Planning Commission Regular Meeting   10/24/2023

So welcome to our work session.

First and foremost, I want to thank our partners in economic development for joining us this evening.

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

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

And so with that, I'll call this work session to order.

And let's establish a quorum.

And Ms.

Sure, thank you so much.

All right, we wish all the well wishes that we can to your loved one, and thank you for joining us.

OK, second.

All right, any further discussion?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Other matters not listed on the agenda from the public.

And for those who are joining us, just a gentle reminder that we will not be taking public comment in terms of the presentation and work session that we'll be undertaking.

But this is a time, if you like to say anything, that you're more than welcome to.

Anyone in the audience with other matters not listening to the agenda from the public?

Okay, seeing no one rush the podium.

All right, thank you.

Moving on to the consent agenda.

I do not believe there are any items on the consent agenda, so we can go ahead and bypass that, and we will move into the work session.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

All right.

Well, good afternoon.

My name is JT Newberry, and I'm currently the interim director of economic development.

And I'm excited to be here with my team today to provide an overview of economic development.

My understanding is that the commission will be soon reviewing the updated chapter of the economic development

Chapter in the AC44 update.

So today seemed like a timely opportunity to talk about what we've been up to.

So first I'd like to introduce my team.

With me today is Deputy County Executive Trevor Henry and Assistant County Executive Emily Kilroy.

Ashley Hernandez-Rina, our business development manager, unfortunately had to go home sick today.

But I will be referring to her, I think, throughout the presentation.

She's a key member of our team.

And I'd also like to introduce the newest member of our team, Liz Hatcher.

who's with us right behind us.

And I think in addition to that core team that works with me in the economic development office, a phrase that's often talked about is economic development as a team sport.

And so I want to take an opportunity to talk about some of the internal partners that we have within the building that we work with very often.

First would be Andy Herrick and his colleagues in the county attorney's office.

A lot of our work is based in performance agreements, which requires a lot of legal review.

We also work closely with community development, finance, facilities and environmental services.

So they're a key part of our team.

We could not do what we do without their help.

It also raises the external partners that we work with.

We'll talk more about this later under Goal 6.

But there's a number of just tremendous organizations that are doing really meaningful work in our community in this area.

And we're lucky to be able to partner with them on these goals.

adopted by the community and Project Enable and so we'll talk more about that later.

There's also public sector entities at the regional and state level that are key partners to what we do.

So we have kind of two presentations for you today.

The first will be about 20 slides, and I'll go through the first six goals, and then Emily Kilroy will take over for goal seven.

We'd like to take your questions at that point before we turn it over to Deputy County Executive Trevor Henry to talk about Rivanna Futures, one of the most significant projects the county's undertaken in recent history.

So just to give a little bit of a background and kind of breadcrumbs to how we got here today, the Economic Development Office wasn't formally created until 2015, but the Board of Supervisors was putting resources to the side in the early aughts, the mid-aughts, putting money aside, recognizing that there was gonna be projects that they would like to undertake

and making sure that there were resources available for it.

In the middle of 2017, and I should have started by saying a lot of this history is available in the first pages, I provided a bound copy of Project Enable for you to take home and to put you to bed at night.

So in mid-2017, I think a really key aspect of our history is when the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors, and our Economic Development Authority came together to adopt guiding principles.

Those were key for developing the rest of Project ENABLE, which you find on the subsequent pages in your bound booklet.

So staff took about six months or so to develop the goals, objectives, and strategies we'll talk about today.

The board formally accepted that at the end of 2018.

We had a little less than 18 months until the pandemic hit.

So in March of 2020,

We really had to pause our efforts on Project ENABLE and look at something we ended up calling a business continuity strategy.

So that's where we were pivoting from all the goals and things that we'll talk about today to really just baseline, secure the foundation sorts of efforts.

One of the things our office was really involved in was distributing support money throughout the community.

We distributed over $5 million with the help of our partners and support from the Board of Supervisors to organizations in the community that were providing critical services.

So as the pandemic began to wane, then we could get back to Project Enable and I'm

Happy to say that our community is somewhat insulated from many of the economic shocks that impact the world.

They still affect us, but not as much as other places.

And so we've had, I think, significant progress on achieving many of the goals that we'll talk about.

And then we just end this slide by trying to root it back again.

The whole conversation today is really meant in preparation for what will the economic development chapter in the new comp plan say.

The board was very clear that all of our work was to be consistent with the comprehensive plan.

And it will be an important part of our work going forward as we work under AC44.

So I'll start by going through each of the first six goals.

And much like the comp plan, we tried to order our goals in some order of priority.

And so we start with our business retention and expansion program.

This is a fundamental service of every economic development office in the country.

This is where we're going out and meeting with businesses, finding out what their challenges are, and trying to come up with customized solutions to help them overcome those.

We have a specific position in the office dedicated specifically for this purpose.

That's Ashley's role.

She and I have had a lot of great experiences going out into the community and figuring out what are the things that businesses are really struggling with.

For an example of BRE, I felt, you know, willow tree hits across a number of different goals, but

Primarily, I wanted to talk about this was a company that was at risk of leaving our community.

They had opportunities in North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado.

Excuse me.

And so it was through our MOU with the city that they knocked on our door and said, hey, this company is thinking about leaving.

Is there any place that the county can help them land?

And so

We undertook the public-private partnership that resulted in the redevelopment of Woollen Mills.

And this company is now thriving.

You probably heard in the not too distant past that they were purchased for over a billion dollars.

They're now over 300 employees.

Their parent company, which is Canadian,

has really encouraged them to continue to do what they do best, continue investing here, continue growing here.

And from all of our conversations with them, they intend to do so.

Goal two is improving the business climate.

And this is really trying to get at addressing controllable barriers.

Two companies that really exemplify this goal would be Bonamos on Pantops and then Castle Hill Gaming in Stonefield.

So I'll talk about those briefly for just a moment.

Bonamose was thriving in our community, received investment from major companies like Hershey and Domino Sugar, and they were looking for where they could do their next expansion, and ultimately landed at the State Farm Building, but not without significant challenges.

The owner of that building was not interested in leasing space of less than at least 100,000 square feet,

and Bonamose was really looking for only about 50,000.

The zoning of the site required a special exception, which to complete R&D activities, there was a maximum of 4,000 square feet permitted, and the board authorized a special exception for them to exceed that.

I'm happy to say they are thriving there.

They've invested well over $25 million in that site.

They continue to grow.

They continue to

execute on their plans for national and international growth.

And so they're headquartered right here in the county.

Castle Hill Gaming was a company that was located further up Route 29.

And they were looking for a place within an opportunity zone.

The county has two opportunity zones.

And through a connection to a developer that was gonna build just a residential site, we were able to have a conversation and say, hey, look, if you were willing to build a first floor of non-residential, we know a tenant that is credit worthy that would be interested in your space.

And so through making that connection, that facilitated a height special exception to go up another floor.

And so now there's a headquarters for Castle Hill Gaming produces gaming machines that are located throughout the United States.

Some of the jobs that are located here I think are really interesting.

It's things like artists, mathematicians,

as well as coders and things like that.

So they're currently contributing to that daily population within Stonefield and that midweek commercial activity for their business.

Goal three is the longest and most dense goal in the plan.

And a few of the things I won't hit on all the objectives but a few of them that I wanted to touch on.

You'll hear more about later tonight, which is North Fork.

A specific strategy in our plan is to support North Fork's success.

And so on the right hand side of the screen is the beginning of the extension of Lewis and Clark Drive.

And some of the things where we were involved with that was just trying to expedite the permitting to

get that project, get the shovels in the ground, get that project moving.

Earlier this year, we were awarded in concert with the UVA Foundation a $3 million grant from the Virginia, from the Economic Development Partnership, the state economic development agency.

And so we're looking to prepare a little over 30 acres for an economic development prospect.

The other two companies that I'd like to mention are related to Target Industries, are biotech and agribusinesses.

So Potter's Craft Cider has benefited from multiple expansions that were supported and then matched at the local level.

They have certainly their tasting room.

You may be familiar with down Route 29 South, but they also have a new production facility on Broadway Street.

They are expanding production.

They're distributing across the mid-Atlantic and even further west.

They're doing extremely well.

That's another example of a company that was at risk of leaving our community without support.

And then the middle company, Acrospheres, this is an example of

commercialized intellectual property that's spurring out of the University of Virginia.

And so the two gentlemen flanking are supervisors and the governor are the co-founders of this company.

They have an environmentally friendly pesticide that has the potential to change the world.

They've got significant investment from companies like Bayer that are helping them execute on their plans.

Another objective within this goal I wanted to mention

A big part of Project Enable was getting tools in the toolbox.

We didn't have any economic development policies at all before Project Enable was adopted.

And so Potter's Craft, Agrospheres, and many others have benefited from us developing policy, providing certainty to businesses that are facing tough business decisions around where they want to invest next and whether or not the county can be a durable partner to them.

So goal four is really fun.

It's all about public-private partnerships.

Two projects that you may be familiar with are Barnes Lumber and Albemarle Business Campus.

In the case of Barnes Lumber, we're utilizing financing tools like a synthetic TIF to help offset some of the developers' investment there.

Likewise, we're doing the same thing at Albemarle Business Campus.

Our contributions are contributing to the built environment.

They're securing public elements that have been requested through the comp plan process.

So as you think about the AC44 update and other chapters, we look to the comp plan to figure out what are those elements that can be included in a performance agreement that we can help secure through our office's efforts.

Goal five talks about educating the community.

We found through the development of Project Enable that many members of our community misunderstood what the intent of economic development was and what our goals were going to be.

So a big part of what we do is just trying to get the word out.

A picture in the top right-hand corner is Ashley talking about our buy local program.

If you flip through your bound version of Project Enable, you found a bilingual sticker that's for free.

That's a present you can take.

We utilize LinkedIn for a lot of our social media presence.

We do print stories through publications like Albemarle magazine.

The other thing that I think is important to note is we developed a standalone economic development website.

You all have probably heard that site selection as businesses are looking at expansion can often better be described as site elimination where you have people who are doing research on your community and trying to figure out if they might be an appropriate place for that expansion.

and without ever talking to anybody at all.

So we have this website up to help market our community, not necessarily to people who are outside, but even businesses that are looking to expand right here.

So goal six, and this is the last goal that I'll talk about, is about partnerships.

Our county executive often talks about partnerships, and I would say it's an essential part of what we do.

Every single organization you see on the screen here is one that we have a financial relationship with to achieve a goal or strategy in Project Enable.

And as I said at the beginning, we could not accomplish a quarter of what we were trying to do without their help.

Partnerships are not easy.

They require compromise and give and take and a lot of time and input.

But I would argue that it's been worth it in each of these instances.

And if anyone has questions about any of these, we can talk more about those.

I'm stuck on.

Is it evening yet or is it still afternoon?

Hello, Emily Kilroy.

I'm going to talk a little bit about Goal 7.

And the reason that JT asked me to do that is because I serve on behalf of the county as one of the staff appointments to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

And that is the main way that Albemarle County works in the tourism sector through our participation on the CACBB.

So Goal 7 is to partner to expand efforts to build the county's tourism sector.

And this is just a little bit of data.

This comes from the Virginia Tourism Corporation.

They keep this statewide as well as by locality.

The most recent data available is year 2022.

So that's the most current that they have.

You'll note a couple of things.

One is that obviously the pandemic happened.

You can see that 2020 bar

dropped very low.

You'll recall that at that time travel really slammed to a halt really across the world.

2021, there was a bit of a recovery greater than certainly folks had projected and a lot of that became due to changing travel preferences during that period where things didn't feel quite open but things were no longer

feeling unsafe to travel.

And so we feel a niche of a really great place to spend a couple of nights located within a short drive of a lot of major metropolitan areas.

And so there was an increase in tourism, a really strong recovery from the 2020 low.

And you can see really great news.

2022, we actually exceeded our pre-pandemic tourism numbers, which was really exciting.

to see as staffing has stabilized at a lot of the sector, the service providers in the sector.

And it's been a great time to visit Albemarle County and Charlottesville.

Visitor spending is a little over half a billion dollars, so it is one of the major sectors driving the Albemarle economy.

Nine percent

of all county jobs are sustained by tourism and that is direct service at lodging and tourist destinations but also you know they attribute some of the indirect and induced effects of having visitors in the area eating lunch and doing some shopping while they're in town as well.

Visitors generated almost 40 million dollars in state and local taxes.

Recent accolades were great.

We are a great place to visit.

Wine Enthusiast Magazine has Charlottesville, Virginia in a broad sense of the word Charlottesville as one of the top five wine regions for 2023.

So we are a finalist and we'll expect to hear back on that.

in just a couple of weeks.

Really exciting recognition just to be on a list with Limbrisco, Italy, Provence, France, Australia, South Africa are also on the top five list.

So it's a huge recognition just to be on a list with some really strong

wine producing regions.

We're also just named one of the top happiest towns from outside, which is a publication that's web and magazine, as well as seven best US cities and towns to see fall foliage.

Again, a lot of those show up as Charlottesville, but what they're actually talking about is a lot of the amenities and opportunities that we have in Albemarle, and we're very proud of that.

So I mentioned the CACBB.

That's the agency that promotes tourism for our region.

It's a destination marketing and management organization.

That's an industry term that describes the work that they do.

It's funded through a portion of the lodging tax and that's generated by overnight stays in the community.

They focus on marketing our region.

They provide visitor resources ahead of and during travel.

and they also work hard to increase visibility of and support for underrepresented tourism segments and so some of the work over the past several years

on the left side of your screen.

Tourism for All is an initiative to show our community as a place that's welcoming to all visitors.

One of the sub-brands that CACVB works on as an initiative that has a lot of direct marketing and influencer type engagement is Discover Black Seaville to highlight the Black business owners, Black restaurateurs, and to really show that this community is a welcoming place for all kinds of visitors.

Another example of that work is a partnership with Wheel of the World, which directly engages some of our tourism destinations in evaluating how accessible is

their facility and their tours and other amenities for folks who navigate in a wheelchair.

And so that's some really great focused work that CACBB has been leading, which has some really great impacts on the tourism sector overall.

The CACBB Management Board has 15 members.

As I said, I'm the staff person for Albemarle County.

There's one staff person, one elected official from Albemarle in Charlottesville and 14 industry representatives.

In the years since Project Enable was created, there's a new executive director at the CACBB.

That board composition has shifted a bit and they've launched what is the current brand logo, the Charlottesville Albemarle County, Virginia,

And there's a really exciting project that's just launched to do the first long-term strategic tourism marketing plan, which will give really a roadmap to the organization on how to focus their efforts moving forward.

These are the marketing pillars.

It won't surprise you that farm-to-table food and beverage that encompasses both our excellent restaurants, but also wineries, breweries, and cideries.

and distilleries as a real poll for folks to come visit us.

There's culture and history, world class amenities with small town charm, outdoor recreation and a vibrant art, live entertainment and festival sector.

Obviously, Monticello remains a big draw.

The University of Virginia obviously brings a lot of folks through our community, and they are counted in those numbers as well.

But we have a lot of really great things that pull people in to stay once they've decided to make that investment in those singular destinations.

And that is all I have.

Happy to take any questions.

Sure.

First and foremost, thank you all for the rich conversation and presentation.

And I'll open up to the commission.

Do my colleagues have any questions regarding the presentation?

Very timely, too.

Thank you.

So I'll start to my right.

Thank you for the presentation.

It was a nice overview of all the goals and some of the good examples of things that are going on.

I was curious to hear more about sort of public-private partnerships and how that's been going over the last few years.

Yes, so thank you for the question.

We have

I'm not sure how many we have exactly right now.

We have a total of 19 different performance agreements where we're administering right now.

probably seven or eight public-private partnerships.

A number of, I would say we have a handful or so that are in development in terms of trying to figure out if there's the opportunity to where it would make sense for us to partner with someone on a particular project.

They are, you know, when I was, previous to joining the economic development office, I was in the community development department for a number of years.

I thought that some of our projects took a long time, and I didn't know that you can spend years working on public-private partnerships in the economic development world.

So Willow Tree being a good example, those discussions started in 2017, completed in 2018, and we'll continue to administer that for another couple of years.

So those are long-term projects and it's still exciting.

I hear about shovel-ready sites, the pads where business could come and locate in and off you go.

That's an excellent question.

Site readiness is one of the biggest challenges to business investment in our community.

We have, the state has a five tier system to categorize the readiness of a site.

Five being ready for construction to begin, permits are already in hand.

One being raw land that's outside of the growth area that's not even being contemplated for development.

We, the, I would say a major goal of most communities is to have a diversity of product at a Tier 4 level.

We currently have one site in the county that is Tier 4.

That's North Fork.

They have 253 acres that are characterized by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership as Tier 4.

Excuse me, anything else, Commissioner?

Anything else?

Yeah, I was glad to see outdoor recreation mentioned as one of the marketing pillars for tourism.

I'd like to see an objective related to preserving and promoting Albemarle's recreation economy, which among other things includes running, cycling, hiking, kayaking, fishing, camping, botany, and bird watching.

as somebody who spends a lot of time outdoors myself and who's spent thousands of my own dollars visiting other communities and locally and being outdoors and doing things running or botany.

I think it's not something that we're really doing enough to recognize the financial impact of that.

If you just look at one thing like the Charlottesville Tim Miler, for example,

All the people that travel here to go to that race, who go and stay in a hotel, eat a restaurant, maybe do some shopping.

I think that there's a big impact of that when you consider all the running races, all the cycling races, all the people who come here to fish or birdwatch or do any of that.

It's a huge impact.

I'd just like to see some recognition of it.

I did like your example of Willow Tree, which I thought was a really good example of sustainable redevelopment.

And I think anything you can do to beef up the objectives concerning redevelopment and encouraging redevelopment is an important thing.

You had several great examples in your presentation of redevelopment projects that you had supported, so I'd like to see more of that.

and then a very small thing under job education to I'd like to see

As someone who's worked sort of environmental circles, you know, now we have a lot of funding through the state for things like stormwater and native plants.

It'd be great to have some training for people.

We have to search very different, you know, the stormwater conservation district has had to do a lot of searching for people who are qualified to know how to manage stormwater or to install a rain garden or a biofilter.

And these are great jobs for people.

Thank you.

That's great feedback.

Actually, I'll go online.

Don't want to forget my colleague here.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I wanted to do a plus one to Commissioner Murray about really promoting the natural beauty of this area.

For example, birders as tourists spend more than most all other types of tourists.

I don't know if it's all the binoculars they need or all the yummy food they want to eat after they bird, but

Those are very lucrative types of tourists to attract.

But I really wanted to see if there's, and I don't expect an answer now, but if there could be more emphasis placed on helping to attract and grow small businesses.

You know, we talk about the University of Virginia and the incubation opportunities there.

I was a professor at UVA and then I started a small business that had one employee, which was me, and now is 18 employees.

Small businesses make up 99.5%

of all businesses and there's more than 766,000 small businesses in Virginia.

Most of the new companies that are startups are started as small businesses and I think that, in my opinion, we don't do quite enough it's always I guess more

I want to use the word sexy, but it's more attractive to talk about saving a company that maybe had 50 jobs or 100 jobs.

But these entrepreneurial startups really are very popular in our area.

And I would like to see an emphasis on more of the startup services as part of our economic development strategies.

Because those startups, once they get up,

can end up being a significant part of our economy.

So I just giving a plug for not only focusing on the larger companies and not just on the breweries and salaries, but also on all different kinds of other tech firms and other sort of intellectual based small businesses, not just the sort of mom and pop shops.

But I think I've made my point, so I'll stop.

All right, thank you, Commissioner Firehock.

Great, thank you.

Thanks for your presentations.

Really impressive.

And I've got to say, you guys have made light year movement over the last several years.

So congratulations.

Also, I do have to say separately, it's been great to partner with you all and really look forward to doing that.

I'm sorry I took my hat off for a second.

Switching hats.

A couple of quick questions.

One is,

How can we be most helpful?

So you mentioned elements that can be included in a performance agreement, part of a comp plan, be part of the comp plan.

Yeah.

Thank you for that question.

I thought about that as I was thinking about the presentation this afternoon.

The broadest stroke to answer that question, I think, is just keeping us as a part of the conversation.

And I realize that's a two way street and that, you know, I acknowledge personally I could do a better job of communicating

some of our initiatives and things that we have going on.

Got it.

Thanks.

A couple of questions about your

fancy document that came with a free gift.

Uh I am looking on Let's see.

Gosh, what page was it?

It's where you listed the businesses, the business areas of business focus.

Yeah, it's going to be towards the the beginning.

So it talks about recommended target industries.

And maybe this is getting a little bit to what my colleagues had mentioned.

Have you thought, you mentioned agribusiness, but thinking about the volume of rural area that we have in the county, have there been initiatives to partner with agriculture that maybe aren't really what we typically think of as in terms of light industry?

At the state level, there's a lot of interest in controlled environmental agriculture, where there are, you know, vertical grow houses and aquaculture and all sorts of things.

That is currently a priority of the governor's administration.

When you look at the utilities that are required for some of those types of uses, our current policies do present some challenges to that.

Throughout any business or company that's looking at Albemarle County, we first start with the comp plan.

Yeah, exactly.

Just a couple more quick questions, sorry.

The CACVB, those were really amazing stats, especially the one that showed the growth of like the decrease during COVID and then the increase and then the increase and how we're from what was a 400 million up to 500 plus million now.

It's a great question.

I think Emily Kilroy, what are your rules?

I'm used to presenting it.

It's a little bit sight to be seen.

And some of the things that drive that, that make that hard to land are coming out of the pandemic, there was an industry term that I have come to very much appreciate, which is called revenge travel.

And that is everyone who had to put off a big trip

and then suddenly everyone in America found themselves in Rome last summer because they had all planned in 2020 or 2021 or 2022 to mark a big anniversary or life event to take those trips.

And so at some point, the revenge travel will end.

And so what does that look like long term?

Again, we had a buoying effect as being a good destination from Washington, D.C.

and the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina.

And so it's something that they're watching very closely.

Monthly, the CACBB gets reports on hotel occupancy data.

And we continue month, you know, when you look at the months across several years, we continue to see some pretty strong

occupancy data in light and even despite fairly high when you look at historical trends average rates for rooms and so it does seem like even with really high room rates folks are still really wanting to come here

University is obviously a huge impact of that.

The economic impact report for the defense sector showed that there's a lot of visitation, overnight visitations that are driven by Rivanna Station and they obviously continue to increase their presence in the community.

So it's hard to know, but it's something that the CACBB is looking at really closely and continuing to really focus on building the, what are the destinations here.

And so to Ms.

Firehock's point, we're a competitive wine region, partially because the wine that we grow here, or the grapes that we grow here, you don't grow wine, are producing really great wines and our vintners are producing really great wines from them.

but it feels different than standing in a city drinking wine in a wine shop.

And so part of it really is the sense of place that you get and the visuals that you get from drinking at a winery in Albemarle.

Great, thank you.

Last question, I promise.

Zoning modernization.

So as we think through that, it would be helpful, and maybe this is less of a question, you're probably already doing this, but as you think about the zoning designations,

thinking about how intertwined or how it's beneficial to intertwine uses into zoning designations that are beneficial for all of the things we think about, like sustainability, et cetera, but also economic development, mixed use, 24-7 live, work, play, all of those kinds of characteristics and how that can be incorporated.

Again, part of how we can help.

Mr. Carrazano.

Thank you.

This was this was really helpful and very enlightening in many ways.

And there are some things that I wasn't aware of, even the amount of partnering that you were doing with adaptive reuse, in particular, which is my that's my second question.

But my first question is, so can you talk a little bit about the affordability of commercial property?

and the viability of commercial property currently here in Albemarle County.

We've had, just to give you a little bit of context on the question, we've had during the last year, a number of resubmissions to reduce the amount of commercial property in the developments.

And it's because of affordability, because of demand.

So can you talk a little bit about that?

What are some mitigating factors that you feel are out there that we can begin to look at?

And back to Commissioner Missel's question, what are some things that we can perhaps help?

But that's a challenge that we're seeing where it's a reduction of commercial property, perhaps new development of commercial property.

Perhaps there's certainly

I wish I had a great answer for you.

sector, but I can share that from what I've heard from commercial property owners is that they're seeing lower demand than they have seen previously.

The macroeconomic shifts of shoppers for things like retail and things like that moving to online away from brick and mortar

the challenges with rising costs and inflation to do any sort of, you know, if you're going to change a commercial space from one use to another, is a small business owner going to be able to put a couple hundred thousand dollars into renovating a space so that it can be, it can accommodate that use.

So it feels like, and you know, I'm really shooting from the hip here, that there are just more and more challenges to

commercial property, whereas the demand for residential is so strong.

And the fact that not everybody has to own a business, but everybody needs a place to live, the demand is just so much more certain.

And for banks that are financing these things, they feel a lot more comfortable with residential projects than commercial ones.

So I think there's a lot of complicating factors, but I could probably just leave it there.

So the second part of my question is with adaptive reuse and I completely agree with your assessment.

I think these challenges will probably continue for a few years and the amount of new commercial property that we'll be bringing online probably reduced.

And so the question and comment is, does that now provide an opportunity for adaptive reuse?

So what do we do with the current inventory that we have?

which was built at a lower price point.

So perhaps there's opportunities there to bring in businesses in an affordable rate.

Do we incentivize adaptive reuse?

Are we partnering?

And of course you gave some example, the Wilentry being one of them, but how are we partnering with companies to incentivize adaptive reuse?

I think we do have a greater opportunity today and moving forward than we have previously.

And one of the tools in the toolbox that has not been used by our community yet is something called a building reuse grant.

Can you repeat that again?

It's a building reuse grant.

And it's specifically geared towards a target industry company that's expanding here.

The exact example I gave where maybe there's

some sort of capital investment that is going to make it cost prohibitive for them to be here.

Just to give some some really quick, you know, regionally, we talk with businesses that, particularly in industrial areas, that would say, you know, I could locate my business in to the east or to the west, you know, Luisa, Fluvanna or Waynesboro, you know, not for

half price, but even less than half price of what it would be to locate here.

And so it becomes increasingly difficult for business owners to choose to invest here when there's that dynamic at play.

I think even with our grant, we're still asking businesses to do more than they may be able to do.

So we have other state grants that support those kinds of costs.

There's also an adoption of the Virginia Building Code that makes it a little bit easier to go into existing buildings than new construction.

So we have some, I think, tailwinds that will help.

I think creating the opportunity for the private sector to test that out would be a great opportunity for us to think more deeply about and consider.

Commissioner Bivins.

Thank you, Chair.

Good to see you, Jason.

Good to see you.

So part of what we're talking about when we talk about economic development is about how good are we about future casting.

That's all what this is about here.

How at this point in time in 2023 can I look somewhere down the line and say these are the kinds of businesses and these are the kinds of individuals we would like to have in our community.

And so part of what I'm asking, and so I see the recommended target industries, and I think there's an acknowledgement, at least there's an acceptance and acknowledgement with me, that these are sort of rarefied business functions that could actually be anywhere in the world.

If I'm in a bioscience or a medical device, I don't have to be here.

We have a good medical device business that took over the former post office distribution center up on Airport Road, but they don't have to be there.

And if I look at sort of business and financial services, I would be, if I were on the board, I would be cautious about that industry because that industry is in such dynamic flux right now that it's not sure what it's gonna look like even in just two years.

and depending on the administrations in Washington, there's no telling what might happen in the financial services area.

So the information technology and defense and security, we all know the Rivanna Station, I think it's called Rivanna Station.

The Rivanna Station project is in fact something because of the land mass and the proximity to Washington and depending on where they put those buildings that are going to leave Washington.

actually could be an anchor for this community.

So the whole idea is about what do we anchor in this community that allows us to stake a claim on being a special place, okay?

If I were an autocrat for a few moments, I would like call us Albemarle.

I would figure out a way for us to stop being Charlottesville.

Let's let that hang out there for a second.

Because I think it dilutes our brand.

Let me give you an example of that.

Some of you know that I've lived a lot of places in the world.

Anything that goes on, friends of mine say, is it safe to be in Charlottesville?

In 2017, I had friends from around the world WhatsApp-ing me and DM-ing me and asking me, are you safe?

Are you and my spouse safe here?

Everything, whether or not it's The Guardian or it's Le Monde or it's, we don't need to go any farther than that.

When they say about what's happening in America, they always give an example of Charlottesville.

Of which, while that's really nice, it is not helpful.

It is not helpful when people look to bring businesses to town.

and when they say Charlottesville, they see crime, they see dysfunctional governing in our sister city.

They see things which they're not used to as someone who grew up in Northeast distinguishing between a county and a city.

They do not understand the separate jurisdictions there.

Most business owners, unless they came from Massachusetts or Kentucky or someplace like that, don't understand the separateness between jurisdictions of counties and cities.

And so how we do that, I think, is to brand ourselves in some way, and I know I'm speaking into the wind here, but that's what I'm doing, is to brand ourselves as Albemarle County.

This is Albemarle County.

This is not the city of Charlottesville.

That's one of the things that I think there's a deficit there.

I think I would like to hear as when you come back to us, I think you're coming back to us for really sort of a work session on the comp plan at some point to sort of say, here are the things which we hear from our business partners that keeps them from coming from making a different decision.

Okay.

You talk of JT, you talk about what it takes to get things through economic development.

I'm still waiting on some projects to be built from 12 years ago.

And people can say, you know, it's because of the economy of the project.

Okay, that might be true.

But I think sometimes it's because the ROI on the project doesn't have a natural light to how I can sustain this in the future.

So making the drawing the nexus between this investment allows you to both have this type of ROI and allows us to have an investment, which I think is a piece that here I'm coming to on this one, is that in your in your group of people that you interact with here, I would love to see some conversation about what you're doing with Albemarle School System.

The reason I say that is because we've got one center one.

We've got a center one that's over there in what used to be, in my mind, the Condell Building.

That's some special name now, but in my mind, it will always be the Condell Building.

And then we have a center two, which I think we just talked about.

I'm looking to my left here, which will probably be on the Lambs Lane campus.

I don't think I'm giving anything away on that.

I'm hoping it's going to be on the Lamb's Land campus.

My piece there is that that's a distinct sort of two distinct places that are trying to give young people an avenue to a life after high school so they can stay here.

Because one of the things I'd actually like to see as you're talking about economic development, what do we lose every year?

What do we lose when people graduate from the various places they can graduate?

Not necessarily university, because the university has become much more of a national place than it used to be, just feeding the minds that are from this region.

But could you just know how many of our people leave?

Because then, in fact, we're talking about the new economic development is for people that we're attracting here.

Karen said we're not trying to build people here.

We're not trying to build a solution that helps us to sustain and to develop an ecosystem that allows us to sort of create forward thinking and future casting for economic development here.

I would also, I think it would be helpful to know what drives tourism here.

What does drive tolerism here?

This is where everybody knows my little piece here is that while I believe that some people go up to Mickey Tavern and have some fried chicken on their way from going to Monticello, I don't believe that Monticello's numbers drive the way they do now.

And the reason I don't believe that, because I read their documents.

Their documents say their numbers are down.

Because they're asking for too much money.

When they ask for too much money for gifts, that tells me something's wrong from another part of my life.

So I want to know what are the elements that are driving the tourist economy here.

We all knew at one point we were either the number one or number two bridal destination in America.

And from what I understand from some people who still get married that that's $100,000, $50,000.

That could be $100,000 or $50,000 weekend.

I'd say, don't put it in Bitcoin.

I don't know if you want to put it in that.

And so what's driving the economy when we look at tourism?

Because then you start thinking about what are the auxiliary sort of businesses we want to try and attract here to sustain that, whether or not it's birding.

whether or not it's outdoor bicycle off-road, not whatever that cross-bicycle stuff is, whether it's that kind of stuff.

And how do we advertise that in a way that lets people know on a national level that this is a place you can do that, because we have a brilliant airport.

I can be anywhere in the world in one stop out of that airport.

And so that means that, no, it's not Dulles, but who wants to go to Dulles?

And no, it's not Richmond, but it is Charlottesville.

It's easy to get to.

It's easy to use and win.

Yeah, I know.

I'd like to call it Albemarle Airport, but I know I'm getting in trouble for that.

That's what I like to call it.

It's like Albemarle, Charlottesville, Albemarle.

and when we start later on this afternoon, when we talk about what might be happening at Northpaw, we're starting to create this sort of mass there that says come to Albemarle County.

So I'm just thinking about what are the things that come to Albemarle County.

I will say to the CACB, Emily, when I, there's a bunch of things that I get a hold of, something called Thrillist, Axios DC, Axios Richmond, when they talk about wine, they never talk about it.

They always talk about Northern Virginia.

Oh, you can go to Loudoun County or you can go to Delaplane or you can go to Fokia County for wine.

They never talk about here.

It's like, come here.

So when you're talking to the CACB, tell them they need to get in those people's ears and tell them they need to come here because we're actually a better place.

I won't say we're a better place than Middleburg, but.

Yeah, I'll let somebody else say that.

But we have more to do if you come here than just to go to Middleburg or to go to Delaplaine or go to the Inn in Paris, Virginia.

So this whole idea about are we looking at our high schools and are we talking to them and talking to the possible businesses about how those young people can get jobs that aren't PhDs and that are not sort of very specialized sort of technique and that we can groom them in the way that things used to happen in the business where you'd bring somebody in, they'd work for a while and they may stay with you for 10 years.

because that's the kind of business depth instead of depth of business that we're doing here.

The whole idea that if we could somehow or another stop being Charlottesville but be Albemarle and lift up the whole idea that this is Albemarle County and this is why this is the place you want to come to.

And then thinking about what are the things if tourism is where we're going.

People heard me talk about tourism.

What are the natural bits of tourism that we can speak to?

Even if you just look at the sister state next to us, which is West Virginia, what they are doing is with the visa v selling their tourism with pictures and magazines and things like in stores and things like that.

It's not what we're doing.

And maybe we can learn something from them choosing that.

But then finally, finally, I don't know what it would be like for the county or for you because you can do it.

The county can't do it.

to take equity positions in place in firms that you think have a tremendous upside.

The reason I like that is because my fear with Willowtree is that Willowtree could actually pick up and go if the Canadians decided that they didn't want to be here anymore.

It was a little difficult to do that if you either own some of the debt or you actually have some people on their small boards advising them.

So then, in fact, those decisions have to go through another level of putting a little drag on those decisions as opposed to those decisions being external to this community.

So how do we sort of help them do what they do, but how do we also not let those decisions be outside of our influence?

because sometimes when it's outside of our influence, we don't have a way of keeping or keeping something from happening as well.

And, you know, business organizations tend to look for the least place they can go with the least resistance.

That's just, you know, it's like water.

And then the last thing on the last slide that was on there for that, where was that auditorium?

The auditorium that was on the last slide, is that the one that's down, is that the, there was this fabulous auditorium, is that the, what's that the building downtown across from the Omele?

The code building, was that the code building?

You can bring it back.

And it better be Charlottesville, Albemarle.

But I have that.

Where's that?

Is that the code building?

No.

OK.

If it's not the code building, don't put any slides on each of them.

That's not us.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Okay.

Thank you.

And, uh, well, I was gonna ask a couple of questions.

Sure.

Uh, and I just wanted to, um, uh, so plus one, commissioner Firehawk talking about sort of small business and entrepreneurship and services and resources for that.

kind of development.

It's implied in a lot of these, but more explicit.

But then also speaking to something Commissioner Bivins said, that since that when you have a private owner that can sell it off and just pick up the move anytime, you know, I grew up in West Virginia where that happened, you know, like we're all excited about, you know, auto parts manufacturer and they got great tax credit for 20 years and then they left.

and that was that.

One of the things I might add on to what Commissioner Firehock was saying was, and I also like this politically too, would be to consider being sort of a pioneer in services and resources to cooperative businesses.

that are worker-owned, that benefit the members of those enterprises, extending our political democracy into an economic democracy.

We're in that community where that solidarity economy I think would fly well.

I see a lot of things out there about entrepreneurship and very little about support to cooperative enterprises where people are very smart, want to do good business work, and often can't find financing because it's just not normal.

And so that's just something for aspirational whenever we talk about economic stuff.

And also, they're going to be less likely to pick up and go if they're co-op.

Well, I did have a couple of questions.

Commissioner Firehock, I definitely will come back to you.

I had a couple of questions.

I would like you to maybe expand on this a little bit.

And one is going back to Commissioner Bivins.

I flagged it and it was around the biggest pain points, right?

It's like in those unsuccessful pursuits.

And I'm trying to glean information that might inform our planning.

So what are some of those things that kind of rise to the top?

Is it workforce development?

Is it utilities and site readiness, affordable housing?

Yeah, I'll try to be brief just recognizing the Rivanna Futures content is still ahead of us.

The biggest pain point is talent and the barriers to talent being here.

So more than ever before economic development is talking about housing, we're talking about child care, we're talking about access to health care.

I would say services that

have not been discussed in any meaningful way from an economic development perspective.

You see even some local governments investing in this kind of infrastructure now as a way to ensure their residents can work there.

That's helpful and kind of a segue to regional partnerships and as you are partnering with our surrounding counties in the city of Charlottesville, there will be a point in time where we're looking at our borders, right, and we're going to be thinking about that for comprehensive planning.

There will be a time where we're meeting with the Charlottesville City Planning Commission.

Any insights

I would say our region is exceptional and that they truly do work together to retain businesses.

So we benefit tremendously from having a strong relationship with the city as people are thinking about leaving our community.

I think we get a very early knock on the door, Willow Tree being one example of that.

A different example would be MITRE.

located in North Fork, needed additional space to fly drones.

They couldn't fly near the airport near North Fork, and so they obtained space in Orange County.

So we work throughout the region to keep that economic impact here, because we know the dollars from city businesses are going to be spent in the county and vice versa, as well as throughout the region.

So I think, you know,

And if there's anything from a planning perspective as we're looking at the borders and land use, that would be helpful as you sort of, and last question, I do want to move us along.

I know there's a second part to the presentation.

Within the comprehensive plan, I imagine there's sometimes tug and pull with like your goals.

Curious if you could talk a little bit about that as we're undertaking this exercise.

Yeah, there is a natural push and pull.

And I think that we look for opportunities where we can enhance.

So, you know, in the development, can we have natural native plants?

Can we have, you know, greater natural areas, native plants, biofilters, where there may have been something less

I'm going to go to Commissioner Firehock, then I really do want to move us along.

Okay, I'd like to ask a question and then I have three real quick comments.

My question was about, you were talking earlier about providing help to businesses when they had to maybe like retrofit a space to be available and it's true that a lot of like the office space we have is older stock and I've so far done two businesses in Albemarle County where I had to rewire the whole place

because it didn't have fiber in the corner.

And that was really expensive.

That was thousands of dollars in both examples, like well over $10,000.

And I guess, is that the kind of thing that is also available through small business lounge and things?

I mean, because to me that's retrofitting a space so that a modern company can work in it.

The best place to get information on SBA loans through our Small Business Development Center.

OK, and then I have my three quick comments.

Affordable, you talked about some of the limitations as being talent, but I also want to throw out that affordable housing is a real issue.

I just created two new positions in the last month.

and allow both employees to locate closer to Richmond because they couldn't afford, even though I was paying them a good wage,

The rental costs are so exorbitant for someone to get a one bedroom apartment here.

So thinking about ways that we can somehow link, you know, providing housing affordability as part of our, you know, essential for attracting business here.

The other comment is I wanted to go back to something Commissioner Bivins said that I thought was really insightful, which is just that point that

There are companies here, like mine and others, that don't have to be here.

There's no physical reason to be in this county.

But why are we here?

It's because it's so beautiful, the natural environment, the ability to recreate doors, and there is a lot of data out there showing that businesses place a strong importance on the green of the local environment, and I don't think that we're promoting that enough.

Kind of like

Blindness because we are all here and we take it for granted.

But for others, it's amazing to be able to just go out the door and go kayaking or hiking or whatever.

And then the last comment real quick is in other communities, they have things called small business incubators.

And I know you know what those are.

But for small businesses starting up other other cities and communities have like a building where it has like a shared receptionist.

and you know there's an accountant maybe services available but nobody needs an accountant five days a week they just need them one day a week so they sit and they have a conference room but they don't need it to sit empty five you know five hours a day when they're not using it kind of thing but those kind of things would make our area really attractive to startups and I think that you know like I said I go to other cities and they have them and we don't have them here

I know we're not a city, but we've got a lot of things that cities don't have.

Commissioner Bivins was contrasting us to Charlottesville, but some of the things we do have are, like I said, great outdoors, great schools.

I think that we could tout this location to some of those companies that can go anywhere.

anywhere as long as they're near an airport.

And just last real quick, at that point about the Charlottesville airport is well taken because yes, I always have to get a connection out of it.

I fly every week, but I can go anywhere from there without spending an hour and a half at the airport in the first place.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I think we have officially moved into the evening hour, so good evening Chairperson Clayborne, members of the Commission, Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive.

I appreciate being here today and having a chance to talk a little bit about Rivanna Futures or the Rivanna Project.

When JT was first asked to come and do kind of an update on Project Enable,

We thought it might be a good opportunity to get in front of the Planning Commission to talk a little bit about the work that has been going on in earnest over the past couple years, but a lot of work by the staff over the past five or six months related to an acquisition that the county is in the process of making.

My background is that I've been with the county since 2009.

Last time I was in front of the Planning Commission was, I can't remember what it was, but it was when I was involved with capital projects.

I did a lot of capital project management, so that was kind of my entree into the county.

former Navy, and when I moved into the executive office, I became involved with our Defense Affairs Committee, a committee of the chamber.

I'm very active in our defense and DOD community partnership with the state, and that has led to some of the work by the county that I'll talk about.

I have eight slides of content.

I'll move through them pretty quickly, but really just hoping to

to talk a little bit about the what and the why, and then ask for any questions that I can answer.

JT walked through the goals of Project Enable.

The work around Rivanna Station falls squarely under our board's strategic plan, goal two, and then project enables goal one and goal three, specific to retention and expansion, and then a specific call out to our defense industry and supporting that in our region.

I'm going to provide a little bit of background and context.

A lot of folks, when I first moved to the county, I had heard of

and a lot of people refer to Rivanna Station as Injic.

It's interesting, from the map you can see Rivanna Station is right off of Route 29.

It's in the northern part of the county.

It's kind of hidden away.

It is technically a sub-installation of Fort Belvoir.

Fort Belvoir is up

near kind of the Alexandria area.

I happened to be there yesterday meeting with the command staff up there, Mr. Richardson, the county executive, and I. Rivanna Station is what's called a sub-installation.

And they're very specific about that.

It is not a base.

It doesn't have all the amenities.

Fort Belvoir, it's amazing.

It's its own city.

It has 10,000 people that live on it, have base housing.

They have their own public works, their own security, their own emergency management.

Massive.

Rivanna Station does not have that.

It's currently a 75-acre facility.

It is secured perimeter fence line.

They have secured access.

But there are tenants that are there that do the work in the intelligence community, but they don't have all the amenities that a normal base or installation would have.

So the first part of Rivanna Station was built and started in 1997.

The Department of Defense purchased about 25 acres and that's where they built the National Ground Intelligence Center.

That was the first component that was there.

When 9-11 happened, along with some BRAC activities, there were other entities that were built out, which includes the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NGA and DIA, all together

The government has invested about $312 million to Rivanna Station.

You drive up there now and you look to the east as you're driving up past Borders Road, you see a big crane.

There's about a $90 million addition project happening on the station.

I will slip up and I'll call it a base.

It's not a base, so I just, I don't mean to infer that.

but the great thing about the location is it is outside of the turn of DC but it's outside also what's called the blast zone.

This provides a critical national security function and I think the origins of this site and this location has some ties to certainly to our community, to UVA and some of the elements that have been in this ecosystem but it also is a tactical location

It's drivable, but it is outside of kind of that concern and if something untoward were to happen.

And then finally, our veterans of active duty, sorry, Veterans and Defense Affairs Office out of the state, Secretary Crenshaw, his office has often repeated that Rivanna Station is the only facility in the state that has land that is available around it that is not built out.

So it doesn't have an encroached footprint.

Rivanna Station today, I mentioned the three entities.

They support all the intelligence community work.

They provide battlefield intelligence.

They were very active over the 20-year war with Afghanistan.

They are active right now with what's happening in the Middle East.

It's a very critical aspect to our day-to-day defense and national security.

We have the most recent data say there were 2,200 plus civilian and military people that work on the 75 acres.

Our latest meeting with NGIC said that number is closer to 3,000, which reflects a growth in mission and work.

And so it is an anchor

function to our community.

We did, through the chamber, funded a study via Wilton Cooper Center on Economic Analysis of Defense in our region.

For Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and Greene, approximately $1.2 billion annually tied to defense.

That is the number two economic engine behind UVA.

UVA is significantly above that.

But still, that number exceeds by

by about 100% what we thought it was.

And that was data that we had from the state.

That's why we wanted to do a little more of a deep dive.

Nearly 3,000 employees all make on an average of about $100,000 annually.

So this is a good paying job.

And Rivanna Station generates about 52% of the $1.2 billion.

So it is a key engine.

I should note, too, we talked about visitors and tourism.

Prior to the pandemic,

Rivanna Station would report about 12,000, I'm going to air quote, visitors a year.

Now I think these visitors probably took, you know, they stayed in our hotels, they took advantage of our restaurants, they probably hit some of the vineyards and breweries, but they were here for classified visits to the station.

So certainly there's an economic element to that.

I mentioned the Secretary of Veteran and Defense Affairs.

Over the past 15 years or so, about every four or five years, they've done a listening session across the state at all of bases and installations where they meet with representatives.

They call it a non-attributional meeting with representatives from the facility along with area stakeholders.

We most recently had an update of this work at the end of May.

the image in front of you.

So it's a SWOT analysis.

There's been some consistency in what we've heard from Rivanna Station over the past decade plus.

But the image on the right is what came out of an effort a few years ago, I think around 2017 timeframe, to look at potential mission growth and an expansion of the facility.

It's often referred to as art of the possibility.

It's not a design, it's really more just kind of a master plan of how it might work if we were to do an expansion and there were additional missions or other functions that could support the mission.

Separately, Rivanna Station through the Army Corps of Engineer has done its own master plan.

That's a requirement of all bases and installations.

There wasn't stakeholder involvement outside.

That really was inside the fence line focus.

There were some expansion ideas that were created in that.

And ultimately, that led to the expansion that's happening there today.

And I'll note that

to expand on site.

It was expensive, about $90 million based on some of the terrain.

They had to bring in some parking, structured parking.

The site is built out.

The 75 acres are really built out currently.

And so Rivanna Station tomorrow, that's really what has prompted action by the county.

This slide really represents business and retention work, business retention and expansion work that's underway.

The county has been in discussion with our state Friends of the State and the Veteran's Affairs Office really since 2018, looking to help solve some of the concerns that have come out of Rivanna Station related to

their current expansion and in the future.

And it's worth noting that the DOD has a strong preference generally to have a large buffer from its neighbors as practical as possible to enhance space security and also mitigate intelligence collection.

That is as important here as anywhere.

Concerns over encroachment and purchase of the land is a problem that is emerging across the nation.

I think, you know, turn on any news broadcast on the weekend.

Normally someone is talking about encroachment around bases in California and Texas.

The concern is

foreign nationals buying property in a way to then affect what is happening on that base.

And so this is being wrestled with at the federal and DOD level.

This concern has also been communicated at Rivanna Station.

So that work is what prompted a strategy a few years ago, and again, working with our state contacts,

to look at the land around Rivanna Station to see what could the county do to help mitigate any of those concerns, but also give us the potential to build out and enhance the existing function and serve as an economic development project.

I should note one of the things that we've heard consistently from the DOD, right now, Boulders Road,

The existing red outline is the existing 75 acres.

Just outside of that is a commercial building which is privately owned.

Building owned by LLC out of Chicago and houses support staff, contractors, consultants that support Rivanna Station.

The Army is very interested in the extension of Borders Road back to 29.

And you can kind of see the general path of that.

That's part of our comp plan.

And certainly one of the aspects of the acquisition work will enable us to help move that forward once we're able to procure the right level of funding for it.

So I thought this might be an interesting slide for the Planning Commission.

This actually shows the acquisition.

So with the county,

Working through a strategy, approached the seller, we did it through an anonymous LLC and worked this process over the past year.

On mid-May, we assigned a contract to the board.

The board accepted the contract of 462 acres, which is all of the white hatched property that you see on the image in front of you.

462 acres at $58 million.

The yellow highlight is what is in the current development area.

So about just over half of that, 232 acres and change is in the current development area.

And then everything else is in the rural area.

And so we, through our due diligence, once we got under contract, we had to do all our phase one testing.

Assessing the existing conditions.

We wanted to make sure the property was as buildable as we think it is buildable in order to move forward with it.

And that work has been done.

We overlaid this initial concept.

Again, this is just a concept plan.

There's a lot of work that we will be doing to further this.

but we are able to cite that initial vision of kind of a campus extension and we think we could easily double that footprint if not more and that's some of the future work once we get through closing.

Talked about the acreage, the existing, you know, how the comp plan lays out,

Some of the intention on the build out really will be focused on I'll say the 29, Route 29, which is the road that crosses the top of the screen.

Kind of the west side and north is where the future development will be focused.

The areas to the east, the lakes that you see on there, we look to really keep as

as standoff and there's a lot of interest in turning those into some quality of life trails, amenities.

We've heard from staff that work at Rivanna Station, there's a lot of interest in that as an amenity to help just folks relax from the day and we think that that's a great site for that.

And really, last couple of slides, this is a 3D version, an image, if you will, of what that art of the possibility would look like, just to give you a perspective of it.

Again, we believe that that will cover about 50 acres.

The concept that we're working through with state, federal, we'll be connecting into the intelligence community and national security community is what Commissioner

Bivins had talked about, it's kind of anchoring this corridor as a technology corridor that can support our intelligence and national security work for the government and for our defense.

We think there's an opportunity from North Fork all the way up to Greene County, about eight miles, that could really turn and imagine Silicon Valley at the onset.

We think that there's that level of potential for this corridor

and we believe Rivanna Station and the Rivanna Futures Project will help anchor that work.

And so, we think there's an ecosystem in our community that supports it.

JT gave examples of

of ideas that started at UVA that turned into a small business that's now expanding.

We think there's a lot of pipeline opportunities to this function, K through 16 opportunities as well.

And so those are some of the areas that we will move forward in our concept as we work with state, federal, and our military partners.

And again, this is just a

Artist rendering of what that concept plan is.

There's a lot of work to do to affirm the use and the needs.

And finally, this is kind of the last slide.

Site control and having control of the property was a critical path to allow this work to happen.

We have been briefing at the state level with secretariats.

We expect to be in front of the governor this fall.

Also, we'll be briefing our congressional delegation.

We believe there's a lot of interest and opportunities.

The way we are doing the acquisition, this is a long game project.

It's a 10 to 15 year build out.

And so once we get to closing, which we're working

All eyes are focused on that sometime in late fall.

End of the calendar year, beginning of next year is kind of what we're looking at.

Then we'll start pivoting to doing other things like master planning and broader engagement.

And so we're really excited about it.

We think this will help retain that existing function there that is critical for defense, but also critical for our economy.

And we think there's just a tremendous amount of upside for development that will support the function.

And part of our ask to the state is funding to help get us to a site readiness level of a tier four or so.

Finish the road, be able to get the site ready for future build out.

That was great.

I can honestly say I was not familiar with this before tonight.

So thank you for the presentation.

I just have one.

Albemarle County is going to be the owner of this land, I guess, once everything is signed.

That's the expectation, and certainly with new military facilities, that's important to their new construction.

Resiliency is key.

We, talking Fort Belvoir, they're upgrading their fleet to EV, so there's a lot of

Henry, I want to say thank you again and to the whole economic development team for spending the last 90 minutes, or probably more like 100 minutes with us.

Very informative, very timely.

And thank you again.

Thanks.

Appreciate all that you guys do for our community.

Indeed.

Have a great night.

Thank you.

With that, we'll call for adjournment of the work session.

We'll take a recess, and then we'll come back for the public hearings that start at 6.

Good evening, good evening, good evening.

So welcome back.

We will start our public hearings for tonight.

The first one would be CCP 2023 0002 New Southern feeder pattern elementary school, and just as a reminder that our only action tonight is related to the consistency of the proposal and that's so much.

I would say not an action or recommendation of whether facilities should be built.

There's I think that's a very important distinction as we have our deliberation and discussion tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

David Benesch, Development Process Manager, and we are reviewing a proposal to locate a southern funeral pattern elementary school

in the Avon Street corridor.

And the proposal is for that school, which elementary school would have grades K through five or some combination of those.

It's a 72,500 square foot building with a capacity of 500.

Those are general numbers.

It's still under design.

That's the concept.

It's on property that's owned by the county school board.

Previously, the county

about 15.8 acres.

It's located at the end of Founders Place off of Mill Creek Drive.

And I did want to go real quickly for you and the public, just as the chairman indicated, kind of touch base on what a CCP review is.

It's a little bit different than some of the other reviews.

This proposed activity is considered a public use and public uses are permitted by right in all of our zoning districts.

Public use not specifically identified in our comp plan or land use plan.

requires per state code determination of whether it's in substantial accord with our comprehensive plan.

The CCP sort of looks at the location, character, and extent of the facility and to determine that substantial accord.

Community meetings by county board policy are held for all public facilities of this nature.

and one was held with the 5th and Avon Street CAC in September of this year.

The Planning Commission acts on CCPs and makes that finding a substantial accord.

As Mr. Clayborne indicated, this is about whether it's going to be consistent with the comprehensive plan.

It is not whether to build the project or not.

And it's not at the level of as fine a grain of review as you might see in a rezoning or a special use permit.

No action is required of the Board of Supervisors, but your finding is forwarded them for information.

They do have the option to appeal or call up that decision, but that is not a normal practice.

You're charged with this final call.

The site is located, as I said, on Founders Place, or at the end of what is now the end of Founders Place, south of Monticello,

of Fire Rescue Squad.

As you may recall, this site was subject to a prior compliance with the comprehensive plan review for the high school center too.

And that proposal was found in compliance or in substantial accord with the comprehensive plan that was back in June of 2020, I believe.

The previous PCA action was specific to the high school center too.

So it was determined that this proposal being a different type of elementary school required a CCP.

So while you may recall having reviewed this sort of action before, it was determined that we needed to run this through you again as an elementary school.

I provided in your staff report and in this table here the differences between those two schools or highlight some of the differences.

The building square footage is roughly 12,500 feet larger, about 100 more students potentially, more staff, more outdoor fields than I think was originally intended for the high school center, although I believe that was an option to put fields there.

And you see the hours of operation and the number of buses as provided by the applicant.

And I'm going to be brief in this presentation to sort of hit some of the highlights and I've given you a long staff report but

In terms of the land use and related recommendations of the comp plan, the comp plan calls for institutional uses on this site.

The master plan notes that this could be a center location, which is more of a mixed use more intensive area as per the current master plan.

It proposes an extension and founders place that would connect to Route 20.

The master plan did anticipate civic uses for this site.

It did recommend a collaborative process and a community meeting and process to determine what uses were most appropriate for this area.

I'm going to go quickly to the table from the master or the map from the master plan.

Again, where Callick C. Farm Drive is noted is the property in question.

You see that it's designated for institutional uses.

Just real quickly regarding that center designation, what the narrative in the master plan did say is that civic uses on county property are expected.

It did say that a collaborative community process should be undertaken before the county decides on what uses should be made of the property.

However, there has been a finding that a prior public school was appropriate on the site.

It's always been noted that schools were a potential location within the site and within the center.

We don't believe that the continued use of or potential use of this 15 acre site precludes the possibility of doing that collaborative process in the future for the remaining area that's designated center, which is about 46 acres.

It's a map of, we don't need to go through that, that's the list of uses in case we want to refer to it.

I think in summary what we found is that the proposal is consistent with the growth management policy to locate facilities in the development area so that the areas that we propose most of our development to take place is adequately served by public facilities.

It's consistent with the land use plan and the land use recommendation as institutional use

and it's overall consistent with the community facilities objective strategies and neighborhood model principles.

We did raise two concerns about this site.

We did feel like this school, this proposal sort of concentrates schools and related public uses that are derived from those schools.

It's concentrated them in one area of the development area and has

has left other areas a little less served by these services.

We also feel like the traffic impacts on Avon Street could be such with development of this area that it's going to advance the need for more road improvements in this area sooner, particularly given some of the patterns of traffic we've been seeing at elementary schools with the current usage of school buses and such.

However, we felt like on balance, the comp plan doesn't specify spatial distribution in any specific way in our comprehensive plan.

We have other communities and development area neighborhoods that don't have school services such as Pan Tops.

So we feel on balance looking at all the issues outlined in the comprehensive plan, we do feel like it's within substantial accord.

I've listed here the factors favorable literally from the staff report in case that's not needed for your motion.

But in summary, staff recommends that the Commission find the location, character, and extent of the proposed elementary school and public use in substantial accord with the comprehensive plan.

I'll be happy to answer questions you might have.

I do have motions for you at the time when you need that.

Thank you, Mr. Benesch.

Commissioners, any questions for staff?

I'll start with my right.

Commissioner Moore?

Pass.

Pass.

I have a few questions but I'm assuming, I'm debating whether to save these for after or now.

Let me shoot some out now real quickly.

So there were, I know more than one site considered for this building, correct?

That's probably best for the applicant.

Got it.

I think the rest of them I'll say for the applicant.

Commissioner Carrazano.

There's no traffic study?

Not necessarily required.

I think we get our advice from our transportation planning staff.

But at this point in time, we utilize the information that was provided in terms of the just general vehicle counts and buses and our experiences with traffic from the other schools.

Yeah, thanks.

Kevin McDermott on the

Deputy Planning Director.

We typically use that 1,000 trip per day threshold to require traffic impact analysis for projects, and this one wouldn't reach that number.

Thank you, Mr. Bennis.

So just a couple of transportation questions.

And so did I understand in the staff report that there was going to be a connection to Route 20 or Scottsville Road?

OK.

I think they can speak best to that.

It did come up in the CAC meeting.

I do know there is some topographic issues with connecting to it.

I believe the applicant will say they'll be looking to opportunities for at least pedestrian connection, but there are

I do have one question around transportation and this is more along like the master planning, if you will, of mapping out transportation projects.

It was clear in the staff report that there were some concerns about that infrastructure there in terms of road network.

I know we also use smart scale as well, but it's my understanding it takes six to 10 years to cradle to grave.

So I'm curious, is this part, was this already part of

Upgrading in terms of project workflows and upgrading this stretch of road here, or is this not on the radar at the moment?

Uh, yes, sir.

Um, the, uh, there are some recommendations for transportation improvements in the area, primarily up along Avon street.

So we had a, uh, had performed a Avon corridor study a number of years ago, uh, and,

looked at a series of different improvements.

One of the areas of concern was the intersection of Mill Creek and Avon.

It's currently a signalized intersection that in peak hours sees a lot of congestion, especially with the Mountain View School fairly close to that intersection.

There's some difficulties with that.

There was a recommendation to put a

a roundabout there.

But other than that, we don't have any specific transportation recommendations.

There is some like curb and gutter and pedestrian infrastructure recommended down on 20 though as well.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Just one more related to that in terms of ongoing studies, I guess, in a sense, under factors unfavorable.

You mentioned the collaborative community process has not been undertaken as recommended in the Southern and Western Neighborhoods Master Plan.

Priority wise, no.

In terms of say priority wise within our work program.

Yeah.

The applicant, as noted in their application is intended to work with the public on the this site, right, the design of that building, we feel like that center area, which really amounts to the county and properties and some others besides the ones that are all budding in this particular area.

is still, there hasn't been a determination for any other uses.

Any final questions for staff before we move on?

No?

All right.

With that, I would like to invite the applicant.

Welcome.

As always, you'll have 10 minutes and you'll see a little lighting system in front of you.

It'll be green for the majority of your presentation when it shifts to yellow.

It's about a two minute warning, roughly.

So it's asked that you make your most pertinent points then, and then red means stop.

And we look forward to hearing what you have to say.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me this evening.

My name is Lindsay Soddy.

I'm the director of building services, and I'll be digging into all those questions that you brought up.

So we'll have some time to talk through them.

All right, so building overview, I know Mr. Benesch has been through a lot of this, but this was initially a site proposed for High School Center 2.

So we've been through this process before for that school use.

The site proposed is now for the new Southern Feeder Pattern Elementary.

We need the school based on capacity issues at Mountain View.

So this will be, this isn't bringing kids in from another area, it is splitting the Mountain View community into this, into this, the new school.

approximately 72,000 square feet and 500 elementary students when it's fully grown out.

That's the capacity.

Interior spaces will include all the things you typically see in elementary school or school classrooms, cafeteria, media center, gym, admin spaces, breakout rooms, and support spaces.

And the exterior, one of the things that's different from this from the high school center too is we will have those playground spaces and also field spaces, which wasn't, it's not part of our center model.

We will be looking, we will obtain compliance with the Virginia High Performance Buildings Act.

And we do have a goal for the project of being net zero ready.

These are just some spirit images.

Our architect VMDO is here with us this evening showing a variety of spaces from their prior projects.

We are early in design, so these are not what our spaces will look like, but they will probably be similar.

We'll be looking at lots of bright colors, looking at sustainability features.

and you'll see a recent up in the upper left hand corner is Bluestone Elementary that they recently completed and our design team actually took a field trip out there last week to see what we loved about it and what we'd like to bring to this new school.

So I'm gonna go into our conceptual plan and community connectivity and talk through some of the neighborhood concepts that we're gonna bring to this project.

So you've seen this image in the staff report.

Our project is,

Well, let me start over.

Our civil engineers are performing a traffic study.

That was one of the questions that came up of the area to determine existing and projected traffic volume on nearby roads with and without the projected road that you see dashed in yellow to determine the importance of that relative road to the proposed school.

We are currently planning to design that connector road that's dashed in yellow and bid it as an ad alternate.

If the project bidding is favorable, it could be built.

As noted in the staff report, when we had the CAC meeting, some members of the CAC questioned if the road connection was needed.

And if it was determined that the road is not needed, it would open up more land for other community facilities such as another field in that area that we wouldn't be able to fit if the road was constructed or if we were saving room for the road.

As we've already discussed, the county does own two adjacent parcels to this one.

You'll see where those are located here.

And we will, as part of this project, we will certainly not prohibit any access to those two county-owned parcels as part of the project.

So our building design is not dependent on the founders place Galaxy Farm Road connection.

We could live with it or without it as part of this project.

It's a 15.8-acre site, 133 Galaxy Farm Lane.

We are, as I said, early in design, but we will likely have a two- or three-story building on that site due to the size of the site and some rock impacts.

We will be maximizing day lighting and views.

We're looking very carefully at the queuing space.

We've learned from COVID that we have more parent drop-offs, so we're certainly looking to not add any traffic that would queue off of the site.

And then sports fields, paid basketball court, and some outdoor play space is definitely part of our project.

This is a conceptual plan.

I'll show two conceptual plans and then one that's built out a little bit further.

This was shown at the CAC meeting showing some, when you come off Founders Place, having the parking, the bus drop-off loop on that side of the property, and then the parent drop-off and parking up in the front, closer to Founders Place as well, showing a plop of a school building, what that would look like, and then definitely the play space.

In this next conceptual plan, you'll see we've moved the bus drop-off area to the lower part of the school, just a different configuration and a little bit of reconfiguration of the play spaces.

In this prettier model, we've developed the site out a little bit further.

We're getting closer to what we think might be on the site.

This is a three-story building in some locations.

In the two classroom wings, we have three stories going on.

And then you can see the play space, the gym, cafeteria.

We're really working with the site to take advantage of the gorgeous views out to the mountains.

So we're not obstructing those with our design.

And then you'll see the play spaces and some of the landscaping that we'd intend to do around the site.

This is the breakdown that was also included in the staff report, but for buses, five large, two small is what we anticipate coming to the site.

We actually reduced this slightly based off, again, the COVID numbers, what we see for parent drop off and what we expect.

So we increased parent drop off, so we expect about 80

Excuse me, 80 vehicles from parents dropping kids off.

That tends to be more in the morning than the afternoon because there's extended day enrichment programs at the school so that that will stagger a bit more in the afternoon as far as the number of cars that you will see.

Cars that will come to the site for as far as staff and visitors we have total there and then walking and biking.

And this is a new discussion since the CAFC meeting.

We just engaged with the school PTO to ask the question of, how would you like to see the school operated?

It will ultimately be a school board decision, but we're doing really active community engagement because the sites are so close, because we did an extensive land search and couldn't find anything that was appropriate for us or available for us.

And the Southwood proffer wasn't a place that was considered, but that is a very small proffer and

The timing did not work out for us at all, even if we could deal with the space.

We need the school now because of the capacity issues we have at Mountain View.

So looking at a traditional pre-K through five model, each facility would operate as independent pre-K through five schools, which would lead to a redistricting study.

Nobody likes redistricting, so this question was coming up more and more, so we decided to open up to the community to get more feedback.

We had a lot of people at the PTO meeting that gave us feedback, and we'll be issuing a survey out to the community for those that couldn't make it to that meeting.

A primary intermediate model would put pre-K through two at the Mountain View existing school and then there'd be an upper campus at the almost adjacent new school that would have grades three through five.

We do that split because the Mountain View building does have larger classrooms in it already, which is what we tend to

due for the pre-K and kindergarten and first grade students.

And then the buildings would operate on a staggered schedule, so that would help that traffic flow as well to have that staggered schedule, which might also happen with traditional pre-K through five if that's how we go.

So one would probably be 15 minutes earlier than the other.

For example, a bus would pick up all students in a neighborhood, it would drop off the pre-K through two and then go to the second campus to drop off the older children.

As I mentioned, the design and placement of the building will not impede the future interconnected street plans that are in the comprehensive plan shown in the dotted yellow line.

And there were questions about the pedestrian connectivity to the site.

So this map outlines existing sidewalks.

And we would certainly look at maintaining the existing ones, improving everything to the site and looking at other connections, possibly to the Galaxy Farm neighborhood.

And we're investigating with our civil engineers how we can connect to the Mountain View existing campus.

It wouldn't be vehicular, it would be a pedestrian connection.

Our properties touch, but we don't have like a pathway that we own.

So we're looking to see what we could do to make those connect.

So as part of the neighborhood model design, this project looks to incorporate outdoor learning spaces, community usage amenities, fields, and playgrounds.

The school board does have a very active community use program.

We have a policy in place.

There is very, very high demand for our buildings that are in more urban areas.

They are used day, night, weekends, as much as people can get in them.

We have tons of sports programs.

And the fields outside are used heavily and scheduled by Parks and Rec.

So more fields in this area would certainly be used and I think appreciated by the community.

Just to give you a feel for how much community usage at Mountain View School over the past five years has facilitated over 6,000 events.

So it's pretty extensive with 55 user groups.

You can see a list of different groups that have used our facilities and we'd expect that they would also like to use the new one.

And we, as I mentioned, increasing demand for community usage in our centrally located schools.

Our next steps are continued our community engagement.

We're doing extensive communication through surveys, through meeting people in their neighborhoods.

That's our next step, PTO meetings.

All of our main materials are in Spanish and English.

So we just we can make sure we reach everybody.

And the next step for our presentation to the school board is schematic design presentation on December 14 is planned.

Project schedule, we're looking at programming through September.

We are programming schematic design.

We'll go through December.

Designs of development will go December through May 2024.

You can see our site plan and utility plan development, bidding and construction September 2024 through July 2026, and to be open for the August 2026 school year.

Thank you.

I'll bring it to the commission for questions.

Thank you, Chair.

So I would be remiss, I would be untruthful if I didn't say I think this is an appropriate place for a school, given that in my district we have a whole bunch of schools on a campus.

And so I understand the process, I understand the model well.

What I'm struggling with is not for me to say, because Mr. Benesha said this is not what I'm supposed to be thinking about, but I can't control the things in my head.

And so what it would be interesting to see if perhaps the middle school could go there and that children could go to the Walton School as an elementary school.

So in fact, children could go from Journey to whatever the middle school would be to Monticello, much like the model, half of them, two thirds of the model at Western, where you have Western, I think it's Brown across the street, and we're in Lamb's Lane Campus, where you, as you know, we've got the full suite, plus we've got some additional schooling there.

I think that would be, that would actually sort of be helpful to the community, and I think it would give some flow to that, but I'm just putting that out there as a bit of seasoning.

I also need to just say, Chair,

I remain disappointed that there wasn't a way to put a walkable school in the Southwood community.

I believe the community, this community, Albemarle community did a whole host of things to make that work for that particular development.

And here was a perfect opportunity for that community

or that developer to do something for this community and I remain disappointed, let it be shown that my hand is to my heart, that I remain disappointed that there wasn't a way to facilitate a school being a community that's going to have close to a thousand households when it's fully built and we can't have enough room to put a walkable school there.

So, Chair, I just have to say that again for the third time, but otherwise,

You've answered my questions.

I hope there'll be whatever schools there.

There'll be some way to get to Mountain View because I think that would be helpful for you.

And then how'd you figure out whatever the connection is to 20, that you do that in a way that doesn't, you know, that makes us still good citizens, however that may be.

Of course.

Commissioner Carrizato?

Thank you for your presentation.

Appreciate it.

Just following up on that last point in terms of

Connectivity, and this is where I think a traffic study would be very helpful, whether it's required or not.

I think the staff knows my feeling about this limit about 1,000 cars, or I thought it was less than that at some point, but I don't know if that was increased recently.

But it's a cumulative effect, so we can look at one development, but if that development, say it's 900 cars and you're not studying, and then there's another development next door that's 800, you're not just studying that one either.

So the combination is over a thousand.

I do think it's going to be helpful and it shows that you're actually paying attention to what's being the impact that you're doing to the roads and whether or not you're going to need that connection.

So you'll have more information to work.

Thanks.

Thanks for the presentation.

That was really helpful.

And you answered a bunch of my questions, so I appreciate that.

Just have a couple of additional ones.

One is you mentioned, obviously, actually doing a TIA voluntarily.

What is your intention?

It is in our scope to have our civil engineers do that traffic study.

Thanks.

So just following up on that, I was actually envisioning, I mean, so it feels a little bit like a chicken and an egg thing where, you know, you usually do a TIA first, and then you decide on your development program and the capacity of your site based on that.

And you understand the implications of building that capacity on the adjoining roads.

So it seems like you've got the capacity, the goals, the need, but you're not quite sure what is happening on the adjoining roads yet.

So I'd be curious, and I guess this is related to the project schedule, what if you find that with Commissioner Carrazana's note about background traffic and cumulative impacts of this, that you you are at a tipping point?

If the project budget allowed, would be my answer to that.

I'm Matt Workman, Deputy Director of Building Services.

I can add two points to your line of questioning around the road.

So for one, the two termini would be existing roads.

And so we would be connecting to the existing Founders Place Road.

And then the other terminus would be connecting to the existing Galaxy Farm Road, I forget.

and so from our project's perspective, those would be the termini.

I will say that part of, we're working with Timmons Group as a civil engineering firm and they are here today if you have any specific questions.

I know that they've already done traffic counts on surrounding roads in the area, but we're still waiting on that initial data back or analysis to determine our next steps.

But one of the things that we have asked them to study as part of that,

traffic impact analysis is even the possibility of is there a need for a roundabout at Mill Creek and Founders Place.

You know, we have Monticello High School right across the street.

And we know that the southern parking lot at Monticello has traffic exiting problems around football games into the school.

And so a solution such as that would provide another

or Egress out of Monticello even that would serve the community as a whole.

So those are all things that we've asked Timmons to study.

But I think Lindsay's right.

Part of this is budget too.

So the project was funded for a school.

It wasn't funded as a transportation project, which is why we're bidding it as an additive and hope that we can construct it if budget allows.

which is, I can't help myself.

I mean, that's just interesting, right?

I mean, the impacts that are caused by the project that are not funded, but the project could go forward without those impacts being mitigated.

It just seems a little, sorry, that was editorial.

One quick other question.

Yeah, all right, got it.

Sorry, trouble clicking my mouse.

I don't really have any questions for the applicant.

I think that the use is appropriate in that location.

I mean, all I ever want to comment on at this point is the site plan, but that's not our charge this evening.

So, as you look at designs, though, for the site, you might also check out another VMDO project, the Bellmead School in Richmond, Virginia.

We worked on doing a sort of outdoor learning center with some vacant property next to that.

It became a really nice nexus of use of the outdoor space around the school instead of just sort of the traditional mode landscape.

So maybe take a look at that.

It's a short field trip.

Awesome.

All right, thank you.

I think the site is appropriate, just as Karen said.

I'll offer my own suggestion, as other people have,

If you're looking at an outdoor learning center, it's worth noting that the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has often funded, they funded the rain garden, sorry.

They funded the biofilter at Crowsdale Elementary under the condition that was part of an educational curriculum.

Thanks again for the presentation.

And again, I think, actually a quick question.

We did not have a traffic study at that time.

Well, honestly, it's nice to have a presentation and with a school on one side and a high school on the other side, to not have anybody complain that it doesn't meet neighborhood character, because it clearly does.

And I just sort of appreciate the split model with PK through second and then third through fifth.

I think that's actually a wise idea to have some staggered schedule that will probably help with that as well.

Helps with both the district lines and also the traffic situation.

I'll pass that along.

I'll ask just a couple of questions before we go to the open for the public hearing.

How long do you anticipate the structure being around, right?

I think if you look at our existing building stock, I can't remember our weighted average age, 60 years, approximately 50.

Over 50 years for our existing building stock, and that's weighted with our renovations calculated into that.

We have some very old schools.

We want this to be around as long as it possibly can be.

I don't know, VMDO has a better answer of what typically the age is that we're building for, but at least 50.

And I'm asking a question just to kind of illustrate a couple of points.

One, I just want to double down on some of the comments you're hearing about the transportation, how that's magnified, right?

If it's going to be there 50, 60, 70 years, the importance of that piece, but also in regards to the comprehensive plan, we have equity and climate action as two anchor pieces to that as well.

I know you have a fantastic architect.

I'm very familiar with VMDO.

I would just ask, as we are using this site, how do we make this an example?

An example of what it means to have a great learning facility as we're doing this.

So that's the trade-off for this investment.

How do we make it an example?

I just want to make one comment about the community engagement piece, and it's just something that we are still grappling with in terms of AC44, right?

Getting reasonable amounts of responses and doing the same kinds of tools that you're using.

Just putting a plug in for, you have to go beyond ordinary boundaries with that.

That slide was nice, but just from our own personal experience, the results that we get are, there's room for improvement, right?

There's opportunity to grow.

being innovative in that space, I think is going to be very important.

Just a question and an observation given what you just said and what our colleagues just said.

So if the other access road is going to be Galaxy Lane Farm, that was positioned to us as this sort of

Higher and but more modest footprint or more modest footprint but middle density community.

So the whole idea that there would be lots of traffic flowing through that.

that community is not what I think they were anticipating, at least when they came before us.

And so being able to balance, I'm just thinking about balancing, since I live on a road that only has one way out and one way in, and what it's like to have to navigate school traffic twice a day,

I'm just thinking that's probably, that community's probably not expecting that to happen at a 400,000 plus price tag for those cottages when they get built.

So perhaps using some of the county's road there to put a road in might, would A, come to, with some of our colleagues there and also continue for this project to be considered a good neighbor since it really was not, I don't believe that community was constructed or was envisioned to be a pathway to the,

to a school chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to open up for the public hearing.

With that, I only have one person present to sign up to speak, and that is David Frazier.

All right, and welcome to the podium.

We'll allow three minutes, and the same rules apply.

I'll go from green to yellow, which means just make your most pertinent points, and red is concludes.

Well, thank you, and thank you for all the information.

My name is David Frazier and we, my parents live at 107 Galaxy Farm Lane.

We're right in the middle of all this that's happening between the new development, the schools, all that has happened, the Albemarle Rehab Center.

Forgive us if we feel a little claustrophobic and concerned.

One of the things that I'm concerned about is

the one that's been mentioned several times.

Number one, the collaborative community process has not been undertaken as recommended.

I don't know why that has been neglected, but I definitely would like to see that rectified and there be a little bit more community involvement in the process would be helpful.

I know there was a meeting on September the 21st.

My parents are 88 and 85.

They were not able to attend.

I was not able to attend to be there as their representative.

Some of my other concerns are impacts to quality of life for my parents and for whoever has the property after them.

Property values, how will they be affected?

Right now we have beautiful views of the mountains to the south and you're talking about putting a three-story building directly in front of their property.

Also, I feel like the traffic estimates that were given by the applicant were woefully low considering the amount of traffic that we already see.

I guess that's Mill Creek Drive that goes in front of the high school.

Is that correct?

The amount of traffic that comes out of there and out of the elementary school Mountain View at peak times is amazing.

So I think

Going forward, the traffic study absolutely has to be done.

because you have all these different factors, different add-ons.

So we're adding on a community just down the hill from our parents.

That's I think 57 or 59 units, something like that.

We're adding on those.

Of course, they didn't meet the threshold for traffic study, but we have these other schools around and each one of them we're adding on one at a time, but the cumulative effect I think is what you brought up.

And I think that's a valid issue that needs to be looked at.

Those are my major concerns.

I have 44 seconds, but I got it out plenty of time.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who did not sign up, but wishes to speak to this topic this here in person?

OK, seeing no one come forward.

All right, I'll invite the applicant if they wish to make any closing remarks based on what you've heard, or you can forego that opportunity.

Good.

All right.

With that, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

And I will bring it into the commission for any thoughts, reactions to what you've heard before we move forward.

Other additional comments?

I have a question.

I guess I have one question while the motion's coming up.

Is there, I guess this is a matter of process, is there a way to add conditions to this?

I don't think there is, but just check.

Got it.

Good question.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, sorry.

Where's your Firehock?

I know you're used to my big mouth.

I just wanted to, I appreciate that the question was just asked, I had the same question.

So I understand we can't put conditions, we can just say the use is appropriate or not.

But I would imagine that we could

That's a great comment and I would assume that the staff report from this that has factors as unfavorable, that would be one listed, will go onto the board and they would also get a record of the pertinent points of our discussion as well.

Fair enough.

And so a commission, what I'm hearing, I think there is overwhelming consensus around what I'm hearing is that yes, from a comprehensive plan standpoint, certainly is viable.

Some of those concerns that are raised, one is the community engagement process, traffic.

Those are two that really jumped out, listen to our deliberation.

Is there anything else?

I would also just add to our deliberation that this will get reported back to the school board.

This doesn't just sit in this eco, so it'll go to the board.

Chair, I'd just like to share this.

It'll more than likely go to the superintendent of schools as a report to them.

There will be other individuals within the school's hierarchy

Very well, thank you.

Sure, I'm happy to make the motion.

I move to find that the location, character, and extent of the proposed elementary school and public use thereof to be in substantial accord with the comprehensive plan for the reasons identified as favorable factors in this staff report.

Very well.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Yes.

Mr. Murray.

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you to the applicant for your presentation.

Moving to our next public hearing, we have ZMA 2021-00016 North Fork UVA Discovery Park.

Great.

Thank you, Chair.

I have a personal interest in a business that may realize a reasonable foreseeable benefit as a result of the transaction identified as North Fork UVA Discovery Park ZMA 2021-16.

I declare that I am disqualifying myself from participating in this transaction and request that this fact be recorded in the appropriate public records for a period of five years.

And I'll also be leaving this meeting.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an employee of the University of Virginia.

The pending application is for the UVA Foundation, which is a separate entity.

Very good.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm also employed by the University of Virginia, pending applications by the UVA Foundation, which is a separate entity.

You may.

Commissioner Moore.

In the interest of full disclosure, I, too, am employed by the University of Virginia.

The pending application is by the UVA Foundation, which is a separate entity.

All right.

And I went to Virginia Tech, and I have no affiliation with UVA.

Well, I do not have that particular statement in front of me, but I need to also disclose that I'm an employee of the University of Virginia.

Thank you.

Mr. Bivins, you good?

We're only two standing.

All right.

So we'll turn it over to you.

Bill Fritz with the Community Development Department, and I too did not go to the University of Virginia.

I went to Mary Washington College.

I have a very brief presentation for you tonight.

You have a very lengthy staff report, so instead of me going through everything that's in the staff report, I figured I'd just hit some of the highlights and I'd be happy to answer your questions.

Just to orient you real quick.

I think we all know where this property is, but I wanted to go ahead and highlight it.

It's a very large piece of property running all the way from Airport Road all the way up to the North Fork Rivanna River and between Dickerson Road and Route 29 near the airport.

Some of the features of this particular development are, excuse me, let's get my notes.

So this is just a page from the application plan that's in your packet.

And I wanted to point out some of the features.

So this area has single-family attached proposed in it.

This area has multifamily, single-family detached, and single-family attached units.

This area has multifamily, single-family attached, and commercial office.

And this area has commercial and office.

The remaining area is the industrial area.

There's an entrance existing on Airport Road.

This particular entrance, this particular intersection is going to be upgraded with a roundabout.

The applicant has proffered significant improvements, proffered land for these improvements and a significant amount of cash associated with that.

There's another entrance that is directly on Route 29.

There are proffers for improvements to this entrance and intersection also that are based on the level of development.

So improvements will occur as development occurs.

There's an existing entrance up here on Quail Run, this arrow at the top of the screen.

Nothing is changing with this.

It's a relatively minor entrance.

It's a secondary access point, actually a tertiary access point.

and there is a location for a potential connection to adjacent property to the east, north is at the top of this map, adjacent property to the east that could potentially allow access to that property to this property and maybe even down to Route 29.

The applicant has proffered and incorporated improvements to the greenway and trail system that runs along the northern portion of this property, including along the North Fork Rivanna.

And there's also a recreational facility, Dabney Park, that's referenced in some of the documents you have that's located fairly central to the property.

Also included in this application is in the application plan,

is proposed grading.

This is important because it would allow the grading to occur prior to this middle of site plans.

It's something that we encourage, particularly on planned industrial parks.

The proposed grading that's shown does impact steep slopes in several locations.

We've analyzed those locations.

It's important to note that area B5, which is the one that's right on Route 29,

The slopes in that area have already been approved by the Board of Supervisors for critical slopes disturbance, but we're showing them here also.

Wanted to point this out that this is included in the application.

You don't need to take a separate action because if the development is approved, disturbance of these slopes would then be approved by virtue of them being shown on the approved application plan.

That's the presentation I have for you, but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

There are significant proffers.

All right, thank you, Mr. Fritz.

Questions for staff.

Commissioner Carrazana?

Thank you for the presentation.

Question of the proffers.

Are they

It's my understanding that there's triggers for the level of proffers and when they take it correctly.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

So there are different triggers for a variety of different things.

So for example, and I'd have to pull them out and look at them and to remember them all, but to take the intersection improvements on Route 29 as one, when traffic reaches certain points, then certain improvements are made.

When a certain number of residential units are constructed within the residential portion, then certain other proffers are triggered in terms of

construction improvements in Daveney Park or trail systems.

There are proffers that are included for the right of way for the roundabout and I believe it's yearly, there's payments that are included with that.

When the Greenway trails are built, that triggers either dedication of land

and when greenways are completed by the county, that triggers construction of other trails within the development that would then link to those trails.

With the traffic ones that you mentioned in particular with this concept of as there's development and they do studies to determine that that development is going to create more congestion, there are proffers that are required in order to

and how we can consider this for other developments that are creating these challenges in other parts of the county.

I agree.

Good point.

I'm fine, I'm fine.

I would just offer sort of an interesting sort of counterpoint to my colleague here where we talk about sort of phased proffers for transportation.

Let us not also, let's also take into consideration one of the reasons that that works here is because you've got such a vast and open green space that's got probably decades of development ahead of it.

and unfortunately, while it may take decades to develop some of the things that we see, they usually want to get it done in one bite.

And so I think what I'm going to challenge you to do is think about how do we tune that in?

How do those kinds of one, where they have a hard cutoff, where they expect to have a grand opening in some place?

Because I think you're onto something.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's a simplified approach here, because there's one owner.

However, the logic, I think, can still stand.

It's how we consider applying it in a situation where you have multiple developments, still one green area that's being developed through time, right, wherever that might be, Crozet.

and how you then think about that.

I agree because clearly the last big piece that we had, and Cheryl I'll leave this alone and sort of go quiet for a moment, is that if we had done that when they first did that development out there and the one, I think, I forget, White Gate or White Gables, whatever it was called, or Montclair I think it's called now, then in fact the entire community would have had to bear

the sort of the complicating issues of how we're going to deal with this incremental traffic.

What I've always struggled with is why do we put that on the last to the table when in fact, as we've seen there, it's a cumulative effect of two or three thousand houses there that are adding it, not the 120 that are coming at the last bit.

So how do we think about that as we're thinking through the comp plan?

And that's why I'm bringing it up.

That's right.

Very good.

With that, I'm going to invite the applicant to come forth for the presentation.

Thank you very much.

I'm Tim Rose.

I'm the chief executive officer of the University of Virginia Foundation.

And with me tonight are two of my colleagues, Frank Hancock and Deborah Van Ersel, who are the leaders on this project.

So we also have our engineers and legal team here as well.

The University of Virginia Foundation provides real estate and other services to the University of Virginia.

And as part of that, we're the owner of the North Fork Research Park.

I stood in front of this group about 30 years ago down the hall to get the original piece of land approved.

And we hope that you've been pleased with the development that we've helped lead there.

Our goal is with the park is to support the university's vision for fostering research and also to provide an economic development engine of sorts for the community.

University affiliated research parks across the country have transitioned and are transitioning from we're just a research park to we are a 24-7 live, work, play community.

And our proposal, our request today is to allow that to happen at the park.

We hope that this housing would serve both the park

and the employment center that obviously has taken significant growth in that area and of course the city and the county.

If we obtain this rezoning, first thing we'll do is communicate with potential housing developers, both market and affordable housing.

On the affordable housing, it would be similar to the process that we're going through closer to the city.

and we need them on our team to help us assist us with this.

So with that, I will introduce Valerie Long, who is our legal counsel and she'll walk through the proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission.

Valerie Long here representing the applicant foundation, as Mr. Rose said.

First, I want to thank Mr. Fritz and Mr. McDermott and many other people on the community development team.

We've been working on this for, I believe, three years now.

It is a challenging process when you have such a large project like the research park.

And obviously, as you all have alluded, there is a lot going on around this area.

So part of the challenge has been the very detailed traffic study and analysis of that and working collaboratively with the county staff and VDOT to identify the appropriate proffers to address those transportation challenges, particularly given that there's congestion there already.

And even without any changes at North Fork, that will continue.

But I'll go through this.

Again, many of you are familiar with it and as Mr. Rosen indicated, the main goal here is to create a 24-7 live, work, play community that has lots of activity going on all the time.

It will enhance the economic development potential at North Fork as well as throughout the entire county.

It will provide for a mixture of housing, different types of housing and different price points in a strategic location near a very large employment center.

It functions as an amenity for economic development prospects.

Those prospective tenants, their employees want to have opportunities to live near where they work and hopefully have shorter commutes than perhaps where they might be living and working now.

It also helps support transit service like the new MicroCat service that is on its way and would include this area.

It enables the foundation to leverage the park's existing natural assets, its trail systems, all of the amenities.

As you may know, there's a cafe and a gym and miles of trails and walking paths.

And again, it introduces this 24-7 mix of uses to enliven and activate the park.

So with residents there, living there, and perhaps working there as well, you'll have families enjoying the playground areas and the recreational fields.

Enjoying the paths and the trails and the future restaurants and so forth.

So that's a lot about what this will do and in essence the infrastructure is there already for these residents.

I know that's not always the case or rarely the case with particularly residential rezonings.

I also want to touch briefly on the comprehensive plan.

There's a lot going on in this map, too.

But inside the dashed blue line is North Fork.

And you can see that the purple areas, the planned is the flex mixed use or flex mixed use R&D light industrial area.

And the green is, of course, the open space.

And we included a quote from the existing Places29 master plan that actually contemplated having residential units here in North Fork.

Fork in the future.

This was the original plan approved back in 1996.

I'm going to orient it so that it is the same direction as all of the plans you'll see currently, but that was the plan back then.

Our plan set for tonight's application is much longer and more detailed, but we wanted to be able to show how similar the core elements are within the park.

You have the same

Road Network, essentially the same development bays or blocks there with B5, B6, etc.

On the far left of your screen, you can see the original Block D, the area in the yellow dashed line that was added to the park.

The foundation acquired that after the original 96 approval.

So that was then owned by the foundation and then with a later rezoning application that land was also added to the research park.

That was the last time I was here working on the North Fork Park which was approved in 2010.

So about every 13 years I think we're due for an update.

Quick summary on just the key elements.

As we noted, so that we back up a bit.

The key thing to know or understand is that a portion of the park will be rezoned to neighborhood model district.

The rest will stay as zoned planned development.

Industrial Park and the sole reason to make the change to neighborhood model district is to allow residential.

That is the only district that actually allows both residential and non-residential.

There's also two parcels along Route 29 that I'll highlight in a moment that have been owned by the foundation for a long time but are not actually part of the park and so we felt that it was appropriate to officially add them to it.

and we're amending the proffers to address the impacts, we're modernizing the terminology, making a number of other changes as Mr. Fritz indicated, building on the historical proffers that have been in place for so long.

For clarification, all of the uses that are allowed now at North Fork will continue to be allowed in everywhere in the park.

So the blocks that we're proposing to rezone to neighborhood model development district or neighborhood model district will not preclude the plan development industrial park uses.

It's just an additive.

So again, the existing approvals permit up to 3.7 million square feet of non-residential and PDIP uses that will continue.

It is an addition, not a reduction from the employment area land.

And as has been the case since 1996, the foundation commits to retaining 200 acres minimum of open space.

And again, as Mr. Rose indicated, there'll be affordable housing as well.

This is the proposed application plan.

In the lower center are the two parcels blocks G1 and G2 that I mentioned that, again, have been owned by the Foundation for some time.

We're proposing to rezone those also to plan development industrial park.

I think one is currently zoned highway commercial and the other is R1 or R2.

But this is the application plan that would be binding.

Development of the park in the future would have to be in general accord with this plant, this image, as well as lots of details that are on this page and in other pages of the application plan set.

But this is the general framework.

And again, you can see the continuation of the existing transportation network and design that has existed from the beginning.

This is an illustrative plan showing how the park could be developed based on that application plan.

This is a close-up of how the neighborhood model district blocks could be developed.

And I want to just add one clarification.

Mr. Fritz indicated at the beginning sort of what is shown on this plan.

Townhouses here, for example, and some multifamily and townhouses and single families here.

Those are merely illustrative examples of what could go there.

All of the different types of housing units are permitted in all of the neighborhood model districts.

and this is just showing the specific block plan for the neighborhood model district.

There's also a specific green space plan and this is just bringing you back to note that in addition to the neighborhood model district plan, all of the areas, the blue blocks, those are the planned development industrial park blocks and that will continue to be the application plan for those blocks as well.

We're running out of time here.

I'm happy to walk through some of the proffers that we have for Parks and Rec, as well as transportation, although Mr. Fritz covered them.

So I'll start here.

This is what we call the Parks and Rec proffers, Parks and Recreation.

There were existing proffers that talk about the trails and so forth in the park.

The exhibits were very difficult to read.

There was a lot of confusion about what's required when.

The new proffers are much more clear about what is exactly required and when.

And the start, excuse me, the first one, there we go.

And this has been in the proffers from the beginning is that the foundation would build a recreational field and recreation area in this location that includes a field, parking lot, restaurants, restrooms, et cetera, picnic area.

And then the second is, this is a new proffer, is to build trails or a trail from the Dabney Park parcel to the future Greenway Trail along the river.

And so there's three options.

The foundation wasn't able yet to say exactly which one, but the proffers commit to building at least one connector trail in one of those three locations.

Also a new commitment that was not part of the original is to build a trail along this stretch of Jacobs Run, which will create a really nice connection once the county builds the Greenway Trail along the river.

This will connect here and then connects up to Chris Green Lake, eventually.

There is an existing

There's easement that was previously dedicated by the foundation to the county for the county to build this greenway trail along the river.

So that's in place now.

But the current Parks and Rec planning stop identified that there are some areas that will, based on the existing boundaries of the greenway easement, would require

The trail to be disturbed more land and sensitive areas than is appropriate and would be much more expensive to build.

So they've asked the foundation to agree to some flexibility and to consider or be willing to commit to expansions of those of the Greenway easement dedication in the future to

enable the Parks and Rec staff to build that trail in a more environmentally sensitive and cost efficient manner.

So those ovals and squares that you see there just to show where those areas are generally.

And then finally, there was a study that contemplated a future shared use path along the Route 29 frontage.

So in the event that that ever comes about, the proffers commit to dedicating an easement for that path in the future.

and sorry, finally is the commitment to set aside a small area for a trailhead parking for the public who want to come and use the trails at any time there'd be a small parking lot.

The exact location has not yet been determined.

It would be at that site plan stage.

But in that, we think that's probably a good starting place for the trailhead parking.

So then we move on to transportation proffers.

The first is, and these are continuing from the original proffers, is to construct two additional turn lanes when they're required based on a trip threshold event.

So at a site plan stage, if at any point

The site plan and the trip generation estimates associated with the site plan indicate that there would be, I believe it's 150 trips during the peak hour, that that would trigger the need to upgrade, to construct those turn lanes.

So they're tied to those trips and the impacts that would be created by the proposed use, whatever that is contemplated by the site plan.

The second is a commitment to provide cash to the county to help close a funding gap in the Airport Road-Borkmar extended roundabout.

You all may be familiar with this, but just to orient you, obviously the

where the circle is, that's the intersection of Airport Road and Lewis and Clark entering into the park.

This is, right now, Berkmar Drive extended, ends right here, and there's a project to extend Berkmar to Airport Road and then have a roundabout constructed at that intersection.

Lots of benefits of that project, both to North Fork as well as to the larger community and traffic generally.

It will obviously enable Burkemar Extended and then Lewis and Clark Drive to really function as a parallel road network to Route 29, as was envisioned by the original Places 29 master plan.

So the nice thing is that the foundation actually constructed this extension of Rose and Clark Drive.

It was completed, I believe, in 2020.

They finished that connection.

So now already one can go from Airport Road.

North on Lewis and Clark Drive all the way to Route 29, which already functions very well as a connector road.

But the completion of this Berkmar Extended segment will really make that really complete that segment.

And then the roundabout will obviously help substantially with keeping traffic moving and provide safety.

And the foundation is dedicated in addition to committing to contribute $2.5 million to that to close a recent funding gap.

They've also proffered to dedicate land

and easements that are needed for that project in the area.

So that'll help keep the cost down.

Part of the cost overrun was VDOT factoring in, well, we have to buy land and buy easements from the foundation.

So that's no longer part of that equation.

And then finally, as Mr. Fritz noted, there's a commitment to provide, it's up to 1.5 million or exactly that amount over time for future transportation improvements once they have been identified by the county and VDOT.

There's many studies going on right now and obviously many other projects in the pipeline.

in this area, not the least of which is, of course, the county's role with the new Rivanna Station project, which is really going to complement North Fork so well.

So the idea was that rather than try and predict or commit to a particular improvement that may or may not be what VDOT and the county ultimately decide are the most appropriate is that the foundation would commit to a certain amount of money to be put towards those future improvements.

And it's

would be payable in three increments when certain trip generation thresholds have been reached.

And I would also note that it's not limited to just road projects.

It would also the funds could be used towards transit improvements, bike and ped improvements, or the like.

So we try to make that as flexible for the county and VDOT as possible.

and I think that's everything I'll just show briefly if I may.

That white segment is the extension of Lewis and Clark Drive.

The yellow segment was built at the beginning and the white segment was completed within the last few years.

I probably should have had that slide at the beginning.

So I hope that helps.

Thank you for the additional context.

You're welcome.

Commissioners, any questions?

Thank you, Chair.

So I am relieved that you've said that the locations of the dwellings and the types of dwellings are simply illustrative.

because I was going to ask or I was going to suggest that in the consideration of that, they think about putting the multifamily dwellings closer to the green space because out of all the dwelling types you have there, those are going to be the most densely developed and they're going to be the people who have the least amount of green around them.

So the single family, I assume they'll have some sort of green patch around their properties.

The duplex will have some green patches.

But the whole idea is to give the families who have or the individuals who have the least amount of opportunity to put them closer to the green patch.

So I'm glad to hear that you said that.

I have a couple of other things to clarify, Mike.

So first of all, I should say this.

This is one of those places that's in our county that I'm very fond of.

So I just need to say that.

I'm particularly fond of it now that you've put that secondary road there.

I think it works.

I think it's living into what it was expected to be when Mr. Rose came and gave the vision in the 90s.

I need to admit that at that time, I was an employee of the University of Virginia and had designs on some of the space up there.

But there was some craziness that it's too far away from things that people really don't use.

But I've been a fan of this space for a very long time.

I will suggest that I'm a bit inflicted around the trails and their distance from where people are actually going to live.

and Thadabni Grove is not close to where these people are gonna live.

And so I would encourage as you're thinking, as the foundation is thinking this through, to try and make the area that is really the residential part of that community as full of opportunities as possible.

So that there isn't any tension between some of the ABC units that are in the park and some of the people who are living in the area, that there is a livable, workable place there that works for them.

particularly given what we heard earlier this afternoon from staff about what the envisioned area across the road is to be.

I mean, it's a piece of that and it all makes sense to me.

Also, as she comes to the table to tell us who she is, I will also challenge the foundation to make sure that the design there is in fact lives into being an innovation quarter.

We see a bunch of projects, or I won't say for weight, I see a bunch of projects that just are not very interesting.

And it's the same old, same old stuff.

Right.

And that's precisely why we're here for that very reason.

And I will let Ms.

Van Ersel speak.

But just when and if you're interested, Mr. Bivins, we do, I can highlight that the neighborhood model area application plan does show trails and other amenity areas.

I saw them and I could see them.

It's just that when we start doing all of this proffering on the north side of the property, it's going to be hard to get over there.

When I become an older person, I wouldn't want to have to use my sort of walker to get over there.

And if I were the grandfather of a young child, I wouldn't want to have to push a buggy.

to get over there.

That would be sort of annoying on a whole bunch of things, particularly when I've got this rich field here that can have all these wonderful sort of activities.

And not top lots, but multi-generational green spaces, Tara, is something that I'm pushing for, that we have multi-generational green space, which means we're going to have multi-generational people living in these places.

And then I'll be quiet and hear from Ms.

I appreciated your commentary, Deborah Van Ersel with UVA Foundation.

Appreciated your commentary about that.

It is true that some of our tenants in the park are related to the folks across the street and that is a more restrictive user and they have some sensibilities and sensitivities to those who are around them.

That being the case, they have a lot of security within their own buildings and they are among this population and their employees also want walkability, they want amenities and so on and outdoor spaces and meeting spaces and so we do provide that.

It is true that on another diagram you would see that there around our water retention pond we have trails there.

We want to connect those to the newer trails that have been proffered in the future.

And so and our original master plan or the one that was redone in 2017 shows all kinds of connections to trailways and walking ways in an effort to create really a live, work, learn, play kind of a community, which is what everybody wants.

So I appreciate the encouragement.

And as it relates to the Innovation Corridor, that's something that I personally am championing.

along with the county, Greene County, the city of Charlottesville and the university.

And we absolutely want this to be a place of great innovation.

Thank you.

Commissioner Carrazano?

I'll pass for Donaldson.

Okay.

I just kind of wish that everything came for us was full of so much green space.

I did, I did notice in here to that there's going to be impacts to isolate wetlands and the way it was phrased is that you know like just isolated wetlands.

I know we have no regulatory power over isolated wetlands, but I will mention that very close by there are vernal pools.

along 29.

And those aren't important ecological community in Alamo County.

I don't know what kind of isolated wetlands you have, but just keep in mind that that is an important habitat in Alamo County.

So if you do have that habitat type, I hope you'll take that under consideration.

The other comment that I've gotten is that University Foundation does a great job using native plants.

and a comment that was made as I shared, one of the other projects that had been done is that they, that someone wished that, several people wish that the foundation would take things to the next level and use regionally native plants.

Okay.

Are there some more?