Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   11/12/2024

Mr. Bivins is absent and Ms.

Great, thank you.

And this is the work session for CPA 2021-2 AC44DA land use actions.

Turn it over to the clinical staff.

Thank you so much for making our presentation.

Corey, I didn't say the end.

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Tori Kenelopoulos.

I'm a principal planner on the long range planning team.

And I will be giving the presentation on development areas land use for the comprehensive plan update focused on the actions.

So we'll start off with a quick overview of the board meeting that was on November 6.

Yeah, let me try.

Sure.

Okay.

I'm good.

Yeah, yeah, no, really fine.

So to start off with a quick recap of the board's work session last week, which was on the development area land use policies.

And that was the board work session that corresponded with the planning commission work session that was on October 22.

So talking about the future land use map and the activity centers

and the Board was also generally supportive of accessory dwelling units with the right performance standards in the zoning modernization update, but then also had mixed feedback on whether they should be allowed by record require a legislative review.

The Board had concern for the number of proposed activities

to give the potential over saturation of retail and how much investment might be needed to support any given center.

And then they also asked us to look at potential incentives for redevelopment and encouraging activity centers.

And then the board was also like the commission of the future to distinguish between area

for early accessible open versus private.

Similar to how Crozet and Pantops map those green areas and then was also supportive of raising the lower end of the residential density recommendation for community mixed use to 12 units an acre instead of six units an acre.

So today's topics are focused on the goal statement objectives and especially the acts.

So those are the last three pages, development areas chapter.

As I mentioned, the commission discussed the other topics during the previous work session, along with the board.

and then we have made some updates to the objectives in space too, which I'll talk a little bit more about.

And then after this work session and the corresponding board work session on actions, which is next Wednesday, go ahead and update the full chapter, so both the policies and the actions, and then reshare that again with the full comp plan document.

So we have several

Topics that we're looking for feedback today.

And those were included in the Commission's memo and they're kind of somewhere reorganized here.

overall topic of efficient use of development areas land and then balancing and protecting the natural environment.

So I also wanted to note that we had planned to discuss parking requirements in more detail in the transportation chapter, but decided the discussion better fit within the development area land use chapter.

So we'll be talking about that today.

We have some potential recommendations to incorporate as well.

Since the chapter that we shared with you all so far is more focused on parking related to just activity centers, not the development areas overall.

And then also talking through the balance of using development areas land efficiently, but also protecting the natural environment.

A big community priority we've heard is tree coverage.

We wanted to talk about that with any of us to be missing.

So this slide probably looks familiar, so I'll go through pretty quickly, but just out of how we got here and how we've been developing the chapters, we of course include community input and planning commission and board direction, and then work with a variety of staff and partner agencies across the county, see what should be carried forward from the 2015 plan, and then looking at relevant data and best practices.

So each chapter has a goal statement, objectives and actions.

The goal statement is a vision for what we want our community to be like.

And previously there were goals for development area land use that's been consolidated into one goal statement.

The objectives are the targets or what we're trying to achieve.

They should be measurable.

So we did objectives from phase two to make sure that they all measurable and then made some of them into actions.

since they seem to fit better at that level of detail.

And then the actions are how we implement the COMP plan to meet objectives.

So this is a summary of the goal for the development chapter, which reflects the community input and priorities we've heard to date, having thriving walkable and mixed use places with a variety of housing types, connections with multimodal transportation,

Tree coverage and protected natural areas, and then encouraging redevelopment, infill and adaptive reuse.

And these are the four objectives that we are looking to achieve with this chapter.

So we want to make sure that our actions are focused on implementing at least one of these or more.

And that includes increasing infill, higher density development, adaptive reuse and redevelopment,

increasing the number of jobs and housing units and activity and employment centers, investing in existing neighborhoods, which overlaps a lot with other chapters as well, including parks, and then increasing tree coverage in the development areas, prioritizing areas that have a lesser tree coverage than average across the county.

So this is a summary of the actions that we're especially looking for feedback on today.

It includes incentives for redevelopment in activity centers, reforming parking requirements, site design, and then tree coverage and tree replacement.

And then just wanted to include a new story from today that highlights what some of this tree replacement could look like in action.

And then this is a summary of some of the changes from the 2015 plan, starting with the policies.

So we went from 12 neighborhood model principles to four community design guidelines, went from having different land use categories in all of the area plans to the standard set of land use categories that you all saw, reducing the number of activity centers and having a hierarchy of standard place types.

and then a more broad approach of focusing mixed use and commercial activity within those centers instead of having every single rezoning that comes in having to provide a mix of uses and then also recommending that density be changed to gross density for residential density calculations.

And then for the actions, a greater emphasis on investing in existing neighborhoods.

And as mentioned, that has a lot of overlap with other chapters that you all will see, including parks, a greater focus on replacing tree coverage, more strongly encouraging infill, and then not including actions that have already been completed, ones that are already requirements.

And then just noting several actions are now in other planned chapters.

One example would be urban agriculture will be in the resilient community chapter.

So I wanted to provide some background and context before we talk more about efficient use of land in the development areas.

So of course, there are a lot of negative effects that can come from having too much parking, including increased impervious surface, the heat island effect and stormwater taking up space that could be used for other uses like buildings, potentially having tear downs of historic buildings to make room for parking and breaking up walkability through sites.

So we've heard from, I think, the commission and the boarders to look at changing parking requirements, especially for non-residential uses and more allowing these types of non-residential uses to propose how much parking they think they actually need instead of including a stringent minimum requirement.

This could also benefit businesses that want to expand that don't have space to construct how much parking potentially could be required.

So there's a few local examples of current parking requirements that are included here.

These are kind of, you know, some of the more fun ones, but just noting that across the US, a lot of localities are updating their parking requirements.

A lot of them have been in place for many years or decades.

and could probably be updated to be a little bit more reasonable.

And also a lot of places don't distinguish between different locations throughout their locality.

So they might have the same parking requirements in a walkable downtown area as well as in a suburban area.

So there are also some alternatives that we currently allow in the zoning ordinance like shared parking or transportation demand management, like reduced parking by transit and carpooling.

So we could expand on some of those alternatives as well.

I think so, but if there's if that's okay.

So these are some of the opportunities for parking reform.

The parking maximums are already included in this chapter.

But as I mentioned, we were looking to cover these in transportation and then thought they would fit better in site design for the development area land use chapter.

So these are some additional ones that we could look at like requiring shared parking and activity centers, having multimodal transportation infrastructure in exchange for less parking, bike parking requirements, and then having better design requirements for safe, pedestrian walkability throughout parking areas.

and the report noted that a lot of those best suited sites were places that had lost anchor retail, were not being well maintained, or were in areas that had too much retail.

So, you know, these are sites that we hear a lot about and the county is having good potential for redevelopment, and they definitely do, but there's both challenges and opportunities to these sites.

Some of the challenges, they might need rezoning, which creates some time and uncertainty.

Sites have to be large enough to accommodate, you know, construction and staging equipment.

And of course, it's typically more expensive than just doing a greenfield development that never had any infrastructure.

And then these can be in areas that don't require disrupting existing businesses and structures with infill, if that can be created to kind of replace some of that surface parking and making it more walkable.

And then also there can be some interesting site design, like

five over one building that's shown where you have one floor of parking underneath and then five stories above.

But that does require a lot of density to actually pan out for development.

The Stonefield apartments that were recently finished as one example, if you just look at the density of that site, not across all of Stonefield, but just on the one parcel it's on, it's about 92 units per acre.

So it's pretty dense.

And then we did a quick analysis of about how much surface parking is in activity centers today.

And we looked at activity centers that don't already have an approved development or are not already building out.

And it's about a quarter of the land in activity centers that have that development potential that's currently used for surface parking.

And then as noted in the Rio 29 small area plan, that has a significant amount of surface parking today, at least at the time that the analysis was done, it was about 40%.

So as mentioned, we wanted to also talk about incentives for redevelopment in centers.

There's Action 1.6 in the chapter that talks about establishing incentives and it lists including water and sewer connections and structured parking, but there's some other potential incentives listed up here.

And then we would appreciate hearing from you all on what other incentives we might want to consider for encouraging redevelopment in centers.

and then one of the biggest challenges of course with this chapter is balancing using land efficiently in the development areas to protect the rural area, but also making sure there's a high quality of life and that we have resilient communities within the development areas.

So we talked about parking reform and why that's important and can help with efficient use of land.

There's also a lot of other benefits for replacing tree coverage and some of the other topics that we'll cover in this section.

including for ecosystem services which is kind of a fancy way of saying the benefits that are provided to people in the natural environment by nature such as the benefits shown from tree coverage here including shade and removing carbon dioxide.

So trees have also been shown to increase retail sales when they're added to commercial areas so a lot of good reasons to prioritize those.

and then within the chapter there's recommendations for replanting in areas with lower than average coverage and then protecting groves or replacing groves of trees, especially in important areas like along stream buffers.

So a couple of other topics related to the natural environment and environmental stewardship in this chapter, lighting, which we hear a lot about, again, with the trying to balance the dark skies, but also having safe environments for both pedestrians and bicyclists and drivers throughout these more urban environments, and then green infrastructure and open space like amenity-oriented lots.

having native ecosystems with community facilities and on public properties and then street design and public realm standards within activity centers.

There are also a lot of overlapping recommendations that are included in a couple of the other chapters, including environmental stewardship and resilient community.

So just a quick overview of the upcoming and completed schedule.

So as mentioned for development areas, land use,

We completed talking about the policies, at least in this phase.

And then today, and at the board next week, talking about the goal objectives and actions.

And then next week, we also start to move into the rural area land use chapter.

So the planning commission meeting Tuesday will be focused on rural areas policies and the 10th will be focused more actions.

So as a quick reminder, these are the topics that we're especially looking for feedback on today.

So using land efficiently in the lens of parking requirements, incentives, and then protecting the natural environment, and then if anything's missing.

So with that, I'll stop for questions and comments and discussion.

Great.

Thank you.

Great job.

Do you want to pick us up with questions?

I know that we discussed the part of the requirements for non-residential.

What is the current part of the requirements for residential?

That's a good question.

I think it depends for apartments on the total number of apartments.

And then I think it's like about one space per one bedroom.

What is, so I'm thinking about the places that visit, we're talking about rightsizing parking and that stat that you showed, 25% of the land that is as potential for redevelopment is dedicated to asphalt.

So when you talk about rightsizing parking, I think of, I go to Whole Foods,

It's hard to find parking there, but if I go to Giant, I look at Gantops, if I go to Giant or Brumaian, right by my house, there's a million open spots.

And so you talk a little bit about like, what are the requirements, the parking allocation requirements for

It's like, I guess what I'm getting to, why is Whole Foods different than Giant?

Is it just a happiness spot or is the Whole Foods do something that's the same one, right?

Because that's the parking.

I think it also partly depends on if places did shared parking or if it ended up all getting added together.

So for some commercial areas, you know, if they just did their parking requirements based on each individual store and business and then it just all got added together, it does kind of create that sea of parking.

And that too.

Yeah, or scratch that.

We talked about Mike, well you didn't, but we had before we talked about microtransit, and that was a pilot program at PanTops.

So currently it's going quite well there.

We have Kevin here.

We talk a little bit about particulars.

Obviously, when we get to the transit chapter or the transportation chapter, that's certainly something.

We talk about transit strategies to employ and maybe better use transit in our community.

That may be a good option.

In short, I think we're pleased with that.

I can't quote your number.

Anybody else?

Thanks for your presentation.

So, yeah, a couple of questions around parking.

You look, you mentioned that you've looked at several different municipalities in Hollywood.

Can you tell us what, which ones you're looking at?

And obviously the colleagues, but we don't have the plans that only in the city.

So just interested in who are you looking at?

I mean, obviously, they're all great examples of their, I'm not sure how you get to eliminating partial requirements.

Yeah, and to clarify that one, I think as far as eliminating parking requirements, it would probably be only in regional activity centers where it would be, you know, the density where that might be feasible and there could be a lot more shared parking, a lot more walkability.

I'm going to push for our plan level as a place where zoning words would eventually get ourselves towards.

Okay.

and the municipality that are numberable to us, where we don't have the benefit of having different funds.

When we do that, it's always actually going to be some things that are beginning to, like, the microphone and so forth, that are beginning to develop, but we're not there to go.

So it's almost an action phase, and hopefully we're going to improve on how we do.

How does our parking policy, maybe,

Yeah, and again, there are great examples out there.

I had a question with you, everyone.

A couple of words just sort of general about the objectives and actions.

Is it these are in particular priority order or are they just going to happen with Albemarle in that way?

We looked at the end of attachment B for action 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.

It's a good question.

And then I also had a question about the incentives for redevelopment or higher density in the activities, and particularly when it comes to like a parking structure.

We've heard a lot about the challenges they face.

That's been the primary part of the discussion.

Who are parking structures themselves.

For example, in the

The Barnes Lumber Redevelopment Project in Crozet.

There is a tip there to help the redevelopment or that property and the creation of a plaza.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, the reason I was asking was just like,

Do we, if we've talked with the developers of some of these, or the current owners of some of these, shall we say, underutilized commercial spaces, do they have an interest in doing these?

And I guess, I'm thinking of one in particular, near where I live, where, from what I understand, the guy just doesn't have any interest.

And I don't know what,

It certainly represents a significant barrier to getting up to that next level.

Yeah.

That's one of the barriers.

Sure.

Yeah.

What other ones would you identify as key?

Well, I mean, I think the land prices are one, for sure, and have you gotten to a significant amount?

to support that kind of density.

And then the commercial market is in a strange state right now.

Sure.

Thank you.

thoughts and comments a bit to start with.

One was, you know, when I look through these, when I look through the objectives and actions of the objective statements, increase the use of these, fill higher density development, increase the number of jobs, invest in existing neighborhoods, and then there's increased tree coverage.

I'm curious about the last one, that increase in tree coverage seems very specific.

whereas even here you talk about balance between efficiencies about matters like environmental stewardship.

I'm wondering, is there, how do I ask this question?

Is there room to think about how that objective was written to be a little bit more broad and more specific to it?

I'm wondering if that's helpful.

That's an interesting idea, and I like that, because I think, you know, we could think more.

Yeah, but you know on top of what kind of group, that's an example of another way of breathing is not a group.

was that there's kind of a similar recommendation in the climate action plan to really prioritize tree coverage in the development areas, and especially because it comes up so much through actual development and through community input.

Yeah, and maybe it's, you know, as stated in the kind of action plan and the reason

Yeah, that's what I mean, I agree with you both.

I wonder if it's a matter of putting it into a broader category, but I do think that there is a difference between groups.

I'm trying to do that, one, how to protect the canopy because once you're taking out

and other better people.

So whether there's a category within the Brazilian, whether it's environmental stewardship, whatever the category is, then here are some things that are important within that.

It could be some green roofs and looking at, you know, perforable pavers and a number of things that we could do, tree canopy protection would be one of them.

But one of the big things that we're missing now, Marconi, I'd like to see those specific rules, because I think we need to learn the trees mission.

Because a lot of times, you know, you see these trees that just dropped into these wet

The landscape industry calls islands death, you know, and they just travel and die and then they drop it a new one once they die, you know.

I think every fund efforts and I think what we also are talking about is the need for maybe a more robust and modern public works department.

We're starting

We have a little bit more proactive looking at some of the storm water and trying to improve some of those things.

But for a long time, for years, we've had a very sort of, I'm thinking about like the Rio Overpass, like put these planters in and plant the flowers and they all die.

and we don't have, you know, we don't really have an apartment to do that.

And it's just now kind of starting.

I think in the whole statement, you talk about neighborhoods being green and resilient.

So that's sort of broader.

And it talks about tree coverage, protected natural features, energy efficient designs.

So maybe just thinking about that objective that there are ways to broaden that.

The other thing, while we're

More riffing to use your word on trees.

A couple of things that others know more about than I do, but biofilic cities movement.

I mentioned the same thing.

I don't know how that, but I think there's grants actually even in terms of that.

I had that website already pulled up where you just talked about it, and there's a list of partner cities.

Austin, and so, well, we can't show this to the internet, but you know, you guys can look at this up, and I would love to see us join as a partner city.

We've discussed this in Nashville a couple of times, and we'll see that in school, but there's this chapter, there's a university, and we're trying to find a university there.

I think we have me, Professor, who's calling you to turn by folks, and it's here again.

with the architecture school, talking to City already about this and asked if they could talk to us as well.

So that might be a good opportunity.

The other thing is old road forest.

Yeah, there are actually,

I think one of the things that we've been talking about a little bit is obviously we'll be able to pick up some of the stuff from resilient communities, stuff like that.

It is a climate change, the heat island of this thing.

And I guess one of the things that's really pushing the viral stewardship is a heavy emphasis, especially in the

and the development area versus the rural area.

With the development area having a balance to the need to also efficiently be able to use the

Development Area, which sometimes you may have to cut trees or grow trees to be able to achieve that goal too.

But trying to sort of still prioritize canopy coverage associated with streams and critical slope systems and streams.

So I think, as I hear you all talk, one of the questions I sort of have is, where do you stand?

What is your refusal to counsel on?

Yeah, so I think the plus slash minus is that our development areas have a lot of invasive species.

I think people don't fully grasp when they look across the landscape

how much of it is like escaped Bradford pair and Elanthus and other like trash, you know, could should frankly be removed.

So the number of actual native species that need to be preserved in our development areas is pretty small.

There are, as I said, specimen trees or

that I think we should take a look at.

And that doesn't mean you can't develop those spaces, but they should be taken into consideration.

As one of the factors, you know, when we talked about what was areas in the one area I think about is over near fun.

There's a nice colony of unrelevant, which is a very unusual tree, particularly next to the voluntary.

Yeah, I think it's part of that.

I also think, you know, if you think about this, if I'm understanding your question, Michael, how do we balance the need for density

Desire for tree canopy in the development area.

So one thing, I mean, I was looking at this, we were seeing the one in green right here.

I'd say just a couple of things I thought we had.

One is, you know, we're not cursed and blessed, but we have the benefit of and the challenge of some severe topography, even in the development areas, like existing topography.

So

and you name the percentage, just 25% or over, whatever it is, even 15 and over creates a lot of challenges for developers.

So are there places where we can, in the development area, look and say, yeah, they're not going to be developed ever anyway.

Maybe it's flood plain.

Maybe it's these, you know, those kinds of things that are already preserved, that are often identified where it's on.

And then if it's not a developer, that's

This is also working with this publication on that which grows and builds and we're going to maybe open that.

So there, and then there are buses and minors, but I do think

to build on them, but then are we going to lose the opportunity to maximize what we can build for the housing?

If we use that, then you're going to be right where you use the growth, you can benefit from it.

You can still protect the areas that need protection, but allow for higher density within the

Again, there are pros and cons that I can always want to argue while there's some potential problems with using Groesch.

But I do think for some benefits and if we're looking to maximize our development area, you know, I do think that's positive.

It's a positive environment.

Do you ask your question?

I think a little bit more on that.

There is that balance, but as Fred was just saying, we can look at the areas that we're not going to touch, and there's plenty of them around.

Then you could still maximize your billable areas.

And then when you talk about replacement, because we're going to have three, three different, you know, we have a dialogue and want to continue to promote that.

Do it in a way, so I don't know, I don't believe that Karen has talked about this in the past.

and all of the group of us planting pipelines.

And so you were talking about this earlier now.

When you put things back, let's put it back in a way that's going to survive and they actually are going to reach a size, a caliper and canopy that's going to make a difference.

Because it takes a while for that canopy to actually have any impact on the environment.

And if we don't let it ever get there, then why spend all this money?

And there are two in tribe.

I agree with my colleagues, Mr. Barnes.

I think it also emphasizes the importance of utilizing existing buildings and adaptive reuse, which would have less negative impacts on the site design.

And so just want to add that portion there also.

I think that's one of your questions, or at least I thought I heard it somewhere.

How do you incentivize that?

Well, I like that you already brought it, stepped into the, like, the grass versus net.

And then, you know, and if we think about this in terms of, you know, you don't always draw a continuum, you know, as development occurs in the rural area, the balance is protection.

But as the number of people increases,

You start, you go from protection to restoration towards artificially created ecosystems versus natural ecosystems.

So creating ways to treat stormwater versus protecting the systems that have that storm.

So I mean, in the world here, I think that density makes no more sense.

You have a lot of stream buffers, a lot of critical slopes,

You don't want to, you want to simply protect those areas as they are.

You don't want to chunk in more houses and whatever is left.

But you know, residency makes sense in the development areas, but I think where we've identified sensitive areas, I think this should be treated differently.

If we've identified areas that we want to have as green space or areas that are next to waterways, that we know are impaired waterways in particular,

We should try to limit the footprint.

So limit the footprint, but then release some of the other requirements about things like building height so that we can say, we don't care how high you go, but you need to be within this footprint.

And I think that will result in much better development.

And when you pulled this out, can you talk a little bit more about it?

I think there's stuff that we're hearing doesn't even talk about the development area chapter.

as well.

So that's what that's coming from.

Yeah, not directly from the development community.

And I'm right in saying that, right?

And not staff isn't really trying to, I mean, I think we recognize that we've got this challenge.

You were just asking me about a second ago.

To guess, I mean, one of the bugs here is that it hasn't developed or, you know, we're putting that pattern.

Really simplifying it, there's incentives that have dollar signs and there's incentives that don't have dollars.

Like, it's going to cost money to do this.

Or this would just be about practicing more efficiently.

Because it costs money.

And so I think thinking about these categories, I got, you know, one step to scream the consciousness came out.

There are things like time, which is my time, processes, how do you get things done more quickly so that a developer can bring their project to the market quickly?

Now, you know, all this kind of thing, we're focusing on those, we're doing approvals, running process, broadening, running categories, so once they, there's some flexibility built into that,

something like a neighborhood model district where you can do commercial, you can do whatever you want, you can just write it in as a developer.

There's that, that opportunities, that opportunity.

And, and then thinking about the items that would cost money.

So public infrastructure connection, someone's going to have to pay for that.

And is that the county or is that, you know, it's not the developer who's paying for it?

What is the qualification for that?

I'm not sure about structure parking and really what that meant or stormwater management because structure parking is a whole heck of a lot more expensive.

So does that mean that the county might participate in building structure parking to support larger developments?

Again, again, it's kind of like, I think we recognize this as a

It's a big topic.

And for the reasons you just mentioned, it's very expensive.

It's come up multiple times over the past several meetings we've had talking about the development area.

And I think we're cognizant of its cost and of a pretty significant change that would represent in the county.

I don't think we're

So, yeah, so I mean, I think I heard several of us, I think that's right, but sort of the point.

So we look at the right-of-road malaria plan.

Hard to imagine how you build that out to how it was

Watts.

And so by doing that in a disparate level, burial plan level, you then consolidate your building up and parking.

So it then allows you to have more density and more emotional and residential along the border.

So there's a lot of benefit.

There will be a lot of benefit to both the development community as well as the community of Lawrence.

So how do you get there?

How do you get where it's

Public Initiative, well, it's fun to get there and target areas that are here, here's two or three centers that really benefit and a lot of people benefit because there's certainly been a development community right there.

So how we get there, I guess, is a graduation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so I don't understand how it's an incentive for density.

I think we're talking about a county investment in that, in a sense.

Well, at least when I read through this, I was thinking, oh, OK, so let's imagine the Ryos model area plan.

This is all hypothetical, because none of the developers have said, yeah, we're up with that.

But that if the county were to build and operate a structured parking facility, and that would then enable this other dense development around it that would be private, as long as Mark Brown's not involved.

Yeah, I mean, like, like, could that actually work?

You know, could we could we invest in that proactively?

But otherwise, what year do we pass that small airplane in 2015?

So I think particularly about Commonwealth Square, right?

Not to pick on one, but let's pick on our most

So, that place is a ghost town.

I think, personally, I think offering tax income financing, I think is a good way to get there because we're not getting the additional revenue from redevelopment right now anyway.

So putting on the table service and if you remove some of this surface parking we'll offer you tax increment financing to make structure parking feasible.

And so I think that's sort of the baseline right there and see if that gets us there putting that on the table and offering that particularly if they're willing to achieve some performance based standards.

We set criteria ahead of time in terms of like what they would need to do to qualify for this.

I was just over at Von Pantops and my wife and I were looking for a place where we

We could hike the old mill trail.

And there's this big, big parking lot.

It's just totally empty.

And all these signs are saying like, no park here ever.

And it's thinking like, this is crazy.

We need parking for people to get to this trail because we actually wanted to get to the back of the trail.

But here's this big parking lot.

It's not even usable.

And that just seems like

and at least some of these parking lots as commuter lots.

Because then you're bringing people in to these places that are then they're like, oh, I'm parked here anyway.

I just got home from work.

Oh, maybe I can pick up some groceries or maybe I can use some shopping on here because my car is already here.

So I mean, I think there's some opportunities like that too.

Yeah, I think we have sort of parking in the baseline.

So you're like still, we're going to build a structured parking lot because you had to have built in.

So they did because they were having space to build their way to work.

One thing that I think we needed to do, maybe you're on this, but when we have done rezoning and we want to have the options in a structured parking, you have to do it in a structured environment.

is there a way to just automatically say, you know, you're going to develop this.

Someday, we expect you to be super successful with one of those values, because the workers are automatically going to start the party.

There's an opportunity right now to do the process of doing it.

I think, I think another side to that too is these areas that we have, personally, currently zone commercial.

The question is, even if you wanted to retrofit housing into that area, you'd have to do a rezoning.

We'd have to come before it's not an expensive process.

We should allow that by way.

I think we should allow, if you're going to retrofit housing, I think there should be a condition.

We can't just simply replace all the commercial with residential because that would just swing us in the other direction.

Honestly, and I appreciate the talk about different kinds of incentives and how it could go.

It seems like there could be a really simple way to do it.

It's kind of in 2.3 here, the bigger 2.3 looking at CIP funds to support projects that support activities in their film.

But like, I can see like, we use CIP funds to build a parking garage in conjunction with a developer who's got a plan to build a new downtown.

and seeing what the result is, and I'm not criticizing the county or anybody, but the results, according to the developers, don't even come close to being able to close the gap between us.

So there's this, and we can't as well, let's engage the development community, let's figure out what it is that they would like for incentives and get this list, and then that was qualified into the number and then accounting for a different part.

So I just have a hard time seeing, not to be down here, but the hard time seeing how we're going to be able to create incentives that are going to cost the county money.

It just doesn't feel like it's a priority.

Maybe that's just me.

But when we talk about affordable housing, donations and funds that you can bring to that traditional tolls, it's hard for me to see how we can

Rechannel Funds that are just floating out there is something that's a low level.

If only narrowly tailored to use large surface lots, I think having a little bit of stick along with the carrot wouldn't hurt.

If you can add to your density and affordability of building what they don't have for the parking that has been built, and maybe as a combination, I'm not sure that it's all with how many farms, but there are people that have to operate these garages unless the county wants to get into the business group and they will partner with the group.

So when looking at opportunities with partners, how you can build these garages, now you're enabling denser development,

which would have more affordable housing, more tax revenue.

So I think they're not this collective.

They're definitely weighted.

So yes, how do you move money from one to the other?

I guess that's, I think we can separate because they are in the same.

Well, yeah, exactly to your point.

And I think if we could use our funds to very proactively invest in that kind of thing, it'll eventually pay for itself, right?

That's quite good.

But it would be very proactive.

So yeah, I drive by Fashion Square Mall and that Rio and Young border every day.

And once in a while when I'm kind of, you know, daydreaming a little bit, I can imagine I can sort of like see like a kind of like a downtown for our, you know, development area part of the county.

The Urban Rain, you will.

And it's a nice thought, but it's not going to get there just by like, you know, a tax break here and a tax break there.

I mean, I think like some proactive investment to make it happen.

And it is a destination.

I have a question about staff's perception of the viability of density and height bonuses.

And I'm asking that question from posture of just seeing the proposals that have come by here where we rarely hit the top line of density.

And in terms of height, I don't recall me telling people asking for more height.

Yeah, and I think it will hopefully come up more too as we get more of these kind of infill and smaller sites because I think you're right when there's

You know, a lot of what we've had in the past are these kind of larger, you know, planned communities over kind of a significant area.

But as we've started to see, you know, some of these kind of smaller, more infill sites come in with apartments, they have wanted to go somewhat, you know, higher and denser.

And sometimes it doesn't pan out, you know, there's challenges with, you know, access and easements and things like that on some of these sites.

Okay.

Yeah.

Edelman, Miss, and I've seen this at least two different large scale projects where there was an outside developer who came in and saw what we said we wanted, had a very robust proposal, there's something that was very dense and no tighter, and had so much pushback, and we said, let's do it, right, and then a local developer came in and just kind of did things that were things that were always gone.

Pushback and more.

Maders coming out, you know,

or it's not being, we're not going for it.

It's some years ago, you know, but I'm thinking about the one across from Dunn-Nord.

And then, you know, we come back and we get something that's not being built out to anywhere near the capacity.

Okay.

I do some state building, but I would have building concerns if something gives me a look at in terms of increasing density.

Okay, yeah.

Wood.

Park is wood.

And I don't think you can change that.

We'd have spaces right there that is possible, and I lived in one of those spaces for a while.

And so I wonder, I wonder about if there is a walkability index.

So we could look at, you know, areas that have a high walkability index within our growth areas and say in those areas, we can drop the parking requirements.

I could imagine them all coming forward saying, listen, we wouldn't build an affordable housing complex for people who are serious about, like, our clients, they don't want cars.

Can't I build one?

And I think we should, there should be spaces for ways that we can say yes to that.

So just thinking about, again, good on time, incentives, are there any other incentives that are missing here that we haven't talked about?

I guess when I think of economic development, they have like Virginia EDP, they have the site ready, the readiness sites program, right?

Which is brain field sites.

It is all set up in utilities, it's a ranking scale.

Is there anything that exists for like,

They can't believe it.

I can't even take the idea of a senator to invent himself for that role, for you, who's zoning and maybe high density police to encourage building these centers.

And I do think, you know, how many of these, how many of these can we feasibly tackle at one time, right?

There's a handful.

They say, these are the priority centers.

And I don't want to add another one.

We have a lot of people that want to pick it up.

Maybe there's a handful that are just the priority centers.

And you just begin to focus on these incentives and look at how they've intensified.

Perhaps we have infrastructure already.

So we can be there.

And then we can bring in some more.

And then you can focus on these.

Pat Reddy, whatever you want to call them.

Yeah, maybe there's intersection improvements that are needed, right?

If there doesn't be a sticking point, there's intersection improvements.

There is a bunch of stuff that we'll go ahead and put that in already.

I do believe that we're, you know, perhaps we're in a threshold and I know we've talked about, so I think the incentives for density

Mike Sonoy developed.

My sense is that if you see it in the city, their new zoning, they're now building buildings that are head stories tall.

You're going to see more of that.

I believe we're in the threshold.

Now, yes, we have seen four or five stories.

You're seeing it now.

Maybe it's just trickling in.

Don't need to stand at points where we can take advantage of when they come to us to surface conversation.

We've got a path for that, and it spreads to another.

Let's take a, just a quick check in staff.

Are we answering your questions?

We get these questions we want us to get to?

Absolutely.

We're not taking the whole time.

What about if we just touch on parking requirements?

We're kind of going in reverse order.

And then spend some time just specifically on the goal, objectives and actions.

Some of those may have some comments.

Are there any more under reducing, eliminating parking requirements?

Is there any other comments specific to that?

We did provide incentives for appropriate surface removal from small scale to appropriate surface.

And so there's a cost share payment, which Albemarle contributes to that actually.

We have a fund that is the soil and water conservation district.

or one small business.

It would be nice to upscale.

Upscale, some of those incentives say like, listen, the perfect service I'm removing is several acres of pervious surface.

and it's an obvious thing to think about.

Parking, when we think about reducing parking, we have to also think about how do we handle traffic.

You know, whether it's in the city, you mentioned the transportation time to record a parking reduction, things like that.

We're going to reduce parking.

We've got to figure out how we can get people around.

The other thing is, you know, just thinking of something like, just use most of the examples where we have

And I think it's for two reasons.

One is, I think we reduced it from the best thing we talked about in the shared one, but I think it's also how we use our buildings.

So,

You know, whether it's more working from home, and so there are not many people in it, or more than hopefully what's happening is repurposing some of those buildings, and they're no longer office, but they're maybe lab, right, or maybe even residential, which allows you to kind of re-capital work in the piece.

The other is, I don't know about, I think this is right, that the county doesn't allow off-site parking.

Is there some requirement that you can't, like, build a building

Maybe think about taking that out.

Full elimination might be a stretch, but just because we are still a community where people drive to where they want to go, we don't have the, but that said, I think some of the examples you put up there were amusing enough.

Rat, and his overbuilt photography.

There was one other incentive to go back to the last thing that possibly, I don't know if it needs to be looked at per se, but setbacks is something that I don't know how often this is going to come up, but just, you know, if you're building even

in the building area, housing in the building area.

You've got 10 feet on either side.

Do we need 20 feet between every building?

Under the actions, right?

I'm looking at action 1-1 under objective increase the use of infill and it says update the zoning ordinance to support infill adaptive reuse and redevelopment activity centers.

Okay, let's do that.

Let's do this.

Are there any other ideas?

I have a couple of comments.

Does adaptive or use need to have his own objective?

Benfield, higher density development, adaptive reuse development.

That just seems like a lot.

And adaptive reuse is one that kind of stood out to me because, particularly just on existing buildings, right?

So something to think about, does that need to be a standalone objective?

and then with the affordability of housing, it being such a crisis.

I was just surprised to see that language, any of the objectives.

The echoing story on that,

There were a few slides that referred to getting to the parks and all the things about the parks and farms I can

It's a Charlotte Humphries Park.

Otherwise, I don't know what parks we have in the urban ring.

And so I think this idea of actually trying to create some urban style parks for people to gather is something that we've talked about in the beginning.

So I think that is probably coming in a future chapter.

I just wanted to kind of doggie that one for how much I love the idea of program park spaces.

Coming down the back.

and the other one that was a couple things that we did this year.

I had a question about 2.2.

I kind of figured out what that was about, update the county's residential bonus density requirements to remove minimum block size and street food requirements to allow for additional open space and natural social recreational space to be retained.

Yes, this one is I feel like kind of strangely worded and it also it comes from the Crozet Area Plan update so it was included there

and then we were looking at it and thought well this would you know make sense to do more broadly but basically what it's you know saying is to update the zoning ordinance to not have those minimum lot size requirements you know like

point two, five acres or whatever it might be.

Okay, cool.

I think there's a lot of 2.3 that's that could be used in a very

It's just in the way that we invest a great deal of money in the Rivanna Station features project to invest our county's substantial resources, substantial resources.

into more things that will serve people's needs.

And I think that can include housing that we build.

Yeah.

So this may touch more into, as you said, Mark's show.

One of the big things I see in our development areas is that we, we know we've got a pocket park here, a pocket park there, but what the community really wants is that they want a bike lane or a walk that solves a serious problem in their neighborhood.

They think about opening a crusade park and how desperately people would love to have sidewalks there, but you never get redevelopment there with a sidewalk proffered as part of that.

And I think that that would be a great way to connect somewhere in greenways and provide green space or maybe provide those larger opportunities for parks that they're difficult to achieve.

So that's something I would say.

And then also, you know, there's several things in the, some of the action items that talked about, you know, design with native ecosystems, incorporating native ecosystems.

And the one thing I would really like to see is a, again, whether we're here or in the

is a goal about providing existing staff and accounting and treating opportunities and things like

When's the last time we, as a county, said, let's check and see what a typical parking standard should be for each of these units?

How long does this extend?

I don't know how that's playing the other people, but the point being is to think about why other communities that we can talk about are reducing parking requirements to the past community.

And then the last thing, and this is just based on, I was in a real estate conference last week,

Thursday and Friday.

And the new, I guess, vision is that retail is sexy.

That's what I heard.

Well, it's important to note for a county revenue standpoint that, you know, what makes this revenue positive as a county is routine.

These are industrial sites.

Part of this is things, you know, counties that are way too much residential, not well commercial, you know, have a massive infrastructure deficit.

And so I think, you know, I would hate to see us, you know, we may need to facilitate the transition

Question slash comment, I guess.

Two of the other goals that are kind of, you know, 1.7, 1.8, which is how we monitor these things.

And so, monitoring

New Housing, it's really very estimated.

And as far as I can tell, these two goals are basically like, just do our recommendations, really do them if we have an issue.

And I know our friends here are gonna say, no, no, never, never expand it.

But like, we don't have, this is like a 10-year plan, right?

We will be updating that based on the feedback you all shared and what the board shared as well.

So then probably need to update these actions as well.

And that actually is what you said too, is that, you look at the density of Charlottesville, right?

The number of units per acre in Charlottesville.

Yeah.

and so forth within communities.

And you used to have, you would have a bunch of houses and then over time, you know, those houses would get redeveloped into apartments and those would become, you know, larger buildings.

Of course, cars disrupted that whole thing.

Now we've sort of like locked uses in the place who said like, okay, this is single family housing, and now it's locked that way forever.

Can you include a plan for, not just what it is now, but what it could be?

I mean, I was thinking about that in terms of, you know, what we already, I don't know if that was a lot of things too, like where we have this overlay with

So how will we address that?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Can you just one more time?

I'm sorry, I know you did this with the schedule.

Yeah, it's definitely not easy to keep track of.

So of course, we've shared the full development areas chapter and you all have now gone through the full chapter.

So we'll check back in with the board next week on the actions and we'll send them an email with your all's feedback as well, given the turnaround time.

And then I believe a few days ago, you all just received the rural area land use chapter.

and that was the full chapter, but the discussion will be into planning commission work sessions.

So I think the discussion next Tuesday will be mostly focused on the policy part of the chapter or everything kind of before the goals, objectives and actions, maybe getting into those a little bit, but focusing more on those at the December 10th work session.

Now on your calendar?

No.

I want to copy off guard.

4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 4 o'

That's it.

Yeah, 19th and 16th.

And I love that.

So there's not a calendar invite for those things.

I'd love to get one so that magically we can.

So this can we recap it?

What is it?

Apparently you guys have seen an email, Carolyn said four o'clock for next Tuesday.

My attempt was to bring in at six o'clock on that Tuesday the 19th.

You would just adjourn to next Tuesday.

When you close this meeting tonight, you would adjourn to next Tuesday at 6pm.

So everybody wants some six of marks.

And we do have a 26 that should be at four.

That's public hearings.

Actually, you need to review the perian buffer.

Oh, that's that.

Generally speaking, the way we're going to try and work this is we'll have regular business type meetings, second and the fourth as we've always done.

Park.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

You say we're go, we're go.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the November 12th.

That sounds really loud.

Sorry.

November 12th meeting of the Planning Commission.

Ms.

Great, thank you.

So we've established a quorum.

With that, we'll move on to the matters that are not listed on the public hearing agenda.

Are there any public comments that anyone would like to share on matters not listed on the agenda?

Good evening, commissioners.

My name is Sunshine Maithon.

I'm the resident in the Rio Hale District of Albemarle County on Allwood Lane.

And I'm here to speak on the sort of trajectory of affordable housing, as it's discussed in the COMP plan moving forward.

And I'm the executive director of Piedmont Housing Alliance serving Charlottesville City, Albemarle County, and a few other surrounding counties as well.

So it's the nature of the work that I do.

I wanted to share a few thoughts as the Planning Commission and then the Board of Supervisors moves into consideration of affordable housing, prioritization, policy, et cetera, in the comp plan and a future rezoning at some point.

And in particular, I wanted to highlight a few key, plant a few seeds and highlight a few key concepts.

The affordable housing and the housing landscape in general is tied to a whole host of factors that some of which you are obviously directly familiar with.

But I do want to highlight three in particular that are most impactful, particularly in our region.

One is first a history of racial covenants and exclusionary tactics that was true in the city.

It was true in Albemarle County.

Many of you have probably seen the work that Jordy Yeager and the Jefferson School, the Jefferson African American Heritage Center.

has done to document racialized covenants both in the city and the county.

That history has shaped the way that many of the families that live, whether we're white families, black families, or other folks of color, it has shaped the where people live, how people have accrued wealth or not, and that is a huge part of the underlying base of the

of how Albemarle County has come to be in many ways, including the city.

On top of that, you all know that supply and demand is a key factor in any level of affordability, whether it's housing or any other commodities, so to speak.

And that is certainly true in Albemarle County and Charlottesville and this region.

It is true nationwide.

The general rule of thumb is that as a nation, we are somewhere between 10 and 20 years behind the curve.

on the housing supply equation.

And what that does ultimately, obviously, is drive up the cost of housing.

And it actually means that there's a gap in housing at all levels of affordability, which then as higher income individuals and households are looking for housing, it pushes that they look where they can't find housing in the what the way that they're looking for, they look into other areas that would otherwise be moderate housing, moderate cost housing.

that would then displace those families and then so forth.

It's a cascading effect that ultimately puts the greatest pressure on those with the greatest need, those in the 30, 40, and 50 percent of the area.

So the gap when you look at the housing needs assessment that the county has done, the city has done, the greatest gap is at those deepest levels of affordability.

The other factor of the supply demand issue is that it has

It inevitably inflates the cost of land, which makes it more and more difficult to build in affordability, either naturally or with subsidy

that factor has essentially created, it creates an uneven playing field that privileges the higher cost housing unless there is direct intervention.

And that direct intervention has to take place with every possible toolset.

It has to require, at this point, there is no way to build affordable housing without some form of subsidy.

that can be direct dollar subsidy, that can be density bonuses, that can be the policies that get put forth in the COMP plan and then ultimately in zoning.

Every tool in the toolbox has to be utilized if we're going to have, if we're going to reach any level of affordability, but in particular for folks at the deepest levels.

And one key concept that I want to reinforce is that supply alone is important but insufficient.

Yes, supply has to be part of the equation, but if that's all we do through the comp plan and through the rezoning process, it will not result in achieving the depth of affordability that we know that our constituents need.

That sort of background, I wanted to highlight a couple of ideas or a couple of other jurisdictions that have actually confronted this work

as planting seeds for the Planning Commission to consider in its future deliberations.

And the first one I want to actually highlight is Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And some of you may or may not be familiar, but in 2020, Cambridge passed the only sort of rezoning overlay that I'm aware of in the country

It's called the Cambridge 100% affordable housing overlay.

And essentially what it did is it, in this case, it's designed specifically for affordable housing developers.

It more quickly and more predictably allows, and this is direct quote from the text, allows for the creation of new affordable housing that is denser than one might be allowed in base zoning and a new review process through which new affordable housing can be approved more efficiently.

So fundamentally, you have your base zoning that you allow throughout the city in different ways, some commercial, some multifamily, some single family.

but the affordable housing overlay essentially allows for by right, if you're doing affordable housing, 100% affordable housing allows you increased density and all of those jurisdictions, all those zoning districts.

What that does is it starts to balance the playing field between the traditional market rate developers and the affordable housing developers.

So if under the base zoning, you could build 100 units by right under for a market rate development,

You might be able to build 150 by right under the affordable housing.

Now it's differentiated depending on the nature of the base zoning, but there is consistently this increase, this overlay that makes it automatic for someone for an organization pursuing affordable housing.

to get increased density.

So then what it does is it means that as an affordable housing developer, I can pay more for the land that I would otherwise and put it at par with market rate developers because I'm actually distributing that cost over more units, if that makes sense.

There is another aspect which is I think somewhat controversial, but still a really useful tool, which is that it actually provides a mechanism for affordable housing projects to move through the Planning Commission and other approval systems within the city much more quickly than it would in a traditional market rate development.

I'm not going to go into the details here.

I would just encourage you to take a look at the overlay.

One, there was a review that was done in early 2024, about four years or three and a half years after the original overlay was created.

And the vice mayor commented that they averaged on before the overlay, they averaged about 40 units a year of affordable housing.

After the overlay, they were averaging about 200 units a year in affordable housing.

So it has had a pretty significant impact overall.

The other jurisdiction I'd like to point to is one right next door, Charlottesville.

I don't know if any of you live in the city, but it is worth paying close attention to.

The process that the city went through was somewhat unique in that it started with an affordable housing plan that established goals and parameters.

moved into the comprehensive plan, which set the sort of basic framework at the land use level, and then moved into rezoning that took the the COMP plan concepts and put them, you know, codified them in code.

There are a number of factors in there that I would really encourage you to take a look at.

But in particular, what it ended up doing, the city ended up doing is sort of a hybrid between an overlay and a more robust inclusionary zoning concept.

So at the lower density levels in the residential districts, it essentially did apply its own version of that overlay concept.

So if you are in a residential, a previously single family district, a residential district where you might now have as a base zoning, say up to three units on a residential lot, a fourth if you are going to keep the existing building to privilege preservation.

But if you are doing affordable housing, you might be able to do up to six or eight by right.

And so you gave this baseline increase as an overlay across all the residential districts.

It didn't apply that same concept to the higher density districts.

Instead, there's an inclusionary zoning component where essentially you get additional density increase, but there's also a mandate around having a percentage of affordable housing.

So I'm going to pause my comments there.

I just want to reinforce that as the Planning Commission considers the future of how Albemarle County is going to approach this question of affordability, that even though your purview as planning commissioners won't encompass all aspects of every tool, your role in looking at the COMP plan and ultimately in rezoning is crucial as that foundation on which the other tools can be employed.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

And as you may know, and I check with staff to the affordable housing chapter of the comp plan will be coming up for discussion sometime, think around February from a timing standpoint.

So thank you.

Great.

Appreciate it.

Looking forward to future conversations.

Is there any other public comment on items not associated with tonight's agenda?

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Emily Dreyfus, and I'm here on behalf of the Legal Aid Justice Center and the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I am a people person and you all as land use experts have a lot to bring to the table.

I wanted to share a bit about what I've learned in my job as a community organizer in talking with people in the community and also I think as we've all witnessed the number of people who are the increasing number of people who have become homeless

who are locals, majority of them are locals.

They moved from an apartment in Charlottesville or Albemarle to the street.

And what I see in my work where I talk with low income residents routinely is that people are really hurting.

They don't have options.

They cannot find places to live.

They're often living in very difficult conditions because they don't have other places to go.

And they are rent burdened.

So I agree with all of the recommendations and statements that Sunshine Mathen just made.

And I wanted to point out that it really takes a salary of over $70,000 to not be rent burdened and afford an average priced apartment in the area.

The rent costs in the Charlottesville Albemarle area have gone up over 30% just in the last four years.

The quality of life is really hurting and I appreciated your early conversation about balancing quality of life, equity concerns, environmental stewardship.

Those are all really important issues.

I think a lot of times what we don't see because we're not living it is the quality of life suffering that's going on.

and I encourage you to increase the growth areas and increase density with upzoning.

An overlay district sounds like a wonderful option.

And I hope that you will really look deeply at how you can take action that will be ambitious to address these issues through the AC44 process.

Thank you.

Are there any other comment on items not on the public hearing agenda?

All right, seeing none, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

I move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Great.

Ms.

Firehock.

Hi.

Hi.

Great.

Thank you.

Welcome, Commissioner Firehawk.

With that, we'll move on to the public hearings and begin with SP 2022-26, the Shule property.

Well, good evening, everyone.

My name is Cameron Langell, and I'm a principal planner with the Planning Division of the Community Development Department.

Tonight, I'll be giving you the staff presentation and recommendation on SP 2022-26, which is the shawl property.

This is a request for a public garage on a piece of land in the county that's owned RA rural areas.

Before we get into the details, I think it's important to note that tonight is the second public hearing we've had on this item.

It previously went to the Commission on March 12th of 2024 at the request of the applicant.

It was deferred.

There have been some updates to the proposal itself since then.

I think my presentation is going to be pretty similar to what you saw back in March.

I've updated it slightly, but I just wanted to make that known.

This is the second public hearing for this item.

So to begin, this is where we're located.

Our parcel of land is highlighted in yellow in the center of your screen.

It's known as tax map parcel 121-86I.

It measures 6.41 acres, zoned RA rural areas.

It is in the entrance corridor overlay zoning district, and it is right at the southeast corner of the intersection between Scottsville Road, Colesrolling Road, and Plank Road.

There's a variety of surrounding uses in the immediate vicinity of the property.

There's the Keen Post Office.

There's also the Piedmont Veterinary Service Clinic, the Green Mountain Country Store.

The Keen VDOT area headquarters is located slightly to the east on Coles Rolling Road, and then the remaining properties are either undeveloped or feature single-family detached residential homes.

So as a refresher, let's talk about what a public garage is.

What you see on your screen is the exact text taken from our zoning ordinance.

Public garage means a building or portion thereof other than a private garage that is designed or used for servicing or repairing motor driven vehicles.

So the services that would be allowed in a public garage would include things like engine work, battery and fluid replacement, flat tire repair, safety inspections.

A public garage is not a body shop.

That has a separate definition in our zoning ordinance, which is a facility.

I won't read the whole thing, but basically that's where you take your vehicle.

If you get in a big car crash and your car is totaled, or you need significant body work done, like replacing panels on the side of your car, painting and things like that.

So a public garage is not a body shop.

This is an image of the updated concept plan that has been prepared by the applicant.

I'm going to go ahead and use my laser pointer just to make this a little bit easier for everybody to follow along.

So of course we have Cole's Rolling Road up here.

Just like the original proposal that we saw in March, the entrance is in the same location.

There's going to be an opaque gate right here.

And then surrounding basically everything that you see that's actually going to be developed within the property, there's going to be a six foot tall fence.

There is a forested buffer that exists today.

It varies in width for the entire perimeter of the parcel.

It has gotten wider in a couple areas, mostly down here on the southeast side.

The staff report touches on that a bit.

But the most critical thing to talk about in terms of changes from what we saw in March is that there is only 2.8 acres of land disturbance now.

that has been reduced from 3.02 acres with the original proposal.

Only 1.05 acres of the property will actually be developed for things like building, parking, and travel ways.

And so when I say that, what that 1.5 acres means, it means everything that you see in gray, which that gray represents, parking and travel way.

You see the building here.

There's another building here, which I'll talk about in a moment.

The areas that you see in white will be graded.

There's existing vegetation there that will be cut down.

But the purpose of that area is two things.

This property is in the rural area, which means it's going to have well and septic.

This is where the septic system drain field would be located.

And then this area here is where the stormwater detention pond would be proposed.

Those are basically in the same place that she saw with the concept plan back in March.

The last thing I wanted to talk about

and this was brought up during the public hearing.

We had some discussion on it, the commission and staff and we also heard some comments from members of the public.

But originally there was four metal shipping containers that you saw here that this business was proposing to use for storage of parts or other materials that would be needed to operate the business.

Since that time, they have removed the storage containers and they're now proposing a permanent accessory building that's fully enclosed in that same area.

So this is the evaluation criteria that staff has to look at when we're looking at a special use permit.

I have a detailed analysis in the staff report.

I'm not going to read these word for word or really get into too much detail.

But basically, with the changes that have been proposed, our original staff analysis all stays the same.

There's going to be visual and noise measures in place that would prevent impacts to adjacent properties due to the

and a lot of non-residential uses that are on those adjacent parcels.

We feel that in this area, the character would remain unchanged.

It's in harmony with the purpose and intent of the chapter.

Specifically, there are supplemental regulations in the zoning ordinance that apply to public garages.

The original proposal

didn't really address anything on the concept plan about that, but they have since revised it to include notes that are the exact language of the supplemental regulations.

If this were to be approved by the board, staff would be making sure that all those supplemental regulations are adhered to and complied with both at the site plan review stage and then once this would be built and actually in operation.

For the more consistency with the comprehensive plan,

Allowing this use would provide a limited amount of service delivery to residents in the rural areas, which is one of the things from our rural areas chapter that's talked about.

And then in terms of environmental protection,

With the revisions that have now been made, 59% of the existing vegetation on this property would be retained.

So from an ecosystem protection standpoint, we think that's good.

The original proposal was only about 53%, if I'm not mistaken.

So that has increased.

The factor is favorable.

It's consistent with the review criteria for special use permits contained in the zoning ordinance.

And it's located in the area of the rural area zoning district that does have other nearby non-residential uses.

Unfavorable factors, the public garage does not actively support agricultural or forestal activities in the rural area.

These are the conditions that staff is recommending with approval of this special use permit.

They have been slightly changed.

Basically, the first one removed reference to storage containers.

The second one, condition number two, there was four letters underneath it originally, and one of them said that if there's storage containers on site, it would be limited to a maximum of four.

We've just removed that now that there's a permanent accessory building proposed.

And condition number three is exactly the same as you saw it in March.

That concludes my presentation.

Great, thank you.

Great report.

Any questions from commission?

Sort of a basic question.

Thank you for the total acres of land disturbance comparison from the previous proposal to this one.

Could you tell me the

Same for the paved area.

What was the previous one?

Yeah.

So the paved area, which would be, you know, the parking travel ways in the buildings itself originally, I believe it was 1.30 acres and it's now 1.05.

Yeah, there'd be things like oil changes and that sort of thing going on here.

So oil changes would be allowed in terms of like long term storage of contaminated fluids.

I think that's actually dictated by

ECR, I believe, or the Health Department.

I just have a clarifying question.

The conditions indicated hours operation.

Just want to confirm that excludes towing vehicles to the site.

That could be done at two in the morning or whenever it's necessitated, I should say.

Are you asking like with the condition the way it's worded, it would allow towing to occur at those times?

Right.

So, the way it's worded right now is it says that there's the hours of operation, but it does allow customers to do drop-offs of their personal vehicles earlier than 8 a.m.

So, I mean, that's something that we've commonly seen with other public garages that have been approved in the county.

They may not open until 8 in the morning, but they've got a drop box where you could come and drop your own vehicle.

I do not think the way it's worded now would allow tow trucks to be coming in and out of here all night long.

Commissioner Carrazana, Capara.

Just a quick question.

Is there any information on the fence itself, the privacy fence that's supposed to surround it?

Is it chain link?

I'm gonna pan back to one of my slides and I'm sorry it might be a little bit difficult to see but this is a detailed defense so it would be a minimum of six feet in height for that entire perimeter and then since this is the entrance corridor we have said that it needs to be opaque materials just to protect you know that that visual sight line into the property from the roadways

I have no questions for staff.

Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners.

Good evening.

My name is Clint Shiflett.

I'm with Timon's Group, representing the applicant, Tommy Shull.

I think Cameron has a few slides to share, just five or six slides.

Great, thanks.

Some of this will be duplicate, but we just wanted to make sure some of these eyes were touched on.

This one right here, of course, is the application plan.

Probably don't need to dwell on that.

I think Cameron hit that pretty well.

I'm going to go to the next one.

So we showed a slide similar last time, but just getting everybody back up to speed.

It's been a while.

Just site context, just to show the site layout in the context of the uses around it.

I think this was spoken on as well, but this kind of gives a visual, right?

You've got the VDOT headquarters across the street, Green Mountain Country Store, U-Haul facility, Piedmont Veterinary Service, post office, and then down the road,

about 250, 300 feet is the Southern Albemarle Convenience Center as well, just to show the character of the land use as it is today in that area.

Next slide.

Again, a little bit of duplicate slide that we showed last time, but just kind of looking at view, view shed, if you will, from the street.

These two images on the right are coming down Rolling Coles Road headed north.

The one view is looking toward the VDOT facility.

Actually, the two on the right are both looking kind of down the road toward the VDOT facility.

Again, show some psych context.

The two images on the left are coming north on Scottsville.

The one at the top is at that intersection with some of those uses we mentioned previously.

The image on the bottom shows just the heavy existing vegetation that exists today, roadside.

That's looking right at the parcel to the right is the parcel in question with the heavy vegetation.

Next slide.

This is a touch on as well, but again, just to get a visual of kind of the evolution of this project as we've taken in community feedback and public meetings.

This image on the left, it was from our original SUP application plan.

took this to the community at the community meeting, received staff feedback as well.

So Tommy and I went back to the drawing board, figured out how can we dial the project back, the impact on the site and preserve more buffer and things of that nature.

With that, we came up with a 37% reduction between September of 2022 and the application plan that you guys first saw in March, represented a 37% reduction in land disturbance.

Next slide.

and then further moving on and further taking in feedback and refining the design.

We were able to reduce the overall disturbance by an additional 7%, which represents a 41% reduction in what we went in with originally to where we're at here today with today's application plan there on the right.

Next slide.

and lastly, I know you guys hit most of this already.

Just wanted to just reiterate some of the conditions that are in place today with the recommended approval as well as some of the ordinance items.

I'm bringing these up because this addresses a lot of what we've heard from the community as it relates to their concerns of the site.

The restricted hours of operation, the use being limited to repairing, equipping of vehicles,

The limit vehicle storage to 30-day maximum on site.

The screening and landscape planning and final site layout, just a reminder that that will be reviewed by ARB.

So the opaque fencing material, the vegetation buffering, things like that goes through that next round at the ARB and will be subject to their review.

And again, the ordinance that dictates

the uses in the public garage.

What can be done in the public garage use that all parts of materials shall be stored within the enclosed building which we proposed and that no vehicles awaiting repair shall be located on any portion of the site that can be visible from the public street or any other residential properties.

One thing I did want to address, I think I heard a question about towing and after hours.

You know, Tommy and I circled up before this to get an understanding of his operations and things of that nature.

They obviously keep really good records, tow logs, things of that nature.

He pointed out that in the last 30 days,

They only had two cars brought in after hours.

And one was at 6.15 AM.

The other was about 7.30 PM.

The majority of Tommy's operations for tow service is operated out of his Avon parcel, much closer to town where a vast majority of the towing is taking place.

So this location is not anticipated to see any significant

Towing and after hours would certainly be an exception and not the rule.

I think that's all we've got.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Ms.

Thank you for the presentation.

My name is Tommy Schill.

Thank you.

Okay.

Could you, based off of that, could you share a little bit about the thinking behind the site design and the amount of pavement that we all see for three to four cars, service per day?

So what we do in a site like this is look at one method to understand how much pavement we need is anticipating employee parking and some number of cars awaiting repair.

But more importantly, I think the area you see is understanding, we run, it's called auto turn modeling.

It's modeling the vehicles turning in, turning out, and navigating around the site.

So what we've got here with this one acre of pavement, which is a reduction from, I think we had about three with that initial one, really represents that we feel is the bare minimum area that the site could function properly, where cars awaiting repair could be there.

What's the biggest size vehicle that you use for that?

So we modeled a, just as an example vehicle, a 45 foot box truck.

Mr. Murray.

Where do you see your primary customer base coming from for this facility?

Probably mainly the Charlottesville area from the beginning.

Not to say it won't bring on work from that area.

But I really want to know exactly that.

But we have a lot of requests for repair within the towing business.

So that's more or less what this is about.

Great.

I think just based on the letters that we've all gotten on the Planning Commission, I think there's some concern or just not understanding why a full acre of pavement is needed for a 4B garage where you're going to repair three or four cars a day.

I was just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit more, like the size of the pavement paved area when

Yeah, I can help to speak to that again.

Cameron, is it possible to pull the application plan up one more time?

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thanks.

So maybe it's hard to make out of this scale, but you can see adjacent to the garage building right now, we've got... So that's five parking spaces in that area, right?

With a 24 foot drive aisle to be able to get around to the building and into that parking space.

I bring that up just to show a little context, right?

That whole corner right there is just to facilitate the five parking spaces.

So you can kind of imagine if you extract that out across the site, it's not as large as one acre lot doesn't accommodate.

Many vehicles, as you would think.

Again, the front of the garage facility needs access for cars to come in and out, get back in.

We need to have the ability for towed vehicles to be able to drop off and then the vehicles to swing around and leave.

And the ability to access the storage building that's also included on the site as well as some storage of vehicles.

So yeah, it's not an exact science, but it's definitely been evaluated.

Thinking about operations and working with Tommy and understanding what they need out of the site.

Not handy, no, but I'm happy to share them later.

I just had another question about your customer base again.

So the cars that you repair, are those from, I'll say, a car that was towed, it got in a wreck, and they want you to repair it?

So somebody would call you and say, my car broke down.

Correct.

Yeah.

Like my car breaks down in 29.

I call you and you come take it to that facility.

Absolutely.

And so you're really just looking for a facility where you can expand this business, but not in not closer to Charlottesville.

Correct.

Okay.

Yeah.

If I could help with some clarity there and correct me if I'm wrong, Tommy.

So the Avon facility, he's got a facility today on Avon.

Kind of outgrowing that.

The idea is that is mainly going to be the dispatch, right?

That's where most of the tow vehicles would be because that's where they would be emanating from because it's closer to their clients that need to be towed in the city.

Mostly.

And the need has also been asked to, hey, we would love for you guys to be able to provide additional repair services.

And so the idea is that this would function as the repair hub.

OK.

The regular tow vehicles.

OK.

That helps.

Thanks.

I had a few questions and a couple of these may have already been answered, but I just want to make sure I'm understanding it.

One is, when you look at this plan, and I know you replaced the C cans or whatever those were with an actual building and enclosed building, it's adjacent, I'm reading this, it's adjacent to 20.

That's the backside.

That's close relative.

That's right.

Okay.

So you've moved it away from Route 20.

Okay.

I had my things slipped.

Never mind.

You identified a lot of surrounding uses that was helpful to see.

There's also a lot of residential surrounding uses that you didn't identify, right?

Sure.

They're kind of mixed in with them.

Let's see, and this was the one I think you've already answered maybe two or three times already, but I'll double check.

So hours of operation, right, were noted as a timeline between, I can't remember what the time was, Cameron, could you go back?

Eight to five, but you are saying that you can still tow vehicles to this site.

after hours, right?

I think currently the condition has written would not restrict that, as I understand it, but not restrict towing, bringing a vehicle in or out after hours.

So the way I read it is that it does restrict towing.

It allows customers to drop their vehicles off earlier than eight a.m.

on the days of operation.

I don't know.

I've got some staff members here that we could have a discussion and call them up if need be.

So if they chose to open at seven,

and I had a car that needed to be repaired.

I thought, but I thought you said that they could drop them off before customers could come into the site, park their vehicle, put their keys in a drop box and then leave the site before.

Yes, before before.

Yes.

So, I mean, that would be something that they would figure out, you know, as we're going through this, but there's ways that those gates can have sensors or something, or they can be given a code where a customer, hey, we call up, I need to get my car serviced.

What is your operating protocol for that kind of thing?

Would you allow access to the internal site after hours?

Interesting.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

I've seen that there's some un-clarity around your last question about eight to five and being able to drop off tow trucks.

I just want to make sure there's clarity because I heard staff say the way it's written, it doesn't allow that.

We're happy to provide, if the condition needs additional clarity in it, we're happy to restrict tow truck drop off and pick up to within the business hours as well.

If that would be helpful, if there's ambiguity there, we can certainly provide that as well.

Now we would still like to leave the ability

We would like to reserve the ability for customer drop-off, right?

If someone's on their way to work and wants to drop the car off at 7 a.m.

on their way to work, to me, that seems reasonable.

That's not a large truck.

But if there's a way in the conditions to disallow the towing operations and the drop-off and pick-up of the towing to alleviate any concerns about loud vehicles and lights late at night, we're happy to add that to the conditions as well if it needs to be.

Thank you both.

Appreciate it.

And I have a sign up list for public comment.

And just as a reminder, you'll have three minutes in total to speak, you'll have green light for the first two, and then you get a yellow for the last one, you could wrap up before the red

Dings, I don't know why I'm looking at that side of the room, but just generally.

Also, I'll also mention just if you agree with what the previous person has said, feel free to just raise your hand.

And we will take that as a second set of comments or a plus one or two or three or whatever it is.

There's no need to come up and speak if you don't wish to, but you're always welcome.

So with that, I will ask, I'll go to the first name and I believe it's Jerome Beasley.

and just a reminder to everybody, please state your name for the record.

Thank you.

My name is Jerome Basely and my wife and I live in Esmont and own property across the street from the post mechanic shop.

When the application was initially filed a year ago and during the

The community meeting in the spring, there were numerous objections, particularly regarding the applicants' blatant violation of zoning laws at both his home and the parcel in question.

He operates without consequence, fully aware that enforcement action is unlikely due to the complexities of court action.

At the last planning commission, you expressed concern about the neighborhood's lack of trust in the applicant, which is quite reasonable.

You might expect the applicant would be motivated to bring his property in compliance with zoning loans.

However, he has doubled down.

and Dunn the opposite.

Instead of complying, the advocate has increased his violation by repositioning his commercial towing trucks, tractor trailers, and other business equipment on residential property, which is not permitted.

What makes this situation even more alarming is that his property is only a few hundred feet from the proposed site.

It is clear to us that this is not merely a public garage, but rather an unauthorized auto and towing shop as indicated by the size and the after hours drop-offs.

As violations of ignoring zoning laws are serious concern, approving this application would allow the applicant to continue bypassing zoning laws and gradually moving his industrial equipment onto the site.

This amounts to a bait and switch tactic aimed at the Planning Commission.

The applicant's bad pattern of behavior demonstrates a total disregard for county regulations, once a special use permit is granted, enforcing its terms of existing laws and regulations will likely become impossible once the applicant establishes itself on the land.

Finally, the partial land commands attention and takes on a prominent focal point on the corner of Highway 20

and Coze Rowley Road, thanks to its elevation and substantial size.

However, the establishment of auto mechanic shop hundreds of feet of fencing along Highway 20 and Coze Rowley Road and a parking lot for industrial equipment, which starkly contrasts with the rural charm of the area diminishing its character and appeal.

I strongly urge you to now eat this special use permit

to prevent the unfortunate situation from unfolding.

Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners.

Andrew Brennan.

resident nearly 30 years on Secretary Sand Road of Plank Road.

They paved paradise, but they put up a parking lot.

1970, Choney Mitchell, and I'm hoping we're in a better place now than they were then.

I want to say actually something about Keen itself, because I think that's why they're important and part of the context.

I don't know if you know that

Theodore Roosevelt had his first camp, David, at a place called Pine Knot in 1905, and that's still there just around the corner from this suggested location that's for a two-lot.

There are at least three buildings that are in the National Register of Historic Places, Christchurch, Glendale, New Access on Coles Rowling Road, Plain Dealing Farm, Access on Coles Rowling Road, and the Rectory also on the same road.

and I also want to mention, of course, the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, which is a historic black church just across the road.

So I would just like to say I do see that Keane is rather reminds me of your logo behind me there because there are lots of horse farms in the area.

Plain Dealing has produced an Olympic horse and silver medal.

I don't know if you're aware of that.

and then I look at the buildings and I've mentioned some of the historic buildings and of course you've got the pictures of the orchards up there and I just, without starting facetious, I'm hoping that the new logo isn't going to be horse power rather than horses and we aren't going to be seeing parking lots as opposed to orchards in future.

So I would just like to say I would urge you to reject this submission.

I do think that it's more important that we

keep the character of our community as you are guardians of our county and our countryside.

And I'm hoping you will reject this submission.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Sarah Sargent.

I'm a resident of Esmont.

And I just have to get my phone organized here.

Sorry.

I'm here to voice my opposition, excuse me, to SB 202226.

A massive public garage like what was just presented is completely at odds with the pretty community crossroads picture that we have been painted.

I wonder how many of you are actually familiar with that intersection.

Right now it has a distinct country charm with a historic veterinary clinic on one side and the Green Mountain store on the other.

while the store does rent U-Hauls.

Calling at a U-Haul facility suggests a much bigger commercial operation than in fact it is.

It is a side business of the store with a handful of U-Haul trucks parked there.

The VDOT facility is hidden along Cole's Rolling Road, while the recycling center is likewise disguised on Esmont Road.

These are necessary civic operations, not private enterprises.

Aside from the immediate impact this business will have on the surrounding area,

Like many of my neighbors, I fear that if this is approved, it will be a giant green light to developers and business owners looking for cheap land.

and very soon, instead of pastoral rolling hills dotted with farms that are the hallmark of Albemarle County as well as orchards, our precious corner will be inundated with subdivisions, solar farms and businesses that should be relegated to industrial zoned areas either in Charlottesville or Scottsville, which is a mere six miles away.

I urge you to reject the submission.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Good evening.

I've got a stuffed up nose.

I'll try to speak clearly.

I'm Laurel Davis.

I live on Esmont Road.

I moved here 30 years ago for the gorgeous natural beauty and quiet and to build a home here in which to raise my daughter.

And this is what worries me.

It feels as though those in charge of making decisions for the future of this county imagine themselves CEOs of a profitable corporation, not the protectors of the nature of this county that we call home.

15 years ago, my then eight year old daughter

stood before the county board when we were fighting the proposed firing range and said, you're supposed to be the guardians of this county and you're doing a stinky job of it.

And I must confess, I feel the same now.

When I hear about yet another plan to further erode the beauty and rural nature of my neighborhood, a commercial enterprise that has no place being there, belongs in an area zoned commercial and industrial.

and I can't help but wonder if yet again there has been a determination made that our end of the county having the most low income as well as African-American households somehow doesn't deserve the protections that were written into the comprehensive plan.

There was the dumps, there was the proposed firing range, now we have a waste site and now a tow truck depot.

I'm not against change in general, but I am against change that destroys the essence of places.

Thank you.

My name is Shirley Phillips.

I live on Coles Rowling Road.

My land backs up to Shawls, to his home and where he is running a business out of now.

You all talked about the containers.

That's not going to be on the corner.

That's because they're on the land behind me.

Go there and count the containers there now.

When they had their first meeting at Walton School, it was relayed that he was running a business.

Nothing has been done.

Is Albemarle County protecting him in some way?

The rest of the residents of Albemarle County has rights to.

He continues to do things his way.

If this thing gets passed, which it probably will, I don't care what restrictions he has, he will do it his way.

Now, tell me this.

How many of you all are going to drive your car from Charlottesville to Keene to get it fixed?

Now, if he's going to tow cars down Route 20, which is a dangerous road, you can ask anybody.

That's putting another danger on that road.

It was stated that the gates would be closed.

and if the gates are closed, nobody can drop their cars off.

When I first moved there, I moved there in 1972.

The State Highway was a satellite office and that has developed into a mega business.

I don't think Cole's Rolling Road can stand any more traffic

other than the State Highway and the horse trail as it goes to Plain Dilling Farm.

Thank you.

Right.

And I put this in context.

I'm Shirley's next door neighbor.

So I've grown up there all my life.

I've lived there for 58 years and I live at 1585, which is directly behind it.

And the property that's there on the corner, they have the picture kind of wrong.

They have a picture of 20 South and like a whole bunch of wood.

You're actually, if you get closer,

that corner right there you can see into the property and you can see that they have two great big dump dumpsters there right now they also have um

It's when you come into the property on Coles Rowling Road, it's a hill and it's kind of a blind hill.

We used to own that property there.

So I'm the one that can probably speak the most of it, but there's a road there.

There always was a road there.

R.E.

Shirley's son and I used to ride many bikes on it when we were kids.

And I can't tell you how many times we've driven up through there and almost been near ended from coming up that hill on Coles Rowling Road.

and turning right into that road right there.

We have 1585 and mine is directly behind the private property.

I can hear large equipment at my house at all times of the day that vibrate my home.

I did at one time notice large amounts of vehicle, including a tanker.

It was like an oil tanker.

I don't know what it was, but it was a very large tanker.

Tons of old tow trucks, ambulances, trucks and cars.

They crushed them all because they got in trouble and they got rid of them, but there's still stuff going on back there.

Right now, there are three dumpsters that are back there.

They're full of stuff.

I don't know what they are.

I can see it directly behind there because I have an open area.

And when their property that they're going to have can be seen into 20 South, it's not that wooded area right there.

It's up closer to where it's at that corner lot thing.

But I have lived there most of my life and I realized how dangerous 20 South can be.

My dad was hit there and was forever

unable to work again.

With the businesses and extra traffic added to this residential neighborhood, I can see the intersection just getting worse.

It's going to be bad.

There are lots of VDOT trucks and horse trailers now on Coles Rolling Road.

This added vehicles cannot be good for the neighborhood.

This is going to be, it's also going to decrease my home value and I know my neighbors and they have voiced their own concerns about the decrease of their property value because

of that business right there and the noise that they're going to be making.

I feel, in closing, I feel that they've been cited already and on their private property and what is to stop them from making a junkyard on this property.

They did have a junkyard on that corner lot right there and that was also the vehicles were removed from that.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Bertone.

I live in Asmont.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the Commission.

If it doesn't walk like a duck, and if it doesn't talk like a duck, it's probably not a duck.

And in this case, it's no public garage.

The applicant has a successful towing, impoundment, and vehicle storage business on Avon Street extended, as you know.

And he would like to replicate much of that business in Keen.

but knowing that such a commercial establishment would not be allowed under the regulations in a rural area.

The applicant is trying to position the proposed facility as a public garage.

Do not be fooled, it's no public garage.

There are, however, four public garages that adequately serve the keen area.

Southside Garage, East Main Garage, West River Garage, and a garage on Plank Road only one quarter mile from the applicant site.

Each has a scale appropriate for a public garage in a rural area and look nothing like the proposed site.

The Plank Road and Southside Garages have no hard surfaces, none, for parked vehicles awaiting repairs.

while East Main and West River have less than 5,000 square feet for vehicles awaiting repairs.

In comparison, the applicant is requesting over 40,000 square feet of asphalt, which is 10 times larger than even the largest public garage footprint and an astonishing 20 times the average.

because the applicant needs space to park and maneuver a fleet of large tow trucks and store impounded cars.

The existing public garages have no retaining ponds, but the applicant is requesting one.

Why?

The reason's obvious.

10 times too much asphalt.

The existing public garages have no gate, but the applicant is requesting one.

Why?

Public garages do not need to lock away and protect impounded cars.

The existing public garages have an average footprint of 2,000 square feet instead of the requested 6,000.

It is clear that the applicant is trying to cite disallow towing, impoundment, and vehicle storage business and keen under the guise of a public garage as he is currently doing improperly at his current residence.

Do not be fooled.

This is not an application for a public garage.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Hello, my name is John Cosette and I live in Scottsville.

And I'm not sure if I have anything much to add because my neighbors have said everything so eloquently of what I feel, but we move to

Southern Albemarle County, 20 years ago, really, because we want to live in a historic rural area.

We live in a historic farm, and I believe Route 20 is a historic byway.

I'm curious why we would even consider such a large commercial endeavor to be in place in an area where it doesn't belong.

Not that I'm against small businesses.

I support small businesses wherever I can.

But I feel this is a much larger repair shop that I have ever seen.

And I certainly don't understand the footprint request and feel like something like that should exist in a commercial or industrial area and not in a rural agriculture residential area.

My heart goes out to the neighbors.

If you were to drive by, it's quite unsightly.

to see the school residents and all of the trucks that are currently being stored there.

It's really not fair for them.

They've lived there forever.

It's not fair for us that live in the southern part of the county, which is really a celebration of the historic rural community, which Albemarle County, I see signs as soon as I get out of the airport or as soon as I am in the

Lacebury Get Your Luggage.

There's this big sign celebrating historic rural, Aberdeen County, county offices, another sign celebrating rural.

So I beg you, I ask you please honor what we're all about in the southern part of the community.

Thank you.

Paula Beasley?

Tim Schmidt is on deck.

that I live at 6198 Green Mountain Road and own the 1790 Closing Road.

For at least three decades, the Comprehensive Plan has supported preservation and protection of our rural areas and its agricultural, forestal, equine and related endeavors.

This industrial commercial application is not permissible on a rural area zoned parcel.

Two inconsequential changes to the application don't change that fact.

and in fact one of the changes as I just saw this evening is they will denude all the trees on the side of the residential properties directly in front of our home, our rental home and also the four containers that were only 1286 square feet are now replaced with a 2000 square foot permanent structure.

Under county regs and UVA law, public garages are distinguishable from auto repair and towing shops, body shops yet another category, and none of those are permitted by right or by special use permit in the rural areas.

This decision, such as the state-owned VDOT and the size and scope of the Recycle Center, at least supportive uses, should not be used to shoehorn in this commercial enterprise or be used to justify future keen industrial activity that will spur development and insightful for the crossroads community designation conversations.

Our community very loudly and clearly doesn't want or need this industrial size, really an impermissible auto repair and towing shop in our historic rule intersection.

Why are all the relevant criteria and considerations being bent to approve this application?

Good for the applicant for being successful and expanding his business, which enables him to do it in a commercial industrial area where it belongs.

Who will be protecting the interests and voices the elderly, widowed residents having lived there over 50 years with the expectation the rural area zoning will be honored?

Forfeiting their quiet hood to bolster the profits of one man, they will experience a detrimental change in their environment and way of life and certainly interrupt the harmony of the area with the beeping of trucks backing up the ambient noise of a commercial enterprise and trying to avoid them and the 18 wheelers when driving to the Green Mountain Store

or Town for Groceries and Supplies.

The economic drivers the country should be supporting in the rural areas are agricultural, forestal, equine and related businesses, not industrial sprawl.

Look at the broader context of the area.

Approval of individual commercial endeavors, i.e.

spot zoning,

will transform rural areas into sprawl and ultimately the end of rural areas.

Once built, the damage is done.

No fines, no SUP reservation, revocation will restore the site or the rural areas.

You may not be controlled, you may not have controlled the state's VLOT decision, but you do control this one.

Thank you.

Kim Schmidt and then Kim Schmidt, you're on deck.

Live at 6507 Scottsville Road.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

My wife and I live at 6507 Scottsville Road.

We've owned the property for about 30 years.

And I wrote a speech today, spent some time on it, and it really boils down to who here believes that a four bay garage

requires an acre of asphalt paving and the subsequent big fence around it, the drainage pond and all that.

This is just playing into a loophole in the zoning.

This is, oh, a garage is allowed in the rural areas.

This is a sidelight.

It's just a way to get an industrial storage site OK for the rural area.

I'm really concerned.

What you have the picture there was taken yesterday as I was driving along 20 with my little iPhone, took the picture.

That is what the Shoal property looks like now, the private property of Shoal.

Notice that there are semis, trailers, various vehicles, and excavation equipment.

These are all in violation of the current zoning, current zoning rules.

And I've even, that has been inspected recently, and it is legitimately in violation of the zoning rules.

What we expect at this site, and why everybody is so upset, is we, nobody needs

and Ager for four bays of a garage.

This will end up being a towing site or a storage site for construction equipment, both of which are not allowed, but who's going to check on this?

Are we going to send the

The Zoning Commission office out to check every two weeks to see if these cars have been sitting for 30 days?

No.

And there's going to be a fence around it.

It's going to be locked.

Who can go in there and check what's going on?

My wife and I have already gotten three letters from a lawyer saying, don't enter this property.

And we have never even set foot on the property.

We do not trust the situation.

We know it's going to be abused.

And by history,

that the applicant has abused the zoning rules in the past and is not compliant with the rules as they are clearly spoken.

So now look at this.

Let's not be naive.

Ask yourself, is this really a legitimate garage that they're applying for or is this just a way to move an industrial business into our rural area?

Thank you.

Kim Schmidt, and then I think it's Nick Saki.

Sorry if I mispronounced that.

My name is Kim Schmidt.

I'm married to the tall guy.

You might want to lower the mic.

Yeah.

We live on a horse farm.

We moved here from Florida where development is crazy and there's no protection.

And I said, I want to live where it's least likely to grow when we had our realtor.

We've lived someplace where things are developed crazy and you have no protection and zoning has changed.

And so we found Southern Albemarle to raise our kids.

We have been to these meetings for over a year now for this thing.

So we've been to many meetings, written many letters.

I have a question for you.

And this has been brought up.

But what is your job, commissioners?

Is it to protect our community?

And that's when we moved here, Albemarle County supports agriculture that we knew that.

That's why we bought a horse farm there.

Many of us have stood up and spoken and written letters.

Nothing has changed.

You've already heard all about that.

At the meeting in March, there was a deferral on these proceedings.

I found it very interesting that Mr. Missel had picked up on one important element from all of the many topics brought up.

He said that it was clear that this community did not trust Mr. Schull.

Mr. Missel had boiled down all the hours of debate to one important thing that he focused on.

He said that clearly it was obvious there was a lack of trust.

The community simply doesn't trust him.

After the many meetings and letters and phone calls, Mr. Schul has done exactly what we expected, exactly what we warned you he would do.

He was not in compliance then.

He is not now.

He doesn't hide it.

This is a question of honorable.

He does not care about our community is how we feel.

He does not care about the historical nature and rural lifestyle of our community.

He does not care that the unsightly nature of this business is not suitable for this area.

So we don't trust him, but we are trusting you.

the commission to do what is right to do your job to uphold the zoning that is in place and protect this community you serve.

Thank you.

Nick Saki, I believe.

Sorry.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

I reside on Albereen Road in Esmouth.

I wish to state my strong opposition to the special use permit application of Schultz property record service proposed for the intersection of Route 20, that's Scottsville Road and Coles Rolling Road in Keen.

So there are two primary reasons I oppose this permit.

I'll keep it short.

Number one is traffic.

Route 20 has seen a huge increase in car and truck commuter traffic to and from Scottsville, especially during the hours of 6 a.m.

and 9 a.m.

and in the evenings after 4.30 p.m.

It's especially difficult and dangerous already

to attempt to enter Route 20 North at the intersection of Coles Rolling Road from Esmont Plank Road during these times.

There are no blinking red warning lights or stop lights that could slow traffic at this intersection.

adding a succession of huge tow trucks with vehicles in tow, turning onto Coles Rolling Road from Route 20 at all hours of the day and night will drastically increase the danger of crashes and fatal accidents that may be on your hands.

Number two, I respect, excuse me, respect for our rural communities.

On both the east and west sides of Route 20 at this intersection, the proposed Scholl facility comes into direct conflict with the agricultural, forestal, natural, scenic, and historic resources of this rural area.

There are nearby farms and historic venues that provide passive, safe, and invaluable economic impact with hay and crop production, veterinary services, equine programs and clinics, winery tourism, as well as bed and breakfast venues.

I do not believe the location, character, size, and extent of this proposed facility is in compliance with the county's comprehensive plan.

Nearby neighbors and area residents are in opposition to this facility.

Thank you.

Maybe if you could just thank you very much.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

And I apologize, Mr. Duke, I'll do you the courtesy of calling you by the right name.

Next one.

Thank you.

And then followed by Susan Love.

And that takes us to the end of our thought.

I was next.

My name is Collins Huff.

And I'm a resident of Esmaf.

With all due respect to my neighbors,

who are in opposition to this.

I'd like to say that I think that if you look at the book Home From Nowhere by Howard Consular, most of it is Chronic Lane, the expansion of urban sprawl.

Kind of the opposite of that is touched on as the decline of the rural economy.

And

One of the things that the takeaway from both of those is the village concept.

The village concept is the idea that you might be able to work, shop, obtain basic services within proximity to your own property.

I would argue that

Mr. Scholl's business is actually beneficial to the farms.

I'd much rather have a horse trailer broke down fixed in a keen than towed all the way up Route 20.

I'd also like to say that I think whoever he may employ there would not have to commute all the way into town.

Anybody from Southern Albemarle that worked for him wouldn't have to commute all the way to town.

Also,

Anybody that got their car done there wouldn't have to go into town.

That would actually take pressure off of Route 20.

And so I think the logging trucks, the farmers, on the farmer, I get my truck worked on in the shop on Avon Street.

And much rather be able to get it done closer to the farm than further from the farm.

Thank you.

Good evening, gentlemen.

How is everyone and lady?

It's very good to see you.

Thank you so much for hearing our concerns this evening.

I agree with everything all of my friends have said.

except for the gentleman who just spoke.

I kind of disagree with him.

But I'm going to speak to you about a different matter.

And that is your heart.

I'm sorry.

I have been a school teacher for 34 years, and I have put everything I have into my home that is one mile from the proposed special permit.

Everything.

34 years in the classroom, people.

It's everything to me.

And I just feel like if your home was one mile from this, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

So I need to put that out there first because that's what it boils down to for me.

I put everything I had into a place because it had peace and solitude.

Bottom line.

I also want to mention that he has the other property in town.

So his business is already not a rural business.

It's a business in town.

So that's why I disagree with the gentleman who just spoke.

The other thing I'd like to say that my friend Nick Duke or Saki, if you will, mentioned red flashing lights.

Don't get any ideas because we don't want those either.

OK.

I'm a math teacher.

I'm a mathematician.

So I'm noticing one in three tenths of an acre to one in five hundredths of an acre.

Friends, that is not a big difference.

I also heard the numbers 59% to 53%.

If I'm teaching a class on mathematics, which I do every day, that's not a huge decrease.

Peace does not equal noise.

Rural does not equal traffic.

Asphalt is not congruent to environmentally friendly.

Approval does not support your constituents.

Do the restrictions really matter if there's no one to enforce them because there's not?

I don't think our rural county has the bandwidth for it.

And I don't think you do either.

Once this is done, it will be very hard to undo it.

You will vote and you will move on, but we will have to live with it every single day in a place that we put everything we have into.

And I want you to think about that when you place this vote tonight.

Thank you.

I have exhausted my list of names that I've not been able to pronounce and would like to just open it up to see if there's someone who has not spoken who would like to come up.

Hello, my name is Sophie Massey.

I live near Scottsville.

I've actually been a happy customer of Scholes towing in the past.

So this, my comments are actually about taking issue with the permit.

To state the obvious, Scholes is applying for a special use permit for a public garage, a use that is allowed in the rural area, but only with a special use permit.

But their application and stated intentions and plans they've submitted reflect their desire to open and operate a garage and a storing wrecking towing business.

Towing falls under Section 3.1 in the county code, under storage, warehousing, distribution, transportation.

and it's allowed by right in the highway commercial and industrial districts and with a special use permit in the commercial commercial office and downtown Crozet districts.

It is not permitted even with a special use permit in the rural district.

This distinction in the county code reflects the wisdom of the zoning ordinance and prohibiting intensive commercial uses in the rural and residential districts.

This particular special use permit is not the appropriate avenue for this business to try to operate in the rural area.

It would be like

a hospital trying to open and keen by applying for a special use permit for a daycare because the hospital happens to offer daycare to its employees.

The public garage special use permit does not fully reflect what the applicant intends to do.

The applicant should either resubmit an application for a little country garage with square footage to match that modest usage and a prohibition on towing and impoundment, or the applicant could try to change the zoning ordinances to allow this kind of commercial industrial use in the rural area.

Good evening.

My name is Roberta Williams, and I live at 1790 Coles Rolling Road.

I'm the lucky or unlucky person who lives across the street from where the proposed entrance is going to be.

My first question to all of you is, have any of you tried to turn in the intersection of Route 20 in Coles Rolling Road?

Okay, so you know how dangerous it is.

That intersection has eight different options.