Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   10/25/2022

All right, good afternoon.

I'd like to welcome everyone to the planning commission for October 25th, 2022 at 4 o'clock p.m.

in room 241 of the county office building.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the planning commission homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters

which comments from the public will be received.

Do we have the call?

Is Carolyn on?

Mr. Clayborne?

That's it.

Mr. Carrazana?

Ms.

Firehock?

Here.

Thank you.

We have established a quorum.

We're not taking any matters from the public at this time for this session.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today we're here for a work session on a potential zoning map amendment application and some questions that staff and the applicant have for the commission about some of the comprehensive plan recommendations.

So to begin, this is the property in question.

It's Tax Map Parcel 61W-02-0A2.

It is 3.227 acres, and it is located on the east side of Route 29.

It is currently zoned C1 Commercial, and it is located on the boundary between Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville.

I'm sure most of you are familiar with this area, but as you can tell, there's a wide range of uses that surround this parcel.

Most of them are non-residential.

There are some retirement and assisted living facility homes to the northeast, but this parcel is actually the former site of the Seville Oriental Grocery Store.

And at the rear of the property is an existing business that does some automobile service work.

So the property is located within the Places 29 development area.

And this is the future land use classifications that are recommended by the plan on the property.

You'll notice the letters NS, and that stands for Neighborhood Service Center.

Basically, this is one of the center types in the Places 29 master plan that is meant to recognize areas of activity or nodes of activity that would occur within this development area.

Neighborhood Service Center is the least intense center type recommended by the master plan.

But for purposes of the discussion today, one thing I wanted to call out specifically is that the master plan recommends a maximum building height of three stories for any structures that are in a neighborhood service center.

So you'll notice there's two other colors within the property.

One of those is orange, and that represents the urban density residential future land use classification.

That allows for basically any type of residential use at a density between six and 34 units per acre.

It also has a maximum three story building height, and I'm just going to go ahead and say that may be an error.

I think it's actually a maximum four story building height within urban density residential.

I apologize for that.

The last color that we see is the pink and white hatching, which covers most of the parcel here.

And that represents the urban mixed use in centers land use category.

So that is what it sounds like.

It's a mixed use land use classification that could include commercial, retail, general non-residential, like office or institutional.

But it also does allow residential uses at densities between three and 20 units per acre.

So this is one of the images from attachment A, which was included with the staff report.

And what it is meant to show is the general development that could be done on this parcel with this proposal.

So again, this would be a zoning map amendment to change the zoning district of the property from C1 commercial to the neighborhood model district, which the neighborhood model district is a mixed use district that allows for non-residential and residential uses.

The actual form of this development would be a single structure that would be primarily multifamily residential dwellings.

It's two hundred and seventy five units is what this developer is looking to do.

They would have an interior structured parking lot, which is represented on this image sort of center left.

You can see parking.

It's a gray color.

There is a residential or retail component that they would be looking to do and that is the salmon or pinkish color you see on the left hand side of the screen.

I think that's 7400 square feet was what was included in the write up provided by the applicant.

The building would be five stories tall.

And so really the last thing to say about this is looking at the acreage of the parcel and then the number of dwelling units proposed.

That comes out to 85 dwelling units per acre, which exceeds the 20 units per acre recommended in the urban mixed use category and the 34 units per acre recommended in the urban density residential.

I have some slides here.

The applicant is also available to go through these images and talk about the specifics and the layout and the purposes of the floor plans.

But they do have images that represent each level of the structure in the staff report.

This is the first floor.

This is the second level.

And this would be levels three through five.

There are some facade renderings to sort of convey what the form of this building would look like from the roadway.

The street that you see down here is actually Route 29.

And then this is Hillsdale Drive back here.

So this is looking from the northwest to the southeast.

This is basically a flipped version of that.

You've still got Route 29 down here on the left, Hillsdale back there.

So this is looking from the southwest to the northeast.

And really the purpose of this work session today is to discuss these two questions.

Given the density that is proposed by the applicant, would that be generally acceptable even though it exceeds the master plan's recommendations?

And finally, the building height proposed, which is five stories.

Would that be generally acceptable considering the limitations that the master plan recommends based on the land use classifications?

That concludes my presentation.

I have a quick question.

Yes, the Places29 master plan was adopted, I believe, in June of 2010.

Okay, that's all I had.

Anyone else have any quick questions for staff?

So I'm turning it over to the applicants.

As long as you're representing the applicants or not?

If you want me to sit or stand, I'm happy to just sit.

Whatever you say, eye level as you all, do you have a preference?

Well, I'll just introduce myself for the record.

I'm Valerie Long with Williams Mullen, representing the applicant, my colleague, Megan Medastup, who most of you know.

And this is David Dees with Thesis Living.

His company is the contract purchaser of this property.

And first, Cameron, thank you.

He covered most of the issues

When David and his colleagues came to us with this property, they're very interested in investing in the county and helping to address the shortage of housing, multi-family housing in particular.

They identified this property, sort of shared with us what their vision is.

Thank you.

And from an urban planning perspective, we think it makes so much sense.

They think it makes sense from a market perspective.

Really the big issue is the density issue.

And so when we first looked at it, our initial thought was, that's about twice what the comprehensive plan contemplates here.

But this makes so much sense for this parcel.

It's the, as you may have noticed, the run on the Evan City County border.

The city's comprehensive plan, which was just adopted last fall, the parcel to the south and those several to the south

have a designation that contemplates up to 10 stories along major corridors.

And they haven't gotten into density levels in their comprehensive plan, but there's speculation, at least signals from their drafts that it'll probably be higher density on their side as well, maybe no limits on density.

Anyway, from our perspective, we just think that's another reason why it's a wonderful opportunity for the county to think about

how this property could be most efficiently used and address the shortage of housing and really the density limits we think is really the only sort of challenging aspect given the, as you know, Ms.

Firehock, the 12 year old, maybe almost 13 year old master plan.

I know that since that was adopted, there's been a lot of change and realization in terms of, you know,

density limits, you know, how the built environment is done, the places or the Rio 29 plan just up the street.

Obviously, the character of that plan calling for a much higher density, much more urban compact development.

We looked at that closely and see a lot of similarities here.

It's obviously not within that

small area plan, but we think there's a lot of potential benefits.

Obviously, right on a bus line, it's convenient.

There's walking sidewalks and trails and all of those things.

So I'll maybe walk through this.

Great, thank you.

We included this slide just to visually demonstrate again that it is right on the boundary of the city, everything to the south on the east side of 29 is in the city of Charlottesville.

And then everything on the other side is the county.

Next slide.

Again, I imagine you all are familiar with it.

As Cameron indicated, you all know it.

That's the old Condyle Building, now Seminole Place, property across the street.

Sort of backs up almost to Hillsdale Drive.

Next slide.

And Cameron already went through the comp plan designation with you.

We're happy to chat more about it.

One thing we also think is relevant and helpful is that with regard to the uses and the comprehensive plan, we think it's an exact match.

It contemplates urban density residential, and then some type of neighborhood service center level mixed use.

And as indicated, the concept plan is for a retail component in the front.

So we can, in terms of usage, it's a perfect match.

That's okay, next slide is good.

Again, this is all part of our proposal.

And I should back up and say, when we were looking at this, and as I indicated, we noted that the fully acknowledged the density

that's proposed is more than the current comprehensive plan contemplates.

That's why we wanted to come to you and have a work session.

We think there's a lot of merit.

I hope you might agree.

As we talked about, we wanted to at least get your temperature and feedback on whether this is something that you as a commission would even entertain before we went to the expense and time of preparing a full application.

and waiting months to get to the commission only to find out that it's sort of done on the way.

So, thank you.

So, could you go back one slide?

Thank you.

If I were building non-residential retail in the front, which is approximately 275 units, the structure of parking back, and I can walk you through that a little bit more, standard modern amenities for a multi-family project like this.

We are proposing saving room for a multi-use path along Route 29 frontage.

which is also contemplated in the Places29 master plan.

We have a pedestrian and vehicular connection proposed to Hillsdale Drive, which I'll walk you through in a minute.

And then a small plaza area adjacent to the retail commercial space as part of the concept.

So I don't know if this works as a laser printer or not, but I'll just talk through it.

And again, Cameron covered most of it.

The area in the sort of red up

Closest to 29 is a proposed retail component.

And it's probably tough to see, but there is the shared use path shown there also with a grass strip between the path and 29.

The parking deck is gray in the center.

You would enter the site one of two ways.

See if the next slide is a little closer up.

There we go.

You would enter the site at the bottom left is one way in.

That's a in only, not an out.

not an exit.

So if you are, for instance, coming to pick someone up who lived here or drop someone off, come in, go down, drop off or pick up at the circle and come back out and exit through the parking garage.

That's you can hopefully see.

And then there's a right out right in right out at the northern edge that would also coordinate with the future Wawa gas station that's proposed on the parcel immediately to the north.

and you can see that interconnection.

We're also proposing a walking trail along the entire southern boundary of the parcel that would run from 29 all the way to the back of the parcel.

My next slide shows that a little better.

This is just showing the various floors of the building, how it could lay out.

That's more residential and you can see the parking deck in between.

As Cameron showed you that

This is just a rendering showing conceptually how it would lay out with regard to the adjacent uses and actually the future Wawa site has been sort of drawn in to show what that would look like.

You can see in the back, behind the building, sort of the top left, that's a future parking lot and it would provide a vehicular and pedestrian interpersonal connection to Pillsdale Drive.

You all may remember several months ago when we brought the Virginia Institute of Autism special use permit.

That back, what is now currently a vacant lot, that would be a potential future overflow parking for them or additional parking for when they build out their second phase of their expansion.

So we were able to work with their plans and incorporate an interpersonal connection that still allows them to have enough parking spaces

So we think it works really well and provides for future redevelopment if needed.

Again, this is just from the other side.

And as you can tell, or maybe see in the bottom kind of center corner where the red meets the orange, there is, you can see the vehicular

tunnel almost a corridor where you drive through that parking deck to reach the opposite northern edge of the parcel and then be able to proceed north on 29 or into the Wawa.

Again, looking at with regard to the issue of consisting of the comprehensive plan, we would ask that you consider that while certainly the master recommendations are important

Those are, when we talk about consistent with the comprehensive plan, that's what we talk about all the time.

But really, as you all know, there are many components of the comprehensive plan.

And we like, I guess we would say, ask that you consider all of the other components of the comprehensive plan that are relevant to this application and really all applications at the same time, that the issue of density is just one of many recommendations or guiding principles in the comprehensive plan.

As I noted that use is exactly consistent with the plan's recommendations.

When we walked through and analyzed it internally against the neighborhood model principles, it meets all of those.

It was based on our concept plan.

There's also the growth management section of your comprehensive plan that talks about encouraging approval of new development proposals in the development area at the designated location and with mixed mixture of uses.

That's obviously a relevant component.

Next slide.

I'm going to keep pushing it.

Also in the development area section of the comprehensive plan, there are a number of other objectives that we think are very relevant to this proposal and support this proposal in terms of consistency.

They're obviously there, but provide sidewalks and pedestrian paths in the development areas.

Promote redevelopment, which this obviously is.

Take advantage of existing investment in development areas, such as the infrastructure that exists on 29.

Use the development area land efficiently to prevent premature expansion into development areas.

This would certainly achieve that objective.

Promote density within the development areas and help create new compact urban places

We think it satisfies that goal as well in promoting infill and redevelopment that's compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and uses.

As Cameron indicated, there's a variety of uses surrounding it.

There are no single family residential uses immediately adjacent.

The furthest one I think would be far side of where Virginia Institute of Autism is in the Brook Mill community, or maybe the Branchlands community, but this certainly won't have an adverse impact on those

neighbors, the parcel to the south that's in the city, which is currently the Chinese food restaurant.

It seems to be pretty successful from a restaurant perspective, but there's a lot of extra burning there.

Presumably that parcel would potentially be redeveloped in the future.

The Wawa is being redeveloped.

Virginia's autism obviously going into the east, hopefully, for their expansion.

So we think it works well with all of the adjacent uses.

with the Seminole Place property across the street, which again, the old comm dial for those of us who are around that long.

Now, as you may know, is mostly a mixture of, I think, warehouse uses.

I think the school center one is there.

There's a brewery there.

You obviously have Stonefield just down the block.

So we think it fits really well and could be a very desirable location for a place like this.

And so we would,

I think we have a couple more quick slides maybe.

Oh yeah, sorry, forgive me that perhaps one of the most important that housing Albemarle talking about the, from the coverings plan about the shortage of supply of housing and the need to have diverse housing for current and future residents and it's about encouraging a variety of housing types.

And also there's a provision that talks about exactly what the need is.

but the county's projected to grow 25% in the next 20 years and needing 2,700 additional units to accommodate that increase.

So obviously that's an important component as well.

I think that may be the end.

Yes.

Thank you.

Well, if we could, let's try to start with questions before we get into the comments on what we think of this proposal.

I know I wrote down some questions.

Does anyone have any questions for the applicant for those questions?

Sure.

Just a couple of quick questions.

Thanks for the presentation.

It's really helpful.

So you mentioned where the red meets the orange, and there was the entrance to the garage.

It looks like there's a step back also shown there along the road.

I think there was.

I think it would be helpful to just keep those up.

We'll go back and forth.

I think you're talking about the building height step back?

Yeah, so the retail... Right here, the fact that the retail is one story and then the multiple family is a step back.

There it is.

Retail with double height.

Yes.

And then there's a white, looks like step back.

Yes.

Is that accurate?

Yes.

And some of that was to sort of reflect the

Got it.

Okay, thanks.

And related to the retail

I don't want to call it gratuitous retail.

I realize that, you know, sometimes it's sort of ground floor, it's adjacent to the main circulation pattern of the pedestrians.

Is it retail that you're envisioning to support this development?

Would it be retail for other developments as well?

What's your kind of concept around the retail?

Well, not necessarily.

I mean, it is a retail corridor.

So I think doing some retail does play into the context of the corridor itself.

We're setting aside some parking in the internal parking garage for these retailers.

I mean, I can't predict.

Retailers are really difficult.

But I can't predict who's going to want to go here.

But we kind of envisioned.

You know, like a deli or something and try to set up some kind of, you know, like outdoor space right here for people to sort of congregate.

I think it would be, you know, in a building this size, it does help have some internal retail.

So yeah, your residents can go downstairs and grab a sandwich or coffee or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think, you know, having everything

trying to meet the wishes of you all and some of the planners making everything interconnected.

I think it does help that retailer does help our building ultimately and just having flow of people.

I think it would be desirable space.

Do we want to do 7500 square feet?

Yeah, I guess the reason I ask is because we've probably all seen retail backfire, where you have this desire to bring life to the street.

Yeah, I haven't envisioned that on Route 29.

I mean, I really, you know, we wouldn't be proposing a mixed-use project here with this much retail if we didn't think

If we didn't think we could fill it.

Sure.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, you know, Lululemon, Starbucks, you know, all of these, you know, REI, all these big box retailers.

Sure.

A lot of small box, small shop retailers like to fill around, around those large groups.

Great.

Just a question about stormwater.

Good.

And then last question, Lonnie, and then I'll be quiet.

Your vision for affordability?

Is it meeting the county policy and exceeding the county policy?

Yeah, so just along with the retail, have you considered flexibility in terms of that ground floor in terms of if you

You can always convert it to residential units.

I don't foresee us wanting more retail here.

It's just the city, the county, the US really in general, where we go, these housing

and, frankly, 7,500 square feet of retail.

It's a lot.

I mean, it's not.

If I had a use that I could put on three and a quarter acres right now, then of course it's not a lot, right?

I could do that easily, but if you're going to build a spec, like we plan to do, it's a decent amount of retail.

We think it's attractive, but

To answer your question, you can always convert it to apartments or office or some kind of living space or something like that.

You know, extensive green roof on there is one way to do that.

OK, yeah.

I have some questions.

before we get to comments.

I'll just go then.

Just some simple things.

You talked about access through the parking lot in the back to Hillsdale Drive, but that's not your property, right?

So do you have to work out some kind of ingress and egress agreements of easement?

So that would be to be determined.

Correct.

In working with Virginia Institute of Autism and the owner of that parcel,

We haven't worked out the details by any means, but that's been part of the plan forever.

We've also had discussions with the developer of the Wawa property.

And because we're trying to meet VDOT's

Apparently we have two in and out access points on Route 29.

They of course wanted to limit the Wawa.

I understand, I get it.

But we're working with them to just combine our in and out to the north of the property.

And they've been so far very cooperative and great.

But there's such two kind of things that have to happen before we can kind of all hold hands.

But we're all trying to work together.

Those guys have, you know,

and very cooperative, at least thus far.

But yeah, we all have to, in a sense, work together to make the fire marshal happy, to make you not happy, and to provide marketable access to the asset.

Yeah, I mean, because just looking at the parking lot that goes to Hillsdale, it doesn't really feel like it's that conducive to go as a through way.

You know, you've got cars backing out and pulling in and then you're trying to like sneak through it.

And I've certainly done lots of sneaking through parking lots back there, but it, it can get, it can get hairy.

And so I guess I'm just wondering if that parking lot needs to be designed a different way.

It's not necessarily, at least correct me if I'm wrong, intended to be sort of a regular interconnection for the very reasons you indicated, but at least an option.

Certainly, I think, you know, you really want to get to Hillsdale and you don't want to deal with that, you know, turning right out of the building and then right on Greenbriar and then go so close, you could get there relatively easily.

The challenge with that site is there's a stormwater management facility in one corner, there's some steep slopes in other areas.

That's kind of the only way the footprint works, at least for the civil engineers that designed it, that it both provides enough parking for

The Virginia Institute of Autism's needs long-term and allows for vehicles to circulate through.

Okay.

And then types of units you're envisioning.

Yeah, I was I was sort of seeing it that way because I didn't imagine there's like top lots on this property.

This is not the place that I don't I don't really envision a lot of families wanting to live in this spot necessarily.

I mean, yeah, I mean, maybe young families, but yeah, to better condo when I first had a child, we didn't last very long.

So

Yeah, and this won't be cockles, but that's just my personal experience.

Okay.

And then the parking deck itself, that kind of harkens to Lonnie's question a little bit.

Is that top open to the sky?

I can't tell.

So I've been, I've seen some units like this in Florida where you're, you get out of the parking deck on the third floor and you open a door and you're in the hallway.

Is that what you're thinking of?

Yeah.

Okay.

We haven't gotten that far.

But yeah, in some instances, that's the case.

It's not like there's going to be 60 doors on the outside.

No, I didn't mean that.

Right.

Right.

And most of the first floor would be for the retail, the parking.

The first floor would be dedicated to the retail.

At least that's kind of what we're planning for now.

And then essentially, for security reasons, you five off the second,

Nobody can get into the apartment.

It's a security issue.

Is it only for residents?

It's just tall.

OK, right.

Right.

OK.

Well, those were my main questions.

I'm going to have comments.

I have a follow-up to your question on the park garage.

So that top level is parking?

You're not showing the spot, but you're... Not on top of the building, like on the roof.

Okay.

Pardon me.

Yeah, generally it would, you know, because if you're in a parking garage, it's like this, right?

So you're sort of swiveling up, swimming down.

So it would be in general, it would be lower.

The highest point of your garage would be lower than your roofed carpet or having people getting access to

that roof and all the mechanical, I'm assuming that's going to be full of mechanical systems.

As much as I would echo my, my colleagues point about, you know, green roofs and having something building of this size, that it would bring some, you know, look at how we can build in a, in a sustainable way.

And particularly with, I mean, you're going to have issues with, with your,

with your both quality and quantity with your stormwater.

Our civil engineer wasn't even here today, but yeah, that's something we're thinking of right now.

You know, 100% impervious.

It's all gravel and concrete.

So, you know, it doesn't seep through.

Right.

Apologies for high ignorance.

As you probably know, we're in the middle of the comprehensive plan.

I don't even know if we're in the middle.

We're in the first quarter or something.

Anyway, we're not even in the middle.

And then we're also gearing up or working on the, rewriting the zoning orders.

and as part of that we may be looking at some incentives for green technologies such as it's been done in neighboring facilities to give density bonuses we were putting on a green roof or using permeable favors in parking spaces and things like that so you know that but we're not there yet so we don't have these things to

present to you as here are the ways that you could get additional density bonuses or do those kind of things.

But I just want you to know that's kind of on our minds in terms of things that we're looking for.

So we could just now transition into just making comments.

We're kind of already starting to do that.

Just one other quick question.

I assume that since it's five stories, it's going to be stick built, basically.

Well, multiple reasons why.

I mean, building anything larger than this would be a pretty big swing in the county.

Not that I don't think it would be successful, but there's a lot of different reasons why one would shy away from that.

Yeah, but it would be stick built.

Yeah, but sprinkled sprinkler and all those things most likely stick with all of them.

No, this would be one and done.

So let's start with their, I mean, I think I have some design ideas, but even those aside for the moment, what are your thoughts about the height and the density proposed here?

I'm fine with it.

I mean, I think it's, I think it meets our goals from the comprehensive plan, the kind of density that we're looking for.

I like the idea of the,

Internal parking garage that as opposed to... They're at this big bonky thing.

Yeah, you're not wasting a whole bunch of space with parking lot, which drives me crazy.

And it is redevelopment, which we're really trying to encourage.

Okay.

I guess I would just add a couple of things.

One is

I appreciate the time you took to look at the step back, step back from Route 29.

I think for a number of reasons, Route 29 already feels like you're a pedestrian out there.

It's so uninviting and so cold.

And if you really want to enliven the street edge, which I think, you know, it's inevitable and five stories is not like out of

It's not like we're looking at a 10-story building.

Everything we talked about, the city and that current ordinance and so on, envisioning 10 stories, it's not so much the height, it's how you feel along the corridors of pedestrian, making sure that that's enlivened, that there's landscape, that there's, like you said, maybe some retail that causes you to go out and have a sandwich on the front patio, and it's not just closed at five o'clock, so it's cold.

And all of those things also help our building, right?

Yeah, exactly.

A little cafe where people can stop and have a glass of wine or whatever, a cup of coffee, you know, that makes our building

It's a no-brainer.

I think we've had a couple iterations back and forth with the planners and have given us notes on more landscape.

As a developer, you don't want to plant a million trees, but I get it.

And quite frankly, being next to a wah-wah isn't exactly the best thing in the world.

And so we plan to landscape it, create.

Part of what we do is place making, right?

We're trying to create an experience.

No, that's all right.

So just following up on that sort of sun angle relationships.

So if you're looking at five stories with a minimum step back, I don't know what the step back is, but it's probably 10 or 15 feet.

Just the rising sun, which is east, I think, is the top of the page, right?

So it's going to shade 29.

It's not a lot of stories, like I said, but five stories will create shade.

Julie, do you want to comment on the density at this point?

Well, I don't have a lot to say because you're saying it for me.

So I'm really pleased.

So I will just add a couple of things.

So, you know, I have to go for my little walk around there to sort of see what the elevations.

Across the street, there's a rise.

So it's still going to be small.

So I'm not going to show it to you.

I actually took a photo from

from the front of Calm Down, getting over there and said, you know what, if this was me and I was in a fighting mood.

Which you never are.

But that you're not me.

When your counselor's going to tell you not to be in a fighting mood.

I actually would try to go taller because there's nothing there from the whole thing.

There's absolutely nothing there.

Sorry, Monticello.

and so I'm looking down, you know, we had this conversation yesterday.

I'm looking down the road.

I imagine if the present person who's in charge of the post office remains in place, that our post office there is not gonna be there.

Because that piece of property is too valuable for us to go stand in line for our passports.

And so we're gonna have

from the new opportunity.

And I have to apologize to the owners of these places because the names don't mean anything to me.

But I believe it's Seminole Square where the giant was.

That's how I remember.

The giant shopping center.

Right.

I know what you're talking about.

So the giant shopping center is going to have a several story building there.

We all hope, or at least I hope on our behalf, that the fashion square is going to have a several story

building there at some point in time.

I've given up on the other one because I've just given up on that.

But I had given up on it when we were talking about it.

So what I think we're doing with this project is helping to sort of establish what the parameters for this part of 29 might be and we do it on our terms.

I would actually like to see it a little taller and I would actually like to see some office buildings on the second floor there.

I actually believe having to go up 29 to go to the urgent care place or to go to the, we did a lot of vet buildings up there recently, the vet building stuff up there, that we really don't have what I would call sort of community office space in that location.

You know, so I don't know if you needed to go to a vet, you go to Ibupro.

If you need to go see some other kind of thing, you go someplace else.

If you're an environmental consultant, if you're an environmental consultant, you're going to come back from Scottsville.

So there's a whole bunch of stuff that could go, that could go running.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I think that would be fantastic.

but I think so that we have an opportunity to send a signal if in fact we want to see that part of 29 redevelop to sort of be 10 years from 10 years, 15 years down the road.

There's my other last piece on the quadrant.

Staff has told us that we were about 55% below density whenever anything comes from somewhere.

So when they give us our density import,

There's a piece of me now that's going to be starting to talk about this thing about that we're going to have to do dev zone density.

So we're going to say dev zone density.

Oh, got it.

So dvd, which is the whole idea in my mind.

And so my mind is how do we recapture the density we didn't get that we didn't

Right, exactly.

And so this whole idea that I've been playing with my head is like, are there places that it's not obnoxious to think that there might be an opportunity for a higher density?

And when I was standing at Calm Down, looking down, looking right, looking left, I said, you know what?

I didn't get it on the John Warner Park right where I really wanted to call it instead of getting garden apartments over there.

But this would be a place where it would be hard for us to say a little bit more density when we get.

So I'm not saying you should do this.

This is just me musing in a work session.

So I'm deciding to be clear about that.

But that's what I'm thinking about.

You're never going to be able to capture that 50%.

You know, how do we do it?

So that's me.

But I don't have a problem with the density.

If that's a pool over there, did I see a square pool outside?

You might as well right now put lily pads in there and put cat tails in there because the geese will be living there.

There are a lot of geese in that area for sure.

I will echo 100%.

We have certain sites that lend themselves.

I think this is definitely one of them.

And when you do that, obviously, financially, there's some incentives.

If you go higher, there's some cost.

But I think here you can be bold.

I would personally also echo the, so one thing is retail, but the other is commercial.

And perhaps that entire block wants to be a combination of retail and commercial, the one that faces 29.

And then think of that with a larger residential

And if this is done well, it can serve as a model of what we can do in the rest of the county.

Some people fear the density.

I think if it's done well, you could, and this is where, you know, that there, we would challenge you to do that.

make this the model project so that others can see that we can have high density in areas that we need it, which will help us with other areas that we wanna preserve, or if you do get those higher densities and it also helps with infrastructure, we have infrastructure here.

Okay, and so I'll just wrap this topic and then we can talk about elements of the building itself.

But I completely agree.

I looked at your height, and I thought, why not six?

And I understand that there's other things that come into play, not but seven.

I mean, I honestly look at

What's going on around it?

And to your point, you know, like I'm not worried about offending the post office or that the postal truck drivers would have a nice view next door.

I really think that because of what's all around it, you're not towering over somebody's single family bungalow.

We don't have any of those issues.

Tom Dowell is at a raised elevation across the street.

So the height isn't going to really even feel that out of whack when you think about roof lines.

but I do really like this notion of considering perhaps some office or commercial on the stores above the retail because think about renting out those units and you're like, sorry, you're the last one to the rental office and you get the view of Route 29.

But for an office person who's like, yay, I'm right above the coffee shop, there's a real dearth of spaces for smaller firms.

and a high, high demand for that.

And a lot of firms can't afford or for various reasons due to parking and other things don't want to be on the downtown mall.

And the downtown mall doesn't have that much to offer.

So I think you might think about that as a way to have like office on the front and then the retail underneath it.

And that's kind of your work part of the building.

And then the back is more of the residential where you can not necessarily look at cars whizzing by.

In terms of the site itself, I mean, when I saw that flat top that I thought maybe was a roofed parking garage, I wondered whether or not you could put a green roof on top of that.

But if you went up another story or two, there are some award-winning designs of people who have had interior parking garages.

You may have seen these pictures to us.

Periodically, I just sound very long, random, low-impact development things that I like and say, like, share these with all your clients.

Not a question of proper, just randomly.

But honestly, those apartments that are interior then can have windows looking down on a courtyard space.

That becomes a huge amenity.

I know some builders of apartment buildings and condos in Jersey City, New Jersey, where there's very little green space, where they have made green rooftops, activated spaces.

So it becomes a huge amenity.

They rent those places like crazy.

And it's worth the cost to them.

The green roof tends to last, costs two to three times more than conventional, but it also lasts three times longer.

So it's kind of a nix-nox.

You're going to have it open.

You're thinking, well, I wasn't going to have a roof anyway.

But it's, you know, it's just, there are ways that you could do something with that space because you're trying to create this sort of internal courtyard where that turnaround space is.

You have this sort of amenity zone, which I'm not sure what that is.

Maybe it's like gym space or,

A light blue area would be like Harvard.

But one thing that always kills me about this whole region is the fact that we have all these gorgeous views.

And then if you really look at who has the best views, it's like car lots on pan tops.

If you were a car, you have a fantastic view.

Yeah, the people in jail probably can't see out because the windows probably way up there.

Not so far, not so far.

But honestly, what an amazing view you have from up there.

Yeah, I grew up in D.C.

and a lot of the buildings of neighborhoods I lived in now have rooftop bars, rooftop, you know, and again, because you're if people were up on the rooftop going whoopee, you know, who cares?

Again, they're looking down on postal trucks, but hopefully they're looking off into the distance and they're seeing beautiful sunsets.

I mean, just to be able like you're in this really urban space idea that you could go up the elevator and be outside.

On a beautiful day like today, that space would be really enlivened, more so than down in the courtyard.

Because I'm not sure if the courtyard is big enough to, if like I was living there, I've lived in courtyard apartments, but they're really big courtyards, very park-like.

I'm not sure that space is big enough to give that feeling.

So other spaces that you could go and kind of feel open and feel free.

I know that I like that you have the pathway going down towards the park

Way across, you have to cross Hillsdale Drive and all that stuff.

But that's kind of far.

It wouldn't be neat if you just ride the elevator up.

One thing to add on to what you're saying, it's a little bit of the height issue and I completely support what everyone's saying.

The view from

Southbound traffic on 29 of that northern edge of the building, especially where the parking garage looks like it's exposed.

Just think about ARV, you know, the viewshed, what that's going to need to look like.

Or you could face it with a different material.

You look at downtown Stanton, they put up, they snuck in a parking garages where it just looks like another building to go.

It doesn't help.

I will share that, just so that we're aware, that there are a number of six-story structures in Stone

The other one, the last one that they built was the social resturption.

And there's a force, the old department, it's six years old.

It's four stories.

And so this really isn't out of, if it were to go a bit higher.

This is not setting some new, breaking some new boundaries.

No, and I think that's useful when you do your presentation, for real, that you show, you know, these are, you know, a larger zoom out.

These are the other buildings that people may not, off the top of their head, realize are just as top.

Yeah, right.

Sunco was originally proposed to be a much better project.

Yeah.

I'm so glad you mentioned that because

There's a multi-family building that's under construction adjacent hydraulic.

That's true.

There's one of the structures in Stonefield.

I believe it's the one that's just north of the movie theater.

It's where they've got the, you can see the concrete.

So portions of it are going to be six.

There'll be a little bit that is seven stories.

So, where the parking lot used to be.

Yes.

You know, that's the thing that will tell.

The thing that's got the cylinder right now, it's got the gray cylinder.

Yeah, it was.

But that density, I mean, going to those higher densities, 7A stories, I think will allow you to create some amenities, vitals.

allow you to do something with the affordability of some of the units.

So I think those are the kinds of things that density brings.

Right, because your land costs are set, and obviously it does cost more money to build computers.

And we're not sitting here as your structural engineers either.

But I think that what we're also saying to you, I just don't want this to, I just want to state the obvious, but just put it for the record that we don't want to just say, yay, yay, more density, and that's it.

We really want you to,

do something innovative here, but that's less polluting.

provides more opportunities for unique outdoor experiences, like I said, up on the roof, whether it's a green roof or a patio roof or accommodation.

There's lots of green roofs that have been designed around HVAC units and all that.

So that is not out of the question.

But in order to do that, we don't yet have those policies in place, but we'd really like to challenge you so that we can say to the public,

Yes, we let them do this way past what is in the master plan as 12 years old that didn't envision sort of a modern looking, forward thinking design aesthetic for this corridor.

Yeah, and what I'd add to that is just remembering to honor the street edge and the pedestrian scale along 29 because you know you can go high and it can completely lose the pedestrian scale.

The other thing is stormwater management.

You can actually do stormwater management in your tree wells.

There are structured cells that will hold stormwater that you can actually run your utilities through.

And so you're getting your stormwater water quality credits.

Starting to do a population thing while you're talking about water.

And so you could have an interesting set of clientele.

So you could have someone who can just want to rent a space that could be near their mom and dad.

Or you could have someone who needs to put a care care or something close.

So while I know you're talking about, initially said about young professionals, that when you sit with your crew, look at that community there and see what's there.

You've got a number of people, you've got a good-sized population that is significantly older than your 60 years old.

that we initially looked at the site, we considered the age restricted.

Age restricted housing.

It's much more difficult to capitalize on a restricted deal.

But no, I hear you.

And that's honestly that's music to my ears because it just it gives us a we know that the greater Charlottesville area, it's not just young professionals, you know, that we're going to be living.

Some of us get old eventually.

You're looking at this block of cheese, it's not much but it will be a beautiful space when we have it fully designed and it'll be a phenomenal place to live.

I know a number of people who've done just what you said, who have moved to Florida and gotten a condo to be near their elderly parents who are in a care center.

Gosh, I can't wait to.

I can't wait till we talk to that for a while.

And no Tesla chargers, none.

Well, along those lines, I mean, is there a bus stops?

I don't know about bike riding around the stairs because it's still pretty congested, but there is bike lockers.

You'll be able to, because there's going to be an over 29 bridge between Stonefield and... Sand Road.

And so you could walk down Hillsdale through the back parking lot.

Pleasant.

Pleasant parking lot.

So you're walking trail that goes along the side and then you showed it kind of goes through the parking lot.

Is it possible that you could get an easement to make your walking trail not go through the parking lot?

The intention is to extend it to Hillsdale, where we're not, yeah, we don't want to delve into, you know, F-150, right, the corner, you know.

I think that that's... That makes a lot of sense.

That's the intention.

Okay.

All right.

One thing I'll say is not related to specific development, but you know, when I met with Valerie, the applicant with this one, and Megan, we're kind of talking about the application package.

And we had a lot of discussions last night about applications.

I think that this is a great example of what is kind of really important with the rezoning.

showing building massings.

But also circulation patterns for vehicles but also for people and so you know that point that I just asked about like how will they get to Stonefield and then you said you could just include that you know like.

Let's have us think about that as we think about our zoning ordinance update and what we want to see with applications.

Is this the direction we want to go?

My recommendation is it is.

It might not be perfect, but it's very different than what we normally see.

For this one, obviously, we're talking about more density.

But one of the things that would be helpful that isn't here

is having a section elevation that shows the height, because a lot of times we are dealing with things that are, we are trying to be more sensitive with the height, depending on the surroundings.

And in some cases, we just don't, we don't know how high they are.

And then we say, well, what's your floor to floor?

Or what is that height?

And say, well, it's probably this.

So I think having something in writing would be good to have that kind of section.

Of course, in this case, it's not about the sensitivity, but it's about,

even knowing how high off the street is that setback and so forth and how deep is that setback that's being proposed.

So I think this is more of a common core staff and they're trying to put together a package of common.

I understand the minimum requirement for most applications.

Yeah, I guess for yours right now, it's not as critical.

But for others, it does come into play because we're being asked to be for special use or a variance on a setback or something like that.

And so I think a lot of the comments that you made earlier, Karen, on finding ways to do something with that roof and create some, we can dare call it green space on there, that I think that that gives my concern with too much density on a parcel is that if you're just creating a whole lot of concrete and no amenities, but I think there's a huge opportunity here to provide

housing space, and amenities.

And that's what I think we'd really like to see.

Just another comment, too, as we get to other sites with large density, the other thing that concerns me as the ICU goes up is emergency vehicle access.

I don't think it's a concern here.

It seems pretty obvious for emergency vehicles.

That's something that I'd like to see.

Well, you know all of that.

Perhaps you don't know.

I sat in a number of things where the fire department actually said, we took a truck out to the site and we couldn't get it down.

They said, no, we couldn't turn around and we couldn't turn the truck around there.

and the guy, well, okay, well, we'll go back and fix it.

And it got fixed.

And so just to let you know, you know, the, you know, the email we sometimes I forget if it's Vivian or it's Carolyn that said, that sends it, it's about cyber abuse.

Look at the list of people who have to send comments back.

And I will tell you, if you haven't, it'd be interesting for you to go to one.

But things will stop if a particular person says,

just sort of meeting the sort of the diagram, the regulations that we say have to be, but the project just sort of stops until the applicant fixes what he or she needs to fix, and then it goes forward, so.

Well, that's good to know.

I mean, I know that it's not true in the rural area that we have people building houses that you could not get by our house.

You see, we don't get involved in that.

You have to go out to the pond and put a hose into the pond

Now, thanks to I assume staff's role in this, the fire marshal is included in pre-application meetings.

In fact, two pre-app meetings with the fire chief.

And this plan has evolved based on his comments and concerns already.

So they try to flag those issues on the front end for that very reason.

So nobody's in that horrible position of getting their zoning approved, but then not being able to get their site plan approved.

That's right.

Just so everyone knows, usually with a rezoning like this, all the members that are on the site review committee for buy right site plan or subdivision, they get sent copies of the ZMA.

And so the rules that were in 08 certainly aren't the rules that are today.

before they have to come back for some sort of reevaluation.

Under new business at tonight.

No, that's my homework too.

I do want to get back to that topic at some future point, you know, because I've seen things in Charlottesville where there is a project in Charlottesville that was 100 years old.

Oh, ouch.

Possibly true.

We're spreading more urban legends about underdeveloped side plans.

Is there anything else that you all would like to ask of us at this juncture?

I think we appreciate the opportunity to have this work session so that, like you said,

I can't think of anything, but I'm sure.

I greatly appreciate everyone's time.

I mean, you know, incredibly helpful planners and, you know, everyone that's that's that's got you guys, you know, allowed this to happen.

It's it's it's it's super efficient, frankly.

It's a breath of fresh air and you guys get it.

Yeah, I think these work sessions should be required.

Maybe for things that are more complicated or they're trying to be something really different.

I think you've given us enough information, maybe one exception in this section, but it's given us enough to really chew on and give you good feedback.

Thank you.

It gives me a little comfort, Megan and I, when we look at it and think,

Wow, this could really work if the commission and board are open to it.

Anyone in the public who might be listening to this recording later, we did not approve anything.

We're merely discussing directions.

Okay, so with that, I'm going to close this meeting of the work session of the Planning Commission.