and trails planned throughout the neighborhood.

This is the Phase 1 overall site plan.

This was part of the update to the board.

What's highlighted with the yellow dashing is what's approved and under construction, which includes an improved Hickory Street, the new road horizon, and then village one is under construction.

Village two and the remaining blocks are still under review but are approaching final site plan and platte approvals.

It ended up being 335 units that were

approved and then 211 of which are affordable.

And I expect Habitat will have some more details in their presentation.

Construction has began.

This picture is from a couple weeks ago.

I'm sure if you go out there it will look a little bit different, but this is again some of the things that are happening in Village 1 and with Hickory Street.

Stormwater utilities, new roads to access Village One.

I mentioned the performance agreement.

Many of those milestones have been met and are expected to be met with phase one.

The performance agreement is only in place for phase one.

So this is the funding of 3.2 million that has been in place.

There's also an additional 675,000 that was approved by the board to support planning efforts in phase one.

With the update to the board last week, there was a recommendation of continued support.

It's in the future recommendations for the 2023 budget, which would support the apartments in phase one and also assist with relocation of the residents as redevelopment occurs.

So we're going to shift to the details of phase two now, again, which is

The parcels outlined in yellow, which are about 93.32 acres.

Phase two is proposing between 527 units and 1000 units.

This is an addition to phase one that's already been approved.

There are 227 minimum units that are approved.

Unfortunately, there was a typo in some places that indicated 271.

I apologize for that.

It is 227.

There's the additional 60 that are proffered in terms of low income housing tax credits.

and you will see as we go through the presentation, some of the planning work that the residents have been undertaking is carried through throughout the phase two proposal in terms of the blocks, the open space blocks.

There are two transit stops that are proposed.

This is an overview of the zoning.

The property is zoned R2 residential, which is one of our lower density zoning districts.

The darker green

is the existing phase one area that was rezoned to neighborhood model.

And then the rural area is shown in white adjacent is Biscuit Run Park.

The future land use recommendations that we talked about in a great deal in the staff report include an urban density residential designation, parks and green systems that are consistent with areas that should be preserved, green space areas that should be preserved,

And then also the recommendation that there be a neighborhood center near Hickory Street that would provide non residential uses, including neighborhood level serving uses.

So we found that the proposal once we get into it is primarily consistent with

These recommendations, but we do have some concerns about the neighborhood center.

So this is the block plan that I mentioned, which is a continuation of the neighborhood planning efforts and all of the work that the existing residents are doing to design their community and it continues the block pattern and

the transect concept, if you will, where the higher intensity uses are located internal along Hickory Street, continuing the neighborhood center special area to provide a potential neighborhood center and then lower density residential uses along the edges of the development.

So with the neighborhood model rezoning application plan as a requirement of the ordinance, as is the code of development, and then anything additional that the

developer may offer in terms of additional requirements or in the form of the proffers that you have in your packet.

There is a great deal of planning work, as I said, that has continued.

These are block regulations.

Staff felt that everything was very well covered in terms of block regulations, building height, form and height, and the block layout itself and the uses within each of the blocks.

Now, there is no minimum non-residential proposed.

So there are maximums in phase one and phase two, but no minimum commitment to a square footage to provide that center.

In terms of green space and amenities with the neighborhood model development, we use the term green space and amenities more generally, usually referred to as open space by some.

So they're providing that 20% of the green space

That's required and then it's designed and dispersed throughout the community in terms of the different level of amenities.

Amenities are those places where you would see the active recreation.

In addition to the amenities and green space, there is another section of the ordinance that covers active recreation areas, playgrounds,

And it has sort of a number of playgrounds you're supposed to provide, a number of basketball courts, depending on the number of units that are built.

So there's no waiver request to that.

Some of the active amenities that they've proposed may serve as substitutes, but they will be providing the minimum recreation that's required in the ordinance.

Also shown on this map in red arrows are the trail connections that have been proposed to the adjoining Biscuit Run Park.

They've also offered the 10 space multi-purpose lot that could serve a number of purposes supporting the trail, but also acting as sort of an outdoor market space or commuter lot or commercial vehicle spaces.

and that would be located shown on here potentially block 29 or block 30 at the bottom of the screen.

Or in lieu of that construction of the trail, excuse me, in lieu of construction of the parking lot, there would be the offer of $50,000.

And again, we mentioned the connection to Biscuit Run Park.

This is just showing you the relationship of the mobile home park and the trail connections.

It's also showing what is planned in the Biscuit Run master plan as far as future trailhead and park access.

That's recommended and planned from Hickory Street.

Thank you.

Kevin McDermott, I'm planning manager in charge of the transportation planning program.

I reviewed the application from looking at the transportation issues.

I'll start by saying that the code of development and the application plan provided the network connectivity, the street design, the layouts, everything that we would expect to see from their standards as well.

and it was really well developed, provided a high level of connectivity internally, showed sidewalks throughout the whole network, so a lot of pedestrian connectivity and the two exterior connections from either end of Hickory, that's really all that's available except for the connection over to phase one which was also made.

So it's a well developed street network that was provided

There was also a transportation impact analysis provided to staff as required.

We require those for anything over 1,000 vehicles per day being generated.

This one, phase two, was generating approximately 4,400 trips per day.

So that was provided.

And so I'll go through some of the findings with that.

Just for background, the Old Lynchburg 5th Street extended

Corridor currently carries between 8,000 vehicles in the southern portion to, let me pull up my laser pointer here so it will make it a little easier, so around 8,000 vehicles per day in the southern section

down here and closer to 15,000 as you get around the I-64 interchange.

This corridor we've identified as being constrained.

This has been identified in the previous TIAA for phase one as well as other TIAs.

that were done in the area and a recent STARS study conducted by VDOT.

A few of the intersections, the intersection with Old Lynchburg Road in front of the county office building based on the development at the Albemarle Business Campus findings were that this would be failing.

So we have now secured funding for a roundabout to go in that location.

It is in design that is

Partially funded by the developer of Albemarle Business Campus, partially by the county and partially by the state.

So that is underway or in design right now and we would expect that to be completed before the bulk of the phase two development comes online.

Other existing issues that were identified include the Stagecoach Road 5th Street intersection right here, as well as both the ramps for the I-64 interchange.

Those all have failing movements in the future with or without the Phase II construction.

There's also a lack of consistent bike-ped facilities throughout the entire corridor that we are looking for funding right now to try and address.

As I mentioned, Southwood Phase 2 would add approximately 4,433 trips to this already constrained network.

When you add Phase 1 and Phase 2, that's about

around 8,000, just under 8,000 trips per day into this overall corridor, almost doubling the number out there.

With the addition of the phase two traffic, we have some concerns with

the operations at the Sunset Avenue, Old Lynchburg intersection, which will in the for the movement for people leaving Sunset trying to get on Old Lynchburg to head into the city or to the interchange that would increase significantly

The delay for that movement in both the AM and PM, especially in the PM where it goes from approximately a 30 second delay to about a three and a half minute delay to get out of there.

So recognize that that is an issue that we'd have to address.

also the Stagecoach or Fifth Street intersection which as I mentioned has significant delays already the addition of the Southwood Phase 2 traffic would increase those delays making this intersection very poor operations through both the peak hours.

Southwood is proffering construction of two transit stops within their development and those would include shelters and benches.

We think that's a great improvement.

It could reduce or offset some of the vehicular trips when people opt to use the transit instead of getting in personal vehicles.

Phase two would also add an additional approximately 400 trips to Hickory Street.

Hickory Street is currently a private road and the maintenance responsibilities are shared between the county, Southwood, and Covenant School.

And it's in pretty poor condition right now.

Southwood is also proffering to develop the 30% design plans to reconstruct Hickory Street to public standards so that we could then have VDOT take over the maintenance of that

I think that 30% design, that is a necessary first step

so that we can move into looking for funding for construction if we wanted to move towards that.

But I think that the completed improvements would be necessary prior to full build out of Southwood because of that additional traffic we descended on that poorly maintained road.

In the staff report and one of the concerns that we had raised in the analysis was schools impacts.

With 1000 units, there's potentially 190 students total as far as projected yields.

The current community has about 160 elementary students and as we know Mountain View does not have any additional capacity.

They're operating with 12 mobile units.

to accommodate its current population and expansion is planned to accommodate the current population and replace some of those mobile units.

The analysis that was provided in terms of the projected student generation was included in the Code of Development and the school staff has reviewed it.

And we've talked to them after their initial comments.

And we still think there will be impacts or there will still be impacts to elementary school students.

And this is around 90 to 100 students.

Some of the difficulty with these projections is that we don't know with certainty right now how many

of the existing Southwood residents will remain.

There's a higher student generator associated with that than what you see in this table.

And then also, we're not sure of the unit type as far as the breakdown when phase two moves forward.

Schools is currently studying options for land acquisition for the new elementary school.

That's their primary concern.

This population also goes to Burley Middle School and Monticello High School, but they didn't identify any critical issues at this time.

So they are studying the issue and have indicated that ideally a comprehensive school site would be 20 acres in size and then identification of the site and construction.

is important prior to any additional growth in the Mountain View boundaries.

There was the proffer that was provided by Southwood that offers the 5.7 acre school site.

And should the county purchase the lot, the county would assume responsibility for relocating residents in block four if the owner has not yet begun redevelopment.

And then it was offered at a 20% reduction to fair market value.

The Mountain View, future Mountain View, our new elementary school is not currently funded in the budget, but it is recommended within the next five years.

In terms of affordable housing, again, there's 227 either for sale or for rent units that are being offered in the code of development.

Depending on build out, that could be 47% of the total number of units or 23%, and those would be at 80% AMI or if sold to current residents of Southwood, there is an additional cap.

There's also the reservation in block 25 for an additional 60.

low income housing tax credits.

I mentioned that there is no action plan or performance agreement in place for phase two that the board has approved.

So we talk about zoning running with the land a lot so.

The zoning runs with the property.

We understand the current applicant is habitat and has higher levels of commitment to their residents, but those are not in place in the code of development or the application or proffers.

I wanted to acknowledge and thank everyone that had sent in all of the emails that the Planning Commission has received prior to the board will certainly package that up and that'll be part of the record and as the project moves forward all those emails of support and those concerns that have been raised.

We provided the community meeting summary in the packet.

Some of the support is obviously for the neighborhood, excuse me, the positive impact this will have on the Southwood community and also the resident driven planning process.

Some of the concerns that we've seen are mirroring some of the staff concerns in terms of traffic and schools impacts.

There are many positive aspects to this project.

At this time,

The recommendation is not for approval.

We've cited many of the positive aspects of the project.

We also have concerns, as we've mentioned, with regard to schools and traffic, and also the commitment to the neighborhood center.

Now, this item, as I mentioned, has gone through a little quicker than our typical review time that you would see for this type of rezoning.

So in addition, we have some additional detailed comments we'll be providing to the applicant as this moves forward in terms of code of development corrections and things like that that we will provide to them.

So that concludes my portion.

Sorry, we took a little longer than we usually do.

OK, questions for staff.

Just a couple points of clarification.

So the 227 is a fixed number.

So when you give us the percentage of 47% to 23% of the max development, the 227 stays fixed.

And what changes is the overall development.

Is that the amount of units?

OK.

227 is saying that's right.

Yes, that's the constant.

OK.

Can we just, as a secondary sort of clarification on that, just extending on that.

So it's 227 and if that, if the piece comes through, if it can block 18 or something like that, then that would be in addition to that.

Yes.

OK, so it's 60 in addition.

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation.

That was great.

Really appreciated it.

Also, really appreciated a little bit of background on phase one.

So obviously, I'm doing a fair amount of catch up on that, as I wasn't part of the original phase.

I just had a couple of quick questions.

One is on the performance agreement that was part of, I think, phase one.

Has staff looked at, I think we had one slide and had two green boxes.

I remember that on there.

I assume you all have looked at the work that's been done to date against the amount of investment the county's made.

Have you made any determinations on your feelings about that in general?

Well, Stacy and others have been more involved with the performance agreement.

Like I said, they have met certain milestones that we acknowledge.

I can go back to that slide if you want, and then their remaining milestones that will be met.

We could have Stacy up now to address that.

While she's coming up, Mr. Missel, I would say that this is really a land use application rather than an evaluation of the performance agreement.

So any sort of their performance under the performance agreement ought to be considered separately from the land use applications before the commission tonight.

OK.

Fair enough.

Thanks.

You're just not going to deliberate on whether it was successful on this side of the dais.

Got it.

Good evening, Stacey Pethia, housing policy manager.

A lot of the milestones in the performance agreement really focused on

is making sure Habitat secured funding for the units that were promised.

One of the milestones was being able to secure a partner to develop low-income housing tax credits, which they did.

And so the two milestones that are left really have to do, one has to do with funding, which they have secured.

We're just waiting for documentation that we can have for our records.

And the other one doesn't kick in until I believe they

have a significant number of the affordable housing building permits issued, and I don't remember what that is.

Great.

Thank you.

That was helpful.

Thanks.

One other specifically land use related question, I think.

So thinking about the current zoning as R1, right?

Or sorry, R2.

No, I don't think that there's anything else as far as improvements in that area because it is zoned R2s, one of our lower density.

It's a nonconforming mobile home community that has more units than

Okay.

Thanks.

That's all I have.

Thanks.

This one is just for my clarification, because I'm still grappling with the school piece a little bit.

And I just want to make sure I have it right.

So 190 students

are projected with 1,000 units and there's currently 160 students in the Southwood and with the plan to not displace anyone is that that commitment.

Can you help us give a range of like that net

That's there.

And I know there's a lot of moving factors, like some people decide not to stay and some will move in.

Well, we focused on the elementary school.

OK.

You know, we've got we've got a number of questions from commissioners and, you know, we've presented on what we have at this time, given

The review, we have some remaining questions about schools, but it is difficult to come up with that range based on the variables in terms of the number of units.

When we looked at it a couple different ways, it still has a significant impact on the elementary school.

And it was like 80 or 90 units.

We don't have any of those numbers for you for this evening because they're not, you know, we could, we don't we have what's available in the Code of Development and what we've reviewed and been submitted so far.

All right.

No, thank you.

That's been a little tough for me to grapple with.

And then the second question is more transportation related.

And I guess the question is how many of those projects, like you had those little circles in that slide.

So like how many of those projects would you expect to be funded by like smart scale, which I understand cradle to grave is like a 10 year process, cradle to grave versus like other streams of revenue, like proffers or, you know, capital improvement funding.

Sure.

As I mentioned, the intersection at Old Lynchburg and 5th Street in front of the office building, that was funded just in the last round of SmartScale.

So just two years ago.

And we did get approval to accelerate that and accelerate a kind of incongruous term there, because it will still be probably about three years before we see construction on that one.

The other project that we are looking to move forward on right now is the

is a shared use path along the entire Old Lynchburg 5th Street corridor south of the interstate.

And that we are looking to fund through smart scale right now.

So that would probably, we wouldn't even know until a year from now whether that got funded or not.

And then you're talking at least another three to four years at a minimum to get that constructed.

And we do have some other sidebar projects in the area

I think that all of these projects we're going to need some state funding for because they are all pretty significant projects, the intersections and the interchange ramps and Hickory Street.

Those could be through smart scale or revenue sharing.

They could be partially locally funded.

If developments come and offer proffers that can also offset some of those costs.

Thank you.

OK, and just for the benefit of the audience, Smart Scale is a competitive transportation grant program.

And by cradle to grave, you meant start to finish.

Just try to be careful with our planning jargon.

So other questions?

Yes, go ahead.

So Kevin, a question.

So Kevin, can you look for a bit?

So I understand what we're talking about coming out onto Old Lynchburg Road.

So we're going to push.

Let's say 1,300 households out that way, but they also have the ability to go out the, I guess it's the east way, by covenant school.

So what's it going to take to be able to handle a thousand, that's a thousand here, and how much was it in the first one?

Yeah, so we think phase two would generate, we estimated about 10% of the phase two traffic would exit Hickory Street going towards Covenant and then through to Stagecoach.

So that would be about 400 trips from phase two.

And then phase one that's going to be about 300 trips assuming those same percentages because they had about 3,000 something trips.

Backwoods, which is really basically still a residential community.

It is, and I think we noted that in the staff report that those are stop control intersections over there in that neighborhood.

And there are concerns noted that there's probably going to be a lot of delay at a lot of those stop signs that are more in the neighborhood focused and would impact all of those people that live down there plus the Covenant School.

And the road is in

Some level of disrepair right now.

So we definitely would like to get that fixed.

We are also proposing the Biscuit Run Park has a proposed trailhead on that road that could generate more trips.

This is Hickory Street, something that we want to take care of with or without phase two.

But the phase two would kind of put a little bit more pressure on us to get that taken care of.

Sorry, just one last question for Ms.

Ragsdale.

On the number five factor, unfavorable, just to clarify where it says the rezoning does not provide a commitment to a minimum square footage.

Yes, that was, excuse me, without a minimum, there's no assurances that some of the recommendations in the plan, the master plan could be met with, for providing that center with non-residential uses.

Well, it's a neighborhood service center.

I think there's no maximum in the master plan and have to look up what we typically recommend for neighborhood service centers, but I think five or 10,000 at least.

If I could follow on just the same question, similar question.

So it said in the report that they originally in phase one, they were going to build, I think it was 50,000 square foot of commercial, but it noted that they're now for phase one, possibly only doing 10.

So we're getting 40,000 square feet less of commercial in phase one.

I can't speak for, well yeah, it's up to 60,000 for phase two.

So that's what they indicated.

Like I said, there haven't been any site plans that come through that have any commercial at all.

They might be planning ahead for it in the future, and I asked about that with blocks 11 and 12, but there isn't anything.

And blocks 11 and 12 are right at the corner of Hickory and Old Lynchburg, where the apartments are planned.

Right.

So the concern could be, a concern could be, that they're less commercial areas than the more residential areas, which means potentially more units

Well, we haven't stated that, but we analyzed the residential and the number of units based on the residential range.

You know, I guess you know more commercial.

OK, well when the applicant comes up, maybe they can talk to what they what they're thinking and what they're hoping for.

OK, other questions for staff at this point.

All right, so at this point, we'd like to hear from the applicant.

I'm gonna not open my mouth until I get our presentation.

Rebecca, can someone come and exit us out of the staff report?

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the Planning Commission.

I'm Lori Schweller, attorney with Williams Mullen, representing Southwood Charlottesville LLC, a habitat entity.

I'd like to introduce our primary speaker, Dan Rosensweig, who's the CEO of Greater Charlottesville Habitat for Humanity.

I'd also like to introduce some of the members of our team who may be speaking to you tonight.

We have Andrew Beniski, who is the Chief Construction Officer for Habitat.

We have Valerie Long, who is my colleague at Williams Mullen, Megan Nadostep, who is a certified planner, also at Williams Mullen, Steve Schmidt, who is his transportation engineer at Timmins Group, and Craig Katarski at Timmins Group.

So we would like to start by thanking the county for all of the funding that's provided thus far for Phase 1.

Thank you for the staff resources, the devotion of time and staff to Phase 1.

And we'd like to particularly thank the Planning Commission.

Three years ago, you took a leap of faith in approving and recommending approval for a form-based code based on a block plan.

And I think that your faith was warranted.

Thank you, Lori.

And thank you, members of the commission, for inviting us to participate tonight.

I'm Dan Rosenzweig, President and CEO of Habitat for Eastman and Greater Charlottesville.

Okay, so as Laurie said, you took a leap of faith a few years ago, and you approved a block plan that created a foreign based code that created general formal regulations that allow the residents to be in command of the neighborhoods that they designed, and they knocked it out of the park.

This is village one, it has everything in it that you would want a professional planner to have.

It's got a consolidated open space in the middle for folks to gather, it's got pocket parks throughout, there's a mixture of affordable and market rate units on every block, it's all connected to trails.

And they took advantage of some of the flexibility of the code to make some incredibly wonderful moments.

So for example, as you drive into or drive or walk into Village 1, first thing you notice are homes taking advantage of the ability to front homes on a green.

So rather than private yards, it's a pocket park for people to gather together.

There were also some concerns about the minimum proffer of affordable housing.

As you'll recall, we proffered 50 affordable homes and we're building 211.

We're hopeful that we can build as much as we possibly can in Village 2 as well, but it was 63% rather than 15% affordable in Phase 1.

That brings us to phase two.

And I won't go over this in too much detail because Rebecca did a wonderful job describing this, but this is really an extension of the code of development and the regulating block forms that were part of the first phase.

That will allow critically the next cohorts of residents as they're ready to come together as a group and design it village by village.

We're now in this sort of rinse and repeat mode where we know what we're doing.

So we've done the first two villages that have now knitted themselves together.

The third group of village three planners are now working in phase two, and what we plan to do is work that way throughout the process.

We talked about, Rebecca talked about green space, there's flexibility within this so the residents can actually plan the green space in their own internal developments.

A couple things that are fixed items on this is a big Central Park located in Block 28, the trail connections and two miles of eight foot wide trail looping through the looping through the neighborhood.

It's not just residential.

And we will have a conversation later about the commercial.

We agree with the staff recommendation.

But we are working right now with partners from Northern Virginia La Cocina VA that specializes in shared commercial kitchens rented at a very low fee, business incubation, especially with Latino communities.

And so we see the new downtown Charlottesville as being this hub of business incubation and activity.

In terms of affordable housing when you add what we built or building in phase one with what the minimum that we've proffered in phase two you get the 438 units total that is an absolute minimum the reason we proffered 227 because you add that together with what we're building habitat ourselves in phase one

And that says at least one-to-one replacements, what's there.

We wanted to make sure that we are on the hook to at least do that.

We're going to build more and we're looking for LIHTC partners to up that number.

Ideally, we'd love to get up above 50% to probably something closer to 60%.

Some people have asked, well, isn't there already affordable housing there?

Well, not by your own standards, not by the standards of the county housing policy, which describes the conditions that homes have to be in to be considered affordable, decent affordable homes.

This is a trailer that we purchased back a month or so ago from a gentleman who sadly lost his wife to cancer.

He went and moved in with his children and this is the condition that he was living in when we purchased this.

We're going to rehab this trailer for temporary housing for a new family.

We don't really believe that the trailers, some of the families, most of the families keep them in beautiful shape.

They work really hard, but we don't believe that they meet the definition of affordable housing for your own definitions.

But this is not just about affordable housing.

This is about meeting lock, stock, and barrel, your first objective in your new housing policy.

And that's to create, if you can boil it all down, it's to create all kinds of housing for all kinds of people in all kinds of places.

And I think we're hitting a home run here.

I don't think there's any community like this in the United States of America.

We are committed to every single family who's there, giving them multiple choices.

If you don't make any money, we're going to subsidize your rent all the way down to nothing.

If you want to purchase a home, we're going to find a product that works for you.

If you want to rent a home, you're going to be able to rent it no more than 30% of your

income and we will work all the way from 0 to 100 percent AMI.

Our partners PHA are building rental units for folks between 30 and 80 and then the market will take care of the rest.

This will truly be a complete housing ladder of opportunity unlike anything else in the nation.

and it will be a mixture of housing types.

These are the housing types just in Village One alone.

But not all affordable housing is equal.

You've heard developers talk about how hard it is to get from 80% to 60% of area median income.

This is the demographic breakdown of the residents of Southwood.

You can see most people are clustered around 30% or below.

Our subsidies, we subsidize things at a lot greater rate than most of what's considered affordable housing.

We have to.

But we're also cleaning up the site.

What we've gotten into in the supposed green fields adjacent to where the site is, is that we have found the

It makes me really sad to talk about this, but we have found really the results of 60 years of environmental injustice and neglect.

We've already spent $2 million cleaning up failing septic fields, cleaning out unsuitable soils, fixing or changing out an asbestos water line, taking up underground sewage tanks.

The good news is that we have a handle on this now.

The area where we're developing now is absolutely 100% pristine under the watchful eye of DEQ and we know what we're doing going forward, but that's added a lot of pressure to the pro forma.

But we have solutions here, but we need the rezoning to move forward because we can't access these solutions until we move forward.

We have designed an upgraded Hickory Street and we've designed a new sewer line to replace the remainder of the failing septic at Southwood.

Financially, this is a challenging project.

And I know some people have concerns about our ability to pull it off.

Here's in rough terms, the proforma.

This is just land.

This is not land and housing.

This is just land.

It's about $161 million project.

There are some things in here that most performers don't have in it, like resident engagement and trailer acquisition and moving.

And what you notice on the revenue side is that market rate lot sales, $81 million are about 60%.

of total revenues for this.

And so people wonder about why mixed income, in addition to creating a place for everybody, it also cross-subsidizes the affordable stuff.

So if we lose market rate lot sales, that deficit only grows.

But the other thing to look at is habitat affordable lot sales.

With the price of construction, with the depth of the subsidy that we provide, there's no money in there in the pro forma on the land side for market rate for affordable lot sales.

The good news is, and this is where there's an extreme, extreme sense of urgency, is there's $2.9 trillion of federal funding out there right now for projects just like this, specifically designed for upgrading infrastructure in the hardest hit communities.

But that money is being spent and allocated and pulled down in Chesterfield County and New Mexico and Alaska.

and we cannot access it until rezoning happens.

So we really appreciate the staff moving this forward.

We know it's a little bit of a rush and we know that there's some things that we still need to work on, but we need this to go forward.

Otherwise, we can't close that funding gap.

We are providing 274 homes above the minimum.

274 marker 8 lots times an average of $150,000, which is a going rate for a lot these days.

It's about $41 million of income that we're not generating because we're going above the minimum.

You add that to the pro forma and all of a sudden that deficit turns into a $20 million surplus that we could otherwise then use for some off-site proffers.

But this doesn't necessarily support that while we build $140 million worth of affordable housing.

I'm just about done, I promise.

This is a project that's been designed by the residents.

It cleans up an environmental catastrophe.

It remediates on-site and off-site environmental hazards.

It creates a center for business incubation, early childhood education, commercial use.

We've proffered a school site.

We know this proffer isn't perfect, and we do believe that we can work with staff and the Board of Supervisors as it goes forward.

We've provided a host of multimodal transportation improvements so that we're not so car-centric as we're solving traffic issues in this area of the county.

But most importantly, it's urgent.

There's $2.9 trillion of money out there.

We have 39 families working towards home ownership right now.

We have families living in unsafe conditions.

We have to move forward.

So I would very much welcome any questions and would really, really love it if tonight we can move this forward towards the Board of Supervisors.

Thank you.

All right, do we have questions for the applicant?

Thank you very much.

That was very thorough, but I do have a couple questions.

2.9?

Yeah.

And I think 1 trillion of that was your mark for infrastructure in the ARPA grants.

So have you looked at what specifically would you target in terms of those infrastructure improvements and do you have a priority list and things that you feel that

We do, thank you for the question.

Absolutely.

The two biggest projects, the single biggest project and the very first thing we do right now is to decommission all the remaining septic fields in Southwood and we can do that

as soon as rezoning happens.

We have worked with the county to prepare an application for ARPA funding and what we've sort of found is that there just seems to be a disinclination to move forward until such time as the rezoning is done.

The infrastructure bill is a different bill, that's one

1 million, ARPA was 1.9, this was 1 million.

And that is, there are a number of different initiatives.

We're going through the, they're writing many of the final rules right now, but we're going through the list.

And there are a number of different projects that could fund the sewage cleanup.

It could fund removal of the oil tanks.

It could fund upgrade of hickory right now.

And so those are sort of the three big projects that we think would be first in the queue.

It does and particularly with the sewage and getting that remediated obviously is a key and should be the highest priority but the circulation and vehicular I think is up there as well so I appreciate you mentioning that.

The other piece that I haven't seen anywhere is a comprehensive timeline.

Where are you with phase one?

I know there's been some changes in that since we saw it.

I forget how long it was now, almost two years ago.

And then what you're seeing the beginning of phase two and how long would that take?

Do we have any of the timeline slides?

So as you saw up on the screen and what you see behind you right now, village one site work is all but complete.

There's a little bit left to go.

We started building there, and that's the first 49 habitat homes, the first 80 homes total.

Village 2 is under site plan review, but as Rebecca said, it should come out.

Right away, we have contractors ready to go, so we should be able to just continue building.

The other parts of the village, which are the commercial center,

Our partners, PHA, that land is all but ready to go.

We're waiting for them to do some final details to get themselves ready to move.

So all of phase one should be complete within a couple of years.

And the idea is that we roll then right into phase two.

Phase two because there are families that are sort of working already towards phase two.

So we believe phase two, once you get through the county process and then you have a site contract and you do the earth work, we'd start building in 2025 and it's probably a 15 year build out to complete the rest of Southwood.

So 2025 to 2040 is the timeline for phase two.

Correct but it's worth noting that the two big infrastructure improvements that we noted the sewer line and the hickory upgrade can happen before redevelopment.

That's

or some of the other stuff.

In fact, the sewer line was designed to serve the trailers temporarily, but then convert to a permanent sewer line later.

But we've just been told that we can't move forward until it's rezoned.

Appreciate it.

Hey Dan, thanks for a great presentation.

So much information and the slides were going so quickly.

I'm not sure I grasped everything, but let me just start by saying congratulations on a real, really a masterful job of community engagement.

I mean, it's like none other that I've seen.

It's really phenomenal.

So congratulations on that.

Just a couple quick questions.

So there's obviously an existing tenant base on the site.

What programs do you have in place?

Have a description of both the rental program and the homeownership program.

Would you all like to hand that out so you can see that?

I was thinking kind of high level, if that's possible.

Maybe a summary of that, but we could also...

We can accept handouts on the dies.

The cliff notes are is that the first 39 families home owners are already moving through the program and selecting lots in the first phase and then there are about 14 renters who are sort of doing the same thing and so the first phase, the first village is all but sold out and people are starting to select lots in

The Second Village.

Our priority, our selection policy into the program prioritizes Southwood families, so they are first in line.

If for some reason we build more than Southwood families want, then we would open it up to the general public.

But first and foremost, our commitment is to Southwood residents.

We have created a program where there are 10 different homeownership options.

And it's just a pilot program where typically in Habitat and a lot of affordable housing, you make what you make, you pay what you pay and you get what you get.

But this is a very different community.

There are people who've made fundamental and really rational and smart choices about housing.

So for example, there are people who under house themselves so they can grow a business or they send money home to families so they can keep people alive and

in their country of origin.

And so we wanted to provide people an opportunity to actually buy down if they wish so that they can still pay a smaller percentage of their income on housing.

They have more for other things that we didn't want to be patriarchal about that and paternalistic about that and force people to

to spend what underwriters say you can spend.

At the same time, there's a high cash economy at Southwood as well.

And so we're offering a one-to-one down payment match.

So any dollar that anybody puts down that they may have stashed or in a rainy day fund, they can put down and they get $2 off of their offer the price of their home.

So we've created prices at all price points, including entry-level home ownership,

where the total housing payments aren't more than what they're paying now for their trailers.

Now that's a little bit complicated because they have a number of different payments.

There's rent payment on the pads, some pay rent on the trailers, some pay a mortgage on the trailers, but a lot of it is eaten up in utilities.

Some utility costs are $300, $400 a month.

Our home ownership program starts at $500 a month for every single housing expense.

So from your first mortgage to your utilities to everything else and then it goes up from there.

Our rental products, we offer I think four different rental products and there's a fair market value.

If people pay something like fair market value, they kind of get to choose whatever they want.

If not, they're a little bit more

kind of constrained by what's available and what they fit into.

But we will subsidize that.

So we will do an underwrite on every family.

And if they don't have, they pay no more than 30% of their income.

So if their income is nothing, they pay nothing.

We have a solid commitment with choice in it.

And is it flawless?

I don't know, we're piloting it, but we're doing the best we can.

Great, thank you.

Quick question about schools, the school site.

So obviously, staff raised concerns about that.

You all have proffered to discount the market rate by 20%.

There's also a sundown clause in there, if I read it correctly.

So after a year, basically, or a year from the date of the approval of the rezoning, that would go away.

Can you tell us a little bit why that sundown clause is in there?

Yeah, we were trying to put this proffer together in a way that gave the county space to sort of make up its mind.

So what we gather is that some folks want a 20-acre school site, which really isn't feasible land use here.

Some folks are open to the idea of an urban scale site.

Not everybody has decided that this is the place they want to school.

We are open to a school.

We would love to have a school there, an urban scale school, as it's called for in your comprehensive plan.

But we wanted to give the county some time to make the decision about that.

That's the reason for the year, basically, to give the county time to think through this.

But somewhat of an arbitrary time.

Yes.

OK.

Last question.

We applaud them.

We just missed that.

We absolutely plan to do it.

Commissioner Firehock talked about what was anticipated in the first phase and what's happened, and maybe this is a good time to address that.

But our intent was to build

between 10 and probably more, 20 or so square feet of commercial in the first village.

What we did do was proffer a form based code that had 12 foot first floors in that neighborhood, that special area.

And that extends into the code of development.

So even if at the initial iteration, they're not commercial, over the lifetime of that building, that space can become flexibly commercial.

I can tell you, we were working, we were trying to work with the local food hub to develop

um uh

Commercial Kitchen, Food Pantry, a bunch of different things there.

Then COVID hit and the investors left.

Right now, PHA is building.

They're planning a community center.

They're hoping to have a couple of classrooms of early childhood education and some stuff that sort of feeds that building.

So it's not, there's a civic space, but it's not going to be sort of the hub.

We see the more active uses in that second phase right downhill from there.

but we're willing to tonight to go on record and if you want to make it a condition or we can proffer it a minimum square footage.

Just following up on that.

Yeah, they're OK.

Following up on that, so that's a minimum, if I'm hearing you correctly, that you'd be willing now to say about phase two, what about phase one?

Because phase one still feels like, well, let me back up.

So when you first came to us, one of my concerns was that this was going to turn into nothing but residential area.

We had this long discussion about the rest of it, but I see that happening right now in phase one.

because I don't see a commercial center.

So that's a big sort of, I'm having a hard time with that.

And now perhaps staff found it, perhaps staff didn't find it.

But now you're saying that you're willing to do something in phase two and go on the record and say, we're going to do something in phase two.

Perhaps that happens, perhaps I'll feel better about that.

But my main thrust on this is that it still feels like what it's going to be is this big commercial, over 1,000 houses over there.

And so there's a couple of things that I'd like some clarity on.

How many students are going to be, are anticipated in the phase one?

So if you're telling me right now that there's 120, sort of, K through five that currently are there, 160 K through five that are there now,

and if there's a let's say another just forget the 190 but 95 that are going to be there in the elementary school how many are how many do you anticipate in phase one according to the county's calculator it would be 48 in phase one using the using the same metrics

48 in phase one.

Yeah, about 200 new students, K through 12.

That's the total for the entirety of Southwood, not deducting students who might already be coming.

From what I understood from the staff is that there's 160

K-12 right now coming out of the community.

Am I wrong?

Okay.

So 160 and then 48 using the county's calculations for phase one and then 95 using the county's calculations for phase two.

Well, there's a slide for that.

Let's see.

We used the calculators provided by the schools, which are specific to the school district and specific to housing types.

And so using those specific calculators, we found 190 students if we built out the maximum 1000 units in phase two.

I went ahead and did that same analysis for phase one, just to see what that number would be.

So that's 243.

Right now,

Out of Southwood, we have 391 total students, not just elementary students.

So if, you know,

Based on the numbers that I'm looking at, I'm seeing over the course of the build out of phase two, I'm actually seeing a net reduction in students.

And part of the reason why that could be explainable is that habitat homes have a lot of restrictions and encumbrances that mean habitat homeowners stay in their homes a lot longer than

non-Habitat homeowners.

No, we didn't.

But that's OK.

I'm good.

I'm not good at not getting to a total, because I was really just trying to look at what's the impact of the Mountain View School.

And I don't see how we get a net to that, which my question is going to be.

And this you can either or either one can answer.

So I don't see a concrete solution on how this brilliant community.

So I want to be real clear with this audience.

I have nothing against this community.

What I'm trying to figure out is that,

Every student should have a place where he or she can be comfortable at school.

And I would expect, given that the majority of the housing here is actually market rate, it's not affordable housing, that I would expect that this community would want this, that Southwood, the emerging Southwood community, would want to be a active contributor

to making sure that, at least at the elementary school level, that those children have all of the possibilities that they can have.

And so a five acre, which is a reasonable amount of space, because it could be a little bit if we're going to have an urban school, five acre for this amount of time, for this amount of money, that doesn't feel as if it's a

an active way or an engaged way of coming to a solution.

It sounds like it's sort of like we can do this.

And so I'm looking for, since we heard something about, well, perhaps we can have community space.

I think I'm looking to hear that, well, perhaps we can actually think about a more robust way of having schools.

Cause right now it doesn't feel robust to me.

It feels still very cautionary and very sort of attentive.

Well, it's true that, like with all housing, new residents do use roads and schools.

There's no doubt about that.

But, you know, to state the obvious, Habitat does the work that it does for no profit.

And we could give millions more in proffers, as Dan showed you with the spreadsheet.

We could do that, but it would be at the expense of the affordable housing that you're just not going to get anywhere else.

So

What we're addressing in terms of schools is a 20% discount on the price of that school site that is needed to acknowledge the 20% of those students who may be coming from Southwood.

We are doing what we can, but respectfully, it's your policy decision

I will say that we will sort of stipulate that this is not purely an affordable housing community.

So we should sort of be truthful in the fact that there is a large and will be well-developed community of market-rate houses there.

So this is a blended community.

and in that blended community.

So if this was simply a replacement of the 300 families that were there, 300 some odd families that were in Southwood, I understand that, but this is not that any longer.

This is a very different community that's got both, I assume by some of the numbers I've seen here, higher end houses and not so higher end houses.

And I still think that there should be,

I would feel as if, as you said, from a policy standpoint, I guess I would feel as if there was a meeting somewhere in the middle of it was a little bit more robust.

But that's not my only piece on this.

The other piece that I have on this that I continue to struggle with

is that it's one thing to have the 300 households sort of coming out and joining stagecoats from the east side and whatever past covenant school, whatever has happened there has happened and the road is not a good road, I can attest to that, having driven it a couple of times.

It's another thing to push up 900 more people through that and only say, oh, we're gonna give us 30% towards the design.

that again is something that if I were looking for something a robust sort of trying to engage in this whole process I say we're going to do this and we're also going to open ourselves to that I just have this I get this sense that for me at least that the things which are being offered are nice nice in there and nice that you're offering them but the totality of what's being offered is not um

It's not really going to go towards the solution very much.

It's not going to help to create the solution.

So that's part of what I'm wrestling with.

Commissioner Bivins, may I respond to just a couple of those things?

First of all, as you all know, we already have residents in Southwood, many of whom are here tonight.

So that number that we're talking about, you need to think about how a good number of those people are already there.

So, you know, keep that in mind as well.

Sometimes Habitat works ahead of its promises, and in this case it's going to do 100% of the engineering of that road.

That's new news.

So this is a slide that quantifies some of the benefits from the proffers along with the affordable housing.

I think it's a very important slide that you didn't get a chance to look at.

And what we wanted to point out was that we're doing 100% of the engineering for Hickory Street.

And that's not just on Habitat's property.

That is off site.

So that's the whole of Hickory Street.

That's a $325,000.

If you add up all of these things,

that Southwood is doing as a developer, 152,605,000.

That's a lot being offered in addition to the intangibles that Dan went over with you.

So again, we could even do more, but you see that number, 438 minimum affordable housing units.

OK, I'm just going to ask two quick questions real quick.

This is just a terminology question, and I feel like I asked you this last time.

You said in the report that 317 existing Southwood units have a GIN.

It's a general information notice that's required under the Uniform Relocation Act.

So there was a certain period of time, July 2019,

when Habitat had to say to our current residents, now is the time when you are here, you're guaranteed a place.

So the 317 is the number of folks that you must

and then there are other people who've come since then that you're saying you're also pledging to provide housing for.

Like everything is a little more complex than it seems.

So we have to go back a few more years before that actually.

In 2013, we did a three-part survey with everybody in the park to find out who was there and ask them if they wanted to stay and whether they wanted to be a renter or homeowner, et cetera, so that we could begin the planning process.

We anticipated at that time that the planning would move a little faster than it did.

So after about five years, we kind of looked in the mirror and said, hey, there are a lot of new people in the neighborhood.

So let's open up the door.

At that point, in 2013, we made promises to everybody who was there and told everybody else who came in after that that you can stay because there's not a lot of affordable housing in the area, but you're probably going to have to move.

In 2018, we opened up the door again because those five years of families have become part of the community.

So we did that again.

and the sort of the mechanism for that was the general information notice, which legally requires us to do that.

So we locked ourselves into that.

At that point, it's even more complicated.

So at that point, we were still a couple of years away from development.

And so we looked and we said, look, can we shut the door completely now?

But given the dearth of affordable housing options in the area, we said,

At least for a little while, we will let people in under a significant caveat amp door.

So when they came in to register, we said, you will not be able to stay.

This is temporary.

And there's a handful of families, maybe 14 or so families that moved in since then that have what's called a move in notice that says this is under redevelopment and you can't stay.

We're already helping those families, but there are some families we don't even actually know about.

Sometimes families move in in the dead of night.

Yeah, that was very helpful.

And then this is probably one of those questions that sounds simple but is also complicated.

Would it be a fair statement to say that all of the revenue that you are generating by the sale of land, the sale of homes, I mean, you know, you're going to be selling things,

properties within this, all of the 100% of the revenue would go back into the Southwood site?

Or would you be using some of these revenues for other Habitat for Humanity projects?

Like say you were going to do another trailer park somewhere.

100% of the land development stays at Southwood.

So if there's a lot sale at Southwood, that's right back into Southwood.

But it's a little bit more complicated when we originate a mortgage.

We're the lender as well.

So we originate a zero interest mortgage.

We build those mortgages up over time and then we either borrow against them so we can capitalize our next building.

Moving forward from 2025 on, we're going to be doing the majority of our building in Southwood, but we're also building elsewhere because there's a huge need regionally.

So we build in Louisa and Green and Northern Albemarle and Crozet and Charlottesville.

And so that money that comes in through origination of those loans, that's core money.

That money never originated from Southwood to start with.

And so that goes back into the pool that gets leverage to provide capital to build the next home.

So I can't guarantee that that

Dan, thank you for all the work that Habitat is doing.

And I'm sure you're probably going all around the country presenting on this project here.

I do believe that everyone deserves, everybody in this community deserves a safe and healthy home in a vibrant neighborhood.

And you guys are working towards that.

My one question was about feasibility studies.

And was one performed on that environmental, on the environmental aspects

Yeah, we did a number of feasibility studies and we went above and beyond what a typical developer would do in terms of our environmental surveys and environmental reviews, because you have to pull down some of the public funding.

We had jet geotechnical work, but it's impossible to predict what's under the ground until you actually start digging.

And what we found broke our heart, to be honest with you.

And thank God we were the ones who bought the park, because if anyone else had found what we found, they would have run away.

What we found was that previous owners of the park had jury-rigged multiple trailers to single septic tanks.

So we found as many as 10 hooked up to a single septic tank.

So when someone flushed their toilet,

The tank has been full.

We have been pumping and hauling for 12 years.

Typically a sewage tank should be pumped, I don't know, depends on the amount of use every couple of years or something like that.

Some of our tanks we've been pumping and hauling three times a week.

That's a cost of about $50,000 a month that we've absorbed for about 12 years now.

And it's only gotten worse.

And so we expected to find some of the stuff underground.

We didn't expect nearly the amount of leaching that we found.

Good news is that we actually have started removing some of the oil tanks.

Every single original trailer had an oil tank and we were worried that they would all have leaked.

So far none of the tanks have all come up clean afterwards.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that our

are originally our pro forma balanced, as did our grading plan, but we've had to remove about 15,000 cubic yards of organic topsoils, organic I'd say is kind of a, you know what I mean by organic.

And so we've had to remove that.

Thanks for the insight.

And then it looks like there's a really high commitment.

I jotted down 438 of things on the screen here, affordable housing units.

And if I recall, there's maybe 341 existing residents.

So I was wondering if you could talk about that, I'm not going to say overcommitment, maybe for the sake of this question, overcommitment, and how does that impact the other proffers where the staff has said they found them maybe lacking, if you will?

Sure, thanks for the question.

So there are 317 trailers.

That 341, there's been some attrition over the years.

The trailers have caught fire.

Some people have moved their trailers, etc.

So it's 317 right now.

And so even if we build just the minimum number of affordable units, it's 121 extra from what's there.

I don't fundamentally believe that ethically we can look at a trailer that has a half-life of a certain number of years located on infrastructure that has failed and say that that's a Safe, Decent, Affordable unit.

So I don't think it's being not generous on my part to myself to say that it's only an addition of 121.

Again, that 438 is a minimum.

That's our promise, but we're going to try to do better.

We did it in the first phase.

We knew we could do 50.

We did 211 and that's what we're going to try to do again.

Does that answer your question?

It does and it's one more as a follow-up because it seems like some things are changing just a little bit.

So with respect to the additional affordable units, we did a calculation based on what the land

if this were a typical development built out to its maximum of 1300 units and the minimum proffer was met of 15%, that would be 170 units or 164 units or something like that.

So we're actually well above the minimum number.

And then we did a calculation based on how much we would sell a market if we were to replace

An affordable lot at zero with a market rate lot at 150, what would be the revenue difference?

And the revenue difference would be about $41 million.

Just on the land deal.

And so that's kind of the delta.

So if you look at what we're sort of proffering towards affordable housing, it's 41 million for land subsidy and about $100 million of buildings.

So we have $140 million that we're investing in affordable housing in this.

And so that doesn't leave

And remember, we're renting homes to people who have no income.

We're selling homes that may cost us $200,000 to build in some cases for a first mortgage of $50,000 because that's what they can afford.

And so we are, I believe our proper package is pretty generous.

I understand Commissioner Bivins

And I think we could probably work through some of that tonight or at least get some direction for that tonight.

But that's one thing that we can control is the amount of affordable housing.

So we can walk through the proffers.

So currently, the things that we've proffered are public trail connections to create connectivity between our two mile trail and Biscuit Run.

If you remember,

The infrastructure internal to Southwood is in the long range transportation plan.

And it was intended to be, it was called the Gateway Project.

And that was in recognition of the fact that Biscuit Run Park, at least that time was planned with only a single entrance down Route 20 south.

And so the crazy thing is if you live in Mosby Mountain or Redfields, and you can literally throw a stone into Biscuit Run,

You can't get there without getting in your automobile and driving through county roads and VDOT roads to the park.

And so we've public, we intentionally built trails.

We're proffering a, basically a park and ride.

So you can, if you live in a Western neighborhood, you can drive in their park in the park and ride, take your car, your bike off your car and get right into the park.

Or you can walk from Southwood or you can walk from Redfields or you can walk from the neighborhoods.

around there.

We've also offered, and I'm not sure that the county, that staffers want to accept this, but we've offered to make the public easement or use access easement over the entire trail, but still maintained by us, so that we want those trails to be used by everybody.

The multi-purpose parking lot I talked about, and that could have a multiplicity of uses and

and some things that serve the community itself.

There's a huge love of fairs and farmers markets and things like that.

I think it could be used for that as well.

We've proffered two transit stops at a cost of $50,000.

And as Lori said, we originally proffered 30% of engineering, but we just figured we're already

We're already working with the engineers.

As Kevin said, it's a really, really critical piece that once you create that, once you diffuse traffic in that area of town, it takes pressure off the primary.

Now, it does put some pressure on neighborhood roads as well, but that's better transportation practice is to move traffic in different places rather than put it all, funnel it all into one place.

We have also proffered a school site and this proffer may need some work.

We did our best to try to put something out there that could be a win-win and it's a genuine proffer.

I do take a little issue with the idea that it's not robust because the 20% discount is equivalent to about $1.8 million.

We think this would work.

We think this would be really good.

We recognize that the county has its own processes to go through, but we're willing to extend the timeline.

Commissioner Bivins talked about the size of it, and we're willing to make the contours of it more flexible, so when we get into design stage, it could grow a little bit if it needs to to accommodate the program that the school wants, but it's really kind of a question of timing here.

and the LIHTC proffer.

Just like with the performance agreement, you can't actually proffer LIHTC because it's a competitive process.

So you can't proffer that you're going to do it because you're not in control of that.

But what we can do is take land offline and only offer it to LIHTC developers for a period of time.

If they go through one or two cycles and don't get funded, it's never going to get funded.

For some reason there's a flaw in the proposal and it's just not viable at that site.

As it happened in the first phase, we worked with Piedmont Housing Alliance.

They got it on their first go round and now they're in the process of building 121 units.

Did I miss anything?

So thank you for that.

And then just two more questions and I'll get out of your way.

So for the 100% design drawings, I just want to make sure that we're all kind of speaking the same language.

Andrew, you probably need to come up here.

My name is Andrew Beniski.

I'm the chief construction officer for Habitat.

I'm an Albemarle County resident.

All right, well, so that doesn't include actually approval by VDOT.

The reason we came up with 30% to start with, this was in conversations with Kevin, that in order to qualify for some of the federal infrastructure funding, 30% is the standard, you get to 30%.

As we started going through this and realized how important this was, we saw the staff report, we saw how important this was to the county to upgrade that road, we went ahead and

and had our engineers continue to move so we can change that profit to 100%.

The other piece as well is that Kevin talked about the difficulty in finding money for that road.

I got the pathway for getting money for that road.

Infrastructure money is primarily geared towards serving low-income communities with improved infrastructure.

So the segment of road from Hickory from our site to Oak that's off our site, if that's included in the entire application, it's serving primarily low income residents.

So it's going to score higher on federal infrastructure.

And we can, as part again tonight, assuming this moves forward, we can provide that on the record commitment

Thank you, sir.

I'm good for now.

I'll try to be brief.

Going back to your budget, and let me first state that I think this is an amazing, ambitious project.

I absolutely love it.

I came from affordable housing.

I was able to get here.

Thank God for the Army.

Got me here.

Straightened me out.

What I'm trying is that, you know, what's being asked tonight is that we're making a land use decision on something that stays with that land.

And so there's some, a lot of moving parts to this and uncertainties and funding.

And if, you know, this has to happen or that happens and what happens if it does, you know, one thing we have to ask ourselves and that's what we're asked to do is what if it doesn't happen?

What if the project doesn't, what if phase two can't get funded and it can't be built?

Now we have a piece of land that has a different designation on it or, you know, or it's somewhere in between where the budget has to include more market rate to make it go, that that market rate wasn't

you know the county or other are bringing in funding to subsidize what would have been in profit.

So those are the things that you know we're struggling with and trying to balance with all these moving parts and pieces and uncertainty and you know opportunity to get dollars through the American

Rescue Plan, but not guaranteed dollars.

And so one question going back to that is, as I understand the budget, as I'm trying to understand, trying to weigh all those things, I saw, I think, 81 million in lot sales from fair market value.

Is that roughly correct?

Exactly.

And some of the ways that you can do that is you can increase LIHTC.

So there is some revenue under the land for LIHTC.

So when we sell something for LIHTC, it's not like... Because LIHTC's not nearly as deeply subsidized as habitat stuff.

has investors that get tax credits for investing in these properties.

We provide a discount on the land to LIHTC developers, but we sell it as well.

So some of that $80 million can be replaced with LIHTC without taking away a whole 150 per lot.

The other things we can do is we can do what we do really, really well, which is try to push our costs down, try to bring more volunteers in to build cheaper, try to do everything we can to build more with less.

And as the financials make sense, then we can build more affordable housing.

Every time we can build an affordable house rather than sell a market rate lot, we will 100% of the time because that's what we exist to do.

Yeah, it helps a lot and I appreciate that.

Kind of going to the second part and I really applaud your work to do the environmental remediation and you know the I always say when you get in that you don't know until you get in the dirt and then you had to be confronted with that.

Try to answer the question.

So as Dan pointed out earlier, we've done approximately $2 million in remediation over the last several years, most importantly, in the last 12 months.

And we expect to spend about $20 million over the course of the project.

But we have a very good handle on where we are today.

We've got some of the best consultants, probably the finest consultant team that you can assemble from folks as far away as Richmond in Northern Virginia on site.

I think Dan mentioned DEQ is also intimately involved in our progress, our reporting.

And as Dan pointed out, we pulled up about 11 or 12 of the 250 gallon oil tanks so far.

And as recently as this evening, we have not yet found where we've had an oil tank that's found any sort of leakage when that oil tank or the septic tanks, the few septic tanks that we've removed to be a problem.

Do we have a handle on everything?

So you anticipate, happen to dedicate a significant part of your budget to continue to do remediation for phase two and expect to see similar type of impacts and improve the land, the underlying land.

just like you've done in phase one.

And I think there's a speaker this evening that'll go in a bit more detail.

I'll let them speak, but they'll go through a quick rundown of what we're anticipating experiencing when we get into phase two.

And again, it goes back to what we've experienced in phase one.

So we're pretty confident now we know where we need to get to in order to get phase two as pristine as phase one.

Thanks.

OK, if that's it for questions, I'd like to move on.

So I'm glad you spent all the money you've spent.

That's quick.

But let me just ask one thing here.

Is that a true statement?

Yes, sir.

Majority of that site in phase one has been under construction for a period of 12 months.

The only thing left in phase one is village two, which we hope to start on very shortly.

I think that site plan is supposed to be approved.

You've gone past my question.

OK.

So I'm talking about oil tanks.

And you have no other oil tanks that you're going to discover in phase one.

I know that, but I'm going to another question.

That's a yes.

We've had issues in phase one.

No additional.

We've experienced oil tanks, septic tanks, and drain fields as part of phase one's construction today.

And you've done nothing with the other 93 acres?

No.

So we got three times as much land that we don't know whether or not there are tanks or what the sewage is down there.

And that's actually where most of the community, that's where most of the community existed.

1A and 1B is the next village as part of phase two.

Area 1A had approximately 26 existing mobile homes that we've relocated elsewhere in the park.

We haven't experienced any tanks that we've removed, and I believe there's been 11 tanks removed to date, and there's been no leaking.

Okay.

Enough tank counting.

Alright, so we're going to move on now to the community part where we get to hear from those of you who've signed up to speak that if you didn't sign up to speak already, you can still speak.

So I have 13 people signed up.

And what I like to do is to ask you to at least line up three people deep so that we can make sure that we don't have a long delay while one person steps down and then the next person walks to the front of the room.

I've just been given a sheet with a handful of additional names, but I understand.

Let me just check with staff.

Okay.

Okay, gotcha.

Lots of lists here to shuffle.

So I'm going to call the first three folks up and then remember you have three minutes to speak.

You'll have a green light showing you that it's time to start speaking.

You need to state your name and where you live.

A yellow light will come on when you need to start wrapping up to finish.

And then a red light means stop.

So pretty simple, green means go, red means caution, almost running out of time, and red means stop.

If you have an interpreter, like I said at the beginning of the meeting, you will have extra time so that the interpreter has time to interpret what you said for us.

And so that will be a six minute period.

All right, so the first three folks I have signed up to speak.

Louisa Candelario, Elliot Butler Cisneros, and Kathy Butler Cisneros.

So my name is Luisa Candelario.

I'm actually a city resident.

I live at Sunrise Park, which is another Habitat community.

I've been a homeowner there for going on 10 years.

I'm not an expert on numbers or things like that.

I know you guys have had a whole lot of that today.

I just want to come to tell you about my experience as a homeowner.

When I look around the room, what I see that I have in common with a lot of the people here is that I'm the daughter of an immigrant.

My parents, I'm a first generation American, born and raised in the United States from parents who are now naturalized citizens.

I'm a mom and I'm also a Habitat homeowner.

And I just want to say that being, you know, when I first started with Habitat 13 years ago,

It was something that I never thought that I could accomplish.

Like my parents always talked about this American dream and about owning a home in the United States.

And it's something that I never thought that I could accomplish.

And then when I came across Habitat, the dream became real.

And I put in like the work I had did.

Sorry, I get nervous.

But anyway, I put in my hours of doing my community service, helping with other homes around the community, helping with mine as well, caulking and sanding and all kinds of crazy stuff that I never thought I could do.

I went to a lot of city meetings.

My kids stuffed envelopes.

They were a big part of the process as well.

I started to see a lot of growth in myself as well as my kids.

And it makes me emotional just thinking of like all the work that a Habitat homeowner puts into their home makes you feel so like just confident in yourself.

It makes you want to rise.

It betters your credit.

It makes you a part of very like

Just an upstanding citizen, someone who's very interested in taking care of their community.

And my community was also previously a trailer park.

Habitat did a good job of not displacing anyone.

We have a building called the Promise Keeper where a lot of our trailer park residents live there.

We've been able to mingle the community all ages, races, different

genders and things like that.

My kids have grown up there 10 years on the bus with the same kids in the green spaces, beautiful area in that location which makes not only us feel good but just everyone around like the bus stops there, the people in the community.

We've had several community days, we've had community cleanup days, we've had

A lot of meetings there.

We've had grandchildren born to some of the residents.

We've had some residents pass.

It's just been beautiful.

It's been such an amazing experience, and I just wanted you guys to know that.

It doesn't provide you guys with a ton of facts, but it just gives you that feeling, just letting you know.

So thank you.

Thank you, and don't be nervous.

All right.

Again, just to remind you guys, when you want to be solidarity, you can raise your hand.

Hi, I'm Elliot Butler Cisneros.

Last name is B-U-T-L-E-R hyphen C-I-S-N-E-R-O-S.

My name became Butler Cisneros.

It used to be Cisneros.

In September, I married that woman.

And the person who married us, can you wave?

Habitat owner, Sharon Sinclair.

So I'm really glad to be here.

I've been involved with Habitat in some really different ways.

We're actually going to be market buyers in phase one.

And my stepdaughter, Ruby, can you wave?

Ruby and Kathy and I will be market buyers in phase one.

We've already got our house and we're just on fire.

We're so excited about this community.

A little bit, I want to share about where I came from.

I came from Colorado through New York and I came down here after the violence that occurred in 2017.

I have a nonprofit that does work around difference.

How do you get along with people?

How do we get along with people who are different than we are?

And when we move down here,

I began working with Heather Heyer's mom, Susan.

We created a program called Higher Voices to work with area youth in our schools.

Formerly, I've been a school principal.

I directed the Human Rights Office for the City of Fort Collins, also taught at Naropa University, multicultural classes.

And the reason I'm telling you all of this is because to me, cultivating bridges is really important.

And this opportunity at Southwood is a chance to cultivate bridges, race, socioeconomic class, religion.

Southwood represents a next evolution of a neighborhood, of what a neighborhood can be.

The lines and supports Albemarle's affordable housing and comprehensive plans

So please consider supporting phase two of Southwood.

It takes boldness and heart to take this kind of step for you as our governing body.

It's not business as usual.

It's a momentous undertaking, but this has such a strong foundation.

It has such a strong partnership.

And it's time has come.

It's time has come for us to cultivate these bridges together.

Okay, do I wait for the green light or do I, oh, there it is.

Hi, I'm Kathy Butler C. Snettis.

You met my husband, Elliot.

We live in Belmont in Charlottesville City.

And as you know, we're moving with my daughter to, as market rate home buyers into phase one.

I actually really want to start by thanking this body for your vision in approving phase one and to urge you to as quickly as possible approve phase two.

I'm so thrilled about this project in many ways.

Here are a few things that I wrote down about why it's so important to me.

It's vibrant.

It's well supported.

We heard, I mean,

I'm just blown away by how much I didn't even already know about what's been done to support the land, the community, the infrastructure.

It aligns strongly with the county's affordable housing plan.

Habitat is awesomely on fire with providing low income housing with phase one and more coming with phase two, assuming you all approve.

The community creates this richness of culture, race, class that doesn't exist and that I and my family want to be in, that we are so excited to be in.

I love that it encourages the use of this other amazing resource, Biscuit Run, and then it connects and encourages all the benefits of being out in nature that we keep learning more and more about.

One thing I didn't know and that I really am really happy about is just how much habitat has already contributed to the infrastructure in the county, these 12 years of cleanup

and septic tank stuff and all this stuff.

And on top of that comes affordable housing.

And I just want to say that it's not just the current Southwood residents that benefit, it's people like me and my family.

It's visionary and it brings together, like I said, people from different class, different race, different cultures.

And when that can be done with intention, as it is being done,

It just expands.

It has the possibility to expand into this incredibly rich, rich part of our world that is right here in the county, that will be right here in the county.

So I'm excited to live there and thank you for your vision and thank you for quickly approving phase two.

Thank you.

All right.

Our next three folks signed up to speak are Andy Miller, Alhena Cleveland, and Genesis Pina.

Good evening, commissioners.

I'm Andy Miller.

I am the director of real estate development for Piedmont Housing Alliance.

And I'm here tonight both as a resident of Albemarle County and an advocate for affordable housing, but also a partner with Habitat on the LIHTC development within Southwood phase one.

As most of us in this room already understand, affordable housing is an essential foundation that supports the wellbeing of our families and communities within Albemarle County.

The stability it creates allows families to plan for their future, improves educational and health outcomes for residents, and lowers the risk of homelessness for vulnerable families.

That opportunity for so many families in our region is slipping through their fingers.

And for many others, it's out of reach and has been for quite some time.

With rapidly rising home prices, increasing rental rates, and now inflationary pressures on family budgets, affordable housing is becoming increasingly harder to find.

This is especially true for our most vulnerable households who are working in low wage jobs, which are making up a larger share of our workforce.

And to address this crisis, we need thoughtful, creative solutions that seek to produce change through meaningful partnerships.

In my professional opinion, the plan in front of you is just that.

It's as thoughtful at its core as evidenced by Habitat's commitment to a resident-led design process.

This process has enabled current Southwood residents to actively participate in the revisioning of their community into a vibrant and inclusive mixed income and mixed use center.

Its creativity is on full display through the proposal's ability to weave complexities of resident aspirations

Financial requirements and county development goals into a comprehensive vision for the transformation of the Southwood community.

This is evidence through alignment with the future land use designation, planned extension of the phase one neighborhood center, inclusion of 20 acres of green space, and the inclusion of 287 affordable homes.

As an architect by training and now an affordable housing developer by profession, I can attest that the thoughtfulness and creativity of these proposals are reflected in the partnerships that support them.

Albemarle County has been a strong and creative partner for Southwood, and I would encourage that this partnership continue through the support of this application.

Thank you.

My name is Elena Cleveland, and I'm also a Habitat homeowner.

In 2017, we moved into our home in Wickham Pond in Creuse, and we've been so happy living there.

When we first got there, my son was like, this is like in a movie.

I can't believe that we're living here, you know, and

It makes my skin grow, just remembering.

We've been so happy.

I feel so blessed.

I love Habitat.

So this is my way to showing, to pay forward what they have done for us, that there will be no chance for us to get into that home, into that area.

I mean, homes go for like half a million dollars around where we live.

They helped us with so much.

I mean we had meetings with our neighbors so we get to know each other before we move into the actual place.

Now I hope that I have been a little bit more

We were doing so much stuff everybody is like single moms the ones that we live right there so we're so busy working taking care of our kids and everything and then making times to go to the meetings to put your work for the construction and so it was a little bit overwhelming at some time but

Now I see what their point was on getting us to know each other so we can get along and we can learn that we're more alike than different.

We just give each other the time and just, you know, give a little.

Affordable housing is like non-existent here.

I was doing real estate for a little while.

The houses were like $330,000 to start.

Now they're getting a lot higher.

It's getting more expensive everywhere.

So now with the market being so everybody wants to buy a house, even cars being so expensive.

Before I was paying rent, not knowing if next year they were gonna raise my rent, if they were gonna sell my place where I was living and then maybe have to leave.

Oh, well, thank you.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I was gonna write everything down, but I was just so nervous.

I said, I'm gonna forget everything.

So I'm just gonna go.

I want to thank the family that is going to live in Southwood and that they welcome

Diversity and especially in times where people are so crazy, it's so nice to see that somebody still wants to take a chance and meeting somebody that is different because of their background.

I was born in Mexico, so I came here when I was 12 and because

I'm not as dark as some other people.

They think that I'm not, you know, but I am.

I'm from Chiapas and my family is half Mexican, half American.

So sometimes people don't know that I'm Mexican and they're saying things and I'm like, hey, I'm Mexican.

OK, so please.

But I love diversity.

I love everything.

We're all the same.

I mean, if you cut us, we're going to bleed the same red.

So, you know, I just think we need more love.

That's it.

Thanks.

And what I will do is very fast.

So probably we finish before the red light.

I'm nervous.

It's okay.

Okay.

I give many thanks to the Avitad for giving me the opportunity to speak before Albemarle County and a country most respected by the residents of Charlottesville.

And with respect that all of you here deserve,

I would like to say a few things.

Many of us Hispanics have dreamt of living in a home in this beautiful country of the United States.

But few of us have the resources to achieve this dream.

And for this reason, we are very grateful

to Albemarle country and habitat that we have been given this opportunity to able to reach and or dream of being able to live in a home opportunity live in a home many like me

are in need of a respectable home and I know many others like myself are equally in need of a home.

With all respect to Albemarle County, please reconsider our work.

To continue this lovely project,

and help us.

We are many families that have hopes of ownership and with this project myself and many others are hoping for better housing.

Okay, thank you.

You did great.

My name is Lourdes Vasquez.

You might, I'm sorry, you might need to pull the microphone down to your mouth a little bit.

Mi nombre es Lourdes Vasquez.

Soy Mexicana.

I have lived here for two years and have participated in the more than 150 years of applying.

In March of this year, my family and I had the opportunity to meet in Lotte, where we are going to build our house.

I invite you to join us in this project, if you would like to join us in our journey, and in the coming years, you will be able to come back.

We are a small town in which my family is safe and safe.

The houses of the people of Albemarle are very small, and with the help of VITA, we can make a living out of it.

We can take care of it.

Our representatives are here, and we are here because we believe in their values, because we know that they are the best decisions.

y lo hacen por el vienestar de la comunidad.

Zagú es una comunidad genar de gente que trabajar y se suerza por el futuro de nuestros hijos porque sabemos que ellos méres en las mismas oportunidades que todos los residentes de este país sin importante su solígen.

Quiero gradecerra cada una de las personas que están interesado en el vienestar de Zagú

Ustedes nos conoces y sabe que dentro de cada uno de nosotros existe un sero mano que paz delograr lo que se propone a través del trabajo y el esfuerzo.

Muchas gracias y les agradezco que poyen el segundo projec.

My name is Lourdes Vasquez.

I have lived in Southford for 12 years and have participated in planning with more than 150 others.

In March of this year, my family and I had the opportunity to choose the law on which to build our house.

I invite you to support this project.

Without you, my dream and that my neighbors will have come crashing down.

We want a decent house where my family feels safe and happy.

Houses and rent in Albemarle County are very expensive and with the support of Habitat, we will be able

We acquire a house that we can afford.

You are our representatives and if we vote for you it is because we believe in our values because we know that you make the best decisions and do so for the well-being of the community.

SACWID is a community full of people who work and strive for the futures of our children because we know that they deserve the same opportunities as all residents of the country.

Regardless of their origins, I want to thank you and every person who has taken an interest that in the well-being of Southland you know us and you know that within each one of us there is a human being capable of achieving what is proposed through work and effort.

Muy buenas tardes tengen todos ustedes.

Mi nombre es lourdes Lopez, pero todos me llaman Lulu, entonces ya día hacerles adereso que es mi tucaya la que pasó d'interior, entonces

It's been a long time since I've lived here.

I have more than 10 years of experience, as a volunteer, and I'm very proud of that because Habitat has given us the opportunity to apply to a house in a large process.

It's a large process because it will take a lot of our time.

But I

Se que todos queremos estar en una comunidad tranquila y nos sentimos seguros mis hijos vanga al clued con viven comas niños tenemos muchos amigos que queremos apoyar y con vivimos las buenas y las malas, hemos vivir en esta aria y si no hemos

y si nos hemos que dado aquí es porque nos vemos ganado muchos venero para rentar o comparar en el condado alberma es muy caro las condiciones de nuestra traila nos nós las mejores pasamos mucho frío y mucho calora veces es imposible

but our place is a place where our cities can grow and we want to live there, do you not want to live there?

We have said that this project will continue and work hard to see our own reality.

We have the power of habitation.

Quiero recognizing que nuestras qualidades y nuestros respectos de por lo que somos.

Si ustedes nos apoyan esta proyecto va, suste no nos apoyan esta proyecto va afectar a má de 30 sientas familias.

Gente trabajadora, gente responsible, tenemos un hacento y color de piel pero ante los ojos de dios todos somos iguales.

Good evening.

My name is Lourdes Lopez.

Well, my name is Scarlett Malgar and I am her daughter.

And I have lived in Southwood for more than eight, nine years and I have more than 100 hours as a volunteer.

I am very grateful because Habitat has given us the opportunity to apply to buy a house.

It is a long process in which we have to give a lot of our time, but I know that we all want to be in this community.

It is calm and safe.

My children go to the club and learn to live with other kids.

We have many friends who support us and with whom we live together through thick and thin.

We have lived in this area and if we have stayed here it's because we do not earn much money to rent or buy air wells.

Albemarle County

It's very expensive.

The conditions of our trailer is not the best.

We are very cold sometimes.

The heat is unbearable.

But it is our home, the place where our children grew up.

We have faith in that project will continue.

We work hard to see our dreams come true.

And we have support of the habitat staff who recognize our qualities and respect us for who we are.

If you do not support this project, you will affect more than 300 families.

We are hardworking and responsible people.

We have different accents and skin color, but in the eyes of God, we are all the same.

Being white gives us privilege.

Perhaps the color of our skin or accents or our income will determine the project is approved or not.

Thank you.

And we really want to make a community

Thank you.

I am a member of the community of Southville for 9 years.

When this project was done, it was no longer complete.

But now we are going to talk about reality.

Es que necesitamos a pollo para continuar con este proyecto y no esperamos uno por espuesta.

Que eso por para nosotros, somos una comunidad multi-pulquerar que no tienen una bandeira de representación.

Casa la mayoría de nuestros niembras jóvenes, no conocen otra bandeira que no se alla de Estados Unidos porque esta su paí su estado y su condado con el que cuentan para tener la pollo de un mejor futuro y un mejor ogar.

Levante de la mano se a polla en este proyecto.

Muchos gracias.

Good evening.

My name is Lupe Nelgar.

I am a member of the Chicago community.

I'm from Honduras, and I have lived in Chicago for nine years.

When this project, it was nothing more than a dream come true.

But now we are seeing control, reality, and that is why we need your support to continue with this project.

And we are not expecting enough answers.

What is saltwood for us?

We are a community, multicultural.

That's not half a represent flat.

Almost the majority of our youngest members do not know any other flat than the United States because

This is the country, state, and county that they come to have a support of a better future and a better house.

Raise your hand if you support this project.

Thank you so much.

I really hope face those concerns too, because we want to live there.

We want to these dreams come true.

Thank you.

All right, thank you everyone.

And thanks to the audience for helping out with the hands up and down.

So I'm going to call the next four people on this list.

And don't worry if I don't call your name.

I have another list too to go to.

But the next four I'm going to call down in this order.

Jocelyn Rosso Castillo, Tatiana Serrato, Alfredo Martinez, and Martha Doggett.

Hello, I'm Jocelyn.

I would like to read in Spanish first.

Is that okay?

Sure.

Okay.

Buenas tardes.

Mi nombre es Jocelyn.

Can you just tilt the mic a little bit?

Okay.

Okay.

Buenas tardes.

Mi nombre es Jocelyn y Rosa Castillo.

Me siento un rada por poder hablar.

from the importance of this project for me.

I have lived in Southwood, Desdequenasi, and I have lived in a small city.

This project of re-urbanization is important for me because we can do a lot of things, we can live in a place that is completely unknown, with so much space.

In this trial, we have to come up with a little space that we have.

It's not just that we can't

Contrinar por la procupación de sobre probar mountain view cuando podemos expandilas escuelas como lo que esta ciendo cross it

Como comunidad estamos trabajando juntos para poder tener nuestra vivienda accessible estamos trabajando lo mejor possible para que este proyecto suceda gracias por tejar me hablar espero que de gasi a la solitito de rezonificación.

Good afternoon, my name is Jocelyn Rosa Castillo and I am honored to be able to speak the importance of this project.

I have lived in Southwest since I was born and I live in a household of seven.

This redevelopment project is important to me because we accomplish many things being able to live in a whole new house of our own with so much space.

In our trailer, we made ourselves fit with the little space that we have.

It isn't fair that we can't continue because of the worry of overpopulating Mountain View when we can expand the schools like Rosette is doing.

As a community, we are working together to be able to have our affordable housing.

We are working our best to make this project happen.

Thank you for letting me speak, and I hope you say yes to the rezoning application.

They're already raised.

Thank you.

So triple hand raised.

Hola, buenas tardes.

Mi nombre es Tatiana Serrato y habibido en Zagud por seis años.

Yo se que ustedes que zaben que zagud existe porque esta en el mapa, pero el mente no zaben lo que zagud es.

El parque se vey como un basurero y no queremos que se vey hací pero no tenemos el supporte para mejorar la cipación.

A vita no sestán doló oportunidad de mejorar nuestras tílo de vida de tener una casa con calefacción y hay recondicional para puede que ha a nuestros hijos.

In the year of this year, we have had a great effort and we will continue to do so in this moment.

Avitano promised to help us with the hotel, and I know it will be impossible for us to help, because we are in the conditions in which we live.

We will be able to do so constantly, but we will not be able to build our streets.

Not only do we need our spaces, we need a place, but we are not only keeping them alive.

This country is multicultural and is made up of immigrants.

Let's try this project, because the people who live here are people, not animals.

I want to give a future to my children and a future to you.

The only way I can help them is to help the United States of America.

I want the people who live here to help us have the opportunity to have a good life,

Realmente no hay una razón logica para decir que no.

Tenemos que mejorar las condiciones de todos los habitandes de salvo porque somos parte del conda.

Les invitas que visiten mestra comunidad y entrivisten a las personas para que hacios te es puedo dar sequentan la orgencia que el vesindario de estado gutiene.

Y solos y por anguentender la necesidad de cada familia y ades puede eso, pueden tomar so decisión.

Hello, my name is Tatiana Serrato.

I have lived in Southwood for six years.

I know you know that Southwood exists because it is on the map, but you don't really know what Southwood is like.

The park looks like a dump and we don't want it to look like that, but we don't have the support to improve the situation.

Habitat is giving us the opportunity to improve our lifestyle, to have a home with heating and air conditioning so that we can raise our children.

In January of this year, we had a heavy snowfall and my babies were six months old.

Habitat provided us with help with a hotel and they did everything possible to help us because they know the conditions in which we live.

Trees are falling constantly and endangering our lives.

No one puts themselves in our shoes.

We need a home.

We are not taking anything away from anyone.

This country is multicultural and is made up of immigrants.

They must approve, well you actually, you must approve this project because those of you, those of us who live here are people, not animals.

I want to give my children a future and a healthy future.

The only flag my children know is what is that of the United States.

I want the people who come after us to have the opportunity to have a decent housing.

There is no logical reason to say no.

We have to improve the conditions for all Southwood audience because we are part of the county.

We invite you to visit our community and interview people.

That way you will realize the urgent need that the neighborhood of Southwood has.

Only then you will be able to understand the need of each family and after that you can make a decision.

Buenas tardes comisión de planificación comunidad aquí presente gracias por venir y apoyares de proyecto.

Mi nombre es Alfredo Martinez.

He vivido en salgúl por casi de 66 años.

I am here to talk in reference to this project.

This project is very important not only for my family, but also for many people in our community.

This project is important because many of the families we live with in this community do not have access to many resources and many of us are entrepreneurs.

We are trying to live with this project

Tenemos la oportunidad de disfutar de una mejor vivienda a presios que vamos a poder cubrir.

Tengo dos hijos y a ellos encanta vivir aquí porque antenido acceso a muchos programas.

como una como un programa de football, mejores escuelas, es importante para que mis hijos tengan acceso a estos recursos para que puedan crecer en un ambiente seguro y feliz.

continue to be realized and my impression is not the efforts of them to work and include them in this project and help people to succeed in this community.

I have always been able to give a significant information during all the process of this project.

There is a lot of unity in Sagu and I love to live in this community.

Charleville is a city, full of communities that promote love and inclusion.

Good evening members of the panel, everyone here, and thank you for your time.

My name is Alfredo Martinez, and I've been living in Southwood for about 16 years.

I'm here to speak in reference to the Southwood project.

This project is very important to not only me and my family,

but also many others in our community.

Habitat is giving us the opportunity to live in more secure, healthy and affordable housing.

This project is important because many of the families that live here in this community don't have access to many resources.

And with many of us being entrepreneurs, we are just trying to survive.

With this project, we have the chance of living in better housing at prices that we can afford.

I have two sons and they love living here because they have had access to many programs such as a good soccer program and better schools.

It is important to me that my children have access to these resources so they grow up in a safe and happy environment.

Habitat has done an incredible job in Southwood.

I have been going to the community planning meetings that Habitat holds since the beginning and I've been really impressed

how they have always included us in the project and have helped people to be able to stay in this community.

They have always given the community the best information possible throughout this process.

There's so much unity in Southwood and I really love living in this community.

In Charlottesville, I've always seen so many signs, many signs that promote love and inclusivity.

I'm hoping that when the decision is made

and just made for the benefit of everyone.

Thank you.

I'm here reading with Martha Doggett.

My name is Martha Doggett.

I've been living in Southwood for 28 years.

My trailer was built in 1993 and is falling apart.

The roof is leaking and the breaker's not working well.

When it rains, the water runs behind the panel box and it's scary.

I have to put buckets everywhere.

We need these homes.

It will be better for everyone.

Habitat is doing many things for us, but there's not enough.

I feel embarrassed to share this, but I'm just going to tell you the truth.

I know that you can help to have a safe place that I can call home.

Other people also need a place to live.

I have many friends and I wanted them to be here.

I like to be around people, many nice people in this neighborhood.

I have never had a problem.

My neighbors are always willing to help if I have a problem.

I love Michelle.

She is very helpful and when I need her she is always willing to help me.

Michelle is a Habitat staff member.

All of our doctors appointments are at UVA and when we are sick it is close to get there, especially for emergencies.

We have everything we need around us.

It will be better for us if we can have a place that we can afford.

I would love to move into something new.

All right, I'm going to move to my sign-in sheet now, and I'm going to call these three folks.

I just need to make sure if there's any duplications.

OK.

Richard Tremblay, I'm a resident of the Samuel Miller District and also on the Habitat Board of Directors.

You've heard tonight and seen slides tonight about some of the environmental challenges at Southwood and its redevelopment.

And I just wanted to give you a quick summary of the total scope of that work.

And I emailed this to you earlier in the day.

And this is just the phase two area that I'm talking about today, or now.

There's over 300 trailers to be moved out of the community, including outbuildings next to most of those trailers.

As Andrew talked about and Dan as well, there's over 400 oil storage tanks.

So far, only empty ones have been discovered.

And septic tanks, there's only over 400 oil and septic tanks that each have to be carefully dug up and removed and documented.

There's more than 50 septic drain fields which serve multiple homes that have to be carefully taken offline in time when there's an alternative in place and removed.

There's about 20,000 linear feet of asbestos water line, which has to be carefully dug up and carefully removed with the proper permits.

There's about 10,000 feet of old sanitary sewer line that has to also be carefully dug up and moved off site.

And there's about 80 acres of existing infrastructure, roads, concrete sidewalks, electric lines, which also has to be removed and carefully taken away.

And then based on our experience in the first phase, there'll be about 100,000 cubic yards of dirt that has to be stockpiled and moved off site into an approved area.

And once this rezoning is approved, Habitat, as you've heard about tonight, will continue to seek federal and state and county grants to make this all happen, along with the other sources of revenue.

Thank you.

OK, the next person I have is Lourdes Vasquez.

OK, and then Rick Randolph.

He left, but he left a statement.

OK.

All right, then the next three folks I have on the list are Abigail Turner, Martha Doggett, and Pam Riley.

I think she already, yeah, Martha already spoke, sorry.

Good evening.

I'm Abigail Turner.

I live in the Samuel Miller district, and I want to celebrate.

I want to celebrate the advances that Charlottesville and Albemarle and really Virginia have made in terms of breaking the mold and creating something that's still in the progress of being a model for the country.

And I don't think I'm overstating, and here's why.

I'm a retired civil rights lawyer, and I spent 40 years, more than 40 years, representing people who were low income, and a lot of that was housing work.

And a lot of it had to do with discrimination, but I also represented a housing development of nonprofit housing developer in rural Alabama.

and the most poverty-stricken parts of Alabama.

So I know to some extent the kind of problems that Dan has faced and the kind of problems that you face and the decisions you face in making decisions.

And this is a big deal, what's being built here, what's been built.

I am also one of NAN's volunteers.

I'm a Master Gardener, and my organization, the Piedmont Master Gardeners, has a program where we help the families, this is not as part of Southwood, but we help families

landscape their properties before they move into them.

And it means that we've heard the stories and I've heard really convincing stories about what a difference even being involved with habitat is and what it's difference it's going to make with children.

And one of the things that's been so much fun for us is the children's involvement

with the landscaping.

My colleagues told me on the phone today that last Friday when we were doing landscaping in Lachlan Hills, two nine-year-olds had big plastic trucks and they were moving the mulch from the back of the house to the front of the house, totally outdoing all the adults.

As a taxpayer, I wanna urge you to

approve the second phase and to do it now because with interest rates rising, with the federal funds that are available, the county cannot afford and we citizens in the county cannot afford to not take advantage of the timeframe that we have to get the money that Dan described to you.

Good evening Chair Firehock and commissioners.

My name is Pam Riley and I live in the Mill Creek neighborhood which is in the south side.

I'd like to thank you all for your service and I would also really like to thank the staff for their thorough and professional staff report for this evening.

I just want to begin by saying that I support southwood redevelopment.

I support habitat.

and I support affordable housing.

I think many of you know that that's been a lifelong career of mine.

I stand with the residents of Southwood and all the residents and the businesses of the Southside.

As a longtime resident in the Scottsville district and as the former planning commissioner representing the Scottsville district during the rezoning of phase one, I have repeatedly advocated for more affordable housing and for the protection of the legacy residents of Southwood.

I have a degree in community and regional planning and most of my working career has been devoted to the creation and the preservation of affordable housing.

I'm writing you and I sent you this in an email and I'm also wanting to get this in the record in person and for those in the audience.

I'm here tonight to urge you to follow the staff recommendation to not approve the ZMA this evening.

I believe that this is a worthy phase two.

I believe it needs more time, and I do believe the staff recommendations have really addressed the potentially disastrous impacts of particularly schools, roads,

and the impacts on the park as something that really needs to be worked out before this goes forward.

The applicant itself has admitted that they've rushed this, that they haven't actually been able to provide all the information that's necessary.

And they do come forward tonight with some proffers and some even amendments to the proffers of what was provided to you in writing.

However, there's still some really, really sticky issues here.

And the school impact issue is the critical one.

We really need to be careful about this decision to rush this because I believe that there really is not just the impacts of this application at stake, but the precedent we've been establishing by allowing developers to

come with these applications and not address the impacts that are being made.

I'm happy that the current residents will be able to go to Mountain View, but I'm very concerned about all the other children in the market rate homes and all along Avon Fifth Street.

This is an issue that the Planning Commission has discussed for years.

This has been a building catastrophe.

We are so over capacity that it's not an issue that can be ignored.

It does sound like there's a proffer or an offer of selling land for a site in the neighborhood in phase two.

It would be great if you could give it more time to work this out.

Thank you.

OK.

So that concludes the people I have on this list.

Oh, I'm sorry.

This is on the Zoom meeting.

And then we'll come back to anyone who didn't sign up.

Right now I have three people.

The first one is Ken Garrison.

Hello, my name is Ken Garrison.

I am a resident of a community adjacent to Southwood, but I am speaking tonight on behalf of Sean Bridges, who works as a member of the Fifth and Avon Advisory Committee.

I will read Sean's words into the record.

As a homeowner in Southwood since 2005, I have seen the Southside grow over the years as my daughter worked her way through Mountain View Elementary, Walton Middle School, and now Monticello High School.

The longstanding plans for Habitat to redevelop Southwood without displacement has been something that many of us have been excited to see for many years.

As the development plan became refined, I have expressed various concerns regarding staging,

buffers, and community impact while continuing to support the redevelopment that would address these concerns.

As someone who runs, bikes, and drives along Fifth Street extended in Old Lynchburg regularly, I see firsthand the current state of our traffic and our roadways and how these conditions have worsened without significant improvements being conducted in conjunction with the development of new residences.

Traffic where Sunset Avenue extended and Old Lynchburg meet Fifth Street extended and Old Lynchburg Road already have significant backups, which have led to multiple accidents, close calls, and I witnessed this at various intersections.

BDOT's proposed changes to mitigate with a forced right turn, U-turn lanes, and or a traffic circle should provide improvement, but that does not account for the traffic that will come with phase one and phase two.

The existing development of the Albemarle Business Campus and related apartments and Phase 1 development of Southwood will add to the pressure to those intersections and increase the need for enhanced public transportation, better bike and pedestrian access.

Phase 1 development of Southwood and other projects underway do not provide adequate proffers to address current traffic, pedestrian or bike activity to say nothing of the future impact of these developments.

This is further concerning when you consider the scale of Southwoods Phase 2.

At the November 18, 2021 5th and Avon advisory meeting, Albemarle County and Habitat for Humanity Redevelopment Representative presented to the committee, based on the information provided during the meeting, that there were 331 trailers

and approximately 1,300 residents in Southwood.

Phase one of the Southwood redevelopment provides for 335 residents to be constructed, 84 habitat affordable units and 121 PHA affordable units, 128 market units.

Based on these numbers, it appears that 84 to 205 residences could move from a trailer to affordable housing, thus adding 120 to 250 net new residences in Southwood

Okay.

If I can add one last statement to allow the continued redevelopment of Southwood without the developers taking responsibility for the significant expanding and impact to traffic, schools, environment and county services without providing meaningful mitigation plans would be irresponsible of the county and the staff.

Saenz, Sean Bridges, Member Fifth, and Avon Advisory Committee.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

Next, we have Steven Cornelson.

Steven, please unmute yourself, state your name and address.

Hello, my name is Steven Cornelson.

I work at the University of Virginia, and my family and I are purchasing a home in Southwood, phase one.

My wife has taught at Mountain View Elementary for five years.

And I want to highlight two of the major concerns raised by the county staff in their report.

One is the schools and the other is the traffic.

I think both of these sayings, Mountain View Elementary is already over capacity, regardless of what happens with Southwood phase two.

And as was noted about the traffic concerns on Fifth Street extended and Old Lynchburg,

there's already overcapacity issues, regardless of what's decided on Southwood phase two.

And so I think those are things that the county has already been planning for in the fiscal 23 budget and the CIP.

There's plans for a new elementary school for the Southern feeder pattern.

Additionally, there are a host of projects from VDOT, SmartScale, et cetera, to address the concerns on Fifth Street.

If we hear the timeline for phase two, starting as early as 2025 and lasting potentially 15 years,

It's going to take a long time for an increase in density to show up in school enrollment numbers.

If we're talking about a projected 95 kids max when it's full density, that might not show up until 2040.

And so what is noted as a negative thing in the review, I would actually say is a positive because the county is taking measures to provide the adequate and necessary infrastructure on both the school front

and for the roads to provide sufficient capacity by the time the density is realized in this project.

And so I would say, given the macroeconomic factors, the interest rates, the ARPA funding available, this is actually a real great strategic chance for the county where these other things are already in motion to take advantage of this opportunity to move this project forward knowing that by the time the infrastructure is needed, it will be there and it will be in place.

Thank you.

Next, we have Peter Krebs.

Peter, state your name, address.

OK.

Hopefully, you can hear me now.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, Planning Commission and members of the public.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I'm a Charlottesville resident.

PEC supports phase two of the Southwood redevelopment.

We believe that the proposed rezoning is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

It will provide additional housing in an appropriate location, including much needed affordable housing.

We have some areas where we think the proposal could be more fully clarified before the project gets final approval from the board of supervisors.

Hickory Street will be a major transportation connector and not just for residents of phase two.

Hickory will also function as a through street for residents in the southern urban area and provide access to the western entrance of Biscuit Run Park.

As such, the street must be designed and constructed as a complete street with sidewalks and protected bike lanes.

We've seen these described in some of the literature, but they're not apparent in the drawings I've seen.

Secondly, easements for future connection to Biscuit Run Park, described in the proper, should link to the public road network, excuse me, to the public road network so they will be accessible to all.

That way they serve the broader public interest and remove ambiguity.

That's just a few words, but I think it'll make a big difference.

We wouldn't want the county connecting the park to a private area.

Third,

There is a clear need for a trailhead park in somewhere near the southeast corner of the project.

This will serve park visitors from Southwood and other locations too.

We have also heard that residents need space to store commercial vehicles.

These functions are quite different and should not be conflated, particularly if only 10 spaces are being provided.

We applaud Habitat's resident-led approach to redevelopment.

We look forward to working with our partners there at the county and with Southwood residents to bring about a community that is healthy, natureful, and a high quality place to live.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Somebody raised their hand.

OK.

Well, no, they took it down.

Nope, it's back up, okay.

Next, we have Matt Lawless.