Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting   10/22/2024

Great, thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone, and apologies for the late start.

It's a little bit after four o'clock.

and I will move us into the work session.

I'll begin by reading the opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website and 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.

Okay, Mr. Moore.

Bivins, Mr. Murray, Mr. Clayburn, Mr. Missel, Mr. Carrazana, Ms.

Firehock.

Thank you all.

We have a full house, so we've established a quorum.

And with that, we will move directly into the work session, CPA 2021-2 AC 44 DA land use policies.

And I may be stealing some of staff's thunder here, but

I was just informed I think this is very helpful to give sort of some context is we're going to be really kind of looking at these work sessions moving forward and staff correct me if I'm wrong here really in three main categories.

One is we're going to hear a recap of the board of supervisors.

Thank you, Commissioner Bivins for that idea.

And that'll be, I think, very helpful for us.

So this will be, again, consistent moving forward.

We'll then hear the content, the subject matter for the day, the specific work session items.

And then at the end, I would appreciate it if everybody could be thinking like this.

What would be most helpful to staff would be to provide them with the general direction of the commission.

So when you're making your comments, try to make them as closely aligned with the questions that we receive from staff as possible.

And then at the end, I'll try to, with everyone's help, provide an idea of the general direction of the commission, if that makes sense.

Sound good?

All right, staff, we'll turn it over to you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Tanya Swartz-Jerber with Albemarle County Community Development as a Planning Manager here to update you on the Development Areas Land Use Chapter of the Comprehensive Plan.

This afternoon, we'll go through this agenda, which will, as Fred mentioned, summary of the board feedback that we heard on October 16th.

We'll go through a few of the community input themes that we've heard thus far on the topic.

We'll review the future land use map and categories, activity and employment centers, and then we'll go through the upcoming steps or calendar.

This right here is the structure of the draft development area's land use chapter that is currently on the website and you all should have a draft.

Today we'll be focusing on the future land use categories map and the activity centers and we'll be saving the discussion on the goal statement, objectives and actions for the next time.

to start off with the board feedback that we heard on the growth management policy.

At their work session, the board agreed with the commission's previous comments on the importance of addressing the barriers and challenges associated with being a welcoming community, especially related to housing affordability.

The board also agreed with the commission and community input to incorporate language into the growth management policy statement on the importance of protecting public water supply and watersheds.

The board agreed with recent community feedback to include additional language on the purpose of the growth management policy, including protecting these water supply watersheds and other important resources in the rural area.

This content will be incorporated into part two of the plan document.

As far as board feedback on the development areas utilization review, the board agreed with commission's recommendations to make achieving the objectives of the comprehensive plan the highest priority factor in the development areas utilization review.

The Board also felt that several factors may need more frequent updates than every two years and could become part of a rezoning and special use permit application review.

These factors include comparing the approved density of a project with the recommended density in the COMP plan and tracking the rate at which affordable housing units are being delivered, either by right or as part of a review process.

Also on the development areas utilization, the board agreed with the commission that more incentives may be needed to better utilize land in the development areas and achieve higher densities.

They also agreed with you on the idea to consider swapping areas within the development area, acknowledging where lower densities have been proposed and built and transferring development potential to other development areas locations.

Focusing on the land use tools, any comments we got on the land use tool, the board also previewed these tools at their work session and shared that the future land use maps should distinguish between areas that are designated for publicly accessible open and recreation space compared with privately owned open space.

This is one of your direction topics that I noted earlier.

We'll go through those in a moment.

The majority of the area plans are also currently, sorry, the majority of the area plans also currently use this approach, including Pantops and Crozet.

Can we sort of interrupt?

Can we interrupt you?

Just a couple quick questions.

Sure.

On those, I assume we're tracking those comments and that they may eventually turn into action items or some, so specifically things like incentives.

Okay.

And to that point of incentives, I mean, obviously there are models out there on how they

other municipalities incentive, adaptive reuse or infill projects, right?

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Let's see, on the direction topics, the areas that we're looking for your feedback on specifically regarding the land use categories.

We have 12 standard categories.

We're including the rural area in that number plus three legacy land use categories.

So we're looking for your confirmation.

that that is your direction.

Also looking to confirm that ADU should be allowed in the lowest density residential.

The green, representing the green as I mentioned before,

representing public access and separate environmentally protected areas.

Let's talk about that before we leave tonight.

Then on the future land use map, we want to make sure that you agree with our consolidation approach, which really is that document that was sent earlier today that's been referred to as a crosswalk and shows how those categories are applied.

And then under the Activity Centers, we want to make sure that you're comfortable with the fact that they're intended to focus growth and will function as a land use overlay.

Make sure that you're comfortable with the attributes, the distribution, and any investment strategy that might go along with that.

So for the development area chapter, how did we get here?

I want to focus on the fact that when we write these plan recommendations, we incorporate community and planning commission and board of supervisors feedback and also our technical expertise, best practices, and are guided by the AC44 guiding principles developed in phase one and two.

On the screen, the themes of the input that we've heard most recently from the community related to the development area land use.

Throughout phase one and two, we had good response and attendance to in-person and virtual events, online questionnaires, and visits to the AC44 website.

We intend to have similar opportunities as part of Phase 3, including keeping the website up to date with current activities, resources, and draft documents.

Based on your feedback, we've drafted 12 standard future land use categories as presented in your packet and in the draft chapter.

This consolidates over 20 categories across five area plans.

The crosswalk you received this morning details how the 2015 land use categories match with the proposed AC44 land use categories.

The categories were mapped in a one-to-one approach so that the color on the map or the name of the category might be different, but the overall land use recommendations are the same.

This does not affect any zoning entitlements.

As part of the adoption of the comprehensive plan, we will also ask the board to adopt the proposed future land use map.

This chart is really for your reference, but I'll use this opportunity to discuss the recreation slash open space category or the medium green category that we see on our flume.

This currently includes both publicly accessible open space and privately owned environmental features like critical slopes, floodplain, stream buffers, and private open space.

Historically, our area plans have distinguished between these two types of open space, and the board would prefer to continue with the two types of open space.

This is a direction topic that we can address at the end of the presentation, but we are looking for your directions and thought on that topic.

Right here we have shown just an example of one of the land use category summary sheets.

It does include the description as well as identifies the primary and secondary land uses as well as the building form and ground floor use.

As I mentioned before, we do have a couple of land, legacy land use categories.

These are, these include

These include neighborhood density residential low.

Sorry, give me just a second.

Crozet downtown and then town village center.

The neighborhood density residential low shows up across Crozet and the village of Rivanna only.

Across the other DAs, the least dense designation is Neighborhood Residential, which shows up as yellow, which is 3 to 6 DUs per acre.

Could I just ask a question of clarification?

If you go back to that previous slide, it's all right.

I'm not exactly sure what you want us to provide feedback on there.

Yeah, I think basically, you know, you have these kind of specialty areas, if you will.

We recognize because a plan is a lot of effort to talk about their downtown, similarly with the Rivanna Village.

down center.

Yeah.

And then there was also these kind of, they're relatively in crusades, really, that small area out, I think Jarman's Gap Road that is this low density residential.

And then there's like portions of a Glenmore and Marvanna that are likewise this low density and

And just to follow up, if I could, our approach really was to make this a one-to-one matching exercise rather than trying to make some of those big decisions outside of a small area planning effort.

And I guess the final point on that is, you know, when we're showing you these 12, we're calling them the standard because, you know, these are like, these other ones are sort of one-off.

We hope that when we move forward with small area planning, we'll try and consolidate everything.

So when in the past, when we've had conversations about legacy zoning?

There's been this whole piece that if the zoning on the property and if the activity on the property is consistent, if someone wants to come in and do something different, in that particular, go ahead.

Yeah, I heard you use legacy zoning.

Because the key word in all of this is legacy.

and the key concept in this is that if I were able to purchase, for instance, one of the things we're going to see tonight is that VEPCO was able on the old Lynchburg Road for the grand sum of $3 million to purchase three houses there.

That's the project we're going to look at tonight, which got me thinking.

Well, if I don't have $3 million and if I did, I wouldn't tell anybody on this panel.

But if I had the ability to go in in one of these areas and say, is a legacy, but yet we're going to change it, we're going to think about changing it in another one.

And I bought sort of a parcel of land.

I'm generally speaking when we're doing rezoning, we're trying to do them in consistency with the comp plan.

So I think if your point is that say you are one of these low density residential and you wanted to do something higher with your rezoning, they could well be R1 zoning to begin with.

That's one

House Breaker, right?

So the hypothetical that you're providing, I guess potentially it could be an issue.

I don't think we foresee that as a major issue.

Okay, because that will be the, I think that will be the tension when one of the questions that you ask us when you ask us about AUDEs.

because in fact you're changing the density in a single family area.

I think with those, I can wait till I get there.

Again, noting the lowest density standard land use categories, neighborhood residential, which recommends three to six units per acre.

A recommended housing type within this land use category is accessory dwelling units.

This is a direction topic that we would like to revisit later in this discussion.

Given the significant amount of neighborhood residential on the map, which again is yellow, one way to address housing choice is to allow a detached accessory dwelling units in all residential zoning districts for single family detached houses so that these units could be built throughout the development areas.

as property owners choose.

This could be part of the zoning ordinance update, which will be informed by our updated COMP plan.

The land use categories and how they are applied to the future land use map, along with the activity center's influence the effectiveness of the growth management policy, as we talked about last time.

They are also intended to foster the desired features of the development areas, which are based on best practices, community input, and housing and transportation choices of a variety of land uses, walkable neighborhoods, parks and amenities.

The activity centers will focus growth and help identify core areas of higher intensity mixed use development, which also helps to prioritize infrastructure projects and investments.

They will operate as a land use overlay, providing additional guidance for development along with the underlying future land use categories.

Projects located within the activity centers will be encouraged to develop at the higher end of their recommended density and intensity range.

In the draft chapter, there's a place type summary sheet for each one of the tiers of activity centers.

Here's an example from the community center type.

Each type has a description and expectations that address anticipated land use, built form, and multimodal transportation.

The menu of place types were developed with a hierarchy in mind.

So as the density of the development increases from local to the regional, the feasibility of transit, larger public amenities and other infrastructure also increases and may require additional public investment and or public-private partnership in order to catalyze development.

This table shows a summary of the four center place types with an overview of the typical attributes that are included in more detail in the development areas land use chapter.

As mentioned, these centers function like a land use overlay and encourage a higher intensity of development as compared with the underlying land use categories.

We'll also walk through some examples of what these centers could look like.

From most intense and dense to the least, the four types are regional, employment, community, and local centers.

We'll get into the feature of each in the next slides.

There are 30 of these centers shown on this map, which is a consolidation of the 50 centers currently in the five area plans.

Many of these centers are small and not currently are anticipated to be mixed use.

This consolidated set of centers helps focus development and public projects.

Sorry, it seems like

It didn't work.

Sorry, there's some animation on the slide that is not... Do what?

This one?

No.

Here.

Okay.

I'll try and talk through this specifically.

So, looking at the Pantops area, the River Bend Shopping Center is identified as a regional center, which is the Red Oval.

Imagine this area as a vibrant urban mixed-use area with residential goods, services, and entertainment accessible by a variety of transportation options and could serve as a regional destination.

It covers approximately a half mile with a quarter mile focused core area with buildings that are three to eight stories with structured parking and fit into the surrounding context.

Ground story uses are required within the core area and the built environment includes wide sidewalks and streetscape elements that encourage pedestrian activity.

Moving on to the community center represented in blue at Rivanna Ridge, this area will be a focal point for commercial and cultural activities that are accessible by a variety of transportation options.

also with a walk shed of a half mile and a center area of a quarter mile.

The core area will consist of buildings, at least two stories that may range up to six stories and fit in with this also fit in with the surrounding context.

Parking is relegated to the side or rear of buildings and you the use of on street parking is encouraged.

Medium scale plazas and parks are encouraged and should be visible and linked together.

Moving on to the area of the Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital and also Broadway, we have a concentration of employment generating uses that support basic industries and economic development goals.

While mixed use is encouraged,

residential, commercial, and retail should be considered secondary uses that support employees and community members.

The center does not have a defined walk shed or center, but instead should be a cluster of related facilities.

Billings are generally two to four stories with massing height and stepbacks consistent with localized recommendations.

Just note to note about the circle shown at the hospital.

These, as part of a future small area planning effort, will be refined and focused on to follow parcel lines so that it more accurately reflects where the activity center should be.

Local centers like the one at Route 20 and Riverside Village, shown in orange, are the least dense and intense of the center types.

They are also smaller in scale of activity and support a quarter-mile walking radius.

A mix of uses is expected, and buildings have at least two stories and can be up to four.

Activity Ground Story uses are encouraged along with small to medium-sized publicly accessible open space with relegated parking to encourage pedestrian activity.

Bike and pedestrian facilities connect to adjacent neighborhoods and other activity and employment centers.

This brings us to our upcoming events.

So today being October 22nd, we're here to talk to you about the Development Area Land Use Tools and Policy.

We'll go to the board on November 6th to speak about the same topic.

And we'll be checking in with the community on October 30th to go over these same topics along with the growth management policy.

On November 12th, we'll be back to talk about the Development Area's land-use goal, objectives, and actions with you, and then the Board on November 20th.

The Day Before will be here to talk with you all about the rural area land use tools and policy.

Then we'll be coming back on December 10th to talk with you about the goal, objectives and actions on, again, on December 10th and January 8th.

We'll be presenting the entire chapter to the board.

I'm going to go to the next slide here, which is the list of direction topics, so we can go through any questions you have, the discussion, but I will leave these up on the screen.

Great, thank you.

This is helpful to have this as my next question, you write my mind.

Just why don't we, I think it may be best just to take these one at a time and see if we can kind of come to consensus at the end of each of the categories and some of them may blend.

I have a really cop plan 101 question.

The second one where we're talking about ADUs and low density residential, remind me, are you talking about

Within the development areas.

We provided posters for y'all if you wanted to look up and look at specific areas.

Thank you.

I thought I had heard we would met somebody mentioned rural area.

Just want to make sure.

Cool.

Thank you.

All right, anybody want to kick us off in terms of the land use categories?

I have sort of a process-ish question that I think is related to land use categories.

And last time we were here two weeks ago, I was saying, let's not have a yellow neighborhood residential.

Let's start with missing middle, because there's all this great rhetoric and three pages of all the great things that missing middle can include.

And then I look at the map, and there's actually not any missing middle in the sort of urban ring.

And I think last time I was like, why don't we just start with missing middle?

Just like when you get a coffee, you start with medium.

I'm being facetious.

But at the same time, I think there's so much in here that recognizes the need.

And there's so much in here that cleans things up really nicely.

And it's kind of like you've got this great soaring rhetoric and identifying the issue.

And then it's like, oh, and then we've got all these yellow swaths that are just kind of the status quo.

And I think I was picking up on that's because you want to sort of honor a commitment that was made at some point and then

Puntus to sort of future small area plans to maybe change that in the future.

Can we just ask one, there's a most one clarification of staff, so

The middle residential, that's intended to be the missing middle.

Okay, got it.

Okay, so you're cool with that, the missing middle.

Gotcha.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

So a couple of answers to that.

One, I think obviously part of what we're trying to do is how do we use development area effectively?

How do we try and put the density that we talk about wanting in there and the commercial intensity?

I think staff's really trying to work towards these activity centers as the vehicle to do that.

and not so much make a radical change if we would with this particular plan, the land uses as they've been worked through in previous small area plans.

So a lot of what we're doing on the land use map itself is trying to have some fidelity to the previous planning efforts and not change those areas.

So everybody's going to be talking about this, like Richard Yellow, the neighborhood residential category and

and it does, there's a lot of that on the map as you'll see and that represents a lot of R1 and R2 zoning in our community.

There's obviously a choice that could be made by the community to

pushed that up.

Staff took a sort of, I think what it reflects of what we've understood is more of a pragmatic approach at this time to really focus in on the activity centers and moreover to try and like put that hierarchy in place and to really try and say, hey, here's a couple centers we really should try to start building a walkable core someplace that really starts to meet the goals that we've been talking about the neighborhood model and as a community for years.

Well, I appreciate the answer.

And I mean, I think

My personal fidelity to past plans is pretty low, and my pace of change feels like it's like, come on, come on.

But I do appreciate where you're coming from on that.

It's just hard when it feels like an emergency.

Our prices keep spiking and spiking and spiking, and we're pushing lower income people out today.

is why I bring that up over and over, but I get it.

If we look at the missing middle model that's on page 10, where you lay out detached single-family homes, which I guess would be emblematic of the yellow up there.

It feels to me what we've been seeing and why sort of X amount of years on the commission is we've been seeing a lot of projects that basically would fit the missing middle house.

If we look at some of the stuff at Brookfield, I always mess up those names.

Yeah, Brookhill.

If we look at Brookhill, if we look at some of the stuff that's come on Rio Road in both areas now that's now started playing, if we look at the thing that's going to be built up there on John Warner Parkway and Rio Park Street.

And in fact, and then what was I surprised when I got an email, I'm sure like everybody else, that the RST project is now home by yet another hometown

Big Business, but it seems like what's coming to us by default, what's not coming to us, we're getting the structure, we're not getting the nexus to transportation and centers.

So we're getting the form, but the form is not being connected to the kinds of places that I think my colleague over here is saying, I'm not sure that if we were to do

all the yellow, we get the same.

I think, and I'll make my comment when we get what I think will happen, what ADUs, which is why I may be less enthusiastic about those than other people on the panel, but on the commission.

But I think we're getting that form.

What we're not getting is the nexus to transportation.

We don't own it.

And we don't get the nexus to commercial centers, which my last walk around the commercial centers in our area is that we've got a lot of vacancies.

of which I was going to come and talk to you, ask you, how do you ensure when you were using the Pantops thing, the Pantops, I know it as the Pantops Shopping Center and the other one's the Giants Shopping Center.

I'm sorry, I know we have these fancy terms for it, but you know, it's the Foodline Shopping Center and the Giants.

I know, because when you said it's the rent, it's like, where the heck is that?

It's not in that development area which is not being used effectively, I can tell you that much.

But when you look at the vacancies in those commercial sectors, there's a lot of empty star fronts.

So if we're talking about how we're going to use

centers to be these places that enlighten and enliven the communities, then I would want you to have some sense to be able to share with us.

What's the vacancy rates in this place?

Because we can say that this is something that we want to happen here, but if we look at those eight or nine, not eight, one, two, three, four, that was 12, 13, 14.

If we look at those five areas, just from the bridge up to Martha Jefferson,

We've got a lot of empty retail, empty offices.

And so my idea would want to be, in addition to this, and this is where I think you speak to your economic development, for this to happen, how are we going to make that happen?

Because it's not apparent to me.

It's not apparent how we make that a reality.

I know how we make it part of a plan, but if we're starting to shift towards matrix, how do we, if we say, yes, we're going to do this, then what's the thing is, as Commissioner Carrazana will say, how are we going to know at the end of the day we've been successful doing that?

Karen, bring your microphone.

Sorry.

Can I tag onto that?

And I know you didn't get a chance to answer.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I had some similar thoughts rather than bring them up later out of sync.

So yeah, when you were talking about the River Bend Shopping Center, I've spent a lot of time there.

I used to ride my bike there all the time, pick up some Chinese and get a video.

Remember those when you got videos?

Anyway,

That shows how long ago that was.

But, you know, listening to you talk made it sounded great.

Like, I'm like, oh, I want to go to that place.

But I was trying to imagine like what makes the owner of that shopping mall go and get out of those single, single story, sprawling, you know, the food line and the enterprise car rental and the roses and all that stuff that's there.

Like what, what, what is the, what does the county do?

to incentivize someone to have this vision.

I mean, it's right by the Rivanna Trail, so it has a lot of other amenities around there, so it would lend itself really well to

residential and mixed use.

I think it would be fantastic.

There's some restaurants there.

So I just feel like rather than just writing these beautiful statements, we need to go farther and maybe that's the plan.

But what is it that we do to show the development community?

Yeah, if you want to come in and join our vision, wow, are we going to make this easy for you to do this?

Do we fast track things?

Do we facilitate things?

Do we lower fees for that to happen?

and just think about the Pantops area in general.

I know we're not here tonight to make a small area plan or master plan, but like when I was first on the commission, a regular thing that happened was people would come from that area and talk about the pedestrian bridge they wanted to cross 250.

And we talked about this a lot in this commission and that isn't there yet.

That's like seven years ago.

or whatever it is.

I mean, that's a long time.

So we can't get across the street there.

And so like drawing those bubble diagrams with that road in the middle, it's kind of like the elephant in the room.

We really can't, I was dropping off my car at Toyota and I wanted to go to Guadalajara.

And they're like, no, ma'am, you can't go over there.

I'm like, no, I can see it.

They're like, please get in the van.

I'm like, why?

And they're like, ma'am, we can't risk your life.

Please get in the van and we'll drive you and they'll pick you up.

It's, I mean, it is that ridiculous.

And I know now I'm interrupting your answer.

But I also want to make sure we stay on track.

And I will stop talking in a second till the chance.

But so we're focusing on 12 standard plus three legacy land use categories.

Right.

So is it staffs?

Oh, I'm not trying to put words in everybody's mouth.

But is it your your goal for us to say that the general direction of the commission is that we agree that the reduction from

24 to 12 plus three legacy land use.

Thank you.

Categories is acceptable with these fill-in-the-blank modifications to those specific 12 standard plus three legacy land use.

That's what the goal is.

Yeah.

And it feels like we're getting a little into activity centers.

Yeah, that's what was going on.

Okay.

I'll just ask one completely related.

Wasn't there 11?

We wanted to underline the fact that the 12th was the rural area.

But in the key, there's only 11.

And I think before there was 11, but okay, the 12th is the rural area.

And the text says two legacy land use categories.

I think that the 11 that are here, and I know our colleague, even though I'm a Ruralite, I'm a Ruralite, even though I know my other Ruralite says there should be something to add something to the rural area.

So right now we're going to have one, maybe by the end of it we'll have two.

But so I'm fine with this.

But if you say, these are the 11, I'm like, make sense to me, it's clear, it's descriptive, it sort of accurately predicts, it describes what we've talked about, we want our future to be.

There's some stuff in there that I would like in the

how to apply section a bit more.

And so I'll be quiet there because I can see other people.

But to answer your question, yes.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I would say, once again, generally speaking, I mean, I would still, as you predicted, the grand sea of rural area of all one color outside of that, I would hope that when we get to rural air chapter, we can reconsider whether the sea of green really needs to be uniformed like that.

As an example, they're brought up before, if you look at Ivy.

Ivy used to be a growth area.

And when it was a growth area, it had designated green spaces.

When it was removed as a growth area, it also lost its greenways and its green spaces.

They still kind of exist in some ways, but they're not on the map anymore.

And so I think that I think we maybe need to reverse direction on that, not just for Ivy, but the whole rural area.

So I will push.

So some of the things too.

And the question says,

your question about green representing access on separate environmentally protected areas.

I think this is an important question because, you know, you look at areas, we've had this this goal, you look at like Pantops, for example, along the Rivanna River, we've had areas that we said, hey, we think this should be a nice greenway.

But when it actually comes to be developed, those areas, it's often only a sliver of that that actually becomes open space.

Okay.

Um,

So, I mean, I think that we need some concrete strategies if our goal really is for that to be green space, for that to actually be green space.

But overall, I'm okay with that being two of our colors.

The other thing that I would say too is that in the land use categories for employment centers, when you show like Martha Jefferson, it talks about there not being identified pedestrian networks.

I'll tell you as someone who may or may not work for a hospital and who may or may not have run to work.

You know, that I think that it is actually really, really super important for employment centers to have ways for people to commute by bike and walk.

And I think it particularly like regional networks.

I think the idea of regional networks that get you to employment centers, I think is really important.

I know that in the office where I've worked in the past that we've had a lot of people that bike and ran and walked to our office.

Well, in good form, you're actually moving us along very well.

That's great.

I had a quick point on the 12 standards.

Actually, it combines that in activity centers.

And this goes to some of the earlier conversations that we were having about the missing middle.

And so I think this is a deeper dive, but I just want to put it out there as we think about it, as we think about the activity centers, right?

And the edges of the activity centers.

Some of those activity centers are in their smack in the middle of yellow, right?

So are there opportunities around those activity centers?

that then we begin to think, well, is there an upstanding so that we go from the yellow to the missing middle around those activity centers?

There may be.

I mean, I know some of those are just legacy R1s and there's a whole layer.

I don't want to open that can, but I think there may be some opportunities as you think about it.

We have an activity center.

There's some densification potentially going on.

We want to encourage that development.

Is there a residential?

I think this goes to

what Commissioner Firehock was saying that there may be some opportunities around these activity centers that lend themselves to residential at a higher density that we should consider at some point.

I mean, that's the whole point of development zone is can we densify it?

And as we're doing that, it's how we can preserve some other area, the rural area in particular.

So, but if we keep missing the opportunity to densify, so I just think that's just an opportunity to mix these two maps together, right?

I said one question and then one comment that I think Mr. Chairman, you're probably ready to drive us forward.

But one question is around institutional and it has primarily affordable in response to housing and parentheses.

I think this is a nod to the government and public uses, knowing that that includes our teachers, our police officers, our safety individuals, and making sure that they're able to afford housing close to where they work.

Okay, so I guess my comment would be, are there other uses where we want to be thanking them on those lines as well?

I could see in the neighborhood, you know, residential perhaps, maybe something there as well.

But I think it's something for the staff to explore.

And then I guess the second portion is maybe a rhetorical question.

I'm not sure if you can answer it on the spot, but I'd be curious if we know the housing needs for our community.

and if based off of what we're showing here in these recommended density ranges and looking at the activity centers and the map and where we're trying to push development.

If they were built out according to this, what is that impact to the amount of units we actually need?

Are we actually solving?

How close are we getting to solving our housing issue?

If that makes sense, right?

So you have this huge number and

You have all these density ranges.

If we can build out half of this, because I know typically when we have these density ranges, we're not even getting close to the top of them, but the proposals that come through.

So if you develop half of this, are we 25% better with housing?

But there's something to think about as we start to articulate the vision moving forward, particularly with these land uses.

There's something to plant there.

Mr. Barnes, you want to say something?

I'm not a good poker player.

I would just basically, one thing I keep sitting in my mind, Charlottesville, 10 square miles, 44,000 people.

We've got 37 square miles, we've got 65,000.

that.

And it's just an interesting comparison.

So it's hard to answer some of those questions.

And part of the things you guys are talking about really sort of blends across multiple questions we're asking you about, what are we going to do as a community?

Are we going to meet our incentivized development?

How are we going to meet our affordable goals?

Sometimes it's kind of hard to give you a good metric response.

I think that's what that look was on my face.

It's like, it's hard for me to give you a good metric response until I sort of understand where we're willing to go as a community.

And I didn't expect the response.

That would have been pretty impressive if you had one right away.

But you know, Chair, so if we were sort of a strategic planning board for a corporation,

every quarter we'd be looking at what are our potential sort of market.

And the data which we use coming from the Weldon Cooper Center, while it's decent data, it's always got a tremendous lag on it when I look at it.

And so we're trying to look at density options for some data that hasn't really, I don't think I shouldn't say it that way.

So people should know that I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my back pocket.

In another life, I was an econometrician.

OK, so this kind of forecasting on macro levels is something I did for and was paid nicely for.

And so what I what I become concerned about is that we make policy decisions based on old information.

information that has not been updated and that is not sort of reflective of our evolving, our own evolving environment.

And so that's the piece where I'm the most least appreciative of, of the planning process, because if we were in a for-profit organization,

or even if we were at the university just looking at enrollment numbers.

We would be constantly looking at the data to make sure that these data are informing these kinds of decisions because these are expensive decisions.

You've got people, how do you incentivize people to do it?

Well, you have to have policies and you have to be looking at our density issue.

Do we, given the numbers, because we're using something from the 20s, I think, from 2020, from Weldon Coop instead of data from the 2020, which is completely different.

I would say that it's completely useless given the new environment, the economic environment that we work in.

And so how do we help send the message, perhaps,

through staff to the supervisors and say, your staff needs some more quantitative analysis help so that they can in fact be giving you the right the sort of timely information so they can be sourcing the information to be able to tell you whether or not we're to say what you're saying.

Are we are going to are we going to make this?

Or is this really or is this number really real anymore?

And I don't know if I'm confusing the subjects here, but on page three, where it talks about the factors to be tracked, that kind of plays into it, right?

And then also I think in the update, we heard that there's a recommendation that

And I'm suggesting what I'm suggesting is if since we're always sort of having, you know, we're dealing with someone who comes to us with an organization that comes to us and says, we've done this analysis, we want to invest this money.

I know we got to move on to the other, and I would just say that I do appreciate, as we put in there, we did put, we talked about measurables here multiple times.

I know I've been banging on those drums for quite a while, and I want to just give heads up to, or acknowledge that

It's been incorporated here and is right in the front.

And you talk about some of the growth projections.

It is Waldo Cooper Center.

It's data.

But you are providing a means to how do we measure this?

And what I would add to it is we have an amazing resource in a new school for data science at UVA.

Those are incredibly bright folks in there, students as well, that are very eager

to take on projects.

Could be a thesis project.

Awesome.

So before we move on to the next one, just checking land use categories.

Any specific other points?

One small one.

So yet to answer the big question, I'm fine with the categories that make sense.

Yadda Yadda.

Okay.

So there's just my little small question or comment.

Is middle residential?

on page 11 where it talks about live work units and talking to folks from the development community and talking about the fact that we already have a lot of our land developed, not densely enough, perhaps, but we're looking at a lot of redevelopment, really.

And so the live work units require a fire-separated space from the ground floor to the unit above.

I think that, so that, I've been talking to people in the development community who've said like, that's a real problem because you have an older structure that could work for that, but now you need this fire-separated floor and the county want to prove it.

Now, if you had a coffee shop down below or a little, you know, restaurant or something, yeah, that would, I would be really worried about fire.

I ran an office for 18 years.

Nothing ever caught on fire.

So I'm just saying that maybe we need to, just like the county wanted to see reuse of our historic structures so they allowed five

If it was a historic building, they could have five units for lodging within that historic structure as a way to allow people to afford to keep those big structures and to promote lodging in the rural areas.

So in a similar vein, could we not

look at a situation where depending on the use in that live work space, it doesn't have to have a fire separated floor if it's an adaptive reuse.

Because to your earlier points, yes, people have really changed how they work.

And a lot of people can do that kind of work out of their home with just like maybe one client comes by once a week kind of thing.

I'm just thinking that a lot of this live work space is not that intensive.

Does it need that fire separated?

Layer in there.

A lot of structures don't have that.

Well, I think I would say we're working on the comprehensive plan, which will help influence the zoning code, which would then allow the uses.

It is, but it actually says fire separated.

You know, it's actually detailed in the COMP plan language.

So what I'm saying is maybe we add some language that, you know, for an adaptive reuse situation where they're not building new or it's historic or whatever language that we can have our county staff work with that.

That would be probably the easiest thing to do and just say we want to encourage live work space and adaptive reuse of our important structures.

Cheers.

And allow people recognizing how many people are working from home and running small businesses.

Keep it at the comp plan level.

So one of the things I would add here, too, is that, you know, a lot of this area that we have up on 29 that we have as general commercial for the 29 small area plan.

But in particular, I think a big opportunity if we want to get a lot of infill is really looking at these big shopping centers.

You know, we're talking about incentives, I think that's, you know, these areas with vast amounts of pavement that's not being used up there, you can see from outer space.

I mean, you know, there's been a lot of efforts to try and construct walkability from scratch, and it almost always fails in Elmar County.

I think, you know, where the best walkability happens is where you can retrofit it.

And so you have these shopping centers, you already have like maybe a grocery store, you have some shops there, you drop a parking garage in the middle of that thing, suddenly you freed up all this extra space that could be housing.

So just to clarify.

Yeah, just to clarify, I think you're talking about activity centers, right?

Yes.

Okay.

So we're back on the land use category.

So it sounds like, and I'm going to try to summarize here, make sure I've got everybody's, I don't know if I can do this or not, but I need some help.

We're generally supportive.

No, we're going to get to that next.

Thank you.

We're number one.

Awesome.

and then we discussed focusing proactively on the edges, ensuring that there's potentially rezoning and anticipation of future development around the edges.

I think the word for me anyway, I'll mix all my comments in with this, that is proactive in thinking about what that looks like as we talk through the categories.

Let's see, we talked about recreational open space having clarity and detail in some of the rural areas.

We'll get to that in a minute, I think, or maybe next time we review this.

The importance of analytics, reviewing density, allowances, ranges, and actual needs.

Live work spaces, adaptive reuse, focusing on that as we get to this point.

but I think generally supportive.

One thing I just mentioned is as we look through this and as we think about density, are there other, like some of these categories, some of the future land uses list specifics like parking?

And some don't.

And I'm wondering if there are places unless I'm mixing up thing?

Yeah, I think that's an activity center, that's specific.

That's where the parking is.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, that was it.

Chair, on the green, I think if we're talking about the green within the developed area, then I would just want to add on to your comment.

Yeah.

Just about every single park we have, the land was donated to the county.

The county has not purchased

a piece of property to turn into a park.

And I would just like to add, I think one of the things that we're saying, if you're trying to encourage development in that area, that the county's going to have to invest in amenities.

And one of those amenities may be parks.

Green spaces.

Great.

Thank you.

So let's jump to ADUs.

Staff, are we good?

Michael, you're snickering.

Are we good?

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

ADUs and low density residential.

Any thoughts, comments?

So while I'm generally supportive, I do have a concern and it gets gets back to that concept of getting more missing middle in that on that vast yellow area.

If we allow a lot of ADUs, we're in many ways locking in that area's single family residential because it's going to be a lot harder for some to come back and buy those parcels and then convert them to some other use.

So as I said, while I'm generally in support of it, I do find that as a concern that, you know,

Yes, sir.

So I would be wanting some additional information on how much of that is outside of an HOA.

That's even a higher level.

So the net on that is really worth what that be.

And so that's just a general question.

I would say that that would be something that I would be fundamentally opposed to.

Many of you have heard me say I am not empathetic to I need an Airbnb so I can keep my house.

There's lots of people in this community who don't have that option.

and it tends to be people who are more privileged to have the option of creating an Airbnb in their home so that they can keep their property.

And I don't necessarily know that the county should be tilting the economic scale one way or the other.

And so that doesn't feel neutral to me if that's what I'm engaging, if that's what this policy would engage in.

But I think I don't believe that there's a way that we can engage with a prohibition on land that says you can only do this if you're going to rent it to somebody or you're going to put your child or a family or your mother-in-law apartment.

Just a, I mean, just a reply to that last part first, I mean, the current rules in the county on Airbnb or many homestay, short-term homestay uses that you have to be home when it has to be in your home and you can only do up to two bedrooms and they're already in the existing ordinance kind of covers that, but you guys see that there could be a lot of

Noncompliance.

Inviting noncompliance.

Yeah.

Inviting noncompliance.

Yeah.

I mean, I think Commissioner Murray and I on this one might be a little bit similar is that to me, I had no problem with ADUs.

It does feel like if we were to sort of recolor the yellow as orange and call it, you know, middle residential, some people would opt for a backyard ADU.

Some people might opt for a fourplex.

Yeah, and I think, but the point about you raise about HOAs is important.

And I think one of the things, you know, that I hear people's concerns about density is that they're getting this density without infrastructure.

And so I think that, you know, as we get into these small area plans, as we try to make the case, you don't want to be yellow, you want to be middle, that it should come with some solid commitments to infrastructure as part of that.

Um, and I think, you know, I think that people would be willing to support, you know, greater density if it said like, Hey, listen, I know you're you have an older neighborhood.

You never got sidewalks.

You never got a park.

Guess what?

The other kind of cool thing with that, too, is the tax base increases in value.

We have the resources to do that, to do those things.

And I will also just concur.

I've had some harsh words about HOAs in this dais in the past, and I still have those.

I've saved this before.

There's one thing about the Commonwealth of Virginia is definitely a land rights place.

And I will say, even though HOAs at one point were exclusionary by all kinds of manners, that they're voluntary associations.

You do not have to buy a house there.

And so if a person purchases a house in a place that's got an HOA, that is

hopefully they were served well by the Realtor that they know what they're buying into.

And so while I understand you wouldn't buy into one, I know you did.

I know you did.

I would not buy into one, although I do own one.

I know.

All right, thank you.

I think my colleagues have raised some very good points.

Some of them I didn't even think about, but I'd hate for us to throw the baby out with the bathwater also.

And so I think the one nice thing as we're talking about, you know, multiple generations kind of living in the county at one time in the workforce, it could be a nice way to age in place, right, for your parents or whoever.

to share the property with you.

So don't have the magic bullet for that now, but I want to be able to reconcile what some of our colleagues are saying, but still keep an open mind to how this could work.

Don't really have much to add.

I would say, again, as we look at...

The areas that would potentially be appropriate, I think it would be around those activity centers.

So looking at how one could work with the other goes back to the infrastructure point.

If we have activity centers, maybe there's transit that's going there as well.

So that's another incentive besides the sidewalk, besides the park.

Thank you.

Mr. Firehock.

Just really quickly, so on the ADU question, I think I would have some heartburn by just saying, you know, allowing them by right in this period.

Absolutely.

Maybe by SUP or something that they would have to come in and apply and we could consider

each case on a case by case basis.

And I will say I've been the owner of an accessory dwelling unit, which I rented out and made really affordable for someone for nine years.

And I also benefited when I was young and poor from leaving an accessory cottage in Earleysville for 400 bucks a month, which is awesome.

So I really support it.

But again, in those

example, I just gave my personal life, those colleges were tucked away, not taking up a whole backyard, not, you know, not bothering the neighbors in any way.

So I just feel like each one is contextual, you know, you could be putting one above your garage and it isn't even an extra structure in your yard, it's just using some space legally.

But I also take your point about the Airbnb.

So we do

People have to apply to have an Airbnb.

Yes, there are violations.

So it's just the by-right part that gives me heartburn.

Also, in some neighborhoods, that backyard, that looking at that vista of your yard and your neighbor's yard, if you don't have a park, that's kind of like your green vista.

And if it's suddenly covered with structures, it's really changing the character of the neighborhood potentially.

I think you're getting a lot of, yes, we agrees, but I'm just curious for staffs, Straupol, who agrees that they should not be by right?

Should not be by right.

Not be by right.

Okay, almost unanimous, just thank you.

Cool, so let me try to summarize here.

ADUs, generally supportive.

Our general direction is that they not be by right.

That's our general direction.

That's not unanimous.

I was told there's a difference.

and that focusing on a good question about HOAs impacts to that.

I think I had written down that we should have parameters around, it's poorly worded, but qualifications and intent of ADUs and low density residential.

So part of that is having to support it through a process that's bigger than just by right.

Keep the big picture in mind.

So infrastructure and proximities to other activity centers and

helpful for age and place opportunities.

Anything I missed?

Great.

Yeah, I'm not sure that everyone has the benefit of where that's coming from.

Yeah, just a real quick like when we were at the board last week talking about this, the observation was that the map has a lot of green on it and that that was not publicly accessible space.

I think on a previous compliance plan, maybe the previous one before that, a decision was made.

It's a bit strange.

Most communities wouldn't call out all of their environmental spaces or HOA properties as green.

They would really only have the green for publicly accessible spots.

I think it's interesting to look at the map, especially as we start talking about how we can, you have two options here, three options here.

You leave it like it is.

You could split them and have one color green for parks or if you have like a

a dedicated greenway area, something like that came from a particular rezoning.

That could be one color, and then the environmental resources could be a separate color of green.

And the third way is kind of more traditional, which is you wouldn't show that at all or map.

You would just have the parks, and you would have the yellow to pick a color extending to the property line.

And it wouldn't necessarily show the HOA property, floodplain,

Streambuffers, Critical Slopes.

In this case, it's interesting to see how much green is up there in the context of how can we use our development area.

I think in some respects, it truthfully calls out how much the development area is either parks or this protected kind of zone.

So that's the context.

So one thing I think I remember is part of their past 2015 process.

The selection of those green areas was done sort of, I don't want to say arbitrarily, but it's based on critical slopes, flood plains, things like natural features, right, to your point.

So pulling those out from parks, sometimes they blend, right, because the natural features in a park or the other way around, the parks in natural features.

So I think it'd be kind of tricky to do that.

For me, it comes down to more of the practical reason for having them.

I was going to recommend something to you while we're doing this on the fly.

I'd call out parks, a publicly accessible land in one color.

I wouldn't bother putting its environmental aspects on top of that.

And then I would have a second category that was, if we wanted to do this, that would show these protected areas.

I think one thing you'd notice is I-64 is actually green, too, in this thing.

Exactly.

So just as a proposed model, it may make sense to

did publicly and then the protected areas as a different color.

I think that people, we would suggest you will.

Well, I might amend something there.

I mean, I think it's good to have on a map.

So there's there's areas that we have as parks.

There's areas that we have as environmental resources and there's areas we would like to be parks in the future.

And in those areas, we would like to be parks typically are environmentally sensitive areas.

But they don't have to be.

And I think there's some dangers.

I mean, there's some input that we've gotten from the public.

You know, in Crozet just recently, we had a bunch of floods, and all the bridges and all the infrastructure that we put down there over the Crozet Trail, they had to go and rebuild all that.

And then big flood came and then knocked a bunch of that out again.

They're there's dangers to putting all of your all your parks and floodplains.

And so I think I think having areas that you say like, hey, listen, this is a nice area, whether or not it's environmentally sensitive area.

This is an area we would like to be a park in the future that it's nice to have a color for that.

That that's designated on the map.

I think we have to have a better system by which to help incentivize and get that to the point where that whole area has the potential to be a park either through purchase, as it was mentioned, or through a mechanism like transfer development rights, which other localities have used for the purpose to transfer density out of those green spaces into other areas where they do want that density to occur, where that density can occur

So you're a developer, you own two pieces of land, a lot of developers own more than one piece of land.

One of the pieces of land includes an area we want green space in.

The other area, they'd really like high density.

We let them move that density to the other place, so they don't have to come through us for rezoning.

So there's ways to do these that other localities have done that I think we really need to explore.

But I definitely think, to the question, I definitely think that we need to have the colors on the map to say these are areas that we're planning to be green space.

Any other comments?

I would just like to sort of add, I don't, we do not have a deficit of parks in Albemarle County.

We have a deficit of community spaces.

Whether or not that's a green space or that's a space for the gazebo.

And most of the projects that come to us because of the rule that says that they have to have some X amount of 25% of it has got to be green or something like that.

Within the project, there's a decent amount.

We're not always, some of us on this panel are not always pleased with how some of that green space is laid out on the project, but it meets the threshold that's in the thing.

What we don't have is, I don't have a place, and at one point I sent a photo to Commissioner Moore, and it was just this interesting thing.

It was at Barracks Road, and so don't go blah, blah, blah, blah.

It was a little, the little quad of Barracks Road and there were people meeting and there were people walking and there were people standing and talking.

And so I was in the store and said, how could I replicate that in the county?

And so I've been driving around the county trying to say, where would there be a natural place that people could come?

I could see you.

I could say, hey, can we sit down and have something like that?

We don't have any place in the county.

We will when Barnes Lumber is finished.

Okay.

We might if there's something that really happens in the village of Rivanna.

But other than that, I don't have any common space.

And so what I would like to say while we're saying, what I would like to say is that the county invest in common space.

And that that's a place that we start to call community.

I agree with that.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Yeah.

And I think I'm specifically, all of my comments are specifically to the growth area.

You know, and so I think the other thing, you know, I sent a real quick.

Lonnie, real quick.

Yeah, real quick.

We can talk offline.

But I think we need to go into strategies about how to get there.

OK, let's roll on to that.

So I think so that the general direction of the commission is that they should be separated, right?

Basically, we're taking staff's advice.

And then just one thing I can't help myself.

But after applying for lots of zoning, rezoning, there is a process that you go through.

And I'm not saying what you're saying is wrong, but that idea of choosing places for future

Parks, and those types of things comes about during the discussion.

And that's where Parks and Rec is very helpful.

The County Parks and Rec has that bigger view of in the development area, how are we going to create linkages?

How are we going to create common spaces?

This is what the public need is.

For example, we need a soccer field here.

We need this here.

And they work with you as a process as part of the rezoning.

Good to go.

All right, let's jump to activity centers in the next six minutes.

So in general, to me, there's a logic there.

And I think the term was used of hierarchy of the smaller ones, local, the community, and then the more regional ones.

So I agree with that.

with that focus.

The one that, to me, it's a bit of a misnomer.

And you know what I'm going to say is it's the employment centers, because I don't think it follows that hierarchy.

All of those are actually the local community and regional.

They're all employment centers of one sort or another, just at different scales.

So I don't know that I have a great option for you and how to embed it.

Is it a layer?

Right now, it's just a separate center, right?

It just doesn't follow the same logic in my mind, but that's my large overarching comment.

Yeah, and I think part of the language on that, Page 24 talks about three-tier system for centers to guide the relative residential density and commercial.

But it's in the overall heading, right?

What do they call it?

Activity and employment centers.

I think that's what they all are.

But then employment centers called out separately as a center.

local community and regional, makes sense.

Employment, yeah, consider that.

Okay.

I just have a quick one.

In the, there's a whole list of objectives at the end of that, of how we're going to do this.

So I just restate, I'm still concerned about what the county's investment is in making these happen.

Something about

What we're going to do to actually facilitate this happening besides just putting it in a plan.

Obviously, one of the things we're asking that question is about investments.

It's a broad thing of trying to use these as a place to sort of focus investment on.

We get to the actions down below.

I think that'd be a great time to talk about what actions you all would like to have the county do for individual investments or individual incentives.

That's fine.

I have a quick suggestion on that.

In incentives that I've developed in the past for the development community, I found it very instructive to have focus groups with the actual, just like we did for affordable housing, with those developers to say, would this incentivize you or not?

Because we dream up things like, oh, that'll be great.

They'll really like that.

And they're like, nah, that's not an incentive.

Chair, I would just like, I would like to reinforce what Luis said about the employment centers.

Every single of the ones from 1 to 26 on page 31, they have housing within a quarter of a mile.

And so I think in our community, there is no distinct sort of downtown business district that only has office buildings in it.

Or there is no place that has an industrial park that used to be an industrial park.

We don't have one of those now.

Every place that's listed from one to 26, you could walk to some housing, to some part of housing in that area.

and if I could just add on one thing, and where we say regional centers, there's nothing about a public or a civic space in those.

So they're really big spaces.

We'll go shopping.

This is like, you know, the plan, we're trying to break things into different topics.

And it's just kind of an artificial way of doing that.

Maybe it's just a placeholder, because you use the description of it.

And when you do that wonderful description, I thought I might see something in there about a gathering place.

And so I'll just give that to you as a pin.

It's just a key point, because

Mr. Commissioner Murray was talking at one point about running to work and we wanted to be able to get there.

I think part of what we're trying to do is you'll see this when we get to the transportation chapter.

We want to try and link transportation to these centers and obviously employment centers are a place that during peak traffic hour a lot of people are trying to get to.

Can I just mention one thing?

Since we're talking about activity centers, I just want to call your attention to a mistake we discovered in our draft chapter.

The activity employment center's map and E did not include, mistakenly, the local centers were left off.

The PDF that's been uploaded to our website does have all of the local centers.

identified just so y'all know it's been updated.

Yeah, why'd you leave them off?

Got it.

Thank you.

So just a little look on one of the things that in here it says that in many ways this concept replaces the neighborhood model.

The only design guidelines

When I looked through here and then looked at the neighborhood model guidelines, the one thing I saw that was missing was sensitivity to terrain, to terrain and the natural

the natural terrain of the environment and to avoid ingrading.

And that seems to be scrubbed out of here.

And I don't know if that's because we already have sort of a critical slope ordinance so that we felt it wasn't necessary.

But I do think that when we do scrape everything flat, it does erase a sense of place.

If you think of some of the great, great cities and places, some of them have significant terrain, and that's part of what makes them what they are.

I had a comment, I think, to address here.

Can you put back the six?

To, oh, to the Yeah, you're sick of the points of what we're addressing or trying to address.

So the, so the attributes.

So I, as I look at them, to me, they seem very helpful, right?

You have the description, you have the, the, the, the walk shed and

and Senors, land use, heights and so forth.

Parking is one of them.

So my comment on parking is you do encourage structured parking, but that starts at the regional level.

And if I look at some of the examples, I'm looking at page 29,

of what you're calling the community center, which actually has some nice density, right?

Six-story buildings and up to six-story buildings and so forth, which maybe could go higher.

I'm just wondering if we don't start to encourage some kind of structured parking or district parking or some kind of way to begin to talk about that at the community level.

I think goes back to the point that the several commissioners have brought up in terms of

that helps you create amenities, whether it's, and you have them.

So this is the, you know, they have the public, civic and open spaces in all of them to some degree, even in the local centers, you have that.

So the parking will go hand in hand with that.

The ability to create that would be if we have some kind of district parking, structured parking.

We started three minutes late.

We're now three minutes over.

So I think we're good.

Do you want me to try to, I can summarize the activity centers, logical hierarchy.

Do we all agree that's a logical hierarchy?

Questioning the employment centers and how that kind of wording fits into the three tiers.

Feels like it's sort of overarching concern about the county's role in investments and what our actions are and staff that will get there.

That was a good thought.

What did I miss?

Public civic space in regional centers.

that's sort of a random comment I had down here.

How do you create community?

We don't have natural places.

That's right.

We don't have natural places in the county to be to be a our space.

You know, we don't have a pavilion.

We don't have a downtown mall.

Awesome.

So we can go back at all to these, these action items down below.

We're going to see them later.

No, I think, Mr. Murray, yes, the intent is we'll come back to you on November 12th.

And a lot of what we'll be talking about is pages 33 on.

Again, you're going to see this in the tempo that we try and work with you all on.

We're going to have 10 chapters.

There's going to be a policy section at the front end.

There's going to be actions, projections and actions at the back end.

For the rural area and the development area, we've split them apart because there's a lot of beat here.

Awesome.

All right.

Chair, I found this email helpful today.

Yes.

How did that go?

All right.

I'm going to put us in recess until 6 p.m.

Thank you, staff.

Great work.

Are we live?

Yes, we are.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

The Planning Commission meeting for October 22nd, 2024.

And I'll just briefly read that 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 for which comments from the public will be received.

Yes.

Mr. Bivins.

Here.

Ms.

Firehock.

Here.

Awesome.

Thank you.

With that, I will move on to public comment on matters not listed on the public hearing agenda.

Are there any comments from the public?

on items not listed on the agenda this evening.

Great.

Okay, moving on, then we will go to the consent agenda.

I think we have two items on the consent agenda, approval of draft meeting minutes from October 8th and SE2024-10, 10 place planting strip design exception.

Do I have a motion to accept

Mr. Chair, if I might, as the commission may be aware, I had distributed to the seats, or actually, Ms.

Shaffer, I distributed to the seats a draft resolution to approve SE 2024-10, Penn Place Planning Strip Exception.

And it's my suggestion that if the commission is inclined to approve the Consent Agenda, that it do so specifically noting that it's approving the draft resolution to approve the Planning Strip.

Got it.

Great.

We have a second.

Second.

And let's do approve the consent agenda with the resolution on the planning strip.

Great.

Yes, I didn't want to pull this item at this late time, but on the planting strip, I just want to point out that in my opinion, and I hope that staff will take this to under advisement or whatever you want to take it as, that there are other ways to meet this exception request and one of them would have been to narrow the sidewalk.

I've spent a lot of time in the last couple weeks for another client looking at sidewalk standards and AASHTO guidelines and rules and all of that and ADA requirements, etc.

And the five foot width of the sidewalk is intended to allow, say, two strollers to pass coming in different directions.

but you can narrow the sidewalks and you could also, even to meet ADA requirements, it just requires that you have a passing opportunity.

So you can have a narrow sidewalk for a while and then a wider section, then a narrow section and in those narrower sections that could be where your street trees go because as we're continuing to pave Albemarle County,

We're losing trees.

And so in this case, it could have been a nice leafy green walkway.

And now it's not going to be.

It's going to be another hot walkway with a bunch of grass and a strip.

So I would just like to encourage staff to realize that the sidewalk is not sank or sank in every case.

And there is not a requirement that sidewalks be five feet wide under AASHTO and ADA requirements, just that there's a passing opportunity.

So in the future, could we please try for staff to look at ways to vary the sidewalk rather than simply always getting rid of the street trees?

Great.

Thank you.

So I have a motion.

We have a second.

We have some comments under advisement.

Any other discussion?

Hi.

Hi.

Thank you.

All right.

With that, we'll move into the public hearing items beginning with CCP 2024-1 Northern Albemarle Convenience Center.

Could we have the staff report, please?

My name is Michael Barnes, Director of Planning.

I'm sitting in for David Benish on these two items this evening who had to be out of town.

This project is the Northern Albemarle Convenience Center.

It is a compliance with the comprehensive plan review.

We have these conference plan reviews.

We're working to review against Virginia Code 15.2, 2232.

Oftentimes you'll hear these things referred to as 2232 reviews.

and what we're looking at is we're considering the general location, character and extent of the proposed public facility to ensure that it's in substantial accord with the Adopted Conference Plan and it's reviewed by the Planning Commission and the Commission's findings are forwarded to the Board of Supervisors but no further action is required of the Board.

The commission's action is only related to the consistency of the use to the comp plan and this is not an action or recommendation on whether the facility itself should be constructed.

In general, I will go quickly through this.

I know the applicant is one of my colleagues who give you a deeper understanding of the proposal.

Briefly, this is open six days a week, mostly from 8.30 to 5.30 in the winter to 6.30 in the summer.

Its purpose is recycle material collections sort of similar to what you find at the Ivy Convenience Center.

There's a potential that they could do food waste or use cooking oil at some point in the future.

Obviously, household bags, 32-gallon bags, and people would put a ticket on for disposal and potential for annual special waste collection days.

The idea is to have an attendant on site at all times, and there's a series of structures that you see there that, again, you'll hear more about in the applicant's presentation.

The proposed location, this is off the new Berkmore Drive Road, where recently there was an infrastructure project to connect Ryome Mills over to Berkmore and then discontinue the rest of Ryome Mills and its old alignment down towards the river there.

The property is zoned RA and it's designated as RA in your ComPlan.

The site characteristics, what you see in orange there is a 19, almost 20 acre site that was split by that new road that was created.

The site that we're talking about is on the northern side of that road.

You can kind of see the red star generally showing the location of the proposed facility on the property.

Currently, the property is undeveloped, mostly wooded, and it sort of slopes down from sort of on your screen there from left to right.

The uses to the north are rural or suburban in scale along Wild Mills Road.

There is an existing and working stone quarry to the south.

and then further to the south and to the east are wooded sites.

I think you'll note that the parcel on your screen there, the farthest down that's between Burke Mar and 29 was recently timbered.

The final thing I would say is that this parcel was part of a larger land that was proffered to the county, part of the Burke Hill Resoning.

This shows your comprehensive plan.

You can sort of see the development area sort of surrounding this, but not inclusive of the area.

This is the rural area.

The concept plan for the site, again, sort of showing it here on the eastern part at the sort of the intersection of the new Ryro Mills Road, Alignment, and Burke Mart Drive.

There was a community meeting, actually two community meetings.

One with places 29 North, CAC, and the other one with places Rio, CAC.

Somewhere in the content comments, there was worried about impacts to adjacent properties, especially the idea of noise or odor or runoff or rodents.

There's potential for traffic impacts.

Ryomell's Road was identified by citizens as well as speeding and truck traffic concerns on Ryomell's Road.

And finally, there was an idea that potentially the site should be closer to the rural populations that it's really intended to serve.

So those were some of the major concerns coming from the community meeting.

With this particular project and a review against the Comprehensive Plan, the community facilities chapter of the Comprehensive Plan, in particular page 12-1, is the applicable language that we're looking at here.

And specifically in this objective, number one, it's the idea of providing public facilities and services in a physically responsible and equitable manner.

And that typically,

These types of facilities would probably be provided within the development area and that the rural area residents should probably not anticipate levels of service delivery equal to that in the development area.

But I think what I've highlighted here is that the public facilities are allowed in the rural area in cases where it is not possible to provide that in the development area due to physical constraints or the nature of the facility or the services provided.

And I would highlight that part of the idea here is to provide some

Trash and Refuge Collection to rural residents.

They typically don't have urban pickup for recycling and trash.

So in this particular type of facility, providing that service to folks in the rural area is thought to be consistent with our general provision of facilities and services.

and I guess that's what I was really trying to make at this other point that there is a long-range solid waste solution advisory committee final report that was created in 2015 and that was really looking to try and provide those solid waste management services to folks in the rural area.

This map here, I was just noticing slightly out of date.

What it shows is four sort of service areas in these circles.

The two blue ones represent at least this particular one, existing ones of Ivy and the one that is McIntyre, just next door to where we are now.

The southern one probably should be in blue as well.

That was the one that was approved for Keen several years back.

and so that probably should be existing center blue as well.

But the area that we're sort of talking about here is this northern site, the green circle that you see above.

And what it's really trying to do is provide service to sort of the areas north and west of 29 as well as north and east of 29.

Staff found factors favorable to this that is consistent with the community facilities section of the ComPlan as well as the long-range solid waste solutions advisory committee's final report from 2015 that the location in the rural area is consistent with the ComPlan

community facilities objective and guidance for allowing the location of facilities in the rural area to address unique needs and in this case to provide convenient service to the rural area residents.

And then the third one is the location provides a reasonable and accessible access to the northern portions of the county

via these commuter routes that are along there and also provides convenient access for residents actually in the development area who might want to use this facility as well.

We did not find any factors unfavorable.

We do note that the traffic may increase along Rio Road, but it's not anticipated to be a significant increase.

Great.

Thank you.

Great staff report.

Just one thing for, I don't know how many members of the public are here to speak to this, but just to underscore that the commission's action is only related to the appropriateness of the site for the proposed public use and is not an action or recommendation on whether the facility should be constructed, just as a reminder, because that was an early slide.

So any questions for staff?

I'm sure I should know this, probably just need my memory refreshed.

But, and the report has said that this was the site that was proffered for a future high school.

Where is that site now?

Has it one been identified in the Northern for that future high school?

Let me come in.

So there's two things that have occurred there.

So it really needed to be a broader explanation that that site has been offered for both county government or schools.

So it's an and or.

It's not a school.

It wasn't simply for schools.

OK.

And so what happened is that, remember when we did Center 2?

Center 2 is the high school entity that could have been placed there.

So instead of placing it there, we're placing it on the Lamb's Lane campus.

There's been some conversation about reshaping the Lamb's Lane campus and to remove some of the activities there that are not

that are inconsistent or not in compliant with an educational campus.

For instance, this is the only campus that has a watering, a wash, a vehicle wash section.

This is the only campus that has a

a pretty large fueling section and it's also the only place that has a repair section.

And so right now the facilities, they're in the process of relocating some of them over to, you know, where the pennies is.

Okay, that's helpful.

Yes, sir.

Do we have a sense of the southern center?

So the one that's in Keen, I guess it's not Keen or whatever that is down there.

It shows the report, actually, the daily visits of Keynes Seig.

Oh, that's right.

It is.

I think it's 45.

They would be similar.

Great.

Any other questions?

I just had one question for clarification.

So there was the concerns that you outlined that the community had raised in terms of rats and smells and those kinds of things.

First, I'll defer you to the applicant.

But my understanding is they don't feel that that's going to be a problem.

But those concerns, maybe I'm wrong here, but those concerns are valid, of course, but not necessarily what's before us today, right?

It may or may not impact.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Any other questions?

No.

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

as a reminder, public will have a comment, have a chance to comment after the applicant's presentation.

Please state your name for the record and general place of residence, please.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Jeff Dumars.

I'm the Deputy Director of Facilities and Environmental Services with Albemarle County, living in the Redfields subdivision.

Happy to be here talking about the Northern Convenience Center with you today, general outline of the agenda, covering, we're just going to cover much of what Michael covered, so we'll be brief, but talk about what the Convenience Center is, why it's located where it is,

Look at a little bit more detail, the proposed site plan, and then we did some visual simulations as well.

And then we have team members here, Phillip McCollops, Director of Solid Waste for the Solid Waste Authority, and then a member of our consultant team, Wendy Carably from TRC, available for questions after the presentation.

Again, 2015, the Long Range Solid Waste Solutions Advisory Committee identified a pretty significant lack of facilities in Albemarle County, especially compared to neighboring communities and the lack of services to rural residents within Albemarle.

Since that time, there's been investments in infrastructure, strategic investments, including the IV transfer station in 2019, the IV convenience center in 2021, and the Southern convenience center in Keen in 2023.

Desired traits of a site for a convenience center, easily accessible, but also strategically located, and we will revisit the diagram that Michael presented.

But also, we pick a site to limit impacts to the neighbors and surrounding properties.

The convenience center is not a dump site, if you will.

It is focused on bagged household waste, also the opportunity for compostables, recyclable collection, and periodic special waste trim collection, if appropriate.

Again, the TAGA bag household trash waste is a 32 gallon bag and costs to be comparable to a local hauler cost for the more urban residents made available to rural residents and others.

But tags are available for purchase from local merchants and by mail to be deposited.

They're deposited in these self-contained compactors, which are specifically designed with a feed chute to limit the waste to these trash bag sizes.

This facility will not accept commercial or construction waste.

Again, hours of operation, six days a week.

Actually from eight to five, there's not a seasonal timeframe being considered now.

And would be coordinated with the other facilities throughout the county so that there's a consistent, consistently available facility throughout the county.

At this time, anticipated to be closed on Wednesdays and open the other six days a week.

So again, revisiting this diagram, it's obviously the county there, the blue dots are the 10 mile radius, and the two blue circles without the red concentric circle are the existing facilities.

to the south, the southern convenient center in King, to the west, the Ivy facility, and then to the north, the proposed northern convenient center.

Without that facility, there are significant rural populations in the northern part of the county that don't have access to a facility within 7.5 to 10 miles.

The location is strategically located to best serve residents broadly in the county.

The site, again, was a proffered site.

It is zoned rural and is located on Ryle Mill just off Brickmar.

The community-wide benefits

is simply access to residential bag waste and recycling disposable for rural residents.

And these centers are proven to reduce illegal dumping and curb open burning within the county.

And this is important to achieving our climate action goals.

The proposed site will quickly go through this.

You've seen this on Ryle Mills off of Berkmar.

just north of the Places 29 Rio, CAC, just south of the Places 29 North, CAC.

Another diagram of the site with seminal trail bisecting north-south, the diagram, and then Burke Marr just to the west.

The uses, again, reiterating to the east and south are undeveloped forest lands.

To the west is the Luckstone-Rivanna plant, the aggregate supplier.

Directly north is a farm lot with open pasture and forested lands.

And then the northwest corner is where the beginning of the adjacent residential parcels.

Zooming into the site north of Ryle Mills Road, this land is approximately 8.3 acres.

And one of the reasons the development is focused to the east adjacent to Berkmar is to maintain a 300-400-foot buffer to the nearest residential property boundary and or structure to maintain a significant boundary.

The site includes 3.1 acres, so less than half of disturbance on the site, which breaks down to .8 acres of fenced area, .3 acres of entry road, .4 acres of stormwater treatment facility, and then 1.4 acres of regenerative forest, if you will, on the sloped areas that we'll talk about a little bit.

So zooming in again, entering the site to the north off of Ryle Mills Road.

You drive up the entry corridor and circulate the facility in a counterclockwise fashion.

There's the lanes to access the compactors and bypass lanes.

There's two self-contained compactors.

There's an attendance station.

The facility will always be

There will always be an attendant at the facility when it is open.

There's a 30-foot wide entrance corridor with security fencing around, completely around the facility.

And also, there's been a commitment made for decorative fencing to provide screening, which we'll demonstrate.

There's 10 parking spaces, one van accessible spaces, directly adjacent to the recycling containers, eight standard size and two of the large 80 cubic yard recycling containers.

There's a stormwater facility significant, and then all of the sloped areas are proposed with native trees and reforested it, reforested of buffer.

And then we wanted to demonstrate the screening of the facility.

So this is an aerial view looking just basically over the intersection of Burke Maher and Arale Mills Road, looking to the north of the facility, if you will.

We did two visual simulations, one from the entry drive looking up the drive.

Demonstrating that most of the activity within the facility will be completely screened from Ryle Mills Road in the entry at the completion of construction.

Within five to 10 years when the native planting flourishes, the facility should be completely visually screened from Ryle Mills Road.

The other visual simulation that we completed was from Berkmar, looking to the west.

Again, at the completion of construction, the visual, the site should be well screened from views from the road corridor.

And then again, within a short period of time, the forest, the reforestation should mostly block views into the site.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Any questions for the applicant?

Really just kind of small questions.

I'm kind of curious about it.

Sir, I'm sorry if you could come up and just state your name.

Phil McCaleb, Director of Solid Waste for the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority by the city.

Yes, that's something we consider.

Oh, I apologize.

It's something we could consider, but we'd need to manage the breadth and extent of it, like for things like tires or whatever.

We use a lot of our existing heavy equipment to manage those materials.

Yeah.

And then I was curious too, so this is not a place where you could take like an old couch or something.

This is sort of household only.

And then the last question is, I saw Sam in the presentation.

Is he a worker?

No.

Commissioner Bivins?

I will say thank you for this.

This is something that that part of the county has wanted for.

It's been recycling NV for a number of years.

So hopefully if we move it through here, it'll help with some other NV up there.

But on your attachment six, on the north sort of west side, there's this little box

That's at the edge of this piece.

It's not up there.

It's here.

It says a little box right up there that's within your property line.

Okay.

It would not be our intention as we did at the Southern Convenience Center is to basically set up a license with the county that we would take responsibility for the developed area of the site.

For example, and the county may choose to set up a open space easement or something on the other.

That's what we did at Southern Convenience Center.

Great.

Commissioner Murray.

Thank you for the presentation.

Just one question.

Okay.

We discussed what this was with the director of facilities and environmental services.

We looked or it was discussed loosely, but I don't know if they went through a detailed property survey of what was up in that area and available.

because I'm asking because I heard there was a community comment, I guess it was in Mr. Barnes' presentation about the site's appropriateness in terms of serving adequately the folks that live in the rural area.

And when you look at the aerial, there's a lot of density, not too far away, but I'm suspecting those folks already have services to take care of their solid waste.

And so I hate to put it bluntly, it was that a matter of it's just land already owned, so it was used that versus

is this truly going to serve the rural constituents in a way that was intended to?

So looking at the diagram, it was strategically located there to be concentric in the county and serve the most residents.

Can I just go off of that a little bit?

You mentioned this is a very compelling diagram because, you know, just the overlaps look perfect.

The question I think at least what I was hearing was, is it actually best located to serve the rural area?

Or did you not necessarily consider that fact?

I think it's both.

So it is the goal to cover all areas of the county.

And this was next on the list, if you will.

Got it.

I don't have a specific question on that.

My question is, where does a recycling material go to?

The two long containers, those are metals, aluminum beverage cans and mixed metals, and those are taken by Gerdau directly to their facility in Roanoke.

The other containers that are on a diagonal plus the larger compactor,

The glass is taken out to Ivy where periodically strategic materials comes and collects truckloads of it, takes it back to their sorting cullet facility down in Wilson, North Carolina.

The plastics go to a sort facility in Raleigh, North Carolina.

and then all the fiber products, the newsprint, office paper, mixed paper and cardboard currently are going to a paper mill south of Richmond, excuse me.

Appreciate it.

I don't

and maybe something to think about for the comp plan, which is that we've done this facility and you've got this stormwater management pond, but there could have been an opportunity to have that circular where you drive around that vegetated planting area.

That could have been recessed potentially to be a rain garden.

Maybe we could have used permeable pavement so that we didn't need this big stormwater pond.

So because so many people visit this,

it could have been a demonstration site like we have bioswales here at our county office building and I just thought you know that could have been a nice opportunity to use that vegetative space for education or even like a zero escaping demonstration of like how to use native plants that are drought tolerant so just a little you know and when I've asked this about the Keen site when it was under development they said something along the lines of it was value engineered outer we don't have the money to

to do that.

But those kind of things that I just described actually cost less than traditional stormwater management ponds with all the piping and clean out that's required periodically.

So I like your design.

It works really well.

I just wish it could be a little bit more on the green side.

Yeah, it could be a really great site for education and demonstration.

Yeah, plus one that was a great idea.

One thing I had the same question about, well, a similar question about the stormwater.

It sounds like it is a wet pond, envisioned as a wet pond.

Yeah, I figured that from the rendering with a little brown.

There's so much grading that just is in place to help that to create that pond.

And obviously, if you can minimize that through your recommended

Yeah, then you're going to reduce, I would imagine your cost significantly if it's possible.

Plus, you would possibly be able to keep some of the green space green as opposed to grading it all.

Great, thank you.

Any other questions for the applicant?

Okay, I'll have a chance to come back up after the public comment if you're interested in responding.

Any of those?

Is there anybody in the public who would like to comment on this project?

Please come forward.

State your name.

You'll have three minutes.

The light will turn yellow when you have one minute left.

My name is Jennifer Marshall.

I am the resident of the adjacent property next to the proposed site.

I see the circles and all the graphics, etc.

And I too question, even though it shows a perfect visual overlap, wouldn't it be better suited further out, rurally?

As a resident of the neighboring area, I have been there for over 25 years.

All of my neighbors have private trash service.

So in the comment that it's 7 to 10 miles to an area to throw your trash away, it actually is curbside.

Everyone has private service.

Our neighborhood areas that are close to us also are Woodbrook, Hellymede, Forest Lakes, and the townhomes at the Hellymede Center, which all also have private.

I can't imagine that these folks are going to stop their trash service or their private dumpster use that they have at these facility locations where they live and bag their stuff up to

have a drive down to this area.

One of the things that I did not hear mentioned was the traffic report.

I was at the last meeting and I had a concern about the traffic as well as the blind spot that's at the top of the hill turning into that area.

According to VDOT, a traffic study was ordered and it has not yet been done.

I feel like as you have thought in this far into this

with all the graphics, all the research, all the dollars that have been spent so far for the project management, that it's very curious that this has not been done.

Several years ago, when the connection road was put in, the traffic increased a lot.

I jokingly call it, now it's an expressway to Walmart.

However, it's where I live.

And now looking at this and seeing who is actually going to use it, it really is not going to be the neighbors that area.

And I feel like if you're looking for, if you would pull that area, we would see that most people are not going to be coming in to use it.

Thank you.

Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak to this?

Okay.

I'll ask the applicant if they'd like to come up and address any of these questions.

One was location, the other was traffic.

I guess I would like to come up and address the comments if you would.

Thank you.

So what I'm particularly interested in is just so this site, this idea of this Northern Convenience Center was a result of our solid waste study and with a lot of engagement around that and that went on for several years.

So it didn't just come out of nowhere.

But I guess I'm could you guys say just a little bit more about demand, like how you identified that you've got your circle of area served, but I guess could you maybe elaborate a little bit more on the idea of demand and and just also briefly, even if people do have curbside pickup of commingled recyclables, we all know that that the recycling rate is not very good in terms of percent actually recycled, because a lot of material ends up stuck together.

I'd also just like to say you can do it all at once just to add the question about the traffic report and what your thoughts are on traffic report.

Phil McCalips, Director of Solid Waste for the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

We're working to get the traffic study set up.

It just hasn't been accomplished yet, but it is something we're working toward and we will get it done.

So towards demand.

It's hard to, I don't want to wave my hands.

It is right next to the developed portions, but the lobes of that sort of bisect the northern part of the county to the east and the west.

And unless the alternative would be to have one eastern, northeastern facility and one northwestern facility to serve those both separately,

But one thing I kind of want to point out that we see here at McIntyre is that just because it's new development doesn't mean that they have recycling service.

A lot of multifamily use facilities, and I know some of those are townhome or condo type developments or apartment complexes, won't really have or haven't always had or haven't consistently had access to recycling.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Anybody online?

I think I already asked that question.

OK, great.

I think with that, I will close the public hearing and open it up to the commissioners for discussion.

Mr. Firehawk, would you like to start us off?

I think I've said everything I had to say.

All right.

Mr. Carrazana?

I guess I will say one thing.

I was almost going to vote no but the gentleman kind of just convinced me to vote yes but I do find it surprising that we don't have like data around that like a demand study or something like that to say yes this site is appropriate because we know these residents over here only 25% have recycling service and it feels like we're just kind of

just anecdotal gut checking.

So I'm just kind of flagging that in the future.

This feels like that'd be the succumbing practice of data around those kinds of decisions.

Yeah, I mean, just looking at the map here, I'm seeing that there's a significant part of the rural area in the northwestern part that is uncovered.

And I can't imagine anyone from that area driving to bring anything there.

So it does seem like it'd be nice to have some data about how that was decided, and why it was felt that the northwestern part of Albemarle County was

I'll just make a quick tag onto what you said.

It's true that, yeah, let's say you live in the very northern part of the county, but there are a lot of people taking trips to Charlottesville or going down 29.

So like, I don't live near the Keene Center.

I live in the very tip of the county.

I'm not even in the circle, but I make just a jog that way on my way to Charlottesville to take my trash and take my

Unco-mingled recyclables.

If you think about the way the roads run on that section of the county, though, there's not a really great direct route from that northwestern side.

Mr. Bivins?

I will just sort of get us to look to the future here.

So number one, for me, this is close to a regional center.

Holleymead is a regional center.

And so we've been talking about the kinds of amenities that we want to have at regional centers.

And there's an awful lot of at the Holleymead Center there.

There's a bunch of people that come there.

And this is on the way there.

I will remind us that thanks to the University Foundation, that there's going to be a cut through on Burk Marr that's going to go from across Airport Road

where I think there's going to be a circle.

I mean, it's going to go up through, and I'm not trying to be a smart butt here, but I think something like 300 or 200 and some odd 50 units up there at some point at some some some day when it's all built out.

I think I'm somewhere right in.

I'm sorry.

And where in North Point?

Oh, that's even more.

It's going to be 1400.

Then on the arrow side of the road, there's North Point.

which is still developing.

So I think in many ways, there's a good reason why you're going to have people either coming into town that way or going up to the airport or going up to work at either one of the many employees up there.

So for me, this made sense for me.

This is not that this depends on what I do, but it is a those of us who remember what Ryan Mills Road used to look like and that it was sort of the rural dumping zone.

and that now you're giving people a place to come to a place to recycle stuff.

I think that's an improvement for me at least.

That's an improvement for sort of the environment up there.

I will also remind us, some of us were talking about dry water, whatever you call those things, but that whole Berkmore extension has got various places where they've created water treatment.

Water Treatment, Catchment Areas on either side of that.

So that's consistent with how they're treated dealing with water going up Barkmar.

It may not be the optimal way, but it's there are several water water ponds.

Yes, thank you.

Some water ponds going up Barkmar on either side of it right now that's doing that.

So for me,

I have to say, this feels like, yes, oh, just the road up from there.

There's a pretty good size apartment.

I'm gonna say apartment, I don't know what it is, but townhouse community right up the next road up.

So you're starting to see, you're starting to see people in the development area who over the next probably 10 years, we're actually gonna be very close to that as a new center.

So no, it doesn't answer the question, what do you do at Earleysville Center?

or Earleysville for Union.

But what you're doing is sort of closing, you're bringing people to that center star there.

So I think it's reasonable.

I also say, I don't imagine that the traffic going into the convenience center will be anywhere like it goes into the quarry.

So the quarry, which is at,

Great Deal's shorter distance from that intersection.

Those have got to be very different vehicles, creating all kinds of noise and dust and whatever gets created at Corey's.

That'll be very different, a different kind of mobility and different kind of traffic that will go into this center.

The last thing I will say,

Well, yes, I can appreciate that people say there's curbside, there's curbside pickup, but I will also say the curbside pickup is fickle and if they take recyclable.

There's a number of curbside pickups that say, no, we only want your trash.

We do not want you to recycle, or if you put anything in your trash, it's not going to be recycled.

We're going to shoot the whole bag as trash.

And so what we're giving is people to make the decision that we're encouraging, as you want to encourage people often, they're making the decision that, yes, I can do my trash, but I can also on my way into town or, you know, to Best Buy or whatever it is over there, down there at a Walmart or whatever it is over there, I can stop in there and put.

my plate papers, my bottles, my cans and things like that.

And so I think we're building that kind of recycling muscle into the community and that part of the county.

And so for me, Chair, I'm fully in support of this and thank goodness we don't have the Ryle Mills dump any longer.

Echoing some comments I've heard before, I do think that just the way people drive in when you live in a rural area, you often come to town for things.

That's the way this works.

And while there is no, I mean, like, it's not like we live on a grid here because we're in a hilly area and there's a lot of curvy roads that go all over.

But if you were to pick a place that a lot of people could drive through with a short detour, this is a pretty good one, whether it's coming from the east, like Stony Point, where that's coming from points northwest, like three Union or Boone'sville or whatever.

And so it makes a lot of sense.

Plus, there are, I know, a lot of people in the county.

I know several personally who, yeah, have curbside trash, but still take their recycling into the city, into McIntyre.

So this makes that trip less because it'll be closer by.

And so that part's

I think a nice addition.

I do appreciate that within the parcel, it's located about as far from the nearest houses can be.

It looks like a good five or 600 feet, which I know anything is not wonderful to have next door, perhaps, but it seems like this is a pretty darn far setback.

Awesome.

Thanks.

Have I gotten everybody's comments?

I think so.

That's for yours.

All right, I got a couple.

One, and just the stormwater, just to echo what Commissioner Firehawk mentioned.

I think it is a cool idea to potentially have a kind of, I don't know, maybe a stretch to call it a living laboratory, but something that might be educational and that might save a lot of grading and help it lay lightly on the land.

I'm encouraged to hear that the traffic study will be done, which obviously I think is key.

Also interesting with the traffic, I live in North Garden, so we use the Keen recycling center instead of going to the Ivy Land.

So there's less traffic going in that direction and there is going in the other direction.

So holistically, it'll be interesting to see.

I tend to think that it's actually going to help traffic in a sense, maybe not immediately around there, but for the county in bigger picture, I think it may.

And then, and just for educational purposes, part of the analytics and part of thinking about data, as you mentioned, and I would imagine there's a lot that went into this that we're not really seeing that would be helpful in a staff report summarized somehow, like we looked at all these different things, and that would help us understand it.

But also, when and if when it's built,

I think you've done surveys before of people's where they're coming from and how that affects the location for the future for the next one.

So it'd be interesting to see, are we getting a lot of folks that are coming from the development areas?

Are we getting mostly rural and how that impacts maybe the next location?

Just a thought.

All right, with that, would anybody like to make a motion?

So I'm wondering if the presentation, if you could put the last slide from the presentation that I think has the language.

Great.

Second.

Second.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Mr. Moore.

Mr. Bivins, Mr. Murray, Clayborne, Mr. Missel, Mr. Carrazana, Ms.

Firehock.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

With that, we will move on to SP 2023-17, Walnut Creek Substation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Michael Barnes, Director of Planning, again, standing in for David Benish, who did staff support.

This is for SP 2023-17, Walnut Creek substation.

It's a special use permit.

The proposal is to construct a new substation by Dominion Energy, Virginia.

It's located on Old Lynchburg Road, sort of near the intersection, just north of the intersection of Red Hill Road.

The property is zoned rural areas, and the special use permit under the section that you see there is for energy and transmission facilities.

I'm sure the applicant will speak a lot more about the actual proposal, but just as a general overview, the site development will require removal of trees for the substation and significant grading.

Total area of the site is about 10.95 acres, of which about 4.9 will remain either wooded or undisturbed.

The substation equipment itself is around 35 feet or less.

There are two, I think they're called H poles that are going to be 75 to 100 feet tall.

And those are consistent or maybe slightly shorter than the existing transmission lines in the area.

There will be one 24 by 70 foot building.

It's kind of a

Prefab Building that will be used for housing substations controls.

The whole site will be surrounded by a 12 foot high perimeter security fencing and outside of that fencing there will be landscaping around the perimeter.

of New Plantings in an effort to screen the facility.

The substation itself, the base material will be covered with gravel and stormwater management will be provided, but it is subject actually to DEQ annual standards specifications as opposed to a county review of water protection ordinance.

Existing conditions on the site.

There's really three parcels that have been obtained by Dominion Energy.

There were houses on the property that, if not, haven't already been removed, there will be in the process of being removed.

the area four of the rural area.

And surrounding this to the south across Redhill Road is Mount Olivet Church.

There are a series of private homes on the property or surrounding the property.

And to the north, there is a private home that has a home occupation.

There was a community meeting held on January 31st.

About 10 people attended the meeting.

Some of the comments were a concern about change the role character of the area, the visibility of the site, either from adjacent properties of the roads, potential noise impacts, environmental impacts related to erosion or runoff from the site, and a concern about a potential negative impact, the adjacent home occupation that has this small art stream.

This is a picture of the site itself, superimposed over an aerial photography.

The next picture kind of shows the landscaping plan, as well as the grading plan for the property.

You can see the fairly excuse me.

Early extensive grading to create the pad for the site as well as stormwater facility and there is vegetated buffers consistent with the ordinance in some places in excess of the ordinance around the perimeter of the site.

with all special use permits applications we follow the following standard evaluation criteria and we found that there's no substantial detriment whether the proposed use will be

that there is no substantial detriment to the site, that the character of the nearby area is relatively speaking unchanged, that the proposed special use permit is in harmony with the purpose of the intent of the chapter, that this, and whether or not this is a proposed use that will be consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Based on that evaluation, we felt that the landscaping along the eastern and southern property lines could be improved or augmented with additional taller plants than had been proposed.

We've also provided a recommended condition of approval that would require the planning director, myself, to approve the final landscaping plan to ensure that it is sufficient with what's being shown here prior to the issuance of a building permit.

There has not been a documentation or verification of the noise levels that will be generated from the site, and in part that is because they're still working to try and get the, they haven't actually identified the specific types of transformers that they would use on the site, but we're going to require a condition that they provide

noise study to ensure that the decibel levels will be below 50 dBH at the nighttime hours and that below 65 dBH during the daytime hours at the property lines.

But it should be noted that public facilities such as substations are exempt from noise regulations of the county code.

Factors favorable for the property.

The project helps meet utility needs and supports continued electric power availability and reliability.

The location is immediately, the location is immediately adjacent to the existing two power lines in the area and right-of-way limits.

And so thus it's sort of the impact and change.

It's similar to the impact of the current facilities in the area.

Third, that the visibility of the site can be minimized, we believe, through adequate landscaping and plantings.

Factors, unfavorable.

The applicant has not documented the sound levels, as I mentioned, to be generated from the facility.

However, as a condition of approval requires that this information be provided prior to the issuance of building permit.

Additional landscaping we feel should be provided along the eastern and southern property lines.

However, as again, the condition of approval requires that I approve that.

if they do provide a revised landscape plan.

And I should note, I did have a conversation with one of the representatives from Dominion today, and I think they are going to talk about beefing up that landscaping along there, the adjacent property in line some.

And finally, that the site will have some visual impacts until that landscaping matures.

We do have a recommendation for approval with the following conditions and those were provided to you and your staff report essentially that the project needs to be developed in a substantial chord with the concept plan that the land disturbance

which includes but not limited to the grading excavation and fill of the land and felling of trees and removal of stumps shall be limited to the areas of the limits of disturbance on the concept plan.

That minor modifications with the approval of the zoning administration or the director of planning of the concept plan that do not conflict with the essential element listed above may be made to ensure compliance with the zoning ordinance or state and federal laws.

The second condition is that the planning director's approval of the final landscape plan be provided prior to the issuance of a building permit or the start of construction.

Three, that the submittal of a sound study or other documentation to the satisfaction of the planning director must be provided to demonstrate compliance with the decibel levels limits of the zoning ordinance for rural area properties prior to the issuance of a building permit or the commencement of construction.

Lee, that's my last slide, even though it won't move forward.

So I do have a motion for you all when you get to that point of your discussion.

Great.

Thank you.

I don't remember where I started last time, but I think it was worth it, right?

So we'll get down to Commissioner Moore.

Any questions?

Not for staff.

So thank you for that, by the way.

In your

In your, when you were talking about decibels, you had, in your report or in your comments to us, you had specific ranges.

But in your recommendations, you replaced the ranges with just the category of rural.

Correct.

So I think the idea is that the substations typically are not required in the ordinance, but obviously rural area uses do have the sound limits.

So we will apply the rural use.

And we don't have to apply the upper decibels because you're saying under the rural use that'll cap it, I think it was 55 and 65 during the day.

Correct.

I did have a quick follow-up question.

at this case, we're working to try and for the DBH level and I appreciate what you're asking.

All right, Commissioner Murray.

So the lighting is something that was reviewed as part of the application.

And they did provide a lighting plan that showed that at the property line, there was no light, zero put candles at the property line.

Thank you.

So the only question I have for staff is, I didn't see in any of your comments or recommendations the change of the landscape.

or at least the types of trees that were going on.

Let me, I don't want to belabor the point.

So I managed to find my laser pointer.

So basically, we're looking to try and get a variety of plantings that would be taller in nature.

And I think the concern was the area that I'm trying to highlight here, where there's a

The adjacent property is slightly higher and you see a cut slope dropping down into the site.

That's fairly steep, two and a half to one slope.

And the applicant is worried about planting larger vegetation in this area.

because it may fall on that steep slope and fall on the fence.

So they've proposed a type of planting here.

It was a mixture of a couple of different species, ranging in shrubs that would be at maturity about 20 feet tall.

That was the area we were trying to find a way to increase the

the capacity of the landscaping in the area.

Yes, this will have to go through site plan review.

Well, that's the clarification I was looking for.

Right.

And that typically does.

At this point, it's too conceptual.

You really need to get down to the weeds, literally, to figure out which plants to do, where, put them.

Commissioner Firehock?

Yes.

So on the sound vestibules, I understand that you have this condition that

It will have to meet with your satisfaction, I guess.

I'm just trying to understand, like, well, what if they do their sound tests and it doesn't meet?

Then what do we do next?

Right, and that so that they have to meet it, not that like it said they should, but yeah, maybe we could change that slightly.

You good?

I just had one question just to go off of that.

There are a few of the conditions, I think, that, I don't know, I may be misreading it, but there's a lot that's placed on the planning director.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear the first part.

I just I felt like a fair amount of the conditions reference and put a lot of emphasis on the viewpoint of the planning director or their ways.

Like, for example, planning director approval of the exterior lighting photo metrics plan.

I'm not sure I'm not sure that that condition is really needed or necessary because one of the things we were just discussing is at the time

Last week, week prior, there was still some question about whether or not a site plan was going to be required.

We've looked at this more, and the requirements of a site plan are if there's required parking, well, there is no required parking for this, or if there's a change in the entrance proposed, and this has a change in the entrance to a public street proposed.

So that will automatically trigger the site plan, which then automatically triggers the landscape provisions, the screening provisions, and those other things.

So we may need to work with some of these conditions to make sure that they're not redundant, it's already there, or to clarify that it's going to 418 or 417, which the right right section is.

From what I'm hearing is you want screening that meets the requirements of the ordinance and you want lighting that meets the requirements of the ordinance and you want sound that meets the requirements of the ordinance and we can make sure that the conditions are

Yes.

Awesome.

I had one other, I guess, wording related question where it says minor modifications with the approval of the zoning administrator and director of planning.

And you may say this because it's now a site plan, this is not an issue.

But to the concept plan that do not conflict with that essential element listed above may be made to ensure compliance with the zoning orders.

That's fairly standard language, if I'm not mistaken.

And what we're trying to do there is the concept plan wasn't reviewed as a site plan.

So maybe something doesn't need a setback or a height limit or some other requirement and needs to be changed in order to comply with the ordinance.

Potentially puts the applicant in a catch-22 of, I can't comply with the zoning ordinance.

I can't comply with the special use permit if I comply with the zoning ordinance.

So we put a safety provision in there that the zoning ordinance wins.

Okay, got it.

So do we have any other situations where...

You know, our sound ordinances, you know, I think in many ways are geared towards, you know, like loud music venues or other things.

But I think that for, for there are situations like this where, you know, as Nathan pointed out, a low persistent hum or things that have an infrasound, you know, I'd say just this past summer, my wife and I were botanizing in the area, but there were very large power lines and just stopping into those things for just a little while.

It's hard to describe, but it makes you feel nauseous.

I mean, it's like the sound of it.

I doubt it has any actual health effects, but there's something with that low persistent thing that doesn't make you feel right.

I can imagine someone living next to that and how it feels.

Any thoughts?

Chair, could we go back to fencing or not go back to since we never went there in the first place, but I mentioned you have fencing or this project is going to have fencing and we're saying it's going to have fencing.

So we just heard from the the convenience center that they're going to have decorative fencing.

Is this going to be, do we know whether or not we're asking for decorative fencing since there are people on the northeast side of this and also on the, no actually you're not close to the road, or are we just asking for chain link fests?

Thank you.

I would just add that one of the options for meeting screening requirements is you can use fencing and a combination of plantings to achieve screening.