Planning Commission Regular Meeting   4/23/2024

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Nice to see everyone.

We'll begin by calling to order the April 23, 2024 meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission.

And I would like to establish a quorum.

Yes.

Mr. Bivins and Mr. Clayborne is absent and Ms.

Great, thank you.

Just like to read one section here at the beginning, the opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meetings 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 for which comments from the public will be received.

and with that, I will move on to matters, any public comment on matters not listed on the agenda?

Nobody has signed up.

Anybody in the audience?

Nobody online?

Okay.

Thank you.

I will move on to the consent agenda and ask if there's a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Any discussion?

Okay.

And Ms.

Firehock?

Present.

We're doing the minutes.

Aye.

Pause for emphasis.

Nice.

Welcome.

All right.

Well, with that, I will move on to the public hearings beginning with SP 2023-18 Kappa Sigma International Headquarters.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

Good evening.

My name is Sid Schoff, and I'm a senior planner with the Planning Division of Albemarle County's Community Development Department.

Tonight, I'll be giving staff's presentation for Special Use Permit, SP 2023-18, Kappa Sigma International Headquarters.

This is a special use permit request to amend an existing special use permit to relocate an enlarged or previously approved building.

The subject property is approximately 6.14 acres and located south of the city of Charlottesville at 1610 Scottsville Road.

It is sound R1 residential and has been home to the Kappa Sigma International Headquarter since 2004.

The comprehensive plan designates it as urban density residential.

As I mentioned in the last slide, this site has been home to the Kappa Sigma International Headquarters for the last 20 years.

The existing building on the site is approximately 22,977 square feet in its three stories.

It is used for administration, meetings, a museum, and library space.

The first special use permit to construct the existing building was approved in 2004.

Another special use permit was approved in 2006 to expand the existing building and construct another building on the site.

Currently, there's a major site plan amendment under review to construct the approved building expansion.

The surrounding properties are zoned residential or rural.

The property of the north is also owned by Scottsville Road Holdings LLC, and it is owned R1 Residential.

It contains a pavilion and overflow parking for the Kappa Sigma International Headquarters.

Additionally to the north is the Galaxy Farm Subdivision, and it is owned Planned Residential Development.

To the west and southwest is the Avinity Estates Subdivision, which is also zoned Planned Residential Development.

Lastly to the south and southeast is Somerset Farm, which is owned rural areas.

The applicant is proposing to relocate and enlarge an improved building, which is shown with the highlighted label on the right.

The applicant is proposing to move the building from the parking lot to be adjacent to the property line with the Vinnie State's townhomes.

The proposed building is a one-story, approximately 8,790 square foot building with a maximum height of 27.5 feet to the center peak of the roofline.

It'd be used to display archives and memorabilia associated with Kappa Sigma.

Additionally, the new building space may be used for meetings and support facilities such as research, classroom space, storage, and guest suites.

The previously approved building from SP 2006-21 was approved to be roughly 1266 square feet with the same uses.

Additionally, the applicant is proposing a new delivery area slash access way to the rear of the proposed building as well as a new landscape area between the existing building and the proposed building.

Here is a proposed cross-section profile view if this were to be approved.

To the left are the Avenidae estates townhomes.

In between the townhomes, there is an existing six-foot privacy fence and a roughly 12-foot open space parcel that is owned by the Avenidae estates HOA, which contains existing vegetation.

On the Kappa Sigma property, there is a 20-foot use buffer that consists of existing vegetation, and the building is set back 50 feet, which meets the county's setback requirement.

The finished floor elevation of the proposed building will be between 8 feet to 27 feet below the finished floor elevation of the townhomes in the Vinidia States.

The dash gray line over the proposed building corresponds to the cupola heights in the image below.

These are proposed renderings of what the building could look like.

If this were to be approved, it would be subject to the architectural review board review to ensure compliance with the entrance corridor guidelines.

And here's a zoomed in picture of the previous slide.

The red dashed line is from the average height of eyesight for someone who's 5'7".

Above the proposed building is the dashed gray line, which corresponds to the max height of 27.5 feet of the cupola on the building.

The special use permit application was reviewed under the factors for consideration as outlined in the zoning ordinance.

Staff believes that the proposed special use permits will not be detrimental to adjacent parcels, will not change the character of the nearby area, will continue to be in harmony with the R1 residential zoning district, and is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

There are nine conditions drafted for the special use permit.

I'm not going to get into all of them, but they are carryover from the previously approved special use permit.

And condition one was modernized with new language.

Staff added condition one C, one D, and one E to address the new building.

So in sum, there are two factors that are favorable.

The first is it's consistent with the review criteria for special use permits contained in the zoning ordinance.

And the second is the use is consistent with the Southern and Western neighborhoods master plan.

There's no factor unfavorable.

Staff recommends approval with the conditions as recommended in the staff report and update to the concept plan to construct pedestrian improvements along Route 20.

And I'm happy to answer any questions from the commission.

Great.

Thank you.

Any questions from the commission?

Not particularly about the building per se.

We did get a couple of public emails about sound and noise potential.

What's someone from BART?

Good evening.

Thanks for about a deputy.

Director, Community Development, Zoning Administrator.

I was just asking about the noise.

There were some emails about this facility and Kappa Sigma parties that have been loud in the past.

So we have two types of noise.

One is nuisance noise.

One is land use noise.

Land use noise has a decibel rating.

and a time that's allowed, nuisance noise.

That is frequently, say, a party that goes on.

And so that is something that's an audible thing that is determined by the police department.

So you would call a Moore County Police Department for that type of noise.

Events or things, depending on what they are, would be subject to, what's the zoning of this property?

This is our one residential problem.

So I believe it's 60, 60 decibels is what our ordinance says.

But if it's a if it's a land use noise, the zoning folks would investigate it and enforce that noise regulation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Art.

Mr. Murray?

Mr. Carrazana?

No, no questions at this time.

Yeah, I have one question.

So in order for the applicant to get the building below the sight lines of the people at Avenditti, there being a big cut into the slope, that's not a steep slope at all.

Yeah, that particular area is not a steep slope.

and Commissioner Bennett.

Thank you.

It's mentioned in the process that there's going to be a guest rooms.

And so does the county have a specific process for guest rooms in these kind of structures?

It's not going to be an Airbnb, I assume.

But is there a different set of or there are additional processes that have to be followed in order for them to have both a hotel, basically a hotel.

I'm personally not aware of any regulations.

The previous SP approved for eight guest bedrooms.

Thank you.

Great.

Any other questions?

All right.

OK, with that, I'll open the public hearing and ask for the applicant's report.

As a reminder, you have 10 minutes.

And when the light turns yellow, you'll have one minute left.

Please state your name.

My name is Amy George.

Hello to all of you.

I'm with Radha Bush and Gail.

I want to thank Sid for doing a good job of describing this project.

This project has an existing building on the site with a, I guess, center portion and a wing.

We are working on a site plan amendment for the wing on the west, the northern side of the property.

As Sid mentioned, there was a proposed building site next to the middle of the property, directly adjacent to the parking lot that we are wanting to move and rotate up along.

So it creates more of a lawn space and more of the Jeffersonian style between the two buildings.

And I know Mr. Bivins asked about

the guest rooms and things that we continue to use that as part of like the original SP and carry those uses forward.

But so far, the main uses of the building are going to be for archival memorabilia, classroom spaces and possibly meeting spaces and coordination if with with the main building.

We worked really hard with the architect to get a good rendering of the building and to work, I guess, to take into consideration the neighbors' feelings of not wanting to block their view of Carter Mountain.

As Sid said, the proposed building will be eight to 27 feet below the affinity properties that is not the amount of cut on our property.

it's probably like six feet is like the maximum cut on our property and we'll either it'll be graded back up to the existing vegetation that is there and with a retaining wall if needed.

We will have I guess a loading area behind the building for caterer access and connection to the

to the building itself.

The building elevation is constrained by the elevation of the parking lot itself.

We cannot set the building up too high away from the parking lot due to like accessibility issues.

So the elevation that is shown on the plan is the relative elevation that it should be.

Great, that's your presentation.

All right, thank you.

I'll open it up for questions.

I'm just still wrestling with this picture.

If you look at, I mean, if you look at the picture and also the scale, it looks like that diagonal line that's going up to the bottom where the trees are, it almost looks like it's going to the top of the first story.

So how could that be six feet?

That would mean then from the distance, from the top of the line to the roof line is the average, an average cut of six feet.

That would be the deeper slice cross section that we're looking at then.

I know how to use a scale ruler.

So I can see that doesn't make sense.

All right.

Can I just follow up on that because my question is along the same lines.

It's a three to one slope at that point.

Like I said, it's like there may be a retaining wall.

and there may not be, we haven't.

Okay, I'm not seeing a retaining wall on your site plan.

Perhaps maybe but where the

Yeah, there will be a slight retaining wall where the drive is.

Correct, it's at the center of the building.

That's what you're showing.

Clearly, you have almost a vertical wall behind the building.

So there's some kind of space, which I don't know if that's one of these adios or what that is.

There may be a retaining wall as some portions along that, but at that point, I was able to grade down from the existing slope and in front of their existing evergreen trees, down to the patio, leave a ditch, and come up to their patios behind the building with a three-to-one slope.

Like I said, this is rough grading.

You also might want to point out that it's a vertical and horizontal exaggeration, right?

OK.

Do you know what kind of trees you have planted there?

The existing vegetation in the 20-foot buffer is a mixture of pines and deciduous trees, some junipers.

Just a little concern there that as you cut into that slope, you could damage the roots of the trees there.

We will definitely deal with that at the site plant stage.

It's like the evergreen trees that are there now, they're approximately six, eight feet tall.

So, I was going to say, go ahead.

I'm done.

Mr. Bivins.

So, thank you for the brief presentation.

Thank you.

So there's a wooden fence.

There's like a wooden security fence that sort of runs along the property line.

The trees are on your property, okay.

The trees are on our property.

Because I went to the site, I went to both sides yesterday and to sort of just see what it looked like and I was hard pressed to see that unless you're on the second floor of one of the homes.

when the four homes is there, no one can see over the fence.

And therefore no one from there is from the community side.

And people would be hard pressed.

First floor.

I guess what we were going for was like, there's the main

There's the main roof line of the main, I guess like the center portion of the building that we were trying to to match into is like that was be the maximum height of where our main roof would be.

And so when you go down, so you're going to be 10 feet from the boundary of the trees that are there.

And coming back to our colleague, and also I guess to my colleague to my right, is being able to insure, because it's a lovely site and I drove out there the other day and it's

You know, it's a neoclassic stuff, and people know where I sit with that, so I'll just, I'll be restrained in my comments about that, given that the founder of the University of Virginia would anticipate an evolution from the neoclassic, and so I will just stop there.

But in any event, it's really well constructed.

Building.

And so I can't imagine that anything you put in is going to be less than what's already there.

I assume you're going to continue to transition.

And so my concern was not so much that the people behind them would not be able to see the mountain because I think they will.

But my concern is how are you going to come from the back of the parking lot and connect to that so that it doesn't connect to the new building?

create a way to get into the new building so that it doesn't look so that the back of the building doesn't decay.

There is 30 feet between the back of the building.

We are how much 30 feet because like the 50 foot setback, there's an existing 20 foot buffer.

The 30 feet we're

I had another question, and it's not about the grade.

I actually wanted to hear more about why you wanted to have this new building.

I mean, I read your application.

It's obviously twice the size.

You said stuff about memorabilia and classes, but could you say more about, you obviously originally thought that the

The half-size structure would do the job.

Now you want double the size.

If you look at the square footage of the proposed, I guess like the original building in the middle of the site, it was 8,000 square feet plus, plus or minus, or actually it was plus, 8,000 square feet plus.

Okay, so you're just going wider?

And again, I'm still trying to understand why.

I guess it was to add more of a formal space between the two buildings to kind of like bring it into compliance with the neoclassical Jeffersonian style that's already on the lawn.

Maybe they were referring to the footprint rather than... I think it was the footprint.

Okay, so the footprint is twice as... Okay, I got it.

That half or a little more than half.

Okay.

Good to go.

Commissioner Moore.

Good.

You guys are good.

Okay.

I just had a couple of quick questions.

One, some were answered.

One, it mentions grass pave and I know that's a remaining carryover.

It says all grass parking areas must be grass pave and that's a product themed equivalent, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, actually, we are proposing that the fire entry, or I guess like the part of the fire access be in front of the building and that would be grass paid.

And you mentioned the grading.

The stormwater measure plan is being updated with the building wing addition.

Got it.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for your help.

All right, I'll open it up to comments from the public.

And I have one person signed up and one person online on Zoom, Sarah Hayden.

You'd come up, please.

And you'll have three minutes total time.

Actually, can look just like online, too.

That's fine.

Come up if you would and identify yourself, please.

And you'll have three minutes of time.

And when the light turns yellow, you'll have one minute left.

My name is Sammy Barnes.

I live at 3421 Montague, which is the one right in the very center of where the new building is proposed.

I'm the one that took the picture and the reason that you can see over the fence as well as you can.

is because the fence is actually on the down slope already.

And so even though it's an eight foot fence, we can see over that fence.

And we invested in this house as our ultimate last house that hopefully we'll have to move into.

And the views of Carr Mountain were very important to us.

What I wanted to address were two things in relation to what you were describing before.

If you could put that picture of the side view

and another neighbor that's traveling and couldn't be here at the same question.

We're concerned about the feasibility of actually doing the excavation successfully.

We're wondering if any soil

Tess or boring tests have been done just to verify that that is all feasible because we're very excited that now that they've come back with this plan to lower the ground floor to 527 feet that it can in fact stay there.

that there won't be something that comes back later and says, well, there's too much rock.

We're going to have to raise the building and then it's going to be a real problem for us.

And then the second question related to that is, as you mentioned before, the retaining wall.

We are concerned about not only our trees, but also our foundations as wanting to ensure that there

Great.

Thank you.

And now I think we have Sarah Hayden.

Hi, I'm Sarah Haddon.

And I wanted to thank you for taking my comments.

I also live on Montague Street directly behind where the loading

like Sammy and our other neighbors.

I greatly appreciate the changes the Kappa SIG has come up with to make this

better for those of us who live in a vanity.

I think you've kind of addressed the issue with the noise, but noise does continue to be a concern.

And while it's nice to know that we can call the cops, we'd rather have better relationships with our neighbors than calling the cops on them.

And so one of the things that I'm wondering, I don't expect an answer is whether or not the fraternity headquarters can consider

lessening the decibel level of the noise.

Last year's party, I was driven out of my house.

And also to reconsider the time that the music stops, it says between nine and 10.

We have a lot of young children in our neighborhood, and we also have a lot of medical professionals in our neighborhood who do have to get up and go to work first thing in the morning.

Then I had a slight concern.

Some of us in the neighborhood also had a slight concern whether or not the

The meeting space would be rented out to others for use because that doesn't seem in keeping with the residential zoning ordinance.

And that was it.

Great.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else present that would like to speak before I go to Zoom?

I think everyone else is county staff.

Michael, if you could please unmute yourself and state your name and your location.

Hi, Mike Davis.

I live at 3431 Montague Street.

I guess my comment is that this change is so radically different than what

I originally saw when I bought my house in 2020 that I probably would have definitely thought twice about investing a half million dollars into a place that is going to be turned into a construction site.

I'm very concerned that the plans from this developer are oversimplified and doesn't take into concern like a lot of the varying landscaping that's there.

and that I'm concerned that things will be changed over time that will mitigate the views that we have of Carter Mountain, which frankly was the only reason I selected this unit.

The trees that are on the drawing, that's not what they look like.

They're not

They're not as tall as the, they're not eight foot tall.

They're, they're, most of them are sort of a brush and everything else.

I'm, I'm concerned that the trees that are going to be planted will also interfere with the view of Carter Mountain.

and finally I'm concerned about, as the previous member of the public said, the noise.

You don't build something like this and not expect a lot more people to attend and it's very, very close to those of us who live on Montague and I'm concerned it's really going to ruin a lot of the reasons why we bought this place in the first place.

My opinion is that this is

Not a change.

This is not just an application for a slight change.

This is a radical difference that I think a lot of us at Montague probably would have thought twice about if we'd known that this was what was going to happen.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else online?

Madam Clerk?

No.

All right.

with that I will open it back up to the applicant.

I know one of the comments was about whether or not other people would be using the space and be able to rent it.

The answer isn't an emphatic no.

The only people that will be using the building is Kappa Sigma.

It will not be rented out.

The other question was about the trees that were there.

There are, I guess, beyond the existing vegetation, this kind of

The Natural Pine, right up against the fence.

There is a double staggered row of evergreen trees.

Like, like you said, they, they aren't very tall right now.

They're only probably about six to eight feet tall.

They are Leland Cyprus and they will, will grow and will remain in place.

to the best of our extent, or actually they will remain in place after construction.

That is like one of the things that we want to keep.

Great.

Can you speak also to the question of the height and the excavation and the risk of rock?

We have not done any soil testing up there or testing at all to see what the depth of the rock is at that point in time.

My name is Chad Gephardt.

I'm the executive vice president for Kappa Sigma.

On that level,

Above the back, there is French drains that have already been built with the first pass that drained down to the pond.

So there is tunnels, not tunnels, but tubes under the ground already.

So we know it can go down.

Got it.

OK, thank you.

All right.

Any other responses from you?

No, we're good.

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

and bring it back to the commission for comment.

I think Chair, I'm not sure, but it would be interesting to know whether or not that bit of a pavilion that's over on the right-hand side that's next to Galaxy Farm, my experience has been that that's where there are outdoor events.

And so it's really the Galaxy Farm that's being built out now that would be the closest and there's even a good amount of space over there.

You know, given that I would challenge the architects to think creatively about what would be the next interpretation of neoclassic architecture, but you know, that's my own brick to haul.

I'm fine with this and support and support it.

I think that

There will be a site review process where people will be able to talk about that.

Hopefully the executive director will be in good contact with the four neighbors that are right behind them to be in dialogue and so that there's a direct line, much like we have with the home stays that you have to know who the person on call is so that you can call them instead of calling the police.

You call the person who's the executive on charge.

and I think if the executive director of Kappa Sigma can be engaged in that dialogue, I'm fine with this and support this revised plan.

Thank you.

At this time, I'm not in support of it for a couple of reasons.

One is I haven't heard a compelling argument for doubling the amount of impervious surface.

I'd rather that they did go taller and not wider.

So it's actually a more impactful design that they've come up with in my view, even though they did work hard to lower the elevation.

And I'm still concerned about the cut and fill plan.

I don't have enough detail.

I realize this is not a site plan review.

But I still, I've seen some slopes in our area become very unstable, even with lovely retaining walls so the I am sympathetic also to the neighbors if they were to purchase a townhome and look at the plan that was approved they would see that

The building that was coming was not in their backyard.

So because there isn't a compelling reason, it hasn't been shown to me that the building can't be anywhere else on the site, that it couldn't be in the original location.

It's the same size structure, so they're getting the same function out of the building at two stories as they would at one.

So it sounded to me that the primary argument was one of a design aesthetic, which to me is not a compelling enough reason.

to move the use closer to the neighbors and also to double the impervious surface of the site.

Since we're in discussion, I'll just ask a question.

My mind went there as well.

That's why I asked a question about stormwater management.

They do have a pretty significant stormwater management facility out front that they would use to mitigate the additional impervious surface.

Unfortunately, most of my career has been actually in stormwater management, and we're not really able to design systems that perfectly mimic what was there before.

If you look at any developed area, even if it has a stormwater pond with all the calculations and the correct curve numbers, and then we can have a whole long discussion about curve numbers and how they're generated and perfect, that you'll still see impacts to receiving waters.

So, no, if we were able to 100% offset it just by simply adding more stormwater management, that would be great.

I understand where you're coming from.

I'm pretty familiar with stormwater management myself.

I guess my question is, does that not actually impact any development in the county?

That's correct, but they already have a plan that's approved to meet their needs for space.

So I haven't heard a compelling reason for changing.

the plan that was already approved besides the design aesthetic of the building would be prettier in the one story spread out format.

And that's just not enough for me.

I don't think it functions, but I haven't, again, it's up to the applicant to make that case.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have some similar concerns in terms of the location of the building.

I appreciate that they obviously worked with some of the neighbors and listened.

dropped the elevations.

So there's a nine-foot difference.

There's nothing I can see here in what's been presented, so it's kind of hard to really understand how this is going to work.

This shows me how you mitigate that nine-foot difference between your entrance to the building, where your slab location and that edge of the planting areas above.

So this moves over to, obviously, to order supervisors and the site plan review.

I think that's where there's going to have to be a lot of work to figure out how this actually works because there is a risk of that soil not being stable.

There's nothing here that shows me how they're stabilizing it.

Glaube Home is a good firm.

Just jumped.

Okay.

I don't have any particular, despite my colleagues bringing some things up, this doesn't, this particular proposal doesn't rub me the wrong way.

Having additional space for whatever the business is of the fraternity to do the thing.

works all right.

I do agree with Commissioner Bivins in terms of being mindful and having someone on site to respond to neighbors when the noise things happen.

I was just kind of looking at the agenda for the last Grand Conclave and, you know, seeing like, oh yeah, several nights in a row of loud parties could be a real pain in the ears.

So, but that's for how it's used rather than how it's built.

At the very minimum, I don't know who the civil is here, that Flavie has in terms of a subcontractor.

I think it's rather push.

I didn't see it.

And the materials.

But to your point, I don't know if that was done.

I haven't seen it.

I think said there was no geotechnical.

Oh, that's right.

Thanks.

Commissioner Murray, are you?

No, no, that's it.

Okay.

Good to everybody.

I'll just share a few things.

One,

is, and we're still into discussions.

Let's go back and forth.

My general sense, I thought about the stormwater impacts.

I thought about the impervious surface.

I'm satisfied that the process that we have for stormwater management is sufficient as the site plan review process and water quality and so on.

That's just me.

The other piece of it is the retaining wall, how that, I mean, we're taking the applicant's word at the fact they graded it so that it would be a three to one slope and that it would have drainage in the back and there's a French drain in the back or a drain that's been installed.

Unfortunately, the materials that we have, I know there was probably a logical reason to do it.

and a vertical to horizontal exaggeration, but it's just hard to really understand.

And I know at the CAC meeting that I was attending, that was one of the areas that we really focused on was something that would show us an accurate cross-section so we could understand the community's concerns about visibility.

And I just don't see it in that section.

It doesn't convey that in my mind.

That said, I think that, you know, when they move forward, assuming they move forward with the site plan and building permit, you know, there are code requirements in place that are going to help to handle the issue of not only setbacks, but stability, you know, wall requirements.

We're about to talk about that right now at six feet, you know, and engineering requirements, etc.

I guess if it were up sort of my my scales tip towards the side of supporting this understanding that there is there is a you know a series of requirements that are in place to to prevent I think some of the problems we may foresee the other thing I just wanted to clarify with staff and that was the elevation the 527 foot lower the ground floor elevation I know that shows on all our drawings and I know that the

Recommendation includes a statement that says, development of the use must be in general accord with the conceptual plan, et cetera.

If they were to encounter something that would prevent them from going to 527 feet, they would not be able to build it, right?

They would have to come back, or would they be able to adjust that at the site plan?

Right.

We could probably work with the county attorney to craft some language that is more in line with your concern.

That's correct.

Well, it's not called out there as an essential element of the plan.

And I should know this, but attachment for, remind me, what was attachment for?

OK.

So we need something more specific than in general accord with the conceptual plan attachment for it would need to be called out as an essential element on that on that ABCD list.

Got it.

Okay.

All right.

I just want to reemphasize I am not merely objecting to the building based on stormwater concerns.

My primary concern is location.

All right.

I would move to recommend approval of SB 202318 Kappa Sigma International Headquarters with the conditions stated in the staff report with an elevation of base elevation of 500

and 27 feet.

527 feet.

All right, we have a motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, any further discussion?

No.

All right.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Ms.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

I've got you.

Hello, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Bill Fritz.

I work in the Community Development Department.

And unfortunately, I don't have a PowerPoint presentation for you.

This is a very word heavy document.

Would you like that?

So let me explain what the current ordinance has.

And then I can talk to you about what the proposed ordinance is under the current ordinance.

Everywhere in the county, there's a 10-foot maximum retaining wall height.

So if you're in the rural areas and you're building a house and you want to put a driveway in or terrace it, 10 feet.

You're in the development areas and you want to build something 10 feet, unless you are in the steep slopes overlay district, which is only within the development areas.

In the steep slopes overlay district, the maximum retaining wall height is six feet.

So we have situations where you have a property and it has steep slopes, managed steep slopes, because you can't build on preserved steep slopes, but you have managed steep slopes and areas outside of steep slopes.

And the areas outside of the steep slopes, you can put in a 10-foot wall, and in the steep slopes area, you put in a six-foot wall.

There's really not an engineering purpose for that.

We had simply picked six feet at the time this the six foot height was first, the 10 foot height came later.

We pulled it from the air, to be perfectly honest.

And what we had was a situation where there was a longstanding tradition that the county had county planners.

We deemed any wall six feet or greater to be an objectionable feature that we could require screening on.

So we pick that height.

When the section four, the regulations that apply everywhere in the county came in, 10 feet was picked and that was based on engineering.

Again, you can still screen it, so because it's an objectionable feature.

Anybody have questions?

Is that a clarification?

Make sure I heard it right.

Correct.

Correct.

You only will have that difference in the development areas because steep slopes exist only within the development areas.

When you move into the rural areas, you have critical slopes and you can't build on critical slopes full stop unless you get a special exception.

And then if you do get that special exception, you could build a 10-foot wall if the special exception allowed.

And now you could.

Right now, today, that's what you could do.

So if you're outside the development areas, you're on critical slopes, you want to put a retaining wall in, you need to get a special exception first to build anything.

So that's the starting point.

The proposed ordinance does not change that.

So let me just start there.

That doesn't change that at all.

What it does is it raises the height of retaining walls on steep slopes to 10 feet.

So now it's just 10 feet.

If you're allowed to build a wall, the maximum height is 10 feet.

Because you can't build on preserved slopes.

You can't build on critical slopes unless you have a special exception.

So that creates a uniformity in the retaining wall height.

It's a little bit easier to administer and design with the second thing that's being proposed, the current ordinance

You're stuck.

10 or six, there's no way to even request an increase in that height.

What we're proposing is that special exceptions be permitted.

And these special exceptions really are narrowly crafted to allow special exceptions to facilitate improvements that really require a quarter.

Roads, trails, paths, things like that.

And they need to be something that's identified in the comprehensive plan.

and has a public benefit.

So this isn't a subdivision coming in and saying, well, I want a 12-foot wall because it's cheaper for me to build that to come into my development.

Is it shown in the comprehensive plan?

If so, maybe yes.

If no, no.

And this is again, by special exception.

Exactly.

Or pedestrian feel or what it might look like from adjoining properties.

The whole idea here is that the retaining walls would increase and the height would only be done if it was really necessary for a public purpose to allow the facility to operate or if rerouting that road or that trail would require the acquisition of so much

So it was narrowly crafted for the special exception.

So that's what this does.

And that's all it does.

So it's a pretty narrow, in terms of zoning text amendments, this is a pretty narrow zoning text amendment.

That is helpful.

Any questions from the whole heart?

I don't know.

I guess I'm sort of struggling with public purpose.

You know, I think that's pretty, pretty broad in some ways.

So if you look at the special exceptions that talks about, is it consistent with the prudent use of public funds?

No, because there are no public funds.

Would it require rerouting or redesigned of the improvements to an extent that the improvements would not serve the intended purpose?

maybe, but you need to look at the previous language about it being corridor.

Does it significantly increase maintenance cost and would it result in the design to be unsafe for users and or maintenance of the improvements?

So it and the Board of Supervisors gets to look at all these things.

So it is designed to be narrowly crafted and give the Board of Supervisors the flexibility to allow improvements to come in.

Part of the reason it's written the way it is, also we foresaw the potential where you have a project where they're proffering on improvement.

So it's not a public improvement, but they're proffering an improvement, which is one the county desires.

For example, the road that connects Fifth Street and Avon that Wegmans did, doesn't have a 10 foot retaining wall in the county, does in the city.

But there's an example that that, if that retaining wall had been in the county,

What would it have done to that road?

Would it have affected that road, which the county really wanted a connection between there?

I have a question.

So one thing that I've seen happen, I'm not saying, I'm not going to say in this county, but in Virginia.

or is where, you know, let's say that somebody doesn't, they're going to build a structure, but it's floodplain.

So they get rid of the floodplain by simply backfilling and then building a high retaining wall.

And now they're not in the floodplain.

They've wrecked the floodplain, but that's a different problem.

So I could, but they might say, but my lot isn't buildable, unless I elevate out of the floodplain.

Is that, is that then?

It'd be very difficult to make a finding for that under this special exception criteria.

I don't see how you do that, but I also don't see how you get past the special use permit in the floodplain.

Our county is particularly wonderful.

I hold it up as an exemplar for not

allowing development in floodplains where it's not a good place to build.

So I love that.

Fred, any other questions?

I think this is sort of a clarification question.

I think I know the answer, but basically

In the development area, you would not even be able to come in.

You would need to request a rezoning to change that designation from preserve or to manage or remove it entirely.

and a managed steep slope in the development areas you could build a retaining wall.

Correct.

Sort of by right.

Today.

Yes.

Today.

Okay.

Any other questions?

I just had a couple.

That's not impacted.

Correct.

None of the other standards for retaining walls are changed.

So we're maintaining, for example, and I know this isn't the question, but I'm going to elaborate on the answer, your stepping between walls, your reverse slope, those all stay in place, and any wall over two feet requires a building permit.

I believe it's two feet lower than I thought.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, great.

Thanks.

No other questions for staff.

I think I will now open the public hearing.

and I will ask for the applicant's presentation.

We are the applicant.

You are the applicant.

It's been done.

So that's been checked.

No.

All right.

And it doesn't look like anybody in the building either.

So I will quickly close the public hearing, put it back for discussion.

Maybe I'll start if that's okay.

I'm a little bit concerned, particularly you brought up this street station.

I understand from that comment that the reason that there's that big wall there is because of Charlottesville.

I would hate to see that sort of thing happen in Albemarle County.

There's definitely a situation where you can canonize your growth area, where particularly since we don't provide any protection of intermittent streams in the growth area, what happens is those often get filled, covered with pipes.

And I think one of the things that's also worth noting is that this distinction between preserved and managed slopes.

When this was first

When people first came up with this idea, the idea was that there's these areas that already impacted or may not be natural, and so we'll have a different standard for them.

I almost wish I had come with like a slide presentation about this, because I almost feel like I need a whiteboard and a marker.

But if you have a natural slope like this, and you cut out part of that natural slope, and we almost saw an example just a moment ago, you end up with

a new steeper slope on one side.

And then because the fields were moved here, maybe shifted on here, now you end up with potentially two new managed slopes on either side of that.

So the question is, is

when we're allowing, when we allow the development in these managed slopes, which were probably previously natural slopes.

Are we making the situation worse or are we making it better?

And I think that that's, for my concern, the thing that needs to be addressed the most is like, what are we doing to make this better so that we don't end up with something, you know, that's still going to cause erosion that could be present safety hazard or that just canonizes our, you know, our growth area.

You know, and so, so that's, that's when, then also just in terms of place, the reason that what provides a sense of place is the fact that we are in the Piedmont, we have rolling hills, we have a topography, you know, if you flatten all that, which many sites have done, and as you flatten that, you end up with retaining walls on the sides as you flatten that landscape, you lose a sense of place.

And so I'm concerned about any policy that does that, that could potentially incentivize more flattening of our landscape.

I don't know that this kind of exceeds the discussion of these retaining walls here, but I think it's still an important thing to bring up.

and then also just, we're discussing providing an exception here to allow higher retaining walls, but we still don't have the stream protection ordinance come back before us.

And so we're loosening regulations and apparently this is something we can have two meetings about.

Oh, awesome.

So, Chair, if I could just sort of balance that a little bit.

So, I appreciate what Commissioner Murray is speaking to, particularly about sort of trying to keep the topography of the Piedmont on this side of the Blue Ridge.

But I also want to sort of couple that with the fact that we're talking about 5%

So 95% of the county's land is still, to the extent that it is, rolling hills, and still comes under while it may not have the storm protection, or excuse me, the stream protection that you're speaking to.

That is an issue that every time in my period on this, on the commission,

Any time there's been any serious, any attempt to advance a conversation about stream protection, a very capable lobbying group comes forth and screams.

They scream that they can't be good farmers and that being a farmer in this community is, they are burdened by having to pay attention to streams in any kind of significant way.

So I agree with you and I think that we, there's been some conversation among some of us over the years that we

while we understand there's some resistance, we understand why we just need to adopt the Chesapeake Bay Act, which would then give a set of ordinances and rules that would allow us to sort of perhaps make significant advances on the stream protection.

But I want to remind us

We're talking about 5% of the land of which our colleagues are our cositoyen.

I don't know what that is in English.

Every time we try to do a couple of stories higher, they scream.

I didn't say it today.

because I was trying to be a good guy.

But the Avenidae people, there was a project that came in 2017, I believe it was, that wanted to put some modest scale, a family wanted to put a modest scale development, multi-family development on the property that's right next to Avenidae.

And they asked permission, could we use your street as an emergency way to get into this property?

And they called Bloody Hell.

And so while it's okay, and everybody knows my deal on preserving, I was kind, because I wanted to say to people, you should buy the property.

You don't want to buy the property.

That's how you deal with this.

So it is always odd for me.

to have people calling out a project when they were given an opportunity to put a modest family-owned multi-family thing there, but didn't want to do it because they didn't want to share their rope.

And so, since we're doing something a little different here, I understand what we're saying.

If you want to see a high retaining wall, go up Berkmore Drive right behind what used to be

Price Chevrolet or whatever the thing is.

I don't know what it is now.

But there's a very high set of retaining walls there.

And one of the reasons they were there so they could put some more houses on it.

Pure and simple.

They wanted some more buildable land.

And if in the 5% of the county, we're trying to create space for people to build more houses, because we need more houses here, I'm told.

then I'm okay even though I find that wall scary and would never walk in front of it.

I would never in front of that wall for the reasons but it is well it's well constructed and they paid a lot they paid a lot of attention so that's what my main point is that we're talking about five percent of the county that this is going to apply to and 95 percent of the county is still going to have that gently undulating

I'll add just a little bit onto that because I was thinking about the same thing.

And when I was just mentally diagramming it, the thing that came to mind is number one, aesthetic impacts to a higher wall.

So you're basically going this much higher.

You're going four feet higher on one wall.

Your alternative would have been to do six feet and then four feet behind it.

You could potentially plant in front of that four foot step, right?

But then I also realized that you are getting more development area, which you said in your staff report by increasing the height of the wall because you don't have that extra wall to add to it.

So, I mean, it seems to me that, again, because of the small amount, the low percentage of these that you'll see,

The only aesthetic piece, I mean, I spoke with somebody about this, I think it was you, Michael, just the impact to the entrance quarter, if there are examples where a 10-foot wall looks horrendous and, you know, three, I don't know, whatever, four-foot walls or something that would help to mitigate would be better.

I would think that the ARB will step in and say, we think your 10-foot wall looks terrible.

We need you to do something to mitigate that, whether it's screening or stepbacks or something.

And it's not, it's also not by right.

To go 10 feet, they're good.

This will allow them to do that.

One thing I'd like to point out also on the entrance corridor, one of the factors to be considered when we drew up whether or not an area was preserved or managed was whether or not it was in an entrance corridor and was important to the entrance corridor.

So the areas where the slopes were important to the entrance corridor, they were placed into preserved slopes and cannot have walls built on them.

That's a great point.

I forgot.

You know, Chair, at one point, staff, one of our directors had mentioned that they were looking at a project that would look at preserved and look at slopes across the county.

That there's now new technology that would allow them to do that in a more efficient and actual way.

And so when we do that new map, I don't know how we get to those maps, where you do those overlays, that if we could sort of be be intentional about using new technology, I think that would help a bunch of us or whoever the us is when we're finished here, so that we know what our steep, what our steep slope overlay is.

and in today's terms.

I was thinking about what Commissioner Murray said.

So if I'm looking at the Berkmore Drive thing, so some of that was created when they did that road.

When they did the road, they created the slopes because they just took the dirt and moved it over there without any appreciation that the people up there on, I think it's Woodlands Road or something like that, whatever that road where the SBC used to be, the people were going to perhaps try and create some, because it's in the development area.

They were going to create housing over there.

So this whole, this whole, the sort of

Unintentional Impacts of Construction, of which in that case it was a V dot and I don't know how we tell V dot.

But I mean, that has, that has impacts too, you know, on, you know, we end up putting a lot of the trails through these, through these riparian areas.

And when you end up with retaining walls, like squishing into the riparian areas, then it really makes those, there's remaining, there's trails inhospitable.

And so, you know, and, and I appreciate your comment about, you know, the 5% and yet, and I, I agree, we want to maximize development in the growth area.

But it's also important for that to be livable.

And I think that if we there's an extreme that we could go to with high retaining walls and flattening the landscape that would make the growth area unlivable.

All right, any other comments or questions?

OK.

Do we have a motion to approve?

So moved.

DTA 2023-8.

We have a motion to approve.

Second.

So just to clarify, that'd be a motion to recommend approval to the Board of Supervisors, correct?

Yeah, I recommend approve.

All right, and we had, do we have a second?

Did somebody second it?

Any discussion?

All right.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, staff.

Mr. Fritz, appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, we'll move on to committee reports.

All right.

The MPOC tech, the Metropolitan Planning Organization's Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee,

at a special April meeting.

It was five minutes late, which was 25% of the meeting.

It was very short.

Basically, we got a very quick overview of the moving toward 2050 transportation plan.

It's just published.

Wow, awesome.

That's great report.

Yeah, so we had the Crosse CAC at the time of Brownsville and it was a bit of a larger event, more outreach.

A bunch of different topics were discussed, ranging from an update on course systems, modernization with the county,

There's a lot of discussion, as one would expect in Crozet about Eastern Avenue.

And there's one of the things that was discussed too was my staff was ways to move forward on Eastern Avenue, one of which was the idea of a public-private partnership on that.

So I'll be excited to hear when we hear some more details about that.

I think there's a lot of eagerness among the public to hear some, you know,

Okay, there's also a discussion about in Crozet Square, you know, if you go to Crozet, the mud house there, they're, you know, they're going to change that.

So now right now there's a stoplight, you can go right or left.

Now it's right, now they're going to change that to be right in, right out.

So you can go along and make a left turn there.

To me, that makes a lot of sense.

Are they going to fix that road?

Are they going to fix the road?

That's yes.

They're going to fix that.

Yeah, there's a whole there's a whole project that they're doing there.

You know, this was related more to school board, but there's a lot of concerns about the teachers and, you know, teachers getting laid off and inadequate pay.

There's discussion just about the general infrastructure, infrastructure gap within Crozet.

Discussed sidewalks.

and Owen, I did one of the things that was mentioned and this was news to me.

Someone talked about sidewalk priorities and apparently there is a county website.

I did not mention the inflammatory postcards.

One thing of note, too, I'll mention is that one communication I got from a member of Crozet and sent me a recording from back when Dennis Rooker and Sally Thomas were in Crozet.

And it was talking about West Hall.

And it was very interesting.

What?

Sorry.

Talking about what?

West Hall.

And so, yeah, and so there's a, it's a very interesting discussion.

I'll be glad to send a DMV who want to listen to it.

It's interesting how much the issues have stayed the same, and the, the debate about the lack in infrastructure and the, you know, the challenges of by right development and so forth.

Thank you.

It's not really a report.

I think Commissioner Moore already got it, but MPO Tech also met, but it seems like they have the same, they have the same agenda.

Yes, I attended the fifth and eight on CAC meeting.

The primary agenda item was a request by tandem school to increase enrollment.

And I just wanted to get the numbers correct.

So the campus is about 24 and a half acres and they want to increase enrollment from 250 to 400 students.

They said that right now they don't have any plans to dramatically increase enrollment in the near term.

They have maybe about 25 additional students they'd like to be able to let in.

But over time, they do see the need to grow the size of the school.

We didn't get into a lot of detail about, they didn't have a detail about how additional buildings they might need on the site.

I don't think they've gotten that far along in their thinking.

The only concerns that were raised in the meeting were

just considerations about traffic impacts if they did get to that number and how that school letting out might affect a nearby school also getting out at the same time and tandem talked about the fact they've tried to do staggered arrival and departure times already they've been doing that to accommodate the traffic

Conflicts.

I'm not aware that there's huge conflict going on right now, though.

But anyway, there was not really much concern about it overall in the meeting.

In other words, people were not alarmed at that.

I could just add to that, I was looking at their application and they have had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight special use permit applications over the years.

But that has been approved.

So they actually have a special use permit to expand the buildings.

So it's really just about the enrollment.

And I tried to look it up on my tablet to be more informed, but my tablet does not want to talk to the county government this evening for some reason.

So I can only look at my cell phone and the site plan is one inch big and I can't expand it.

Thank you.

Mr. Bivins, nothing.

All right.

What else do we have?

Thank you, sir.

So the board met on April 17th.

Talk about numerous, there was a bunch of homestay issues on that particular board meeting.

The two public hearings, besides there was one on the budget, but the ones that were land use related was Cornerstone Church, that's on Route 20 North in Pantops.

came in.

It was resulting to see one, the church, some property uses out.

That was passed.

And then the other one that they considered was the Woodbrook Apartments, the one with 244 units that was between Berkman and Woodburn up near Agner Hurt.

Yeah, that one also was passed by the board.

Got it.

That was one of the two major items I think were on there.

Great.

That's the one of the connections between the calls back.

Yeah.

Yep.

Thank you.

And how about Segway and AC44 updates?

So it's been interesting with AC44.

We've spent a lot of time working on the goals and objectives.

You all have spent a fair amount of time with that.

And our plan is to bring you back the action steps shortly.

I'm seeing your management in the county looking at what we've been doing.

And I think

wanting to make sure that we're taking a holistic or contextual component to the work that we've been doing.

Obviously, what we brought to you before was eight chapters, each one with its own goals and objectives.

and I think there was a desire for us to go back and sort of like create like a sort of a section in front of that sort of contextualized some of that work to allow the reader to have a broader view of kind of what the county's policies were, what our objectives were and how we're going to try and meet those.

So staff has sort of stepped back per minute and we're working on something I would love to be able to tell you what the schedule is, especially after I

gave you the doom and gloom for our several meetings in a row about you're going to be here all summer.

I don't know exactly how this will play out from a schedule standpoint.

I would like to be able to bring something back to you at the next meeting, hopefully, or maybe the week meeting after that.

We're still trying to make this the AC44 plan and not the AC46 plan.

But as we go back, I think it's a really good opportunity for this thing to be an improved document.

I think the dialogue we've been having, I think we'll improve and we'll work ahead it and we'll build still on the work that we've done to date.

So that is a bit of a bomb and a weave.

Got it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks.

I was just going to ask about the schedule in the summer, but now I can't.

You still, just for the commission, chair, you still want us to tell the two of you when we're not going to be here?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, for sure.

All right.

Just have we heard anything about when the water protection ordinance will be coming back?

Yeah, I asked about that as some staff turnover does not look like it will be coming back to you anytime in the near term.

We lost one of the gentlemen who was working with Ag Forestry District in our office.

They moved on from the job.

All right.

Thank you with that.

I'll adjourn the Planning Commission meeting until Tuesday, May 14th, 2024.

Assume it's at 6 p.m.

and we do not have a work session.

At least that's what the agenda says so far.