Planning Commission Work Session (4:00 PM) and Regular Meeting (6:00 PM)   3/11/2025

Great, thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

It's good to see you all.

One second, one second.

Nicole, are you ready?

What is this thing?

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Okay, I'm sorry.

Okay, we are now ready.

Everybody here.

All right, sounds great.

Good afternoon again, everybody.

I will call to order the March 11, 2024 meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission.

And I will read the public can access and participate in the meeting through information posted on the Albemarle County website, specifically on the Planning Commission homepage and the Albemarle County calendar.

During the meeting, there will be opportunities for public comment on specific agenda items where input is invited.

Yes.

We have Ms.

Great.

So perfect way to segue in.

I'm recognizing that

Karen Firehock has joined remotely, and Ms.

Yes, thanks very much.

Awesome.

Sounds great.

The weather is as nice up there as it is here.

It's pretty amazing.

So with that, I'll ask, is there a motion to admit Commissioner Firehawk?

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Great.

All right.

We will roll into the work session.

And before we do, I'll just mention kind of, I guess, a strategy on how we'll approach this.

There'll be two staff presentations.

The first staff presentation will be followed by a very brief time for us to ask that person questions.

So if you have any specific questions, not so much statements on the document itself, but specific questions on the presentation from Mr. Holt, I believe, that will

Befirst and then we'll turn it over to Ms.

Kilroy to present the rest of the discussion this evening.

Great.

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

I'm Ben Holt and I'll be presenting on behalf of the AC44 team today.

So before we dive into the chapter content, one second, just give me a minute to organize my notes.

Mr. Chair, can I have five minutes, please?

I've misplaced one of my documents.

Sure, absolutely.

Do we want to recess for five minutes or do we want to?

Yeah, that should be fine.

OK, sure.

Thank you.

So we'll I guess we'll officially recess for five minutes.

All right, are we back?

Very welcome back.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate your flexibility.

No problem.

With that, I'll begin.

And before we get into the chapter content for Thriving Economy that we'll be talking about today, I wanted to take a minute to kind of give a big picture snapshot of the AC44 project and how it's going to tie into our future implementation efforts.

As you know, the comprehensive plan contains many actions across the 10 AC44 topic chapters.

These actions will be taken as a whole and evaluated to determine the key actions that will be used to inform the six objectives within the board's strategic plan.

and then the budget process will be used to determine how key initiatives will be funded and that will ultimately inform the department work program for how the county resources and staff efforts will ultimately be applied.

Can I ask a quick question?

So we're hoping to have the last topic draft chapter published in June.

So as you move into the late summer months and into the fall, then we're looking at adoption.

So it's our hope to have AC44 adopted later this calendar year.

I couldn't speak in detail about the strategic plan and what the timeline is for that.

So TBD with that effort.

Got it.

So this isn't like the budget process for this year.

This is a future budget.

This is looking forward.

Yeah.

So that board strategic plan, once it's refined, it'll help us determine the CIP that would be used to implement AC44.

We're about halfway through the current board strategic plan, which is all encompassing of the county's local government functions.

So that is, we're coming up on the start of, no, we are three quarters of the way through fiscal year 25.

Got it.

Okay.

That's helpful.

And so for today, I'm going to give a brief presentation on the thriving economy chapter.

I'll keep it pretty quick.

So we leave plenty of time for discussion.

And as you mentioned earlier, we'll also have a presentation from Emily Carroy to my right on the strategic plan from the economic team.

And so what we're going to focus on today with the work session and the feedback that you all will be providing, it's going to be centered on the chapter objectives and actions for thriving economy.

And we're calling particular emphasis on objective two and the associated actions within it, since those focus on land use.

So there are particular importance.

So in terms of previous feedback from both the Commission and the Board, prominent themes on this topic of the economy have included provision of land for target industries, along with the appropriate zoning designations for economic uses, and the need for sites that are development ready or ready for development that

They have supporting infrastructure in place, and the lack of these types of properties were identified by our build-out analysis.

Other themes include the need for affordable housing near employment areas, support for small businesses, the need for workforce development and economic uses in the rural area, such as tourism and outdoor recreation industry.

Community input on this topic has identified the need for jobs that provide career growth opportunities within key industries and the importance of attracting new jobs to the area.

There is also a desire to support businesses and entrepreneurs, including the provision of workspace availability, growing artisan and craft industries, and reducing restrictions for home-based businesses.

Community members also echoed the need for land and infrastructure that supports economic uses and the need to utilize infill and adaptive reuse within our development areas, reducing barriers for site development.

And another priority was workforce development, including career and vocational training by partnering with local colleges and technical schools.

as well as providing the support services for local employees such as childcare, housing, and providing a variety of transportation options.

A thriving economy is also supported by other chapter topics and county initiatives.

Economic development is guided and supported by our growth management policy and the associated land use strategies within both the development areas and the rural areas.

AC44 recognizes the Economic Development Strategic Plan as the primary document guiding the county's economic development and growth.

Both AC44 and the EDSP, the Strategic Plan, reinforce connections to the board initiatives of equity and climate action.

In terms of overall scope, the thriving economy objectives and actions provide high-level support for economic development, while the ongoing or pending economic strategic plan will provide more detailed implementation strategies for the local economy.

The AC44 chapter will be refined by direction from the strategic plan, and future revisions of the chapter will likewise be informed by the strategic plan.

Our current draft chapter actions are more focused on land use and regulatory efforts, which are less likely to change with future strategic plan input.

The thriving economy chapter overlaps with other topics, including the development areas chapter, which has an emphasis on the quality of life, dense development within the development areas, and a mix of uses.

Whereas the rural area chapter includes guidance on tourism, agriculture and forestry related uses, as well as historic cultural and outdoor activities.

The Transportation and Community Facilities chapters emphasize the multimodal transportation planning efforts and the community infrastructure needs that are also critical to support a thriving economy.

Some of the challenges addressed by the chapter are the need for industrial or light industrial zone land, the need for site-ready land in a range of sizes and supporting different scales of buildings to support employment-related uses.

The chapter also supports identified target industries, such as the local defense industry and others.

And there's also a need to address barriers for work

Employee Support Services for things like childcare, multimodal transportation, workforce housing, as I just mentioned.

The chapter has five objectives which are to implement the strategic plan as the primary document again for economic development and to ensure the availability of land and infrastructure for the employment-related uses, strengthening business retention and expansion, and especially for those target industries, and also support access for jobs training and career advancement to reduce those barriers to workforce participation.

Overlapping and related actions within the rural area land use chapter call for the zoning ordinance update to allow uses that support processing and sales for agriculture and silver culture related uses, as well as allowing small scale businesses for services and daily needs through adaptive reuse of buildings.

and allowing low-impact outdoor recreation uses that complement and do not conflict with other existing rural land uses such as ag and forest-related uses.

Related actions within the development areas chapter include updating the zoning ordinance to support infill adaptive reuse and redevelopment, especially within our activity centers.

And other actions include utilizing public private partnerships to support redevelopment and underutilized areas.

identifying and funding CIP projects that support activity center development, utilizing tools and funding sources such as capital funding grants and community development block grants or CDBGs to support employment uses.

And there's also an action recommending that the zoning ordinance update makes a provision to allow for data centers within the development areas only

and those would be restricted to industrial zone land and it would also be accompanied with performance standards that address and mitigated the associated impacts with that use.

Stepping back and taking a quick look at the AC-44 schedule and where we are.

We will have a continued work session with the Board on April 2nd to finish our discussion about revisions to the Development Areas Land Use Chapter and Community Design Guidelines.

For Thriving Economy, we of course have a work session today and our session with the board will be held on April 16th.

We also recently held a virtual Lunch and Learn event for community members on February 27th.

The community facilities and infrastructure chapter will be covered at work session with the commission on the 25th of this month, followed by the board's work session on April 16th.

So at this point, I'm going to pause for any general questions you have regarding the chapter content.

Great.

Awesome.

Thank you.

So I'm not looking at the ones with the bullet points, the one point whatever, the two point whatever, but I did have kind of was looking at the land use and build out analysis page in that packet and saw that there are about 39 development area parcels that might qualify.

Tell us more about what those parcels are, where they are.

Sure.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

Tori Kenelopoulos, principal planner on the long-range planning team.

So we did not create a map of those parcels, but it was more of an internal review looking at some criteria, like which properties would be big enough to accommodate a business generating use for economic development, what already had zoning in place, like light industrial zoning,

and looking at some of those criteria.

Where was infrastructure easily accessible?

It's related to another question I had, which is this tier system, which we learned about a year or so ago when the EDO folks came by.

And, you know, we've learned there's one tier four site against North Fork, and then none that are tier five at the moment.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I'm guessing we might get into more of that discussion over here.

Sure.

That's totally fine.

Well, I can offer just a little bit of context.

I wasn't going to go over that specifically, but it's a good question.

So there's five tiers in the tier system.

It's a system that the state has kind of adopted in coordination with engineering firms that work in the state.

And it's just a way to help sort of have common language around how ready is a site.

And so the tiers are really about the time in months to get to really cutting the ribbon.

We love celebrating a ribbon cutting.

And so tier five, there's a five-tier scale.

Tier five is actually not often the end target that economic developers are focused on.

It really is tier four.

Tire 5 is you're actually going and building a building or designing a building to be built by a future prospect and when you when you think about

Heavy industry or warehousing, those types of structures are more or less one size fits all.

But when you think about more specialized light industrial or specialized industrial users, advanced manufacturing, it would be really challenging to design and or build a spec building.

And so tier four is sort of that.

The site is cleared, it's graded, it's got a preliminary site plan.

And so it's very quick to get to vertical construction, but that vertical construction is very informed by the end user.

So not everyone knows that five is not necessarily the target.

So thank you for indulging me on that.

And then going down from there, most of the sites in the county that would have been identified in that study, I imagine, would have fallen in the tier two and tier three.

Place.

Tier one is it's basically raw land that's privately owned.

Tier two is that the comp plan designation is aligned with what that future use could be and the site is in public control or in control of a developer who is seeking to develop that site.

for an economic development purpose.

Tier 3, you've got your zoning in place.

You've done all of the site due diligence.

The Rivanna Futures Project, the land that the county purchased adjacent to Rivanna Station in 2023, started at a Tier 1 and is now, as of September 2024, a Tier 3, and we are working hard to get to Tier 4.

So we're hopeful that we'll be able to advance to Tier 4, which is that you've got all your infrastructure in place, all your issues are sort of taken care of, and that you've done some entitlement work with the county.

So it's kind of a mixture, and we're always kind of evaluating.

We have one Tier 4, and that's wonderful.

We've got a plan to get to a second Tier 4 with fairly large capacity in it.

You know, then we'll start to focus on what are those tier two and tier three sites?

Which ones are the most likely to be a tier four soonest?

It's really helpful.

Great.

Mr. Murray, I'll hold my questions until later when we get all right.

Thank you.

I do have one question.

And if it's not suitable for this, maybe later, just let me know.

But it involves the macro environment, particularly at the federal level now, and balancing that with

a longer term vision that you would have in a comp plan.

That is a wonderful question.

So in terms of, you know, right now it's budget season.

So the county executive recommended budget came out about two weeks ago.

The board is really just getting into work sessions this week on it.

And so they're talking a lot about the federal, the county's sort of exposure to federal funding.

What does that look like?

What are opportunities that we have?

What grants do we currently have that may be at risk?

The staff is studying that really hard.

The landscape evolves fairly rapidly, but not something that government is typically accused of.

The county's budget overall, especially if you're just focusing on local government and not necessarily thinking about the public school system, it's a little bit different of a makeup.

The federal revenues are a relatively small portion of the county's overall budget.

The federal funds that we do have are connected very heavily to specific programs and the county has a couple of different reserve funds available to help absorb a shock that may come from a rapid shift in funding availability.

So those are those are conversations that the board is having right now from an economic development standpoint.

You know, again, we're also sort of watching closely what's happening.

There's a lot of announcements that get made and then a couple days later, a couple weeks later.

The story will shift a little bit about the scale or the impact or the magnitude or orientation of that.

And so we're continuing to look at the things that feel like they're permanent and happening and looking at how we can be responsive to that.

The Rivanna Futures Project, specifically adjacent to a federal installation,

obviously has some impact there and we're focusing really hard there.

We have great partners at the state and the federal level that are helping us understand what some of those on the ground impacts might be.

And as things become real, we feel like we're in a good position to be responsive.

But the good news is economic development is often thinking about the longer term.

And not so much focused on the next 12 months, but what does the next three to five years look like?

And how can we be a good stable partner in that?

Thank you.

That's informative.

Thank you, and thank you for the clarification on the tiers, because that's where my questions were going as well, just better understanding, because that tier five to me just seemed like it was already a building that was designed and ready to occupy.

So, yeah, somebody's going to have to develop that.

Because I heard there's only one North Bork as foundation and university.

So the evaluation, yes, was looking at the overall build out included property owned by the UVA Foundation, but not by UVA itself.

And as far as the build out, it was generally not including places that we knew already had an approved development and were building out.

So we took that into consideration, but didn't necessarily assume, you know, a major redevelopment that it would just kind of continue with its capacity.

Because I think there's a that that's an important piece that maybe should be included that that

because there's opportunities within the county that maybe you're not accounting for and it might diminish because right now it seems like it's a diminished opportunity for these kind of developments when actually I think there's a lot more out there.

My other question has to do with redevelopment sites and how are we considering those?

I mean, they have the infrastructure.

I'm thinking some of the ones along 29, right?

They're empty spaces right now and block stores and so forth.

So for the build out, we looked at where the land value was higher than the structure value as far as redevelopment.

And that did actually, for one tangible example, it picked up that property that I think was a recently approved rezoning.

that's taking an old office building and turning it into maybe 15 or so residential units and then an office building below.

So it was able to pick up some things like that.

But I think we would want to do a more in-depth study with some other areas that could redevelop where maybe they won't get picked up by the analysis, but we could do a more in-depth study and see what's feasible.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I was just looking for a definitional issue or a definitional clarification list.

So when we talk about the development district or the development area, in my mind, I tend to think of that as a place that we can house people.

And so when you talk about light industrial and commercial areas, is that land mass that's in addition to the development area or so, or is that land mass, which is included in the development area?

And if it is included in the development area, then I will say again, we don't have enough land mass to do the kinds of things that we need to do.

and so that's my, I know people are probably going crazy about me saying that, but if you're looking at sort of 20 years worth of growth and we're already in a constrained amount of area that we're trying to push density into, density and commercial and light industrial don't appear to have enough land to sit on.

Well, everybody, you can be mad at me about that, but that's what I think.

And you've figured out a way to put it on it, and then you can make me feel better.

You know, I think, I think in just a follow-up none.

And I think this were an analysis of the areas that we have.

And that's why I think it's it's not quite accurate right now.

It's not ready.

It's not ready.

We're looking at a very limited when I when I actually just do a quick thinking about lands in university and or or or

Foundation.

There's actually more capacity for building, particularly if you densely build than what it's being called out for.

It's like 1.9 million or more.

You can get to that.

Easily.

Pretty easily.

And that's exactly my concern.

I don't know how we accommodate sort of the very conservative population growth that's come out of the Well and Coopin Center.

I mean, it's not talking about large influx of individuals and also try to grow economics in this area to accommodate

just sort of to provide an alternative to real estate taxes.

Let's just use it that way, just to balance real estate taxes.

I don't see how we have enough land to do that in an effective way.

Everybody good?

Just to have a couple quick questions.

One, can you go back to slide 13, please?

I just didn't fully understand.

Can you talk a little bit?

So number 4.2, updates, owning awareness rights to allow rural, light, industrial, and commercial uses, supporting so we tell ourselves appropriate with ag and civil, okay, civil culture uses.

Yes, this would be a little more detail.

Yeah, this would be sort of industry supporting uses within the rural area.

Something, an example could be something along the lines of some sort of canning operation that would be used for food processing.

Got it.

But I think there's a limited amount of uses specifically allowed by right within our current zoning.

Excuse me, Mr. Missel.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just one other thing, just to call out what I think is the obvious here.

The Economic Development Strategic Plan is ongoing.

This will layer some of those into some some of the economic development strategic plan will inform this AC44 document, right?

I think the development and completion of the strategic plan may provide us more information that would lead to further updates of this section.

I think the intent here is to be a little bit higher level in the comprehensive plan, provide for some broader guidance that helps have some long-term viability, but the strategic plan is really the substance of the actions.

So some actions in some areas are kind of

Light here with the expectation that those things really belong in the strategic plan.

And this section too, much like other sections, there's many other economic development related actions as we've just shown you.

There are more, we just listed some of the examples of those.

Got it.

Ms.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to make two quick points, if I may.

One point is that as we think about what land is available for economic development, I mean, we do have quite a few parcels that are underdeveloped.

So I'll give you an example.

If you look at Avon Street Extended and you see there's a lot of single story, there's a number of single story businesses, you know, various like Leap and other businesses that

have very, very low density development on those parcels.

And so what's the incentive to redevelop those?

The county might want to think strategically about ways to get those developed at higher density by things such as having a tax break if you increase the density of structures and you give someone a tax break for a few years on the real estate taxes.

that that would perhaps incentivize that.

So thinking about the fact that we do have spaces where the land is not being efficiently utilized there's also issues with our zoning and I think that's been brought up tangentially today that if you recall there was a development where somebody wanted to have a business a recording business but they also wanted to live in the space and we had to give them a special

special use permit for that we could make a lot of those those types of uses a lot easier.

And then the last thing I wanted to note is that one of the challenges with a lot of our spaces it is it we have a lot of older space.

And so I can tell you that, you know, running a tech business myself, looking at the spaces available, they all need a lot of them needed extensive rewiring that would cost thousands of dollars.

We have spaces that don't have elevators to the second floor, which means they're not disability access available.

and actually many federal grants won't allow you to rent those spaces unless you have appropriate access.

So there's a number of improvements that could be made to the infrastructure of existing businesses that would make them more attractive.

And then also thinking about creative zoning as well as incentives to densify the space that we do have.

That's all I wanted to add.

Great points.

Thanks.

Any other questions for staff before we move to Ms.

Kilbride?

Thank you all so much.

And thank you for letting me sit up here.

It's nice to be up here.

All right.

and we talked a bit about, you know, do we talk about the strategic plan that we have and then come back and we felt like it might be more efficient if we, just given how close those timelines are to focus on the things that we know from the plan that we're currently working through and we don't have a final adoption date nailed in just yet, but just for your awareness, we're looking at an August adoption by the Board of Supervisors.

So we do think that this, that the strategic plan will be final ahead of the AC44 comp plan.

So any any adjustments that need to be handled, we certainly can work through that.

I'll take the next slide.

Okay, so just a quick backdrop on why economic development is important and why folks focus on it.

Again, it's currently the county's budget season and so we're looking a lot at sort of where our revenues are coming from the federal revenues are one area that we look at.

Another area that we look at is the sort of the balance, the mix between residential and commercial tax revenues.

Property tax is the largest area of revenue for Albemarle County and most local governments, frankly.

But having a good mix is helpful because commercial properties can, if you look at what the cost to provide services to a commercial property versus a residential property, generally you'll see that a commercial property

is going to generate more tax revenues than it's going to require to serve that property.

Now, there's a lot sort of embedded in that.

Obviously, the people that work at those commercial buildings may live and generate residential demands.

But it's just a big picture.

That's sort of one of the things that we think about.

And that's one of the reasons why economic development is an area that most local governments

have investments and resources into.

This is just a kind of a silly infographic that tries to sort of lay out the items in red are generally, you know, quality of life items, and they, you know, parks, infrastructure, public safety, housing, quality, general quality of life.

and when you have a thriving business community they can really drive revenues that can help sort of reinforce and help support some of the other things that we know and love about Albemarle.

So the role of economic development is really to take a look at how can government be a good partner, how can we help support a thriving business environment, and how we do that is really driven by our strategic plans.

So some localities, small towns, their economic development strategic plan is really going to be focused on main street retail type opportunities

We have a number of different areas that we can point to where we have some really great opportunities and the strategic plan is going to help us really

determine where we should focus.

We're our largest opportunities given that no matter where you are, you only have so much land to work with.

And so what can we do to make sure that we're sort of doing right by the community?

Take the next slide.

That is not showing great.

OK.

So the mission of economic development is to attract financial resources into the community through responsible activities that enhance the county's competitive position.

And really, we're focused on quality job creation and career employment opportunities.

That helps us increase the tax base.

In Albemarle, we focus on enhancing natural resources and community character and improve quality of life for all.

So what does it actually look like in practice?

There we go.

So I like to talk about three things that we have been focused on over the past several months.

One is job creation.

This is a photo from a governor's announcement that happened at Afton Scientific.

It's on Avon Street Extended.

Tom Thorpe and his company, they started here, they grew here, they are getting ready to really grow here.

Really exciting opportunities in the work that they're doing to help provide medicine to folks with a variety of diseases.

Their business is on the delivery injectable mechanism.

So they're not developing drugs, but they're making sure that they get to consumers.

So a really important piece of the supply chain of pharmaceutical industry.

and they have announced 200 jobs, $200 million capital investment in building a new facility next to their existing one and they continue to look at what are some additional investments that they can make happen and so we think that's really just the beginning.

One of the things that's really exciting to me about acting scientific is that the jobs that they're creating are not just PhD jobs.

In fact, they're not primarily PhD jobs.

They have some folks on staff who have that level of education and acumen.

But at the heart, it's really an advanced manufacturing type facility.

And so the lion's share of the jobs that they have are in that space and really accessible to a really broad spectrum of the community.

There's a grant that the county's partnering with Seville Biohub and many other of our local economic development partners to help understand how we can better align the training and the educational opportunities at high schools, community college, and also the university to make sure that our community members are well positioned to be able to take advantage of those job opportunities.

The next one is redevelopment.

So we talked a little bit about this, or you all talked a little bit about this in your comments.

And Ms.

Candelopoulos referenced looking at properties where the improvement value is below the land value.

We partnered with the Home Depot over the summer to do a public private partnership to help make their store at the fashion store mall property happen.

and one of the reasons that that was so important was home depots can open on green fields and often do open on green fields.

That's really more their model.

They were interested in coming to Albemarle County and redevelopment sites were really what they were finding and those come with some additional expense.

As you look at making some upgrades, there were some remediation issues related to the Sears Auto

Function that had operated there for many years and so the cost to develop that property was going to exceed what they normally would expect from a site that size and so the county partnered with them on that and the county typically hasn't really focused hard on a retail strategy but in this case we looked at the redevelopment opportunity.

You look at

City and counties across the Commonwealth and the funding that they put into public-private partnership agreements to try to compel a developer to come and please redevelop our aging mall was pretty significant.

And here we felt like for a fairly modest investment could help unlock and sort of trigger that redevelopment that we do expect will be sort of a first domino on that property as we look to its future.

So we're really excited about that.

Next one.

The other one is really just planning for the future.

So, Rivanna Futures is one piece of that.

The defense sector in our community, in the regional economy, is $1.2 billion each year.

And so the Rivanna Futures is really an investment in creating an additional tier four site, again, a tier four site of scale.

We have several hundred acres there, 172 are zoned right now for light industrial and commercial through the work that we've done and you all have helped do over the past 18 months.

And this is just continuing to try to look at how can we stay ahead, how can we build opportunities that we can bring partners to the table to then really make some impactful things happen.

The first economic development strategic plan the county ever had was called Project Enable.

This slide just shows some of the metrics on some of the work that we were able to do through that.

So we'll often partner through the Economic Development Authority.

to provide grant funding matches to state opportunities to land business retention and expansion programs, job creation, there's an agricultural infrastructure grant, and so this is just some of the by the numbers from the first plan.

on the next slide.

This is kind of what we're starting off with now.

We are taking a real data driven approach to our work this time and I'll share a couple data points with you in just a couple slides.

But we are working with a firm called Resonance and they have

Both a data-driven and an engagement approach, so it's very much in shaping, using the data to help shape conversations and then to understand from stakeholders what their priorities are.

Take the next one.

Just a quick look at the process that we're using.

There's four main elements outlined here.

It's a fairly iterative process though, so a little bit of data, talk about it with stakeholder engagement, and then go back out, do some more data analysis, talk with stakeholders, and develop a plan from there.

The next slide.

Just a couple of data points from some of the initial data work that we've gotten from residents that I think might be of interest to the Planning Commission with respect to thriving economy.

So one takeaway that they had from the data was that Albemarle County has strong economic growth, but workforce participation is lagging behind its peers.

Take the next slide.

And you can see from here that based on some peer localities that we identified throughout the process that we've done, our unemployment rate is very low.

It's what economists would consider full employment, which is not a bad thing.

But when you look at that and you look at the rate of job growth, so we've got 11% job growth over a five-year period, 2018 to 2023,

and when you have high job growth and full employment, you're potentially facing some labor shortage crunches.

And so that's something that the data has produced for us.

The next one is related in some ways.

So Albemarle County has a highly educated workforce.

You all are probably very aware we have some of the highest bachelor's, master's and above.

credentials in the country.

But our prime working age population is underrepresented.

So on the next slide, you can see that this is just a clip of our population age 25 to 44 as a mid-career professionals.

It's not their first job.

It's not their last job.

We are behind the Commonwealth, the United States, all of our peers that we included in this study.

and our median age is very high.

So you can see and we know we have a large retirement age population in Albemarle but we're also seeing there's something going on that you have working mid-career professionals not in our community.

and if you look at the city of Charlottesville, you see the same thing.

So it's not just that young professionals are choosing to live in the city, but it's a regional challenge that we're looking at.

The county has strong innovation assets and one of the fastest growing STEM job markets among its peers.

A lot of that has to do a lot with the University of Virginia and a lot of the research that they're doing there and a real, really wonderful focus on commercialization, translation from the university setting out through entrepreneurship.

The next slide just shows the STEM jobs growth rate.

When you look at sort of where we stack among our peers, we're high middle, but that growth rate over the past several years has been very substantial.

And those are the slides that we prepared.

Just wanted to kind of show the type of work that we're doing.

Awesome.

Thank you.

All right, how do we want to go about this?

Anybody want to take off the general discussion?

I have a suggestion on one of your slides.

I would consider removing KTEC since you're probably aware of the tension with the county over that institution and put PVC, which you know about, given what you just shared with us, PVC might help to fill that space in a different way that KTEC would be.

And it would also be something that I know that the county's been sort of

embracing in a very different way than how they were rebuffed from the KTAC arrangement.

We didn't do very well.

We didn't do very well at all.

The one piece that took advantage of the opportunity zone as a property across from the 5th Street office building, county office building, where there was to be a very interesting set of buildings there to do exactly the kind of

to house exactly the kind of individuals that Ms.

Kellroy just spoke about, sort of, you know, biotech, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, people who were going to take things to market.

And the only thing we have now is the perpetual self-storage facility.

Everyone knows how I feel about the perpetual, the church of the perpetual self-storage facility.

And so the whole idea about how that didn't happen here,

is something that I think might be helpful as you think about how do we attract businesses here to this place, because we did not do well.

In fact, we didn't do anything here.

I can give you a couple of things on your page or sort of target industries.

and I broke this down as I was thinking about target industries in sort of three different ways and you gave me the name for the last category.

So when I look at our historic, when I look at our target industries, there's sort of the historic industries that have evolved after what I would say the reshaping of Albemarle County to more of a retirement community.

because we weren't that for a long time.

We were, in fact, a place that had a distinct sort of, as Ben said, we had industries that supported our agriculture businesses here and that most of a good deal of them were in, a good number of them were in the Crozet area, that's now housing, but they were scattered throughout the county.

and so there's this whole issue here about what are historic industries and I think on page page four you list the amount of what the sort of current state is.

Okay, I would share with you that I feel that every single forget what the I think what we are 9% I think somebody said 9% is what the county is with regards to federal funding something like that it's a very minuscule amount.

Every single one of them could die tomorrow based on a Washington, D.C.

FOIBLE or folly.

That's probably a better word for me.

A folly.

Northward Grumman could go south, depending on what they're saying, what they're going to do with the defense industry.

I'm not even going to talk about what could possibly happen in that wonderful space that we have up on North.

but if the University of Virginia of Centera, if they make significant changes to Medicaid, that would basically gut those two organizations in some very serious switch.

Crutchfield Corporation is a private corporation of which, depending on Bill Crutchfield, could close tomorrow when he says he's had enough.

Atlanta Coast, the ACC and Farmington, those are private entities of which, at some point, the members of both of them may say, we're not paying any more money for dues.

You're not increasing your dues anymore.

And therefore, they're going to go into a steady state.

And I'll say that, I can't speak to the board, I said, you can speak to the board, I said it.

And so my point here is that many of these are dependent upon federal money.

and federal decisions that will have impact on who gets employed.

And if they get laid off, what happens to that housing stock as we're starting to see, as you may have seen, the chairman of the supervisors in Fairfax County sort of approached the governor and said, you need to be more active in stopping the closing of federal buildings.

because if those federal buildings close, people will lose their jobs, they will lose their houses.

Houses will go into foreclosure and that will undercut our blank space, which will mean we won't have the things to do other things.

And that's the piece that I'm concerned about here, that these target industries, while they're interesting industries, they're not

They're not like the one that you mentioned, Afton Scientific, which is somewhat like that.

There's a building out on our airport road that I think is called Micro, which is similar in type.

These are similar type businesses that they make the things that actually help people in health care.

And so that's the kind of business that has, in fact, has a diverse employment that isn't all PhDs.

that isn't all MBAs, and I'll throw myself in there, that aren't all lawyers also, that they have this sort of this eclectic group of people there, which I think helps the community sort of prepare a workforce for them.

And so looking at your aspirational industries is something that I would encourage you to do because that's really shaping the conversation about how does the county invest its funds and bringing people here and also working with educational institutions.

and that's a bit of a, you know, that's somewhat unnerving to people because you're saying we're sort of thinking about what the future is, but there's enough smart people in this community to help think that you have access to them.

My concern is when you talk about, when you looked at this, you gave us the piece on the low unemployment and high job, many of us who've had to hire people know exactly what that is.

Most of the new job growth in Albemarle County in this area is because we import people.

We don't grow people.

And so when you see low unemployment or high growth rate, that's all about people coming from someplace else to fill those jobs.

I can't begin to tell you offline.

I can tell you about the number of people.

Then we go to your mid-career professionals who can't afford to come here for a whole host of reasons.

Even if I give you a house, they don't want to live here because the quality of life here for a single person is not the same even as our sister city down in Richmond.

The quality of life for a single person in Richmond is leagues better than a single, a quality of life for a single person that I'm okay.

It's just a better place to live.

and so I'd even say even in Lynchburg, it's because there's just some more diverse sort of opportunity.

So when you're looking at the things that what are we doing?

It's not just about can we get you a job?

But if you come here when you're not working those few five hours on a Saturday afternoon, when you're not working, what could you do?

What is here, and this is where my colleague at the end, Mr. Morris, what is the community kind of spaces that you can bring people together, that we can bring people together and sort of say, this is a place where you want to live.

And you've heard many of us talk about we're sick and tired of top lots because there's a whole host of people who are never going to use a top lot.

But that's an amenity that we insist that they have.

In fact, we know it's not because if we look at the live birth rate in Albemarle County, it's declining.

So we have all these hot lights which are increasing, but live birth rates which are decreasing.

And so we're doing these things which is just counter-intuitive if you're wanting to attract people in their 30s, high 20s, mid 30s, and you want them to lay their roots here.

because it's hard for somebody to lay roots here if they don't have a number of things to do.

I'm just sort of giving you my thoughts here.

So that's a real easy way to say low unemployment, high job growth, and they're filling those jobs.

They're bringing people in from outside.

And they're usually not in their 30s either.

They're usually not in their 30s if you just look at who's coming in the private schools and the public schools.

They're coming in with children.

So they're not coming here saying, oh, this is my first job.

The other thing that I would just sort of suggest as you're looking at this is to really be able to say to the community that you wrestled with the data, that you have, you're not, this is not your gut, but it may start with your gut.

The assumption may start with your gut or the hypothesis may start with your gut, but you really are going out and validating this because I think that will help in the adoption and the appreciation of the amount of work that's gone into this.

You know, I always get this thing wrong, but we do this count, and sometimes Mr. Moore knows better than I do what it's called.

I just don't know, maybe I was wrong.

We do this county-wide survey.

It talks about what kind of degrees do you have?

How much money do you have?

Do you think the county's doing okay?

Do you think you're better?

I forget what that survey is called, but we do the survey like every other year or something like that.

If you look at the demographics of the survey, it is clearly pitched towards

older individuals, multi-degreeed, making a lot of money in their lifetime, having access to assets or having access to income, and they are predominantly European in their birth.

Now,

We can wrestle with that any way we want to wrestle with it, but that's all self-reported data.

Julian didn't say what your heritage.

Julian didn't say how old are you.

Julian didn't say there's a self-report.

So what the community and realizing that everyone doesn't respond to those, we are sometimes not as broad in the gathering of information.

My colleague can talk to you about how we gather information here, Mr. Clayborne.

But that's the kind of stuff that I think for the validation of this particular piece that I will now be quiet and let other people talk to.

Thank you for the presentation.

I should be very informative.

And actually, I also appreciate you highlighting the Home Depot example, because I think that is a great success story, and it embodies a lot of what we're talking about in AC44.

We're talking about taking advantage of infill sites, redevelopment sites, and how we can partner with private industry to accomplish that and perfect example.

The one thing I would add in terms of that would further continue to embody some of the principles that we're talking about in AC44 is densification.

And so as we look at what can continue to happen in the mall area,

How can we encourage higher density?

Opportunity, and hopefully we'll encourage more development there so it can start to be the anchor that Sears was at one point.

But how do we encourage higher density development?

What we don't want to see is repeats of Fifth Street Station, where we have this incredibly expensive civil engineering feat

with enormous retaining walls to create all of this development land to then build one-story buildings.

I mean, that could be three times as dense, four times as dense as it is.

So I think those are lessons learned that we need to embody and think about when we look at these.

And that's why I think we're underestimating the capacity

that we actually have when you start to marry back to this chart, I think we have like 3.4 in the high end in the next 20 years, 3.4 million square feet of need, right?

If you add up office, retail and industrial, 3.4 million square feet of need, if I'm reading that right.

I don't think that is a challenge to achieve.

I think you have more than $3.4 capacity within the county in those areas.

And particularly if you think about the university.

So I think that that's one area that I have a question and I mean, I understand maybe the logic was a tax base, right?

There's taxes coming from the foundation, but not directly from the university.

However, if the emphasis is job growth and career enhancements, if that's part of the economic conversation, right?

And I think the university should probably be part of that, even though you may not be getting direct tax revenue, you're certainly getting indirect tax revenue from the people that are being employed.

So it's just something to think about.

And I think my takeaway from Mr. Bivins, although there's a lot of great insight there, is

Yeah, thanks, Karen.

Before we go to you, I just want to throw something into the mix that for us to think about, because we've been talking about UVA lands, been talking about foundation lands, just to put some things in perspective that Emily's well aware of.

and thank you, Emily, for partnering with us on so many things.

And I told Luis, I was going to be careful about my role here as a private citizen versus foundation, but there's an example that I think might be helpful to share.

And that is that at Northwark, public knowledge, there is 3.7 million square feet of allowable industrial mixed use and well, research, I mean, pretty much everything, light industrial, et cetera.

And it's been there at 3.7 million square feet since 2010.

Before that it was 3 million square feet of allowed density and that dates back to the late 90s.

We have built 650,000 square feet of that.

and it's taken this long to start to feel like there is a wave cresting, right?

And that's in large part due to some things that I think are obviously critical in this whole process and that is primarily partnerships, right?

So I won't take the time now.

I've got some ending thoughts, some ending comments just to highlight, but to put it in perspective and to your point about capacity,

There is 3.7 million square feet available, say 3 million now at Northwark alone.

And we've talked a lot about going up because the trick is, as everyone knows, this is Albemarle County, we can't just, it's not flat land.

So we have in that 565 acres proffered 200 acres of permanent open space.

And still we're looking to fit 3.7 million square feet in there.

So it's got to go up to make it work.

Yes, thanks.

I wanted to underscore something that Julian said earlier and then just tag on to what you just said.

I think the affordable housing piece is really critical because I, as an employer, I hired five people in the last year.

to your point, I had to import a couple of the tech people, couldn't find the skills here.

But the biggest challenge for one of the bigger challenges is being able to tell people that they can buy a home here.

And I just want to give an example.

of Creative Use of Funding.

And I know that HUD is under attack by the current federal administration, but there was a community that partnered with John Deere Tractor.

They could not find affordable housing for their workers.

And so they were able to use CDBG funds, Community Development Block Grant funds to buy down the costs, the mortgage costs and down payment costs for their employees, which allowed them to then attract employees to work at the factory

and allowed them to become permanent residents of the community by using those funds to incentivize home ownership.

So we often talk about workforce housing for teachers and firemen and policemen and that's all really important, but just a regular average paid person trying to move here for a job, it's just really difficult to make the case

because housing is so unaffordable.

So thinking about some of those creative partnerships or ways that we might subsidize this and then to the point about space, just actual space for firms to locate here, we have, as I've mentioned in the past, I'll just say it really quickly, we often have like a 400 square foot office or 40,000 square feet.

and so on.

have to just either be two people or 75 people.

But how can you find ways that people can grow that out over time?

And that has to do with even thinking about some of the designs for new office spaces.

I mean, I understand there's a lot of space at North Fork, but frankly, I've never needed that much space.

And I know I'm just one small business person, but I think that

You will find that we're not necessarily meeting the needs of sort of mid-level startups.

So I guess thinking more diverse in terms of the kinds of space that we have, but how can the county

offer incentives to facilitate this.

And then I already made the point about the fact that a lot of our space just simply needs modernization so that firms can move into it.

So there's space that goes unrented because it's just not suitable.

So perhaps we need to provide micro loans or other opportunities to get that space to be more ready for today's current market.

No, thanks.

That was all great comments.

The one thing I'll add, you mentioned incubator space, you mentioned startups, and you mentioned the importance of thinking about ways to help to offset those costs or to incentivize them.

And the point of an incubator space is that it's low cost space.

The developer has trouble making the pro forma work because you've got to still build out the space.

Well, Chair, you know, and many of these sort of grand research university communities, often it's the university that owns that space.

If we look at the place that the University of Virginia used to want to be like, it was Stanford and Palo Alto, most of the space that then sprung people to be the Googles, the apples and things like that, it's owned by Stanford.

They get a piece of the action once it happens, but it's owned by Stanford.

And that's a different sort of model than we've typically had here.

And I think it's also necessary to sort of go back to what you both were saying is that on page four, the document says that four or fewer employees are what make up the firms here.

That's really telling.

It was exciting to hear the direction of the strategic plans, so thank you for sharing that.

I flagged three things as I was listening to the presentation and hearing my colleagues here.

The first I felt that transportation and infrastructure, it's not hammered on enough.

So when you think of those who are underemployed or young professionals that want to live in a vibrant place, the ability to have public transit infrastructure that's reliable, dependable, can get you where you need to be without waiting unorthodox amounts of time to get there, I think that is something that you might consider just looking into more in terms of emphasizing that piece.

The second thing I flagged is the conversation around being a trusted partner, particularly to those communities here in town that are underinvested in, underrepresented.

Lots of things have happened, whether it's here or Charlottesville, things have happened in some of our lifetimes that are not forgotten, right?

And so I think in order to do some of those things are in a strategic plan and

bringing other folks along to come into the workforce.

I think just working and investing in that relationship might be something that the economic development team might look at as a priority.

And then lastly, just think of the concept of regionalism and

Not to compare us to DC, but when you think about how Northern Virginia, they band together and they get people like Boeing and Amazon to come here, there's this story about their strength in numbers.

And you kind of signal a little bit of that within a strategic plan.

and I'm sure you all will continue to work as a region to bring economic fatality here, but it made me think of how many times does the Planning Commission not work with the Charlottesville Planning Commission or the surrounding counties that touch us as we're thinking about future land use.

And so just flagging that both internally for our team here, but also from an economic development perspective, I'm sure there's conversations we ought to be having

as we're thanking 20 years on the road as a region that I feel like we're probably not having right now.

So just thank you for flagging that.

Yeah, a long time ago when I was saying a class at UVA and one of the things that that we talked about actually it was in Brownfield redevelopment is is actually taught by a former county supervisor, David Slesky.

But yeah, so so one of the one of the things that that we talked about, one of the many things we talked about is the kind of place that a Google employee would like to live and what attracts tech companies and other places to community.

It's not always necessarily what people think about.

It's access to nature and recreation.

It's walkability, cultural attractions, as you said, a good transportation network, and also diversity and inclusion.

That's the kind of place that tech workers want to be in.

I can say that also as a tech worker, that's the kind of place that I like to be in.

So when we think about, and we also think about some of these things about the challenge of housing, I think it's important that we think about workforce housing as its own special kind of problem here, because we really have two economies in Albemarle County.

We have those people who make their primary income off of their investments, and then we have wage earners, and they're not the same people.

but they compete for the same housing.

And so the problem is, is that we can try to do bag and control, you know, to offer, you know, as much affordable housing as we want.

But as long as someone can move down from Northern Virginia and snap that up,

And they're not a wage earner, then the wage earners can't compete for that housing.

And so I think what I've long wanted to see is for Amar County to partner and actually proactively, maybe it's the university, I don't know how we build these partnerships, but talk about building actual dedicated workforce housing for people who work here.

I think that that would be a big advancement for, you know, I imagine, you know, maybe you have a group of, you know, a group of employers who say, like as Karen said, you can't find employees because they're too far away.

Maybe they contribute some to this project.

You have a local developer who's willing to build it.

Maybe you have some county land county could offer up.

You know, maybe you have some sort of partnership that forms.

I know there's a lot of grant opportunities as well that could be applied.

And there's specific grant opportunities for horse housing.

So something to think about.

Thank you.

Thanks, y'all.

I've enjoyed the conversation so far.

And thank you for the presentation, too.

It was informative.

Thoughtful and it's a nice recap of kind of where we've been.

I know the Home Depot project has some advantages to it, right?

are plopping in a store that I see closer to fruition every day, and we were able to do sort of like a tax incentive to have the road behind it.

I don't know, and this is, I don't want to second guess everything the county has done for the last decade, but I do want us to think a little bit more as we go forward with this kind of thing in the future.

We spent how long on that Rio 29 study, that small area plan, and then just kind of stuck it on a shelf?

And it sat there

In the distant future, we get something that looks a little bit like the Rio Small Area Plan, if future owners don't feel like just putting something else in by right.

So like, I want us to think about how we can actually be more proactive on that kind of thing going forward.

And so we're talking about a 20-year plan.

This is the time to think that way.

You know, Rivanna Station, I know the land around that is kind of where a lot of energy and certainly a lot of financial investment are going.

We've already kind of made that choice, and I think the last two months have made it look like, well, golly, I hope that still works, because it may or may not be where future investment actually happens from the federal government.

But I don't know.

The other thing about that particular choice is that does tend to lead to the kinds of jobs that import people.

Not people that, as Commissioner Bivins put, we create here, that we build here, but people that we bring in here.

You know, and so the people that kind of grow up here end up either a UVA in some capacity, or in the service sector in some capacity, if they can stay and afford to stay, which many of them cannot.

And so that's just like a little bit of like nuanced critique as we think about kind of how we invest in future things that, yeah, yeah.

And to me too, I want to kind of zoom out and I always think about economic development is like

It's the resources, it's the tools, it's the land that people need to meet their needs and lead flourishing lives.

And so on that front, I do think that things like affordable housing is economic development.

I would say free and subsidized childcare for infants to pre-K is economic development.

High union membership rates are economic development, things that boost people's ability to lead flourishing lives.

And so in some of the sections on objective four,

I might include things like, you know, training and financing for co-op development, training and financing for small backyard developers to, you know, rezone and redevelop and add more housing stock, training and financing and for, you know, how to, if we have a place with a very high workforce, a rather very low unemployment,

and a lot of very educated people.

I mean like that's primed to another way to build wealth is through workers getting paid more.

So that's why I bring up the union stuff.

I know I'm in Virginia.

I know that's not a state that has historically real strong stuff there.

But if we're talking about economic development, I talk about labor.

So that's where it's at.

So, I mean, again, I think I think there's a lot good here.

I think things like making sure we have adequate land supply and those, you know, looking toward those tier four sites.

Sure, certainly.

And I think also investing in people's needs and having that expansive view of economic development.

Great comments.

All right.

I'll roll through a few thoughts.

I'm starting with, excuse me, this specifically the chapter, and I'm on page four.

The second bullet on the right-hand side talks about continuing to strengthen existing business retention and or expansion.

As of June 24, the county leveraged $877,000 to secure $1.8 million in state grants, etc.

Can you talk just briefly about, well, with the time, why don't I just say this?

Be great to learn some more about that.

What is the proactive approach that the county is taking to continue to incentivize strengthening existing business retention and what that looks like?

I think it's critically important.

That paragraph didn't strike me as having much aspirational goal in it.

It would be good to maybe think about what that might look like.

Page 5.

We talked a bit about defense.

Here we didn't talk much about tourism, but tourism is obviously huge and needs to be considered.

So as you think and you do have this on page 5, you've got both defense and tourism, just continuing to underscore ways to support and expand tourism opportunities in the area to help bring

to help bring that growth.

Moving to

Paige Seven.

I think we talked about most of this, but just the efficient use of existing space, et cetera, et cetera.

We acknowledge the fact that while the, I think, buildout goal, the 20-year demand was, what did you say, 3.34 million square feet, 3.4?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the goal is for expanding Rivanna futures.

What is the capacity?

To tie that together with North Fork, there's 4.3 million square feet of land right in that one area.

So I think that's obviously critically important.

And then going over to page 10, you asked us to focus on the objectives, especially action, or especially number two, the land use related stuff. 2.1

who talks about maintaining adequate inventory of land use, maintain an adequate inventory of land use plan designated in zoned lands for light industrial flex, etc.

Prioritize maintaining existing designated in zoned lands

over proposed to convert such lands to other uses.

I think that's an important one.

I would just underscore that.

Not really more of a comment there.

Moving down to action 2.4, you mentioned in the last sentence, initiating county-led rezonings.

Curious, I know of one.

How many of those actually occur?

We haven't had a practice of doing that in the past.

We've usually let the private sector or the market take that.

I think as we emerge into the efforts to encourage and incentivize infill development, there may be a need to do that boost.

If you go back to that tier category, one of the important ones is lack of zoning.

and the cost for rezoning.

Yeah, for sure.

So can I jump in there for 2.7?

Absolutely.

Jump in.

And so in 2.7 provided a full range of sites and structures.

So

For instance, I would also sort of like to see that linked up with the industries.

For instance, on that same page that the chair was talking about on page five, where we talk about sort of the wineries and all that agribusiness out there.

I'll say it again, if I want to go to a winery and I want to stay there, I have to go to Williamsboro.

There is, unless I go to my colleagues, the Boers head in, but if I don't want to go to the Boers head in, I have no place that I can stay in that area, except for the five ARMB, or not five ARMBs, but the few home stays that are out there.

That's not supporting the 45 wineries, which most, the epicenter is that is most of us west of town.

A couple other, on objective 5.1, update the zoning ordinance to reduce barriers to land uses.

I think that's kind of what you're getting at there.

And I would also, I guess it was flipping back to 2.7, Louise, you mentioned.

Tax abatements really don't do it because not enough is abated to flip the switch on the performer.

that a couple other comments, and some of these you've covered, these are mostly either to provide new ones, but also to consider, but also to underscore some things we've already said.

So one, when you look at identification of sites and tying that directly to user groups, so thinking about what, I mean, this is sort of a 101, but whatever, what's out there, what are we seeing as needs, and how can we then

Proactively think about the sites and the locations, tying those together.

Leveraging relationships, somebody mentioned adjacent counties even and I know there's work that's been going on with green and the innovation corridor, etc.

But thinking about partnerships and whether they should be somehow mentioned in here.

infrastructure aligning that with uses.

We've talked about that.

I think, you know, one of the things that, again, sort of a personal story of my profession or where I work, I've learned that it's really helpful to be taught like the resources that are there, for example, state grants that are available for tier four ready sites.

I didn't know they were even available.

And I'm sure a lot of other people, there are grants out there.

So thinking about an education program as part of this that might help almost like you could come in if you're interested, if you're a developer, here's a learning session or a conference you could go to that teaches you the opportunities that are there for financial support and incentives.

We talk about incentives.

We're not just talking about financial incentives.

We're also talking about time and the amount of time that it takes to rezone things.

Obviously, we talk about is a lot.

So thinking about an equitable way, because I always hesitate to say expedited review, because then the next guy says, well, why didn't you expedite my review, right?

But so thinking about an equitable way to help expedite the zoning process where necessary.

being adaptable to the market, housing and housing availability, obviously being critical.

And I think with that, I will stop.

So staff, thank you very much.

It was really helpful.

And we're looking forward to next steps.

Thank you.

Great.

So, I mean, one of the things I just, you know, as I mentioned, we had the Parks and Rec chapter.

One of the things is just, it would be nice if you do call out the importance of the recreation economy, but then there are no action items associated with it.

And I understand that some of those will be in other chapters, but they should go somewhere.

As we said before, it's a significant amount of money that the people spend on those sports.

I know that runners spend an average of $1,500 each on their sport.

I have a lot of runners in Admiral County.

Birdwatchers spend even more.

So I think quantifying that amount, I don't think we have really good numbers locally right now about how much we're really spending on our recreation economy.

It'd be good to have those numbers, particularly when we do the park needs assessment.

So tying those two things together would be really important.

I think it would be nice to see some maps here.

The other thing that I wonder too is, you know, in Crozet, one of the challenges that we have is we have former industrial sites, some of which are contaminated.

And, and though I know right now the grant opportunities from the federal government are probably slim.

This is a 20 year plan.

So I know there are, there have been grants through RICRA, you know, helpful redevelopment grants to address contaminated sites.

Anything we can do to look at that in Crozet and other areas where we have those contaminated sites as redevelopment opportunities, I think would be really positive.

One of the comments too that I've heard from people in Crozet, particularly as it relates to transportation, they say, the transportation network is insufficient, you know, we all commute from Crozet to Charlottesville and the Rose just can't accommodate all of us traveling from Crozet to Charlottesville.

My first thought when I hear that is not, well, obviously we need to make bigger roads so you can all get to Charlottesville.

And so I think in our analysis of where we want to really attract jobs, we also need to really think about where are those places where people are commuting a significant distance where we should maybe infill some of those jobs because

As you said before, we're alluded to, a lot of it, we lose a lot of money and sprawl.

Residential sprawl costs millions of dollars, whereas commercial land has a surplus of 70 million that it adds to our economy.

So really trying to attract those businesses back.

I mean, Crozet used to be an industrial community, used to have more than foods, used to have those things, and we really lost a lot by having it.

and the other thing would be related to agriculture.

I would hope that, you know, I think there could be some real opportunities in reaching out to the agriculture community and ask, what are the barriers to them getting their products to the market?

You know, they did this in Highland County and the result of that was, was several things, including Allegheny Meats, a small scale processing facility that helped them to get their products to market.

That might not be the solution for Albemarle County, but we need to ask the question, right?

What is the barrier that we can solve?

Then the last thing, environmental services, I know because with the stormwater conservation district, we spend a lot of money on people fencing cattle out of streams, installing wildlife habitat, converting law into native plants, you know, a lot of environmental practices.

It's a lot of money.

And I've seen all the jobs associated with these environmental programs.

And then also, every housing development goes in, people putting in rain gardens and bio filters.

and it just occurs to me that are we really training youth in Albemarle County to take those jobs?

Awesome.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

I will put us under recess and we'll reconvene at 6 p.m.

Great.

Good evening, everyone.

You can take your seats.

I appreciate it.

I will reconvene the Planning Commission meeting from March 11th, 2024.

And we have established a quorum.

We have Commissioner Firehawk online.

and so we are complete.

So with that, I'll move on to the fourth item on our agenda, public comment and matters pending before the commission.

Are there any matters from the public not listed on tonight's agenda for public input?

Anybody who would like to speak tonight on items that are not on our agenda?

Okay, nobody online, nobody signed up, very good.

All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

Is there a commissioner who would like to either make a motion or pull any of those from consent agenda?

Anybody like to make a motion?

Go move, Chair.

Second.

Great.

Any discussion?

All right.

All right.

Mr. Moore?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock.

Hi.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you, Rebecca Ragsdale, and I'll be giving you staff's presentation and going over what this request is and what we need to cover.

So this is the Crozet Independence Day celebration, excuse me, it's a request for a temporary event.

That is a category in our rural areas, zoning district.

For those events that are larger, one time need extra planning and attention.

And we want to make sure that the sites can accommodate them.

So this is the traditional Crozet community, Fourth of July celebration that's put on by the Crozet Community Association and others as the nonprofit that's organizing it.

And the request is for it to be located on King Family Vineyard.

They've outgrown or growth has happened around the Crozet park so it can no longer accommodate

the fireworks display.

So the event they're planning for would be primarily in the evening after the parade and include the community celebration, music, food, beverages, and then culminating in the fireworks.

So the property you may all be familiar with is actually adjacent in one spot to the Crozet development area, King Family Vineyard, being the home of the vineyards and the polo activities located off Half Mile Branch Road.

So the site can be accessed from Jarman's Gap and 250 easily from the development area.

This site has a history of agricultural uses, agriculture being the primary use with the vineyard.

There have been multiple special use permits, the property owners, the hosts, the King family are used to going through the special use permit process.

This is a site that has had larger nonprofit events, if you recall.

in the past that there was the pink ribbon polo match, which was the larger one-time polo event that was approved as a temporary nonprofit event.

And then more frequently, and a more recent special use permit was the weekend polo activities, which is up to a thousand.

So a site with a history of being able to accommodate larger crowds for those

Tim activities, temporary in some cases.

It is also a property that's been under conservation easement with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation since 2000.

Just wanted to note that I mentioned that the community had the previous location at Crozet Park is no longer going to work for fireworks so the

Celebration was moved in 2004 to the King Family property and that was held but with fewer attendees so for it to continue at this location and be able to grow into a larger event than the special use permit is necessary.

This is an aerial overview of the site where in the red rectangle is where the primary event would set up would be

and when I say that the food trucks, the music and then around those areas parking would take place in some areas that you know are typically used for parking now overflow areas and then I've shown a couple locations where traffic control would be set up but this is an event that has been extensively coordinated with public safety

for both events set up on site and traffic management to and from the site.

That's really the primary

one of the primary factors in this review.

We've reviewed it against the criteria for special use permits.

It is in the rural areas.

We don't believe it would be as a one-time event on a property that will be continued use for agriculture and is under easement in conflict with the comprehensive plan.

The substantial detriment category is really provision is really covered under the supplemental regulations and that extensive review from

our public safety agencies.

As a one-time event, we don't have any concerns about character and harmony of the area changing.

But we did put in your packet and we did want to note that we want to make sure through this process that the roads can handle the traffic.

That they've we've had a chance even before the special use permit is approved to set the parameters of

The Hours and frequency of the event through the special use permit process, but also have that higher level of review with the public safety agencies.

They've met several times and have a good solid preliminary plan in place.

A condition of the special use permit approval is that that final plan be approved and then each year it be approved prior to the 4th of July event.

But that does involve VDOT, the police, fire rescue,

both the Fire Marshals Office and local volunteer organizations like Western Albemarle Rescue Squad and then the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department.

So we really make sure through this process that those adequate arrangements are made and that covers, as I mentioned, the on-site activities

parking, access for emergency vehicles, maneuverability, and access on the site, establishing command and control, having crowd managers, things that you see at larger events when you go with those certified crowd manager staff, along with the fire marshal would be on site as well to implement and inspect for the fireworks permit.

So we have recommended approval with these conditions.

I'm going to go back a slide and note what we did in the staff report as far as we feeling like their their ability, they demonstrated their ability to meet those criteria and the ordinance and have worked to develop that preliminary event plan.

You know, it is more traffic than you would expect and would normally want on a

to have as a sustained increase of traffic, but it will be managed and is for that one day event.

So we have recommended approval with those conditions that specify this is for the 4th of July ceremony, give them a little flexibility in case of any weather events so that it can be held on or around the 4th of July.

and no later than 10 30 p.m.

Great report.

Thank you.

Any questions for staff?

I'll put your point down there.

I was.

Mine's more of a clarifying question for, I think it was number two, the condition ending at 1030.

That is the program is ending at 1030.

It's probably another hour where people are leaving.

So it's probably 1130 or 12 before the site is clear.

Mr. Murray?

Miss Firehawk has a question.

Awesome.

Anybody here?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

This is a question for staff and

It's okay if you don't know the answer to this, but I know King Family Vineyards has done a great job with the traffic management for their polo events and all that.

So I'm really not concerned about this application with regards to their ability to have a smooth event.

My question is about fire safety in regards to situations where we have high wind and dry conditions.

So like right now, Virginia has fire watches in effect.

I'm just curious, how does that come into play?

Is that something that the fire department would communicate to the fireworks event holders to, you know, hey, maybe, because I'm just thinking about this in a very rural area with a lot of dry forest land around potentially.

I know it's a vineyard, but it's surrounded by forests.

So just curious kind of how we handle that.

Thank you for that question.

That is, there is a fireworks permit that's required through the fire marshal's office and, you know, for one of that being one of the intended purposes that they need to okay that the fireworks can be launched.

They're on site, they're inspecting if the conditions are such that it's a fire hazard.

You know, they're

It's not just a permit and you go off and there's no monitoring and we hope it goes okay.

Okay, so in a sort of high fire risk scenario, they might make them delay a few days or something like that.

I'm just, because when I think of fireworks and fire departments, I usually think of like they're around for on the ground, sort of around the immediate event and just, I was just curious how much they took

with Climate Change, we've got a lot more extended dry periods and concerns.

Thank you.

I just have a couple of clarifying pieces.

So when we say that this is an annual event, but the SP would be for them to be able to have this annual event,

So we're not saying it's only for 2025.

So to answer the first part of that, it is intended to be an annual event and we haven't recommended any conditions that the permit expire or there's a renewal period for it.

This permit is for the event itself.

So we're not, then you could have fireworks through the fireworks process.

That's not, that's a separate activity, but I mean, fireworks are part of the event.

We're not specifically regulating the fireworks because they are covered.

So it's the gathering.

We're really looking at the gathering there.

Okay.

So then my other clarifying question is if we're talking about possibilities for the upward, the upward limit being 2,000 vehicles.

It's been reviewed without use of a shuttle and managing it without use of a shuttle.

And I think that that's something that was mentioned somewhere along the way in terms of something they may want to implement.

To handle 2,000 unique cameras.

Okay, now I'm putting my commissioner Murray at it all.

So in the narrative from, I guess it's the owner of the property on page five, the individual boast of it being, we have 148 different species of birds.

And I wonder when we talk about biodiversity, whether or not there is a, that fireworks incompatible

with 148 different species of birds and the various cows and sheep, which are also in the pastures.

And there's some horses pastured out there too.

So do we take that?

And you can tell me, no, we don't take that into consideration.

So I think that in their narrative they wanted to highlight their stewardship and that part of the history of the property in terms of projects and easements and projects they've implemented that have contributed to the rural areas and biodiversity.

I just had one clarifying question too so kind of bouncing off of what Commissioner Bivins mentioned so the the special use permit being in perpetuity

But you mentioned that they would need to apply for a zoning clearance every year before the event.

Yes, sir.

That's a staff level review.

And it's very common for events that don't even need special use permits.

It's a permit type that we have for Albemarle County and allows for us to make sure that all of those approvals are in place, the details that are necessary for the event each year.

This has been a

This has been a condition for zoning clearances.

Thank you.

I didn't realize it was every year.

It was an annual thing.

Great.

All right.

Thank you.

Any other questions for staff?

No.

OK.

Just some of these questions that we think of an additional one.

Yes, we're not intending to govern the duration of the fireworks.

All right.

With that, thank you, staff.

I'll open the public hearing and ask if the applicant would like to say any words or speak or answer questions.

And please just state your name.

and General Location of Residence.

My name is James King.

I'm one of the co-owners at King Family Vineyards in Crozet.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight.

And thank you, Rebecca Ragsdale, for all your work to help us on the application process.

My family and I are seeking this special use permit not by choice, but just out of service to our community.

Mr. Tolson behind me to the left has run this event for the last 10 years at the park.

And the event's been going on, I believe, since 1947.

Wow.

And Mr. Marshall behind me to my right wrote in the Crozet Gazette that because of housing encroachment, the event would no longer be able to be at the park.

And having the land and acreage that we do, I read that and thought, wow, can we be of service?

So in jest, that would say that

I almost wish you would all not approve this because it's a it's a lot of work and a huge headache and we already take a ton of liability and and do all that with horses and wine and stuff already but having watched my dad for many years go through this process for the pink ribbon polo tournament and that was a community event to benefit breast cancer research and that money would stay in the area so I guess you know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I'm stubborn and

When I see my dad try to help people out, I try to help people out too.

So this is just an ask that we host the event that he's run so well for many moons.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

The over 100 bird species comment when I applied for this process, it was one of the questions was to try to talk about how we were stewards and

how we were helping the environment.

And we worked with Ducks Unlimited and the Army Corps of Engineers to build a waterfowl impoundment, which before that was just a dry stream bed.

It was just a dry pasture.

And since building that impoundment, it's become a bird watching hotspot, which is really cool.

There's birders from all over the state and all of the country that come to our place to look at these amazing species of birds that migrate through.

during the day, during business hours.

So I hope that answers that question.

Yeah, we're just looking to help out the community and try to host this event at one time a year.

And we'd be happy to reapply every year through the zoning process, just as like checks and balances.

I think everyone we've worked with from, you know, EMS, fire rescue planning has really helped

understand what went well last year and what we needed to work on.

So I think every year it's just going to get better and better.

So we hope you'll allow us to do it so we can continue a great tradition.

As Mike would probably argue and talk about, it's literally the one event that Crozet hosts every year where the community gets together.

We call it Old Crozet and New Crozet.

So whether you've lived there a day or

You know, your entire life, it's really the one time every year that people get together to, you know, break bread, have a glass of wine, share a beer, eat a hot dog, whatever.

So it's super family-friendly, community-oriented, and we'd love to keep it going.

So with that, I'll just kind of open up to any questions.

I'm happy to have an answer.

Awesome.

Yeah, we asked, initially we asked a gentleman who runs the Crozet trolley, whose name I'm going to tip on my tongue.

Thank you, Mr. Bird.

I think he's got three or four trolleys parked in downtown Crozet and we asked him

because of his logistical capabilities, could he shuttle people in?

Initially, he was thumbs up and then when I got down to business, he kind of backed out.

We would love the opportunity to do that.

It's just the actual asset to do that.

The farm has the capability to handle

the number of cars we're talking about.

But if people either have transportation issues or would prefer public transportation or shuttle, we'd love to help make that happen.

We were just trying to use a local asset that was available, and they kind of backed out last year.

No problem.

Mr. Moore, any questions?

Any other questions?

Thanks for the insights you provided there, Mr. King.

Just wanted to confirm that the Vineyard building is open the entire time.

Yes, sir.

The winery facility, the tasting room, and what we call the carriage house, the event space next door will be open the entire time.

And the plan, the emergency shelters should, you know, we need a shelter for, you know, weather, high wind, things like that.

But absolutely, we are

not required by law, being a farm owner to be ADA compliant, but we decided to do that because we think it's the right thing to do as a family than a business.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then the second question is probably more of a comment, but just around fireworks and just respecting that not everybody loves them, I think of veterans who have served in combat, right?

And so that 10, right?

So that the 1030 timeframe just,

Be respectful for that.

To your comment earlier, the fireworks, I guess, duration is primarily budgetary restriction.

I think they're usually around $1,000 for every minute of fireworks.

So the budget that the CC has brings to the table every year is about 15 minutes worth of fireworks every year.

And so given the

Nautical Sunset Time.

I believe, generally speaking, in that 10-day window, fireworks would start just after 10 o'clock, around 10.04, and maybe, sorry, 9.30, thank you, and run for about 15 minutes, and then be done.

So the last hour you mentioned would be cars exiting.

But yes, I'm very, very well aware of

All the people that don't appreciate fireworks.

Thank you for your service.

No, no problem.

So we would just look to educate and communicate to the community when they're going to happen.

So people need to put on air protection, shut and lock the doors, keep their dogs inside.

They'll have the ability to do that.

Thank you.

Good question.

A typical Sunday for cars.

I don't personally count cars.

I could ask Brandon Black with Lenora Parking, who actually does our parking lot.

can get full around the tasting room.

There is tailgating around the field.

We do have what we call an overflow lot right next door.

It's kind of in my front yard.

But we've never been at capacity for pull-up in terms of going over the limit of, I think, 1,000 vehicles or something like that.

So we've never been close.

The two biggest days of the year are Memorial Day and Labor Day, for obvious reasons.

People are traveling.

Just at the top of your head, more or less.

Our main lot, I've seen it before.

200 cars in the main lots around the Tayser Room, just for Tayser Room traffic.

Yeah, and then you have all the tailgating around the place.

Perfect.

Thank you for clarifying on your work with Ducks on My Med.

That's a good organization.

Just a piece of clarification.

So you have your exercise rink that's down, that's below the polo rink?

Outdoor polo arena, yes sir.

Yeah, the Great Fencing is an outdoor polar arena.

The upper field is just a grass field.

It's a smaller size.

OK, so that's OK.

The reason for that construction was basically if the grass field is wet, it is not safe for the ponies or the players to play.

So if it's not saturated, we can play in the arena because the footing is different.

It's a rock dust sand maker.

It's safer.

We also do

Paul Lessons for Children and Adults.

In the arena.

But you're not parking on the arena because I assume you've got a certain kind of drainage thing.

Absolutely not.

That's what I want.

That's all I wanted to know is that the arena is off.

The arena is off.

Correct.

Off limits, okay.

I just had a quick question.

First of all, thanks everybody for what you do for the community in all aspects.

So can you just speak briefly?

I know that there was a mention of Half Mile Branch Road being sufficient to handle the cars.

For traffic specifically?

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Last year, the exit plan

was initially to have cars exit two different entrants, two different exits.

One would turn right and go south down half mile branch road towards 250 and 64.

The other would exit left out of the main entrance and go towards Jarman's Gap, for as a proper

At the last minute, that did not happen.

Mr. Black from Lenore Parking and one of the police officers on site made the decision to keep cars away from 250 so all cars exited to the left, which was not conducive to efficiency.

So talking to all parties involved, the plan this coming year is to have

officers stationed at various intersections.

There'll be two officers at the intersection of Jarman's Gap and Half Mile Branch Road and Lane Town Road.

They will be illuminated with the light as is requirement.

There will also be two officers in 250 where Hillsboro exits onto 250.

They will also be illuminated.

We've talked to Mr. Rhodes, Officer Rhodes about that.

We've talked with VDOT as well.

There is also going to be officers

three different officers on Greenwood Road and Jarman's Gap Road to

Limit traffic heading towards the two officers at the intersection of Jarman's Gap and Lane Town.

Let's keep them safe and keep traffic down.

So based on last year's experience and the recommendations from Officer Rhodes, Mr. Black and VDOT, we've kind of come up with a plan that we believe will be much more efficient, much safer, and get everyone out faster in an efficient and safe way.

So hoping that's the case.

And again, everyone's got a plan that goes out the window after the first bullet flies, as we said, the Marine Corps.

Great.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

It's really helpful.

Yes.

Just want to make sure, Commissioner Firehock, any questions?

I don't see your hand raised.

I'm assuming not.

No chair.

I don't.

I'm just.

Thank you.

You may.

Our clock is off.

I'm Mike Marshall and the publisher and editor of the Crozet Gazette and I'm here representing the Crozet Board of Trade which is the non-profit that does the fundraising for the show.

and I just want to make it clear, we're all volunteers.

We do not charge for this event.

This year it's going to cost us about $50,000 to put on.

And I'm a little worried you guys will raise our requirements and raise our cost.

But Tim and I put this on now for 15 years, volunteers.

Everybody is a volunteer and we're doing it so that we can create an attraction that will cause newcomers to town to come in and get invested in the town and start to call it their own.

Hometown, and I just want to say it's been going on for a long time with volunteer effort exclusively, no charge.

We want everybody to come.

You don't have to pony up anything to get in.

All right.

Thanks, everyone.

You can have a seat and we'll open it up to the audience.

Is there anyone here tonight who would like to speak to this issue?

All right.

Not seeing any.

Correct.

Nobody signed up.

Great.

All right.

Well, with that, I assume the applicant doesn't want to come back up and speak to any of those issues.

So we're good to go.

All right.

With that, I'll close the public hearing and open it up for discussion.

You know, I just need to sort of say that

I'm glad they found the place to land because this in fact is one of those community building things that we talk about.

But I also want to make it clear that the county has responsibilities for its community.

And so I thank the King family for assuming a great deal of expense because this is not an inexpensive expense for your property and for your family.

So thank you for that.

But for the volunteers, the volunteers need to appreciate that if there are regulations that have to be adhered to, it's not to give them a pain in the pocketbook.

It's to make sure that the community is safe while this big event is taking place.

2000 people would fill easily the lawn.

and just think about that.

So that's the kind of people that you're trying to move around there.

And so I believe that the King family and the King and the King organization knows how to do this well.

But I want to just make it clear to the community.

This is not about putting any burden on a bunch of volunteers.

Thank you.

Well said.

And before making a motion, could I just add a suggested phrase to this?

And that is that move to recommend approval.

If the motion is for approval, recommend approval with the conditions and for the reasons stated in the staff report.

No further discussion except just to commend the King family for offering this service to the community.

I moved to recommend approval of, oh, that lost the screen there.

Okay, there you go.

Great.

Second.

Discussion?

Okay.

All right.

Ms.

Firehawk?

Awesome.

Thank you, Ms.

Ragsdale.

All right, we will move on to the second public hearing item, SP 2024-22 Living Earth School.

Good evening, apologies for the delay.

I'm Scott Clark from the Community Development Department.

This is a presentation about a proposed special use permit for a camp use.

This is a site located off of Red Hill Road, adjacent to Walnut Creek Park.

The request is for a camp for a maximum of 250 attendees for various year-round activities, plus some events up to six times per year for a maximum of 500 attendees.

And again, the proposed development includes campus facilities, staff residences, camping areas, and a pavilion.

The parcels outlined in red are the property for the proposal.

You can see at the north end of the map is where it touches Red Hill Road.

That would be where the entrance would be on the western boundary.

That green area is Walnut Creek Park, which is directly adjacent.

Just want to point out that for the remainder of the presentation,

All the maps you see, the north will be at the right, rather than at the top, just to fit the plan on the screen well.

So in summary, this use would consist of eight weeks per year of summer camp with up to 250 campers.

The remaining 44 weeks of the year, there would be other day and overnight camp activities for up to 100 campers.

These are all generally speaking environmental education and nature-related camps.

In addition to the main camp activities, there would be up to 12 programs for 200 or fewer attendees and then up to six events for fundraisers and related events from 201 to 500 attendees.

I'll show you the plan in a moment, but just in summary, the structures on the site would include a welcome pavilion, a main camp hall, some cabins, up to six staff residences to provide places for staff who are there, especially for the summer camps, other miscellaneous structures such as a nature library, a pavilion at the southern end of the property near the South Fork hardware floodplain, and some greenhouses.

There will also be a central water and septic system proposed for the use.

That proposal has been submitted and is currently under review, and that would be a decision to be made by the board of supervisors.

This is the applicant's conceptual plan.

Again, north is at the right.

You can see the entrance on Redhill Road.

Here, there's one staff residence area at the front.

using an area that was previously used for a residence in the past, although there's nothing there now.

Farther back in the property to the south, just before you get to White Oak Creek, there's a welcome area, which has a pavilion, a parking area, and a maintenance building.

Once you get over White Oak Creek and up the hill, you're into the main camp area, and that's where the camp hall, the cabins, structures like that would be.

and then at the far south end about the flood plain of the South Fork hardware and this is downstream of the dam at Walnut Creek Park.

There's just a pavilion there for educational activities.

The two areas hatched in red are where the staff residences would be located.

The blue areas are the primitive tent camping areas.

Not necessarily all of those would be in use at any one time and be rotated between those areas to provide locations for camping intents in the woods.

Another sheet in the conceptual plan that lays out the vegetation management for the camp.

There's four zones here.

Zone one and the lightest green is the most intensive area.

That's about 10 acres.

Zones two and three, where there is, well, two is more wooded, but allows for structures such as the education of buildings and the staff residences, more vegetated, but with keeping as many trees as possible.

Zone three, which is basically the primitive tent camping areas, is where

The forest canopy would be retained, but there would be permitted uses on the ground for the tents, perhaps tent platforms.

And then the remaining 203 acres is in zone four, which is an area that would not be impacted for structures and use that would remain forested.

Under the

Factors for review for a special experiment under no substantial detriment.

There are two places where the application plan has some mitigation measures for impacts on adjacent properties.

On the left here, you see an inset showing the welcome area that I mentioned before near White Oak Creek.

That includes the welcome pavilion, which is the larger structure.

Parking Area for drop-off and pickup and a maintenance building.

There's also a greenhouse and some orchard trees proposed for that.

That maintenance building is the closest point to a dwelling from this welcome area.

It's just under 500 feet away.

It's also worth noting it's about 40 feet lower than the dwelling, so it's not a direct line of sight.

The applicants have moved the driveway that's shown here.

The old existing farm road goes very close to this property line and is not at all screened from this dwelling here.

So by moving this proposed driveway farther into the property, they've increased the setback in the screening as the majority of that area is wooded in between.

Also, in this inset on the right, this is up near the entrance at the north end of the property.

You can see that this hatched area, again, is where one of the staff dwellings would be.

And there's some screening shown here.

to protect the adjacent property at the bottom here from the impacts of that driveway being used.

This isn't the dwelling here that you see at the bottom, that's the garage.

The house is a little bit farther away, but so this would provide some screening between those two properties.

Under the criterion for character of the nearby area, you can see with the property outlines and the conceptual plan overlaid on the aerial photos.

Generally speaking, the area is made up of large forested parcels with some significant open areas, especially to the north and the east.

And of course, there's the public park to the west that

matches that same pattern being somewhat more wooded, but with some open areas.

The park, excuse me, the camp layout largely matches that pattern for this surrounding area.

Address some safety issues.

The property would be accessed by a Redhill Road, which is

The good condition rode about 24 feet wide.

The center line well paved.

FEDOT had no objections to the proposed use.

The applicants have requested a critical slopes waiver.

to be able to fold it back this bank that you see here.

We're looking southeast along Red Hill Road.

This area here, they're asking for a waiver to start about 2,600 square feet or 0.06 of an acre to just open up that sight line from the entrance.

Also related to road safety staff has proposed a condition that the larger six events would be required to use shuttle vehicles rather than individual vehicles to just reduce the overall traffic load on Redhill Road.

New Emergency Access, the fire rescue division or department did review this application.

They were concerned, especially with the length of the property and the distance to the activity areas, that there'd be a clear route all the way into the property to allow for access for emergency vehicles.

So they asked for a 20-foot improved road surface to provide for two-way traffic so that people could be getting in and out at the same time.

That's now shown on the plan.

They also asked for an emergency access plan before the use begins, and that is one of the recommended conditions.

As I understand it, that's also required for the applicant's insurance, so that's not going to happen before any use begins.

Under consistency with the comprehensive plan, there are several criteria that this use is in compliance with related to public awareness of biodiversity and nature.

The retention of important land cover, especially near rivers and streams, protecting historic and archaeological resources.

There are some stone structure remnants, foundations and walls on the site.

And also, again, providing information to the public to understand the aspects of the rural area.

However, this, of course, is a form of development in the rural areas, which is generally not in compliance with the complaint.

What we usually do in a case like this is compare the impacts of a proposed use to what is possible under by-right residential development.

This particular property could have up to 23 dwellings.

There wouldn't be limits on structure size or road or driveway lengths, and there would be limited control of vegetation changes on the property if it was developed for residential use.

In contrast, the camp use has a specific and limited extent of development and has defined vegetation management areas that protect most of the forest cover on the site.

to compare traffic impacts between residential use and the camp use.

I want to refer to this table here.

And again, there are eight weeks a year where up to 250 campers could be on site for summer camp.

These two rows in the middle of the table

are kind of worst case scenarios for traffic generation, one assuming that every single one of those campers is staying overnight for the whole week.

So all of them arrive on a Sunday evening and all of them depart on a Friday.

And that creates peaks at those times that are somewhat larger than the peak generation for residential development.

The row below that makes the assumption that all 250 campers, if they max out attendance,

are attending day by day.

So they're arriving and departing Monday to Friday.

And again, you get a somewhat higher peak for those daily trips than you would for residential development.

That said, these are worst case scenarios.

It's in the applicant's experience rare for any given summer camp to be entirely overnight campers or entirely day campers.

And what that means is these peaks get spread somewhat more.

Rather than having a big peak on Sunday and Friday or having big peaks every weekday, it's more average doubt.

And again, that's eight weeks out of the year.

The other 44 weeks are the day camps, which are limited to 100 people.

So again, that's going to be lower weekday trip levels than you would expect from the 23 dwellings on the site.

So in summary, we found two major positive factors, the fact that the use limits development impacts compared to what's possible under by-right development, and the fact that environmental education is consistent with several comprehensive plan goals.

We're recommending approval with conditions listed in the staff report.

However, I have two changes to those conditions I want to review with you.

These were the original conditions.

We'll read them all.

There are two changes recommended here.

The first is in number three.

This was taken from some draft conditions from the applicant's previous application when it was located on Pounding Branch Road near Batesville.

for those of you who are familiar with it is an entirely different road from Redhill.

It's about a 10 to 11 foot wide dirt road that required a different level of traffic mitigation.

So I should not have included sections A and B here and we're recommending that those be removed.

Also, after discussions with the applicants, we are recommending that condition eight be deleted.

This is a condition requiring health department approval before the zoning clearance can be approved to begin the use.

This is already covered by existing sections of the zoning ordinance.

This requirement already exists that any such structures would have to have health department approval.

There's a concern that

including this condition would raise the expectation that all of the systems for all of the buildings would have to be built and approved before any use could begin.

And that's not necessarily what was attended.

So we're recommending that number eight, absolutely believe it.

Thank you.

That was a great presentation, really helpful.

Emission, any questions for staff?

Not for staff, I don't think.

Yes, has there been a site surveyed the streams on this on this property?

Just, you know, quick glancing at the DCR map of streams versus the county map of streams.

There do seem to be some discrepancies in terms of where the intermittent streams are.

Has anyone site verified where streams are?

I'm not aware of any detailed on-site surveys looking for intermittent streams.

It's possible the applicants may have more information, as I know they've done a lot of detailed investigations on the property.

But I'm not aware of any county or otherwise official surveys related to stream locations.

Mr. Claiborne.

Good question.

It's a quick question on the requirement for the road to the 20 foot for fire accident and fire accidents, I'm assuming.

So that will be required the entire length of the road.

We've had some discussions about that.

That would be resolved at the site plan stage once the exactly out is known.

Fire Marshal's office mentioned that some sort of hammerhead or turnaround might be needed.

But again, that's

once we have a more tied-down location for those structures when the site plan comes through, that'll be worked out as fire rescue.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I just, I have a, you know, today's a day of clarification.

So in Scott, in your presentation,

Today camps equal those students who come there on homeschooling.

Is it the applicant and their, and the applicant's narrative says that they have homeschooling there, homeschooling, homeschoolers there every day.

That's part of the day camp use.

They may also have adult groups doing environmental education.

so then given that if I could ask you to go back to was one of your first one or two slides where you had the number of activities taking place there and asked here we go I would just ask the applicant to unpack that because when I so you're saying the

The weekly camps, not the I'm signing up for summer camp or I'm coming for a special event.

That's a set maximum.

I don't think they expect to have honored campers every single day.

That's just a cap for potential activities.

Awesome.

I just have one clarification.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Yeah, the special exception for the critical slopes waiver.

All right.

Good evening, Chair Missel, members of the Planning Commission.

My name is Kelsey Schlein.

I'm a planner with Shimp Engineering.

We're assisting Living Earth Sanctuary with their special use permit application.

I'm just going to pull up our slides here.

Scott, thank you so much for the staff report and your presentation.

Thank you.

I want to just thank the Planning Commission for all the questions you do ask and try to sort out what's going to be a good thing for the community.

And Scott Clark, who's put up with me for a bunch of years, coming back and forth and doing this.

So I appreciate it a lot.

And I'm also very grateful for the families.

Is this echoing?

for the families for 23 years and the kids that have had the luxury of being in camp and seeing the kids come back with it.

So excited to tell me stories about something they saw out in the woods and I ask questions and they get, there's a spark in their eyes.

That's really unique today for a world that's really plugged in and to see these kids come alive.

And I do adult programs.

We can answer the question you were asking about unpacking the 44 weeks, but

I do adult programs, and I see child likeness.

I work with 80-year-olds sometimes and 50-year-olds and 30-year-olds, and they all come back feeling like children again.

And there's a youthfulness that comes to them.

So I stand here today, not for me, but mostly just to keep providing something like we do in the community for this.

And I have walked this 287 acres at great length day in, day out.

I go out there in the snow.

I have maps.

I have species lists.

There's like 36 species of trees.

The White Oak Creek has some really sweet fish in it.

And I just really care about the land and how the animals move on.

I've seen bobcats and other animals and how the routes they use is impacting how we plan to use the site so we can not stir what's happening there and what's good there.

There's a lot of unique ecology.

There's plants that are unique to the site that we have designed to work away from.

And there's also historic sites to learn from.

A neighbor showed me a Native American grinding stone along the river

embedded.

So it's a really rich site and it's an awesome place to educate people.

We've been patching together properties for 23 years trying to do these programs and we built a really robust program to take people out into the woods and teach them of all ages.

and educate them and help them become nature smart and how to interact well.

So like when we see a copperhead, how do you interact with a copperhead?

Do you just scream and yell or do you, you know, or how do you handle it?

What do you do when you see a bear, you know, and teaching these kids how to do that brings a deep ease in their soul.

And they get a lot of beauty that comes out of the woods and something that changes in them.

So that's why I'm here today is to create a place that will go beyond me.

for the next 100 years, and that's what we're working towards.

And this land, I've looked at a lot of properties in this land and the people that helped buy it for us are conservationists.

They have several thousand acres in easement.

Our goal is to protect this land the best we can for the long term and protect the resources, but also use those resources to educate the next generation of people so that they can be inspired by it.

And I see that a lot of the kids that we've worked with have come through and they said it's impacted their career choices.

and that they feel a sense of belonging and our main tenants are earth care, people care and those are the things we can rob around what we teach and so we're excited for it and I'm excited to share this land with people

and just to make a place that Charlottesville can be proud of that can keep educating people and of all different ages.

I've been working with a group of elders lately and it's great to work through the generations from the little kids and to the older people and just provide a place that feels like home to them and a place that they feel part of where they can help be a part of the caring for the land and then they feel

So that's why I'm here.

I wish you could be there when the kids do come back to camp and just see how alive they are because they come sometimes somewhat dead inside from being on their screens all day.

But then eventually when they come to us to watch the work that happens is beautiful and needed and I get thanked a lot in town, even though it's not me doing it, I have wonderful staff.

throughout the year that they're doing a lot of the work, but parents are just really grateful for what we provide to the community and I want to keep it going and we can't keep patching sites together because it's just exhausting and kids need a home.

Thanks, hub.

Yeah, I think that this this property is really special and really unique.

And it's also really suitable to support this type of use, not only from the ecological perspective, but also from the the transportation's perspective, the access perspective.

this large middle area of this 287 acres where we can really concentrate the uses and the most intense programming on the site to have the least impact possible on neighbors.

So I think this property is very special for many aspects, but especially from an impacts and planning and evaluations standpoint.

sometimes through the lens that you all are tasked to look at these things through.

This property really checks a lot of boxes.

And so these are just a few of the site photos.

So on the left, most photo, we're looking at a meadow as you come into the property near the welcome area.

The middle property is the hardware river at the rear of the property.

and on the right is some of the historic stone walls that Scott mentioned in his staff report that are in some of the areas of the property that are proposed to have minimal amount of human impact in the future.

and so here just a few more photos the the middle and the right photo we're looking at the central Meadow area where most of the programming for the main camp area and proposed structures will be on the property and just kind of hopping into the site plan a little more and going through how we laid this out the the site we're really fortunate that the a high point on the site and the open meadow is is really central

and it's adequate to support the proposed structures while in septic systems that are that are necessary to support kind of full buildout of this camp and we've programmed this to have the the greatest impact at the core of the site and the least impact kind of around the periphery

adjacent to neighbors so that's how we've cited our primitive camp areas but you know despite the proposed improvements on the site we're still no closer than 500 feet from any from the nearest residents anywhere and this is just kind of going through the the the welcome center as you come to the site the Craft and Maintenance Barn Garden Center that's imagined for that area

Once you cross White Oak Creek and get up into the open central meadow, this is where most of the buildings are proposed on the property.

And then we have a staff residence area, primitive camp area, and some additional primitive camp areas.

getting my directions mixed up since we rotated this, but I think that's east of the main camp area.

Pavilion towards the rear of the property to provide access and shade when kids are enjoying access to the Hardware River.

Our concept plan here, we've defined specific areas and programmed how the site can be used and this ties directly to our vegetative management plan.

I'll also note that Hub and his team have been working very closely with the Department of Forestry on a stewardship plan.

This is kind of the most comprehensive

Forest Management Plan that the Department of Forestry prepares.

And so he's been working very closely with them to come up with a comprehensive plan for just long-term management of the forest systems on this property.

And you can see here that we've included some much more detailed information in our concept plan and materials about exactly what's permitted in these sites.

83% of the site is effectively going to remain as is with minimal primitive trails going through it and keeping the septic systems, all of that stuff out of those portions of the site, keeping it on the high portions of the site, the most suitable soils to support those types of improvements.

and just kind of going over some distances to nearby residences.

Again, our closest structure is approximately 500 feet away.

The main camp area is nearly 2000 feet away from the nearest residence and our proposed staff residence areas 1500 to 2,300 square feet.

So this site really lends itself very well to have as minimal impact as possible on adjacent property owners.

and as kind of reiterating a few points that Scott said that the property could be developed with 23 single family dwelling units and so looking at impacts we think that this has this site this proposed use has far less impacts and a lot of respect than the by right use and it also

I think is a great community asset and opens up the property for people to be able to enjoy nature rather than kind of keeping this very privatized as single-family residential.

That had a few, if I could just touch on this one point very quickly.

for the revised conditions.

Scott has already gone over two items and just a quick note that we had included for the shuttling for the larger events for the community and fundraiser events.

We just request that the shuttling kind of come into effect after 200 people.

So that up to 200 could access the site and individual vehicles and then also requesting for amplified sound in the welcome area.

are totally willing to commit to a restricted set of hours with that as well.

Thank you all so much for your consideration.

Great.

Thank you.

Any questions for the applicant?

Would you like to ask it again?

Well, I don't know about you, but the one next to you always has good answers to my questions appropriately.

If we could go back, there was a piece there trying to figure out the number of people, not the camps.

not the special events, but in your narrative, or someone's narrative, there was conversation that that space is used for homeschool children.

And how many of those a day to have some sense of what really will be flowing down that onto the property.

Oh, thank you.

You ready?

Please go.

Please go.

So right now we do homeschool programs in the Charlottesville area two days a week.

And it's like 36 kids max.

So that's only two days a week.

But once in a while, we get other groups that reach out and say, hey, can we bring 20 kids out to you to do a program?

So we were trying to like, how do we set this up and not have it like, said Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you can do stuff, but Thursdays and Fridays, you can't like, how do we just kind of do it right now?

We don't, we do other homeschool programs in Goochland and Stanton.

So, so there's that.

And then I also, we do a lot of adult programs and there's demand for adult programs during the week.

And we haven't been able to do them because we haven't really had adequate sites.

So having some adult programs where they come out and like our elder program is something we're trying to develop more.

So how do we have just some spaciousness most week?

There's, I doubt, I can't ever imagine we'll have 100 people five days a week.

I don't imagine it.

You know, I mean, it's like, we, they're probably four or five days a week where we don't do anything.

So, yeah.

Thank you.

So, I mean, there's nothing official.

I know the Hardware River has had a bunch of studies done on it.

Oh, just let me, let me clarify.

Yeah.

I could tell you all about the hardware.

But anyway, so we require a hundred foot buffer on perennial and intermittent streams.

So just my concern would be is there have been other situations in the Albemarle County's rural area where there are undocumented streams on the Albemarle County's map.

It's pretty frequent in the rural area.

And this is an area just comparing the county map and DCR's map.

There are discrepancies where those streams are.

So is anyone going to site verify that

I mean, I imagine, like, according to the site plan, it's probably part of the process.

But I know where all the, I mean, I could draw all the streams on the map right now that are perennial flowing.

And summertime, like last summer, was a dry season.

So, but there's a lot of the creek.

I noticed you mentioned all these undulations in there.

A lot of those are dry.

So if you look above, this isn't a good map.

You had one map that had one.

There's one that had some topography on it.

So if you look right above zone one, you see that very steep V shape right above zone one.

Yeah.

That that looks like that they're very easily could be a stream right there.

And it has always, it seems like it's always been dry so and even there's not like I know there's rushes and sedges that indicate wet zones and there's none in that zone that I know so

and even when it rained a lot during the hurricane because the river did come up 16 feet.

And then just as an FYI, I mean, it looks like your property, this is completely vegetated already, but you probably already know there is a TMDL for the hardware river.

It has a bacterial TMDL for being contaminated.

Yeah, from what I've researched, because I've read a bunch of reports on is that it's mostly the North Fork and that this section that we're on is supposedly considered the healthy section of the whole hardware and the rest is considered impaired.

because it's been a concern of mine, like, because I have kids I work with and I'm responsible for number one.

I mean, we're here to have fun and teach them about nature, but my number one thing is to have 100% return rate to their parents.

So having, and so far we've been great with that.

So, but so, and so I looked at that because I was concerned, like, I don't want to put kids in grave, you can't keep kids out of water sometimes.

So, you know, so I just, yeah, I've looked into that.

If you could include one of your activities, stream monitoring.

You what?

We have been talking with UVA about bringing some of their PhD students out to do bioblitzes with like the muscle research and stream monitoring and like what's the health of this and our hope is early on to start, start making lists like what data points would be really healthy to have that we can monitor over time.

one, not just the Sierra impact, but also to get the kids involved about learning about stream health and how do we improve that?

Cause it's critical in our area.

And we've got a lot of impaired streams and I've walked, we have about a mile of the hardware on this property and I've walked the whole length of it and there's almost no trash in it.

I found one tire.

I'll give it to you if you want, but I'm just kidding.

But you know, it's really a clean, I'm surprised cause I've rarely walked this much property and there's not like trash heaps all over the place.

So I feel very blessed in that way.

Just out of a curiosity, I was checking out the GIS web data on this, on these parcels.

And I see that it's already in the use value taxation program.

Do you know if you'll continue that or as a non-profit school, do you get property tax exemption?

I don't know if we get, well, we're a non-profit school but it's owned currently.

It's under an LLC, which we hope to buy it out from the person who bought it for us.

She bought it for us to give us time because she knows, she really believes in what we do.

And she just is like, let's just buy this and help you out.

And our hope is to put it under easement.