Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   4/25/2023

It is 4pm on the nose and we're glad to be here.

Great.

Go for it.

Okay.

Mr. Missel.

Correct.

Thank you.

With that, we have established a quorum.

Now, are there other matters listed, not listed on the agenda from the public?

Seeing none,

I have some.

I have some.

I'm good so far.

Good afternoon commissioners.

My name is Tori Kenalopulos.

I'm a principal planner in the county's community development department and I'm joined today by Vlad Gavrilovic, principal planner with EPRPC.

We'll be sharing today's presentation and the work session will be focused on phase two of the AC44 comprehensive plan update.

So we'll start with an overview of phase two and community engagement to date.

Then we'll share the proposed approach for what we're calling planning toolkits, which are ways to implement coordinated land use and transportation planning.

And the four areas that we'll cover today are the focus of the next round of engagement are shown on the slide.

Can I interrupt you for one second just to clarify one point?

I think, if possible, we'd prefer to wait till the end.

But if there's a really important on-topic question, we're happy to pause.

Sure.

So moving to an overview of phase two.

These are the three outcomes for AC44 phase two.

And the first has been completed where we identified the main topics for the comp plan and gathered information on data and existing conditions and trends.

We shared a series of topic reports by comp plan topic.

The next outcome will be developing planning toolkits for coordinated land use and transportation planning.

and these will continue to be developed throughout phase two and further refined in phase three.

And at the end of phase two, there will be updated goals and objectives for each topic.

The goals and objectives will inform the action steps that will be drafted in phase three.

And these are the three steps to accomplish those outcomes.

And as mentioned, the first step was recently completed.

So we're moving into step two and we'll be talking about each of these land use and transportation topics today in more detail.

And then instead, we'll be sharing updated goals and objectives and asking for community input on the other land use and transportation topics, which we'll briefly introduce at the end of the presentation today.

So to show those steps in a timeline for each of the three steps we'll be going through in this phase.

and at each we have a meeting with our working group prior to beginning broad public engagement.

This lets us check in with the group and test out activities and questions and then make refinements before sharing them more broadly, which we found really useful with the community chat kits that we shared.

And we also have work sessions with the planning commission and the board after engagement for steps two and three to ask for guidance and direction on the toolkits and the goals and objectives and also to share community input that we've heard in a summary form.

as we check in with the commission and board.

So to gather community input on comp plan topic, challenges, opportunities and priorities, we had an online questionnaire, a series of pop ups and community chat kits.

Community engagement input from this engagement will be used to help inform drafting the goals and objectives along with the framework for an equitable and resilient community and input from phase one.

We received 532 responses for the questionnaire, and the full results are available on the AC44 Phase 2 webpage.

We held pop-ups in each Magisterial District where we handed out flyers and had conversations about what community members wanted to see in the future.

We also had community chat kits available on the website, and those had a series of questions focused on transportation, housing, economic development, parks and recreation, natural resource protection, and climate change.

And this let community members host meetings on their own time at their convenience and have group discussions on these topics.

So we received about 15 chat kits with about 130 total participants.

And we are currently working on an engagement summary to summarize input from all these places and we plan to post that to the website and share it in the next few weeks.

A lot to cover, so appreciate your patience on this.

We'll walk through it briskly, but you have this in your packet, too, and look forward to your questions and discussions.

So this is a brief overview of the toolkits approach, starting with kind of what are the planning toolkits.

This will show you kind of a slide of overall what all the toolkits are, but basically they're a series of analytic tools and best practices that help us update the comprehensive plan, specifically the policies in the comp plan.

As you can see, they're intended to support the birth management policy in the current plan by integrating transportation and land use.

And importantly, they also build on all the community input we received in phase one that led to the framework for an equitable and resilient community.

We'll touch on that several points in the presentation.

And as you know, this will relate to many other plan topics and will need significant input from you all, from the board and from the public, of course.

So in response to kind of a request for really more of an explanation of what we mean by toolkits here, we added this slide that's not in your packet, but basically this diagram shows the basic pieces of what we're calling the Planning Toolkit, and we'll go over these in the following slides.

The circle on the left, which is the activity centers and multimodal networks, is what we're going to talk about in detail today and what will be the focus of the community input in the next month or so.

The other three purple circles, like the land use designations, neighborhood model principles, and density calculations, Tori will touch on here, but those are really the focus of the fall discussions in the community.

And then the green circles at the bottom, we'll go through each one of those, but those are aspects of this overall activity centers and multimodal networks approach.

So what are the centers of activity in the multimodal networks?

Without getting too far in the weeds on the technical information, I'm just gonna walk you briefly through the multimodal systems planning approach, which is from the statewide multimodal guidelines from the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

That was the inspiration really for these activity centers and multimodal network analysis in the following slides.

But in doing this, we also want to recognize that the guidance for this approach comes from several recommendations in the current comprehensive plan, as you see here, as well as the climate action plan as shown in these slides.

So this is what led to this approach.

Now, it's important to recognize and acknowledge that you already have centers within your master plans in the development areas.

There are about 50 centers identified across the development areas in the various master plans.

They're not necessarily consistent across the master plans because some have been updated more recently than others.

For example, Places 29 centers uses the underlying land use designation for the centers, while others have kind of an overlay approach.

The southern and western areas just use a C for the general location, and then it has recommendations in the text.

whereas Crozet and Pantops, they use a quarter mile walk shift, these circles for their centers and they give you guidance on scale and form.

So there's different approaches depending on when the master plans were done and additionally some of them are very small in different sizes.

Some of them may not be mixed use especially in the older kind of less recently updated plans.

But we're thinking that moving forward, the proposed approach would be to have an overall consistently applied set of updated center types that would be expected to be mixed use and be a focus for future projects and future resources in the new comprehensive plan.

They would ideally provide additional guidance on scale and form and intensity and provide a focus area for these future multimodal bike or ped networks or transit so we can connect these centers in the future.

And like Pantops and Crozet, they wouldn't replace the underlying land use, but there'd be overlays to give you additional guidance on those.

So the idea here is that they would kind of replace the current 50 centers but build on what's in the existing master plans for those centers.

And then lastly, where you have single-use areas of importance like employment districts or parks, you could use that same district designation like Crozet and Pantops had for districts in addition to the centers.

So that's kind of the approach of these activity centers.

Just want to acknowledge that, and I won't read all this, but we've been very intentional in going back to the input we got in phase one that built that framework for an equitable and resilient community.

So at each step in the toolkit, we want to show how this relates to that framework.

So how do you build this kind of multimodal systems plan?

As shown in the statewide guidelines, there's three basic steps to this.

You identify where are your current and your future or potential activity centers.

You develop guidelines or typology of these that show what should be the scale and intensity and character for each type of center.

And then you connect them with your multimodal networks for transportation, which includes automobile, bus, bike and ped, of course.

and as we mentioned, locating these and coming up with this typology will need a significant input from you all from the board and from the public to kind of affirm the overall pattern and scale and locations of these.

So this map shows that kind of first step in that multimodal systems approach.

This is looking at something called activity density.

And activity density is basically the sum of jobs and people.

And this is kind of a heat map showing where the jobs and people are located currently in the county.

We use both county datasets and commercial datasets to determine where the actual locations of people and jobs were.

So things like the E911 address system, various commercial datasets that show you where jobs are.

and that's for current and then for future population employees we use the land use build-out analysis that was done for the county and it has projections of the potential future build-out in the next 25 years and we added that to the existing ones.

So these show kind of the activity density in the county in a color-coded system.

They use the transect approach, which is in the statewide guidelines.

That's why they're called T zones from T1, which has one or fewer jobs or people per acre, all the way up to T6, which has 100 or more jobs or people per acre.

And one thing that's significant about this, and this is a page from the statewide guidelines, these were calibrated to Virginia place types.

Back when they did this, they did several hundred place types across the state to come up with a system of place types from P1 to P6.

They use the transect zones and transect density to build these place types with a slightly more dense core and a slightly less dense edge.

And they go anywhere from these very small rural hamlets to urban centers like Ballston or Tyson's Corner.

Of course, most of Albemarle County is in the lower end of the spectrum if you're not in Ballston.

but it's a good way of talking about kind of on a unified basis what places are now or might want to be in the future.

And then this is another diagram for the multimodal guidelines that shows a real key principle here about how you connect these activity centers with the multimodal network and shows here two basic types of corridors shown in the red and the blue lines.

The blue lines are what's called through corridors, which are higher speed

roads that are mobility focused that get you from one activity center to another.

So these are things like Route 29 or Route 250 where you need to get from one to the other.

It can still be multimodal.

The red lines are called placemaking corridors.

These are the slow 25 miles per hour or less streets that emphasize walking and biking and build this kind of walkable sense of place within an activity center.

and one of these blue lines is through corridor can actually go through the middle of one of these placemaking areas, but it has to slow down if you're going through this pedestrian-bikeable precinct.

And then most importantly, both of these are multimodal.

It's just that on the through corridor, multimodal aspect might be an on-road path, so it's safer.

Whereas when you're in a placemaking area, it could be a sidewalk and an on-road bike trail, things like that.

So that's a basic kind of principle for building these networks.

Now, when we look at, as you saw on the map, there were activity areas even in the rural area.

You would not expect these activity areas in the rural area to be like the ones in the development centers.

Obviously, they have a very different character and scale.

But the kind of point is that each one, whether you're in a very rural area or a

More suburban urban neighborhood, you need a gathering place, a place to meet daily needs.

That's what these are kind of implying.

And this slide shows the recommendations from the current comprehensive plan for areas of activity in the rural areas, which focus here on crossroads communities and especially on things like adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

So when you get to areas of activity in the rural area,

The current plan talks about seven crossroads communities.

And these are examples of activity areas in rural areas today.

But it should be noted, as you could see in the map before and as we'll show in a minute, that there are other places in the rural area that have existing businesses or community centers.

So it's not necessarily limited to the currently designated seven crossroads communities as to where you have centers of activity.

and again, note a connection to the framework from phase one for equitable and resilient community.

For example, the first blue bullet there, it says that there's support for more equitable access to services and amenities in the rural areas.

So this could be potentially one way of looking at that issue.

And then this is a map of the details of the overall countywide activity density map, showing the seven crossroads communities, but again reiterating that these are not the only activity areas in the rural area.

but this is again where we really need community input to help define where are the current centers of rural activity.

If I may, similarly,

You've got Covesville up there, and yes, there's an apple packing plant, an antique store, and a post office.

But I wouldn't really think of that as an activity center.

There's not all people converging on Covesville unless you're packing apples.

But north of there, Crossroads is what I would call an activity center, where it does have a fire station, another post office, a gas station, restaurants, businesses, a health center, a bank.

I could go on.

You know, so I just think some of those are a little out of date or, you know, harken back to an activity center from 1850.

It's not really.

Anyway, so your point is well taken.

And obviously, Yancey's school has changed a lot.

Like you said, it's not providing a lot of jobs.

But folks there have actually, as you saw in the comprehensive planning session you held, there were one thing that came up was more diversity of housing, apartments, you know,

not just having single type of use and I think they would like to see more jobs there.

Carry on.

Well, that leads to kind of this next slide before I turn it back to Tori.

So there's several options for how you might deal with activity areas in the rural area.

One option obviously is not to change anything, keep the current plan recommendations for these crossroads, these seven crossroads in the community.

Another option is to have updated recommendations for adaptive reuse, historic preservation,

or to show where there may be other crossroads communities or rural villages or centers for daily needs.

Another option is you could create criteria for when new buildings or uses would be appropriate with standards for how to do the form and scale that's context sensitive and appropriate.

And an example of that is here from the statewide multimodal guidelines.

Their lowest place type is a P1, which the inner core has up to 10

Jobs for People per Acre, and The Outer Edge has one or less Jobs for People per Acre.

So a lot to think about there.

Thank you, Vlad.

So moving to this third toolkit component, we'll be looking at criteria for future development areas expansion and starting with the current comp plan, which recommends using development areas land efficiently to prevent needing to expand the development areas earlier than necessary and monitoring building trends and the availability of vacant or redevelopable land.

The current comp plan provides some guidance for the potential timing of future expansion by using the land use build out analysis, but does not provide guidance on identifying locations.

So the updated comp plan is expected to have criteria for timing, but also to identify locations and input from community members, the commission and the board is needed to inform and refine the criteria.

And this approach is connected to the framework

So for any future expansion areas, new development would be expected to include a mix of uses and a variety of housing types, parks and trails, preservation of sensitive environmental features, green and resilient design, a safe and accessible multimodal network, and opportunities for employment centers and jobs.

And this is also consistent with the expectations in the neighborhood model principles.

So the following are potential criteria for identifying locations for future development areas expansion should an expansion be found to be needed.

And community input and continued coordination with external and partner agencies will be used to further detail and refine these and ask what may be missing from this initial list as a starting point.

And consistent with the current comp plan, the land use build out analysis will continue to be used to estimate the availability of development areas land compared with projected growth and demand.

So based on the 2022 analysis, there appears

However, full build out is dependent on development at the higher ends of density and intensity ranges and constraining factors will limit build out.

Additionally, while there appears to be sufficient office flex and light industrial land from just a pure land use designation standpoint,

When doing a more detailed tier analysis on site readiness and infrastructure availability, there are very limited options ready to meet economic development strategic plan goals.

And other areas that we could consider are the cost of housing and then vacancy and rental rates for non residential uses.

So moving to the fourth and final toolkit component that we'll be covering today and in the spring and summer engagement is the approach for rural interstate interchanges.

So for interstate interchanges in the development areas, the applicable master plan is used for guidance.

But for interstate interchanges in the rural area, there are specific recommendations in the comp plan, which focus on land uses that support agriculture and forestry and then avoiding tourist destinations.

So the reason that this is being reviewed with the comp plan update is that there are some types of businesses that require access to an interstate and that may not be suitable for the walkable and compact development that's expected in the development areas.

Additionally, two of the four rural interstate interchanges have existing non-residential development.

So community commission and board input is needed on whether the current conflict recommendations should be continued or if they should be updated to recommend additional non-residential uses at some interstate interchanges.

And this approach is connected to the framework, especially for the placement of new development and for supporting economic development strategic plan goals.

Rural interstate interchanges have the potential to support local food systems

So again, connecting back to the activity intensity analysis, these are the four rural interstate interchanges identified in the current comp plan.

and of course Shadwell and UNC Mills have the highest level of activity or jobs and people per acre and they both have existing non-residential development and properties that are zoned commercial and industrial.

So moving to the next steps, we will be holding a series of in-person events in May and June to talk about multimodal centers and networks, areas of activity in the rural area, criteria for development areas expansion and rural interstate interchanges.

We expect these events to have both an open house and roundtable component to give community members time to read through posters, fill out worksheets, talk to the AC44 team, and then engage in group discussions on what they're most interested in.

There will also be online engagement opportunities.

And over the summer, staff will be

drafting updated goals and objectives.

And we wanted to note that the AC44 team will continue to meet with staff across the organization and our partner agencies to share community input that we've been hearing and to collaboratively draft plan recommendations.

So it will be quite a few people engaged in working on this over the summer.

And then in the fall, there will be in-person and online engagement opportunities to give input on draft goals and objectives.

which I'll walk through briefly and then we'll share those for more input in the fall.

So to start with the land use designation approach, there are currently 24 land use designations across the master plans and many of these have similar recommended uses, building heights and building footprints.

And so when we say land use designations, that's like neighborhood density, residential,

community mixed use, things like that.

So the current comp plan actually has a recommendation to create consistent land use designations that are the same across the master plans.

So the proposed approach is to consolidate the 24 current designations into updated land use designation.

For example, the variety of mixed use designations would be consolidated.

and the updated designations would then be applied to an overall future land use plan across the development areas in a matching approach in phase three.

So as an example, all properties that are currently designated urban density residential would still be urban density and then the designation recommendations would be consistent for density and building form and scale across the development areas.

those mixed use land use designations as there are a significant number of them and many have really minor differences between them.

And then more detailed changes to properties such as changing a property designated neighborhood density residential to office flex light industrial would be done with future master plan updates as these types of changes would need a more detailed analysis and review that's better done at the master plan level.

So another area that we'll be asking for input on is the neighborhood model principles, building on the input that we've heard today and that will continue to hear in the spring and summer.

So we will continue to use the neighborhood model principles, but we'll be streamlining and updating them into several categories instead of 12 separate principles.

So the guidance on building communities that are walkable, mixed use, have a variety of housing types, multimodal transportation, and parks and trails is essential for supporting the growth

and the expectations for the development areas.

But having several categories instead of 12 separate principles and then having updated guidance based on input will make the review of rezonings and special use permits more efficient.

And then the final area will be asking for input on the fall is how density is calculated for future land use based on the comp plan recommendations.

So this recommendation is primarily used for reviewing rezoning applications to calculate the recommended density.

And the current comp plan recommends using that density for land use designations by netting out areas in steep slopes, floodplain, and stream buffers.

However, the zoning ordinance uses gross density, which uses the full acreage of the site to calculate density.

So the proposed approach would be for staff to evaluate the current comp plan recommendations and then share an updated approach in the fall and ask for input.

So that was the full presentation.

And we have a couple of questions for the commission to consider.

Those are, does the commission have any feedback on this proposed approach for the toolkits?

And are there additional topics or areas that we should also be considering for coordinated land use and transportation planning?

And we're happy to take any questions as well.

Great.

Thank you, Tori.

Thank you, Vlad.

So I would offer

sort of a two phased approach.

One is we have exactly an hour, if we need all that time.

And within that timeframe, I would suggest we start with just general questions about the content that was just shared.

And then that's okay.

And then we'll keep a close eye on time.

And then we'll shift to your specific questions.

Okay.

Yeah, to clarify, this is sharing, basically, here's all the things we're going to cover.

Do you feel like we've missed anything?

Does this approach make sense?

We will be coming back, I believe, in July to the commission to share what we hear about, at least the first four areas that we cover, and then ask you all to give input on, what should the criteria be?

Yeah, I suspect that it might take us more than one hour to talk about.

Rural Theory Criteria, Rural Interchanges, et cetera, et cetera.

I know staff does a lot of the pre-work, but I just think we might need to either have a longer work session or do it as a regular planning commission meeting that takes two or three hours.

I don't agree, but I don't think these are topics we can just, you know, yeah.

I guess one thing that I saw that was missing, maybe not really missing, but one of the criteria you were talking about, like when you were having like,

The different principles, there was like sort of four on the slide and you said like resilient, things should be resilient.

That's sort of a giant bucket of stuff.

I'm wondering if that that should be fleshed out a little bit more and also connectivity was something that I'd like to see added because we can have lots of parks and they can but they can all be terribly isolated and actually therefore harder to connect with pathways trails and greenways also harder for wildlife to take advantage of them so we can fragment the heck out of our landscape unintentionally if we don't have

I'd like to see connectivity added.

I'd like to unpack resiliency a bit more than what you have, especially with climate change and climate change report.

On a similar note to that,

Right on the same time, we also have maps of natural resources in Albemarle County and areas of highly unfragmented forests, of high quality habitats.

I think that needs to play into those maps as well to look at places where we have these high quality resources you will want to collect.

because currently our growth management strategy, an implicit part about that is that we will restrict services to the rural area.

And if we're saying now that we're going to expand services to the rural area, but that's definitely in conflict with our current strategy and could conceivably cause sprawl.

Lonnie, could I ask, maybe we should better define, not you right now, but services in general.

I think sometimes it's talking about water lines, but then other times people are saying services and they mean like laundromat.

It's going to be fiber internet.

But I think even with some of these things that we have all agreed that we should provide, like high speed

But maybe they won't be driving all over the roads.

But there are cost benefits providing additional services.

And all I was saying was services, I think, even by the county gets all mixed up.

The other thing I would say, too, is that we're talking about transportation.

I think we need to, in the rural area, we need to also document the existing rural transportation, multimodal transportation, which includes walking, running, and biking.

Streetlight has great data that we should be using.

Strava has great data that we should be using.

In the past, we haven't done a great job of, you know,

Obvious roads like DECA and Bridge Road are not on our maps as places that are highly used by cyclists, walkers, and runners.

They should be.

Can I just intervene one second and mention?

So what I was thinking is if there are any specific questions on any of the information that was just shared here, not so much the feedback piece, but more about clarity on anything that was shared.

Sounds like we jumped right to the feedback, which is fine, as long as we said clarity questions.

You have clarity questions.

So let's do the clarity questions first, and then we'll come back to feedback.

So if you could go to page 9.

Thank you.

So I'm trying to figure out sort of what does when you have coordinated land use and transportation planning.

So I guess I'm trying to get a bit narrower or to understand the sources of funds, particularly on the transportation planning.

Because are those going to be, I guess that's really what I'm trying to figure out.

So one is a private sector piece, because I can buy land and develop it depending on how I think.

But the other piece is

looking at opportunities where the public policy will influence the development of the land so that there would be perhaps a transportation overlay or something like that.

I'm trying to understand what that means since those are really two different ownerships or two different ways in which things are influenced.

That's when I was reading that.

So what does that mean?

And also the whole idea

that applying a framework for equitable and, as Karen said, resilient community to land use and transportation.

That's one of those things that I feel like would be my master's thesis as opposed to the lowly planning commissioner dude who I'm talking, I can do the legal stuff about that.

I can do the economic stuff about that.

But I don't know how to, I don't know what that,

piece would look like in a planning document?

OK, I can tell you.

And then again, once we did it, what would be, you know, I'm always this incentive guy.

How would the county incentivize this kind of outcome?

So that part of it is, it's not just sort of a macro piece, but how do we sort of drill down once we establish these goals or these sort of thinking throughs to something that's actually workable.

There is this whole piece, and you know, so there's also this piece about how far do I think this process can go?

I actually believe there are natural governors on this process.

unless there's a significant change in the Whitehall supervisor, the one place in those seven things that it makes more sense is over there by the Harris Teeter, I guess it's Peterson's Mill Road, not Ivy Road, Peterson's Mill Road.

And the whole concept that, there's sort of a macro concept for me, is that you can't have, well, no, that off-ramps have to support

Well the agriculture that's happening in that part of the county right now are wineries and so the wineries want people to come to them and they want people to stay there which is out of sync with forestry and sort of the traditional looking of both traditional thinking about

about what the ag sector needs in our community.

So the whole idea coming back to what Karen was saying is I think some of this needs to be evaluated and what our economy has morphed to or evolved to.

And then there's the real sort of legislative piece.

Do I believe that our supervisors are willing to change those things?

I don't want to spend a lot of time on something that's going to get to their table and they're going to say, oh, that's really nice, as some of my colleagues have told me.

They said, oh, that's really nice, the things that the Planning Commission suggested.

But you know what?

We're going to do something completely different.

I will be like, why don't you say that up front?

You know, give me the parameters in which you're willing to flex.

Because I also don't believe we can have all these conversations about how the development area is going to increase.

But I also don't believe there's any stomach for density in our community right now.

And I don't think there's a stomach to increase the development area.

And so

It feels like an intellectual exercise that's never going to result in any significant change.

So I'm just, I'm pushing it, you know, I'm going to like, I'm going to push it because it's like, sure, we could go through this exercise, but you know, you try and put a five-story apartment house on a hill on 29 and everybody brings the red coats to get you.

And that gets old.

That gets you really old.

And I just... So you've got three questions in there.

Just to make sure, again, that everybody gets their questions answered.

Do you want them to give you a response to your question?

They can come back with that.

I don't expect that now.

I'm saying that's a question I'm going to have.

There's philosophy in there and there's mechanics.

We're very good at mechanics and philosophy.

but if our philosophy is out of whack with the board.

So that's the whole, that's a process piece too.

But I think if you're going to ask us to dive deep in here, which I think everybody in this room is willing to do, at the end of the day, I think you'll have a bunch of views,

you'll have a bunch of bruised public servants if we go through this and it's thank you very much but please go home now.

So yeah, a couple of things too.

I'm going to have some clarifying

and also tagging up here a little bit with Commissioner Bivins.

So, I mean, so I do think that you're right in many ways.

However, having the conversation of the debate may change some minds.

Who knows?

Not that I'm either more or less optimistic than you are, and that's where the joint meetings could potentially help to bring this to the conversation.

From a clarifying standpoint, you showed the activity centers, you showed your heat map, and that is current, is my understanding of what you showed.

Okay, so which is which?

It's cumulative.

Like I said, this map is the sum total of both, which is how you would plan for a twenty five year horizon.

So that's part of my clarifying piece.

Yeah, because this is confusing to me because you did say you said current, but we both will then extrapolate it based on the other development areas.

for future and I didn't see current or future and I couldn't quite distinguish and I think it would be helpful because if I'm looking particularly with a heat map but that's telling me activity areas right so if I'm looking at okay here's my current state and this is what the densities that we're planning for

would get us to in, what was it, 20-year horizon?

25-year horizon.

So this year is a 25-year horizon.

Can I add to that just to hold your thoughts?

One is, why?

Is it a direct extrapolation, or is there some reasoning built in that causes it?

Well, if I understood it,

Well, no, I think it's planned.

Got it.

Oh, right.

But again, if I'm if I'm understanding where you're going with this, which is, you know, I think that's a useful because it begins to to give us a visual of what the densities that we're planning for might cause.

which leads me to my other question, which you've already heard.

And I think you gave me a really good answer, Vlad, when we had the two on two, or at least the best answer I've heard so far, maybe the only answer I've heard so far, to the question of why are we not obtaining our current densities?

Because when you look at your growth,

and we talk about expanding growth and potentially, right?

We see that we have enough density available to us if we were to build at the higher levels, but we don't build at the higher levels.

Could you repeat what you said to me, if you remember, on why

Well, that's a memory question, but I think if you're asking that again, one of the key reasons I think developers do is if you can

If you can build, if there's enough land and entitlement available to build at lower densities, you'll do that because it can be more expensive to build at the higher densities, particularly with structured parking and things like that.

Another reason are just market forces of the value of land, which is when land gets more rare,

The value goes up and that land value makes it more profitable to develop at these higher densities.

I honestly don't remember if I'm hitting on the one reason that you thought was the key, but those are some of the factors there.

Quite often, developers want an easy button, and if they know something will get approved, they will build to that density.

If it takes another year or 16 months or something like that to go through the process to get a higher density approved, that means money to them on their balance sheet.

I think you mentioned all those, and I agree.

what is available in terms of why would you build a 10 story apartment building when what's driving the market is probably more four or five and you're not going to get to that 10 which then has to do with parking and everything else but there's not enough density in population and businesses

So I think it was a combination.

Sure, especially if the land values are not there to build with that high density.

So I raised a similar question in our conversations.

And one of the things I pointed to was Charlottesville.

Charlottesville in many ways has

achieved this level of density where things are becoming walkable, where you have commercial and residential mixed together.

You have underground parking, a lot of these things that would be great for us to have.

And when I've asked developers in Almonte County, they said, so why don't you put a parking garage in here?

They said, well, the density is not there to support it.

Years ago, Charlottesville, we were landlocked.

This is terrible.

The worst thing, this is why we had to do annexation.

We had to take county land was because we're landlocked.

And it's going to be the end of Charlottesville.

Actually, far from being the end of Charlottesville.

It actually improved Charlottesville.

It was probably one of the best things that ever happened to Charlottesville.

And so the danger of prematurely expanding the growth area is it will never achieve that form.

of urban walkability that we're striving for.

As long as, you know, that's, I mean, one of the things I've suggested when we get to that piece about developing this criteria for when to expand the growth area.

So the big key to that is have we achieved that form yet?

Have we achieved the form of walkability and mixed use that's called for in a comprehensive plan?

If we haven't, if Albemarle Square is still a big parking lot, if Bashford Square Mall is still a big empty parking lot,

Have you read the small area plan?

RIO 29 small area plan.

Have you seen that?

And it's okay to say no, because you are.

I mean, it's been a while.

I would suggest you look at it, because what you're talking about is exactly that.

And I'm going to extend that a little bit more.

I think fundamentally Albemarle County sees itself as a suburban community.

And so there's a mindset here.

I don't believe that there's going to be a stomach for that.

I did a little looking at the sea just recently about who was able to sort of get what I would, and this obviously is personal, a personal opinion, what I thought would be sort of projects that went against the grain that were all outside developers.

I also think that there is a self-limiting, a self-governing that takes place with the developers who live here, who have to see, their kids are in the same school, they gotta see each other in civic places.

There are only so much that they're gonna do to become, to get ostracized.

So I think there's a community, my sense is over the four and a half years I've been on here and talking to some developers outside of here, there's a community ethos that says, this is who we think we are,

and this is all we want to be.

and until that changes, and I've had some conversations with a couple of supervisors that they have to be much more open to saying, to asking staff to say, to create narratives in the various places that we can create narrative.

This is a place that in order to have this lifestyle you want, we've got to have density.

And all I've been having is conversations.

I haven't had a tacit agreement.

and we grew up that way and I don't know how we get to this.

I don't know how we realize that in a built environment.

So I think your analogy of Charlottesville is brilliant.

I think you're absolutely right in that assessment.

I would love to get, you know, if anybody actually would do a study of that, but I do think that

If they would have annexed, if it was like, okay, let's just sprawl some more, they would not have achieved some of the density that they've done and the walkability and some of these other things that they have now.

And, and I do think it's, it's, I hadn't heard that before.

I think there's a deep brawl in that suburban mindset instead of trying to think about more of an urban mindset in the areas that we can't densify, that we even have the density already there even if we add to it, but we have plenty of areas that can be much higher density than they are today and will provide for the walkability and for the additional services.

I mean, I think the big thing when I talk to people about density and as I say, well, I mean, the big thing is we see density as a density of units or density of people or density of businesses.

But, you know, if people saw it, we saw density more as not just a density of people, but a density of service.

Right now, we associate density with a loss of service.

And people say, oh, well, if this development happens next door to me, my schools are going to be overcrowded.

My roads are going to be overcrowded.

I will lose this.

I will lose that.

Well, that's because the outcomes are exactly what you said.

I've long thought for things like we should have a subsidy for parking rides.

One, and I'll just keep it down to two.

The first is on page 15, when you talk about using the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transit's multi-modal system design guidelines to help inform center types.

And I wrote, how does this apply here and not just in Nova?

And then you mentioned, oh, it's Boston.

And you actually picked out those ones that are at the top of that continuum.

So I guess my question is, is that approach putting transit first?

Did you look at other approaches?

Certainly good question.

The approach isn't to put transit first because this, even though it was the Department of Rail and Public Transportation, it was intended to be an integration of land use and transportation.

and total multimodal transportation so that you have bike and ped in the most rural areas as well.

You may not have transit in those.

And you can see their lowest activity unit is less than one job or person to the acre.

So they did look at the full spectrum.

I just mentioned Ballston and Tysons as the upper end of the spectrum.

But when you look at what's permitted in your, not permitted, I'm sorry, planned in things like places 29, those are even higher than some of these at the upper end of the multimodal spectrum.

you know, 80 USA acre in some of the highest intensity place types.

So this is scaled to the Virginia, the highest place, intensity place in the Virginia and some of the lowest intensity places in Virginia.

Got it.

OK.

Thank you.

And then my other question was just on the process.

It was initially I was wondering how you were

And I think you addressed that well on the slide on page 6.

The question I guess I have is, maybe it's in there and I just didn't catch it.

Yeah, I think we've you know kind of tried to check in at key points and check in like as we approach community engagement to kind of say this is what we're looking at you know these are the topics we're going to be covering what do you all want us to keep in mind is there anything that you know jumps out at you all and they've also been reviewing the 2015 comp plan goals and objectives and we'll be working with them to draft the updated one.

I've also been trying to share community input along the way with staff as well.

So as we work with them to draft the goals and objectives, they are hearing the same things that we're hearing.

They're seeing the themes.

Well, the reason I ask that question is because there's two, what VDOT, I'm just picking on VDOT.

Everybody does, so maybe I should pick on someone else.

So just a question of, you know, they have their plan, they have their funding source, and that doesn't always coincide with the county's plan and the county's strategy in terms of development and density.

And there's always, as I've been around for a while, there's always been sort of this disconnect or kind of a, well, they were going this direction,

You're going in this direction and we can't really make the two match.

And what ends up happening is you don't have the level of infrastructure support that you need to support the county's growth policy plans.

So I'm just wondering if the strategy

Let me throw in there so you know.

Can I help?

So I think that isn't that what the smart scale process was intended to do, to bring more collaboration into growth plans?

I'm not sure if I would say that was the intention.

The question was to coordinate with municipalities because you bring in potentially different pots of money, right?

So to align the funding with the needs of the different areas.

But I'll add on.

So this goes to the point, and Luis will know this now for what he sits on it.

There's also, we have this interesting, I think, sort of governance structure here that you have.

Some things come from TJ, PG, J, whatever.

You have that thing.

And then you have the city and then you have our desires.

And all of those roads are interconnected.

So you've got three different jurisdictions lifting up projects that they think is important for this

I forget how many miles we are, but how many mile region we are as opposed to, and you hope they're coordinated, but having sat on some of those meetings, sometimes what the city thinks is important as far as roads are concerned does not necessarily advance the county's needs.

And then what you just said, what they then lift up.

They have this sort of big regional piece to it, which almost felt during the time where I sat on the MPO Tech, it almost felt like

They were trying to be Solomon in how they allocated or put their weight around projects.

I never saw how they engaged with the supervisors or even with you, but it just seemed like these were projects like, oh, that's a really nice project, but how's that really going to help us being us being the county?

And so to come to where you're coming to is that I don't know that we have in place a funding and development structure that allows that kind of pointed

all that kind of pointed solution development.

I don't know.

I see where the money comes from.

And usually when you have that many multiple places for money, it's hard to get collaboration.

Just as an example, what's going to happen over there at the old Kmart intersection, I was able to sit on two years of conversations about that.

and every time someone came to the table, mostly it was the developer, the solutions that I think staff wanted with VDOT had blown up because the developer didn't want to lose an entranceway.

A developer didn't want to lose an entranceway that would have moved traffic through that whole section in much better ways and so the system blew up.

It blew up the solution.

There's something about, I believe in democracies, but there's something about the greater good,

I don't know how we get to that.

Could I respond to Commissioner Missel's question about that?

And I think that maybe you were about to jump in and say something about this.

But this might help you all understand a little bit more about this multimodal system plan, is that VDOT did agree to the principles in the multimodal system plan.

And what they have done is that VDOT has created

road design standard related to what they call urban areas.

And if a locality goes through this process and identifies where we call these urban areas or activity centers, then we are going to be able to apply their urban design standards to those.

And so I think this might be getting into your question, Fred, that if we that we can align by doing this, we will be able to align our the county's desires for the way the road system develops with our land use system.

So that is one of the significant reasons.

And Vlad, please, I know you've been really involved in this.

Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to say it, but it doesn't mean funding.

And VDOT doesn't have a plan.

There is no statewide plan or locality-wide plan for what VDOT wants to do.

VDOT does planning, but it doesn't have a written plan.

And the smart scale, as you know, is localities have a right to propose things that go to the MPO,

The MPO can put all those together within, you know, they have a limited number they can put forward into SmartScale.

And then SmartScale is a process for running them through data-driven criteria to see which rise to the top.

Sorry.

Yeah, no, there's one thing, and that was just a follow-up and help to

That was exactly the reason for my question.

How do you make that, and maybe you can't, but it also extends to RWSA, to schools, to the other partner organizations, right?

Just thinking about that communication process.

I just want to ask, in the past VDOT has said things like, yeah, you can have, you know, a different kind of road width, but we won't be maintaining it.

So is this that case?

They will, that's the point of having their urban design standards.

Because that's what kills our, you know, all this talk about walkability and urban density, and then you've got roads you can land a small plane on.

That's not a walkable community.

All the roads are designed as racetracks.

They're all over designed for going two to three times the speed limit.

Well, you know, all these things like, you know, you have the super wide road, but you're not allowed to park cars on it.

So you can't even traffic calm with cars.

You know, you've designed this road so everyone has a double wide lane to go zooming.

And these were adopted in 2013.

So what Kevin's talking about is fairly recent.

OK.

Well, I'm really excited.

Well then, when you come back to talk to us on page 16 then, would it not be helpful to understand with some of those, what are the gaps?

I think the centers is one attempt to do that so that it's not like peanut butter density all over the place.

But if you can kind of prioritize where you want the more walkable higher intensity growth to go, then you can build that network to connect those at least and have

like Hollymede Town Center, you know, like Meeting Street.

I was just looking at that.

That could be one of these placemaking corridors where you slow traffic.

And give them an opportunity to come down to the shopping center without having to go to the end.

because that's just human nature.

If you want me to come to walk here, to come over here, I'm going to drive.

I'm not going to walk.

I'm not going to walk.

So I'm going to cut off the conversation.

There's 20 minutes left.

We each have four minutes.

Can you skip to the last slide, please, Doreen?

And I just want to make sure maybe

I think we've answered a little bit of the first one, maybe.

But let's focus on these for a second.

Does the commission have any feedback on the proposed approach for the planning toolkits?

Have you been to the supervisors yet on this, or are you going to this?

So you're still going to make all the guts of these toolkits, right?

I mean, I have some sketches I can send you of examples of connected development versus disconnected development, diagrams and those kind of things to illustrate what I was trying to talk about with connectivity.

Well, we would hope that the county would use the biodiversity action plan maps that we all work so hard on.

They're not in any system right now.

I don't believe it's in the process when the county developer proposes something that in the county's GIS they pull those up and say, oh, do you have a major habitat core going through your property?

That process wasn't created.

Similarly, the acquisition of conservation easements process was supposed to include

habitat cores and corridors as part of the criteria for requiring them.

But the county disbanded that committee and they haven't met for two years.

And the draft language for changing the code was developed.

And then it sits there.

You know, to come back to what you're talking about connectivity, every time we have

a new community that comes to an existing community and there are ballots.

We just, we get again, blasted by the ballot core to say, no, I don't want any connectivity.

I shouldn't say that, but many say also

Whatever they think those people are, the people who live in a house that's $100,000 less than them because they never, when they were 25, needed a $350,000 house instead of a $600,000 house.

This is really offensive.

Yeah.

But I don't care.

I still want to, I don't think it will hurt their children if they play together.

It has been stated.

One thing I'll offer to think about it related to this conversation is, and the approach to the planning toolkits is as you're speaking with

the community and with your partners.

How do you convey value of these things, right?

So there is value to interconnected streets.

And the problem, I mean, you're still going to have people who don't, they weren't participating and they moved in and they love what they have.

And there's a cul-de-sac that all of a sudden turns into a road and they don't like it.

So that's going to happen.

I think too we have to be careful about how we pitch some of these discussions in the rural area.

We need to be very careful about how we pitch some of these additional uses because you need to be very clear in those communications that there is not public water, there is not public sewer, that these do not enforce speed limits in the rural area.

Yes they do.

Mine might be the Whitehall badge that you have here.

They selectively enforce that speed limit.

There's definitely going to be money.

We've asked.

We've asked.

It's going to be a long night.

It's going to be a really short night.

I think that the fact that there aren't these services to support that infrastructure I think is an important piece of this in this tier.

There's some opportunities that can be explored there because you have the first bullet point that talks about uses that support the rural area, that support agriculture and forestry.

And then you have the last bullet point that says, but no tourism.

No what?

Tourism related activities.

And I think there are a lot of tourism activity

activities that do support the rural area.

And so many times I've been on a trip somewhere and I see, oh, there's a bike trail, there's a newer trail, or there is a park, or there's something.

And so I think the degree we can capitalize upon

on recreational tourism that supports our rural area and supports natural resources, I think we should do that.

We don't have a census.

Just like you're never going to get an Olive Garden.

You can tell all your friends it is not going to happen.

We don't have, we do not have that kind of population here.

So any other comments or questions or offerings on the proposed approach to the planning toolkit?

If not, we'll move on to the second question, which is, I think, much more open-ended.

You know, I do have this, I have a question.

So we always talk about the historic preservation.

And this is going to sound like a Scrooge.

Make up a new name.

You're a Scrooge.

I'm a Scrooge.

I keep coming back to there is the implicit value of preserving historic structures.

But what's the community value?

What's the greater good value of doing that if the structure can't be gotten too easy?

So are we doing it because it's like the right thing to do?

And that's fine, no problem with that.

Would you like to know what the historic resources are?

Yes.

So they talked about that.

And they and we had at a prior meeting, we had wordsmiths and added concepts to what's in the comp plan now for historic preservation.

But and then this past meeting yesterday, we talked about, OK, so is that what we all agree?

Somebody should write it out in the form of prose.

But one of the things you did specifically elaborate on was

that we didn't want it to seem like that historic structures were only important if you could see them from a roadway or if they could be visited as a tourist attraction, that they had these structures and these places had integrity in and of themselves, whether or not you could ever see them or ever visit them.

I agree with that.

Well, we need to elaborate more on why it's important, but I think that the other thing that we talked about in the committee is, you know, what kind of information is provided.

You know, the county sends a letter to everyone.

You have a historic structure.

and I haven't seen the letter for a while.

So we're going to all look at the letter again, decide whether it's actually a helpful letter.

Cause it's like, I got one when I moved to my house.

So like, you know, you have a structure, don't tear down your house or else.

It was one jerk is what the letter basically said.

It was, it was rude and sort of implied that I didn't know anything.

And there were no helpful resources in this letter.

So to the degree that the County not only proposes that,

People protect these structures since we currently don't have ordinance, but that we provide them tools and resources and help.

And, you know, because a lot of structures are in terrible shape that people inherit or are on their property.

Yeah.

So just to piggyback on all of this, I think a couple of things.

One is on historic resources.

And this is on page 19.

Talks about preservation.

I completely support that.

I think the thing that you have to be conscious of is the cost of doing that.

Preserve and adapt, I believe, at least in the examples I've seen.

Speaking from experience?

How much information you want me to share of the historic resources?

It's just expensive.

So I, again, get back to that value proposition, right?

So it's not just the interconnecting streets, but it's why do we value these historic resources?

To your point, how does that bolster the rest of the community?

How is it differentiating Albemarle County?

And I think there is a way to make that narrative.

And there's a concern, too, that we, by overpromoting that, potentially, as one particular board of supervisors said yesterday in the historic meeting, not that it was a historic meeting, you know what I mean, that there's a concern that we say, like, well, if you have a historic structure, I just want you to adaptively reuse it.

It should be a wedding venue.

You know, because we want them to protect.

We want people to protect historic structures.

So I think along with the value proposition and that kind of thing, you have to help define pathways to get to that goal.

And one of those pathways is not the county's job to do this, but

You know, the historic tax credits.

I mean, what what kinds of resources are there to help leverage that goal?

Right.

I think we also need to expand.

I've lived next to some of those communities.

I think they're a pretty valuable place with a lot of history.

It's rapidly being lost, all that's being lost.

You haven't told us.

You know, why does the Gibson girls' house and Lady Astor's house?

So just briefly, the county had

to fund for historic markers.

And the goal was to recognize communities of color and other types of history that hasn't been adequately represented in our county.

I believe there was funding for five markers and they've done three.

And so the Historic Resource Committee was also going to find out, well, can we still do two more?

Where is that money?

Is it still there?

Because our committee, as you know, didn't meet for six months.

We all know that sounds strange, but we finally met.

Two times this year, man.

We're on a roll.

So I'm just saying that's on our radar very much so.

But yeah, your points will take it.

There's also lots of parts of our history that we don't have on a map.

maybe that loops all of this together or lumps it together under one category that addresses the additional topic and is sort of this cultural resource for some things, right?

And making sure that that's kind of integrated throughout.

That was good.

Thank you.

That's why you're the chair today.

I had a couple of thoughts.

And some of these we've already talked about, so I'm going to be really quick.

So we talk about infrastructure and methods of implementation or recommendations or tactics for implementation, not just that they are needed, right?

The second is thinking about, and there's going to be a common theme throughout this, infill.

What incentives are there to infill?

So is a developer going to prefer a brownfield site or a greenfield site?

Probably a greenfield site.

There's less risk.

So are there incentives that we can look at?

The other thing is that infill piece tied to open space requirements.

And one of the differentiators of Albemarle County, obviously, the city is dense.

And I agree with your assessment of that.

The county has amazing natural resources.

Not that the city doesn't have some, but this is one of the most beautiful places in the country.

And so how do we preserve that?

And how do we leverage the infill argument

against sort of the value, not against, but sort of parallel to the value of open space.

Economic development is not one of the topics that was raised, I don't think.

And thinking about how, you know, as the county is sort of in this new economic development realm, which is guided by some of the new leadership at the county, I think we think about how do we integrate that.

into the process and be helpful.

We talked about historic resources, housing.

I was talking to Supervisor Price this past week, and I know they're getting some information, maybe already have, on housing incentives for affordable housing.

I think affordable housing needs to be somehow built in.

Maybe that's not the right place for it.

Can I come alongside of that?

Yeah.

Alongside of what the Chair just said today, there's also about how do we enhance the areas which were left when development took place?

So for instance, around Norwood and Hessian Hills, which everybody knows, if you know where Best Buy is, it's that area behind Best Buy.

There's plenty of places there that are not on sewer or water.

and so aren't really walkable.

They have no sidewalks.

So how if you're trying to say, what are we going to do new?

I think there's some value in trying to improve the existing inventory so that people can stay there.

So that they don't have to, they're not forced with the decision of, if I'd like to have sidewalks for my kids to walk up and down, I got to go move over to that place.

As opposed to, I really want to just stay here, but I don't have the kinds of emerged

I think there's nothing to, I think, in the discussion about how should we consider to expand the growth areas.

Yeah, you suddenly have, we're just going to create a development right instead of thin air.

And now, you property owners, this new area, now you've just received a windfall.

and now this property is worth a whole lot more.

I think there's an opportunity there.

So that's sort of a blending of land trust and also conservation.

I think it could be a larger conversation about how that works.

I'd be glad.

So the way the transfer development works is that you have a sending area and a receiving area.

We only spent two years at least on this and couldn't make it work.

And it has to do with supply and demand.

I was in those meetings, and so we could have a conversation offline.

But I think I have some beliefs about why that process failed and what went wrong in that process.

that we can talk about.

Well, I'm the fan of just rezone everything how we want it.

I don't subscribe to the county's current approach and have it.

There's something we said for that.

Then you make it easy for developers to do the density that you want because one of the reasons you didn't get into too much was just the pain.

And you talked about the timeframe, but also just, yeah, people have gotten fed up and just left.

Just so under our last question here on additional topics, it's actually easy because it's the same topic I was talking about earlier, which is the question that I asked you.

and your additional, it's actually, I think you've heard his theme, right?

We made a density infill bonus, like I mentioned before, for Charlottesville, where you had to put in so much low impact development in order to get the density bonus.

And that's what the beginning thing about the question is important because it would figure out exactly why

And also keep in mind that we're talking about a generation.

So, you know, this is a different generation.

So as you're asking these questions, also ask people to sort of not talk about what their own interest is, but also be thinking about what might be possible 25 years from now.

Because as Kevin has reminded me, sometimes even Vytaut says yes, you know, one is going to be built, one is probably going to be done.

Well, it's probably not going to start until six years from now.

And it's like, well, that means it's not going to be finished until 10 years from now.

So we're right at 5.30.

Corey, Vlad, thank you very much.

It's been really helpful.

I'm going to take advantage of this one last thing to say.

climate integration, right?

And we've talked about that, the climate action plan, making sure that that's integrated.

And then one other, sorry, is time.

So who's what?

Time.

Okay.

So when we think about density, when we think about increasing density, bringing that in, what is the, and it was brought up that market influences are an issue.

If it takes two to three years to get a rezoning,

Those market influences change and it's outside of the control of the developer and the developer cannot plan appropriately their pro forma or business plan to meet the, you know, it's like crystal ball.

So with that, I will adjourn us to the next commission meeting, which will be a serene convening in Lane Auditorium at 6pm.