Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   12/19/2023

All right, good evening and welcome to the work session of the Albemarle County Planning Commission.

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.

With that, I will call us to order and would like to establish a quorum through a roll call.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Here.

All right, thank you, Madam Clerk.

And with that, we do have a quorum.

Next thing on the agenda are other matters not listed on the agenda from the public.

And with that, this is a work session, so we will not be taking comments during the work session.

So this would be the time to speak.

I do have a list of folks who have signed up, so I will start there.

Then I'll move to online and then I'll ask if anyone who has not signed up would like to speak to please do come forth.

As a reminder, you will have three minutes.

I want to call your name to come up and you'll see

a lighted lantern in front of you.

Green means you're good.

When it moves to yellow, it's just a gentle reminder to wrap up your points as quickly as possible.

And then red means to stop.

And again, we have three minutes per speaker.

So starting from the list here, please forgive me if I mispronounce your name, I'm doing my best.

But the first person I have here is Holmes Brown, Holmes Brown.

And then second is Rob McGinnis.

If you could share your name and your general vicinity of your address, that would be great.

My name is Holmes Brown.

I live at 1894 Stillhouse Creek in Batesville, Virginia.

And I've watched Batesville evolve and change over the last 67 years.

I submitted 11 pages of comments on rural crossroads communities to county staff several weeks ago.

I would like to address a generic question regarding crossroads communities before elaborating on several other points.

The question is, what are the advantages of being designated a rural crossroads community?

At this point, it is simply meeting a county definition.

So far, there appear to be no material benefits.

County surveys have indicated a range of services that rural residents would like to see available.

Many of these could be provided in rural crossroads communities given proper incentives.

Site-specific consultation with individual Crossroads communities will determine what is feasible and what is desired.

To achieve these goals, will the final comprehensive plan adopt a passive approach involving simply changing or eliminating regulations for Crossroads so that enhancements to Crossroads communities

would be dependent on private funding or private initiatives?

Or will the county undertake supportive projects or offer financial and policy assistance to promote Crossroads communities' priorities?

And I'll mention just a few other items of interest to rural communities.

One is abandoned buildings.

Those are being proposed for reuse, but often it's difficult to establish ownership and accelerating the process of determining ownership and also assisting communities in setting up entities that can manage these abandoned buildings would be very helpful.

Another issue is groundwater.

There's a lot of development and you hear stories of people who had wells that were producing for years and years and they're going dry.

I think the county would do well to try and take a survey about water levels and the problem of development.

All right, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Rob McGinnis.

I'm here representing the Piedmont Environmental Council.

First, PEC strongly supports the county's decision to prepare a standalone rural area chapter and a standalone development areas chapter.

Thank you for making that important decision.

Regarding crossroads communities, PEC recommends that the county pause the designation of new crossroads communities in the comp plan update.

The county should include a recommendation in the rural area chapter for the completion of a rural area plan.

During the process for completing a rural area plan, the county should engage rural communities regarding the potential designation of their communities as a crossroads community.

PEC also strongly supports the county's proposal to undertake small area plans for rural communities with significant community engagement.

PEC generally supports the draft multimodal systems planning activity centers option for implementing the planning toolkits.

However, the proposed activity center destination P4 for the SEAG property bordered by I-64 and US-29 is problematic given the activity center will be very isolated with no walkable connectivity and marginal bikeable connectivity.

With the likely growth of the biotechnology sector and the proximity of those parcels to the Manning Biotechnology Institute, these parcels may be better suited to be an employment district with a proposed land use designation of office, research and development, flex, and light industrial.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide my comments.

Happy holidays.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Peggy Gilgus.

I live in the Jack Jewett district and I own a historic property in Whitehall.

First off, I'm grateful that there will be a separate rural area chapter in AC44.

I've only lived here 20 years, but I've seen a lot of changes in that time.

Open space, healthy functioning ecosystems and clean water are becoming more endangered in Albemarle County.

I want to thank you for thinking about Albemarle's future and preserving these important features that make Albemarle a good place to live and enhance our quality of life every day.

On updating future land use designations, I think we should continue to make the most of the already designated growth areas.

We don't know how the city's up zoning will impact the county, but in the meantime, I support the formation of a development area task force to work on resolving the growing pains our growth areas are experiencing.

Our designated growth areas need both to work well for residents

and to be able to comfortably accommodate further population growth.

On the topic of community crossroads, I'm not familiar with most of them, but I do know Whitehall.

In Whitehall, we have two country stores with gas stations, a rural town building available for community events, a post office, a vineyard and an inn.

Whitehall is also very close to Crozet where there are many expanded services.

So in the case of Whitehall, I don't think anything more is needed.

And in general, I worry that commercialization of crossroads in the rural area is going to be a bad idea.

I agree that emergency shelters could be valuable in the rural area, but I think it makes sense to use existing facilities such as schools,

Oops, lost my place.

If needed, using existing buildings or improving old ones for this purpose would be more efficient than constructing new facilities.

Regarding guidelines for new development, since implementation of the county's climate action plan and community resilience are priorities, I want to see you re-categorize many very effective climate strategies from encouraged to expected.

We need to be reducing our impact and at the same time, restoring and supporting natural solutions to mitigate climate change.

Instead of stating that site design could consider protection and restoration of the natural environment, I want to see site design should protect and restore the natural environment.

I want to see native plants and an ample number of native trees expected under our new design guidelines, not just encouraged.

With any new development, we need to have highly efficient building standards and distributed energy capability across residential and commercial buildings, as well as over parking lots so that we can reduce the need for large industrial solar installations on agricultural or forested land.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Tom Olivier from the Samuel Miller district here to speak about the comprehensive plan.

In a previous statement, I recalled the Club of Rome's 1972 report, The Limits to Growth.

The report was based on early computer simulations of the global economy, incorporating limits of planetary resources.

The report warned that the economic growth then underway was unsustainable and if we wish to avoid a collapse of the global system, probably in the 21st century, we must recognize planetary limits to growth and learn to live within them.

From many recent scientific analyses, it appears we're on the brink or in the beginnings of the global collapse the club projected half a century ago.

In the recent past, Albemarle County has displayed awareness of the needs

to live, to recognize and live within ecological limits.

We see that recognition in the county's participation in the 1990s Thomas Jefferson Sustainability Council, in subsequent financial support for research by advocates for a sustainable Albemarle population into our optimum sustainable population size, in creation of a standing biodiversity committee, and in the county's commitment to become carbon neutral.

However, in the past 15 years, side by side with its efforts to protect the environment, the county increasingly has sought to promote economic growth.

Currently, comp plan economic development proposals call for the county to lead growth of the favored and other industries.

Apparently, promoting enough industry isn't under consideration, neither is developing an ecologically sustainable economy.

and then there's Rivanna Station.

In October, staff suggested the station could anchor the development of an 8-mile technology business corridor.

One day we could be like Northern Virginia.

There seems to be too much uncritical zeal for economic growth in the corridors

of the Albemarle County Office Building.

This zeal is at odds with the value of most county residents as revealed in decades of surveys.

And of course, economic growth will elevate the threats we face soon from the climate emergency.

You still can place needed constraints in comprehensive plan economic development policies, but your window is closing.

Thank you.

Hello and thank you for having me today.

My name is Christine Putnam and I live in the Scottsville District.

I'm also the chair of the Albemarle County National Heritage Committee and I live in the southern part of Albemarle.

My property is in the middle of the planned Woodridge solar project and I recently attended a meeting concerning another proposed project off of Secretary Sandro

and just last week I drove by the Rivanna solar project near the intersection of Buck Island Road and 53.

After seeing this work in progress, there's no question about the enormous impact of utility scale solar projects on the land.

The place looks like a moonscape and so I recommend going there and checking it out.

With the increased number of data centers coming to Virginia and their insatiable energy needs, it's more important than ever

to properly plan and to take action to protect the rural areas.

The push to develop more utility scale solar is just one example of the pressures being placed on the rural area.

Wineries, glamping facilities, and parking lots for tow trucks all put pressure on our natural resources because they create more impervious surfaces, traffic, they deplete groundwater, and remove tree canopy.

This is why it's important to create a rural area plan which takes into consideration the protection of large forest blocks, wildlife corridors, and water resources.

We must also have a strong solar ordinance which does not allow grading and requires the restoration of natural landscapes to support biodiversity.

I want to thank you guys.

the Planning Commission for their support of a rural area plan.

Action on this is long overdue and cannot happen soon enough, given the development pressures from all directions.

I would also like to comment on the draft community design guidelines.

I'm very pleased to see the many important

design features which recognize the importance of ecosystem services provided by trees, buffers along streams and greenways.

I'm also heartened to see the commitment to building out the development areas in the best way possible rather than expanding them.

I do have questions about why some elements are encouraged rather than expected.

For example, we should expect that simply

I'll then simply encourage the protection of tree canopy and the use of low impact development best practices.

I would also like to see the addition of language to address light pollution with dark sky compliant lighting requirements requiring the use of fully shielded, low intensity, low temperature lighting to minimize light trespass.

And there should also be an expectation that all new development use solar ready building design.

Both of these guidelines would help us meet

our climate energy goals.

Yes, thank you.

Kristen Raberden, I apologize if I'm not saying that name correctly.

And then lastly, it looks like the last name is Smith.

Maybe first name is JR.

I'm having a hard time reading that piece.

Is there a Smith here?

Hi, good evening.

My name is Kristin Reboarden.

It's fine for the mispronunciation.

And I'm the current owner of the Batesville Market.

Batesville Market's been around since 1880 and has endured many, many changes over the years.

And so we appreciate the county looking at Crossroads communities, not only how can we sort of

to preserve what's happening, but how can we provide things and services that will make the communities thrive?

We all know that crossroads communities really are important hubs for those community members.

It's not just a pass through to get from point A to point B, and it's a way for us to engage our current population, which is expansive.

and provide unique services for both the young and the aging population where they may not have access to services that are a little more centrally localized and available.

So in addition to kind of recognizing how the crossroads communities are important, we also want to make sure that we're controlling traffic and creating safe spaces.

That's something that is important as we again have an aging population in Batesville.

We want to make sure that

It's walkable and it's accessible to everyone.

And with that sort of safety and accessibility, we also want to address electricity and broadband the electricity that all the time.

and we don't have reliable broadband.

And so having that access is important for our youth.

We saw that during COVID how so many children did not have access no matter what their financial means were.

It just didn't exist.

So being able to create a connected crossroads community is very important.

And then also looking at

development and zoning regulations that are tailored to each community based on its own community's needs.

Every community is a little bit different and has different use of land and different needs, so we'd ask that

that you all kind of consider that as well and engage the community members when it comes to zoning regulations for each crossroad community.

And then also, you know, we love the support of your country stores is something that is important.

We're an important hub for the community and sometimes the only place nearby where people can can meet and gather.

So

being able to find some zoning regulations that might be a little easier for country stores to be able to thrive.

Thank you.

All right, I'll try again.

Last name Smith.

Is that person still here?

Yes, I have Neil Williamson.

Neil, please unmute yourself.

Good evening.

Thank you.

My name is Neil Williamson.

I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum.

I appreciate the diligence that the Planning Commission takes in preparing the comprehensive plan.

I have to say the best protection for the rural areas

is a adequate development area.

And the need for looking at your development areas with a climate lens and an equity lens.

If development areas don't have areas to really grow and rural areas are prevented from growing residentially, you are pushing the additional residents into the outlying counties.

How does that square with your goals for climate?

I sincerely appreciate the conversation about rural areas and the crossroads communities.

And I look forward to the combination of how we can make it a balance of making it so that folks can get what they need close to them and promote community in those nests.

I don't think it's going to be an easy balance, and I look forward to your conversation.

All right.

All right.

And I'll come back to the audience before me one last time.

Is there anyone who would like to speak who has not signed up?

This would be your opportunity.

Okay, with that, we'll move on to the rest of the agenda, which next is approval of the consent agenda.

There are two documents listed on there, meeting minutes from November the 14th and 28th.

Does any commissioner want to pull one of those items for further discussion or review?

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

All right.

Thank you.

With that, we'll move into the heart of the order, which is our work session surrounding CPA 2021-00002 AC44

Land Use and Transportation recommendations for implementing the planning toolkits.

So with that, I'll turn it over to staff.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission.

I'm Ben Holt with the Long Range Planning Team.

Sure.

Thank you so much.

All right, looks like we got our technical difficulties straightened out.

Sure thing.

Okay, so tonight we're gonna be talking about options for implementing the planning toolkits.

These toolkits were brought before you earlier this year.

We talked about the four different components.

Mr. Holt, is it possible to speak more?

Is that better?

Can you hear me?

I'll try to keep the mic close to my mouth.

All right, thanks.

So the agenda for tonight, we're going to give, as usual, a snapshot of where we are in the AC44 process.

We'll cover community priorities and the Planning Commission and Board direction that we've heard to date for the five topics we'll be presenting today.

Those include multimodal plan and activity centers approach, a draft updated future land use designations, draft community design guidelines, which are currently referred to as neighborhood model principles.

We'll also cover calculating density and the discussion about gross versus net density application.

and last we'll cover the rural crossroads communities again and in the very end of the presentation we'll mention the next steps in the process.

So the purpose of today's meeting, we'd like to hear feedback from you all on the options for implementing these planning toolkits and how they'll be incorporated into the relevant maps, guidelines, as well as the goals, objectives, and action steps for each plan topic.

The recommendations are intended to implement and support community priorities and the Planning Commission and board feedback that we've heard to date.

So we are currently in phase two of four for the comprehensive plan.

In phase one we began with distilling the big ideas, the direction for the plan, the type of community we wanted to be.

From that we developed a framework and we also applied a review of the growth management policy and a land use build out analysis.

For phase two, again, as you've recently helped us with updating the goals and objectives for each plan chapter, and now we're diving into the planning toolkits, which is a coordinated approach to land use and transportation planning.

In phase three, which will begin early next year, we'll update the action steps and we'll prioritize the plan recommendations.

We're calling these big moves.

These are priority implementation that we will pursue within the first five years that the plan is adopted.

and Phase 4 which is scheduled for late 2024.

That would be the final comprehensive plan adoption and it would entail public hearings with the PC and the board so public would have a chance to share input as well.

On the comprehensive plan organization, we currently have eight chapters and they're shown at left.

The guidance that will also be included in the plan involves multimodal transportation, activity centers and districts, future land use designations and the future land use plan, as well as community design guidelines.

So in building on phase two for the community priorities within the development areas, and this again is summarized in the staff report, but takeaways are increasing housing choice, walkability, public transit, and access to high quality open slash green space.

We'd also like to provide safe and comfortable multimodal transportation options.

especially the key destinations which would include things like parks, schools and employment opportunity areas.

We'd like to pair greater density or intensity of uses with quality open and recreational space and protect the natural environment.

We'll also be encouraging redevelopment and infill within the development areas and we need to make sure that infrastructure keeps pace with growth especially considering transportation in schools.

So community priorities for the rural area.

Some small scale uses may be appropriate in some crossroads communities, things such as healthcare, country stores, community centers, and fire rescue stations.

We will be engaging with individual communities prior to any land use or zoning changes that may occur.

And the community resilience hubs are intended to have affordable food access, centers that

It could be utilized by seniors and youth with related programming.

We'd also like to provide access to healthcare, emergency shelter that would include phone and internet access during an emergency.

There's also a need for public transit and access to employment areas and these would likely first be implemented by smaller on-demand transit options and also health care.

And we also would like to protect and restore the natural environment, including conservation focus areas as identified within the biodiversity action plan.

So to build on phase two, the Planning Commission and Board direction was to update the center locations and place types throughout the development areas so that we can encourage walkable mixed-use development and support the existing growth management policy.

We will continue to prioritize efficient use of the development areas land over potential development areas expansion.

and also rural-interstate interchanges would be addressed after the comprehensive plan update and this would involve separate small area plans that would be applied and these would not identify specific land uses at this time when the comprehensive plan is adopted.

So that brings us to our first toolkit topic of multimodal plan and activity centers approach.

The multimodal planning that we are emphasizing is used by localities across the state and it's based on guiding documents from the Virginia DRPT, that's the Department of Rail and Public Transit.

The guidelines have been vetted by VDOT and they can help improve coordination on future projects with VDOT.

The outcome of this approach is a coordinated land use and transportation plan that shows activity centers, multimodal corridors, and modal emphasis.

A coordinated land use and transportation approach is key for transportation choice in providing other options besides driving.

This helps reduce emissions and traffic congestion.

This model also supports transportation options that are less expensive than using a personal vehicle, and that includes walking, biking, and transit.

This type of planning can also provide a more focused guidance for future transportation projects and infrastructure.

Now the activity centers are places that have a variety of businesses, services, and houses, either now or planned for the future.

And they're places where community members can gather, shop, walk, stroll around, and

go to destinations that meet their daily needs.

The development is expected to include a variety of housing types, a mix of uses, multimodal transportation networks, access to trails and parks, and various place-making elements.

To identify draft activity centers, we did an analysis to estimate the current and future number of people and jobs per acre using housing unit counts, job counts, the land use build-out analysis, and the county's development pipeline.

We then compared the analysis with the current centers as designated in the existing master plans.

There are currently 50 centers across the five master plans, and many of these are not mixed use or expected to be mixed use in the future, which call for an update.

So as a result, we are recommending consolidating and updating the centers through the AC44 process to allow for a more focused project and infrastructure planning

including multimodal transportation planning.

And this text is kind of hard to read, but it is within your packets as an attachment.

This chart details the three different activity center place types, and these are neighborhood, town, and destination.

The draft center place types would function similarly to the centers in the Crozet and Pantops master plans,

which were updated most recently compared to the other master plans.

These would function as a land use overlay to provide additional guidance on building form, scale, uses, open spaces, and it would encourage a higher intensity or density of development beyond the underlying land use designation.

So this would be a means to achieve the density we would like to see within the development areas.

All center place types are expected to be mixed use and walkable, though they may differ in form and scale.

For example, neighborhood is recommended two to four stories, town center two to six stories, and destination three to eight stories.

The scale of recommended public and civic open spaces also increases as you move up three center place types.

Now that brings us to an example and a comparison of current centers and the updated centers.

An example of reducing and consolidating the number of designated centers, in the Places 29 Master Plan, there are currently 12 centers that are designated in Places 29 area below the Rivanna River, including Stonefield and several centers along Hydraulic, Route 29, and Rio Road East.

With these new draft activity centers, we're now showing three total centers and the Rio 29 small area plan.

What we've come up with is more focused, consolidated approach, and this could help guide future development and redevelopment and possible infrastructure improvements, as well as public-private partnerships.

For the multimodal plan, it shows a modal emphasis and part of this multimodal process is identifying the modal emphases for streets within the development areas.

So we have identified where certain modes in the related infrastructure should be prioritized.

For example, a key part of a bike network or a transit route.

To identify, we start by reviewing existing conditions in future recommended projects.

This includes utilizing data on existing infrastructure such as sidewalks, shared use paths, bike lanes, and reviewing the master plans along with local and regional plans for recommended future projects.

The modal emphasis prioritizes more optimal standards for the mode being emphasized through all streets, excuse me, though all streets should accommodate all modes.

The modal emphasis mapping does not preclude additional transportation projects or infrastructure.

For example, even if a street is not identified as a bike modal emphasis, it could still be a good future candidate for a bike lane.

Especially for biking and transit, the modal emphasis is really intended to highlight the primary or spine network.

As the DRPT multimodal guidelines note, achieving these networks will take place over years or even decades with combined efforts from both the public and private sectors.

Modal emphasis and activity center maps are shown for each development area.

We have draft versions for each master plan area and we will continue to refine these with input.

It's intended to build a multimodal network that will connect centers, parks, and schools.

All streets in the development areas have been identified as pedestrian emphasis and they're shown in blue lines as walkability is expected throughout the development areas.

The bicycle emphasis is shown in green and this was identified based on major connections needed between and through centers as well as other areas of importance such as parks and schools.

The transit emphasis shown in red was identified through existing transit routes and the unconstrained version in the Regional Transit Vision Plan as well as the Charlottesville area.

The modal networks within the comprehensive plan will serve as a basis for targeting future investments in bicycle, pedestrian, and transit facilities.

With future master plan updates for the county's development areas, the multimodal system elements can also be refined in greater detail.

So that brings us to the centers slash modal emphasis maps and we're going to push through all of these not spend a lot of time on each one but staff would be happy to revisit these slides once we are doing the feedback session.

So the first map here is Crozet and we have a total of four centers shown on this map.

The next one is Pantops where we have three centers

And the place is 29, has been consolidated into three centers with two very large centers along either side of Route 29.

As you'll note on this map, in contrast to some of the others, the centers are not a neat geometric circle.

They've been kind of adopted and shaped to meet the underlying land use conditions and future land use.

And here's Places 29, and it has five centers, and again, the largest are adjacent to Route 29.

Moving to the southern and western neighborhoods, this first map zooms in on the western area where we have two centers, one of them shown adjacent to 64.

And this is the southern area of the southwest model.

And last but not least, we have Village of Rivanna, which, as you know, is mostly residential, and we only have one designated center in the northern portion of Village of Rivanna.

So as a summary of the CAC input that we've acquired on these modal maps, we held meetings with all the CACs, except for Pantops, which has been rescheduled for January due to quorum.

We asked for input on how they would prefer to travel around their CAC area, what transportation modes they'd like to use, if any major bike or transit emphases seem to be missing, and what other destinations would they like to be able to walk or bike to.

A summary of the input

is shown in the slide, so speeding through these real quick.

All bike emphases should also be pedestrian emphasis.

Desired connection to schools for walking and biking.

Also considering scooters and e-bikes as part of multimodal transportation and would like bike modal connections to nearby rural area destinations as well.

They'd also like to identify park and ride for transit modal emphasis.

Better connectivity between parks and trails and noted significant barriers include high speed roads such as Route 29 and I-64, which do not accommodate bike and pedestrian movement.

And also the bike infrastructure needs need to be separated from vehicles for safety purposes.

There were also some additional centers suggested for Places 29.

This includes the north of the Rio 29 small area plan below the river.

There was overall support for consolidating the number of total centers.

So that brings us to the feedback portion.

And what we'd like to hear from you is any feedback on the location and or place types of any of the activity centers.

And we also would like to know, do any of these seem out of place or missing?

Also, are there other important destinations that are not connected?

And do any major bicycle or transit modal emphases seem to be missing?

Thank you.

Before we start a discussion, I'll ask the commissioners, are there any questions based off of what you've initially have heard?

So in looking at bicycle and pedestrian transit, did you actually look at the data of where people are currently biking and walking and running?

Because that data does exist.

So in these maps, I would love to see corollary maps that shows where are people currently biking, walking and running today?

Because that data is out there.

And then also, I did like this comment from that we had the

the comments from the public about connections to the rural area.

I think when we get to discussion of a rural area plan, which I hope we will, I do think we need to also talk about rural area multimodal travel as well.

76, for example, goes right through Crozet.

It's a national bike route.

It seems like that that's an important connector piece that we should be talking about.

the Three Notch Trail and other things that have been talked about in community planning.

There's also connections to the Shenandoah National Park.

Thank you.

Any other questions before we go into discussion?

Question for clarity, if I could.

So under

The multimodal systems planning and activity centers, you mentioned in there that activity centers were identified based on jobs plus people per acre across development areas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that resulted in a heat map.

We have shown that in the initial drafts.

It's a traditional heat map, sort of a gradation of yellow, orange, and red.

So that was used to identify where the centers were going to be placed.

These current versions of the map, we were trying to show

More of the underlying conditions, land use and the transportation network.

So the heat maps may would have made that it's a little bit too busy.

Yeah.

It's okay.

I was really more.

I remembered seeing them, but I want to make sure when making it up.

Right.

And I think I know the answer to this.

So those were used to drive these areas, right, these activity centers.

And it says projects that are approved or under review were also used.

So I guess my question is how far, well,

And maybe this question can be more asked later, but I'm just curious, is there a system to be able to add to these activity centers in the future?

And we're kind of taking a snapshot now, right?

Based on what we know or what we're projecting in the near future.

Got it.

Okay, great.

All right.

Well, this.

Oh, you have a question?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So what are the overarching.

I would say that the piece that blends this together for me or that or that is the emphasis, I think you just take a quote from something you said, but make sure that significant that that.

make sure that infrastructure keeps up with growth.

I'll just paraphrase it.

And that's in here in a number of places.

It struck me how many times it's actually in this section, which I applaud that.

I guess the question that I have and how we think of moving this forward is how do we expect to do that?

Or what are the tools, mechanisms,

Well, I'll let Tory jump in after me, but I think it starts with these modal emphasis, making sure that both the public knows what we intend to do in terms of a transportation network, and then make sure that that's clearly identified and conveyed to the development community so that we're working together to achieve these networks that we want.

Transportation was probably the top cited infrastructure issue for people, followed by schools.

Sure.

So yes, the multi-modal plan activity centers would help, you know, guide new development applications that are submitted and what would be expected with those, but could also be used to help prioritize future transportation projects and where those should occur.

I think all that makes sense.

And the piece that I didn't see too much about was talking about the capital improvement plans and then how the funding layers into this.

But I think your points are important.

Fewer centers, areas that we can focus on, limited resources, where do we focus them so that they can keep up?

And obviously meshing or coordinating the land use with transportation, which is what you're trying to do here.

makes a lot of sense.

I would just keep that in the forefront, keep it in that front burner as we move forward to the other.

And I just elaborate on one thing that you said and then I 100 percent agree.

Ben, you mentioned one thing you said working with the development community to ensure they know where these things are headed.

I would just and I'm sure you also were thinking this.

It's not just about the development community that's going to influence this.

So we'll move into the discussion piece and I do want to be sensitive to the agenda we have in front of us here.

So you have three questions here to consider.

Maybe we'll just go around and then you can weigh in on each of those, maybe provide some additional guidance to maybe help frame your thoughts

Historically what we've done is kind of thought through this in three elements.

One thing that resonates was a positive thing.

What's an area for further exploration, which is kind of woven here within these three questions?

Anything that's just blatantly missing that needs further pride might be one way to think through these questions as we go around.

So I'll start with Commissioner Moore.

And if you have nothing, that's totally fine.

No, thank you.

So as far as location or place type of some activity centers, you know, I'm looking at the Rio 29, Places 29 rather, sort of the south side of that, which is

Largely contiguous with my district here.

And just noting that I'm curious as to why there's like destination sort of where the Stonefield shopping area is and destination kind of on the other side of 29.

But then north of the Rio small area plan, there's neither of those designations on either side of the highway, even though there's like a lot of development there between 29 and Berkmar and the other side as well.

And what that means, I mean,

just focus our efforts on the parts south of Rio.

That might be a reason, but I'm just curious what that's about.

Otherwise, destinations aren't connected.

I mean, they do seem pretty connected as far as that goes.

I think with bicycle and pedestrian modal networks,

thing that is always, I mean, it's what you got from the CACs as well.

Trying to cross 250, trying to cross Rio, trying to cross 29 in any form or fashion is simply difficult, and this is a very, very hard challenge.

Even just trying to go across, and where we've got crosswalks now or bike lanes now, they're not actually very safe, even though they're there.

And so, you know,

Great comments, thank you.

Yes, and looking at Crozet, I still see Eastern Avenue is on here and we've gotten several comments questioning the feasibility of Eastern Avenue.

Okay, thank you.

OK.

I have sort of a general comment and then a specific comment.

The general comment is I don't have a specific location per se, but I'd like somehow in here to have an emphasis on the idea of bike commuting that is bike commuting not on a road, bike commuting not on a bike lane on a road, but actually just for bike commuting.

Give you an example of Lynchburg,

that has a really amazing trail network in their parks with loaner bikes but they built a section to the downtown and everyone started bike commuting on it and they were really surprised and the the citizen said well you never asked us if we wanted to bike commute to work lots of us did but we couldn't get there from here you know we have the parkway but

I think there could be other opportunities if we're a little more creative and I just want to at least give a nod to that because when I look at some of the roads on here, I don't need to pick them all out, but you already mentioned getting across some of the major ones, but where I see like the line and it's saying like, you know, shared car, bike, and I'm looking at some of them like no way would I ever put my bike on that road.

Alright, so maybe a little reality check on some of that.

So that's sort of my general comment.

My specific comment is on the destination center for P4 in my district in Sam Miller.

That is the one that is, for those not familiar with it, south of, it's where 29 and 64 intersect.

And it's up a steep hill behind a lot of rock formations.

It's where the distribution center has been for the beer and all that.

There have been many discussions about how to connect to that site.

There's been talk about tunnels and bridges and all these things for people, pedestrians, bicyclists, whatever, to be able to get in and out of there.

There is not a single feasible solution that has been proposed or thought up so far by even the most creative among us.

So I just suggest that I don't see that as a destination center for, you know, like I'm going to live there.

It is an island.

You know, so it does not lend itself to the walkable neighborhood model of a destination center.

Yes, maybe you could drive your car there and walk around in it, but you literally can't get in and out of it very easily.

And so I don't think it's appropriate to call that out.

I mean, it is if you just pretended that the whole landscape was flat.

and there was no hills and it was, you could get right across 64 and that wasn't one of our more tricky intersections.

Even after VDOT, it's in all that work to create the turn lanes for trucks and the traffic light.

That area's still a nightmare.

Go through it almost every day, so.

Just putting that, I don't think that that is properly designated as a destination center that's intended for multiple,

Multiple types of uses, residential, commercial, it's everything that you have in that list.

I do love, I say something positive because our chair asked us to, I do love the idea of collapsing the centers and getting rid of all the crazy confusion and new little C's next to already developed commercial areas.

It's just been kind of a pain.

Thank you.

Great comments, Commissioner.

Thanks.

Just a few ideas or questions, sorry, answers to your questions.

Number one, feedback on the location and or place type of any activity centers.

I think generally they look like they were, I would say objectively identified and a couple of things I would just recommend.

One is to consider acknowledging the edge conditions around those

are those edges really hard and fast boundaries or are they more kind of transitional

in form, and along those lines, considering ways to say it's a year from now or two years from now, and you go, oh, we didn't consider that part being part of the activity center, but it makes total sense to do that.

Is there a logical way to add that in?

That would, I think, make sense.

Are there other important destinations that are not connected?

So the other last two sort of seemed to tie together.

And one of the things that several of us heard on, was that Thursday night, with 5th and Avon Street CAC was the concern, and I saw it in the public comments, so the concern about connections across major roadways, right?

And if you're gonna cross Avon Street over top of 6040, you actually have the width to plan for these bike lanes.

And if not, are there creative ways to sort of think through that?

Jumping up to the resonates, explanation and missing comments that our chair suggested.

First of all, definitely the way these designations have been refined is great and I think much, much simpler.

They promote density, they promote infill.

I think that's a good thing.

I thought that the categories on the left side of the types, I think they were all very logical.

I had a couple of nitpicky stuff along there.

One that jumped out on me is, you know, how are we dealing with residential under the draft district types?

Thinking through with an affordable housing lens, how might those be included in those and maybe not be the right place for it, but just to consider through that.

I think it's important to think about

under the maybe needing more explanation piece, just re-echoing the capital investment needs and looking at those in parallel with this and having realistic goals and plans.

I also think having the ability to leverage partnerships that exist, whether it's partnerships with the city, with the Charlottesville mountain biking groups, with trails organizations, things like that that can help.

I'm sure this is all stuff you've thought about.

and then missing, so I still think, and I'm probably gonna always be saying this, you know, we have to have the developer slash applicant lens as we're looking through at these.

How does, is this providing clarity for the development community?

I think it is, but I would ask, how are we expected to use these if we are in the development community?

And is it gonna cause us to have additional investments

and therefore are there ways that, and one of the members of the public said tonight, are there ways to incentivize some of these objectives?

And then the last thing, again, this is just kind of administrative nitpicky-ness, but the maps are a little difficult to read.

Yeah.

Excuse me.

I think some of that is a scale issue.

When we took this information to the CACs, we had a large 24 by 36 poster.

And I think when you have those types of materials, it makes it much easier to digest.

So I hope in your packets, if you zoom in on the PDFs, it's clear enough.

If not, staff can follow up and share some larger size documents with you.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Thank you, Commissioner Missel.

Come alongside my colleague here on a couple of comments, some of the positives.

I think the density and the infill opportunities that you're outlining here is an absolute plus of what you're doing and the simplification of the areas.

So I applaud you for that.

I also think that the logic is there on how you're beginning to develop these.

Ditto on the difficulty in reading the maps.

One thing that I would suggest is continuity in the information that's there.

Some of them have street names, others don't.

Obviously, the scales are going to be very different just because of the areas.

But if there's just continuity, and you do that, I think the legends are obviously consistent and so forth.

But there's a few other things that you can add, maybe some landmarks, just that it makes it easier to read.

So a couple areas that I think are in the perhaps missing category.

Commissioner Moore, I think, mentioned this already.

To me, 29, it's almost a corridor, and I'm not quite sure of the logic of where we stop and start in some areas, in that one in particular.

So it seems like from Ryle 29 to Sam's Club,

there's nothing identified but there's a lot of activity and certainly there's a lot of potential for infill there and densification there as well.

So I'm just wondering why that wasn't there or maybe you should just take a look at it.

And so the other one that struck me and it was actually mentioned by one of the speakers at the beginning is Fontaine Research Park.

It's not identified.

That is an area that is developing

The university is developing that.

There's P3 partnerships there, P3 initiatives.

So that's in your southwest district, I believe, or southwest area.

Yeah.

And so thinking of that,

Certainly as a center, I would encourage you to look at that because there's a lot that's happening there.

Not only in that area, but I think the areas around it are going to be impacted.

I think you hit the major, so I don't think there's a missing transit

Modality that you're not, so obviously you're identifying a bike pad.

Vehicles and transit, I would echo Ms.

Firehock in terms of not always having them in the same location.

We've talked about some other models that are out there where it separates them and sometimes that might be easier to create than actually in the street where you have to widen it and

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Are we going to speak, are we going to talk about the district types too at some point?

That was included in this section.

I just was sort of checking there.

So there's a couple of pieces here that sort of just continues to baffle me, I should say.

What you've done here is, I think, is honorable and is in the right direction.

but I always have to sort of bring in the piece is that what are we doing to retroactively fit those areas which are not new development but have large amounts of individuals, numerous individuals living there that would love to have access to some of these sidewalks and bike paths, although I will say it here as I've said it privately to a number of people.

If you look at a sort of a map of where bicycle shops are in this area, they're not in our county.

except for Dick's, I take that back, and maybe the one that relocated up to the Tarkin area.

Most of the bike centers here are in the city, as one would expect in a university community, serving university-type people.

And so I will say again, if you do not work for the University of Virginia, it is most likely you will not have a place to change out of your sporty Lycra to go to work.

Now, those people who work at the university, you can say I'm wrong.

I used to work there, so I know what it's like to have a shower right in the men's room.

But for those people who don't work at the university, riding their bike to a service area job or to a regular office job is not something that I believe is going to happen easily.

And when people tell me about electric bikes, if anyone's looked at the price of a reasonable electric price, electric bike now, they're upwards of three or four thousand dollars.

And so that is not another thing that I want to say about equity.

That is something that I'm concerned about.

As you know, I always say the kinds of things I'm not concerned about.

What I am concerned about is buses.

What I am concerned about are sidewalks.

Because if I can keep new parents not having to cross 29 and getting slaughtered on 29, which we all know is 29 is a road that they don't want us to slow the traffic down.

That's what 29 is.

And so we have to get over under somehow on 29.

which is a very expensive and often the kind of things that VDOT during the smart, well you know, you sit on the committee now, during the smart scale, they don't want to hear about going over 29 and they don't definitely want to hear about going under 29 and the last time I was on one of those committees they didn't want to hear about stopping 29 for longer than just to get somebody into the food line or to the Golden Corral that doesn't exist now but whatever the buffet place is up on 29.

And so I'm concerned about that.

When I look at money, when I look at what we control, when I look at those things which we can actually, as my colleagues so often say, that we can achieve, I want to have better mass transit here.

We don't own the mass transit organization.

That's CAT.

But I do believe there's a regional transportation, something of that note coming forward soon.

Okay.

Maybe that's the way.

So I'd like to hear something about the regional transportation network and how we can, in fact, as a county, leverage mass transportation

for our people here, and sidewalks, and retrofitting areas that don't have sidewalks because they were never intended, when developed, to be as dense as they are.

We've got a whole slew of neighborhoods like that, with lots of people in them, and you gotta walk in the street.

In your activity centers, under your core areas, I would love to believe that in this community, people will walk 20 minutes.

I would love to believe that in this community, people would walk 20 minutes in the county.

Not in the city, in the county.

I think you're ambitious with 20 minutes.

I think that should be narrowed down, because I don't believe, from my years of living in close to the urban core, in quotations, people don't walk that way unless you're one of the new children going to Albemarle High School that has to have, that lives within a mile of the high school, and so buses don't come collect you any longer.

So I think 20 minutes is too ambitious.

The other thing that I will say is that we are still, in our form and site and design guidance, we are still promoting a single-family, low-height community, which is in contrast with trying to build out or utilize the density that we have in 5% of the county.

The form, site, and design guidance.

Form and Site Design Guidance, where we say in a neighborhood center it's going to be two to four stories.

In a town center we say two to four stories up to six.

I would prefer we just say two to six stories.

When we get to the destination centers, which if my memory is correct, and you'll know, Tori, is that what the Rio Small Area Plan is?

So that, since it was done as a separate small area plan, it will be guided by the land use recommendations and the form-based code that was adopted.

I would suggest, since that was a form that we all got excited about, that we in fact sort of lift that up and say, that's the form.

If we're able to do that in the Rio 29 small area plan, that should be that we're looking at those kinds of areas which I'll say in a kind of a broad way that feels like a destination center.

So we should be able to set a max 8 or max 7 as you go there.

On the draft district types, I don't

I'm struggling with in an employment district that there isn't any place to live when many of the people on our panel, me included, have said we support live work environments.

So in the employment district, there's nowhere there for me to live unless I come to us for a special use permit.

I think if we really are committed to that, we should figure out a way to put that there.

We should be able to put some sort of housing there.

The other thing that I would like to see us do, I would like to see us include schools, all the school land that's owned public school land in an institution that just reclassified as an institution.

So we don't have to go through what we have to go through for District 2.

and sort of pretend it's this, but it's not this, and it's really this because it's in a place that at some point, I think that school's 50, so in the 70s, that really was sort of the outer limits of Albemarle County, sort of urban, and so really was kind of rural.

There was the big Roslyn farm there.

that was owned by Mrs. Alton Jones was a big 200-and-some-odd acre farm.

Now it's been broken down to a lot of five-acre lots.

Well, there's still a 20-acre lot out there, but it's no longer there, so if we could think about putting schools, take them out of what they are and put them into zones that you could easily do work then, okay?

I would also say under the employment district, if we can in fact do live work, that we look at perhaps just saying that it's two to six stories, a maximum of two to six stories.

But that then allows us to live into this whole idea that we have about being able to live and work in the same place.

The other thing that I would sort of ask, and this is if we go back to the maps for a second,

I am struck by how one of the dense areas in everybody, this is, you know, my song on this one, on places 29 South, if you will look at the small amount of green space that's there, that happens to be the Cheryl Humphreys Park, which is not really a park, but it's sort of an urban wooded area.

Not in the style of Central Park, but just it's a urban wooded area there.

And you've got, on the other side, we have little or no sort of owned-groom space.

Everyone has heard me say that I wish the county would purchase the green lot at Stonefield and keep it green.

And so I will use this moment again to say, the county, could you please purchase the green spot of land

do a, what do you call those things, P3s or P2s or whatever, you know, some game or something, it's a P3, it's a P3, thank you, thank you.

Some P3 with the stone field owner and put a green spot there.

If you're trying to create a space, then people can come.

You've got the density there, you've got commercial there.

What they don't have there is a permanently set aside green space, okay?

We have

More green space and everybody knows my thing because I'm not putting the kid on a bus to go over to Biscuit Run.

I don't know when I'd see the kid again.

I don't think you can get from my side of town to Biscuit Run and come back again in the same day.

My kid's going to have to be a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout and get her camping badge.

The whole idea

of thinking about some of the work that we have, some of the places we have, and to use these brilliant ideas to enhance the community that exists today.

Enhance what we have today, using these theories.

How do we live into these theories in these particular districts that you've laid out here?

That's what I think we should be challenging the supervisors with.

We receive lots of land free, that's brilliant, buy a piece of land,

for a park.

It was all the other stuff we bought for free.

So, Chair, on that note, I know you said a sale.

That's why we always come to me last, because I'm going to act up on the thing.

But I'm going to say this other thing.

Even in Pan Tops, I think it would be difficult for the children to get to Darden Town Park.

across those streets.

Again, looking where we have people and figuring out how we can put green spaces there.

And I'm not talking about tot lots.

Everybody knows how I don't, I'm sick of tot lots.

We don't have enough tots.

But it also excludes a whole host of people who are moving here.

If you look at the demographics of the people who are coming to Albemarle County, they have tot grandchildren.

that they send home unless they're in one of those situations where they're having to take care of their children because of a situation in the family.

Can I tag onto that just very briefly?

You know I just can't help it when you start talking about parks, but you know it's also true that yes it costs money to buy land and put parks in or to carve something out, but properties around those green spaces increase significantly in value and that park will pay you back.

easily.

It also creates a space where you can have craft fairs and other little events that can also be a draw.

It's not just a green square for throwing a Frisbee with your dog.

It's so much more.

And, you know, if you look at the real estate values of just having that, I've said it over again like a broken record.

We want people to live in the urban ring.

I know that we've said that we have to have hard lines around the development area.

but I would also, and I also know that we've wrestled what can we say where those development areas might be suggested to the supervisors but I would also encourage just at some point to think about sort of as you were saying around the hots, around the districts to have softer edges, not that we're going to invade them as some people in the rural area, that'd be me, think that's gonna happen but that we could have the flexibility

particularly if the county says that we will be in partnership with a developer to put the kinds of housing that we would like in that particular area.

They need the ability to do that.

All right.

I'm going to flag.

We have four more topics, so don't use all your ammo.

I'll bring us home on this one before we go to the next one.

I'll be very quick for the sake of time and attention span so we can get through productively.

I would just encourage a group to look at topics at the macro level.

So we talk about climate.

as you're starting to lay out these pathways, does it start to take into consideration each summer gets hotter and hotter?

So who's gonna be walking on these certain paths when it's a heat index of 115, right?

Going back to, someone made a comment about, will somebody walk really 20 minutes?

I'm curious, what does public health data say for our area?

Does that start to inform where we start to put some of these paths?

I'd ask that we just continue to say the feasibility

of some of the lines that are drawn on this paper in terms of inviting folks to actually use their spaces for how they're intended.

I was looking at the Pantops map, for example, and it looks like there was some pedestrian emphasis, if you will, along Richmond Road.

I say, are you sure?

Because I've walked it a lot of times, so that's a tough one.

That doesn't feel fun when cars are zipping by you at 50 mile an hour down that hill.

And so just are you sure kind of thing, the feasibility behind some of that.

And then also Olympia Drive, which is in that Pan Tops area.

I would definitely put bike in there.

You have Marco's Pizza, a smoothie shop, tons of neighborhoods back there.

So I might just flag that as a fine detail.

And then lastly,

The borders, one of my colleagues mentioned something about borders earlier, but you know where Richmond Road crosses over into Charlottesville, when the map is just an arrow, what happens?

Maybe there's some narrative or something that says we've coordinated with the city and that gets picked up, but I'm not sure how it's illustrated, but maybe there's a narrative just to make sure that we're not dropping people off into the middle of nowhere, right?

With that, that concludes my comments on top of my colleagues.

Does that give you what you need?

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to note, and I meant to mention this before our first feedback session, what we're aiming for in terms of the general

Time we're dealing with tonight is about a 20-minute session for each topic feedback, if you want to try to hold it more or less to that general time.

Okay.

With that being said, moving on to draft future land use designations.

So we currently have 24 land use designations across the five master plans.

Many of these designations have similar but different names and or slightly different recommendations, especially regarding form and scale.

For example, the neighborhood density residential is found within every master plan, but some of the building footprint square footage recommendations vary

For example, 5,000 square feet for most of the master plans whereas we have 3,000 square feet for southern and western neighborhoods.

The current comprehensive plan recommends having a consistent set of land use designations across the master plans.

This approach would also be in alignment with the county's current housing policy which recommends removing barriers to affordable and workforce housing through the comprehensive plan updates including review of all land use designations.

Having an updated and standardized set of land use designations makes this type of review much more feasible, including for future conference and plan updates.

As the current plan recommends, the text in the master plans can highlight any additional considerations for specific areas.

And to update and consolidate these land use designations, the AC44 team started with the existing land use designations in the Crozet and Pantops master plans, as these plans were updated most recently using best practices.

We consolidated similar land use designations and land use designations that had the same name and slightly different recommendations.

Many of the consolidated land use designations were within the mixed use designations.

and after receiving community commission and board input on the draft land use designations in phase two, the draft land use designations would be applied to a future land use map during phase three using a one-to-one matching approach.

For example, properties designated neighborhood density residential would remain neighborhood residential.

More significant changes such as residential to employment or industrial would likely be done with future master plan updates.

There may be some changes made during AC44 to reflect existing developments such as redesignating a parcel for residential instead of industrial if there's already an existing apartment building, or to reflect the intended future use of county-owned properties.

A summary of the changes includes a slight increase in the recommended max density for neighborhood residential low,

increases to the low end of recommended density for urban residential and all land use designations now have a recommended density range, which some did not specify, an increase in the recommended maximum building height in the building square footprint for some non-residential uses and more of a focus on form and scale guidance for mixed use development instead of focusing on building footprints.

Building footprint recommendations included in the primary residential designations, while block length is used to guide mixed use developments and break up longer blocks, which would result in areas that are more walker and creates a better pedestrian experience.

And again, similar to what we did with the maps, we'll move through these slides, but please let me know if you'd like to return to them when we're in our feedback portion at the end of this section.

So this is a chart.

This particular slide shows the residential designations from neighborhood low to neighborhood residential and then middle residential and urban residential, which increase in density.

This slide is our mixed-use designations, which include neighborhood mixed-use, community mixed-use, commercial mixed-use, downtown mixed-use, and urban mixed-use.

And on this slide, we have employment and industrial uses.

And it also includes institutional public land and green systems.

So that brings us to the questions to consider for this topic.

Does the Commission have any initial feedback on the draft land use designations?

And also, does the Commission support having the AC44 team draft an updated future land use plan for community input in Phase 3 using these designations?

Commission, any questions?

I had sort of a clarifying question, really, which was more

Looking at the current zoning map, does R1, R2, does that correspond with neighborhood residential?

That's a great question.

I would say they do not exactly correspond.

Right.

I have just a general kind of overarching question.

I just picked one on the missing middle residential primary uses.

It talks about a density bonus if affordable housing is added.

There are other examples throughout these.

How would that be administered?

So, you know, is there, do you look, I mean, you must look at it on a case-by-case basis.

Sure, and we can include in the future materials as well.

Since it's only in the Crozet master plan right now, in the appendix section of that master plan, there are a couple of scenarios that show how it would be administered.

So it's sort of intended to act in a density bonus in a way of if going above and beyond providing these missing middle housing types that are shown as examples can allow to get closer to the 18 units per acre instead of 12 units per acre.

So you would also, I mean, I guess in an example like that, part of the administration would be to look at the carrying capacity of the land.

Right.

Yeah.

Thank you.

If there's no other questions, we'll move into discussion.

Thank you, Chair.

I would suggest that you think about another way to say neighborhood residential low and then neighborhood residential.

I can imagine how that will become

I can imagine how that would become a point of confusion.

And so just have a distinct term for those two.

Low doesn't work particularly since when you look across it, it's really not that much different.

I would simply say that when I look at the sort of the land use designations, that we still are sort of walking down a low density kind of community.

Yeah.

we only hit some place when you get to the missing middle, and again a little bit when you get to urban residential, but you only get to a significantly higher density if you do affordable housing.

And so if we're going to be, if there's going to not be any desire to increase, go beyond 5%, what I call the 5% solution.

if there's not gonna be anything beyond the 5% solution, then there's two things here.

I think we could be more dense, we have an increase in density with the hope of preserving land around any project.

Because if we stay true or we continue to do sort of low houses that take up as much land as we can possibly take up, I think that's what we will push people towards.

They'll just continue to fill up the lot.

As opposed to giving them an easier way to put some height in appropriate places, and people will figure that out.

We'll maybe figure out that.

So maybe we can figure that out because I do think that four stories is not, is only gonna continue to do what we do.

Four stories, if we maintain four story buildings in the 5% solution, we're just gonna continue to have what we have.

And so we have to figure that out, and I think we should be bold enough to say, if it's the 5% solution, then we need to figure out a way to go a bit higher, so that we have more green space around some of these communities.

And so I would just look at that, I could say that across the thing.

I see in your building type and form, where would, not manufactured, but modular homes come in?

I wanted to do a modular home, have it built someplace like Texas, and then have it sent to me in Albemarle County.

Could I do that?

Today I don't think I can, easily.

But if you want to draw, oh I'm seeing somebody who's got a lot of expertise there shaking their head, that makes me feel good.

If we're trying to think of ways to drive the cost of building down, then we have to be flexible in the way we let things get built safely, of course, but the way we let things get built.

Mr. Carrazano.

Mainly because I agree with everything you said.

Just going back to the density.

Yeah, I do think there's opportunities to densify.

Actually, I think there's some other steps that we're gonna take here or conversations that we're gonna have that come to that very point that you were raising about how do we use the land and how can we densify the land.

So I think there's a lot of moves here that are all getting to more density and infill, which I think is heading in the right direction.

So I wanna talk a little bit about the,

the incentives for affordable housing.

And I guess the only point that I would raise, Commissioner Bivin, in terms of if we densify without that, then the incentive's gonna be gone and we put too much density without that incentive.

And so being able to reach that higher density because of that incentive, I think it's a good marriage.

However, one of the things that we found out that if it's, unless it's a rental, although I think there's still issues there,

they're not always realized.

So we're given the incentives and then they're not realized.

I think maybe this goes back to Commissioner Missel's question on how is this administered and how do we get more out of these incentives that we're losing quite a bit of affordable housing that's not being realized so it comes off the market as affordable housing.

Ditto to everything that was just said.

I just had a couple of things or a few things to add.

So under the land use designations, primarily residential, under the primary uses, urban residential does not mention an affordable housing accommodation.

Was that something that could be added to that section in terms of density bonuses potentially or some accommodation there?

Could you repeat that again, Mr. Missel?

Sure.

If you look at the primary use column, I guess, or row, and urban residential, it talks about residential at a density of 12 to 34 units per acre, religious assembly, and so on, but it doesn't mention anything about, like missing middle residential does, anything about affordable housing accommodations.

Thinking whether that's appropriate there or not.

The secondary use category for urban residential is pretty short list.

Feels like maybe that might, you may want to look at that and see if there are other alternative secondary uses.

I thought at one point they were cumulative, like they were just building on each other, but they're also repeated in other columns, so I don't think that's the case.

So just look at that.

Let's see, on the, towards the bottom under prioritized design principles, I don't, unless I missed it, see anything there about transportation?

And I would say that if there's a development opportunity being considered under those, a transportation as far as a design principle should be part of the residential iterations.

Flipping over to mixed use.

I'm sure there's a good reason for this, but under primary uses, neighborhood mixed use, then community mixed use, their overlaps are residential to a density of up to 18 units.

The next one says 634 units.

It just seems like, I'm not sure, maybe there's overlaps there.

That may be totally fine, just struck me as confusing.

I think in all of these, especially with mixed use and industrial institutional parks open space, I assume there'll be an economic development

a conversation with economic development just to see if there are ways that they may want to look or bolster these.

I think on the mixed use component, especially when you think about urban mixed use, downtown mixed use, is there a way to incorporate under height and massing contextual sensitivity?

so that we're not just blanket putting these height recommendations, but there is a contextual sensitivity and awareness built into this.

And then last thing I'll mention is just maybe that overlaps into my conversation about ARB design guidelines and thinking about entrance corridors as part of that as well.

Great comments, everyone.

I'll try to be brief.

So yeah, you kind of, but all these comments got me going.

So it's all your fault.

But I want to say, you know, just thinking even about those incentives.

So for example, I've been involved in other ordinances where variances in parking can be provided if you locate your building near where there's public transportation.

So if we don't want to keep wasting land with surface lots, that's one way to try to incentivize that.

I'm kind of lost myself in that whole mixed-use landscape, neighborhood mixed-use, community mixed-use, commercial mixed-use, downtown mixed-use, and urban mixed-use.

I tried to look at each column like okay now how is this different sometimes there's there's nuance difference sometimes they're not I really if I was a developer looking at this wow I don't think I'd be even more confused than I am now so I would really like you I'm not saying anyone's gonna do this because my idea but I'd like to see if you couldn't collapse those into just three

I just think there's just too many.

And I'm a huge fan of mixed use, but I'm really having trouble deciding like, well, which one would go where and why and thinking about different parts of the county, like, well, that would definitely be this.

I can't even, I can't really do that.

And I, you asked if we would like you guys to take a stab at that, but I'd like to make your job easier.

We're not trying to put so many different types of mixed use in.

Last quick comment I'll make is, you know,

Well, two more real quick.

Ultimately, here's what I would like to be able to do in the urban ring of Albemarle County.

I would like to do what you can do in places like the Pearl District in Oregon.

I know it's taboo to talk about Oregon, but you can live in an apartment building and take the elevator down to the first floor of your building, and when the elevator door opens, you walk into the grocery store.

You don't even have to go, you just go down the elevator and now you're in the grocery store.

You don't even have to keep stuff in your fridge.

They have affordable housing, you know, big affordable housing high-riders you can't tell are affordable right next to market rate stuff.

It's very well mixed and there's amazing public transportation.

So there's not all this parking.

People don't need cars.

So I mean, you know, that's the kind of thing I'd like to see.

I'm not gonna comment on whether it's affordable or not.

And the last thing is, and I'll blame Julian for this, he got me going on modular housing.

I think sometimes in old thinking, we think of modular housing as like the ugly double wide that was poorly constructed and leaked energy.

You know, modular housing today is designed so you can have your unit and your kids unit, but then the kids grow up, you could actually get rid of that part, or you could put a granny flat in it.

I mean, it's actually almost like playing with Legos, but I can't imagine when I read this, where could a tiny house community go?

We talked about it romantically for the last two years and I've gotten excited about the possibility here, but I just don't see where it goes.

Okay.

First, I would say in terms of stories, I would go higher.

I mean, I think there's a comment made by someone before about how if we are really gonna use our growth area, we need to have areas that are more urban.

Yeah.

And I think- Where's downtown?

Where's downtown?

I don't know where downtown is.

Where's downtown?

And so I think I would go much higher.

I would say too, I think one of the great things that's really wasted our growth area is that neighborhood residential low category.

I would say that we should minimize that as much as possible.

I think at some point, now when you get to that level, I think maybe the secondary uses are ones that primarily serve that local community.

Maybe it's a cafe.

Neighborhood scale.

Neighborhood scale commercial use.

I mostly concur with what everybody said.

Especially, particularly, I think as we look at the cost of living, the cost of housing.

We only have X number of arrows in our quiver here, but one of them is density.

And so, you know, we'll either have one of three paths that this kind of goes down.

Either we expand the development area, which is a

or we significantly up zone the large swaths of neighborhood residential that we're looking at or even neighborhood residential low, I don't know why that needs to be category, to make it, you know, just a lot more missing middle potential throughout.

I mean, like most of the residential areas east of 29 are in this low density neighborhood residential category.

We're not going to be able to do much in the way of infill or redevelopment if that stays the way it is.

And then the third path, if we do neither of those things, is that every home will be half a million dollars or more.

You know, every home will be half a million dollars or more.

Right.

You know, I mean, like at the base rate.

Right.

I have one more comment.

The other thing I was going to say, too, is that we have these are urban land use designations.

But I think when we get to the rural areas chapter, I hope we also consider land use designations for the rural area, because I think that's also important.

And I think particularly one thing I mentioned is I think there's a need for an agricultural support industry category that I would see as very different than light industrial.

That's a great comment, Commissioner Murray, and my comment was kind of similar.

I was thinking about wineries, and of course they probably wouldn't show up on here, but we just want some accolades and tourism.

All right, and so making sure that even as you sort of look at the rural areas that, whereas he's having that mindset of thinking about land use there.

So I have nothing else to add that you haven't already heard.

Do you feel like you have what you need?

So these community design guidelines are what's currently referred to as the neighborhood model principle in the existing comprehensive plan.

The recommendations are detailed within 36 pages of the comprehensive plan plus the appendix.

We're looking to consolidate and update this guidance.

It would still be utilized for rezoning and special use permit reviews.

would support redevelopment and infill and using the development areas land efficiently.

It would encourage development in the development area to be higher density, walkable, mixed use, and include multimodal transportation options as well as open space and parks.

The neighborhood model principles have been consolidated into four guideline categories, which are detailed on the following slide.

We also have an example of how it's currently reviewed in a staff report.

The 12 principles, the 12 existing principles, tends to make these reviews more lengthy and there's a lot of overlap between the principles.

So the four categories, they've been consolidated again from these 12 principles and the guidelines now include expected elements and encouraged elements.

So these have been, a distinction has been drawn between those two.

Expected elements are expected to be provided with new development or redevelopment, though possible exceptions are noted, such as development that only has one type of use, but it contributes to a mix of uses, which you consider adjacent areas.

Encouraged are best practices that go above and beyond, supports previous feedback that we've heard from the commission to include

to help serve as a reference for developers and their best practices.

So that brings us to the categories.

The first one is land use.

And again, I'll move through these and I'm happy to return to these slides as needed during discussion.

These were provided in attachment three.

The chart details the guideline, the intent and the elements expected for each of the

Community Design Guideline categories.

So the next category is transportation.

And again, this is a multimodal emphasis for providing more modes of transportation and a better connected transportation network.

Site design has suggestions for form in the built environment.

and then last we have guidance for parks and recreation amenities and open space and we'd like to see these better dispersed throughout development areas particularly within and adjacent to the activity centers.

Which brings me to the next point of feedback and that was a field notes exercise that we created.

This activity was intended to be an opportunity for participants to think like a planner

and visit and explore location in the county to provide feedback on what makes it a great place and to spend some time considering how it could be improved in the future.

Staff received nine total submissions for an evaluation of various centers within the development area.

They included Stonefield, Holly Maid Center, Fifth Street Station, Riverside Village, Pantops, Hillsdale South, and Rivanna Village.

These submissions generally entailed two or more participants working together to make these observations.

In addition to the development areas, we had two submissions for Crossroads communities and then one for the Rivanna River Greenway.

That was actually a group of high school students that Serena Grigia from CATE conducted.

So, some of the feedback we heard, more mixed use, the integrating housing and commercial activity,

improved safer pedestrian facilities and better connectivity.

Another big one was more improved bike facilities, especially for bike parking and racks, which is lacking in bike destination areas, shopping centers and the like.

Some of the notes indicated they'd like to see the parking move from

to the perimeter of the activity centers instead of in the middle.

It was noted in some areas it sort of broke up the flow of the neighborhood design or the center design.

more transit stops at or near the centers with actual pedestrian connections to them, more green spaces, gathering areas, public art and outdoor seating, more and larger shade trees, more traffic calming measures, including speed bumps or tables, better crosswalks, and also a desire to highlight historic and cultural resources.

So that brings us to our questions to consider.

Does the Commission have any initial feedback on these community design guidelines?

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Holt.

Questions?

Okay, we'll move into discussion then.

I'll start with Commissioner Moore.

Oh, you have one?

Commissioner Moore?

Initial feedback is positive for me.

I mean, the expected elements

on site design and land use all kind of make sense and seem to be in line with the other parts of what we're talking about here today.

One thing that I'm sure others will also pull out and flag is the hard boundaries between the development areas and the rural area.

Others have noted it might be nice to have if we could grow that development area into sort of a more graduated way.

I certainly wouldn't want to take away density potential within the existing development areas, but it is a little

peculiar sometimes when you're driving along and you go from a four story apartment building to fields.

I may differ with some of my colleagues on the hard boundary, depending upon what we mean by that.

But I think that could be a topic of future discussion among us.

I think one of the things too I think there needs to be in here is I think really to achieve the kind of density that we need, structured parking is very important.

And so I think, and I fully support tax incentives, any incentives that we can deploy that makes structured parking more of a reality.

because that's the difference between taking up vast swaths of our growth area with just parking lots and having walkable, livable places.

So under transportation, I would also say that there's a green streets standard that I think is really good.

Actually, if you go to Crozet, you'll notice that Crozet has an excellent example of that.

You see that not only do we have these street trees, but it's also a stormwater

capture facility.

So that's also something I'd like to see more of elsewhere in the growth area.

Otherwise, I would also praise, I like that you've included some things about stormwater management, bioswales, permeable paving, and other things that we've talked about for a while in here.

Commissioner Murray stole my favorite point.

I was going to say complete green streets because we are talking a lot about retrofitting and so that gives us the opportunity to put stormwater and also in the comments from the citizens about wanting shade trees, you can create underground cells with the planting of a large shade tree in a retrofit and use it as a stormwater storage facility

Waters the tree, reduces flooding, cleans the stormwater.

Great examples of that.

There's grants available right now through the Infrastructure Act.

So a lot of cities are retrofitting.

There are streets that way.

So I just think we should really pay attention to that.

And then I always make my little pet peeve, which is I really like to see local photographs.

I don't know where that giant head is located.

But I know it's hard.

We're trying to inspire with examples from other places.

Thank you, Commissioner Firehock.

Thanks.

One quick question.

I think I know the answer to this, but the bottom of page seven says the revised community design guidelines would be implemented through the same process as the current neighborhood model principles.

The current neighborhood model principles are being done away with, right?

Just wanted to double check.

So I think in my

experience what's kind of happening here is we're taking what is just good design and codifying it in a sense, right?

So I think having been through a lot of rezonings in the past and some neighborhood model district rezonings, some others, understanding the amount of detail that should go into a requirement

needs to be somewhat, what's the word, softened at a comprehensive plan level.

Not that the issues shouldn't be identified and certain items shouldn't be encouraged, but I think we have to be careful with how much detail we put in there.

And what I've seen over the years is that detail, the requirement of that, there's enough flexibility so it sort of ebbs and flows.

in the process of rezonings.

And sometimes that actually parallels the market.

When the market's down, there's flexibility, because some of these are going to cost money.

And when the market starts to tighten up a little bit, or the opposite becomes much more lucrative, then, oh, well, we can ask for more.

And I think we get more detail.

So I would just consider how we can monitor and manage that level of detail as part of this.

I would say, just because you mentioned structured parking, just a reminder that structured parking could be allowed and accommodated, but it's 10 times the price of surface parking.

And from a development standpoint, you've got to be

I think like tax incremental financing I think would be a great thing.

Yeah, then there's a land value conversation that comes into play.

Let's see, I think same comment about public art.

So that I guess I just circled public.

I love public art, but I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

It's just, again, we're starting to get into some detail here, which may not be the right place to put it.

That's all.

Thank you.

Initial thoughts or feedback at a high level, but as I look at the categories on what is under, so for instance transportation, I think that makes a lot of sense.

When I get into the site, so site design includes walkability, pedestrians, all that, streets, trees, landscape.

But then I guess the ones that I'm beginning to question here are building form and scale.

adaptive reuse, historic preservation of structures.

So I'm just wondering if that's in the right category or should that be in land use and really part of land use both in terms of the massing of the building, you know, infill, adaptive reuse, historic preservation.

To me, it just seems like perhaps it shouldn't be in sight.

And then the things that I find that are missing are things like

Lighting levels, I didn't see any mention of that, and safety, I think they go hand in hand.

To me, that's how things were categorized, and to echo my colleague here as well,

When we're too prescriptive, I think there's usually that's where guidelines tend to fall apart.

All right, Mr. Bivins.

Chair, so I did have a question.

on land use where it says a variety of housing types, skip through the sentences, that tend to be more affordable compared with large lot single family detached units.

I, for one, don't know what, I don't know why, I don't understand what the reason for large lot there is.

because I can take you to a number of the gated communities in our county that don't have large lots.

I'm not talking about the stuff that's up on Plank Road.

I'm talking about the other side of town.

And they're really expensive.

So they're on like quarter acre lots or things like that, or even in Crozet.

There's some of the communities in Crozet that are in small lots and they're really expensive.

So I'm not sure what the value of large lots is.

with affordability.

So I just ask you to have some conversation with yourselves about that.

And then everybody sort of is slowly coming on to my hard boundaries.

And even though I know that my colleague from Whitehall and I are going to have the wrestling match on that, but I'm glad to see that I will add my voice to the hard boundaries.

What I am, what I will say here, what I said before, that I hope this can be a model for retrofitting our community.

Because I still am like at this, when we talk about CPIs, I don't wanna do a CPI for, well, of course we'll do a CPI for future stuff.

There's lots of, there are lots of places in the county right now that could benefit from this.

That could benefit from this.

There are lots of places where you can't walk on both sides of the street.

Never could, never will.

and so I don't really want to have that for a community yet to be designed.

I'd like to have people can walk on both sides of the street right here, right here, right now in good old Albemarle County.

I saw something, so you were talking about incentives.

This is an idea.

So you know we have this use value tax deferral program that is for agriculture,

Corticulture, Forest, and Open Space.

What would happen if there was a use value tax deferral for some of the things we're trying to get through here?

For renovations, for looking at the way we are hoping to recraft this community.

If we would do it there, because everybody will hear me say at some point, I don't want to do tax deferral towards a payment for home ownership.

That's not where I sit.

For rental, that's where I sit.

But for home ownership, that's not where I sit.

And so if we were to use the same, I mean, because when we do the use value tax deferral, we're taking money from this pool and we're reallocating it over here by the value of the property.

So if there are things in the comp plan that we think are important, why wouldn't we think about using the same tool?

Right?

Because of the people down in Richmond.

We're simply not enabled to do more land use taxation.

Here's where the equity piece comes in.

which I would ask our supervisors, I will have a conversation with a particular supervisor that will, not this year obviously, but when we think about legislative initiatives, if you are trying to create change in a community, why are we only holding out for the part of the community that the last time I looked at USDA was only number one?

One percent of our agriculture compared to the rest of the Commonwealth is done here.

One percent of the value.

Yeah, that's fine.

I'm not going to read that anyhow.

But my piece is if we're trying to figure out economic ways to make this a function, not for the 5% solution,

then we need to think of ways in which we can make the 5% solution work.

I agree with you, Commissioner Frye.

My point here is that we allow certain industries to get tax preference.

As I mentioned before, tax incremental financing does basically what you're asking to do.

So it basically says

You're putting in infrastructure that would otherwise increase the property value after you put it there, right?

So what it's saying is, we're going to defer the taxes on that infrastructure.

I mean, I would say we defer it permanently.

But I would say we could defer the additional value that that's going to create for this property to make it more affordable for you to build it.

So I think having a policy up front that says things like when people put in the design standards that we're looking for as a community, when people redevelop properties that are in need of redevelopment, that we offer that, that we put that policy on the books

out there, because right now, they're just empty parking lots.

So, Chair, the other two things I would offer is that I would come with my colleague here who talked about lights.

This may be the place where we talk about what are the dark sky sort of next steps for our community in a way that's meaningful.

And then there's when in your site design where you talk about regrade slopes should be smooth rather than abrupt or steep grades.

I think at some point we probably need to use the new technology to say, what are real steep slopes?

We've here wrestled over the years, is it a manufactured slope or has it now taken on this new aura of being the steep slope from forever?

Well, really, people don't recognize the fact that it was only there because... They're just debris piles that we have that have a romantic notion because there are weeds growing on them.

That's what I'm going to talk about.

We've got to stay focused.

We've got to stay focused.

All right.

The one thing that stood out to me, one, I do like how it's beginning to be more simplified.

I will say the thing that stood out to me is we have climate and equity as our two cannons.

I see signals tying back to climate.

I don't see so much around equity, and these are our guidelines.

I think we like to reinforce that.

I'll point out a reference from the American Institute of Architects.

It's a framework for design excellence, something to look at as they start to talk about the different things in that space, right, whether it's

Ecuador communities or designing for water conservation, whatever it may be, but you may see some signals in there that might help you with these guidelines.

I just feel like we want to really center climate equity within this framework.

If this is the guidelines, if this is the roadmap, this is not the time to be silent or soft on it.

So those would be my comments.

With that, I think it's time for a recess.

We have two more topics.

Yeah, we're going to do a recess.

We're going to do seven minutes.

And I'm going to call us there.

I'm going to use the restroom.

All right.

All right.

Thank you, Chair.

Good evening, Commissioners.

My name is Tori Kennelopoulos, and I'm a principal planner in community development.

So I'll be walking us through topic four, which is calculating density.

When applications for rezonings or special use permits that include a residential component are reviewed, they are evaluated in part based on the recommended density per the applicable master plan.

Density is calculated as residential dwelling units per acre.

One unit is one single family detached home, one single family attached home, one modular home, or one apartment unit.

Recommended density is given as a range based on the future land use designation.

For example, neighborhood residential is three to six units per acre as the recommended density.

Special use permits and rezonings are also reviewed based on other recommendations in the master plan and comprehensive plan, including transportation and parks and trails recommendations and anticipated impacts to public facilities and services.

There are two main ways to calculate density, gross and net density.

Gross density uses the full acreage of a site, which is how it's calculated in the zoning ordinance.

And then net density nets out certain areas, typically environmental features or sensitive areas, and that's what the current comprehensive plan recommends using for special use permits and rezonings.

Density calculations are one factor that affects the types of housing and total number of units that are built with new development.

For example, using net density calculations for any property with environmental features will result in a lower number of recommended units as compared to using gross density.

There is no similar calculation for non-residential uses.

For buy-write development, gross density is used for the zoning ordinance.

Regardless of how density is calculated, ordinance requirements apply for protecting environmental features, such as avoiding building in the floodplain.

There are also requirements for providing open and recreational space and necessary infrastructure such as roads, water, sewer, and stormwater management, and all of those requirements take up space on a site.

Even with gross density, a variety of infrastructure and open space still needs to fit within the site along with residential units.

Along with other strategies, such as encouraging redevelopment and infill and identifying activity centers, using gross density to calculate recommended density for rezonings and special use permits could be an option for prioritizing development in the existing development areas.

This approach would also provide consistency between the zoning ordinance and comprehensive plan, and it could make some missing middle housing types more feasible, such as bungalow courts, multiplexes, accessory dwelling units, 2 over 2s, and tiny homes, as these types of units tend to be higher density than single-family detached or attached units, and they're typically smaller.

Using gross density would increase the recommended density for some properties in the development area.

That would be any property with steep slopes, stream buffers, or flood plain.

It would leave recommendations for properties without those environmental features unchanged.

It should be noted that land use designation ranges are recommendations and the maximum recommended density is not always feasible, including due to topography and other physical constraints and the space needed to accommodate infrastructure and open and recreational space.

Clustering development to avoid sensitive environmental features is always encouraged regardless of the recommended number of units.

This is a hypothetical example of a property that is a 15 acre property with five acres in the floodplain.

So if the property was already zoned R6 residential and the owner wanted to develop the property by right, they would use a gross density calculation.

which would be 15 acres times six units, which would be a total of 90 units by right.

If the property was instead zoned R1 and was designated neighborhood residential in the applicable master plan, which would recommend three to six units per acre, and the property owner wanted to rezone the property to allow for more units, the recommended density would net out the five acres in the floodplain, which would result in a recommended density of 10 acres times six units or a total of 60 units.

So we have the following question for the commission to consider.

And we're looking for the commission's directions that we can send that along to the Board of Supervisors for their input and final direction.

Thank you.

And are you sure just one question?

Let's just give one answer.

Alright Commission, let's do this.

Chair, I would go for Groes.

I think you've got, we have people who come before us who are quite capable, who are quite talented, and given the other environmental issues which I believe would be identified and they would know the regulations, let them be creative.

I am in the gross mode here as well.

I will say that there's several things that we've talked about that do have implications on here.

We talked about height as well.

So that's something that you need to take into consideration because they may not be able to achieve those 90 units because of the height limitations.

So a lot of these things go hand in hand.

And the other that Commissioner Bivins brought up was critical slopes.

We also need to, all critical slopes are not made the same.

They're not all equal.

And that could also limit, even though it's not limiting the number of units, it's limiting the buildable area.

So we need to think about that.

What is those critical slope's impact?

They're in a watershed, that's one thing, but some of them,

They were just critical slopes because it might be in the entry quarter.

And we've taken a very wide swath in what we're calling critical slopes.

Well said.

So far, three grows, zero for net at the moment.

I just say I am in the Groesch camp as well.

I used to be only in the net camp, but after sitting through so many attempts to do infill in our urban area where we really are got a lot of scrappy and leftover land that people didn't build on for a reason.

and if we're gonna achieve Inville, we're gonna need to be able to be creative.

The other thing is I agree with Commissioner Carrazano that that's where we need to look at that height because even with creative design and getting rid of all the debris piles that are not really critical slopes in our classification, we need to find ways to allow that density to occur.

Okay, so I'm going to be the, there you go.

And I would say that in saying that I support net density, however,

I mean, I think there's some areas that just shouldn't be developed.

There's areas that got developed along the Rivanna floodplain and other areas that were sensitive enough that honestly, they should have been green spaces.

But we allow those, well, I mean, they had development rights, they were zoned, and so they got developed.

Ideally, we should have a transfer of development rights policy on the books so that when we have an environmentally sensitive site with lots of critical slopes and streams and other features, that those development rights can be transferred to another site in the growth area that is not as environmentally sensitive.

Now, in that situation, it would be the difference between the gross and the net that would be transferable.

and I think if we had that sort of policy, that would solve both this issue that we have in our community about the growth area.

People have said we don't have enough green space in our growth area.

This would allow us to have more green space because instead of just these proffers of like we'll develop this big area and then we'll proffer back this tiny corner, you could have the whole sensitive area as a green space and not just call it that.

So I think that this is an important thing that we should really think about doing.

That said, I also think too that I have less of a problem with gross density if we can encourage or require, do more to make that vertical.

So it's really the footprint.

It's the footprint of the buildings on the site that concern me a lot more than the number of units.

So I do think that environmentally, where we have sensitive sites, limiting that footprint is very important.

Good comments.

Could I just respond to that?

So I think I totally get what you're saying.

I think what I'm hearing is that if we go with Groes and there's an environmentally sensitive area on the site, that's still controlled.

It won't be developed.

That's correct.

You will have more density rights, to your point, and to Commissioner Carrazana, as you could go up with Groes.

With NET, you're prevented from having those areas.

My concern with going with NET is that in

you know, the urban area, in the development area.

If we start thinking net and we start backing down on opportunities to create density, things like transit are not gonna be affordable or pursued because there are gonna be certain areas that are less dense just because we chose to go net versus gross.

And I would, maybe you said this some ways, I just wouldn't want to preclude those benefits.

that density brings in the development area.

Well, but it only protects 100 feet around the stream.

Well, yes.

What I'm saying, and I think if you did net, I think we could be very generous with bonus density.

You know, and I think so that you're still overall in the county get to the same number of development, same amount of development.

We'll just be much more generous with how we deal out bonuses.

You know, I want to ask a point of clarification because and my understanding is like the same the same as yours.

My concern is, is yes, the footprint.

and how much you can then build.

So I want to make sure I understand this correctly, but what is the difference in the footprint between net and gross?

Not currently, because either way, if you were looking at the site, you'd still have to avoid the floodplain, the slopes.

And there's no recommendations around, you know, actual

building footprint sizes.

So what disincentivized, and I want to clarify because I want to make sure that my assumption is correct,

is more height, and that's why it's so important for us then to, if we're limiting that height, then we're still not gonna achieve it.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm not saying it limits the footprint.

I know that,

What I'm saying is we should do more to constrain that footprint.

If we know that a parcel has a lot of environmentally sensitive features, we should, through designating that area or other mechanisms, find ways to limit that footprint at the area.

For example, around the Metta Creek, around the Rivanna River, around Moore's Creek, they're places that we know are already impaired.

I'm just saying, but outside of this conversation, if you don't deal with that issue and you just go from one to the other, you're kind of leaving.

We're creating a situation where the areas around our streams and our rivers are continually being chipped away at.

And, you know, you see that all through our growth area and with a lack of green space that we're getting to.

So that's my concern.

Staff will note that as such.

Eileen Tord Gross.

And

Yeah, it will.

First of all, it's consistent with the other types.

And to remove certain land from the calculations, it makes more sense to me to go gross.

Just one thing to add to that.

One thing by doing that also as a as a landowner, your yield is greater, the value of your land is greater,

You can potentially have more money to put towards open space, stream preservation, things like that, and not just see it as a profit source, which could also happen.

I was intrigued by Commissioner Murray's idea of transfer of development rights, though, maybe for future conversation.

I need to sort of call us out on this.

Anytime we start talking about transferring rights, I'm just going to say that we were uncomfortable with saying where the development area could increase because then people will speculate on that.

I know that there are sophisticated people in Albemarle County that will look at land and say, I will buy that piece of land because I can transfer the rights.

We already know they do it now with

Well, I won't say what kind of rights, but they already do it now because people are benefiting from tax, from purchasing certain rights that they can then write off on their taxes.

So I just think this is, you know, I wanna be clear that I think it's an easier thing to sort of go and deal with the stream buffers and some of the improvement of water as opposed to trading rights.

Let's put a pin in that thought because I want to keep us focused on the question at hand, which is gross or net density.

I think we've wrestled that one to the ground.

So let's move on to topic five, which I think is going to be a hearty discussion.

Thank you all and we'll be moving on to the fifth and final topic this evening.

And before we dive in, I just wanted to note that in January, we will be sharing draft goals and objectives for the remaining plan chapters that we haven't shared yet.

So that also includes rural area land use and transportation.

and we'll be asking for community commission and board feedback on a variety of other rural area topics besides the one on the table for this evening including land conservation, rural area transportation topics such as rural road paving and recreational use of roads, a strong agricultural and silvicultural rural area economy and recommendations for areas that are already developed in the rural area.

So as Ben shared at the beginning of the presentation, this is a brief reminder of the priorities we've heard for the rural area based on community input to date.

That includes some small-scale uses that may be appropriate in some crossroads communities.

Community resilience hubs, when provided, should have affordable food access, senior and youth centers, access to healthcare and emergency shelters.

Public transit is needed to access employment areas and healthcare, and ideally there would be more healthcare options within the rural area as well.

and then the definition of crossroads communities which I'll share on the next slide has a community resilience focus and is meant to support these priorities with more equitable distribution of and access to resources while also being consistent with the growth management policy.

And I also wanted to note that we will be holding several rural area events in early 2024 to share the updated definition and ask for additional input on this and other rural area topics.

So we wanted to note that we received a couple of field notes submissions from folks who visited locations in the rural area.

And while there were not a significant number of submissions, it was very consistent with other feedback that we've received, including over email and questionnaires.

Many of the comments were focused on transportation, including concern with traffic volumes and speeding on rural roads, and a desire for more walking and biking, especially in commercial areas and crossroads areas.

And there were several comments related to parks and trails, including more parking at trailheads, improving wayfinding and signage, and trail maintenance.

We have the following draft definition of Crossroads communities for the Commission to consider.

The priority is on providing more equitable distribution of and access to services in the rural area to increase community resilience and well-being.

One way to achieve increased resilience and well-being would be through community resilience hubs and the associated programs, events and emergency shelters that could be provided there.

AC44 is collaborating with the Health Department, Fire Rescue, Parks and Rec, and the Resilient Together team to incorporate community resilience hub recommendations into the comp plan and into the Resilient Together project, which is a collaborative effort between the city, UVA, and the county to develop climate adaptation and resilience plans for each locality.

Based on the draft definition we have here, Crossroads communities could include Esmont, Batesville, Stony Point, Whitehall, Ivey, Earliesville, and North Garden.

Once the definition is refined, staff will identify a complete list of communities to share for input.

and staff does recommend that individual crossroads communities be engaged through a small area plan or similar planning process prior to any future land use or zoning changes.

Constraining factors such as transportation and well and septic feasibility will vary by location.

If community resilience hubs were incorporated into public facilities or existing businesses and community centers that were already operating in the rural area, they could likely be done by right.

The small area plan process would be intended to focus on other types of land use changes, such as to allow businesses or offices if that was desired.

As part of the Resilient Together project, the project team collaborated with the Emerging Leaders in Architecture cohort

to develop a toolkit of recommendations for community resilience hubs in Albemarle County.

This is one slide from the cohort's presentation, which shows ideal features that could be provided with resilience hubs.

Those are buildings that provide physical spaces for accessing resources and services and preparing and responding to emergencies.

They can be public facilities such as libraries, community centers, and schools.

They can also be businesses and nonprofits, and they should be locations that community members are already using and where they feel comfortable going.

As the diagram in the bottom right corner shows, these are spaces that should serve both everyday community needs and options to respond to and recover from unexpected events.

Many of the more detailed recommendations from the cohort also overlap with the community priorities that we've heard throughout the AC44 process.

That includes community gathering spaces, community gardens and food distribution, warming and cooling centers, charging stations, Wi-Fi, and additional classes and workshops.

The cohort also noted there could be toolkits developed to share with the private sector to use to make upgrades to privately owned buildings to increase their resilience, and they identified the possibility of public-private partnerships and using grant funding opportunities.

So with that, we have the following two questions for the commission to consider.

We would appreciate your feedback on the draft definition and if you all find that the Community Resilience Hubs concept could support more equitable service provision and access in the rural area.

All right, thank you.

Questions for staff?

All right.

We'll bring it into a discussion.

OK.

All right.

You guys got to move.

Come on, man.

All right.

Let's move it to discussion.

As far as the definition goes of crossroads communities, it seems to make sense.

I'm noticing it.

These are places that

were villages or small towns for a reason.

Historically, they were places where people gathered and did commerce and met up with one another and all that kind of thing.

I think it's great that we can recognize that and actually encourage that kind of community building and development and third places and the like rather than sort of zone our way out of that.

So it's good on that front.

I am curious to hear more about what resilience hubs could look like.

You know, again, they're kind of like sort of a could be anything sort of thing from a gas station to a school to a senior center.

But that is an intriguing concept.

Again, I don't live in a particular, I don't live in a rural area, so it's not something that I have a lot of personal experience with, but I do see overall the idea is a good one.

Can I just ask staff, if you could pull up the definition that you had up there as we're having this, that might be helpful.

Thank you.

Sorry.

So first, I do agree with one of the comments received that in many ways, this would be a better conversation to have in combination with the rural areas chapter.

But since we're having it now, we'll have it now.

So I do think it's really important to get community buy-in.

I guess this is a question for staff.

So when the small area plans are done for each community, those would constrain the uses that could occur in those areas, correct?

Okay.

So, you know, given that's the case, I'm in support of this.

Is that it?

That's it.

I mean, as these are, as this is written now, I'm good with it.

I'm not okay with automotive centers or other things that have environmental impacts.

I think, you know, there is, there's a comment about, you know, there needs to be better well monitoring.

Great comments.

Not against the concept at all.

I'm glad to see that some of them, we had too many last time and some fell off because it didn't make sense, but I still think

does not make sense to have Batesville on this list.

I'm gonna assume that everyone has been to Batesville.

They have an excellent sandwich shop.

I love the store.

You can mail a letter there.

I don't see how you are going to fit anything else in there.

So this is all talking about providing services and things.

There's physically no room in Batesville to put any of this stuff.

If you're going to have services, they have to have physical space.

Even if it's a person at a desk with a stethoscope, you literally can't fit that in Batesville.

So, you know, I'm all for recognizing our historic Crossroads communities, celebrating them.

There's no reason why we can't have more conversations with Batesville about traffic and

pedestrian and bicycling and all the things that Batesvilleans are already concerned about and have been talking about for some time.

So that doesn't preclude that conversation.

But there physically is nothing else to fit there.

Now, just up the road, we have that development called crossroads, and they already have.

UVA medical offices with doctors.

They have fire station.

They have the post office.

They have a bank.

They have a pizza joint.

They have a gas station.

They have a general store.

They have a sandwich shop.

I could go on.

They actually have acupuncture there now and framing.

I probably missed somebody.

And you don't even have to designate that, you know?

It just is there.

I just don't think that makes sense.

Esmont makes a lot of sense.

The county already went that direction with the repurposing of Esmont School as a community center.

We've already put social services down there.

We already have classes.

We already have social services.

We already have all that stuff.

I'm not saying it's perfect.

We can put more stuff there.

We have revitalized the park.

We've created walking trails.

There's all kinds of stuff going on in Esmont.

So that makes a lot of sense.

I don't see how Batesville fits in here because you literally, even if you wanted to, you just don't have anywhere to put anything else.

Even the store itself, even if it could expand, they don't have the septic and the water to do that.

So it just doesn't make sense.

Thanks.

A couple of things.

First, I'll start with a question.

So on page 10, you talk about based on the draft definition, crossroads communities can include and then you list them.

Is that a reactive response to what's already in those areas?

And is there a proactive position that you would might or that maybe you have or might consider that would be different than what's in those areas?

Does that make sense?

I think it is primarily responding to what's already there and what's already existing and also recognizing that in some cases some of these may already be in a sense built out where maybe there wouldn't be additional capacity for new buildings.

So recognizing those communities that are kind of already there and have those services.

And a small area plan could possibly identify some additional uses in some communities, but that's not to say that it would be feasible in all of them.

And then the second question is, I think this gets to Commissioner Firehock's question, which I totally get.

I mean, I live out in that area at Batesville.

So all of these communities, and it's hard because you got crossroads at Batesville, they're very different.

But they don't all have to look like crossroads, right?

I mean, there can be some variability in that.

And is there, I mean, by just labeling it a rural crossroad community, is that helpful to that community to have that label, knowing that within the confines of the actual context, there may be limitations?

Just something to think through.

The other thing is, it talks about crossroads communities and the definition are not development areas designated for economic development purposes or to provide residential holding capacity.

Sure, I get it.

I'm just wondering, is rural crossroads centers something that might be considered?

It's more of a center than an actual community when I think about crossroads, for example.

and then the last thing, I don't know if, I've been trying to see if it would fit into this definition and I don't think it does, but I just have to mention it as traffic.

I have a question as well.

And so with the exception of base bill because I agree with Commissioner Firehock, what is keeping these crossroad centers from being resilient hubs now?

I think since part of the definition that I also should have mentioned is, you know, it was also to help identify places that are a little bit further from the development areas, kind of recognizing, you know, these communities tend to be a little bit further out from those areas so people, you know, would have to drive further to get to the development areas.

That would be one factor to look at for community resilience hubs.

I guess I'm just struggling with

defining these and giving them some kind of designation is all of a sudden going to enable some transformation that isn't happening now, which in many cases it is happening.

And I personally think as you get into the some of these small area plans and rural plans, it can better be defined for what they are.

Maybe they take take on their own.

Maybe some of them are communities.

Maybe some of them are centers.

All right.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Thank you, Chair.

So part of, I do have a question to sort of understand what is access to essential public services

and basic service needs to rural population.

So how would we define those?

That would be something that as we walk through this, I'd want some definition of that.

Because the one thing that those among us who live in the rural part of the county know, particularly if we live farther from the development area, that things happen there that are not identified as happening.

According to this, that shouldn't happen.

I don't have a tractor, because I'm not allowed to have tractors, but if I did have a tractor, and it went down, I wouldn't want to have it.

Well, wait, I'd have to bring it to the guys who took over the Volvo place.

That's near some of my colleagues on the dais, but that's not near some of the people who we saw last week when they were trying to talk to us about the solar place down there on Secretary Road.

However, since I know people down there, there's a person down there that works on your tractor if you need it, they'll come and pick it up.

And so this whole idea of being able to identify activities that are regulated in land use and type in the development area, but just happen in the rural area.

I'm fearful that this becomes prescriptive.

and in fact limits the kinds of things because it's now under a level of scrutiny which would prevent the kind of natural flow of life in the country from happening.

Okay, now I'm not going to get into the Batesville argument because I don't, you know, I used to know the owners over there, so I'm going to stay out of that argument.

But I will mention that any time something comes to us from Batesville, we get an outpouring of people who say we don't want anything else to happen here.

That just happened.

That's all I'm going to say on that.

So to put something there, then we already have people saying, all we want is the festival that takes place in the summer, we want anything else, I'm staying out of that.

What I would ask is if we look at sort of thinking about crossroad centers, that there are places in the county, I'm thinking about North, I get this wrong, Northwest, so the Fry's Mill, Advance Mills area,

That might as well be in Greene County over there, as much as they get talked about providing services to the people over there.

If I look at some of the other communities, I'll say over there, if we can get past sort of Keswick Hall, just get past Keswick Hall, and past Stony Point, there's a whole bunch of people over there.

There is a there is a good central central sort of emerging small market over there.

But again,

They are pushed towards orange.

Now that may be a decision that we make.

We may say you go to green, you go to orange.

But somewhere along the line, we might also say you go to Nelson County and you go to Waynesboro.

My question is, as I said before, why and how are we going to determine which of the people who live here now get the services that we believe are important?

and not wait for a developer to come in and say, you know what?

I'm going to go down there to Keen.

I'm going to put a little hot dog place down there.

Because when you come to put your stuff in the recycle place, I know you're going to want one of Julian's hot dogs.

But I couldn't do that because I can't put a restaurant down there.

I can't put a restaurant down there.

And so all I'm saying is that when you go out to look at the communities, to spend time talking about what they need now,

but then here's the hard part that people always have a difficult thing doing.

Think about when you're gone and you're in the family plot on the property.

My wife lets me do that.

She's told me I can't be buried on our property, but we can.

I'm gonna look to somebody over there and make sure I get buried on my property.

That they are also looking about what's going to be this place after them.

Part of what we're doing is looking about what is this place going to be after we're all someplace else enjoying sun and drinking margaritas.

And so I think this whole idea of crossroad communities needs to evolve with our communities.

And I think I'm agreeing with my colleague here.

from the Scottsville District, I think it should be centers, and we should be actively engaged in talking to the people there about what does it mean to be a center.

You know, we know where Monticello High School is, we know where Western Albemarle is, we know where Monticello, they have emerging civics class.

Go talk to some of those high school students about what do they want those places where they

can't walk a mile in because they're not a mile away from school.

Although if you lived on my road, you'd be a mile away from school.

Think about what they would expect to see in their crossroads centers.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

And I agree around strongly defining the public service and the basic needs piece.

I know we heard from one of our community members tonight signaling about reliability and utilities

Is that woven in here?

Should it say rural crossword communities provide access to reliable, essential public services and utilities?

Not to wordsmith, but kind of being direct with that.

That's the only thing I'll add in addition to what my colleagues have said up here.

I will just suggest

When we're talking about these places, these are usually 600 level roads or 700 level roads.

In emergencies, when trees come down, if a person does not have a, if there isn't an individual in the area that has a chainsaw or has a tractor that they can pull things, it doesn't matter where we put the resilience center.

There's a whole bunch of people who will remain cut off.

And so thinking about what that response is and how

I will just very quickly, so our community has changed over the last 30 years.

We have many more people who don't understand the value of what it means to get the tree out of the road for everyone.

I have a quick comment.

Just a note that we do have the community emergency response training program that my community of Charlottesville went through.

We all got trained, we got certified, we're ready to respond.

We're down by the train tracks.

If a train car derails, we're in big trouble.

and Forest Fire and other things that were 50-minute response time from anywhere.

I just want to note, though, again, I don't want it to come across, because I'm sure a lot of people listening tonight that I'm saying that small rural communities shouldn't have planning.

Everyone knows we're super supportive of rural area planning.

All rural areas are not the same.

Just because I'm not in favor of Batesville being a resilient center, because I literally don't think we have the physical space to do much there, that that's meaning that we're not going to do planning with Batesville or any other small community that wants to do this work with us.

I just want to be clear what is the purpose.

And some of the things we're talking about tonight

belong in another bucket or maybe an additional bucket which is just emergency response and all of that.

There's a lot we need to do to up our game for responding to storms, debris clearing, debris hazard management, site selection.

This is what I do professionally and we have a long way to go on that.

Where people go in an emergency,

Yeah, just another thing.

I think there's the comment made, I can't remember who said it, that

What does a community get out of being a crossroaded community?

And I think it needs to be something more than just having additional uses that can occur there.

I know I've heard, and I'm sure you've heard it, you're full from people in Batesville about the need for traffic calming.

So I think if this is going to be a thing, it should also have some things about what do they get from this?

Can we leverage this with VDOT and other people to get the kind of improvements that people need for safety in their community?

So, I mean, I think that's that's an important, important.

I do think there's value in acknowledging existing uses.

I would say, you know, in Baysville, I know there was the whole

I won't go into the whole history of that situation, but I think people are trying to keep that store as a viable use.

There's like a whole other conversation on country stores, but I don't think they have to be resiliency hubs either.

Just one quick thing before you go on to next steps.

I just wanted to thank staff for a phenomenal amount of work.

And it's easy for us to sit up here and pick this apart.

Wordsmith and you know, we show up and do that.

But you guys are doing life changing work for the community.

And you're also doing it intentionally, listening to community members.

And that shows up in this.

Thank you.

So this is the last slide.

So for next steps, we will be sharing draft goals and objectives for the following three chapters, development areas, land use and transportation, rural area land use and transportation, and community facilities.

We'll be sharing the final round of questionnaires early next year, and then we will continue to hold work sessions with the commission and the board on draft goals and objectives January through March timeframe.

So again, we'll get to continue the rural area discussion.

And then we will also be sharing the draft action steps for plan implementation in phase three.

And we expect to kick that off in the spring of next year.

Thank you.

Thank you and job well done again.

Let's move on to the rest of the agenda, looking at committee reports.

I just have a quick one there.

The 5th and Avon Community Advisory Committee met last Thursday and we had a great presentation by Ms.

Kanalopoulos and it was very similar to what we talked about tonight actually in fact so some good feedback that was reflected in the summary of community input that was shown to us tonight.

Thank you Commissioner Missel.

Any other commissioners with the committee report?

All right.

That made life easy.

Mr. Binnish, I'm going to stay with you.

All right.

Peace honor.

Chair, thank you for being the chair that you've been this year.

I don't have to say anything because you're not going to buy me lunch, so it doesn't matter.

I just want to say that I think under your leadership and our guidance, we got through a bunch of work that could have been a slog.

And when you weren't here, you let your vice chair jump in there for a moment or two.

And so we were well served by your leadership this year.

Thank you for those kind words.

And I will say that because of watching the chairs before me, so yourself, I watched you for two seasons over COVID and Commissioner Firehock.

and others who are no longer on the dais today who helped kind of coach me to chair in this way.

So I want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement throughout the year.

And I'll be ready to pass this off.

come January to someone who will be named soon.

You know, it sounds like it's a rigged election.

Yes, yes, yes.

We are such a powerful group, we would rig our elections.

Any old business?

No?

All right, any items for follow-up?

All right, well, what's that?

We were gonna adjourn this meeting, but the next Planning Commission meeting will be held Tuesday, January 9th, 2024.

And have a prosperous new year, so.

And get some sleep.

I need that, I definitely need that.

Is there a motion to adjourn before we get silly?

So moved.

All right.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any no's?

Chair votes aye.