Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting   7/8/2025

Could you call the roll, please?

Mr. Moore?

Yeah.

Mr. Missel?

Here.

Mr. Clayborne?

Here.

Mr. Murray?

Here.

Mr. Bivins?

Present.

And Mr. Carrazana is absent.

Mar.

So let's not rush into our future that we don't want.

Second is Holmes Brown.

Thank you.

Then I'll ask if any commissioners would like to pull.

There was no one online either.

Would anybody like to either pull that or can I have a motion?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Great.

Yes.

Mr. Moore?

Aye.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Mr. Clayborne?

I'll abstain since I was absent at that meeting.

Thank you.

We will now move into the public hearings and we will begin with ZMA 2024-8 Brookhill amendment and I'll ask for the staff report.

I'm happy to go back to any of those slides.

Any questions for staff, Commissioner Firehock?

No, just for the applicant.

Commissioner Moore?

I just want to confirm there's no changes to the commercial square footage, just the residential number of units.

Correct.

But I'm just kind of curious how that could even or would even work if it were to be applied just for this portion of an existing model development.

consistent with their housing policy and how that would work with the language that it's to apply to the whole property versus a portion of it.

Yeah, I realize that that's not in the proposal as they brought it to us, but as we think about kind of other ways it could have come up, is it even something that is an option to be penciled at since it's part of an existing other proposal that's already been approved under the old model?

Sure.

Mr. Clayburn?

Or is this more a function of it was passed before that was adopted and so you have the flexibility to say I want to do this or that within the policy?

It's not an ordinance if that's what you're asking.

Yes, so you do have an option to pick and choose then what you want to do.

scenarios like this where it was approved under the prior proffers and this is what they've offered with proffers under the new policy.

So essentially if you started from scratch today, do you have the option to pick and choose or do you need to do the things that are in the policy?

It's much trickier on these older developments, especially one like this, which has been, you know, large parts of it are already been built out.

You wouldn't be able to say, I'll give you 20%, but it's not going to be a 60% AMI if the policy says that, right?

I'm just trying to be honest with you in that we may find that there is times that there's some latitude one way or the other, extenuating circumstances on the site, other things that are going on because this is happening through a proffer mechanism.

But absent any kind of enforceability, what's the point?

They may not be something that the Board of Supervisors wants to support and wants to vote for.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Murray.

No questions at this time.

Commissioner Bivins.

reach and establish and accept the policy as it's written but also recognize at the end of the day I've got a pro forma budget that I've got to deal with that this may not work for me if I were to do that.

You can't have your hand out begging.

And then we build an inventory of, you know, we back, we would back into being a housing authority, which I know makes so many people uncomfortable, but it's, as you said, it's how you got, you got to increase the inventory.

Any other questions for staff?

With that, I'll open the public hearing and ask for the applicant.

I can't see on this screen to click.

Here comes superwoman.

She needs a cape.

She can wear a cape.

Amazing.

I know.

Don't know why the clickers don't wanna work for me.

I think it's moving slow.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good to see you.

Maybe that was somewhere else.

OK.

So that in fact we're moving traffic on to Ashwood Boulevard in a coordinated manner.

That's a great question.

Two questions.

So that's the reason for that slight adjustment on that proffer.

Yes.

Yes, so that one is moving forward and it's not reliant on the connection but it is specifically planned so as Archer goes north it will be in perfect alignment with that project as well as Holly Hills I believe to the north of that.

Is it just school, generic school, so it could be a middle school or it could be an elementary school?

So my understanding, I can check the exact language, but I believe the way both of the, so we had the high school site and the elementary school site, and both of those proppers were specifically worded to be flexible enough that the county can claim those for whatever use they desire.

And I'm just wondering if you have an idea of how you're thinking, how the company's thinking about what we're going to do with those two pieces of property, since the sensitivities have changed about what those mean to this community.

So we don't have any ownership or interest in that property or control.

And hopefully if they sell it, you have an option to do something so that it doesn't just sort of give.

I think we'd probably be the first people to think about it.

I'll just bring that out.

And then we will come talk to you.

Fine.

You don't mind, just real quick, like I wanted to interject here, the elementary school site proffer states that the option of the county in lieu of construction of school, a public park may be established by the county on the elementary school site.

I appreciate that, but no more public parks without being able to give people to them.

Commissioner Murray?

I'm curious as to your thought process of increasing the percentage of affordable units versus increasing the time that those units are affordable.

I don't know if that helps at all, but that's how we're thinking about it at least.

So I thought your question, I may have misunderstood it, was did you consider extending the affordability period beyond the 10 years that's required in addition to extending the percentage of units?

We have not yet, but that could be a conversation point.

OK, thanks.

So have you given any thought, certainly we can't require anything, but is that something that you've given any thought to?

Thank you.

One is, how are you going to, like, in sort of a fairly small geographic area, how are you going to squeeze 300 more homes in there?

I wanted to see a visual.

Yeah, is it either going higher, or are you smaller apartments?

I mean, we had more interest in potential office space up there and the office market is just totally soft.

So we're- We're going to come in at that minimum for commercial probably.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That was the new, okay.

And then parking needs kind of match that through some reconfiguration of?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I don't have anything else except is that car driving on permeable pavers?

Oh, look at that.

Well, your loss just went up for the town center.

Less less.

It's only it's only like, yeah, just that slice right there.

No permeable parking spaces for them?

You'll never leave.

Except for the salamanders who have to breed.

But why?

I explained to Nathan that he could move, but J. Julian and I were not allowed to.

So, the

So all the ground floor commercial, that still adds up to exactly what we anticipated with the original zoning.

So the non-residential, you're breaking the non-residential uses into two categories, commercial.

So the office space likely comes to fruition.

But in this they're combined.

Our area is so weird because we don't use any of our rooftops.

Can you imagine being able to see the river?

We're going to do it, Karen.

Wouldn't they have to get permission from Bonatella to be able to do that, though?

Okay.

That's probably not doing anything with those.

So just to clarify there, basically it's not that you're realizing less need for that connector, it's that the logistics of getting it done are taking longer than you thought.

But as you dig in, there are just a few more layers that we're ironing out at the moment.

Have you tested that?

So we just wanted to adjust it slightly to give a little bit more runway.

I'm just curious, do you all maintain that or is that you do?

But it's a public amenity that's available to anyone.

Any other questions for the applicant?

Have you thought about making some of those spaces flexible so they could be, if the need changed, that they could be converted back into office space from residential?

They could still, you know, any of those, I guess, retail spaces could convert to office in the future if they so desired.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please state your name and your general location of residence.

So thank you all for your time.

Thank you.

State your name and general location, and you can start at any time.

Thank you.

Do we want to jump around?

Is the applicant going to respond to any of the things they heard?

Firehock, would you like to start us off?

Okay.

Anybody else like to kick us off?

I'm glad to see more density in this area.

Do we know where the extra parking is being provided or is it thought that we have plenty of parking already within the development?

I'm going to ask the applicant to come back up.

So I really would like to hear an answer to that.

Would you like to address that?

So it is more than enough to handle the uses that we have planned.

The new units plus people coming from outside to visit the commercial establishments.

So to handle the 300 units plus the commercial, we have 1100.

They raised that, so I'd like you to respond to it.

So I don't expect there to be any impact from what we're looking at in the town center to their section of the neighborhood.

Perhaps they thought they were going up too steeply, and they thought they were in an affordable unit, so they were concerned about the unit quickly becoming unaffordable.

She may qualify for one of the units that's going to the Piedmont Land Trust in the next month or two, so if you want to become a homeowner that could be a really great option and still be in the immediate area.

In other words, do they get the going rate of increase that all of the other people are in apartments who are paying market rate?

Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Murray.

So that's the only thing I'll add.

I need your mic.

Great.

Thanks, Commissioner Claver.

I just feel like we can't move the needle with any tool that we have, so.

Yeah.

That doesn't sway me in terms of this particular project, but I think it's something we need to really talk about as a body and as our supervisor body.

Great.

So I just would like that note to go forward to the Board of Supervisors as when you all go to the board that maybe you've given some thought to the duration of affordability based on what we've talked about tonight.

So that's why I can really support this again.

Anybody be willing to make a motion?

I move to recommend approval of ZMA 2024-00008, Brooke Hill for the reason stated in the staff report.

All right, with that, may we have the roll, please?

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Mr. Clayborne?

Aye.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Mr. Moore?

Aye.

Thank you.

And we will address CPA 2021-02 AC44 comp plan implementation

Shattering

I'll go through the remaining review opportunities later when we talk about the schedule.

I'm sorry, just to clarify when you say the implement that later, later tonight or later?

There's probably an argument to connect all of the chapters to all of these big moves, but we did try and focus on the most important.

Or do you mean literally like moving things around in the plan?

I probably should have defined a big move.

OK, go ahead.

For this one, working with both the county and state housing offices will be crucial.

Do you want us to ask questions throughout this or what do you prefer?

Yeah, feel free to interrupt me with questions.

Maybe you answered it when you said partnering with the housing office, but where does funding come in here, adding funding to support and increase affordable housing access and options?

We were very cognizant of the fact that the comp plan is not a budgeting vehicle per se.

But a prioritizing vehicle.

I think one of our experiences from the previous plans very thick lots of actions and and not sort of a prioritization necessarily so this part of this implementation chapter is to try and give us a little bit more direction and also something we can look back in five ten years and say did we meet these things as well right okay okay I think I understand thanks

Because not just protecting at risk homes, but also entire communities that are that are at risk.

Investment in infrastructure services and amenities makes it a place where people want to live, work, and visit.

This one does speak to the financial aspect of it.

It doesn't necessarily say whether it's a parking deck at, you know, Royal Road or something like that.

Couldn't it say that?

Those are probably gonna take a concerted effort of both private and public funding to make them happen.

Oh, sorry.

Okay.

Okay.

So being able to say this helps to inform that as a footnote or something like that, I think that's not here, but I was trying to sort of think that through as I was reading it.

I can appreciate that might need a little bit more thought in the narrative and in the presentation we do get into that a little bit.

And it's in there, you know.

Appreciate that too.

And I'm wondering why we didn't just sort of approach this with sort of a broad scale up-zoning goal rather than this kind of, oh yeah, we're going to kind of encourage things slowly, gently in centers and get there one day.

So I think that was, this plan should, is an attempt to reflect that guidance.

I mean, that's an understandable answer.

I've stood on this soapbox and you can stand up there with me, but I don't see this happening in the near term.

Crozet went first.

I heard that, but there's a frustration.

that they've sort of been this, they're asked to make the sacrifice of having them missing middle of this additional Disney, but no one else has done the same.

So I think some Crozatians should come in, I made that up, should come visit.

That is the right terminology.

There's other areas I think they'll find it much more dense.

And if I could just add we need to keep in mind that at some point developers will say I'm not going to put any I don't want any density I don't want any more density if what I have to do is come through this process.

That's the problem, that's what I hear.

I'm going to build what I can build on this piece of property and I'm not going to look for any additional density because I don't want to deal with all this foolishness.

Anyway, sir.

What this thing is about is creating that there.

Are we doing comments at the end for the content or are we doing them section by section?

Is that alright?

I'm happy to answer any questions as we go along.

Is that alright?

And I don't see people who look like we're older than me age-wise who are walking anywhere.

And so- I'm down to my neighborhood.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Some of these old people walking down the road, no sidewalks.

Any more questions or comments on this?

You did mention elsewhere the importance of addressing the areas that were called over parks.

but I think that that should be more explicitly in here because the activity centers don't necessarily line up with those areas of excessive parking with the development area particularly on 29 and I think we do I think those are should be a very high priority in terms of you know in terms of redevelopment and providing incentives to get those places transformed into different spaces

you know the focus is to maintain agricultural and forest business and while also protecting environmentally sensitive areas.

I mean, I think that's a good there's a lot you could do with this.

If we look at a common good, that feels like a common good as opposed to a corporate farmer, instead of the large corporate farmers, which I don't necessarily know how I would feel about county dollars going to that.

You know, so I think there's, I just feel like there's more work that could really be done on this to make this more objective and measurable.

Sounds like everything we're talking about sort of fits under these, but if there's some that poke out, then we should talk about it.

So that we have like support agriculture support actually shot through every part of our plans since I've been on this board it's like is that really the thing that we want to be is that actually a what we're doing and be what we need to be doing and I don't know the answer is yes so if we actually want to support agriculture we should look at ways to get younger producers in there to get on the land to make the land actually vibrant and viable for these things that that's I would just say that part of the what Tanya mentioned and

And so I think that that's one of the big pushes that's coming out and that's part of what we're talking about here.

I guess it's tricky because we're not working on the economic plan, this body.

We brought it to you all to talk about it.

The very high level that was being developed was not given to us as, here is a plan, what do you think?

Here's some broad thing.

I do have the body of information to observe and to comment on it, but I'm not going to drive a plan the way we've been driving this.

So we're trying to wrap up this.

We've commented on it, we've seen it, but it is not our responsibility.

So essentially, to your point, what I think we're working on here is helping to create a framework for economic development.

Yeah.

Right.

It's your house, but it's really how much you're going to sell your house for at the end of the day.

Is that it?

Yeah, number five.

and Thoughtful Land Use Management.

And so you'll include, so you have two different, two different chapters here that's not included in your related chapter at the bottom of this page.

We can reduce local greenhouse emissions, our natural systems can offer high impact climate protection, and we can proactively invest in infrastructure upgrades.

Thank you for saying that.

We may want to start taking a step back and thinking more sensitively about what kind of uses we allow or even want to encourage to move away from the banks of rivers.

This is hard to get there.

And I've seen, you know, but I, as I've said before, I hope that we give serious thought to a fire risk overlay that we can map out the places that we know.

It exists.

There are both lifestyle changes that we are also thinking about as we're also trying how to mitigate these changes, those lifestyle changes that I think many of us have been concerned about.

How could that, so climate action, I mean, climate action plan is one of the related, but you know, are there partnerships with the city and the county, the resilience, resilient together, I think it's called, right?

It is, yeah.

So that kind of thing, for example, where are there opportunities for partnerships under each of these categories might be helpful.

It's a great, great idea.

So that was the one thing I jotted down for this.

Thank you.

So I want to make sure we're focused on being ready.

We can't stop massive storms that are increasing, but we certainly can keep people from building floodplains.

And our county is pretty progressive in that respect.

There's a whole list of these factors in that part too that you can take a look at.

How do you close the loop?

Are we doing an adaptive management approach?

I think that's when our opportunity is to check and see how the comprehensive plan is meeting those and then the actions we've taken over the previous five years, how they work, what do we need to be doing more importantly?

Planning Award for the metrics that were developed to track the last comp plan.

I don't know what level that would be.

You don't have to wait five years to be like, whoops.

in the works.

Budget will drive a lot of this.

Yeah, that's true.

So under the transportation, given that we're about to embark in this, I think it's called a regional transit society.

Authority.

So one would hope that with the regional transportation agency,

Authority.

Thank you.

during that work session on the 26th of August.

That will be the only item on the agenda that night.

And maybe that's an opportunity to do that, but we'll, we'll talk through it.

I know sometimes the board is limited the amount of time because like, I would hate to be here and it's like 10 o'clock at night and now we get to start discussion.

So that it, you know, I think, yeah, I'll just stop.

And so we have these CACs.

Yeah.

And so I think that's a way of not having to burden you with a bunch of other public stuff and to use the structures that we have in place.

Just to mention- They only cover the development areas.

And that's why I think you could do something about the rural things.

So that's what we're trying to do.

So you're going to get comments on certain sections of the document that people had already maybe made comments on that just for whatever good reasons made it or didn't make it into the final document.

Right.

Sorry, Karen.

We have comments.

No.

Pretty darn close.

Get those comments ready.

Before I turn it over to the Commission for discussion, I'm going to ask Mr. Barnes to talk a little bit more about the comprehensive plan amendments process.

Excuse me.

I didn't understand that we got rid of it.

and have them then put it on the docket for reviews, so.

And it can only happen, can't it only happen twice a year or is that?

Or if anybody's like, that's a bad idea, then we should probably hear about that now.

Yeah, so I think we need to in terms of like how we treat the weight of things, you know, making a significant expansion of the development area, I think should carry a lot of weight, you know, more weight than we would about, you know, changing ordinance.

I mean, it needs to not be burdensome, but it needs to be really thoughtful and carefully considered, I think.

You know, I think so that the idea that like citizens can still put together a thoughtful proposal works for me.

Consider, I don't know.

I think procedurally, we would just say we need some study on this in a lot of cases.

Yeah.

Good point.

That's a great point.

Not just, yeah, just not just like, I don't like this boundary of rural area.

I could see if there's like a cataclysmic event, maybe some things would need to change.

There's something that's, there's an important defensible reason that something has changed significantly.

Is that helpful?

that we don't wait.

But thank you for the guides.

Great.

Thank you.

Are you ready for closing arguments?

Yeah, so let's get, I guess we need to see some of the nuances.

In lieu of brevity, you'd like a few more to strip their work.

Everyone, you have to listen to all the past planning questions.

Commissioner Firehock and Commissioner Bivins, they want more top line.

The end.

Awesome.

Commissioner Moore?

And I think that can take a number of forms, but I think somehow including that considering robust public investment as part of our descriptions feels like the right path to me.

Mr. Clayborne?

So that was it.

So if the greatest desire is community gathering places, are we achieving, you know, according to that needs assessment, are we achieving the right amount of community gathering spaces?

Commissioner Bivins?

And I'll let, that's something for you all to do.

The rural area plan.

and then I still, I will come back to it again because I still think some of the stuff that all of us here in various places and that we wrestle with is that the comp plan should bring bureaucratic predictability.

Yeah.