Planning Commission Regular Meeting   11/22/2022

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

I'd like to call this November 22nd, 2022 meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission to order.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meeting are posted on our county website, on our homepage, and on our calendar.

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

So when we do our public hearings, we usually recognize the people here in person first, and then those who are waiting online second.

Yes, great.

Yes, I'll call the roll.

Ms.

Firehock?

Here.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Clayborne.

I know it's a shock, but we have everyone here full quorum, fully present.

So before we begin formally this evening's meeting, I would like to ask for a moment of silence in recognition of those who lost their lives this past week, a week ago, and those who are still healing both physically and mentally.

Okay, with that, we have other matters not listed on the agenda for the public.

So if anyone would like to speak on a matter that is not on our formal agenda for this evening could come forward at this time.

Okay, I don't see anyone coming forward for other matters.

So move on to the consent agenda on the next page, which is the approval of draft work session minutes and draft regular meeting minutes from October 25.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, it's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Yes.

OK.

Mr. Murray?

Yes.

Ms.

Okay, that adoption of the consent agenda has passed with one abstention.

I will now move on to the items for which we have public hearings.

So the first item we have this evening is AFD 202200001 Kritzer-Hatton AFD edition.

Thank you.

Yes, this is a proposed addition to the Hatton Agricultural and Forestry District.

Let me take this thing off.

And you can see here on the map, the crosshatched parcel in the middle of the existing district is the proposed addition 82.43 acres.

I want to make a slight correction to the wording in the staff report.

It said that this parcel was previously removed.

from the district.

In double checking the records, I saw that actually only a small portion of this parcel was really in the district before.

They are now proposing to add the entire 82 acres.

So we're actually increasing the size of the district at this point.

The parcel does have 67 and a half acres of important agricultural soils and one remaining small lot division, right?

And extends from here on James River Road all the way down to the CSX Railway just above the James River

to give you an idea of the layout of the property.

This parcel and those to the east that are under the same ownership are largely in agriculture and forest uses, although, as you can see around the ponds to the east, they also have a summer camp there that was permitted by special use permit back before this was added to the district about five years before.

and again, you can see it runs through this open area in the woods all the way down to the railroad at the southern end.

At their meeting on November 9th, the advisory committee voted six to zero to recommend approval of this proposed addition and it has to go through this hearing and a hearing with the board of supervisors before that action is complete.

Are there any questions for staff or comments?

Well, the benefit obviously is the limitations on not only on residential development,

Once they put this in the district, that right can only be used for family subdivisions.

There's no other way they can use that.

It would also put limitations on any approvals of commercial uses or further special use permits because the inclusion in the district would have to be taken into account as part of those reviews.

Also, this just helps to fill a hole in the middle of the district and make it more of a contiguous protected area.

Is this as protective as a permanent conservation easement on the same acreage with five or 10 development rights?

This parcel or any of the other parcels can do family subdivisions and 21-acre subdivisions while they're in the districts.

Thanks.

I just wanted to check, okay.

I once saw one applicant come and talk about the property.

All right, would anyone, so I guess we'll open the public hearing if anyone would like to comment on it from the public.

Is there anyone here to comment on this application?

All right, seeing no one, we'll close that portion.

Yes.

Thank you.

Carolyn?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Thank you.

And she usually checks me if I miss someone.

She doesn't let me get away with that.

All right.

I have a question.

Sure, of course.

So Scott, could you go back to the image, to the

what would that call, to the bird's eye view version of this, I guess the Google Earth.

So can you share or do you know, perhaps you don't know, what the sort of beige area in sort of the middle of this parcel, what it was or what it is?

There are a few different open areas.

You mean this one here?

No, I mean the big long one.

Big long one.

Oh, this one?

Yes, that one there.

As far as I know, it looks like maybe they had a corn maze out there at some point.

That's just a guess.

It was the pattern that I was sort of, it looked maybe like it might have been a recreational use.

And the reason I pushed that question on that is that

I know one of the things we've discussed prior to this is that there's a category of agricultural land that is sort of pure and perfect and it needs to be preserved for all everybody and anything and was trying to figure out if this made it there because it seems like that's just sort of a big open piece of land there of which I was trying to figure out, wanting to hear what the agricultural value of that was.

and why it is why we are accepting it back into the ag forest district.

The districts don't impose any particular requirements about land management or crop production.

They function largely through limiting subdivision and controlling to some degree commercial uses.

They don't actually require any particular use in the way that, for example, the use value tax categories might for

minimum amounts of production for the Ag category, for example.

So, you know, this particular parcel has got a low impact outdoor recreation area for the camp.

It's got a hardwood area.

It's got a commercial pine area.

There's hayfield in front.

I believe there's been a history of hay and crops at the southern portion here.

So there's a bunch of different uses on this particular portion.

Okay.

Well, I mean, when I looked at it, it gave me some pause that someone had taken part out and then put it back and that was kind of confusing.

They shaved off a little piece and then they reapplied to come back in.

I think they were just playing it safe because a very small like under an acre of this property was in the district just because of a former boundary line adjustment.

They wanted to be out, do their division, and come back.

But when we looked at it, we realized it was only that acre that had been in.

and it's really over 80 acres.

So we're actually increasing the district significantly with this.

We have had that happen before and it's perfectly permissible for somebody to drop out during a 10-year review, do a division that doesn't quite qualify as a family division and then come back.

We have had that, but this is not that.

This is actually better than that.

Okay, thank you.

That was very helpful.

Just for what it's worth, and to echo what Scott mentioned, I attended the meeting on the 9th and there was very little discussion and unanimous support.

All right, well, I don't think that we have any other discussion on this.

All right.

I think that was fine.

He moved what we said.

Could we clarify, Mr. Clayborne?

Is your motion to approve the district?

All right.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

I thank you.

The motion passes unanimously.

The next item we have tonight is SP-2022-00022.

and SE202200047, Verizon, Walnut Creek Park, Tier 3, Public Wireless Service, I don't know, whatever, whatever it stands for.

Give me one second.

Sorry.

My name is Kevin McCollum, and I'm a senior planner with the Planning Division of Albemarle County Community Development.

Tonight, I'll be giving staff's presentation on the Walnut Creek Park Tier 3 PWSF Special Use Permit Application and associated special exception.

To begin, this is an application for a personal wireless service facility, more commonly known as a tower.

The proposal is for a 195 foot tall tower on the Albemarle County owned Walnut Creek Park property.

The park is located south of the city of Charlottesville off of Old Lynchburg Road.

The proposed tower site is near the entrance to the park off an existing driveway that leads to a park maintenance building.

When it comes to cell phone towers, there are three different types of applications.

Tier ones are antenna that are located within or attached to an existing building or structure.

Tier two is what we call a tree top tower.

Tree top towers are no more than 10 feet taller than the closest tree within 25 feet.

Tier three applications,

are basically any tower that isn't a tier one or a tier two.

They are typically the largest towers or in an avoidance area, which includes a historic district or an entrance corridor.

These types of towers follow the legislative review process, which requires special use permit, which is approvable by the Board of Supervisors.

As mentioned before, the application is for a 195 foot tall monopole tower.

The applicant has also submitted a special exception request to allow the antenna to be mounted 18 inches from the tower face instead of 12 inches.

The ordinance allows the top part of the antenna to be mounted 18 inches from the tower and the bottom part to be 12 inches from the tower.

This gives a downward tilt to the antenna.

The applicant is requesting a

Special exceptions so that the antenna are mounted parallel to the tower at a distance of 18 inches from the top and bottom.

So at the beginning of the application's review process, the applicant held a balloon test.

A balloon was flown at the location and at the height of the proposed tower.

While the balloon was flying, staff walked and drove around the surrounding area to get an understanding of where the tower would be visible.

Since the balloon is the approximate width and height of the tower, we assume that if you can see the balloon, you'll be able to see the tower.

Staff took photos from as many public locations where the balloon could be seen as possible.

In this photo on the screen, the balloon can be seen flying above the tree line.

This view is from along Walnut Creek Park's main drive and is near the entrance at Old Lynchburg Road.

After the balloon test, staff provided the applicant with photos that were taken.

The applicant then put together photo simulations to simulate what the proposed tower would look like from those different viewpoints.

The map on the screen shows the viewpoints that were used.

Photos one through six are from within the park property, and photos seven and eight are from openings along Old Lynchburg Road.

A majority of the other surrounding areas wooded and the balloon was not visible or on private property and staff wasn't able to go onto those properties and investigate the balloon's visibility.

Next, I'm going to show a few of the photo simulations to show what the proposed tower could look like.

First viewpoint is the view that I just showed previously.

It is from the park's main drive looking west across the field.

The balloon can be seen in red on the screen here.

and here is what the proposed tower would look like.

Next is a viewpoint from the boat landing and parking area within the park.

You can faintly see the red balloon just above the tree line.

As you can tell, we're more than half a mile or more from the balloon at this point.

And again, here's what the proposed tower would look like from this viewpoint.

Lastly, I wanted to show a viewpoint from along Old Lynchburg Road.

As I mentioned, a majority of the trees and existing vegetations along Old Lynchburg block the view of the tower.

But in this example, there's an opening in the tree line, or what appears to be a potentially old driveway or farm entrance, and you can see the balloon across the field above the tree line.

Again, here is what the proposed tower would look like from this viewpoint.

So to conclude, I wanted to briefly talk about staff's analysis of this application.

Fully detailed analysis is provided in the staff report.

Staff has reviewed this application with all applicable sections of the zoning ordinance, the comprehensive plan, and state and federal regulations and believe this is a well-sited location for a tower of this size.

The majority of the surrounding area is wooded, which limits visibility.

All trees within 200 feet of the tower are on the park's property and are protected by ordinance regulations.

The majority of the tower's visibility will be from within the Walnut Creek Park property.

While staff believes this is a factor unfavorable, we point out that the county is the owner of the park and has provided the applicant permission to submit this application.

The only additional visibility staff observed was from small portions along Old Lynchburg Road where the tower was visible along the road.

The views were greatly minimized by existing trees and vegetation along the roadside.

Based on the tower viewshed analysis, some portions of the property to the west appear to have some visibility as well.

This potential visibility is greatly reduced by distance and existing trees and vegetation between the properties and the tower itself.

Given this information and the full analysis provided in the staff report, staff is recommending approval of this special use permit and a special exception.

The staff recommends approval to special use permit with the conditions on the screen.

Staff's recommending a condition to limit the height to 175 feet.

This is because FCC regulations permit the applicant to administratively apply for a one-time increase in height by 20 feet.

So if the tower is approved at 175 feet, it can be built up to 195 feet.

If we approve the tower at the 195 feet as shown in the application, it could then be built up to 215 feet.

The staff report explains this in a bit further detail and I'm happy to answer questions.

Additionally, staff's recommending approval of the special exception.

with the conditions on the screen there.

The FCC regulations allow for the applicant to administratively apply for a one-time increase in the size of the standoff up to 20 feet.

Since staff believes that this is a concealment element, we recommend a condition to limit the standoff at the proposed 18 inches.

Again, if you have questions, please let me know.

On the screen here are potential motions for the special use permit.

The Planning Commission is not required to make a recommendation on the special exception.

If the Planning Commission chooses to do so, staff's provided the motion on the screen here.

That concludes my presentation.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, this is on County Park property.

Have master naturalists or anyone else gone out to look at the place of the tower to go?

Yeah, there will be some trees removed and those are identified on the plans.

Yeah, I would say has the county done any survey to make sure that county rare species or habitats would not be affected by where that tower is going to be?

Yeah, a tree conservation plan will be required prior to the issuance of the building permit.

And like I said, there are trees identified on that plan that are shown to be removed.

Mr. McCallum, it's fairly close to the edge of the wooded area though, correct?

Yeah, that's correct.

Yeah, might be somewhat disturbed already or was going with that.

That's a good question.

OK, any other questions or comments?

Alright, if not, we're ready to hear from the applicant.

Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the commission.

I'm Lori Schweller, attorney with Williams Mullen representing Verizon Wireless and with me tonight is Nate Holland with GDN Sites who has been working on this project.

You will be surprised to hear that I don't think I need to give my presentation.

I think that Mr. McCollum has covered everything that I plan to cover in my presentation.

and I'd just like to answer any questions that you might have and I'll add that we are amenable to the conditions that he suggested.

Yes, questions?

I just have a couple quick questions.

The site is actually the tallest point in the park.

And the park then lowers an elevation down to the lake 40 or 50 feet.

And so not only the location, but the height is needed to get that coverage throughout the park.

It really is a safety issue here.

Just no coverage in the park and it's needed, you know, on the lake and through the trails.

And plus, it's a good location for construction reasons.

Already have a cleared driveway.

I think the county preferred that location because it's out of the way of the park and there's already sort of infrastructure for access.

Got it.

That all makes sense.

Second question.

I realize this is primarily to provide coverage for the park and absolutely.

I mean, I use that park a lot and I've oftentimes had some close calls on a mountain bike and looked at my phone and had no coverage.

So I'm grateful it's coming.

So the park is the main reason for the safety but you're also getting added benefit.

I don't think so.

I think, well, I can't answer that question.

I really shouldn't.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions for the applicant?

I know as part of this, the height can be extended without another hearing on this.

What we're looking for is 195 with a four foot lightning rod.

And because that's what we need, the county is recommending 175.

And then we can have that additional 20 foot extension per the Spectrum Act, the federal law that allows that.

And we can do that with one administrative application.

So in essence, we're

What's being recommended is what we requested.

It's just a two-part process so that we then can't extend administratively another 20 feet.

We can only go to 195.

Thank you.

I just want a little bit of additional clarification on the heights because we get a lot of different heights and other different tiers of the

of the polls but so what exactly is the the I mean that additional I mean we just approved one that was I think was 148 feet and now this is another 50 feet taller so how much more coverage are you actually getting versus a tier three or treetop poll can I don't know if someone

But we seem to get I mean, they seem to be growing.

I don't know if I'm the only one, but they seem to get taller and taller.

And I'm just wondering, what is the cost benefit?

Well, it depends entirely on the topography and the tree coverage in the area.

And so we request the height that Verizon's radio frequency engineers say that they need in a particular location, knowing Albemarle zoning ordinance and comprehensive plan policies.

They do know that and have had a long history with the county, but they tell us what they need for each particular site.

Based on the topography, rule of thumb is that a tower of this height could extend coverage for two to three miles, but in some areas it could go five miles if there are no obstructions.

In this case, again, we're trying to get all the way down to the lake and the boat launch, and so there's an additional concern there.

That doesn't exactly answer your question, I realize that.

It would certainly be helpful, as maybe something that we can discuss here later, that we get a better understanding of the coverage and then options of multiple towers that potentially could meet that, instead of one very, very tall one.

Thank you.

Good question though, I think it's worth asking.

Anything else for the applicant at this time?

Okay, thank you for now.

All right.

Does anyone from the public wish to comment on this application?

Yes, please come forward.

When you come up, just please state your name and affiliation, whether it's resident or whatnot.

And then you'll see a light go on when you get started.

The green light means go, yellow means you're almost out of time, and red means it's time to stop.

And you might want to tilt that mic down to your height.

Okay, so my name is Jessica Atkinson.

I live across the street from the proposed site, so I'm a resident.

I have a few concerns.

If the goal is to increase service in the area, I argue that while the proposed site might be the highest in the park, it's not actually the highest in the area.

I didn't see any research demonstrating what and where the actual need is in the community, nor confirmation of how much service would be improved.

In fact, this seemed to be deferred when I read one of the summaries.

So my questions are, where would service be improved specifically given the topography and how much it would actually be improved?

I think that's important data to have on hand before considering altering the landscape.

Similarly, I question the precedent that this construction presents.

I do appreciate the diligence on the commission to ensure the height and distance and being painted brown.

I do really appreciate that.

I just wonder if parks are now going to be considered open game for more towers.

Clearly, the intention of the park as evidenced by the vision and mission statements by ACPR is to provide the opportunity to be in nature and enjoy the recreation that nature provides as well as to be an exceptional steward.

A giant cell tower seems a little inconsistent with what people might expect as patrons in a designated natural area.

If the goal is to generate revenue for the county, I'd like to point out in the past three years, I've paid $6 for use of the park despite going almost every day.

So traffic has increased exponentially since COVID, but gate fees are only charged in a very narrow timeframe across the span of the year.

So perhaps that could be evaluated as a more appropriate source of revenue for the park.

Related to that, I didn't see much transparency in how much the county will actually be profiting from the lease.

So that might be of interest as well as how those profits will be utilized for the benefit of the park and its patrons.

And lastly, and perhaps most personally, despite being one of the two mentioned properties in the report, we were not notified of the information meeting that was held in September.

And so, therefore, we're not there.

So it was written that there was no community opposition, but I think that's misleading given how few people were given the opportunity to be present.

And I just want to clarify that the documents describing visibility to the surrounding areas are a bit misleading.

The photos taken were not from the perspective of the two home sites listed as being most impacted, ours and Evan's across the street.

And I can assure you that the visible impact is substantial and we don't

I recognize the need for increased service.

I'm not trying to be a nimby here, but I can, you know, nobody wants a giant tower visible from literally every room along the front of our house and pretty much every place on our property.

So that's that.

Is there anyone else from the public who, yes, please, sir, coming up.

My name is Tim Collins.

I'm Jessica's husband.

I just thought maybe I could elaborate on a couple of things.

I've been to parks where they have kiosks.

I'm guessing the idea is to generate money.

and you could put maybe a 5G tower up down at the lake if you really needed service, maybe.

I'm not technical like that, but this is a pretty big tower.

It's kind of a slap in the face, I think, to a park.

We spent a lot of time over there and when you leave the park every night, everybody leaves by dark.

You drive up that road and you look to the west, that is like the huge sunset view of Walnut Creek Park.

Yeah, and Fred said he mountain bikes there.

You could test that.

But that cell phone tower, you know, they show it on perfect blue sky.

That's that's your sunset view when you leave the park.

It's beautiful.

It's that big field.

It should be protected.

That's it's a park.

Right.

So that was someone was saying on the kiosk that going parked up.

Sorry, got off track.

But you can put a kiosk there, make people pay, make one hundred dollars a day.

multiple, whatever, we don't know what the money is, but you can start making some money.

These things has been well-documented, destroyed property values.

It's 1,000, if you look on Google Earth, it's about 1,000 feet from our house, 800 feet from our neighbors across the street, essentially towering over their house.

We were never notified.

Report states it was no community opposition, which is just wrong.

So if that's what you're reading, it's not really fair for you to make a decision on a report that's misleading.

And also the balloon test was done in the summer when there's leaves on the trees.

And Old Lynchburg Road itself is like a gully.

It's already kind of protected with the banks of the road.

As soon as you step up the driveway, boom, you see that rage line.

And I just can't help but think it's sort of an insult to be not notified of a boom test.

And then for them to say that it's not really visible when it's only maybe in the thick of the summer, it's going to be a little harder to see through the edge of the road.

Right now, you drive down there, do the balloon test now.

Have people come look at it again.

It's just, you know, you look at the principal park, I don't need to tell you all about what Olmstead might think of this, but it's just, I just think it's a bad idea, especially for a beautiful park.

It's like, that's when you leave town, you know, you go for peace and quiet, not towers.

Okay.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else in the auditorium who'd like to speak to this matter?

Yes, there is.

Yes.

OK, this is Mr. Doyle.

You have three minutes to speak.

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

Thank you, ma'am.

And thank you, Madam Chair and the rest of the committee

I am Adam Doyle.

I own the property with my wife, Courtney, to the east of the proposed tower site.

And I wanted to get on tonight to hear the discussion as this is also the first open discussion I had heard about it.

I was not notified about the initial research period during the summer as the other two citizens had mentioned.

While I'm not opposed to a safer, better cell coverage, there is a concern primarily from my perspective with respect to light pollution.

and if there are going to be any lights or beacons as this is fairly well along the perch path for Cho.

I did hear from Mr. McCollum who was very helpful and gave me the information that there was not to be any lighting, but I wanted to make sure that that was affirmed and also to kind of

to clarify, there are concerns about going, from our perspective, from going to a park in a natural area adjacent to a place where we bought property to get away from civilization, where we would have then a tower visible when there are other ways to build towers.

I've seen, and I believe others in the committee probably have seen,

Towers that project an appearance of a called artificial tree with limbs or something to the effect that would make it less, you know, intrusive, especially given the height and particularly, you know, with my respect to my neighbors who have direct line of sight vision to it.

So I don't have much more to add beyond that.

I just want it to be known that, you know, we should be looking at alternatives

And if coverage is the ultimate goal, there's other places, I believe, where this might be more appropriate.

But if the safety is the paramount priority, barring any potential revenue, I don't want to get in the way of safety.

But by the same token, I want to make sure that we look at all the alternatives to make it as well received to the community as possible.

Thank you.

Carolyn, has anyone else signed up?

Okay, thank you.

Though we just get to talk once.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am sorry if the abutters did not receive notices.

Mr. McCollum provided us with a list of all the abutting property owners and Nate Holland sent letters to all of the abutter so I can't explain why they did not get notices.

We had about seven people present at the community meeting so I know

The letters went out and we did have people come.

I'm sorry that that happened.

I can confirm that the site will definitely not have any lights.

Being under 200 feet, lighting is not required.

And in terms of the siting and structure, Verizon worked with the county on the location and the siting and the height there.

And we worked on what we thought was optimum for the location.

I should add, it's important for you all to recognize that under state law adopted in 2020, wireless providers are no longer

Let me put that another way.

Localities can no longer require applicants to submit information regarding coverage, such as propagation maps and comparing

propagation from different locations and talking about customers and service.

All that kind of information is considered proprietary information and is not acceptable for a zoning case.

I just want to put it out there because I know that there were comments, concerns about not having that information.

We're not trying to be opaque, but that is the law at this time.

and let's see, I think

I think one more thing I want to add is that a balloon test is the way that works is we drive around all neighboring roadways.

And if anyone happens to be around and invites us on their property, then we will do that.

But we do not go on private property during balloon tests, except in special circumstances where we have like it

and the Mirador Farm situation, as you're well aware.

So where we were invited for their analysis.

So we would not know if something were visible from someone's front porch.

We only take photographs, or the county takes photographs and provides them to Verizon.

from Public Roadways.

So we do the best we can.

Thank you.

All right, so we'll turn it back to ourselves.

We'll close the public hearing and we'll deliberate.

But I actually wanted to ask our council a question.

Councilor, because something Ms.

Schweller just said, and she talked about the fact that they're not required to provide us information on coverage.

But I guess my question is, are we allowed to ourselves consider

Right, and Madam Chair, I'm glad you asked that question.

It's actually covered in the staff report where it cites the Virginia, the new Virginia code section that addresses that issue.

And that code section provides that little Cali shall not disapprove of an application on the basis of an applicant's business decision with respect to its design service, customer demand for service or quality of its service.

or to or from a particular site.

Right, okay.

How many serves or does not serve?

Correct.

So with that being said, counsel, can the community like if they have a community meeting, can the residents request that?

Is that prohibited by law?

Can the residents request?

Not for us, but correct in a community meeting.

I think you've answered my question.

OK.

OK.

You know, regardless, I mean, we have no way of knowing.

Right.

Right.

I tried to think what could improve upon it in terms of the fact that it is tall.

I was thinking of saying it would not be painted

Java Brown because that would actually, that only works if it's in a bunch of trees and it's supposed to look like a tree trunk against a white sky or even a blue sky, it would be much more visible painted Java Brown.

So all I'd come up with so far is that it not be painted and to remove that from item 2D.

But the other solution of course is to not approve it at all because, you know,

Yeah, if I could just add to that, I think we're sort of caught right between a rock and a hard place here in a sense, because in my mind, you know, safety is an issue, right?

But we don't know whether to your earlier point, a lower tier two monopole would be able to cover a substantial portion of Walnut Creek.

and whether or not- Right, whether three smaller towers could ping- To a higher level is benefiting the propagation area beyond Walnut Creek.

And that's not, so I think if I'm hearing this correctly, our focus is really visual appropriateness, right?

Yes.

The aesthetic and the visual appropriateness.

And just based on that alone and having seen the balloon test,

Yeah, and it is, you know, while it is true that they're not required to provide their business plan, you know, nothing prevented the applicant from saying, well, we tried three towers and found that that would be that much more intrusive and require that much more habitat disturbance for that matter.

And therefore, one taller tower is better than three, because we do know that our policy in our county does end up creating the need for more towers because we can't go

But I think that begs the question, at what point is the tower too high?

Correct, and this is well above that.

Well, yeah, I mean, this is an aesthetic judgment and it's a value-based judgment, but it looks to be two to three times taller than the tree line.

And I did note that one of the comments was that considering the artificial trees, I don't know if anyone's ever seen them, they look nothing like a tree.

If you want to see one at the Virginia Department of Forestry behind their warehouse, which is accessible to the public, they do have one of those trees.

There has been some storms.

And so sometimes those giant plastic branches go flying off, which becoming a projectile is unsafe.

But they also tend to look pretty bad over time.

And they don't look, they're not, you would never mistake those fake trees for a tree.

They just look preposterous.

And I think the comment is made about precedent is also very important because we do have several other parks that have yet to be even developed that are very mountainous.

And this could set a precedent for those other parks.

And I also wonder, too, that

I'll just say this really quickly because this came up in a number of comments about revenue.

None of us know what the revenue is from this tower and it's not actually part of our deliberation.

But I do think that there is, to me, a higher standard for aesthetics for a park that is a county park that people are

objectively going to enjoy nature because, I mean, there's a beach, there's mountain biking trails, there's Frisbee golf in the woods or whatever, but it really is mostly a natural area.

So I think that does affect what the aesthetics of that experience is.

Anybody else have a comment?

and I guess maybe a comment on that comment.

So just one thing, with the awareness of the sensitivity of this county to the aesthetic of cell towers and the visibility of cell towers, whether it's on a private property, on an entrance corridor, knowing that and knowing the amount of time that we've spent as a county to try to minimize the aesthetic impacts and visual impacts, it would seem to me if we were to be giving advice,

It would be that when something like this comes to us either with this application or in the future to speak to precedent that there would at least have been some attempt to minimize the visibility and to your point I think a statement as to why it wasn't possible so with the understanding that we aren't privy to propagation maps etc.

I think the importance of the aesthetic impact has precedent in this county and has been underscored.

I would lean more towards trying to be equal on public property and private property as opposed to giving a higher emphasis.

Although I understand your point about the aesthetics of the natural area, I would still want to probably have an equal

Sure.

And I know Mr. Bivins has a comment, but I just want to quickly add on to the comment that was made about precedent.

So our counselor is always very careful to tell us that we're not setting a precedent because each side is unique.

However, I also want to bring up an example where we allowed a tower at a high school

when we looked at the fact that at the high school, there were also very tall, very big lights for lighting the fields.

And when you looked at all the metal standing there, it didn't seem like one tower was going to make that much of a difference.

So the context of the site itself is germane to our view.

So it's not that we would never approve a tall tower.

it's that they were considering the context and that's our job as the planning commission.

That's why there's this extra layer of review in the first piece.

So I appreciate the form versus function discussion that we're having right now.

And I would say in this particular location, much like Fred, I'm personally much more concerned about the function of the tower.

and as you go up to the top and then slope down the property slopes down towards the swimming area and then the bike and the Frisbee as you mentioned here are sort of set off into what I would say is not a flat terrain but is actually a rugged terrain so while I don't have sort of the cell coverage map of this and actually I don't feel like I need it I will say in this particular location

I think that it's important for the tower to be of a height that it actually can function in a way that the staff would have functioned if they are there.

And so in my mind, these towers, they play a dual function.

If you've noticed, and many of you have been to our rural parks, and everyone knows my sort of thread on rural parks on the dais here.

But those of us who've been to rural parks have probably noticed over the past few years that we've had fewer and fewer staff at those parks.

So at the little cabins that you go in, there's probably an appropriate term for that.

But at those cabins, they are rarely staffed today.

And since we have parks, since the county tends to have an abundance of rural locations to recreate, that having a way to communicate either with 911

or to have people contact you in the event that there's an emergency chateau or at your own house, I think is important.

To be able to drive from where the beach is at Walnut Creek over to old Lynchburg Road is probably a 10 minute drive.

and so I appreciate that it's probably not the loveliest thing, but I also appreciate that if we would put a fire tower there, we'd probably have to have a fire tower at a similar height to be able to survey the forest, the hills and all to see what was going on down there.

And so that's how I've sort of looked at this.

I've looked at what's happening with the county's budget vis-a-vis having staff there.

We also know that the staff is usually there during the summertime, but because of where we live here, we also get to use our parks well and fully use our parks fully into sort of late October, early November.

And so we've got a cycle there that I think is, for me at least, warrants this size tavern.

I would also sort of go out and sort of put out there as a moment, but I hope the county is looking at all of its rural parts for some sort of communication structures.

because if you go to, whether or not you go to Chris Green Lake, or for those of you who may have been up to, there's a wonderful park, I think her name is Byrom Park, that's up there sort of in Whitehall, north, so sort of north west.

With that really steep park.

Now it says north, and you can take courses there.

There are very few places we can actually take courses to in our community.

That is really, really difficult to get a line out there.

And one of the things I do as someone who lives on the fringe, I go to various parks to see if I needed to contact somebody, how can I do it?

The only park right now that I can get a decent line from is Charlotte Humphreys Park, which happens to be the only park in the development area.

All the rest of the parks, you'd be hard pressed if you had an emergency and you were there by yourself to be able to get somebody there to help you.

and I think regardless of the form versus a function right now, given what's happening in the staffing of many rural parks and given what's happening with the sort of explosion of people utilizing these parks, that as a community, we have an obligation to try and get to create nets of communication to help to provide safety over form.

The other thing is I've heard us talk about whether or not we put three or four parks there for,

towers and places.

Frankly, I think we would, I can't even imagine the discussion we would have if we were trying to look at disturbing three different places in one of our community parks.

So as far as being the, having the least amount of impact on this land, yes, it's got some visual impact and I can appreciate that.

It's not just for safety, but it's also the fact that we have utilization of our parks is beyond what we would anticipate.

So we also have people.

We just have people there and a mass that I think it wasn't there sort of five or six years ago.

And we also have very different staffing structures now.

So even if we did have somebody in one of the kiosks, they, he or she, I don't know if they all have landlines.

In fact, some of them don't have landlines.

They would need to contact people.

And so to facilitate that, whether or not there's trouble or there's a need for help.

So the safety is one, but I also just think the way life has changed out here, people are traveling and they're operating in ways that it would be helpful to have, be able to connect.

Well, I think the challenge to that, though, is kind of going back to the original statement.

You can't really talk about the coverage aspect.

So you don't know if a type one or type two can get the job done.

So is it a matter of getting the Cadillac versus the Toyota Camry?

versus the Pinto, like you don't know where you stand.

So I feel like the only thing you can really judge is the aesthetic at the moment.

Otherwise, anything goes.

The advice that Commissioner Missel

Well, it's in the minutes and I hope that they take heed because it's basically, you don't have to tell us all your details of your- Right, we don't need to have any people they're serving.

But you could at least tell us what you evaluated, the options that were looked at.

So I can't make the leap that our colleague is making that

I can speak to you about towers because of another part of my life we're dealing with the FCC and the FCC if a tower is over 200 feet it has to have lights on it this is not at over 200 feet so it's not going to have lights on it it's five feet below

the FCC regulation for a tower.

I would say we do actually do have a sense.

Oh, it has a clear view.

because this is the one thing we talked about before.

This area will never be a 5G area because we don't have enough places that you can do points.

You can do point of sight.

The sight line doesn't work here.

and that's 5G is all about sight lines, which is why they work in urban places because you have those great parallel, you know, most, unless you're like in an older city, you have those great sort of sight lines there.

So sign up like here, we don't have enough sort of flat land in the rural part of the county to be able to use 5G.

That's just, I mean,

without looking really tall towers.

If we had tall towers, we could do 5G, but that's not gonna happen.

That's not gonna happen.

So I think what we're looking at here is that in fact, trying to figure out what the balance is of form versus function.

But I also appreciate that there's an aesthetic piece, but at some point I'm looking to save lives.

Well, you want to make one quick comment?

I feel like I need to be more responsive to Mr. Carrazana because we do have an answer and I want to be clear about that.

What we need at this site is 195.

If tier two worked, believe me, Verizon would

offer that to the county like it has everywhere else in the county.

We're not off.

There's no advantage to us to offer a taller tower.

We're not we're not in the tower building business.

We're trying to provide service.

Just want to make that clear.

We're we're asking for what we actually need in this location to provide coverage to the park and surrounding areas.

Thank you.

Sure.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I think we've heard everyone's perspective.

I can't, I don't have a sense yet of where we stand, but I'm willing to make a motion and then we'll see.

Okay.

Could you put the, put them back up, your emotions?

I probably make a different one than what you have, but it'll still be helpful.

So while you're doing that, I'm actually going to make a motion to deny SP 202020022 application for a tier three personal wireless service facility.

And Madam Chair, if that concludes your motion, I would also point out in the staff report there were two other items that should be included in a recommended denial.

I'm looking at page 11 of the staff report, one of which is if the locality is aware of any modifications to the project that would permit the locality to approve the proposed project, the locality should identify them in the written statement provided under subdivision one.

So if the commission is aware of any modifications that might make this proposal approvable, it should state.

The other thing is, as noted in the staff report, any motion to recommend denial should also clarify that the recommendation is not based on, I'm sorry for the long code site here, Virginia Code section 15.2-2316

I understand.

So we'll take them one at a time.

The only, I guess, the only condition that would allow for me to consider approval is if it were at a tree top tower.

Okay.

Sorry, my tablet went to sleep during this long deliberation.

Couldn't stay with us.

So that is my motion.

Thank you.

The only thing I would ask is that when we are going through the various ordinances that the ordinance for cell towers actually

really be looked at in a way that helps to facilitate the conversation that we consistently have at this diocese.

Because we're doing all of this based on an ordinance that was done, is it now 22 years ago?

I agree with that and the same could be said of our lighting ordinance which we have asked repeatedly.

I'm just saying there are a number of codes that technology has fast outpaced what we have in writing.

I was just going to say, we actually do have the cell tower ordinance review on the books right now.

We have a proposal in, and we should be getting that started with Mr. Fritz, who's in the audience as well.

Pretty soon, the board's directed us to move forward with that.

OK, you've got him very excited.

Yeah, I just might suggest, too, if this were to come back before us, that

There might be landowners nearby who might appreciate a balloon test from their house.

Mr. Clayborne?

Aye.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Mr. Bivins?

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Thank you.

So the Planning Commission recommends a denial of this.

I vote a five to one.

This will now go to the Board of Supervisors for their consideration.

They have the final say on whether this tower is approved or not.

Are we good?

Do we need a break or anything?

Okay.

Rock on.

All right.

We're now ready to move to the next public hearing of the evening.

ZMA-2021-00001 Willow Glen, where we have the staff report.

Good evening planning commissioners.

My name is Andy Bridalbock and I'm a senior planner here with Albemarle County Planning Division.

This evening, I'm giving a presentation on ZMA 2021-1 Willow Glen.

So to start off, this is an aerial view of the subject property of this rezoning application.

It consists of six parcels in Willow Glen.

There are two phases.

There's one phase, which I've circled, that has already been developed with 36 residential units and associated open space lots.

And three of those parcels, two of the open space parcels and one of the residential lots is part of this rezoning application.

And then the majority of this application is what is called phase two of Willow Glen and that consists of three larger undeveloped parcels that I've highlighted.

You have the airport to the west, Deerwood Village in Abington Place to the east,

And then I also wanted to just note that there is one parcel that Willow Glen surrounds.

I've identified it here on this aerial view.

It's kind of a square shaped parcel on Dickerson Road.

And so I just wanted to clarify that that parcel is not a part of this application.

So as I mentioned, this application consists of six parcels that total approximately 20.457 acres.

Three of those parcels are in the phase two and they are 19.27 acres.

And then the three parcels of phase one that I mentioned are included really for the proffer amendments that are a part of this application.

This is an amendment to a previously approved rezoning ZMA 2006-19 and so the zoning district's planned residential development will remain the same and this application is to amend both the application plan and the proffers that were previously approved and accepted with that earlier rezoning.

The applicant is requesting to increase the maximum number of units in the development by a total of 126.

So there are currently 198 units permitted in the phase two area.

And the applicant is requesting a maximum of 324 units in that phase two area for that overall increase of 126.

And then there are 36 units that have previously been constructed in phase one.

So the overall Willow Glen development would total 360 units.

In phase two, the gross and net density would be 16.81 units.

And then pulling the phase one part of the development that's already been constructed, it would be an overall density of 15.08 units.

So the zoning of this property, as I mentioned, it does include six parcels that are PRD in accordance with the previously approved rezoning that does include proffers.

There's a maximum of 198 units permitted in phase two, as I mentioned.

It's 234 units total, the 36 units already constructed in phase one, and that leaves 198 units left that could be built in phase two.

The overlay zoning districts for this property include steep slopes and the airport impact area.

The surrounding zoning districts, there is rural areas to the west, north, and southwest.

However, I do want to point out that although these properties are zoned rural areas, they are all located within the community of Hollymeade Development Area.

The property to the east, Deerwood Village is zoned R4, Abington Place to the southeast is zoned neighborhood model district, and then there are some properties to the south, zoned R15 residential.

So looking at the comprehensive plan, this is in the Places 29 Master Plan.

As I mentioned, all of the surrounding properties are located within the Places 29 Master Plan and are located within a development area.

The vast majority of this site, which is identified with the orange color, is urban density residential, which allows residential between 6.01 and 34 units per acre, along with supporting uses.

And then there was a very small sliver of property in the southeast portion of this property that is designated neighborhood density residential, which is the yellow color at three to six units per acre.

And in the Places 29 master plan for residential building height and urban density residential, it does recommend a maximum of four stories.

So getting more into the specifics of this proposal, as I've previously mentioned, it's a request for a maximum of 324 dwelling units in phase two, totaling 360 units in all of Willow Glen, and so it would be an increase of 126 units.

The density, I've already mentioned 16.81 units in phase two alone.

One change that the applicant is requesting is a change in the unit types for phase two currently under the existing rezoning.

It's a mix of different unit types, single-family detached, townhouses, duplexes, condos.

However, the applicant is looking to construct all multifamily units with this new amendment.

It would be those

Multifamily apartments would be spread across 12 residential buildings, three to four stories in height.

Really, they're three stories on the front facade, but some of them being built into a hillside or four stories on the rear.

There are also additional buildings for a clubhouse and a fitness center.

There are two site entrances into the property off of Dickerson Road.

And currently under the existing rezoning, there is a proffered road connection from Town Center Drive through the Willow Glen development over to Dickerson Road.

And the applicant is proposing to eliminate this through street and making the portion of that existing road that is currently constructed in phase one terminate in a turnaround and become a dead-end street.

In PRD districts, the ordinance does require that 25% of the property be open space, and the applicant is proposing that almost 38% of the Phase II property would be an open space, and this comes out to approximately 7.29 acres.

So this is just a screenshot of the

The new application plan that is being proposed showing the building envelopes for all of the various buildings surrounding the site and then the open space areas, the stormwater management pond in the rear, which would also be utilized as open space.

And this is also included in the staff report package.

And then for comparison, I've included the old application plan.

This is the one that was approved originally back in the 2006 rezoning.

And this is also included in attachment four of the staff report.

Looking at the specifics of

The proffers for this proposal, as I mentioned, not only is the application plan being proposed to change, but the proffers are changing as well.

The applicant is proposing to remove a proffer that requires 15% of the constructed dwelling units being affordable for 10 years, as well as accounting option for cash in lieu.

I do want to note that the affordable housing proffer is not really being eliminated.

It's being replaced with a note on the application plan, which is permitted since the application plan is the governing plan for a plan development district.

and so the applicant is proposing to make 20% of the constructed units in phase two affordable at 80% AMI for a period of 15 years.

And this note is note number four on the new application plan.

The applicant is requesting to remove a proffer that was accepted with the original rezoning that would require a cash contribution for each unit that was constructed that was not designated as affordable

The applicant, as I've mentioned previously, is requesting to remove the proffered connection to Town Center Drive.

And this is that through road connecting Town Center Drive through this development over to Dickerson Road.

And so the portion of this road that's already been constructed in phase one, it's known as Shannon Glen Court.

And that would be terminated in phase one near the property line between phase one and phase two.

And so there would be no vehicular connections between the two phases.

However, the applicant is proposing trail connections to connect those two phases.

And then the applicant is also proffering sidewalk construction and conveyance of a temporary grading and construction easement for the Dickerson Road frontage on the southwest side of the property.

And that grading and construction easement is for allowing the extension of that sidewalk onto the adjacent property when that property gets developed.

So looking at the schools, I first wanted to note that in the staff report in the grid that I included in the staff report, the names on the columns of that grid, the names of the schools were incorrect.

But in the text of the staff report, I had included the correct school name.

So I just wanted to note that discrepancy.

And so I've included the correct school names in this grid.

It's Baker Butler Elementary, Lakeside Middle, and Albemarle High School.

Baker Butler and Albemarle High School are currently over capacity and both are expected to remain so over the next 10 year planning period of the school system.

And of course, this development would add additional students at both of those schools.

Lakeside Middle does have capacity at this time.

However, according to the school systems projections, it is expected to be over capacity by the 2028-29 school year.

And overall in the bottom,

Row of this grid, you can see the number of students projected to be generated at each school based on the school systems calculator that they provide us.

So it's 29, roughly 29 students at the elementary school level, six and a half students at the middle school level and 19 and a half students at the high school level for a total of about 55 students.

and I'll also note that this 55 includes all 324 units in the proposed with this development.

It does not include just the increase in students from what is currently permitted by Wright.

So looking at the streets and transportation issues with this proposal, a TIA was submitted and reviewed with this application and there are no concerns from VDOT or the county's transportation planning staff with this TIA.

Shannon Glencourt, as I've mentioned, is the constructed portion of the through street that had been approved with the previous rezoning.

It was approved as a public street, however, the bonds are still in place and it has not been accepted by VDOT for public maintenance at this time.

And to truncate the street in the phase one as the applicant is requesting to do and not extend it farther into the phase two area, VDOT does require some changes to the street to be made.

mainly to make the temporary turnaround that's currently there become a permanent turnaround so that it can meet all cul-de-sac standards.

As I mentioned, the applicant is proposing trail system around the property, including a bridge and trail connecting the end of Shannon Glencourt with the phase two property.

So in place of extending that through road, they would include walking and biking multi-use trails.

And then, as I mentioned, there is a sidewalk proffered along the southwest frontage of the property.

There is no sidewalk currently being provided along the northwest frontage of the property.

So I just wanted to clarify some on that, that staff sees sidewalks as being important for pedestrian orientation, multimodal transportation, and interpersonal connectivity, which are all important principles of the 12 neighborhood model principles.

However, I do want to note and acknowledge that

Due to some recent changes in VDOT policy, they may not accept so-called sidewalks to nowhere, sidewalks that don't connect on either end to other sidewalks.

They may not accept that into the public highway maintenance system.

So that could be an issue in constructing sidewalks in areas that don't have other sidewalks currently to be able to connect to.

So just a graphic showing an inset from the conceptual plan, just to kind of clarify where the sidewalk is provided and proffered on the right side.

This is kind of the Southwest portion of the property.

And then on the left side, that's the Northwest portion of the property.

There is no sidewalk provided.

And then of course there is that parcel in the middle that is not a part of this rezoning.

Along with this rezoning application, the applicant did request two special exceptions.

One is to request a modification in the recreational facilities from those that are listed in the zoning ordinance.

It includes a reduced number of tot lots from what the zoning ordinance requires.

However, the applicant is still proposing three to be provided throughout this development.

And instead of that, those top lots would be replaced with recreational facilities such as a clubhouse, a fitness center with a pool.

There are various trails throughout the property connecting buildings to the areas and facilities around that stormwater management pond to make that pond more of an amenity for the development, including items such as a viewing platform and a gazebo.

And then the applicant also submitted a request to reduce the required number of parking spaces across the entire development by about 5%, which would be about 28 parking spaces in about 570 parking spaces would still be provided in this development.

And staff has no objections to these requests if approval of the ZMA is recommended.

So there are several positive aspects to this development.

The request is consistent with the uses and the density recommended by the Places 29 Master Plan.

The density of 16 units per acre falls within that range of six to 34 units per acre in urban density residential.

The request is consistent or mostly consistent with the majority of the applicable neighborhood model principles.

And the request does provide affordable units at 20% of the total number of units constructed, which is consistent with the county's policy on

There are some concerns, however, with this development.

Number one being the interparcel vehicular connectivity is being eliminated with this proposal.

As I've mentioned several times, that road, Shannon Glen Court, it's designated as Road D in the approved application plan from the 2006 rezoning.

Connecting Phase 1 and 2, that's proposed to be eliminated.

And so there would be no vehicular connections between these two phases and going through this development between Town Center and Dickerson Road.

Shannon Glencourt, which is that portion that's been constructed, as I mentioned, has not yet been accepted by VDOT into the public grid system.

And so it would still need to work through that process and to address any concerns that VDOT or the engineering division of the county may have in ensuring that a road that was previously expected to be extended farther and is now proposed to be truncated into a dead-end cul-de-sac could still be accepted by VDOT.

The proposed development, as I mentioned, would result in additional student enrollment at Albemarle High and Baker Butler Elementary schools, which are both already over capacity, and then the sidewalk issue, which I mentioned.

So staff's recommendations for this application for the rezoning ZMA 2021-1.

Staff does not recommend approval of ZMA 2021-1 Willow Glen for the concerns that I outlined in the previous slide.

And then regarding special exceptions 2021-7 and 2021-8.

If the Planning Commission does choose to recommend approval of the rezoning, staff has no objections to the approval of either of these special exceptions.

However, of course, if the Planning Commission chooses not to recommend approval of the rezoning, then it would not make sense to approve either of the special exceptions either.

So I'm available now or after the public hearing for any questions that you may have.

So the applicant would not have to come before the Planning Commission if they just went ahead and did phase two.

So basically what we're being asked to consider right now is to divorce a proposal that, sorry, a proposal that got established 15 years ago and say, this is what it was supposed to be, but we're cutting off the larger piece of it because this clearly was the larger piece of it.

And we're being asked to consider this new proposal,

and to disregard all of the various connectivity that was agreed to 15 years ago.

Because basically all the connectivity is being pushed away.

Because I will say this, I don't think a walking bridge is connectivity if you said there was going to be a road.

I just have a quick question regarding the parking.

I think it's up to 30% as permitted by the ordinance.

That's good to know.

No.

Just a somewhat off topic question.

So I'm looking at the height, and I'm having a hard time.

But there's a four story pitch roof.

It does not.

That is one thing we looked at.

And so the four story height where it's on the basement is generally on the rear of the buildings.

Right, and I think he was just explaining that's in the backside of the... Okay.

But it's still... With the basement?

With the basement.

It's 50, but the basement is 50.

Yeah.

Okay, hearing none, we will switch to hear from the applicants.

Welcome back.

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

I'm Lori Schweller representing the applicant.

We're requesting your recommendation of approval for Dickerson Overlook, which is phase two of Willow Glen.

The applicant, Dickerson Ridge LLC, is represented by George Ray.

The breed and construction is the contract purchaser, developer, builder, and manager, and tonight we have with us Brian Revere and Moses Romero.

Steve Edwards is here.

He prepared all the zoning drawings and design.

We have Joe Wallace from Remi Kemp for traffic engineering, and my colleague Valerie Long and I are here from Williams Mullen.

The property that you're considering tonight is three text map parcels comprising a little over 19 acres.

Mr. Reidelbach described the context, lots of different housing types around the project.

The airport is immediately across Dickerson Road to the west.

Hollymae Town Center, obviously, immediately to the east, about 0.7 mile.

This is the view northbound from Dickerson Road Airport on the left and the project property on the right.

700 feet south of this is the intersection with Town Center Drive.

A quick history of the project that was rezoned in 2007.

Site plan approved in 2008 and then the recession hit.

And so, George Ray has been working tirelessly to make this project work in a number of different ways.

Or we can talk about that in more detail if you would like to.

Just to note that he did build phase one with 14 single family detached and 22 townhomes.

and in doing so provided over $500,000 in cash proffers, six affordable units and $10,000 to the service authority to analyze and upgrade systems.

Our request tonight will provide high quality multi-family housing in the development area in close proximity to all other housing types.

It would eliminate the cash proffers to make the project economically viable.

It will increase dramatically the number of affordable units and affordability generally and will provide interparcel connectivity between the existing Willow Glen neighborhood and Dickerson Overlook as a

head bike connection rather than vehicular.

This is designated urban density residential, which calls for a range of 6.01 to 34 dwelling units per acre.

The existing plan is only 10 dwelling units per acre.

In phase two, we're proposing 16.81 dwelling units per acre, which is needed in the development area for housing.

In the application plan, you can see our new pedestrian path circling the neighborhood, an amenity pond that will be stocked with fish.

You can see outdoor bicycle racks and indoor bicycle storage facilities throughout the project, and a location in front for a future transit stop if the routes extend in this direction.

This PRD plan is where our affordable housing commitment is located.

In the illustrative plan, you can see that there will be parks

throughout the neighborhood, not just in the center.

The recreational area exceeds what's required with 38% in this phase.

We have requested some substitutions to make the recreational area more appropriate for the residents.

Breeden Construction has constructed at least 45 other developments in Virginia and is very familiar with what its residents will use and would like to see.

All recreational amenities will be free and available to both Willow Glen Phase 1 and Dickerson Overlook.

The pool and gym membership is available for a fee to all the residents.

So let's look a little closer at the recreational facilities.

I want to show you the many different parks and other amenities throughout the neighborhood.

Here we are near the pond.

There's an amphitheater, the pool, and the fitness center.

There are three tot lots or playgrounds.

There's a dog park.

There are gathering places throughout the development with seating areas, fire pits, and grilling stations.

There's also a proposed community garden and again more gathering spaces and then in the center a large lawn area with various amenities.

I want to address the inter-parcel connectivity and pedestrian-friendly design.

On this map, this Google map, you can see that the parcel connection that we're providing for pedestrians and cyclists will encourage bike-ped interconnectivity.

There's already a sidewalk along Town Center Drive.

There is no impact that needs to be addressed with a vehicular connection.

We don't have any transportation issues in this area.

You can see the blue line, if you went by road from the southern entrance to the development to the intersection of Shannon Glen Court, which is the road that the red line is going through in Town Center Drive, that blue line is 0.4 mile.

The red line is 0.3 mile and will take twice as long to traverse because you're going through areas where you have traffic bumps to slow down traffic.

You have pedestrians crossing the road and you're passing through Shannon Glencourt, which is a neighborhood that's developed over the past 15 years and people back out of their driveways and their kids play in the street and they expect that to be a safe street.

We think that this interparcel connection as we're proposing it is a positive, not a negative.

We think it's a positive because the development will no longer be automobile-centric.

The surrounding development over the past 15 years makes it impractical to do this development.

It would be unfair to send the cars from 300 apartment units through Shannon Glen Court.

And the PATH system will encourage bike and ped use, which is consistent with the neighborhood model principles.

We are proffering a sidewalk from the southern entrance south, and that will be important for connection eventually to the neighborhood center on the parcel on the other side of Town Center Drive.

I'd like to talk about affordable housing and the commitment here.

The existing plan calls for 15%.

That's 35 units.

The for sale units, which only have to be held for 60 days, would be at 80% AMI.

The for rent units are offered at 120% AMI.

And that period of affordability is 10 years.

There's also a cash in lieu option.

What we're proposing, we're trying to get

as close as we can to the county's housing policy.

We're doing 20% affordable housing, which for the planned 308 apartment units is 68 units.

So that's 33 additional affordable units that you would get.

Rent 80% AMI for a longer period, 15 years, and they will all be provided on site.

So again, 20% of the units for 15 years, rental rate will exceed 30% of 80% of the area median income, and that includes all your utilities.

We would like to do more.

Breeden would very much like to do more.

They're very supportive of affordable housing.

The problem

is it won't be economically viable until we have some developer incentives.

So if we get through zoning with an approval, then we can work on a performance agreement that would make sense with perhaps a real estate tax abatement plan for the life of the affordability.

As to schools, the current plan versus the proposed plan is an increase of only 18 students.

So a summary of proposed changes.

Housing type, we're reducing to one type, but we're surrounded by every other type in this area.

Increase in density more appropriate to the growth area, more affordable housing units with a longer period of affordability, and a ped-bike connection rather than a vehicular cut-through.

This will be a quality design and construction.

Berkmar Landing was also

built by Breeden so you know the type of amenity and design that you will get with that.

Staff has listed three positive aspects to this request.

We think there are many more.

We want to add to those three more green space and recreational areas than required with carefully thought out amenities.

Recreation areas are fully available to phase one.

There's no traffic routed through phase one.

There will be a pedestrian bicycle connection between the phases.

and Les Environmental Impact.

I know that it was just a concept, but when I was showing the stormwater pond, it looked like there was no vegetation around the stormwater pond and looked like grass came right up to the pond.

I would strongly encourage with that for you to use a buffer of native plants.

There are problems, particularly with cyanobacteria blooms that can kill pets.

Thank you for those comments.

I'm sure we'll be working on those during the engineering phase in the stormwater management plan.

Just note your design suggestion also limits the use of the pond by geese, because if you don't want a pond surrounded by obnoxious geese and poo, that design does a better job.

Absolutely.

Thank you for the report.

I just have a couple of questions at the moment.

Could you talk a little bit about why the drastic change, when you look at the proposal from 2007 to now,

I'd be happy to.

Thank you for that question.

There have been quite a number of changes through the years and a number of attempts to make changes.

The problem with the plan as it currently exists is it would require another million and a half or so of cash proffers, proffers that would not be reasonable under today's state law.

And those make the project economically not viable.

you know in addition to the cash proffers the vehicular connection between the two parcels would be a million dollars in addition so it'd be a very expensive project to develop it as it is so George Ray has tried a number of things and Valerie has been here in front of this body and the board to try a number of things to make the project work one of those was in 2018 there was an application to rezone

to do commercial development along Dickerson Road.

And George had that additional parcel under contract.

And that was going to be sort of commercial with warehousing and so on and loading docks.

but that was not successful because of additional traffic that it would bring so then they did some major site plan amendments and came before you again to try to reduce the proffers bifurcating proffers that were associated with expanding facilities which is no longer allowed and so they tried to reduce the proffers significantly by about two-thirds

and also for a credit for units that could have been built under the RA zoning, which was the initial zoning here.

and that also failed.

So he's tried a number of things.

He's been in contract with different builders.

He had a contract to sell all the lots during that time, but because the proffer reduction failed, he wasn't able to sell the lots.

So now he's got breathing construction, high quality, well-respected, experienced developer, ready to develop and build

this high quality apartment complex, as you have seen already in Albemarle County.

And this will be a beautiful project.

It will solve all the problems.

Without the cash proffers, it can be done.

I said one more before.

I think this project, it'll have one, two, and three bedroom units, so it can run the gamut.

When I look at this project, I think of professionals, especially people who need to travel a lot.

You can't get more convenient to the airport, people who work in the northern part of the county.

It's a great location because of Hollymede Town Center, so all of your amenities are there.

You could even have graduate students.

Thank you.

I certainly could appreciate that.

I'm flying in at 1230 in the morning on Monday.

So two questions.

First one, I know that the overstressed schools nearby is one of the concerns of staff.

But we've also heard up here in the Planning Commission about the need for preschools in the area.

and have you ever considered any option for providing daycare on site or some kind of space for preschool could exist?

That'd be one thing.

Sure.

I won't be able to answer the first question.

To my knowledge, there is no

plan for a preschool on the site, and it hasn't been considered, but I might have to defer to Mr. Revere for that question.

I can certainly answer the question regarding the sidewalk north of the site.

Would it be okay if I had my presentation back up again?

So what Andy was referring to, Andy Reidelbach was referring to was VDOT regulations adopted this summer, VDOT complete streets, bicycle and pedestrian guidelines.

And I'll just read you a couple of excerpts that apply to that.

Ending a pedestrian access route into a parking lot or roadway shoulder or step outs in anticipation of future extension are not acceptable means of terminating a pedestrian access route.

So if you look at Google Maps where our site is located and go north of that on this side of Dickerson Road, the only thing there is large open green fields with single family homes dotting the landscape.

There's nothing there that you would connect to and then you hit Airport Road.

There's a lot of reason to go south because there is in the comp plan there's a proposed neighborhood center a little bit further south and then of course there's the huge regional service center or center

Hollymate Town Center to the east, of course.

So there are reasons to go south.

There are no reasons at this point to go north.

So the question might be, well, will you dedicate frontage if needed for future sidewalk?

What you can see when you look at the plans, though, is that the right-of-way

is already so wide there's plenty of room within the right of way for sidewalks already.

So at this point it just didn't seem necessary.

During site planning, if staff determines that there is something that's needed, we will certainly work with them at that point.

Thank you.

So thank you again.

Right.

He doesn't own the property.

That's right.

Well, right, we're proffering to build the sidewalk.

At the time that we build the right turntaper into the southern entrance, we will build the sidewalk along there and grant an easement for the rest of it, you know, for grading and so on.

So that basically anyone who lives in that community, they're really going to need

That's true.

If it's by vehicle.

If it's not by vehicle, it's not shorter.

Or maybe shorter, but it's more dangerous.

So I wouldn't want to take a trolley.

A stroller, thank you.

I wouldn't want to take a stroller and come out, make a left-hand turn, because there's no sidewalk.

I definitely want to have some sort of, I'm hoping there was a road, but I want to have some sort of connection within the community.

I think I misunderstood what you said originally, Mr. Bivins.

Yes.

So that's one of the reasons why we have to have some sort of connectivity, whether or not it's a road or pedestrian.

So here's the question that I have.

So my colleagues were asking questions about cellular phone.

I know I'm not going to get the answer because you couldn't tell me because it doesn't match your return on investment, which I will then turn to everybody and say, we never get to hear what the developer's return of investment is.

So I'm just going to say that as a gentle thing when we make these decisions here.

I would understand if we were going to do 198 units which were allowed in phase two and you do however you want to do them.

Do multi-level, do cottages, do however you want to, but it's basically just asking us to have a change in structures but it's the same census.

And then I would have a little concern about why then aren't we putting a road in because the people in phase one bought in phase one assuming there'd be 198 units over there with a road.

Okay.

And so I would have, I don't get that.

So I really want to ask the question, why don't you just come in here and saying, we really want to do 198 units, but we don't want to make it as varied as it was in the original request.

And we just want to do multifamily units, which I would appreciate.

And I would be very happy to see something like that.

I am struggling why I'm increasing it by almost half.

that I'm struggling with that.

And I know you'll tell me because it's your return in investment.

And I will then look at you and say, well, I have no idea what your return in investment is.

It could be 50 cents.

It could be 10 cents.

It could be a nickel.

And so that goes to my whole point about we don't know what the business plan is on any of this.

And so we have to take what our applicants tell me their business plans are for us to accept that.

Well, what Breeden is proposing is 308 units.

They have designed for 308 units.

So it's roughly 100 unit increase.

And keep in mind that almost 70 units will be affordable units.

So we do want to do more units.

We do want to do only multifamily housing because that's what they do.

I think that the comment about

Phase One folks being prepared for that interconnection is certainly fair, except that this development Phase One has happened over the course of many, many years.

And so those people have moved in over the course of 2013 to 2021 probably aren't all as familiar with the former application as

You may be.

And they have lived there.

Some have lived there for a long time.

And so they are used to their small street ending

In a cul-de-sac, essentially, there are two streets in phase one.

There's Templehof Court, which always was private, always intended to be private, will remain private.

And then there's Shannon Glen Court.

And the residents in there probably feel that they're in an enclave and would be very dismayed

As you know from the petition that you received, all of them, all 36 but 4 signed this petition to say they would be dismayed to have a cut through through their neighborhood because they think it would be unsafe.

If you're backing into your street from your driveway, which you've been doing for 5, 10, 15 years,

You know, it's not great.

So let me just, sorry, I appreciate it.

So I get the fact that I bought a house, I've been in my house, and now

I've established a certain lifestyle and therefore my lifestyle is going to change if a street comes through there because that's not, even though it was on the plan, it hasn't been there so now it's going to, okay I get that.

Please tell me why we just didn't do 198 units.

What was the cause to push the number of units?

Because right now, you don't even have to come to us.

The applicant didn't have to come back to us.

Well, they probably had to do for form, did they?

It's not just form, the prior project was approved for this mix of housing.

So we needed to come back to you if we want to do a multifamily housing development.

This mix of housing calls for single family detached, single family attached, condominiums.

But at the end of the day, this housing mix is for 198 units.

That if I sort of look at it, it's two and a half, if I say two and a half bedrooms in it, that that's going to give me a census of maybe 315 additional people here.

Right now, we're being asked to go up to 900 bedrooms or 900 additional, if I'm just doing two and a half, two and a half rooms per, two and a half bedrooms per structure.

And so that's a significant difference where I would have said, okay, you want to do a different sort of mix.

Yes, it is for greater density, no doubt about that.

And it is for economic reasons, but it's what we need in the development areas of the county.

This group has analyzed how much development area do we have?

Do we have enough for the residences that we need?

The answer was we don't, you know, unless we do,

higher density on the range that's permitted in each area.

And that's what we're trying to do.

Yes, so we have requested a maximum of 324.

That was because we initially applied for this rezoning almost two years ago and during this time as we've worked through the planning process, Breeden has

has crystallized its plan and that number is now 308.

But legally, we're going to have to stick with the 324 because that's what's in the application.

Yes.

And I was I was very upfront when I was providing affordable housing unit numbers to use 308, not 324.

Right, okay, go ahead.

I just wanted you to clarify that difference.

We have to know what it is we would be voting on.

Mr. Bivins, did you have more?

I'll try to fill in your blank, but I think it's the calculation on the 20%, right?

So the 20% is based on the 308.

It's 20% of whatever is constructed.

So we would have to provide 20% of whatever is constructed.

We'll leave it to them.

For example, they could build 300, and then it would be 20% of that.

We're giving them a maximum.

That's what we're being asked to vote on.

They could say something in the business model, blah, blah, blah.

Therefore, it's 292.

No, that's fine.

I just want to be clear.

Because that's where I was going.

It is based on what's in the application, not what they end up building.

He could have the rest of my baton.

He has a baton.

Excuse me.

So really quickly, back on the connectivity issue.

And I can appreciate not having vehicular, I mean, I could see where there's a benefit there to potentially both developments, I'll separate them.

However, the only connectivity that you do have is pedestrian.

I'm just wondering if not encouraging also some bike.

Yes, it is intended to be multimodal path.

So it would be for bike and ped.

And we can work through the details of that during site planning.

Well, I want to both encourage the bike, because I think it would make a lot of sense for people that they can- You could ride your bike to go to the pool probably.

And they would probably want to do that anyway.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Actually, I'm just on that point.

I heard you say bike pad but just so you know, it's on here as pedestrian only.

It's on the plants as pedestrian only.

I see.

Those are a couple quick questions.

I love going last because a lot of them have been answered.

Thanks for the presentation.

It was really helpful to have you clarify some of the interconnectivity issues.

I'm curious, was part of that driven because you had to expand the stormwater pond and therefore couldn't get across that area?

Yeah, that's what I figured.

And also, you know,

The parking, I mean it's quite obvious you know to everybody that you're basically driving the parking lots everywhere on this site.

I'm curious your five percent number that I asked staff about also

Is it possible that that could be reduced even more?

And one of the things that I'm thinking is the area adjacent to the stormwater pond, it's really nice to be able to do a lap around a pond.

And on the adjacent parking to B3, B2, well, B3 and B2 on the outer perimeter, you only have single-loaded parking, whereas you have double-loaded parking adjacent to the

to the pond.

Because that would be nicer in response to your initial question, reading construction decided on the number of parking spaces that it needed based on other developments.

Got it.

Thanks.

Good evening, Steve Edwards.

I think there is room right now, as you can see in the illustration.

Sorry, sir, can you say your name for the record for the minutes?

Steve Edwards, Edwards Design Studio.

The illustration shows that double bay of parking there on the backside of B8 and that's to help accommodate the residents on both sides of the building.

There is garages integrated within several of the buildings that help reduce the amount of parking.

I think that there could be a way that we can

introduce a path down that hill.

So there can be a complete circumnavigable route around the Stockton Pond.

Right.

Right.

Interesting.

Okay.

Great.

And then just a question of curiosity, is it intended that this would be phased?

The intent is to be one phase, one complete phase.

But if financing comes into play, that might change that a little bit.

Good to know.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Those are my only questions.

I wanted to get back to you regarding your comment.

I actually didn't know where the notation is that it says

pedestrian only.

And so I wanted to get some clarification.

Here's the plan.

And this is the connection between the phases here, which says pedestrian bike connection, but there's an existing pedestrian connection that's being used while we're working on redevelopment.

So that connector that you have, it's like an L shape,

Yes, that one.

B5, page Z5.

Other questions for the applicant?

Are you coming up to make a quick clarification?

The application plan there, which is Z4, is the binding plan.

And there it says it's the 10-foot class A type two pedestrian flight connection in this general area, which is indicating the dark brown connection point.

The Z5 is the illustrative plan.

Yeah, you're right.

I didn't see that.

I didn't either.

I couldn't read it.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

No, that's my bad.

Z4 is the binding plan.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I think we got it.

Okay, go ahead.

Real quick.

I appreciate your consideration of walkability in this.

And just one other suggestion question is what key concept in walkability is the ability to walk to services?

And have you considered any things like being able to walk to a coffee shop or being able to walk to a restaurant or to a school or

Well, we're 0.7 mile from Hollymere Town Center, literally, so you can walk there in 10 minutes.

So no, this is purely residential, not mixed use.

You know, we're so close to all the services that would be needed.

I don't think that's in Breeden's plan.

Sure.

It's one quick question about the schools and capacity.

I think right now, with the request, I was looking at my notes, 55 students would be added across the three levels of schools.

If this was done in accordance to, I guess, the buy-write,

The number would be 18 fewer than what we would have with the revised plan.

Yeah, it's a. So the number of students that would would attend school.

In the current approved housing mix, if it were fully built out, would be 51 more students.

And what we're proposing with our mix is 69.

Thank you.

Okay, are there any other questions for the applicant?

Yeah, I don't have any questions.

I just wanted to clarify a few things.

So on the initial application that was made with the initial rezoning, there were a total of 94 multifamily units.

So they were part of that initial application plan.

All unit types were included.

And if you think about it, that is one of the main principles of the neighborhood model is this mixture of housing types.

So as was stated by Commissioner Bivins, what we have here is basically two separate projects.

So I think that was one of the things that was really attractive with the initial application was this integrated mix of units throughout all phases.

Sprinkled throughout.

And I think that that vehicular connection was not necessarily from getting from point A to point B. It was about integrating the two phases from just a design standpoint of making the two phases feel like one community.

And so that was something that staff really valued with it.

Last, I will say there was a comment also made about the capacity analysis that was recently done with the comprehensive plan.

We ran three separate scenarios.

This was presented to the commission recently.

All three scenarios, one being max build out, one being

Historical Trends, and then another one being the Buy Right, all had capacity within the development area.

Thank you.

All right, I think we're ready.

Thank you, Ms.

Schweller.

Thank you very much.

All right, so we're going to go ahead and hear comments from the public now.

Is there anyone from the public in the audience who would like to speak?

Yes, please come forward.

I'm sorry.

Sometimes it's hard to see over all of these gizmos.

Yeah, I'm sure he keeps arising this.

All right.

You want to pull the microphone down towards you.

Just state your name.

My name is Mary Ellen Isaacson.

I live on Bayberry Way.

My house backs up to the

empty land where the second phase would be going.

Okay.

And in fact, according to these maps, I've seen my lot in multiple of these maps.

So, um, my lot would be back up to the proposed pond.

Um, we've lived there about six years and we were happy to hear that there would also be some single family homes behind us.

The density of the housing supposed to get, it was supposed to get more dense as it went towards Dickerson road.

I'm not real happy to find that there will be such high density right behind my house.

Also, from a traffic standpoint, it is very difficult to get from Town Center Drive to turn onto Dickerson Road in the mornings.

It backs up quite a bit because of traffic on Dickerson Road, and I don't know if that's been taken into any consideration.

Walkability, I don't think the residents would have any problem getting to Hollymue Town Center, but as to your point of being able to walk to and from the airport, there are no sidewalks on Dickerson Road.

You would have to walk on Dickerson Road, and I don't know anybody that would want to do that.

I can walk from my house to the airport.

I've done it 15 minutes from my door to the terminal.

It's fabulous, but you have to have sidewalks.

I would not attempt to without.

Part of my concern is the height.

You know, single family homes aren't tremendously high.

So the ones right behind me I didn't assume would be very tall because there is a creek that runs between Deerwood and Willow Glen.

So obviously the land from Deerwood slopes down and then it slopes back up the hill.

So there are these tall buildings right across.

That's definitely going to change the character

of the people that live in Deerwood looking at that community.

We were expecting to look at mostly single-family homes right behind us.

So I think that was all I had to say.

Okay, is there anyone else from the public in the audience?

Good evening.

Neil Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum.

As an organization, we do not take positions on projects, and we do not have a position on this project.

I just want to call out this moment, this moment for you commissioners who will be working on the comprehensive plan, and this moment where you're adding 126, perhaps, units to a greater than 10-acre parcel, and how that feels with the concerns you have

and the idea that the capacity analysis, even at the lowest number that was put forth, there'll be just enough land for us to get to 20 years.

And how should we be planning the comprehensive plan considering where you guys are at this moment with this application?

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public that I can't see?

Okay.

Carolyn, I can't hear you.

Yes, ma'am.

I'm sorry.

There's two people online.

The first one is Carolyn, not me.

Carolyn, please state your name and address.

And if you're affiliated with the group, you have three minutes.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Carolyn Burnett.

I am a current resident since 2015 of the first phase of Willow Glen.

And my concern that I wanted to speak about today

is just in support of removing the vehicular connection between the two neighborhoods.

This is a key aspect of what makes the application keep from materially changing the quality and safety of the lives and the people in the existing Willow Glen neighborhood.

I don't know how many of you have spent any time in Willow Glen, but it is comprised of high number of very young families

Young children playing in the street all the time.

The width of Shannon Glen is, you know, there's a significant number of residents who must park on the street in order to contain the vehicles that they have.

Not all of them have garages.

And so there are always

cars parked on both sides of that road.

There is not enough room for two lanes of traffic to pass through those cars that are parked on the side safely.

And so as it stands now, even with only the dead end traffic from this very small neighborhood, it already is a place where it can get snarled up.

That being said, to be dwarfed by not only what was expected, but an additional 126 units of traffic

would become a significant safety issue for the children in this neighborhood and significantly impact our quality of life.

Finally, at rush hour traffic on Town Center Drive headed toward Dickinson frequently backs up past the neighborhood entrance.

If there were a vehicular connection through the two neighborhoods, it would encourage people stuck in that traffic already waiting at the

entrance of that neighborhood to try to pass through both of the residential communities if they're going in that right direction to not have to wait out the significant delay at that stop sign, creating further traffic than just the residential density and further concern for safety.

Thank you so much.

Hi, yes, thank you, and good evening.

I'm Kate Elwood.

I live in Willow Glen, phase one, and I'm the mother of a seven-year-old.

I've lived in this neighborhood for five years, and Avery was about two and a half years old when we moved here, and when we moved in, and still there's not much green space.

Children playing in the street is because there's nowhere else for them to play.

We don't have open green spaces for the kids to play.

So playing in our streets is like second nature to these kids and they do it safely.

If you spend time here in our neighborhood, you'll hear kids yelling car anytime they see a car and having more than five cars entering the neighborhood at one time is overwhelming to the kids enough.

I can't imagine having 300 cars coming through our neighborhood.

The kids are very aware already of their lack of play space in this neighborhood and they've adjusted to this way of living.

They kick balls, set up bounce houses in the streets and play basketball.

Taking away a safe space is like taking away a part of their childhood and it will increase their anxiety and add to mental health issues.

Studies have been shown that taking a street that is a cul-de-sac or a dead-end street and turning it into a through-way street does cause

and increase anxiety in children.

I hope that I didn't hear anything mentioned about children tonight from the commissioners from the board and I hope that we can be as concerned about vegetation around the pond and the geese's quality of life as we are our children.

This is where our kids play and it's important for us to have safety as our top priority.

I read over the entire 29 master plan today and some language that stuck out to me was it is essential to respect and work with the terrain and it should improve and access and ensure safety and quality of life.

I heard someone mention that this would connect the two communities.

And if that couldn't be further from the truth, this will definitely divide the community as having cars going through heavy traffic will only cause a negative connotation associated with that of their neighborhood.

I'm definitely for the pedestrian and bike path.

And I've actually lived in a community in Ohio where both the bike and the pedestrian path

coexisted beautifully and it was wonderful.

So I really hope that you'll consider not just the impact of traffic, which there's already a huge component of that in the master plan.

We should let that work itself out with everyone, the engineers who are working on different traffic patterns in town.

It's not going to be improved upon 300 cars going through a neighborhood.

Thank you.

OK, thank you.

Carolyn, does that conclude the folks online waiting to comment?

Yes, it does.

OK, thank you.

So with that, I'll close the public hearing.

Thank you.

First, I want to focus on the comment about the vehicular connection.

The vehicular connection is not needed to bind phase one and phase two together.

In fact, I think it would do the opposite, I think, as Ms.

Elwood pointed out.

George has actually built a playground for the phase one folks in phase two so that they would have some place for their children to go.

That's why we have that that little interim pedestrian trail.

If we have a pedestrian connection between phase one and phase two, all of the Willow Glen people

can come into phase one throughout phase one.

The trails, the three top lots, all of the amenities.

This project provides far more amenities than the prior project does.

More units, more affordable units, better stream protection, more and better amenities.

The townhomes and the condos and the old project were also three stories, so it's not going to feel different to the neighbors.

But most important of all, frankly, this site is not going to get built.

This project is not going to get built with the millions of proffers.

That's why it's been sitting there and that's why Mr. Ray has tried for a dozen years

to get this changed.

When the proffer laws changed, it came again.

And it's just not gonna happen.

So please don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.

We're trying to do a great project here and the existing project can't be built.

So we wanna provide a really good project that we think in many ways is superior to what exists now.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay, I think we're good.

I will just want to make one quick comment though.

Just to again acknowledge the Planning Commission has no way to ascertain the financial viability of any project without

any kind of pro forma statement.

So we're not considering that.

You can make a statement about the proffers from before making it cost prohibitive, but we cannot objectively evaluate that without a spreadsheet.

So it's a statement, but we have no way to evaluate.

So take that for what it's worth.

But it's back to us for discussion deliberation.

We have a site that has

changed it from a mix of different units to one type of unit.

There is obviously single family residences and townhouses.

There's other types of units in the first phase that have been built.

So this is objectively still part of the same development.

It has a lot more density than the prior application.

So I think we've had some comments about whether it's putting tall buildings too close to the neighborhood.

There is a big pond between some of those units and the neighborhood, so it's not necessarily right up against it.

We've also heard that they will provide other amenities and play spaces for the children who are now playing in the roads due to lack of sufficient parkland nearby.

And we have been supportive of greater density

in the development area.

So the question is whether you feel like this is, to me, a quality development that provides enough additional or different types of benefits that it makes it worth it to you to allow them to come back with a, well, what's a radically different plan?

It's still residential, but other than that, there's not much similarity.

That's kind of the layout of the issues I didn't answer.

I didn't tip the scales in one direction or the other, obviously, but that's sort of what I heard so far.

So I'd love to hear from the commission.

We still do not have a representative for the Rio district, so we have to do our best to represent their interests.

Yeah, I mean, I'll just start to address the vehicular versus pedestrian connection.

I'm full support of the pedestrian connection instead.

I think the vehicular connection would not be an improvement.

Would not add much in terms of circulation?

It would not add much, and I think it would provide a detriment.

I mean, I think that we have a shortage of that particular housing type.

So I'm glad to see more apartments.

I don't know if it needs to be all apartments.

but I'm glad to see more apartments.

In general, in the urban area.

I mean, I'm more of a fan of mixed use.

I hate to see just a whole bunch of houses in one spot with no diversity.

I'll share a couple of positives and things that are concerning to me.

So on the positive side, I don't have any issue with the density.

I agree with Commissioner Lonnie about the pedestrian.

I couldn't think of the last thing for a second.

The pedestrian bike path, I think that's certainly the most appropriate way to connect the site.

So I think those are two things that are okay for me.

The lack of diversity in housing to me, that was just very disappointing.

And I think it'd be nice to have opportunities for home ownership within that area as well.

There was no impact.

We no longer address the impacts to the schools.

I was kind of like glossed over.

So I found that to be a little problematic for me.

And then if we're, you know, we're talking about kids running around and we're very concerned about that.

Well, the site plan looks like 12 buildings in a sea of asphalt.

So, I mean, that doesn't really take that into consideration either.

We'll continue to tussle.

Yeah.

We'll just go this way, if that's okay, Mr. Bivins, we can go next.

People have heard me speak to the whole idea that we have lots of communities that like ballads, we're still a ballarded community of which I am firmly against.

And so I understand why, and I've heard the passion about why they want to have their children be able to play in the street.

I actually had this whole image of people playing stickball on the street and yelling, car, car, car, as they used to do in certain parts of our country.

And so maybe we're going back to stickball in the streets, but perhaps not there.

So that piece, while I can appreciate it, I also think that there is a real need in our community to be able to connect communities and to integrate communities with those kinds of connections.

I'm struggling with, I thought the original concept plan that's on page Z2 worked well.

I thought it worked well.

I thought you get the kind of density you needed.

You might need to change some of the condominiums out for some of the townhomes or whichever the structures are for multi-family to increase the density there.

But I thought for this community, that worked well with some shading of structure type.

I have to frankly say that, and you know, I'm the density guy.

Give me tall buildings and I'm a happy guy.

Give me a building that's got some height to it and I actually like them but I appreciate we're near the flight path although that's not part of the flight path there so because there isn't there isn't one it comes further to the west from there so we're near the airport and so I can appreciate there's probably some some limits on height there but I have to say that I think this is a better plan

I think what they presented 2005 is a better plan.

Now that doesn't get us to the fact that what are we asking for, what are they asking for now?

They're asking for density, I get that, and I can appreciate that.

They're saying all of it's going to be rental, so they're asking so we don't need to push any money to the county to be able to basically buy out a non-affordability or the affordability factor there.

Okay, I get that.

And you know, this is the thing that I said early on, maybe I should be on the ARB instead of on the Planning Commission.

I just don't think it's the right use for that plan.

If you're asking me, this was the plan, this worked.

The plan that's being presented to us for all the return on investment arguments, and I'm sure we'll hear at some point in time,

I get it, but I don't know that that's actually for me at least enough for me to give a yes.

Plus I will go back.

You may get a yes on that, but I can't vote yes.

It doesn't matter whether or not I do.

So I think there's enough votes for the bike pad, but I just, I think we as a community need to get away from always solving connectivity with ballots.

I just, I can't support that.

And I actually don't think

Oh, I appreciate the applicants giving us some sidewalks on Dickerson Road.

I think that's a gift that's not gonna mean anything in the near future, or not even in the near future, in the future, because unless they can buy out the piece of property, the Ms.

Perry property, and then they can buy out the two pieces of property that go up to the circle where the airport is, there's never gonna be an opportunity to put a sidewalk from there to anywhere.

So early on actually, and I agree with my colleagues in density and there's certain areas that are very appropriate.

I was a little concerned about this because of the scale around it.

So there was a lot of single family homes.

I actually think that this development has done a good job of trying to buffer and mitigate that.

So there's not a lot of places where they're coming close.

I think there may be a few in B9, B10,

but you're seeing the narrow part of the building.

And so I think in general, they've done a good job of mitigating that.

I do agree with the comments that were made earlier about trying to create more green.

And even if it comes in the cost of parking now, I know that you have to balance that, right?

You have to have enough parking.

You also don't want to have, but looking at opportunities to create more green and more of that

pedestrian bicycle interactions.

I would propose that actually a road would actually serve to separate the communities more.

I don't think that it's just because we have a street that doesn't necessarily connect people.

If you have walking paths, bike paths,

then I think that would integrate the communities much more because they would start to see each other and talk to each other, not gonna talk to each other in a car.

And so, unless they're honking at each other.

So I do think that there's a much better opportunity to think about how we create those walking paths and

and more opportunities for them, more buffers, less asphalt if possible.

So I would encourage that.

And I think both Mr. Missel and I did not see, it does say bike, it is all one word, pedestrian bike.

They both say the same thing.

I could even see five says it's just,

It's all one word.

It's really hard to see, but yes, it actually does say that.

And so I would just encourage that, encourage the development of that and really think about how that works so that both parcels, you know, feel that that's part of their, I think that was mentioned.

And that would do more to bring people together so that people have that opportunity to meet each other and see each other.

And so I,

I do think there is a lot of promise to this development.

Right now, I'm not opposed.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.

So I'll be going to my optometrist.

The next few days to make sure I can read.

So a few things.

One, and I don't want to repeat what's already been said in the interest of time, one, just the use yes diversity would be.

best, right?

However, I think in this case, and I think what we need to keep in mind in the future is balancing that ability to gain density within the development area with what is part of the larger regional context.

And so I think, and I think the applicant actually mentioned this, this is yes, a single use.

However, it is within a field of a lot of other

diverse scale.

So I think that that's an appropriate way and something we need to keep in mind moving forward.

I think you know in terms of density for me sort of density open space parking are all kind of linked, and that's all kind of been discussed.

I think ideally.

You know, the density is the right choice in this location to increase the density.

I think if you're going to do that, adding that balance of open space, like we talked about with trying to reduce parking, but I get it.

Been there, done that.

Sometimes you can't, and sometimes that backfires, but maybe strategically thinking about where that could be located to enhance the open space.

Affordable housing, I think that's commendable and appreciated.

I think in terms of the circulation interconnectivity piece, I agree with my colleagues, I think there's a way to do interconnectivity with vehicles correctly.

And I think unfortunately, this would be a way to do it incorrectly, right?

I think you're forcing that

However, I do support interconnecting streets as a general principle when done right and when it can be done safely.

I don't think that would actually be the case here.

So I also agree with my colleagues in terms of connecting with the bike ped as the best way to approach that here.

And then finally, just thinking about buffers, I mentioned that a little bit, thinking about the pond and how that can be used as an amenity as well and trying to increase as much as possible