Planning Commission Regular Meeting   2/28/2023

The Planning Commission.

It's February the 28th.

Welcome.

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

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

So I'll call this meeting to order and establish a quorum.

Yes.

Firehock Here Mr. Clayborne Here Mr. Missel Here Mr. Carrazana Here Mr. Bivins Here Thank you Alright, well it seems like we have a quorum that has been established Next item on our agenda are matters not listed on the agenda from the public?

Can't see a hand, I'm sorry.

Oh, sure.

Please come on up.

Thank you.

I couldn't see.

Please, please share your name and address.

Yeah.

So my name is here.

Let me lower this.

My name is Annie Lauren Zoney, and I'm a resident of Albemarle County.

I'm here on behalf of Livable Seaville to talk about homelessness in the

Oh, sorry, I'm short.

To talk about homelessness in the Charlottesville and Albemarle area, housing is a human right, and it is a clear violation of that basic right when someone experiences homelessness in our community.

The underlying problem is also clear, insufficient housing.

Homelessness is worsening in our area.

According to the Blue Ridge Coalition for the Homeless, the point in time count for our area jumped by 50% to 266 people in 2022.

and more than 440 people accessed the Haven's Day shelter services more than 19,000 times in 2022.

We need to overcome inaccurate stereotypes and address the factors that cause people to experience homelessness.

While certain risk factors may increase the likeliness of an individual losing access to housing, attributing homelessness to individual choices or behaviors not only misunderstands why people become homeless, it results in harmful policies and defers real solutions.

In their book, Homelessness is a Housing Problem, Greg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldrin analyzed data from across the country and concluded that it's not the levels of drug use, poverty, unemployment, or mental health problems that predict levels of homelessness in an area, nor is it weather or the relative generosity of local social services.

Rather, it's about housing.

The authors found that the cost and availability of housing explains regional variations in homelessness, specifically low rental vacancy rates and high rent.

Now that should sound very familiar to us in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

We need to move beyond stigmas to solutions and ensure there's adequate funding and housing to prevent homelessness from occurring.

in the first place and get people experiencing homelessness back into secure housing.

So I'm here this evening to hand out copies of the book Homelessness is a Housing Problem to each of you.

We've included a flyer from The Haven with information about the invaluable work they do in our community.

And we hope that you'll read this book and that as the county develops a new comprehensive plan, rewrites its zoning code and develops its budget for next year, you'll implement its lessons so that homelessness in the Charlottesville Albemarle area

will be rare, brief and non-recurring.

And once you've finished reading it, please pass it on to someone you think will benefit from learning more about this important topic.

All right, with that, there are no items on the consent agenda.

So tonight's work will be anchored with two public hearings.

The first is 999 Rio Road.

So this will be ZMA 2022-00006 999 Rio Road.

All right, thank you.

I'm Rebecca Ragsdale and I will be giving the staff report on behalf of Andy Riedelbach this evening.

So the request is to amend the Code of Development and Application Plan for a neighborhood model district referred to as 999 RIO.

And there is also for Planning Commission action, a planting strip exception that we will

to guide you through the motions on when we get to that point.

To orient you the property, I will say 999 Rio a lot.

That is the project name and also the address of the property.

It's at the corner of Belvedere Boulevard and East Rio Road near the intersection with the John Warner Parkway with surrounding properties being

City Church, some Dunlora Lots, Covenant Church on the other side of Belvedere Boulevard, and then it's in the vicinity of some other commercial uses along East Rio with Gasoline Alley and Belvedere is a larger neighborhood model development with some non-residential approved within it as well.

So this is a closer look at the property and surrounding area.

It is a 1.947 acre parcel, so kind of a little infill parcel, again, near Dunlora across from City Church along East Rio.

It is currently undeveloped.

There's an existing house that's remaining, and it's still mostly wooded at this point.

As I mentioned, it is zoned neighborhood model district, so that's the dark green color.

The surrounding yellow is residential, R4 residential, and then you can see in the shades of darker pink and lighter pink and red the commercial zoning that's nearby.

So just to summarize what the proposed changes are we went, provided a lot of detail in your staff report but want to focus you in on what the, what the primary changes are in the code of development, and then we'll take a look at the, the changes in the layout between the existing code of development and application plan and the proposed.

So right now it's set up as in the Code of Development with two blocks, one mixed use, one residential.

So it will be going to one residential development.

So the request is for 10 additional residential units and eliminating

the minimum and maximum non-residential.

So there would be no longer the provision for that in the ordinance.

What's not changing is the requirement for a minimum of two housing types and the 15% affordability, which could be either for sale or for rent.

With the increase in residential units, there would potentially be an increase of maybe one unit with the affordable housing provisions.

There are no requirements for specific unit types as far as what type of units meet the affordability requirement.

So again, that's not changing.

It is the increase of 10 units and the elimination of the non-residential, in this case, primarily office.

And that, we did mention, that requires a waiver.

That's not before you.

That's one of the waivers that the board of supervisors will act on, but it will be necessary if the board ultimately approves the rezoning request.

So this is the original application plan that was approved where there were, excuse me, the purple is the mixed-use blocks, green obviously the green space, and then the yellow the residential block.

So in this scenario there were buildings fronting on Ryer Road, although they were set back more than we typically

see on a central parking area and then buildings could front along Belvedere Boulevard and there was the provision for the multi-use path which we talked about being maintained in the new proposal.

So with the new proposal, you see a lot more green.

So with the shifting of the buildings away from Ryer Road, that is now more green space and an area for stormwater management.

Buildings would still front along Belvedere Boulevard, but the other units, the building envelopes would be along the southern edge of the property.

Still an internal

parking area which serves more as a parking lot than a through street as you can see.

The street, excuse me, the planting strip exception this before you this evening one was also approved with the prior proposal because we have a situation where there's perpendicular parking to the sidewalk and people would be

going across the sidewalk to their units so it's not functioning as a typical street where you would have the planting strip with the vehicular travelway.

So we analyzed this in terms of the comprehensive plan recommendations and we mentioned in the staff report that the primary land use designation is urban density residential which calls for non-residential as secondary uses and this is not an area in the Places 29 master plan that has a center designation or any specific recommendations for a neighborhood center or mixed use.

It was also reviewed by transportation and the typical review team as far as were there any impacts that we were concerned about with traffic going from non-residential to residential and there weren't any that were identified and the Economic Development Office is aware of the request and there wasn't any concern with the reduction in inventory particularly given the type of non-residential that it is.

So for those reasons, we did recommend approval of the rezoning in your staff report and found some positive aspects to the proposal.

We did note that the request to waive the mixed use requirement and elimination of the non-residential entirely is not consistent with the purpose and intent of the neighborhood model district.

But again, it is an area that of the master plan that does not call for

specifically call for non-residential uses.

Thank you for the staff report.

So they're asking for the waiver of the planting strip because the driving area is not a real road, but

Are those little dots that were, there's little round circles in front of the buildings, are those supposed to be trees or bushes?

I think that's denoting the setback line.

The round circles in front of the pink boxes are just in the key.

OK, OK, because so they'd mostly be departments would be looking out on the sea of parking.

With no.

If they'd had if they'd had the setback, they would have to have plants and trees, is that correct?

or would they simply have a grass strip?

I didn't mean setback, the planting strip.

I don't know.

Well, I'm looking at this picture and I just see four green fingers sticking out.

This is an illustrative plan.

They will need to meet the landscape requirements of the ordinance.

I don't know that there would be room for trees in between the units and the parking lot.

Just referring to some of the other plan sheets to see if that is shown.

And in this case, they have not done the final design of the amenities and green space.

Just a quick question.

So I've seen a bunch of improvements for the Rio intersect, the Rio Road VDOT plans with the circle and the roundabout in 16 different ways that you can go around a roundabout.

I assume this is coordinated with those or maybe not even near those, I don't know.

I can take that one.

Thank you.

Kevin McDermott, Acting Director of Planning.

So this location is actually separate from the roundabout that is already funded that's over at the John Warner Parkway.

There's quite a bit of distance so we don't really expect.

I think there's some minor impacts on the Rio roadside just to the east of this location, but we do have a current project that's under consideration for smart scale funding for next year.

It's made it to consideration for an R cut intersection at Belvedere.

Yeah, so this would be able to meet that.

I believe if you see they have that right-of-way dedication or right-of-way area on the side that gives us some additional room if we need it, but it doesn't look like we will.

Yeah, I believe they will all be surface parking and they are three stories in height.

They won't.

Well, the code of development establishes the building height requirements.

Sorry, I've got too many papers here.

So the standards of the code of development are 35 feet is the maximum height.

And this is also I didn't mention it's on an entrance corridor, so.

Commissioner, does that satisfy you?

Yes, thank you.

I have a question.

We have two proposals tonight about removing commercial uses.

I wonder, has staff reached out to the Economic Development Authority and reached out to small businesses?

I know at one time it was very difficult for small businesses to find places that they could lease.

And so I'm a little concerned that without that kind of engagement and finding out what the market is for small businesses and for people looking for office space, if we are potentially decreasing the availability, just so that we have someone come up and talk about affordable housing and the impact of not having housing on how that affects homelessness, well, a similar sort of thing happens with small businesses.

If there's not enough supply, the price goes up.

As I mentioned before, the Economic Development Office is aware of this request and the other one that we'll talk about later.

And they didn't express any concerns as far as impacts to inventory for this type of scale and this type of businesses from their perspective, the small business

They're not as involved with small business development and there aren't any incentives from our local economic development office.

But I think, you know, the applicant has provided some of the information as far as what's presently happening with the market and not being able to find tenants.

I mean, the space is available.

Well, this space is not built yet, but, you know, that is one of the

That is one of the opportunities that still remains.

Thanks.

Okay.

Well, I just feel compelled to comment on my fellow commissioners note.

I would submit that the Economic Development Office in our county has no idea what small businesses are looking for in terms of office space.

There is no survey of such and there's not much assistance provided.

I just wanted to ask is that so that the green sort of I don't know what blob in the corner.

That's the stormwater pond.

I believe it's going to be an amenity feature.

This may be a question for the applicant, if so just tell me, but going back to the 500 square foot minimum, can you share a little bit about the history?

You know, like I said, the master plan doesn't give us a lot of guidance in terms of the appropriate range.

We thought that five hundred to five thousand was or six thousand was appropriate scale for secondary uses in the neighborhood.

You know, sometimes it comes down to us responding to what someone is proposing versus us having the exact number in mind for some sites.

Thank you.

Any other questions for staff?

All right, with that, I'll open the public hearing.

And if the applicant would like to make a presentation, this would be the time.

You have 10 minutes.

The light is green.

That means you're good.

When it gets to yellow, it's just a signal to make your most pertinent points if you hadn't already done so.

And red means stop.

So thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Good evening.

My name is Nicole Skro.

I recognize some of you from when this project went around the first time.

And hello to the new faces.

Rebecca did a great job stepping in for Andy on such short notice.

So thank you and I don't want to repeat.

What she said, and I know a lot of you are familiar with the site, we did get approved March 4, 2020, which was very exciting and then wasn't.

And just going back to the commercial space, we had a few users that were specifically interested and had certain idea of what they wanted and that just dropped out.

That combined with the underground stormwater system

Doubling in price just didn't make this project feasible anymore much to my agony because this is what we had previously proposed and what was exciting about this project for me was the small homes in the back acre of the site

that would be for sale at a lower price point.

Not hitting the capital A affordable in the true 60% AMI sense, but still at a lower price point than what we typically see.

So it was really hard to let go, but we couldn't make the numbers work given the commercial

So we are back with a revised proposal that is entirely residential.

This illustration includes some landscaping.

The previous one that was on

Your screen just didn't have landscaping in there.

There will be a requirement for street trees within a parking lot.

There can only be a certain amount of asphalt within a square footage, and so you are required to put a certain amount of trees.

That's what those islands are for.

Besides that, there's a 20% tree canopy also required.

And we will certainly want to landscape this to beautify it for our residents and just for the lot.

I'm working with Jessica Prim, she's our landscape architect on this.

And Craig Builders is actually going to be the end user for this.

So they're going to own a rental community here.

So that's who the builder is going to be.

And so the units fronting Belvedere Boulevard are stacked units.

So they're two stories, one unit on the first floor, another unit on the second floor.

The units opposite the private driveway are three-story townhouses, and they may sell those.

So while we are losing the single family detached home at a lower price point, these are still going to be rentals that are going to be hit the missing middle market.

Because if you look at the reserve down the road that has a pool and amenity space, we are keeping these at a simpler design that will be able to be built and hit the market at the missing middle.

Because we can't compete with that higher

So we will have decreased traffic impact, which I do think is good.

I know that's important for this area.

The Rio Corridor plan calls for a continuous green tea intersection, and I know that had been changed from an R cut

I think that's what SmartSkill is looking at now.

Okay, Kevin's giving me the thumbs up because I know how to change a few times.

I was doubting myself, but I'm pretty sure it's a continuous green tea.

We will also be able to accommodate that as well.

Again, we're meeting the comprehensive plan.

We're still less than the comprehensive plan density.

And another great aspect of this is connecting the missing puzzle piece of the multi-use path.

That's all I have.

I did have some renderings because we went to the ARB of what those stacked units look like.

I hope I hit on some of those questions that came up during the discussion with staff, but that's all I have.

Okay, thank you.

Questions from the commission.

This time I'll start on this side.

Thank you, Chair.

And I will just say I liked your other project better.

And I understand these are conceptual renderings at all.

But these will likely be what they will look like.

And so are we looking at this from the parking lot side?

Yes, it was interesting.

They're designed to have kind of a double frontage look because you will walk in from the parking lot.

It's the parking lot, the three story?

No, it does not.

The lot will be fairly flat.

It will drop towards the front, gently, for the stormwater pond.

Thank you.

I'm hoping it's not obvious, and I'm missing it.

You mentioned going to the ARB.

So we will have to go back to the ARB.

We went through the ARB for the previous proposal, and this was the result of that.

This section of stacked townhomes will not change.

Got it.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

Any questions on this end?

I'd like to get a sense of a little more detail on your narrative for why you're coming back to us.

So you talked about the underground storage was more expensive, so you can't do that.

So that's constrained your buildable space.

But you're now moving to a wet pond, which actually will treat water quality and quantity.

So it's actually an improvement in terms of the environment over simply storing

It's actually not a wet pond.

It will be a dry pond with a bile filter.

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that.

I have a picture.

This is actually at Riverside.

I took a picture today.

This is what their pond looks like.

If it's designed as a bioswale, you still will be gaining water quality treatment for this site that you did not have in your prior application.

So I see that as an improvement.

But can you tell us a little bit more about why you're coming back to us?

Because as you recall, there was a lot of angst around the proposal the first time around with the neighborhood.

Yeah, no, that's

A great question.

So originally, the first proposal went to the Planning Commission twice, if you remember, because we had to lower the density.

I cut the density 40%.

And so it still worked at that time if I was able to secure a commercial tenant and with the site cost estimate that I had at that time.

Once we lost our commercial user, there were some lingering interests, but it was still difficult to

pay for the stormwater detention.

I know it's not necessarily better for the environment, but it does allow for more buildable area.

I'm sure you're seeing that on a lot of infill sites.

It's hard to build.

But that being said, if I had more density, that would have enabled the project to move forward, but I cut it by 40%.

The trade-off is this lower density than what I would need to build something similar to the previous project with the cottages in the back.

I would need something denser in the front.

And I didn't think that would be palatable.

And so I either have to get rid of the stormwater detention pond

and keep the density lower or have the density justify the stormwater ponds price.

I hope that makes sense.

But it certainly was a difficult decision.

I'm hoping to still do something like the cottage cluster at Bamboo Grove in Crozet.

So that was my saving grace for my own mental health, but it was definitely a difficult decision.

So for the commercial that you said you lost your potential tenant, but what was your efforts to try to get a different tenant?

I mean, I know that we've just gone through COVID, but COVID is pretend sort of over.

Yeah, I mean, we worked with a few brokers.

Ben Downer was our commercial broker.

But if you see, Justin just pulled up for me.

I mean, if you see along Rio Road, there's Glenwood Station.

There's still commercial over at George Ray's site across 250.

There was just too much demand for older buildings at a lower price point.

So like Glenwood Station.

I can't compete with Glenwood Station as a small office user would want.

And I forget the name of it.

It's where there's a bunch of people in there, but it's across 252.

That was another difficult competitor.

There's quite a few small offices or small businesses in that larger

Yes, and I'm actually, I'm still on the Places 29 CAC, so I'm there every month, and we did have a meeting in October for this, yes.

The question was asked, it's interesting, there's someone that asked, you know, we do want to see some commercial.

There were people that were glad to see it go.

And we're glad to see the traffic be minimized.

But there were some people that asked about, well, we want mixed use in the county.

And one answer to that is, in the future, 50 years from now, you still could underground that stormwater pond and put something on it if you'd have to go back through the public process to do that.

But it's not as though this forgoes that ability.

So the question I have is, when you look at the amount of parking you have, do you see the parking that you have in this design as too much, just the right amount, or too little?

That's a hard question.

I want to say it's too much from an environmental perspective, but I do think that it does meet the demand of today.

Right now, it is still difficult to get around the county without a car.

The multi-use path is great getting into the city.

There's public transit here, but it's still lacking.

You still often need a car in the county, and so I think it meets the parking demand.

I want to kind of pick up on where Commissioner Firehock was speaking.

Could you talk a little bit about, you know, you probably did a market study back in 2020 that kind of helped shape the balance between the residential and the commercial, which that's what your original proposal.

Can you share a little bit about the results of that?

And, you know, you knew kind of the risks.

Yeah, I mean, the idea with the 6000 square foot commercial was providing a place where a professional office could own that building themselves, which is a little bit different.

And you often see that with a dentist's office, even though there's one down the road.

He is my dentist, so I did talk to him about moving there.

But anyway, the idea was providing a place where you could have ownership of the office building.

Financing made it difficult after COVID.

It just was a very difficult time.

Thank you.

And one of the questions is separate.

Is there fencing?

It was hard for me to pick up in your drawings.

No, there is not.

And there's no fencing around the stormwater pond.

Is that what you're asking or just in general?

I don't have fencing proposed.

I did talk to the neighbors.

a lot about the screening between the property and theirs in the previous proposal.

And we talked about a fence.

So see how this had a parking lot kind of in the rear of the... Do you have a pointer or anything, like the mouse?

Oh yeah, I do, don't I?

Right here, so here there's the parking lot here, and so there was, we talked about screening this a lot with the neighbors that were, that are located along Shepherd's Ridge, but now we will be able to preserve some of those old growth trees back there, and

Thank you.

Go forward, please.

Keep going.

I want to see.

Stop.

This is actually just a riverside.

but it does show the English basement.

So I'm, we'll see if they do that.

I don't know if the grade, it's yet to be, did those three-story townhouses had not been designed.

and this rolls from River Road, I don't know, from Route 20 down to the Rivanna.

Thank you.

Any final questions?

I mean, I can't make a commercial user appear.

The dynamic would be different because the person I would be looking for would be a lot different than what I'm looking for now.

And I would be able to build the building potentially where I could accommodate a commercial user.

And often, their time frame is really short.

All right.

So I think that's all for the questions.

I don't have a sign up sheet.

Justin Shimp.

I am the engineer of the project, but I'm speaking as a matter of the public because the conversation about the small business space is actually something near and dear to me.

I'm a small business that owns a building in town, but I bought it before things got crazy.

And I was involved in helping Nicole try to make the first project work.

And the issue is that if you look now like a Glenwood station, like building, you can buy the finished product for what it would cost for the dirt and the parking lot at 999.

And that's really the issue is that infrastructure costs have jumped up 50, 75% in the past three years.

The construction, if we could have built an office building for 150 a square foot four years ago, it's 250 a square foot now.

And so that means you have to have rents of $35 a square foot.

which is not what the small business needs.

And so I certainly appreciate all the comments.

We always thought it'd be a great place to have a little office building for that community, but practically speaking, you just can't build it.

So just as the small business user is kind of squeezed, Nicole, the small developer is equally squeezed basically.

And I think that's why you had the proposal back before you, not that didn't want to try to make the commercial work.

Factors outside of everyone's control have made it difficult.

I don't know what that'll mean for small business in the future.

I think there will be a county-wide problem.

There may need to be some injection to the county and plans to make places that you can get a $20 or $25 square foot rent.

If you're a business like mine, you can afford.

But it's not on the table for this little project.

Thank you.

Any other members from the public want to comment?

All right.

So with that, we will.

Oh, yes, I am so sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Bivins, for keeping me straight.

All right.

With that, we will close the public hearing.

And we will bring it back into the commission.

I'll just say I found it very helpful to hear the explanation from the applicant.

Makes me more sympathetic to their cause.

I would still like to see, I don't know if it's at all possible to squeeze any more trees in the

parking lot area because it does feel like a big urban heat island in the middle of the development.

And we do get a lot of applications with giant parking lots and the county's parking standards are in need of revision and the county is aware of that and that's on the list.

But nevertheless, it just seems like a very hot parking lot.

And with taking away that green strip,

It makes it even hotter.

So that's kind of where I'm at.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

A couple thoughts.

When I initially saw this and I was thinking kind of the big picture of okay it's a neighborhood model district we're losing commercial really are we losing the benefit of having mixed use in a small area that neighborhood model district brings

and that was a concern initially.

I think after hearing the applicant and staff, great reports were also acknowledging the size of this and understanding the proximity of this to other commercial uses and that to me sort of

I no longer had those concerns or questions.

Also, this plan has 46% amenity space.

If I'm reading that right, it's almost half amenity space.

So I think it'll be generally a nice place for people to live, in a sense.

And I also realize that the concept plan is just that.

It's a concept.

So we can't take a lot away from that.

Lastly, again, making a change to this made me wonder how the impacts on traffic were going to occur and so the applicant answered that.

I think that it's actually down as well as any other impacts that might have otherwise been there like water and sewer, etc.

I think that's fine.

So that was it.

I'm not going to add too much.

I will say that I was here when it came the first time.

I remember that there was, I was in a different capacity, but I do remember that there was a lot of praise about thinking out of the box.

We didn't get a lot of developments that looked like that, and they were trying to do what you were attempting.

So that's admirable.

And hopefully you will get to realize that in another location, as you mentioned,

I get the pressures of the market.

Construction just in the last two to three years has gone up.

Three, four, 30 to 40% escalation, what we've seen in three years.

And that's a combination of things.

Workforce, the inflation obviously that we're seeing, supply chain, a number of things.

I can see how it's hard to compete with someone that's been in a place that was built 30, 40 years ago.

And probably they don't even have a debt service on it anymore.

So it's hard to compete on that.

So I get it.

I'm also supportive of what it is.

It's a small scale project, so can't be burdened with trying to put commercial in this climate right now.

It is a different product.

And I do appreciate the explanation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So I do believe that what we're seeing here as a commission is sort of the flow through from the changing economics in our area.

And I would anticipate that we're going to have to balance these kinds of conversations and what's going on locally with what we see come forward.

And that's the reality that I think we're going to live into.

You all be doing it while I'm off someplace else.

I will say, and this is where I become sort of snarky, I'm sorry that Crozet is going to get that project with the nice little houses and that the urban floor isn't.

So there I've said it.

It can be in the progress.

I don't care.

I wish we were getting the little houses and let them get the garden apartments.

I've said it, and so I hope to see the small houses back with us one point and give them the garden apartments.

And so, you know, that was my comment.

I do understand how complicated it is, and I do remembering that the small group of

of residents, they were concerned about the commercial piece of that.

You know, they didn't, they couldn't see how there would be a commercial piece on the corner that wouldn't somehow or another taint their community on the other side.

And so I'm glad they don't have to worry about that now.

So I will be supporting this.

All right.

Um, I'll just add a couple of questions.

I can say that I'm in agreement and actually I'm glad that it's a bioretention facility instead of an underground system.

I think it's better for the environment and more attractive like the additional green space.

I was satisfied as well with the explanation why this is occurring.

So I would encourage the developer as this is moving on to think about putting charge points in the parking lot.

Not Tesla charge points, but to put other kinds.

You all know where I'm coming from.

You know what I say, what I say.

Okay.

I will say this is the reason that we exist as a commission.

If things were black and white, then it would be no need for us, right?

You could just read the rules and move forward.

I will say in general, these kinds of requests kind of make me nervous, right?

We have a neighborhood model zoning and we want to downgrade and take out commercial.

But after hearing the holistic approach to this and the minimum being 500 square feet, which to me seems so low that you can't really do anything with it.

I mean,

People's houses are 3,000 square feet sometimes, and 500 square feet of commercial that I could support this particular project here.

Move to recommend approval.

I move to make approval.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, any further discussion?

Are here and none.

Yes, I'll be glad to.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

All right, the motion passed unanimously.

So before we move on, there's a second item, which is the parking exception.

Yeah, there's another there was sorry.

So yeah, as I kind of briefly mentioned in the beginning that there were two actions that were needed one on the rezoning and then the planting strip exception.

This is a little wordier than you're used to seeing that we wanted to make sure the record reflected the wording in the ordinance in terms of not only the analysis and the staff report and the criteria we looked at, but specifically, that this is an unusual situation being a smaller site, unusual size of the property and

is wording from the applicable section in the ordinance.

There's actually that section plus the additional criteria that we looked at.

And we recommended approval of this for the reasons we explained in terms of the design scenario and allowing for a more compact development.

So with that, I'll leave that.

I am so sorry.

I'm not on my A game tonight.

I have missed our friends online.

I've missed the second motion.

All right.

Second.

All right.

Yes.

Ms.

Now we are officially done.

I'm getting the nod from council.

We are officially done with that one.

So I wish you the best of luck as you take this before the Board of Supervisors.

You've heard our comments and we will watch as you continue through the process.

So next we have on the docket ZMA-2022-00010 Riverside Village and MD Block 1 Amendment.

Yes, thank you.

It is me again, on behalf of Andy.

So this request is only a code of development amendment and we'll walk you through that.

So there's only one motion.

and action that's required this evening.

So Riverside Village is located in the Pantops development area along Route 20.

And it is located at the front of the Riverside Village NMD, which includes residential blocks.

It's located just south of Darden Tow and the Elks Lodge, has Rivanna River access and free bridge lane trails and is near Albemarle,

and Wilton and Cascadia are within the in the vicinity.

This is already built out commercial, excuse me, Riverside Village is built out in terms of, well,

not with residential obviously that's part of the request this evening but the buildings that we are discussing within discussing in terms of the amendment are limited to block one of the development there's three mixed-use buildings with the ground floor commercial and then above the 24 residential units that are existing the 13,200 square feet of commercial was constructed in 2019 and we have a record of three tenants since then grit which is still there

occupying 1600 square feet.

And right now the remaining is vacant.

Previous tenants included River Birch that occupied about 3800 square feet and a dance fitness studio that occupied 2100 square feet.

So since they were built, they haven't had, they approached maybe half occupancy, 50% occupancy, but right now there's the only tenant is Grit,

and there are no proposed changes to the site plan.

In terms of the parcel, I described the entirety of the neighborhood model district, which includes a parcel that was dedicated in the back to the county for a future park.

And the dark green again is the neighborhood model district.

Our retro green around it is

I believe R1 residential.

The darker residential areas across the street are R10 and R15 with Wilton Farm and Albemarle.

The Cascadia neighborhood model development is nearby, which is also approved for some non-residential uses.

Albemarle has some approval for non-residential uses.

And then again, the red and pink areas closer to Route 250 and the intersection with 20 being commercially zoned.

So this proposal has, I wanted to take you through the history from the original neighborhood model approval because this one goes back to 2012 when it was originally approved.

So it was approved under that master plan at the time.

It was 69 residential units initially, a minimum of 16,000 square feet non-residential.

up to 46,000, which hasn't changed throughout the amendments, specifically to Block 1 that we'll be discussing.

The minimum was, the minimum requirements in the Code of Development are for Block 1.

And then at that time, I thought it was important to note that it actually

Based on the master plan recommendations at that time, the property was designated neighborhood density, which was a lower density than it has now.

And the neighborhood center for that area was shown over at Cascadia, but both the residential and the non residential exceeded the recommendations of the master plan at that time.

An amendment related to the number of units and non-residential was approved in 2016, so that added 36 additional units that increased the number of units that could be allowed in Block 1.

to 36 and then the total number of units in Riverside Village increased from 69 to 105.

At that time, they also reduced the minimum non-residential from 16,000 to 8,000.

So it has been reduced once already for this proposal.

But what's before you this evening is to reduce it again from 8,000 to 1,600 square feet.

And with that, freeing up that space from non-residential would allow them to add additional units in Block 1.

The maximum non-residential would remain 36,000 in Block 1, and then the total overall

46,000 within the development.

And I noted that since then, the neighborhood center has shifted down from Cascadia to the Elks Lodge and I'll show you the master plan map and the designation for block one changed from neighborhood density to urban density.

and as I mentioned, this is sort of highlighting that the only changes in the code of development are to block one with that decrease in the minimum commercial square footage.

This is a busy table.

I know it does lay out pretty detailed regulations for each of the blocks, but bottom line, it's going from the minimum of 8,000 to 1600 square feet for block one.

So we, similar to our last conversation,

The master plan, this property is closer to a neighborhood center, the center being the big N, closer to the corner of Elks Drive, but it is designated urban density, which calls for

non-residential as secondary uses and we don't have specific square footage guidance for this property.

The master plan does provide some guidance for neighborhood centers but it provides maximum building footprints.

It doesn't have minimum square footages.

Those maximum building footprints were 8,000 for commercial retail or 24,000 for

So that's the guidance we have and don't have when we're having these conversations that I mentioned before, not having a specific minimum for this property or even a specific minimum for neighborhood centers.

So based on that change, which again was reviewed for any traffic impacts, we didn't have any concerns about that.

And the Economic Development Office had the same comment as far as the previous request.

In this case, since the square footage is already built, there has been the question that has come up as far as if it does convert to residential, what's the likelihood of it being able to convert back to

non-residential and of course we have had those concerns from those neighbors that were anticipating more commercial.

You got an email most recently today that said at least they enjoy grit and then they are still hopeful that a restaurant could go back into the birch space, excuse me, river birch space.

We wanted to acknowledge that, but we did, staff did recommend approval of this one as well.

All right.

Thank you for the staff report.

I'll start on this side, Commissioner Murray.

Good.

I do have one question.

All right.

We'll call for a presentation from the applicant if there is one.

And I feel like you probably know the rules by now.

I'll go ahead and say them anyway.

Green means good.

Yellow means make any big points that you hadn't already made.

And red means stop and you have 10 minutes.

So the floor is yours.

Thank you, Justin Shimp, I'm the engineer for the project and planned this property from its inception back in 2010, I probably started working on this, the year I started my own business actually.

Joe Reg with me here from Stony Point, I'll let him get up and talk in a minute because

He has the history of sort of the leasing history.

Similar as you heard last time, things have changed.

Obviously, I was here arguing for 46,000 square feet of commercial space 10 years ago, and now I'm arguing for 1,600.

So we certainly did that at the time because that was a good use and envisioned as necessary.

Things have changed the market.

We have had, I was thinking about as we sit here, I think downtown Charlottesville opened up 300,000 square feet of office space.

In the last couple of years, those spaces are happening, but not in developments like this.

You see these more as service type.

And the restaurants, I think, if you look, this picture is a good picture.

It looks down at our pedestrian use, which walks basically from the patio there at River Birch, which is the picture right in front of you, down to a path that goes down to the Rivanna River.

So it was a vision, a nice connectivity through for everyone to come in and out of that path of river and up to that restaurant.

But we really haven't seen that materialize as a lot of added foot traffic into this development and thus here we are.

I wanted to show you all the site context and thank you by the way, Rebecca, it was a very thorough history of this.

I had forgotten some of the history myself as time was on.

So as noted, the table basically is just this.

This is the only change is that one large table is reduced to 1600 and that is the grid space.

You saw this picture.

I do want to bring up my own.

One thing we thought about in context of this, it's like, let's say, for example, if you look at the sort of walking shed and who's around here, we were able to pull some census data.

I think I have it on the next page.

Yeah, here we go.

So to me, this is our little block of commercial is not unlike sort of the commercial corridor of Belmont, which has three or four little restaurants in it.

Probably similar square footage in total.

We have, well, 14,000 square feet of commercial space.

I think those restaurants

I think we have 1600 just in the orange there on the Belmont View, that's a census tract, there's 1600 households there.

On ours, I guess I didn't make it on the slide, but it's something like 600 households and the walkability of

The area on the right, Belmont, compared to Route 20 is just not the same.

You really aren't going to feel like taking a stroll out along Route 20 in the evening, go to River Birch.

I do hope a day comes, and I think the way this project is set up, at some point in time that changes and these commercial users will make sense again.

But what we're finding is it just doesn't have that same sort of appeal.

And once you hop in your car, then you can drive down into Belmont or downtown Charlottesville, other places.

and without that I think walkability really hurts these sort of projects.

The vision of the neighborhood model as it was laid out in here was that this is, you know, part of that neighborhood service where folks can walk to and from this and it's part of the community.

There simply isn't a big enough community around this particular spot to draw this, to support those businesses.

And so that's the desired change.

Joe, you want to come up and present?

I want to give you a history of leasing a little bit.

But I think, in summary, that my finding is that while this certainly was obviously envisioned to be viable commercial, things have changed.

And I do think that structure of this is built such that it can easily change back over time.

We've done the expensive work, we built tall ceilings, we built glass, all the things that are fundamental to a commercial building.

And it's not unlike actually the Rio 29

code has sort of a similar where you can have residential on the first floor but you're building it with tall ceilings and you're building it with glass so that it's convertible over time.

We sort of followed that path and then we got ahead of ourselves and put the commercial in and found that there wasn't quite enough domain to justify but this architecture itself does support that in the future.

So Zach if you want to finish yourself in the history a little bit I think that'd be interesting for folks to know.

Zach Zingshine, Stony Point Development Group.

Nice to meet you all.

Thank you for having me this evening, too.

Just to add a little bit more color, too, on the leasing history.

I've been involved with our team in this particular project since January 2022, so obviously it's far more abbreviated than

the depth of history from 2010 to 2012.

But since my time, it's been our goal certainly to see these spaces leased and we've worked tirelessly with our leasing commercial team.

And unfortunately, particularly most especially for those vacant retail bays that have not had a first generation lease.

It has been, unfortunately, just haven't been able to see anything in the way of demand for those, again, particularly for those current vacant, cold, dark shell retail bays.

It's certainly my goal and intent, having attended in November the community meeting as well and hearing

how much grit is loved and you know how much the restaurant the having a restaurant there in close proximity to the community how much that was appreciated and treasured it's my goal and certainly our goal Stony Point that that restaurant is again to become a restaurant it's in the best interest of everyone what today is really about and what the presentation has been about is just

maintaining that optionality both from the conversion play to really fulfill the need from a housing perspective and the demand we have seen from the housing.

The 24 units above have been historically 100% leased from the get-go and this would help fulfill the need for more housing and add to the affordable housing unit mix as well by adding an additional two units from the four that we currently have by way of

being able to convert from those retail spaces.

All right, thank you for the presentation.

I'll start to our right.

I just have a quick question.

So you would, if you got approval tonight, you would be able then to lease out, would you be leasing these spaces?

They're not for sale?

That is correct.

Okay.

And then let's say the market changes again and everyone's really hot for brick and mortar retail or cool offices with giant windows.

You could switch it back.

That's correct.

Yeah, so I'm not sure how to phrase this question exactly.

but if you are marketing your larger neighborhood model district development, right?

To homeowners, to commercial users and so on.

And it's based on their coming there is based on the mix that you foresee based on which is outlined in your neighborhood model district application plan.

And then that mix changes.

It seems to me that there's a marketing benefit to have had that mix

promised early in the process that's now going away.

I can take the front first bit and then Joe if necessary on anything on the history, but what I would say is we certainly add and have every intent to when those promises were made of what the mixed use nature was.

for all the appeal that mixed-use nature brings.

I have every intent and had every intent to see those through and fulfill it.

Unfortunately, I think market forces have just told us that there's not the demand for the amount of retail that was built at that time.

and I'm not sure just the sitting vacant retails in anyone's best interest today at the end of the day, both in the neighborhood for those folks who are living there, but then also for the ability to fulfill with additional dwelling units for folks who are looking for that housing.

Joe Regg.

Honestly, it's more for optionality for us.

That's what we're looking at more than anything else.

Without a doubt, without a question, when we made those promises to the residents, when we were selling those homes and the condominiums there, our hope was to fill this area out with the mixed use development.

That was always the dream.

The beautiful picture that Justin Shimp showed as the first aerial shot there of the Greenway overlooking, I mean, everything, all of our concepts there were

to bring about a community that is centralized there with restaurants and shops where you can do everything that you need to without having to leave your neighborhood.

Unfortunately, dreams aren't reality and we were having to face that now.

With being open for as long as we have,

pushing for leases in all of these spaces and making the deals that we have and tried to push with everything with the exception of free rent, come on in and do whatever you need and we'll pay for it if we haven't been able to fill those spaces.

One of the things I look at as well is we still have the in-cap River Birch that's fully built out.

In my opinion, it's gonna cost me way more to go in and put residents in there.

I wanna put a restaurant in there.

as well as the residents.

I know that's what they want.

They all enjoyed River Birch.

It was convenient.

It's a great factor for them.

And I'm going to do everything in my power to get something there.

But at some point, I've got to face the facts.

And it's better to put something in there and let somebody utilize that space for residents.

something instead of having that a vacant spot that's never getting used.

We all know, I mean, buildings that don't have something occupying it just start to deteriorate and it loses a little bit of its soul.

Thank you.

Well, Richard Bivins.

Thank you, Chair.

but you actually didn't really say that so I'm going to say it and maybe you'll nod.

That the end cap with the restaurant, which has an enormous amount of investment, it's got a huge capital investment in it, but that actually might be the last bit that gets converted.

And that perhaps there is a way for grit to move there and have a shared space.

Because I will say, I was enthusiastic about the development when you first opened because there was

sort of a sense of life around there that I think was helpful both for the more single family homes and then the condominium that sits on the river.

It gave that a sense of place and it gave it a sense of life.

A few times that I've been over there recently, I was struck just how dead it was there.

and thought that this is not a good sign for these kinds of developments, which I think your previous applicant was telling us about.

How are we going to do mixed use, small-scale mixed use, and make them viable given the economics today?

And so my concern was when I visited there a couple of times on my way to various places is that I don't know if the equation has changed dramatically enough that we're really, as we're looking at our comp plan, that we don't start thinking about are there other ways in which we try and incorporate living and commercial or living and services because my sense is that we may be

that model may not be workable for at least a decade, given the way the market is.

So I appreciate what you're going through.

I'm sorry, you're agreeing at the end of 1600.

I'm hopeful that you'll at least think about preserving that and perhaps making that a co-space between somebody, because I think your investment in that, if you all did the least whole improvements on that, you have a lot of money built into that space.

And I would hope on your benefit that you don't have to take it all out and send it to Habitat.

And I really would hope that you don't have to do that.

And if anybody follows, I think I'm going to get this right.

I think it's called Seville 29, which is a weekly thing on restaurants in our area.

And at the beginning of the year, they do sort of what restaurants have gone away and what restaurants have come back.

The number of restaurants that left last year, now we've had some new ones open up, but they tend to be opening up in that

and the West Main Street corridor.

The number of restaurants that went away that actually looked like they had solid patrons behind them, astounded me when I read that at the beginning of the year.

I think it's called Seville 29.

Give me a head nod around here somewhere.

Seville 29.

Check that out because they keep track of the restaurant scene in our area.

And the number of restaurants that went dark

I'm just curious if you can tell us what you were marketing that commercial square footage at per square foot.

Rent specifically, you know, the previous tenants,

You know, what I will say is we've marked it down considerably, you know, upwards of 20% in addition to tenant improvement allowances and by way of free rent as well, combination of a percent rent to really sweeten the deal.

So would you, since you won't tell me the exact price, were you feeling like you were right in line with other similar type spaces?

You were cheaper.

I would say we're right in line with market and have had to drop our asking rents in line with the rest of the market as well.

And to Joe's point,

And the spaces that you have open right now, like if I was, I'm not making you an offer, I'm just trying to understand, are they like a bunch of 2,000 square foot spaces sitting there?

That's a great question.

A combination of, we have one about, on the other side of grid is just shy of 2,000.

and then there's an assemblage that essentially equates about 4,000.

Could you all talk about the the industries that you are pursuing?

I frequent that area a lot.

Grit seems to always be buzzing, so something's working there.

Absolutely.

And I second the popularity of Grit.

I enjoy every time I do go in there and it's amazing at any hour how busy it is.

which has been terrific to see.

Specifically for the interior bays that have been vacant, because again, the restaurant has been fully committed and still to this moment is committed to finding a backup restaurant user given the significant investment that has been made.

It's in the best interest of everyone to backfill out the restaurant.

But for the interior bays, we've seen anything from a dental office.

Exactly.

Dentist law.

We've talked to a few law firms, some small private practice firms as well.

At one point, there was an engagement with a florist as well.

Barber shop, thank you, as well.

But a pretty broad net.

Frankly, there was no, particularly for those vacant retail bays, there was really no stone left unturned in terms of trying to garner interest.

And then could you just share a little bit about, I know why you're asking for the 1600, but I'm hearing a lot about the restaurant and how we really want to make that work.

No, it's a great question.

I'd harken back to what Joe was saying, just for the optionality, maintaining that optionality of being able to, unfortunately, we certainly hope we would not have to rip out all that equipment because it would be incredibly cost prohibitive.

Just to add to that, this process, while what we're talking about is maybe pretty limited, still takes about a year to get through and many thousands of dollars on the applicant's part.

So if you were to wait and come back a year or so later and realize you still have the problem, we'd be back to you two years from now with the same request.

So it's certainly not something we're not trying to have to do, but recognizing that

yearlong process, public hearings, county staff has things to do, trying to make something that makes sense all at once.

With that, I will see if there's, thank you all.

Your sign up sheet.

Just want to first welcome you.

You'll have three minutes to make your comments.

The light will be green as you're speaking and it turns yellow.

This means to get to your most important points if you haven't already done so and red means stop.

And so with that, share your name, address or area and you may begin.

Yes, I'm Richard Allen.

I live at Trailside Court.

It's very important planners that you also take into account the points of view of the actual residents who received the promises that we just described.

Mr Missel, am I pronouncing that right?

You immediately landed on that with your comments, and I want to thank you for that.

Please notice that this is the second shrinkage of retail.

It's a significant second shrinkage of retail and that once retail is shrunk and particularly this restaurant space is shrunk, it is going to be highly unlikely that Stony Point is going to return it to retail space.

Walkable retail nearby was one large reason a great many of us residents moved to Riverside Village.

Stony Point's website and their real term is Mills promised this feature repeatedly to all buyers.

Mr. Henry also pledged to place one tier of rental apartments on top of the shops at Riverside.

Instead, he placed two tiers of rentals, an additional 12 units there.

He has been collecting that second tier rental profit to his bottom line for several years.

Remember, you are hearing from the point of view of us, the residents,

Now he wishes to remove the space he promised us and collect a third tier of rental profits on the ground floor where retail space should be.

Mr. Henry made large profits selling out Riverside Village.

He used our development and all of you are

Well versed in this, he used our development as a model to gain other Albemarle and Charlottesville development permits.

He created a profit center at houses developed near Penn Park.

He did it a second time with Dairy Market and its 180 apartments.

He's proven at Dairy Market that he can find successful retail space.

He's done it at Freedom Drive and Zions Crossroads.

So I request that Mr. Henry continue receiving his rents on this third tier of rentals that he already receives.

and leave this space open.

I believe he needs to do a better job post COVID of finding retail space there.

I am certain that restaurant can become profitable to him for users across the way at Cascadia, Wilton Pond, as well as with us, as well as with pass by people for three seasons of the year at Dardan Tau Park.

Stony Point has been deceptive by failing to locate promised tenants there, further deceptive adding that third store of rentals.

This developer must not be allowed to default on his contract with us.

Voting citizens of Albemarle deserve to have their residential rights respected.

Thank you.

Ed Skorza.

Hello everybody.

I too am a resident of Riverside Village on the Muse.

I will be a little less adamant than my good friend Mr. Allen, but I am reluctant to have us lose the ability to keep commercial space.

It is doing well.

River Birch was actually sort of making it before COVID.

They didn't have the best plan.

They didn't have a consistent menu.

And then the current problem with pretty much all restaurants is keeping staff.

They could have the staff, they'd be able to function.

And I've talked to Joe and he's worked hard, I know, to try to find

places to come in.

I don't know how attractive they've made the rental amounts there because quite naturally they don't want to share that.

He did give me some information that I could pass on to someone I know that had contacts with the restaurant business in DC area to see if there were any young chefs up there.

Unfortunately, that didn't pan out.

I have a friend that probably most of you know, Ina Krieger, and I tried to get her to see if she had any contacts to bring in perhaps an African American restaurant to the area.

Unfortunately, that wasn't going to work out.

But that restaurant can make it.

it just needs to get somebody to come in.

And I understand it's hard to find.

I understand the economics have changed, but to say it's going to be a 10 year, I don't think any of us know when we're going to pop back.

And I think that Stony Point can make enough additional money.

I don't think Chris is losing money, but

The rental units that are available to be converted outside of the restaurant in Grit would give them a cushion.

At the very least, give us the hope of having a couple of years to try to get that restaurant space because they don't want to rip it out.

I understand that, but this optionality is sort of a word that I find offensive, but anyway, from there.

Is there any other members of the public that would like to speak?

I'm Dick Ruffin.

I'm chair of the Pantops CAC.

I'm a resident of Riverside Village.

I like it very much.

Been there three years.

and I agree with my previous co-residents there at Riverside Village on the desirability.

I think Stoney Point also agrees on the desirability of having a restaurant there.

That's not the issue.

And I understand the economic concerns.

One of the factors that I don't think has been discussed and it may not be appropriate for you, but the master plan talks a lot about walkability.

accessibility.

You don't walk across Route 20.

Far more people live in proximity to that restaurant space on the east side of Route 20 than on the west side of 20.

And there is no safe place to cross.

If you cross at the light, if you're familiar with that at Darden Town, you cross the light, you come down from Pontanner or Evermore or Wilton Farm,

Okay, all those areas.

There is no place to walk along the front of Elk Lodge.

So you have to do it way up there near the restaurant.

You're not gonna walk up to 250.

So it seems to me that somebody in the county should pay attention to how we can get people to walk across Route 20 so they could access a restaurant there.

They cannot do so now safely.

and I would urge speedy attention to that and in a timely way because if it was done in a timely way, it might relieve Stony Point of the problem they now have.

It's time, pressing in.

They're not gonna do it first.

I think Justin and the others have made it pretty clear they would prefer to keep the restaurant space.

So they'll build out the middle building, they'll finish the other and then they've,

You know, a little time is passing.

Are there any other members from the public that would like to speak?

We have not already spoken.

All right.

All right.

Does the applicant want to come back and make any final remarks?

Sure, thank you.

Just let me slide back to my nice picture here.

Couple of good comments.

One, I think that even without the

This commercial space is still a very desirable neighborhood.

This is a really nice place to live.

It's convenient to things.

So I certainly know that people expected that.

We expected it.

I don't think it's fair to say the developer backed on a promise.

built some very expensive buildings.

Those are not cheap, those structures along there that are mixed-use.

I don't know anybody else that built that kind of structure in that time frame, a small mixed-use building.

So they went out on a limb to do that.

So this is not a matter of a ploy to move the neighborhood.

They were fully invested in getting those done and spent a ton of money doing so.

his patios at that concrete work.

It's all top notch.

So I do really think those were very genuine efforts to do those.

And I was talking with the fellow fellows here and they're going to start in the middle.

The last resort is to go down to take River Birch out.

But at the same time, this is a year long process, many thousands of dollars.

We're asking for that now to clean it up in the worst case situation.

But, you know, all things

you know market driven things come around right restaurant ends up there I think the point about the walkability is a really good one as I said earlier it's a question like how many years will it be before we have enough you know walkability and population density where this sort of thing is like really successful not just where it kind of gets by but like where it's booming

I don't know.

In fairness to Stony Point, they made multiple offers to buy the Elks Lodge next door, and if they had been a buy that years ago, would have developed it and would have had a sidewalk up to the connection there, and there would have been that walkability.

but those folks didn't want to sell, and here we sit.

So we understand the neighbors' concerns, but I do want to say as someone who's been with this project the whole way, I feel very strongly that Stony Point put forth the effort to get this done, invested a lot of money to do so, and what we're trying to do now is make something that makes sense in the interim, and we hope that restaurant stays and that everybody, neighbors ourselves, will be very happy about that.

Oh, there is someone online?

I have a quick question.

Could you just remind us how long those units have been vacant?

Okay, so they were open for rent before COVID, right?

Correct.

One internal space was occupied, so maybe

10% of this sort of internal space, 20%, was occupied for maybe a year.

Yep.

Just a quick question.

I'm sure it's in here.

I've been looking for it.

I can't find it.

Any other final questions?

All right.

Thank you.

With that, we'll close the public hearing.

And we'll bring it into the commission.

We'll open the floor to any initial thoughts and reactions.

So Chair, as you've heard my comments earlier about having visited this neighborhood a number of times and having been shocked at sort of how vacant it and how sort of there was no

At a time, there were lots of people walking around, and now there's no one walking around at that upper part where the commercial part is, and sort of remarking on how do you, internally remarking, how do you sustain that model as an owner, and I appreciate that.

the people purchased there thinking that there was going to be services there and if the services don't manifest themselves because of economics or because of the way it's just because of life what is a person supposed to do you know you want them to be able to

I want them to be able to have some return with the hoped expectation that it can be converted.

I know one of our former commissioners, Tim Kelly, used to talk about having the ability to flip commercial space back and forth from residential, and in some places I've seen that done, not necessarily in America, but in other countries I've seen that happen.

I am feeling more supportive

if I'm also saying at the same time that I'm hopeful that the restaurant space will be the last space that's been given up.

So I'm saying that, you know, I'm saying that piece outside.

There's no way that we can do that, but I'm really, it seemed that the applicant was willing, had an appreciation that that was something that's considered both a serious investment for the community and also a lifestyle option for the community, for that, so the broader community.

So I'm feeling hopeful that

This is a company that will at least try to maintain that space until they basically can't do it any longer.

So I understand where they are.

I had a question for staff.

I know we're in deliberation, but so the 1,600 is a minimum that's being set.

Is that correct?

so they can obviously keep more.

And I'm in the same vein, I think if every attempt could continue to be made to keep that restaurant, hopefully find a tenant for it, would be a great amenity for the community.

I mean, obviously they built the space, so I agree that they had all, their desire was to meet that intent of having

Having a mixed use, they built a mixed use and it's just been a tough time in the last few years for rental properties to try to come off the ground.

I understand the resident's point of view.

I can appreciate that at the same time.

I don't think they want empty properties to continue to sit there for three, four years.

And that's where we are now, right?

Three or four years down the road.

All right, thanks.

And thanks to everybody who presented information.

This one's a little bit tricky in my mind.

And so here are my thoughts.

So forgive me for looking at my notes as opposed to you guys, but I'm going to do that so I don't miss anything.

I mentioned some of this at the beginning in the previous application, the concern about the fact that we have neighborhood model districts that built into that as commercial retail mixed use and that there's walkability that's included.

Here, yes, absolutely.

The tenants might have been promised something clearly.

I don't know.

I wasn't part of those conversations.

And I don't think that's

necessarily pertinent, but hear me out.

I would go back because I even know I'm not necessarily the new guy anymore.

I can't really say that.

I still go back to the purpose of the Planning Commission.

Our primary role is to serve as an advisory body to the board, blah, blah, blah, to promote the orderly development of the county, its environments, and to accomplish the planning, zoning, and land subdivision and development objectives set forth in the state law.

So I feel like this is more about land use in my mind than it is about the economics of the market.

And I feel like as, and I may be wrong on this, but as planning commissioners, that should be our primary focus.

What is the best orderly development for this property?

And so my sense is for, well, so let me say a couple other things.

I'm sympathetic to the developer.

I mean, you know, in my day job, right, we have retail commercial spaces, things like that.

Oftentimes, they need to be subsidized.

I understand all of that.

I get it.

You know, there's a benefit to having

a restaurant there, the internal trip captures that are built into part of the development by that restaurant going away or commercial going away, we would lose that.

I'm sympathetic to the community members, but the community members with all due respect don't need to pay the bills for these types of things and make this actually work.

There's risk on both sides, right?

And there's risk and reality on both sides.

For me, again, it's not about economics.

It's not about past promises.

It's about the orderly development of the county and its environs.

For me, I believe that there is a need for a greater amount of mixed use in this original neighborhood model.

And we've seen it kind of progressively go down, right?

It didn't just go from A to B, it's gone progressively down.

I cannot support the application to request as is,

As is written here, I would support something that would include the restaurant and keeping the restaurant, which basically means it's reducing it from 8,000 square feet to about 5,400 square feet.

And I know that there's the hope that the restaurant would go last, but there's nothing that guarantees that.

I'll basically just say ditto to Commissioner Missel and also note that, you know, just I'm no expert, but I do look at space for lease a lot for different reasons, and I can't find these spaces for lease.

In other words, searching on restaurant, retail, spaces for lease in Albemarle County, I can't, these listings are not coming up.

So all I'm saying is it's kind of a best kept secret.

And I'm just not, because I wasn't able to hear from the applicant on what price point they were asking for or any of that, I have no way to judge whether their efforts to lease were reasonable or diligent enough.

I'm sure they tried in their mind, but I can't make a judgment of that.

And I think that even though they could convert it back,

It's unlikely they would go and undo the apartments once they went to that expense.

I think it would just remain not a mixed use.

And I still think this concept could work.

I think that perhaps better marketing, better pricing and getting a little bit farther away from the COVID pandemic.

Um, I think

When you look at something like housing, we all remember that when the housing bubble burst and how inflated housing prices were, and then suddenly, for a brief moment, their housing was affordable because the bubble burst.

And we've had similar bubbles with the ability to find affordable places for small businesses to rent.

And during economic downturns, when you have situations where maybe there is a lot of supply in the market,

That's when these places become affordable for people to rent them.

And if we step in and we convert them all to residential, then we eliminate the free market situation that allows for spaces to become affordable to small businesses.

I'll just leave it there.

I'll definitely make some comments since this is my district and I frequent this facility quite a bit.

I mentioned the last one, the last hearing that we had.

I feel like I worry about the presidents, the sets, right?

And this is no disrespect to the developer, but it just kind of feels like I can put something out there and if things don't necessarily go my way, I just come back, I get it changed and we move on as business.

I think there's so many other things outside the economics that you just, you will never know.

The restaurant could have been poorly managed.

I have no idea, right?

You know, the pricing that's going out to these prospects just could be just not that favorable to them.

It could be too expensive.

We will never know that.

So I can't really put a gauge on how effective the outreach or retention efforts are.

I think if the proposal had come forth and said, meet me a little bit, can we go to 8,000 to the 54, right?

So you really want to make this restaurant work?

I think you would have had me on that one.

I would have said, yeah, I can get behind this.

But I feel like this proposal just cuts it out, and we'll have some houses with a coffee shop.

And that just doesn't feel like that's the intention of the NMD district.

So for that reason, I'm not able to support it as presented tonight.

I'll stop there if there's anybody who wants to make any additional comments.

But as it is oftentimes with deliberations, as we talk through this, many times I'll change my mind.

So I do think there's a lot of merit to the proposal that Commissioner Missel made, which begins to strike perhaps a middle ground here where there is a reduction, so there is some allowance to make a change.

However, it does also respect the fact that there was a commitment.

It is a mixed-use community, so I definitely

Follow your line of thought and agree with the overall land use in that area, which makes sense.

The mixed use in that area makes sense and is needed long-term and it is hard to change again.

That's what I thought.

I will say, while I can appreciate the whole idea of coming dramatically down from the amount that was authorized before to this, there's still, even if it were to go to 8,000, there would still be no given that the restaurant space would be the space that would be preserved.

There's no way to ensure that the restaurant space will be the space that's going to be preserved.

I think there's a capital, there's purely a business sense from the owner of the space that I've got a capital investment here, so I'm going to try to preserve this capital investment.

That's sort of the rational business piece.

But if someone were to come around tomorrow and say, I'll take all your inventory, I'll take your entire, as we all know, there are people that do that.

then that will change the equation quickly.

And so my piece on this is more to what the last gentleman was speaking about.

Some of you may remember my conversation about the Rile Small Area Plan and where I challenged staff.

I never believed, and I was very vocal about this, anyone was gonna walk across 29.

Unbelievable.

I never believed it.

While I voted for it, I was right on record saying, well, I understand this, but it's never going to happen.

Saying a couple of things.

The shopping center, which shares one corner with the center that's been purchased by Home Depot, if you've been there, it is absolutely empty.

and I understand from the person who manages the rentals there, they are really trying to get people there.

One reason why I don't know what it is, maybe it's the people who own it, maybe it's the rents, whatever it is, but it remains empty.

I believe at some point, the area that while this may have been named this and zoned this in the previous comp plan, I believe it was wrongly zoned because the infrastructure to make that a walkable community did not exist.

and is not going to exist.

And we as a body have spoken about not getting ahead of having infrastructure ahead of places so that we can in fact have the kinds of things that are there.

That never happened.

There aren't enough houses in that community to support a restaurant of that size on a daily basis.

A 3,000 square foot restaurant needs to be able to bring people in from all over the place.

Unless they're driving, they're not walking.

And those of you who know, the community is on the east side of Route 20 there.

That's not an easy walk because you're walking downhill and then you'll walk back uphill to Wilton and to Adventist and you have a climb.

So I want to sort of try and disconnect a bit from, I personally believe that the zoning there was not, does not have and probably for the near future will not have the kind of infrastructure to be able to make that a truly walkable community outside of the houses which are there.

and so for that, I'm still in support of it because I think it's mis-owned.

Just one comment on that, I get where you're coming from.

I guess for me, it would be a question of if it was mis-zoned, it was mis-zoned by the county.

right so we had a business before my time but we had a an application that originally came with x amount of thousands of commercial square feet and we said at that moment

Bam, that looks good.

That makes sense.

That mix of uses makes sense.

And then it came down again to, I can't remember, 8,000.

And now it's coming down again.

So at what point was that zoning proper?

And maybe that's because the area around this didn't develop the way we anticipated it would.

interconnections, you know, etc.

But I would say that as a I'm thinking like a land use planner, the mix of uses would have to be almost internally self supporting.

I mean, but would it though?

I mean,

I live in the rural area.

Every restaurant I eat out of the county I drive to.

If there was a fabulous restaurant in there, I would drive to it and eat at it.

We can all agree that walkable, there's not enough foot traffic.

to bring people to that space.

But it is on a very busy corridor.

So an excellent restaurant with a great menu.

And maybe you could go to a dance studio and dance off your restaurant food.

I don't know.

But the point is that I don't think we have to be too hung up that we'd like you to serve the neighborhood.

But I don't think it has to be able to be supported by walking.

Yeah, and I will say, I mean, when we talk about infrastructure supporting development, I mean, I'm not sure that the infrastructure isn't there to support its development.

I mean, people can drive there.

I mean, the street capacity is there.

I think the challenge that we've had in the past is when we're building

dense housing where we have no transit where the roads can't really handle it and we have traffic issues like in Crozet and other places where we keep developing and where there's two ways in and out and very good constricted roadways.

So I think that's the development that we're talking about infrastructure that

But here I think the infrastructure is there.

There may be some other economic pressures that we're having to deal with currently, but does that mean that it's not appropriate long-term?

And certainly I believe that, I'm not sure that it was a mistake when it was done.

I would also say that

Walkability means different things depending on where we're at in the county.

So even if there was a sidewalk along Route 20, in the wintertime it gets dark at five o'clock.

I don't have this image of families walking up and down the sidewalk on Route 20 when it's dark coming from River Birch restaurant at six o'clock in the evening, right?

So you're going to use a car, right, regardless of walkability.

I think in this sense, it's where that neighborhood

that's directly adjacent to it.

Outside of that, I think you want to use a car to begin with.

Yeah, so the other thing too is it's important to keep in mind that the way that we pay for infrastructure primarily is through commercial development because residential development frequently costs us more in terms of sending those kids to school and building the roads and everything than we're really getting from taxes.

So if we keep cutting all the commercial development out of all these places, we're not going to have the revenue to build the infrastructure that we need.

I do think that at some point there is a reasonable conversation to have about the viability of commercial and what that commercial mix looks like in the county.

And I will say that we also send messages to developers.

by the kinds of things that get built and then fail.

Not us, but the community does.

The community just like things will get in and one of your projects, you have a great project in the north.

and it had a varying vacancy rate.

You've had several restaurants in a restaurant that's up there in the northern part of the county.

Now, I don't know what you have there now, but it's because at some point the business model, people have to make decisions.

Can I make this work?

Do I have the assets to make this work?

And I think today that economic balance is gonna be different for a whole bunch of people, small business people.

Small business people can't get loans.

Their families, which used to be people who they knew, often made investments in small business places.

And a number of people saying, I can't afford it.

I can't make that calculus anymore.

And I don't know if

Some of the models, some of our development models can be sustainable under what I will continue to say is a shifting economic model, particularly at the county level.

There's a shifting economic model at the county level.

I don't believe

I believe we're going to see many more mom and pop stores or small businesses decide to hang it up because they can't afford to get people, they can't afford the raw materials, and they certainly can't afford to afford some of the sustainable rents.

And so that's a bit of a difference from where we are right now.

But I don't believe, I firmly don't believe that saying we have to have commercial means that the commercial will be filled.

We're not about filling it.

Yeah, the use.

That's right.

Any other comments?

None.

I'm happy to make a motion.

Ms.

I will make a motion.

Also, do you need pointed reasons?

Sure.

Second.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, can you call the roll?

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Yes, ma'am.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

No.

All right.

The motion passes five-one.

With that, the applicant has heard the discussion.

So this will move forward to the Board of Supervisors.

So thank you.

I have a super brief one.

So the 5th and Avon Street Community Advisory Committee met on February 16th.

That was a full week.

That was after the 14th Valentine's Day meeting of the Planning Commission.

And the CAC elected officers.

And we received a robust and really helpful overview of AC44 from Allison Rubble.

Wirbel, the community connector.

And there was a lot of discussion about that.

And we also reviewed a questionnaire.

There's a more official name for that, where they solicit input from different CACs.

And I don't remember what that is.

But anyway, we got through one of the questions before we concluded the meeting.

Thank you, Commissioner Missel.

The hydraulic Rio, we had a presentation from an applicant who, if you know that area, is bringing, or I shouldn't say is bringing, is perhaps working with staff to bring a development, a small development that's not directly across from the high school, but it's directly across from Georgetown Green on a piece of land that has nothing on it right now.

It's still a piece of property.

Georgetown Green is right next to Albemarle High School.

It's across the street from Albemarle High School.

And I think perhaps we're going to see something here.

Thank you, Commissioner Bivins.

Sure.

Thank you, Chair Clayborne.

So a quick recap of the February 15th board meeting.

At that meeting, we held the public hearings for Maple Grove daycare and the IV proper vet and catering, which both were here in front of the planning commission.

And both of those were

approved with full support from the board members similar to what we heard here.

So those are completed.

Nothing else really on the board of supervisors meeting.

We have a really exciting one coming up tomorrow.

I encourage everybody to tune in to hear old IV residences by the board.

Then I did, at our last meeting, I mentioned that I would provide AC44 updates every time we came here to the Planning Commission.

I didn't actually put it on this agenda.

I will call it out on the agenda henceforth, but I'd like to go ahead and give a quick update on that.

As Commissioner Missel mentioned, we do have the community connectors that are right now going out and discussing with not just the CACs, but other

organizations throughout the county, giving this broad overview and working with them through this questionnaire that we have that is intended to kind of generate discussion and give us some feedback.

So every time somebody fills one of those out with the meetings, they submit those back to our team and it all gets cataloged and reviewed.

And we make sure that we can incorporate those things.

That is the same work that is going on with the working group.

So we trained the working group to do those same presentations with their own networks.

And they are out there right now in the community, having these small meetings with

their groups and discussing these same issues and reporting back to us.

Um, and I know they're out there doing it.

So, uh, they're there cause we get those reports back and, and we're getting really great feedback.

Um, there is, uh, there's also, in addition to that pop-ups County, um, the County staff are attending pop-ups all around the County right now.

There's a schedule on the website if you want to see.

I think right now they're at the Northside Library.

And they were down in Scottsville earlier today.

And they've got one scheduled for every one of the magisterial districts right now.

So look for those.

If they're in your district, stop by and say hi.

And they're doing the same thing.

They're eliciting feedback on some of those questionnaires and turning those in to us.

Staff will be attending a lot of our technical committee meetings.

I'm actually scheduled to be at the Natural Heritage Committee meeting.

in two days to talk about the comp plan with them.

And really what we're doing with the technical committee meetings, those county appointed technical committee meetings is we're talking to them about the goals and objectives that were in the previous plan and trying to get some feedback as to how those are relevant today and how changes, we may want to look at changes for those.

So that will be in a lot of our technical committee meetings over the next few weeks doing that.

We will be back in April to the PC for another work session.

So two months from now to discuss things like this is really moving into the next phase.

All the discussions right now have been about those topic area reports and getting feedback on those specific topics.

In the next phase, which we'll talk with you all about in April,

We'll be looking at the planning toolkits, which include things like growth management, activity centers, multimodal corridors, trying to start to tee that up for the discussion.

And then following talking to the PC, we'll go back out to the community with some of that stuff after we hear back from you all and get their feedback.

So a lot going on right now with AC44.

And I do plan to reach out to you all to try and get some more feedback on how these things are going.

So you'll be hearing from me individually just to make sure that we're in alignment with your ideas.

I know that was a process update primarily.

Just a question to how the county proposes to handle.

You know, we've talked about this before, the fact that there's all these promises in the comprehensive plan in the form of strategies.

So when you come across something, say that said in the last comp plan, this is important.

Let's look at this.

Let's say eight years have gone by.

Nothing was done on it.

What is the county doing with these kind of things?

Just saying, hey, it's still a good idea, but probably not going to do anything on it, but we'll stick it in again.

I'm thinking about dark skies, for example.

There was a lot of energy around that.

People were willing to work on it, volunteered to work on it, and the county wasn't interested.

The board didn't support doing anything on it.

And so, you know, like, do we have like some checklist of like, why did we did we want to do this?

Is it still relevant?

Why didn't we do it?

Is it because we can't do it?

We won't do it?

Well, so strategies are still to come.

We haven't really dug into those, but I will point out that we all recognize that the last comp plan was a little overloaded with strategies.

There was really no way that we could get to everything that we said we were going to do in the last comp plan.

trying to relook at that and focus on what the high priorities are.

So we will be doing that.

Yes, we will look at all those and see, well, is this still a good idea?

Why didn't it happen last time?

How do we carry that forward into the next phase or into the next comp plan?

So over the next 20 years, there'll be an evaluation of all those strategies.

As I mentioned,

We right now, or in this phase, we'll be talking about goals and objectives.

The strategies come directly out of those goals and objectives.

So that's kind of the first step in, in working on that.

Right.

Absolutely.

And we come up with that a lot.

We say there, I think I can't remember the exact number, but it's an obscene number of strategies.

There's just no way we could have gone through all those things.

We threw everything in the kitchen sink in there.

And I think that

at this time is part of this process, how we're trying to really be more focused in what we're talking about that we'll work through that.

Yeah, I just wanted to echo a point because this conversation about measurables, right?

We've had a number of times and I know it's been one of our feedbacks on several work sessions.

And as you develop goals and objectives, it is important to have those goals and objectives be informed

by what was working or not before, particularly if we're gonna, because we're gonna have very similar goals.

I mean, we may have less, so I can appreciate, you know, perhaps we overextended and now let's, and I agree with that policy of let's do a few things really well, you know, like, you know, affordable housing.

I'm sure we're still gonna have that as a goal, right?

Okay, well, is it working or is it not working?

What is it that we're doing?

and so having those measurables on the previous comp plan, I think would be really critical to how we evaluate and create the new goals and objectives.

So again, I know that this is something that we've been talking about and I just hope it's, I hope it's translating.

I hope it's something that's sinking in that hopefully we can get this evaluation.

And you guys have done some of that.

I remember, forget if it was, which one of the,

Staff were giving us a report and was talking about how we under-densified, although we had certain density who were meeting those densities in a lot of areas.

So there was a measurable, you know, we could understand, okay, well, this is an important piece of information for us to see the same thing we can do with a number of other objectives that we had.

Corey.

Mr. McDermott, I know as the process matures and advances, we're going to be rolling our sleeves up and doing more and more on the comp plan.

I'm wondering, I think we've talked about it a little bit before, is there a way to kind of preview

like our next step of engagement, right?

I know we have three work sessions coming up probably over the next six months, roughly.

There might be some other opportunities mixed in there.

Could you talk a little bit about how we can just prepare ourselves, right?

Cause we want to come ready for the next level of engagement, right?

If you, uh,

Give me some time and I can develop something, but I will get back to you and we'll make sure.

I expect that we'll have some form of discussion between now and the next work session when we come to you.

Thank you.

Just a quick request and I want to belabor the evening but we did ask what last time we had a comp plan session that we get materials more than five days ahead and along those lines I know it's like really elegant to say now we're going to talk about the growth and now we're going to talk about the rural area it's like

each work session is 90 minutes so we'll just talk about the rural area for 90 minutes boom we're done now do the urban growth ring and like these are longer discussions and some of them are really complicated and so I just suggest that there might be even though it doesn't fit elegantly in the schedule maybe we have to have a two-part session on the same topic

You know, because 90 minutes, I would love if all planning could be speed planning and everything.

All big difficult issues can be 90 minutes, but that is not reality.

And I think it's just us being superficial and reacting to a document.

Absolutely.

I appreciate that.

And we are actually discussing that already, looking for other opportunities.

And there may be an adjustment in the schedule that we're not just going to be here for three work sessions.

I think we're already talking about having to add another because of exactly what you said.

Some of these topics are so big that we know we're not going to be able to cover them in 90 minutes.

So we're going to try and split them up.

You all have a full work session schedule, unfortunately, so it's not easy, but we are looking at ways to add something in probably later in the year so that we can cover something that we thought we were going to cover then earlier or split them up into two.

I did want to bring one other point up.

Just so you all know, this wasn't, you mentioned last time housing and that we were supposed to have another conversation about that.

We have received confirmation that we are scheduling that for your next meeting.

It was a light agenda.

We have lost one of the items that we thought we were going to have on there.

But we are going to bring in Dr. Stacey Pathea to talk about that.

It is the next meeting, yeah.

and the risk of getting pelted by my commissioners.

I was actually going to offer that if it makes sense, because we used to have work sessions in our regular time, so it wasn't the four o'clock and we only had an hour or 90 minutes or whatever.

And you can spend a longer amount of time in some of these topics.

I mean, perhaps there's ways of squeezing that in instead of breaking it, because even breaking it up, I think

I mean, if you get into the topic and use a continuity and you need two hours to discuss it or two and a half hours, is it worth doing that rather than two separate?

So anyway, I just put that out there.

It could be an option.

If we do split it up, it would be with a clear delineating line so that you're not trying to carry on the same conversation that we're breaking it up, but talking about two elements of that same topic.

regarding having work sessions during our regular time.

That is a possibility as long as we don't have our legislative agenda, but we'd probably also have to, as I've had this conversation with Andy Herrick, is adjust, make sure that schedule is announced ahead of time, because we do have a schedule that has been announced and advertised.

We'd have to change that.

I also wonder about other formats too.

I know you have a history of doing subcommittees or work groups, but I wonder about maybe there's some of these topics where it might be advantageous for a smaller number of commissioners to get together and discuss a topic in more detail and then bring that back to the commission as opposed to having everyone in one room all doing the same thing.

Maybe some of that work could be done in advance by a smaller group and then move forward.

Yes, understood.

Since you just spoke, I did have a question for you.

You were presented with this book and I was just looking this up on Amazon.

It has a value of $26.99.

That's a good question.

Let me look into that.

If you want to be safe, you can hand them to Mr. McDermott.

We'll take a look at it.

Okay.

All right.

Is there any new or old business?

All right.

Yeah.

All right.

All right.

Well, the next meeting of the Planning Commission will be held on March the 14th, where we just had a preview of that agenda.

And so with that, is there a motion to adjourn this meeting?

So moved.

All right.

Meeting is adjourned.