Planning Commission Regular Meeting & Work Session   1/13/2026

Good evening.

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

My name is Michael Barnes.

I'm the director of planning for the county.

We do our business meeting at the beginning of the year, so we're going to do that bit of business right now.

I just want to also make sure for those, since the first meeting, Jennifer Tevendale is our county attorney for this body.

And I also want to thank Carolyn Schaefer for being our recording secretary.

Yes.

Ms. Firehock?

Present.

Ms. King?

Here.

Thank you.

The second item is a chance for public comment on matters that are before the Commission, but are not on tonight's agenda for the public hearing.

Is there anyone who wishes to speak to the Planning Commission about other items not on the agenda?

Okay.

Then I'd like to move to the third item, which is the elections of officers, of chair and vice chair.

I think we should open the order for the chair first, please.

Is there a nomination?

Great.

Motion has been made and seconded.

Ms. King?

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana?

Aye.

Hey, we need to have a nomination for vice chair.

All right.

Mr. Carrazana Aye Mr. Murray Aye Ms. King Aye Thank you

I didn't take a vote, Marcus.

Okay, Ms. Firehock, do you want to vote?

I have to, because it's a 3.

Pardon?

Yes, ma'am, I do.

It's a surprise, but sure.

A lot of experience.

Thank you for accepting that.

Okay, just going through some other order of business.

We need to discuss any Planning Commission rules and procedures.

There have been no changes since last year.

I move to accept the Planning Commission's 2026 rules and procedures.

Yes, Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

Ms. King?

Aye.

And so we have received a list of vacancies on boards and committees.

Because we were somewhat short-handed.

I'm going to motion that we defer the conversation and selection of those committee assignments until the January 27th meeting.

Ms. King?

Okay.

We do have a to review the schedule for 2026 and I would ask Councillor if she can go through the process here.

The Commission can do one of two things.

You can do it in twofold.

You could make a motion to adopt the meeting schedule for 2026 and then make a second motion to adopt the resolution which sets forth the meeting schedule should we have to continue anything due to weather-related events.

So moved.

Ms. King?

Aye.

Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

So moved.

Discussion?

Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana?

Aye.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Ms. King?

Aye.

Okay, now we're on to our consent agenda.

Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

Ms. King?

Abstain.

Okay.

We are now ready for the public hearing.

I'm sure everybody's very excited about it.

We're open to public hearing.

For CMA 2024,

dash five, Belvedere amendment number two.

And this was an item that was deferred from October 28th, 25.

Yes, thank you.

My name is Rebecca Ragsdale, and I'm a planning manager with the Planning Division of Community Development.

And I will be joined in this presentation by our deputy planning director, Mr. Kevin McDermott.

Unfortunately, Cameron Langell, who is the primary reviewer for this rezoning, couldn't be here this evening.

So we are going to cover that item for him.

And thank you for that introduction.

We're going to walk you through the details, but this is a request to remove an element of the originally approved Belvedere application plan.

Belvedere is what we refer to as a neighborhood model district that was approved in 2005.

So this is actually the second amendment to it, so that's why it's referred to as proffer amendment two.

One of the primary focuses of the amendment is to remove a proffer that we referred to as proffer 4.2.

It's a hundred foot reserved road right-of-way proffer.

and with the removal of that prop for the proposal is that that area would be utilized to add additional units to the Belvedere neighborhood model development and that's 120 units total.

Along with this rezoning are some changes to improve amenities, add greenways and then

provide affordable housing commitments that are in line with our present day housing Albemarle policy.

So that's a very high level review.

And I'm going to go through some of the details.

This map here outlines the in blue

Getting my laser pointer here.

The blue outline are the parcels that we did reference as part of the rezoning.

A lot of that acreage is Greenway, some of it existing by right zoned R4, and we're going to explain why we've included that.

But when we refer to block eight, and the 100 foot right away, we're talking about this area in here.

This provides you the context.

of where Belvedere is located for those that may be less familiar.

It's primarily accessed from Belvedere Boulevard off Rio Road and it's surrounded by the Northfields neighborhood, Dunlora, and then developing sections of what's referred to as Dunlora Village and then of course the Rivanna River runs along the edge of it.

going through some more existing conditions information.

Block 8, I'm pointing to here.

The dark green areas are referred to as neighborhood model zoning district.

This map has the parcels outlined again and showing you where we have

When I refer to the originally approved Belvedere neighborhood model development, it is those green areas.

And then when we're saying R4 by right, we're talking about the yellow areas.

They are along the edges of the neighborhood model development.

The property parcels, all of them proposed for development are designated neighborhood density residential in the comprehensive plan.

And then the floodplain and the Rivanna areas are the Rivanna River areas are designated green space.

Jumping ahead to some more details about the proposal, the original neighborhood model was approved for 775 units total.

Now neighborhood model districts, if you recall, get very detailed.

And so those 775 units were broken down across a number of blocks within the code of development.

But this rezoning is focused on block eight.

but the total number of units possible within the Belvedere neighborhood model district would increase by 128.

So it was originally approved roughly at 3.7 dwelling units per acre.

So that would increase it to 4.34 acre, excuse me, dwelling units per acre.

That neighborhood density comprehensive plan designation is a recommended three to up to six dwelling units per acre.

So it's still consistent with

our comprehensive plan.

And then I mentioned it is entirely consistent with the expectations and our housing policy, housing Albemarle for 20% of the new units within that 100 foot right away area.

to also be affordable and within the new area for the NMD.

And I realize we need to orient you to this.

I mentioned the neighborhood model district is broken into blocks.

We have some exhibits that have highlighted block eight.

and right now Block 8 also includes the soccer facility that you may be familiar with and then the neighborhood community building that's under construction.

This is the existing Belvedere network of interconnected streets and then Block 8 is over here.

This corridor, the 100-foot right-of-way corridor additional area

If the proffer is removed would allow what would be primarily single-family attached units.

The proffer was not only on the neighborhood model district area, but it extended over into the R4 area.

So that's why the R4 areas are part of the conversation in terms of proffer amendments.

This is another close-up image of that.

Hopefully, our materials explained the area where the additional units could go.

It is parallel and along that hundred-foot right-of-way, which is from the railroad tracks there.

So behind the existing soccer facility, units would face an amenity area and be served by a alley and the applicants probably going to go into a lot more detail, but the street in purple would not connect all the way through.

They are providing on the application plan some additional greenway and shared use path commitments that are really building on the proffers that were included with the original Belvidere rezoning.

As part of the original rezoning, the county was dedicated this frontage along the Rivanna River.

As part of this rezoning, they will provide shared use paths down and we'll be able to have better access with this improved application plan to that greenway.

And they are providing those necessary easements.

They have also made a commitment to provide 30 foot, excuse me, so many numbers to talk about, 30% construction plans for a future

In addition to what I've shown you on here, there are plans for 30% construction drawing for a shared use path along the Greenway corridor.

So there's both connections to improve connections down to the Greenway that

The applicant's worked closely with our Parks and Rec staff on and the 30% drawings so we can get closer to constructing that Class A trail improvement along the Greenway.

I apologize, that's not showing up.

Oh, there we go.

There it is.

That's potentially a 30 conceptual alignment.

So that is an improvement that we expect to occur.

And that will be their contribution towards that.

Thanks, Rebecca.

Kevin McDermott, Deputy Director of Planning.

So the applicant did submit a traffic impact analysis along with this rezoning.

This slide you see here shows in red the intersections that were analyzed as part of this.

And the yellow on there shows some future planned improvements that I'm going to talk about here in a second.

But overall, that traffic impact analysis, I did recognize that currently at Belvedere and Rio Road, we see extremely long delays.

So right now to get out of Belvedere,

especially to make a left out of there.

People are waiting multiple minutes usually to get out of there during the peak hours.

In the future, we have these proposed projects that will make improvements at Belvedere and Rio and also down the road at the Rio John Warner Parkway intersection.

I'll show you a figure on that on those just a second just to make sure everybody's aware of

of what's going on there.

But following those improvements, the overall intersection at Belvedere and Rio will operate at a level of service B.

So those left turns may have slightly longer delays than level service B, but overall the intersection will operate at a level of service B.

their analysis when they added this additional traffic plus all the future traffic that's coming in from the by right sections of Belvedere and Dunlaura Village shows that that intersection will still operate at a level of service B after the build alternative is recognized.

So with the improvements and with all of the new development

Overall level of service be at that intersection.

The specific left turn movements will have some periods of time when it's operating at level service.

C and D as well, but we don't consider that failing.

So those individual left turn movements and coming out of Belvedere and turning from Rio into Belvedere will have slightly longer delays, but overall still be in no failing movements at that intersection.

So the TIA also did counts.

at these other two locations.

You can see it at Faro Drive and Butler Drive.

This is the connection that provides access over to Dunlora.

We were interested to see if a lot of people are utilizing that route out currently instead of going down Belvedere to avoid that problematic intersection.

What the count showed is that very few people are utilizing that during the peak hours.

We don't expect a lot of change in that, especially once that improvement is in place and people are able to get out of that area much more easily.

The Free State Road Bridge, however, does carry significant traffic.

A lot of people are leaving Free State Road, going across the bridge.

which is a one lane bridge and using Huntington to get out into the broader network.

That looks like about 1,700 vehicles a day is the estimate based on the peak hour counts.

So pretty significant number utilizing that.

And then I'll quickly move on to the just to describe the improvements that are going on.

This is a concept plan that was provided by VDOT for the for the designs for these improvements.

So here we have Belvedere Boulevard.

And what you can see here is this is what we refer to as a green tea.

And what it does is it creates a protected

left turn lane so that people coming out of Belvedere only have to look to the left to see oncoming traffic and then they are able to move out into this protected lane and accelerate so that they can merge into the southbound traffic of Rio Road.

Also, the left turn into Belvedere still remains and that is protected as well.

There is a signal you can see here that signal will operate so that it can stop those north to westbound movements on Rio to allow those people to get in and out much easier.

It will not stop the southbound movements because there's no cross traffic that would interfere with coming out with that.

So because they can use that acceleration lane, we do not need to stop the southbound Rio Road movements.

and then you can also see over here this is the proposed roundabout at Rio Road and John Warner Parkway and it's a hybrid roundabout so it has two lanes going into it and on the major movements and then a single lane around the center but you can see what that is proposed to look like to improve that intersection as well.

Both these projects are expected to get underway later this year, so in fall of 2026, and will be completed in a year's time.

A year's construction time is what they're expecting.

So we would expect these to be online and open likely before any of the impacts from this rezoning would hit.

We just had a couple summary slides and then we plan to just pause for questions.

Anything you would like to come back to?

As we mentioned throughout the presentation and included in the staff report, our findings were that this proposal is consistent with the land use and density recommendations of the Place 29 master plan for neighborhood density residential areas.

and Housing Albemarle, as we mentioned.

And we also went over the, when we were talking about the additional greenway and shared use path improvements, those are in line with some elements of the Place 29 master plan as well.

And then as we typically do, we've noted there would be some increase in enrollment at our county schools associated with the request.

Right.

Do you have any questions for staff?

So we're giving up the proffer for the Free State Connector Road extension, correct?

So what was the logic about asking for that road in the first place?

I'm going to pull up a

A view of our current comprehensive plan.

And you can see here that this dark dotted line, which runs along Rio Road and turns on to Belvedere

is considered a proposed addition to the roadway network.

This is from our plan, which was actually approved back in 2011, the Places 29 master plan.

And initially, what you can see, this is prior to John Warner Parkway being built.

And the idea behind all of this

was that the county was looking to have a parallel road network to 29 that could carry people from 250.

Realistically at that time we were looking to go all the way up and eventually connect to Polo Grounds Road.

and then give us access into the Hollymede development area.

So this was supposed to be a major new roadway network that would carry people through the eastern portion of the development area from 250 all the way up to Hollymede and back.

So it would have crossed over the Rivanna River and gone along the railroad tracks and connected up there to the profit polar grounds road area.

It was expected a road like that could carry up to 20,000 vehicles a day.

And so that was evaluated in the master plan in this master plan.

And at that time,

I think they were starting to realize that maybe that wasn't the best option.

You can see in this master plan, they only show the road going and providing access into Belvedere.

So it didn't actually cross over in the Rivanna River like the older plans did.

As we're looking at that now, we just, for a couple reasons, we looked at the potential costs of a project like that.

You're talking likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was close to a hundred million to build the Hillsdale crossing of Rio over there on the other side.

So something similar to that on this side in these new in today's prices is likely well over a hundred million dollars.

There'd be significant additional impacts both in Belvedere because this would be a significant road addition.

It would carry a lot of traffic as well as significant

impacts north of the river where we didn't have right-of-way.

We would need to acquire additional right-of-way and rebuild the polar grounds, profit road area to accept all that traffic.

Looking at that, we recognized

This project, that road connection has a very low likelihood of getting built and when we look at the value of that with the improvements we've done to 29, Hillsdale, we just didn't see the necessity to have a third connection across the river in this location.

When we thought about all those things, the developer has proposed to build a new parallel network to Belvedere within their development.

We thought that with that, it would really address a lot of the connectivity concerns and the congestion concerns for the existing roadway network in Belvedere by providing that new road.

and also the benefit of having the shared use path connection through there to give people another option.

Thank you.

Second question.

So if you go back to slide six, you'll see that in the critical slopes, you have them marked in different colors of shading.

Can you clarify what's going on with the different shading?

And in terms of the critical slopes being protected, just to clarify, all the critical slopes marked as critical slopes in the county GIS,

So I believe that this map is illustrating field run verified preserved slopes and managed slopes versus

what our GIS is showing, but they have not proposed any impacts to the steep slopes.

They've not proposed any exceptions on this application plans.

Okay, so they'll be protecting the steep slopes as they're shown in the GIS.

That's what's being proposed.

To be clear, the Greenway Trail that is shown on the edge of this project is dropping down will disturb some critical slopes, but it's an allowed use.

I think it's also where they're directing some of the stormwater infrastructure that they have to, you know, connect down to the floodplains going in that same corridor.

but that's all allowed under the code.

A follow-up question to that.

So those Greenway trails and the Greenway space that's already been dedicated, what is the county's current access to that property?

Right.

I think it's an interesting question that may be through the proposed path that is being constructed here.

I've noticed that in other recent developed neighborhoods in the county where there are dedicated greenways that the county then accepts ownership of, but the developer never gave us access to.

and so I think it's something that we need to be mindful of in this particular application.

No and it's a good point and we don't quite have a larger map here to show that but on the screen here on the right hand side is where the railroad is.

It's a railroad bridge.

The opposite side of that railroad bridge sort of

Again, I'm not going to show it very well, but it's still Meadows neighborhood.

The county does own an easement along the river there and has somewhat limited access but has access to the public road network.

To the downstream side on the left hand side here of the slide, we've been working with the adjacent

project that's being developed there to get some access down to the river on that spot as well.

The question I have is around housing.

I think I had some other questions that have been asked, and I will hold those for the applicant as well.

I appreciate the thorough presentation, particularly on traffic.

I know that there is a lot of

concerns about that.

And it is so actually I do have a silly.

Mr. McDermott, you said that the the the development start or the improvements start in fall of this year, 26.

The funding is in place.

The contracts actually let already.

This is bundled with a group of projects that VDOT is completing around.

They've already started construction on some of those, including one out in Crozet.

I actually might have another question for Kevin.

One of the things I've noticed along a lot of railways and since we're proposing development that's been close to this railway is that a lot of the right-of-ways now are maintained by herbicide.

So the trains will come through and spray big clouds of herbicide as they're going through there.

And I don't know, do you know anything about, do they make any exceptions as they're going through neighborhoods when they do that?

Sorry, I don't have information on how the railroad maintains their right of ways.

I do have a question about

the connectivity of the roadway.

So there's a proposal for a public extension as part of this proffer.

Yes, there are sections that are still under construction that have not been accepted by VDOT, but the portion of Belvedere that has been completed, those roads are all accepted by VDOT.

VDOT allows certain waivers to some of their standards and

There's no more questions.

Was it me?

Is it opened up?

Good evening.

My name is Chris Schooley.

I'm the Vice President of Land Development at Greenwood Homes.

I'm also the President of the Belvedere Neighborhood Association.

Every day I wear those two hats, but tonight I only represent the developer.

The residents of the Belvedere will speak shortly to represent their perspectives.

Because this dual role is often seen by the Belvedere neighborhood as a conflict,

We'd like to take a few minutes to note that holding the president role in an HOA is common in our business while projects are under development.

You'll recognize many of these neighborhood names.

Almost all of them are in Albemarle County and all are under some different stage of current development.

Belvedere also has a significant representation on the HOA board.

There are four seats held by the Belvedere residents of the seven.

That is two more than any of those neighborhoods.

There's a significant amount of representation from the residents of the neighborhood on the board.

Belvedere also meets monthly.

All the rest of those neighborhoods meet annually.

Finally, my term as president will end in September, and a Belvedere resident is likely to be appointed as the next president.

We'd next like to highlight neighborhood coordination that's gone through this project.

The initial meeting was held back in 2024 at a CAC meeting.

The result of that meeting, as noted previously by staff, was that we should do a new traffic impact assessment.

That took about a year to finalize that traffic assessment and have VDOT in the county approve it.

After that, we set up a meeting, one of the reasons we deferred from the October meeting, to meet with the residents at the center at Belvedere.

As noted, we have over 100 participants.

It was a lively meeting.

The recommendation of the meeting that we were able to assess would be to avoid an impact on an HOA property that we previously proposed.

There was an extension of Addison Street that was limited because of the street widths in that section.

And we needed to provide more parking both for residents and for SACA.

Those can be seen here on this graphic.

The HOA property is in the top left here.

And the extension of Addison Street, here's Addison Street, previously would have connected this street all the way along the project.

We removed that connection because there was an impact on the HOA property here.

And as noted, the street sections on Farrow Drive West and Addison Street are very narrow and parking would have had to been removed to safely add more traffic.

We also talked with SACA.

The existing parking that is on Colvin Alley is currently for SACA only.

Many of the neighbors on the Cole Street, Farrow Drive West section have limited on-site parking.

So we have met with SACA and requested to expand their existing lot to build a new lot on a parcel that we own next to that.

In lieu, SACA would allow this parking to be shared for the neighborhood.

The preliminary response from SACA has been very positive and we have included the parking improvements in this area with this proposal.

As many of you know, if you've ever been to the SACA field house during an event, parking is a challenge.

This should add over 70 parking spaces that would during the week would be allowed anybody to use and then SACA events would alleviate some of that congestion.

This is a complicated project.

The 100-foot right-of-way reservation does not extend over the Fairview property.

It only extends over the Belvedere property, including across the R4.

So that is shown in red here.

The yellow area is the area we are proposing for Block 8 rezoning.

But as noted, we have committed voluntarily to extend the 20% affordable housing to the blue area as well that is in R4.

That will add another 16 affordable dwelling units to the project.

The rationale was everything that was impacted by the 100 foot right away should also be beholden to the county's affordable housing policy.

All of the affordable housing as noted would be at housing Albemarle standards with the 60% AMI rule.

Greenman Homes is currently and through 2026 will deliver approximately 150 affordable dwelling units in the area.

The proposal for Belvedere is to use our two over one unit.

This has been built in Gundruk in Crozet.

These are the units here.

What it is is a two-story townhouse with a basement below.

The basement is a two-bedroom apartment.

That is the floor plan to the left.

As you can see, there's two bedrooms in the back and a shared living space in the kitchen.

and then there are two stories above which can be three to four bedroom units.

There are no garages, there are on-street parking and we provide additional parking on our site plan to account for the required parking spaces for these units.

This product is also going to be built at Granger, Brookhill Square and in the city at South First Street within 2026.

provide context on how the two over one units mix within a neighborhood.

This really provides an ideal representation.

On the left are standard market rate townhouses with garages below.

Across the street, you can see the two over one affordable housing units integrated into the streetscape.

There's no difference in the product line and it fits seamlessly within the community.

We'd also like to wrap this up on this image.

This is what we are proposing for Belvedere.

This is what the density would look like.

There are townhouse units with two over one units mixed in to meet the county's affordable portability requirements.

We'll integrate in with amenities.

And as you can see, in parking on street, most of the places.

We're proud of what we do, agreement homes.

We build a good house.

We build a lot of great neighborhoods throughout Albemarle County, and we're pleased to work with the county to meet the affordable housing requirements.

If you have any questions, we have Scott Collins from College Engineering, who is available to answer any engineering questions.

And we have Carl Holtgren, who can answer any of the traffic questions.

Thank you.

We have a couple questions.

There was a mention of rent for rent units and the restrictions on those related to affordability.

Right.

Is that all in these two over ones?

There's no apartment building that you're planning to build.

And this may be a county question, but

I noted in the application narrative that there was a lot of information about how we track that long term, which feels a little bit like an administrative nightmare for everyone.

There's a process.

There's an annual confirmation that each landlord would need to submit to the county, which is approved.

We are entering into a new world because this extends it to 40 and 40 years.

So this is really what the county signed up for.

The development community has met it fairly well.

We're excited to be a part of this because, like we mentioned, building 150 units within the area

How does that work?

Would you like me to go ahead and answer?

Sure.

So technically, what we've described is a rezoning process.

So the R4 area was subject to a proffer.

The only way to change a proffer is through the rezoning process.

So

That is a component of the spree zoning.

And they volunteered right away and offered to cover that area that they're adding with the housing Albemarle provision.

And additionally, I'd add that you can proffer stuff that's off-site, off the property.

Keep in mind, there is affordable housing as a bonus density within R4.

The Glenbrook project is part of that affordability.

We'll open it up to the market.

We've had some in Dunloe Park that were sold.

That's great.

It's a bit of a thin line to be able to find someone to purchase a two over one unit, which has to be purchased together to not conduit.

So you'd have to buy both units at that AMI.

So primarily we would expect that they would be rental.

We have.

At Victorian Heights, we worked with the Land Trust on those eight units, and we think there's a lot more potential to work with them.

Yes, I just want to dig into the parking for the new units a little bit more.

So can you tell me how many bedrooms will be in

in each unit, and it might vary, one bedroom, two bedroom.

And then how much parking are you providing?

So is it, you know, like sometimes it's one space per unit, is it two spaces?

And then I'd like to get a sense that it's obvious that the, because SACA is providing some more parking, obviously when people are having events in the neighborhood or friends over or whatever,

They need more parking than what's provided with units.

So we will effectively build two different product lines with this proposal.

One is a standard townhouse with a garage.

Each one of the garage, each one of the townhouses will have a two-car rear-loaded garage and then we will have a driveway that is deep enough to fit two cars.

So

Effectively, you could park four cars on a townhouse lot.

If your garage is empty enough, you could park two cars inside, and then you could park two cars behind it.

And then we have on-street parking.

So the other product type we have is the two-over-one mentioned.

Each one of the two-over-ones provides, I think it's three and a quarter parking spaces.

And so how many bedrooms are in the lower unit then, if they have one?

Two.

So they have two bedroom units, one parking space.

Three, yeah.

So you have one visitor space for every four.

One for every four.

So basically downstairs has one parking, upstairs has two.

But then, of course, each one of the places where we built this, including Belvedere,

There's on-street parking.

On-street parking is trickier to get than it was 20 years ago.

Site lines have made that very difficult.

You'll see it in a lot of places where it's marked off.

Our site plan, which I have here, Mr. Collins has worked on this already.

You can see on-street parking in this area that's already noted.

There's on-street parking on Colbert Street, Colbert Street, and then we have some parking in the alley.

The SACA parking, this is their existing parking lot, this upper bay.

So we would be basically doubling the existing parking lot that they have and then this parking lot is on our parcel which is about 22 additional spaces.

There's 15 spaces behind that would be open for the entire community and then with the on-street parking that's where we feel like it's at least 70

off lot parking spaces.

And we'll work out an arrangement with SACA.

Okay.

So one more question on the parking, just so that I'm clear in your numbers.

So it's not part.

Right.

Okay.

So we're going to be able to, there's parking, each one of the two over one units to go back to the two over one unit.

You could see on the, this is the front side of the two over one unit.

So there's no street parking in that back.

The one, the single parks in the front.

Okay.

Parking is tricky and it gets trickier I think with townhouses because more people have stuff after they downsize in their garage.

So it pushes their parked cars out of the garage into their driveway and into the street.

The other thing is that it's important to make sure that the driveways are deep enough that they can park on without having, in this area, it would be an alley.

A lot of times we have this sidewalk really kind of gets in the way of being able to park in the driveway without extending out.

So we admit that attached product parking is tricky, and it's not just this neighborhood, every neighborhood.

Question, I need to keep you up there.

I have another question for you.

So the application didn't ask for any modifications to the parking.

They must meet the parking policy or come back through to get a special exception.

This is a concept plan.

So my other question for you is on the housing, the affordable housing.

So, and I understand it's complicated and they shift over to block four, but they're all in one location.

Let me show in a little bit more detail Mr. Carranza.

This shows it, if you look at this block right here, this shows the proposed plan.

The two over one units would be the end units because it's easier for us to provide the off-site parking and it allows us to get a side entry into those units.

and then the internal units would be a townhouse.

So we mix it up and we call them sticks and sticks of townhouses.

We can mix up the two over one.

Yeah.

It's already, I don't know if we have a plan here.

So this is where it says phase four.

This is the buy right section of phase four that's currently under development.

It has some affordable housing already included, but based on bonus density requirements.

That's a section of the two over one units, and this is a section of two over one units.

I think what was confusing, if you go to the section that showed the Block 4.

Oh, that's Block 8.

That one is here.

proposed 20% affordable housing for units within 100% 100 foot reserved area.

We have approximately 40 ADUs over a section that has about 140 townhouses.

Okay.

I'm glad to hear that because I didn't quite understand that.

The fossil.

So I got some comments that talked about the potential impact of putting houses so close to the railway and the noise that might be coming from the railway.

What are you going to be doing to address impacts from sound that may be coming from there?

And then also,

and this, as I said, this may be, it's just as much a question for the county.

I know Norfolk Southern just got sued last December for task herbicides drifting from their, the railway into adjoining properties.

So regarding trail derailments, we don't have a grading plan here, but all of the houses are probably 30 to 40 feet above the rail line.

The rail line is really depressed in this section.

The railments can really get out of hand, I'm sure, but there is a certain barrier based off of the topography that the railway is below.

Your question about herbicides is a good one.

I think we often take a look at that real area that's between Old Ivy and Ivy.

It's very prominent in Charlottesville, and sometimes you see it get sprayed, but most of the time it doesn't.

But I think the county's response would be the same as ours, that we would like to look into it and better understand what the risks were going to be.

As far as the sound, this is not the Coltrane that comes from Crozet.

This is the, I'm not a real expert, but it's less frequent than where we have in the other areas.

So we haven't heard that it's a significant issue in Belvidere over the years.

We have a lot of residents who may disagree with that point later tonight.

But if we do find it's an issue, then we can always add soundproofing and change windows.

Please.

Thanks.

All right, thank you.

We're going to open it for public comments.

And I have a list, so I'm going to read two names at a time so somebody can know that you're on deck.

And if you're not on this list, you'll have an opportunity to speak as well.

I'll just remind everybody there's, you know, there's a lot of people on the list.

So if you hear something that's the same comment you're going to make, don't necessarily feel that you have to make it again.

We've also received a lot of emails.

If you agree with a comment, please just raise your hand and not, no clapping, no, no shouting, please keep the quorum.

And I apologize if I, some of these names are hard to read just the way that they're written.

Good evening.

I'm Denise Kirchner, one of the early homeowners in the Belvedere neighborhood in the Rio Magisterial District, and I am before you tonight regarding ZMA-20240005 to ask that you do all that you can do to preserve the design and intention of the Belvedere neighborhood.

When I built my home in 2010, Belvedere was one of, if not the first, neighborhood model district, which promised a new urbanism featuring walkability, abundant green spaces, preservation of the topography, with a nature by design that would include an organic farm.

It featured a town center with shops, a civic core with neighborhood amenities and architecture that assured diversity of materials, colors, elevation, and landscaping with a built form with authentic architectural styles reflected in roof lines, eaves, and design appearance.

The original developers shared this vision with potential homeowners and buying a home there was not simply buying a house, it was buying into the vision and the lifestyle that the neighborhood promised.

With each subsequent developer, and we now are on our third developer, there has been an erosion of that vision and the original build out of 775 units, as you heard tonight, has now been expanded to 903, while promised elements of the design and livability of the neighborhood have virtually been abandoned.

We are aware that our governing covenants and restrictions, particularly Article 2, Section 2, permits the addition of properties to the original scope of the neighborhood and thereby increases the number of lots.

And the current developer has done that several times.

We support the construction of affordable housing, whether it be small homes or carriage house apartments.

Many of us built those apartments on our property initially to foster variability and affordability.

but the original covenants and codes and development which were last updated in 2014 do not support the rows of townhouses that dominate the newer acquired blocks being developed.

This requested rezoning brings with it also a shift from creating a community of homeowners to creating opportunity for investors.

You can preserve the neighborhood design and intention of the Belvedere Historic District NMD

by not moving forward on the rezoning of Block 8 parcel in Belvedere.

And so we have Terry and then Laura Taylor.

Yes, my name is Terry Bosford.

I live in Belvedere, a part of the Royal Magisterial District.

Regarding the proposed rezoning and development in Block 8, I'd first like to address Tenant 2 of the 12 tenants outlined in the county neighborhood development document adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 2001, which states, makes open space integral to overall design so that residents and workers can walk to a public park, experience preserved and natural areas, and enjoy public gathering spaces.

We note that there are many parallels to this tenant in the original plan for Belvedere as outlined in this glossy brochure so many of us were given when we were considering purchasing there.

In the section of this brochure entitled, This is Belvedere Sustainability, among other things it says, and I quote, every home is within 250 feet of green space because we believe nature is something to be protected, preserved, and most of all enjoyed.

An additional tenant in the county document 10

States, adapts development to site terrain so that natural topography can be preserved.

As Belvedere residents, we have already seen both of these tenants have been violated, if not outright discarded.

In fact, we're already past the tipping point.

I know I speak for my neighbors when I say that so many of us thought we were buying into a place with a respect for nature, with a proportionate number of green spaces for the number of houses being built.

but instead what we got was clear cutting of many old growth trees clusters of tall dense town homes with no green space other than a small mulch playground hills completely leveled in the newest section and major destruction of the natural wildlife habitat with almost none of the preserved natural area

promised by the original sales materials or by county document tenant 2.

This destruction, while unsightly, has also displaced large numbers of deer, which are now seen with greater frequency devouring many of our residents' home gardens, gardens which are an important and cherished part of our community, while also bringing in pests like disease-carrying ticks.

How does this affect the proposed development plan for Block 8?

Block 8, as you saw from the drawing, does not exist in a vacuum, but it's also part of the community as a whole.

And as currently proposed, it will be an unbroken line of hyper-dense horizontal development of over 150 units, replacing the existing green space, which also connects to and into Phase 4.

This will be green space forever lost to the community, which has already passed the tipping point for a reasonable proportion of green space to housing and the within 250 feet of every home that we were sold.

this lack of green space will only add to the urban heat island effect which is anti the sustainability goals plenty of data exists that supports the positive psychological effects of nature and green spaces within communities so why can't we strive for a win-win here one solution might be

to break the proposed solid line of units into segments comprised of four to five units with areas of green space in between so that Block 8 affords its future residents a better quality of life as well as helping to better achieve the original goals of Belvedere as a whole.

Lord Taylor and Amy Richardson is on deck.

Good evening.

My name is Lori Taylor and I live in the Belvedere community within the Rio district.

I'm here with my neighbors to support and advocate for Albemarle County's affordable housing plan.

In particular, we stand for and ask for your support of the relevant objectives and strategies for affordable for sale housing in block eight.

These are quote objective one,

Increase the housing supply to meet the diverse housing needs of county residents.

Objective three, improve access to affordable home ownership opportunities and promote long-term affordability of for sale housing, targeting households earning between 80% and 120% of AMI.

End quote.

Also, these relevant strategies, quote, strategy 3B, provide incentives to increase production of affordable and workforce for sale housing.

Strategy 3D, develop procedures for monitoring and enforcing occupancy and sales price restrictions

required by law and or funding sources and strategy 3e develop mechanisms to ensure affordable for sale units developed with county incentives and to remain affordable for a minimum of 40 years.

End quote.

Again, we support the delivery of affordable for sale housing in Block 8, and we are asking for your support as well.

We believe this option is better as it supports families buying affordable homes and adds to the diversity of our community, meets a county housing goal to provide longer term permanent affordable housing options, and enables households to manage their budgets without a 3% year increase in rents as offered in the developer proffers for rental housing.

However, we point out that the county requirements for awarding the density bonus to the developer for this for sale housing and the developers proffers do not assure that such housing will actually be delivered to eligible households.

Therefore, we support for sale affordable housing in Belvedere provided the county advances its housing Albemarle strategies.

by requiring the county to provide an established structure assuring that the homes are sold to qualifying affordable families.

The developer submits documentation on a per unit basis as to the affordable sales price and the homeowner's eligibility and purchase of the home.

Such measures will meet the county's housing strategies, assure developer compliance for the bonus, and demonstrate how such a program can be implemented and delivered on the county's strategic plan.

This approach will make the county's plan real and bring homeownership to the working families of our county.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Amy Richardson.

I live in the Belvedere community in the Rio Magisterial district.

I'm joining my neighbors tonight to express serious concerns about this rezoning request.

In the original Belvedere Code of Development, Block 8 is approved for 33 townhomes only.

in the neighborhood model of development.

The total now requested by Greenwood Homes is 161, a nearly 500% increase in density.

Look carefully at the proposed plan for Block 8 and what is Greenwood actually seeking?

They are asking you to allow them to create a hyper-dense, de facto horizontal apartment complex with a density of R16.

This compares with R-12 for the reserves and R-16 for Rio Point.

Sprawled along the railroad tracks, this de facto apartment complex has none of its own amenities and no apartment complex management services.

Importantly, it has very limited and ill-defined green spaces, grossly inadequate parking, and very small streets and alleyways.

Further, if you zoom out for just a second, please note that this horizontal apartment complex continues north through phase four, further stressing our already inadequate infrastructure.

As previously discussed, this density and design violate many of the core tenants of the neighborhood model of development.

Members of our Belvedere community recognize that the original density of less than R4 in Block 8 does not support Albemarle County's goal, as articulated in AC 44, of significantly increasing housing density within the development zones.

We believe there is a rational and acceptable density

greater than the original design but less than apartment complex density that can result in a win-win-win for the county, the developer, and the community.

As you consider Greenwood's de facto horizontal apartment complex rezoning request, please consider their track record in Belvedere to date.

No green spaces.

A couple of mulch covered playgrounds only.

A fake parking plan that benefits only SACA and broken promises and strong-arm tactics around the community center, the second garden space, and other amenities.

If you want to stay true to the Belvedere model of development, a decades-old social contract between the Belvedere homeowners and the county,

Please do not support this request.

Send the developer and the county planning staff back to the table with this community to find a better solution.

We welcome the opportunity to participate in such a process.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Mike Moore and my wife and I live at 757 Beverly Boulevard in the Rio district.

My wife and I decided to move to Charlottesville eight years ago because our son and his family are here plus three grandkids.

You know what that's like.

We looked at a number of different places in Albemarle County or what we wanted to call home when we lived here.

And when we got to Belvedere, the search was over.

Belvedere represented everything that we were looking for, everything we desired.

It was just perfect.

Since that time, that's eight years ago, since that time, this development has grown tremendously.

Lots and lots of people, lots and lots of young family.

lots and lots of young families with children.

So most of my talk is gonna be talking about safety relative to Belvedere Boulevard from the center all the way up to the soccer building, which by the way is where all the construction traffic goes right by our house now.

And I'm assuming it will with the new development.

One of my primary concerns is we've got parked cars all up and down Belvedere Boulevard.

Those kids are out, not necessarily in the winter, but in the summer when it's warmer.

They're out on their bicycles, their tricycles.

They're all kind of toys that I didn't have when I was a kid, but there's lots of them out there.

And they're on the sidewalks and so on.

It would be a shame.

It would be more than that.

If one of those kids on one of those toys enjoying their time happened to come out from behind one of those parked cars,

with some of this traffic that we've got on Belvide Boulevard now.

Because you're not going to see them.

They're below the hood line.

It would be tragic.

It would be a tragic safety incident.

Then the other thing I wanted to mention is that road is used a lot for construction traffic, as I mentioned earlier.

It's also the prime entrance for emergency vehicles like fire trucks and ambulances and so on.

It's really poor design.

for handling anything of that size.

It's a small narrow road, has a median, all the turns that they would need to take to get off of that road are very tight and it's difficult to make those turns in a larger vehicle.

So what do they do?

They run over curves, they run over our

If you could bring your comments to a close that you're out of time.

Yes, sir.

I sure will.

Our concern as a group here is safety, pure and simple.

I would ask you to think in terms of talking to developers and ask them, what are they doing for the safety of the people around them?

What are they doing to protect the kids, to protect other people that are already there?

There's an old Western saying, you need to hope for the future, but plan for disaster.

Hope things go well, but you've got to plan in case it doesn't.

Good evening, members of the Planning Commission.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Lori Castine.

I own a townhome in Belvedere in the Rio Magisterial District.

I also serve as chair of an ad hoc safety committee appointed by the HOA to address serious safety concerns that long predate this proposal.

I want to address three interconnected safety issues.

First, the proposed rezoning characterizes the units as attached single family homes, which is misleading.

Each structure is in fact a three to four bedroom apartment above a two bedroom apartment served by a single parking pad for just two vehicles and no garage.

Although plans produced in December indicate garage as the developer has confirmed that there are none.

Simply the parking pad and limited street parking.

This creates a density significantly greater than that of the nearby Belvedere Reserve apartment complex.

The average American household owns at least two vehicles, and many have three or more, particularly families with driving-age children.

Yet this proposal provides extremely limited on-street parking, and suggests that residents will park several blocks away, which is wholly unrealistic for families carrying infants, toddlers, or groceries, and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of daily life.

As a result, residents will park in no parking zones, as they already do throughout the existing phases of Belvedere, with no meaningful enforcement.

Illegal street parking narrows roadways to the point that emergency vehicles cannot pass, let alone deploy life-saving equipment.

Second, a safety committee survey found that the vast majority of residents exercise or engage in outdoor activities daily, and nearly half have children who walk to and from school bus stops.

Current traffic volume and excessive speeds by residents, visitors, service vehicles, and construction traffic already pose a serious risk.

There have been countless near misses, many involving children.

These conditions existed before the current build-out in the northern part of the neighborhood and the adjacent Dunlora development, all of whose traffic flows directly through the center of Belvedere.

This proposal would add 150 or so more dwellings and an estimated 300 to 500 additional vehicles.

Third, ingress and egress from the neighborhood were already inadequate before the proposed expansion.

All are located at the south end.

The primary entrance and exit feeds onto Ryle Road.

The second requires a circuitous route through Dunlora and is rarely used due to its inconvenience.

The third is a single lane wooden railroad bridge owned by CSX with no posted weight limit, no clear maintenance schedule, whose longevity and structural integrity are dubious at best.

In the event of a major fire or disaster near the south end of the neighborhood,

Individual escape or full evacuation would be nearly impossible.

More likely, a fire in the north end of the neighborhood, including in the proposed redevelopment area, could become catastrophic before emergency responders could even get that far through the neighborhood, and that assumes the roads are passable with the illegal parking that we already see.

I urge you to listen to the families who live here and simply want a safe place to call home, including affordable housing, as has been mentioned.

Please reject this untenable zoning proposal.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Steve Rose and I own a home on Belvedere Boulevard in the Rio Magisterial District and I'm here to summarize the concerns of my neighbors and ask the Commission for several actions prior to any recommendation to the County Board of Supervisors regarding this rezoning request ZMA 2024-0005.

So stop me if you've heard this one before.

A developer, a county planner, and a neighborhood representative walk into a bar.

Or maybe it's a conference room.

But the idea is that they come up with a win-win-win solution to a very thorny issue.

That's the key to our presentations.

We wanted a voice.

We wanted you to hear us.

You wanted to see us.

This is a neighborhood that welcomes development, that welcomes the goals of our county.

My wife and I have lived there for three years.

We've been in Albemarle County for 50.

I started my career as a tradesman here locally and then went on to become a lead AP construction manager for a huge company.

So I really look forward to seeing an environmentally friendly, smart and planned development here in our county.

In summary, tonight you have heard my neighbors talk about the history of our community, how we look forward and bought into the promise of the neighborhood model, including green space and natural topography, our support of

affordable housing.

Our concerns that the revised density in this proposal will not only tax the infrastructure, but also kick issues regarding future maintenance and parking down the road.

And finally, and most importantly, the life safety reality of emergency vehicle access as well as the proximity to a very active freight and passenger single line.

So here is our ask.

If you haven't yet, go visit the site and see the railroad cut and the considered and constrained routes of emergency vehicles.

Keep the neighborhood model in mind while making a decision to help stop the erosion of that foundational document.

And finally, please don't support this request until a meeting with the developer,

a planning staff and a Belvedere community representative is held to find a better solution in keeping with the goals of AC44.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak this evening.

My name is Tammy Ruble and I'm a resident at the villas at Belvedere in the Rio district.

The villas, if you don't know, it is a very small neighborhood of 26 homes located at the end of Free State Road and we're right at the entrance to Belvedere.

Many of our neighbors have met with the residents of Belvedere and we share their concerns about the proposed rezoning.

While our issues are not exactly the same, there's a clear overlap of concern in the issue of safety.

There's only one exit out of my neighborhood, and it goes to Free State Road and Belvedere Boulevard.

Opposite our exit is the entrance to Fairview Swim and Tennis Club.

Even on an average weekday, it can be very challenging to exit our neighborhood and make the left turn onto Belvedere Boulevard.

They're often walkers, joggers, parents with strollers walking along the sidewalks in this area.

It's already a serious safety issue for both current Belvedere residents as well as residents of the villas.

During the summer when the swim club is open, the number of pedestrians increases as many members of the club walk easterly down Free State Road through the villas and up the abandoned portion of Free State Road near Loring Run in order to shorten their walk home.

The area at Pre-State Road and Belvidere Boulevard is extremely crowded with cars, traffic going in multiple directions and pedestrians trying to cross the street.

Adding more vehicles to that intersection is inevitably going to result in a much higher risk to the safety of vehicle drivers, pedestrians of all ages and bicyclists.

Another consideration is the location of the center at Belvedere, which is filled most days of the week with vehicles driven there by senior citizens.

As the main road out from Belvedere passes the center, it should be a concern that increased traffic will pose an increased safety consideration for the older persons leaving the center and turning left onto Belvedere Boulevard.

The increased traffic that would be the inevitable result of the proposed rezoning will also have a deleterious impact on those vehicles.

Finally, there's the issue of public transportation.

One of the principles of the Albemarle County neighborhood model of development includes ready access to public transportation.

The only public transportation that comes close to my neighborhood stops at the center, which is three quarters of a mile from the villas.

The relatively narrow streets from Belvedere coupled with dense street parking would already be a challenge, but adding the vehicles that would result from the proposed rezoning might be the death knell to any hope of public transportation in the area.

For these reasons, as well as those discussed by the residents of Belvedere, I urge the Planning Commission not to support this rezoning request.

The increased density will adversely affect both Belvedere proper and the neighborhoods around it.

Thank you.

As county employees, we expect you to be good stewards of the land and to be thoughtful of the current residents.

If this proffer is approved, Belvedere will be close to three times larger than the original plan.

We ask to please address the following issues.

Traffic has increased substantially on Loring Run and Dunlora Drive as a pass through to Belvedere.

Vehicles speeding to and from Belvedere are dangerous with the width and curves of our roads along with the noise.

With this plan, traffic would increase exponentially.

I'm not sure when the traffic survey was done, but you are more than welcome to come and sit at our house and watch the amount of traffic on a daily basis.

Dan Laura is being ignored.

The safety of our children and adults are at risk.

Without sidewalks, people have to use the side of the road.

Many drivers have disregard for those individuals.

And some of our residents, the pedestrians that are in our neighborhood have been run off the road by traffic.

A road survey in the proffer noted three exits to main roads, Dunlora, Free State Bridge, and Belvedere Boulevard.

Dunlora didn't ask to be a main exit for Belvedere.

Free State one-car bridge is owned by the railroad and is not being maintained.

This leaves one main exit for Belvedere.

We ask before any additional housing is granted that the road exit problem in Belvedere be addressed.

Infrastructure is vital for this area, and this proposal would create the total of 903 residences in Belvedere, most with multiple cars.

In summary, I walk in Belvedere.

I meet the residents.

I support their concerns.

Forests are being destroyed, displaced wildlife.

Historic land is disrespected.

I ask you to respect the current residents and deny any additions in Belvedere.

But if you approve it, we ask that you also work with Dunlora in solving the traffic and speeding problem.

and to add additional roads out of Belvedere to a main road, not through Dunlora.

In Dunlora, we respect our residents, our wildlife, trees and roads, and hope to maintain that for years to come.

And we respect our neighbors in Belvedere.

Thank you.

That's the end of those that signed up.

If there's anyone else that would like to speak,

Madam Clerk, is there anyone on?

Oh, sorry, yes.

Please state your name.

My name is Sonia McGrath and I live in Belvedere on Shelton Street.

Thank you.

in the Rio district.

I'm sad that we don't have our representative here for the Rio district, by the way.

I sold Belvedere under a tent on red clay.

I know what the vision was.

I know what we promised our buyers.

and I'm embarrassed to see what has happened since I was selling Belvedere in 2005, okay?

So we hear, oh, but you know, the county

the VDOT.

Oh, well, Belvedere, that's a mistake.

The roads that they put in there, that's a mistake.

So we're living with it now, but you are allowing additional and additional vehicles in Belvedere.

My point here is not to repeat what everybody has said.

That is totally justified.

I am asking in the middle of all of this, have you any idea that there's another development that will be bringing in 300 to 400 units

in Dunlora Farm and that will be going through Belvedere.

None of you have discussed this and it's amazing to me.

Do you understand how much traffic that makes it come through?

And you are adding on to Belvedere.

And how Belvedere Farm got accepted, I don't even know.

They couldn't go through Dunlora.

As a former realtor who sold Belvedere and to see what's happening to it and to see that there is no concern by the developers.

I'm sorry.

I've worked as a realtor.

I know the developers and there's many of them who I like.

And please, that sound is so annoying.

Have respect for the people who are definitely concerned.

Please.

I'm telling you, this is a perfect example of the lack of concern and really understanding of what this Board of Supervisors is doing.

I don't know.

Do you come out of your seats and go to these places and see what's happening?

Have you seen what they're building in back of us?

That was not planned and I was not selling it, so I know it wasn't planned, and the county keeps on approving and approving.

And why?

Why?

Because of the mighty dollar?

This is not affordable housing.

Belvedere was built under the pretense that we were having affordable housing.

You know what the affordable housing is?

It's a cottage above the garage that's 400 to 500 square feet for a minimum of $1,000 to $1,400.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Matt Lichter.

I've lived in Belvedere for 16 years.

I was in the first group that moved in.

I won't repeat what everyone else has said.

There's one thing I want to ask of the committee.

I know that there are a very large number of people who are watching right now remotely.

I was wondering if there was a way that we could get on the record the number of people who are calling in remotely.

I do know that there's a lot of people in the Belvedere neighborhood with small children and other reasons they cannot come tonight.

I'd like those people to be recognized as also part of this already very large group here.

My only other comment that hasn't been stated so far is that this is an example of a printout that was provided by Greenwood Homes at one of our neighborhood meetings and

based on the facts and the misleading things that are written in here, I would say that I do not trust this developer at all.

And if you're interested in the way they've deceived us, there are plenty of people here who can share concrete evidence of the way that they have deceived us and manipulated the facts.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Several people online, but nobody with their hand up.

So, no one would like to speak.

OK.

So, we're closing the public comments, and we'll ask the

Thank you for the opportunity to respond.

To start with, Ms. Kirchner outlined neighborhood model principles.

Ms. Kirchner noted the initial components of the Belvidere neighborhood.

Those components were built at the same time as the neighborhood model principles were instituted within Albemarle County.

Each one of the rezonings from the initial rezoning to this rezoning are judged on effectively a neighborhood model checklist as part of the staff report to see if the neighborhood model principles are consistent with every rezoning that you see.

Those are very much the same principles as that are in Belvedere.

A couple of other notes.

I think maybe we failed to emphasize the importance of the Greenway system that would be a part of this proposal because it relates to a number of the things that were mentioned.

Ms. Bossert mentioned the initial, the proposal of everyone lives within 250 feet of green space.

That Greenway would count as this green space.

So as it's included all the way down through phase four and then connects down into the flood plain.

Then you can see that we're integrating green space as much as possible.

We're also doubling the size of the park within Block 8, as initially proposed.

I think it was 0.28 acres and it's 0.65 acres now.

So there's more in the doubling of the size of the park within Block 8.

Ms. Taylor had a very intriguing response about 80 to 120 percent AMI for sale product.

We agree.

We feel that for sale product in that range is very important.

and Albemarle County.

And all of you know the way that is the best way for us to get there.

It's density within the area where there is infrastructure and allowing us townhouses in the $400,000 meets the 120% AMI per sale product.

So the best way that we can respond to that is to build townhouses in this area.

There was a significant comment about horizontal apartment complex for this proposal.

Just a reminder that we are proposing 20% affordable housing within this.

The initial Belvedere neighborhood also included 20% affordable housing.

So horizontal apartment complex is not how the Belvedere neighborhood feels now and has shown in the image that we had previously.

Lost that.

This is what that density looks like.

Ms. Castine, a number of people talked about safety, and I think that is an important issue.

There's a lot of things that conflict within safety, certainly street safety, children's safety, crosswalk safety.

Those are all very important things that I think we should address here, the county should address, and you should address with each one of your projects.

There's a lot of conflict that goes with that because there's also comments about parking.

On-street parking is a significant problem as it comes to crosswalk pedestrian safety.

Street trees in Belvedere in the initial section where the street trees are

Great.

You drive through the first part of Belvedere, we wish we could do street trees like that today when we're not able to do utilities due to feed out restrictions.

But it causes visibility issues.

It's important for us to acknowledge the things that are creating safety.

And you can also see the transition that Albemarle County has gone through on Belvedere Boulevard itself from the initial section with the narrow streets, with the street trees, with the parking.

And then on the other section of the village green where the median is gone,

and the road width is about 40 feet and you have parking on both sides and the traffic is very fast.

So these are the challenges that we're facing in Belvidere and you're facing throughout the county.

Finally, Fire and Rescue has review of this proposal and their comment in the staff report is that they had no comments.

I don't think we should take that as carte blanche, that safety is fine, but at the same time we should acknowledge that there are mechanisms within the review process for this to be considered.

Do you have any questions for the applicant?

Any additional questions?

Did you have some additional?

For the applicant?

We'll bring it up for our deliberation.

Thank you.

One of my questions is for historical reference because I wasn't here at the time.

So maybe one of you can answer this or Kevin or Michael could answer it.

There are a lot of different sections of Dunlora, so I don't know if Kevin and Michael know exactly what you're talking about as far as why it doesn't have it.

Are you referring to the Dunlora Village, the new development Dunlora Village at the back?

When the original Dunmore was approved, there were different requirements by the county and we did not have the same requirements that would allow us to have them build stub outs to future developments out that could have connected to Dunmore Village.

So when Belvedere was built, obviously,

under our new county code, we require those connections.

Yeah, it's not public.

It's by the Homeowners Association.

Thank you.

That answers my question.

One of my thoughts is if we expect people in this neighborhood to utilize public transportation in the future in order to minimize their use on vehicular traffic and therefore need less parking,

I think we need to plan for bringing public transportation into the neighborhood.

So like, can the bus get to the circle in Belvedere and back out so that people can actually ride a bus without having to walk to the center?

I think is a legitimate concern of mine.

I also hear the residents saying that, you know, maybe less units and more parking is potentially a win-win.

and tag on to that.

As a general statement, when I have proposals for more density, I tend to favor them because it does meet the goals of the comprehensive plan.

I also drove my way to large vehicle through your neighborhood because my husband bought a really large vehicle.

I'm blaming him, but it was, I did experience what it was like to try and navigate around.

on weekends with kids running around and stuff.

I am concerned that this, I don't have a problem with the design of the units.

I think they look fine.

It just feels like it's really packed in there.

and looking at how you get in and out.

It's like there's not a lot of choice.

This is not a great neighborhood grid system with lots of different choices that can be made.

And so sort of forced out through a neighborhood that's already extremely congested.

And I'm not convinced by the parking plan that I heard that it is enough for

people's stuff.

I understand that it has to meet the county's parking requirements, but there's the reality of friends come over and birthday parties and girlfriends and boyfriends and all of that, that it doesn't look to me like it has enough overflow for those uses.

Again, I can't do a detailed analysis of the parking plan from the dais with the information I've been given this evening, but it just as a gut check in terms of looking at what was allowed before, I think it could be more dense than what the current allowed plan is.

Yeah, so as someone who has an interest in sustainability, I remember when this was proposed.

I remember the videos and brochures.

I saw all of that at the time.

I wasn't on this body.

And it took me just a few minutes to pull up an article from 2011 that says a green Belvedere begins to take shape, once again talking about the green sustainable features that were supposed to be part of the development.

And so it's kind of a shame.

I mean, because I had kind of hoped that maybe we could have those sorts of features in here.

It'd be nice.

I'm certain we can't require that.

But I mean, it's a shame that there couldn't be more sustainable features in keeping with that original vision incorporated into this.

and I think there's certainly ways to do it.

You have the road that's, I mean, you have the street that's proposed to go through there with sidewalks where you have the, I can't show the audience, but you have the little pink and green lines going through there that connects to the greenway.

That could be a green street, right?

That could be, you know, that could, you could do a lot with that.

There could be incorporation of native plants.

Yeah, I actually like the neighborhood's suggestion for that to have fingers of green that would break it up and not feel like such a mass because I do understand if you calculate the amount of acreage of the Greenway Trail and the Rivanna River, it's a lot of green.

That's true.

But in the reality of like a mom with two tots, they're not necessarily going to go all the way down the greenway trail.

They're looking for green space that they can enjoy right where they live.

And it seems to me that the amount of little clusters of little pocket parks and green spaces is few and far between.

There's not that much there.

That's just how it felt to me.

I don't know.

So yeah, so several points.

I mean, one is, is the realization from the county that this road is probably never going to happen, creates an opportunity for some development.

I just don't think this is it.

So I do think that keeping within the typical model that's there is appropriate, and they've done that to some degree, but I'm also not convinced about the parking.

I'm not convinced about some of the circulation and just the overall density.

It feels too much, but I do think there's an opportunity there.

So it's a development worth doing.

I just don't think they have it quite right yet.

and so, I mean, those are my eyes.

I think I echo.

And I think it was mentioned in the application about the the the soccer, you know, field house and the the parking challenges that currently come along with that.

I'm familiar with those.

You know, I have small children like people are bleeding over into this neighborhood trying to get to that facility and you know,

The street system and the parking is not currently adequate.

I think, too, just in thinking about green spaces, I think it'd be good to

for the neighborhood and the developer to have conversation about what kinds of green space they really want, if there's a mismatch there.

I mean, I think often there can be, and I'm seeing a lot of hands raised there.

So I think, you know, there can be a big difference in the quality of green space.

I mean, I know that

I mean, the kinds of green space I appreciate may not be the kinds of green space that other people appreciate.

For me, it's not a soccer field.

But, you know, I think there's ways of incorporating more meaningful green space within the built environment.

I mean, you know, the UVA has a ton of examples of that.

And I'd like to just go back to my question and comment about access.

You know, I currently live in a neighborhood in the county where we have a dedicated strip of land that was proffered as being transferred over to the county, which has happened.

It's inaccessible by both our neighborhood and the public.

So I don't know how many years it's going to take for anyone to actually utilize that beautiful green space that we're supposed to be able to get to.

But this feels a little bit like that.

I mean, I know I recognize that the concept is that people will come from either end, from Still Meadow and from I guess it's the south end, but

Right.

I would just add on to Commissioner Murray's suggestion of more dialogue.

I think more dialogue would be important between the development and the community.

There are a lot of good moves here, the trails, addressing parking at Soka, because obviously I'm sure that when there's events there, there's a lot of people.

So trying to address that, I commend that.

I think there's a lot of good moves.

However,

I think in my opinion and the opinion of the dais, I don't believe this is ready to go forward.

I move to recommend denial of ZMA 202400005 due to our commission's finding that the

The afternoon would like to defer to a specific date in the future.

We appreciate the comments from the Planning Commission in the neighborhood.

We think there is an opportunity for us to find the right plan moving forward.

Right.

The commission would then need to make a motion to accept the deferral.

May I just state one thing here?

I mean, I'm not quite sure what the scope of what we would need to do.

We can defer it to a date, but it may be, you may want to defer it to a, you know, to another date where we have a whole another, we'd re-advertise it, we're not held to a date we're working towards.

We don't know if we do not have to defer it to a date specific.

Right.

Okay.

So we request a deferral to a later date.

Indefinite date.

Okay.

I second.

You've heard some of our comments tonight, but this is more for the residents in attendance.

A deferral is not simply a delay of approval.

A deferral is a deferral to see a better proposal come forward with some of the additional dialogue that the neighbors have requested.

So we try to be fair.

If we thought that this was just an absolutely no hope project, we would just deny it.

This area is slated to be developed in some way.

We just want to see a better project that can hopefully have community support.

And that's what I heard you ask for, density, affordable housing, safely.

And that's what I think we want to see.

OK.

Thank you.

Yes.

Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

Okay, and we're going to at the chairs, we're going to take a seven minute recess.

Come back in session.

So we are now in a work session for ZTA 2024-1, Rio 29 form-based code update.

Yes, and you are correct.

I have mislabeled the CTA on the presentation, so please forgive me for that.

Good evening, my name is Mariah Gleason.

I'm a senior planner in the planning division of community development.

Tonight I'm going to be presenting, as you said, the ETA 2024-1, Rio 29 form-based code updates.

Thank you for letting us come and ask for your feedback on this project.

We're bringing this to the Planning Commission in two work sessions.

In the first meeting tonight, we'll ask about proposed overarching, or as we're calling it, fundamental changes.

And in the second session, we'll focus on more detailed regulatory and technical changes.

I've tailored this presentation to focus on proposed changes to the current RIO 29 form-based code.

There's a lot more information in the staff report and I'd be happy to answer any questions about the staff report or presentation.

We're sharing a lot of information tonight.

While most of the changes work together, I'll stop periodically to invite discussion on the questions staff has for the Planning Commission.

I'm hoping that will trick you into thinking this is a shorter presentation than it actually is.

As background, why are we updating the RIA 29 form-based code?

The county adopted its first form-based code in September 2021.

Form-based codes differ from traditional conventional zoning districts by focusing on how the building relates to sidewalks and streets to create a place rather than governing development through land use or residential density.

So it focuses on the outside of the building rather than the inside.

The RIAH 29 form-based code was adopted as an implementation tool of the RIAH 29 small area plan that preceded it.

The vision of that plan is the creation of a vibrant, connected, mixed-use community with enhanced amenity spaces.

To implement that vision, the RIAH 29 form-based code allows dense urban development by right with an emphasis on streets and recreation spaces.

Lastly, the code functions as an optional zoning district, meaning it enables landowners to choose between buy-write development under the standards of the Briar 29 form-based code or those of the underlying zoning district assigned to the property.

Knowing the county is new to form-based codes, we anticipated that the first few development projects would reveal problems with the code and that's proven to be the case.

Some of the projects or some of the problems we experienced with the first few approved site plans highlighted in teal on the map were street requirements that didn't align with county transportation plans.

a lack of standards for required elements, unintended loopholes in the requirements, and several others.

So in April 2024, the board approved a resolution to amend the RAD 29 form-based code to address the issues within the code.

Based on feedback from applicants, the development community, architects and the consultant group who you'll meet at the next meeting, staff have proposed changes that address these problems while still achieving the vision of the R.I.D.

29 Small Area Plan.

To be clear, the RIO 29 form-based code is currently in effect.

The proposed changes staff are presenting tonight and at the upcoming meeting are updates intended to address known administration and implementation challenges identified since adoption.

Staff discussed many of these changes with the development community and the local community advisory committee, or CAC, and feedback from both groups was generally positive and supportive of the overall direction.

As a reminder, these are the questions staff are asking the PC to consider tonight.

But again, we'd be happy to answer any other questions you have on the staff report or presentation.

Staff are proposing six fundamental changes to the Rio 29 form-based code.

We'll go through each one in turn.

This I'll spend a while on, so sit back.

The form-based code is organized into three character areas which help define the intensity of development and level of activity.

The core character areas shown in red act as the heart of the district.

These areas have the densest development, highest levels of activity, and most urban forms.

So you can think of this as the district's focal point or destination.

So to give you a sense of the feel of this character area, you would see the tallest buildings here positioned close to the street, typically with parking behind and highly transparent first floors to support commercial uses.

The flex areas shown in white allow greater variation in building form and scale.

Buildings in flex areas are shorter than those in the character area and are generally subject to less prescriptive requirements.

Developments in this character area focus on providing safe, comfortable bike and pedestrian connections from the edges of the district to core areas.

The edge areas shown in blue have the lowest development intensity.

Buildings in these areas are typically one to three stories in height and are designed to provide an intentional transition between denser urban development and surrounding single-family neighborhoods.

So this map shows the current configuration of character areas within the Route 29 form-based code.

Staff have consistently received questions and feedback on the requirements of the Corps, but we found the feedback was actually indicative of a location issue.

First, the Corps is centered on the intersection of Route 29 and Royal Road to high-speed, high-volume roads.

High traffic roads adjacent to core developments are concerning for pedestrian safety and the ability to create a successful pedestrian-oriented development environment.

There's a tension between the design intent of the core area and the character of adjacent arterial roadways.

The second issue

that the RIO 29 form-based code requires commercial or retail uses on ground floors of every development within the core.

At 109 acres the core area is too expansive for this requirement.

It dilutes instead of concentrating commercial and pedestrian activity.

Also, the design standards intended to support these commercial uses, such as mostly transparent facades and ground floor ceiling heights of 15 feet, increased development costs for every building within the core, which may not achieve the active commercial centers it envisions, again, due to the extent of the core area.

To resolve those issues, staff are proposing two changes.

The first is to shift the core area designation to align with existing shopping centers, those being Ryo Hills Shopping Center, Albemarle Square, and Fashion Square Mall, where a density of commercial activity is already present and the ownership isn't as fractured.

Separating the primary pedestrian systems from the high-speed vehicular corridors better accomplishes the goals of both.

accommodating regional transportation through the area and creating safer, more pleasant, pedestrian-focused centers where people might feel invited to stay, walk, and pop into multiple businesses that they might not otherwise.

Parcels that are no longer core are proposed to be redesignated as flex areas, shown in white, and no changes are proposed to the locations or extents of the edge areas, shown in blue.

The proposed concept is similar, or this proposed concept is similar to the squares design alternative presented in the Rio 29 small area plan.

The second change is the addition of a new destination streets street type.

A good example of the look and feel of the street type is Bond Street at the shops at Stonefield.

Similar to Bond Street, these street types are envisioned to be at least 1,200 feet in length, which is about a quarter mile.

Design standards for commercial uses would be tailored to this street type instead of every street within the core.

Examples of design standards include wider sidewalks, streetscape furniture, visually engaging and mostly transparent building frontages, taller ground floor ceiling heights, and other aspects that encourage an inviting walkable and comfortable pedestrian experience.

To summarize, staff are proposing two changes to address the challenges identified to the current character area boundaries, shifting the core areas to existing shopping centers and introducing destination street types.

So this brings us to our first question.

Yes with a comment.

I feel like a crazy person.

We don't need to record that first part anyway.

I sat on this commission, we did the Rio Foreign Base Code the first time, and I very clearly said at that time it didn't make sense to have the intersection of RY129 as the center.

and that it made sense because of the difficulties of crossing that notwithstanding the pedestrian improvements and that we should have smaller decentralized course.

So this was ignored.

Here we are today.

I rest my case.

Of course, we're glad to prove you right as always.

What I'd say, you know, there's also this other nuance I want to make sure we talk about a little bit.

You know, there was this idea of creating a district also too.

So would you see on the left hand side that that whole area was, it wasn't just at the intersection, it was that whole area, that 109 acres was supposed to be

sort of this walkable, taller first floors and intend to make that commercial.

So not only is it sort of the location, it's just kind of the scale that was envisioned in that one seemed to be

a tall order to meet you know in the market conditions around here so again this destination street concept and we're part looking at it it's shops in Stonefield you know it's about 1200 feet and we like that's a that's a good it's three or four blocks of commercial now to be clear when they come into these new cores that's that's what we're looking for that kind of mixed-use destination area

whether that is a single street and a single alignment, whether that is two crossing streets, we've tried to leave that flexibility for the developer to try and see how it would best meet those conditions.

And it may be even that there's actually aspects of the code, which you get into next time, sort of see, allows maybe even some more flexibility.

Okay, so maybe you can't deliver 1200 feet, so how about 800 feet?

To be clear, I like the idea of farm-based code.

I think it's a great tool.

But I still question a little bit, and we can go on to other things, but I still question a little bit how we get developers to build a different kind of product.

Because it's in an already built environment, right?

So it's not like they have this blank slate and they could just do it how they would ideally do it, and they have a successful model down the road at the shops.

So I, you know, like when I was in Charlottesville, we did a lot of work in Belmont.

We built new medians.

We built new tree plantings.

We narrowed the streets down.

We put benches and we put vegetation.

We did a lot.

The city did the infrastructure investment to convince the people there to redevelop those properties.

They were vacant and used as storage and people laughed at us.

Like, that's crazy.

I don't know how we get the private sector, whether we have enough incentives just through farm-based code to make that sort of Herculean lift.

I'm obviously not on the board of supervisors.

I was just going to say, undoubtedly, this is a tough thing to do.

The focus tonight we're bringing you is the rules.

Obviously, you're talking about incentives.

We need to work with VDOT to try and get better street standards that allow us to do some of the things we sort of heard about tonight.

that VDOT standards may not work.

So there's that and there's several other things that we need to do as a community.

I think what we're trying to do with this ordinance and part of this thing is that this change is sort of a reality check to probably what the market is and the location.

I think that's really what this question's about.

For incentives, I would density bonuses for affordable housing.

I said, what about for putting a green roof on your building?

Yeah, I'm going to make my comments very brief so we can move over and keep Ms. Gleason on track here.

So I agree with this.

I think I was actually not part of the voting member.

I was a university rep at the time when we had the conversation on this.

It made a lot of sense to break it up into manageable pieces.

I think also they can have their own identity.

They can begin to

develop and market them in certain ways because they do have their own identity today, right?

So when you get them all, that's a prime opportunity there, right?

So I think we all agree that this is the right move and hopefully we can work on incentives and everything doesn't have to be in terms of regulations, but it could be a qualitative

comment on what could be done, right?

But I will say that, I mean, much in line, I think, you know,

Echoing what has already been said, I mean, I do think this has to be paired with incentives.

I mean, I think we're all in agreement with this.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's just little things here and there, and I don't want to get in the weeds, but just as one little example, on page 46, it says, allow curb cuts.

We can do better than allowing curb cuts for stormwater.

If I can just interject, looking at the code, I think it's helpful to think of it as minimum standards rather than expectations.

The code operates as setting a low bar or a bar.

for what a development has to achieve.

So if we want it to achieve more, we have to tell it that it has to.

And then we have to add requirements and definitions to that enough to be able to regulate it and review it.

I think one of the problems, and we'll get into this next time, one of the problems that we have with green infrastructure is that we didn't define it and we said that it is required, but we didn't say what would meet that standard.

So is it

I had several meetings, this was before your time, with staff about things I would like to see in there.

If we're raising the bar, raise the bar to a low bar, there's a... Well, I think we should just think about it as minimum, because there's minimum requirements.

I was just saying there was a guide that was produced a long time ago called Before the Storm about good stormwater management.

that is a low bar that we should at least strive to achieve that because that standard's been out there for a while.

So, but yeah, I would like to see more in this, but I think focusing on these, I think the proposed layout is much better.

We really need to, as we've said, we need to get at these big shopping centers.

We need to get at, you know, Fashions Quorum Mall and Emerald Square.

And when you break them up, they don't all have to be exact.

They can have their own identity.

OK. Well, thank you.

For the discussion, it's nice to have unanimous decision making.

So the second fundamental change is the recommendation for a street-centric framework.

Typically, form-based codes organize regulations based on character areas or something similar, or streets.

The current form-based code uses both to govern built form, which has created confusion in understanding how the regulations apply to a given property.

To resolve the issue, we're proposing a framework where the form-based code regulations are primarily determined by abutting street type.

By organizing requirements around streets, we're able to promote a more consistent experience along each street.

The second issue is that the current 29 form-based code treats streets as having equal and interchangeable priority.

This can lead to inconsistent and unpredictable building orientation, and it lacks the sophistication to allow changes to building form and function along secondary side streets.

So to address this, we created a street hierarchy shown in this table.

The hierarchy directs building form and orientation to be prioritized and consistent along high-ranking primary streets while allowing greater flexibility along secondary streets.

Destination streets have the highest priority to support continuous engaging building frontages.

along commercial streets and a welcoming pedestrian experience.

Avenues and boulevards are ranked second and third to encourage travel along streets that function as key bike and pedestrian connectors to and within the Rio 29 form-based code.

And collectively, the street hierarchy balances pedestrian-focused placemaking with regional transportation needs.

And this brings us to the second question.

Does the Planning Commission support the approach of using a street-centric framework to organize regulations and inform built form?

A local street is anything that gets you, it's like that last mile that you drive.

So in our

We'll use this map.

I realize it's trying to do other things, but the purpose of the form-based code or one of the intents is to break up the district into a more grid-like system.

Right now the blocks are these super blocks.

They're about a thousand feet in length and they lack sidewalks.

It's a really hard block to walk for anybody without arrest and if you're worried about safety especially.

One of the requirements of the form-based code is to start breaking up these blocks and adding streets to bisect them or trisect them, however long they may be.

So if you imagine breaking up the Rile Hill Shopping Center with maybe

into nine blocks or 12 blocks.

Those would be examples of local streets where it's getting you straight to the front door.

But it's not one of those main streets.

The main streets, like the avenues and boulevards, have already been built.

They're already public.

Local streets would most likely be new streets.

I think a lot of the concept of what this is, it's like we need to try and create, I think the initial steps in this ordinance, if it gets implemented, it would be great to have a building fronting every single street and have a big parking deck to make that happen.

I mean, ultimately that's that really deep urban form that we aspire to.

I think the practicality of it is it may be something that intensifies over time.

So somebody comes in, they need some surface parking lots.

So we can't just, you know, they're not going to start with parking decks.

We're not going to have a full, fully built out area.

We can get the grid network established.

If we can get buildings oriented towards some of these primaries, towards a destination street, it starts to create that sense of place that we're trying to make these places successful.

That's what Bond Street does.

If you look at that, the buildings front that street, the parking's behind.

Had that

development been able to build out as was originally intended when it was first zoned.

They had parking decks and they were going to have buildings on every street.

So I think maybe that one day will Bond Street and Shoppe and Stonefield will get a parking deck and will go denser and some of those other streets may further fill in.

But the point of how the street hierarchy is to say, hey, listen, make sure you put those buildings fronting that destination street first.

The reason I asked for sort of the definition or example of local street is because I don't foresee in my mind what that is in a level between Rio and 29.

I'm seeing a missing designation between Destination Street and Avenue.

So, more like a District Avenue, you know, so you've got Bond Street and then you've got District and District doesn't have anything fronting it, right?

Is that the one that goes across to Costco, right?

So, that's just my comment is that

I can't envision what a local street would be, but I can see that there might be a different designation between destination and avenue, something intermediate.

So when we come back to you next time, we'll talk a little bit more about the different street sections that are in the code.

Each of these things are defined with standards and that's sort of what is a fundamental template

that governs how this thing should be built out.

So we'll get into that a little bit more.

Taking it back to the shops at Stonefield, some of those local streets would be some of the ones that are sort of in the back, where actually they've done a great job fronting in that development.

But the ones that are back behind the Hyatt and sort of those are these, they're like a, they're the lowest in, it's sort of intensity in most local, or the places where you'd have,

some of the other housing that may be along these streets.

Who knows exactly what the form is?

I'm having a hard time explaining myself.

So what I'm trying to wrap my mind around is how would we correlate the relationship between the density

and the street types in terms of how we're pulling this together.

Because it seems to me that really is the overall density of the built environment that should determine

What kind of form surrounds it, right?

So the more you have tall buildings, the more important that streetscape becomes.

If we think about Charlottesville, as the buildings went up, it became much, much more critical that you had bike lanes and street trees.

So thinking about how we tie this, the streets, to how we think about the density that correlates to that.

Yeah, I think one of the things that we're missing in this is probably a map of where pedestrians would be most accommodated and where bicycles would be most accommodated.

Because I think when you're looking at the map and just where the streets would lie in the district itself,

I think what you would start to see is a web created of those primary pedestrian routes and the primary bike routes and those would be covered by destination streets, avenues, and boulevards as the main axes by which you reach most places and then the local streets would be those in between like

connectors to individual residences or buildings or what have you.

But the destination street, Avenue and Boulevard are really capturing and getting close to most everything.

Yeah.

And I think when we think about where destination streets go, obviously, I think we need to look at not only where pedestrians

You know, one thing I'm going to come back to is sort of the analogy.

We're trying to create a carrot.

This is an optional district.

One of the things we're not doing here is we're not sort of establishing, hey, this is where the roads need to be as part of this

District.

Matter of fact, in some respects, we're trying to back off from that.

I mean, because the planners can't understand what the future might hold.

We can't understand what one developer or another developer might do with one of those.

So we're trying to set up a system where we say, hey, look, you have to have a grid network.

And then when you're in that grid network, especially if you're in the core, you have to think, if it's one of these streets, it's going to be a destination street.

And the rest of them would be local, the new streets, basically.

There will be standards on that.

And I think your question of like what's happening on West Main Street, you know, the vision was there.

They sort of at least have a vision for what West Main Street was supposed to be and maybe one day will be.

But that density sort of came in over time.

And I think what we want to try and do with this district is to allow

If we can get the streets in the right spot, we can get some of these other things.

And we may not have a parking deck in the first iteration of the development, but hopefully over time, you can get more density and we can get something that becomes more urban form.

Again, part of this thing is not being so prescriptive from the government side, but to try and set a ground set of rules.

You build this form,

You can put as much density in the types of uses that you want for the most part.

Can I tag onto that, though?

I think Lonnie made a really good point, though, about the density needs to relate to the street.

So the taller your buildings, the wider you need your sidewalks to be because otherwise you get that cavern effect.

So it's kind of like if you need to link that this is

not a boulevard, I don't know, an avenue or something, whatever it is.

Maybe I can.

So as an organizing framework, it obviously that such streets are used in many places, so it makes sense.

However, the key that Mr. Barnes has mentioned, not being too prescriptive.

Because we don't know necessarily, so for instance, Fashion Square Mall, that's an area where you could see significant density.

And you may wind up with one of these larger streets.

through there to accommodate that density and be able to have street trees and pedestrian walkways.

And you want people to encourage.

So you want white sidewalks because if you have stores and you have a number of things, maybe you have a multi-use or you have apartments above.

And so you're going to need a wider, you're going to need wider sidewalks, wider streets.

So we need to have flexibility to built in the flexibility in here.

And I think that that's going to be the tricky part in how you develop that.

And I think maybe, you know, again, I wanted to make sure we had this opportunity to have these two work sessions.

I'm happy.

I think we'll probably do.

My last question is, what do you want us to talk about next time?

And make sure that you're setting up the infrastructure that promotes or encourages the higher density.

particularly in those three zones that you called out.

I mean, those are ripe for the higher density, right?

I guess I'm still struggling with, I understand form-based code.

I'm struggling with how we incentivize people to come in and put in the type of density structures, diversity of uses that we want without the county

you're doing something about the street network.

It's just like, it needs to be master plan.

We're struggling with it too.

Yeah, right.

That's what I don't see, because also the street network has to connect out to the other.

This really needs a and I don't get it.

I'm sorry.

I can't see I can't I'm like here and I get the end result and I'm stuck in Howard.

If I if I could address that part real quick.

This was always going to be a challenging place to do form based code.

It is it is.

built for cars.

Everything is surrounded by parking.

It's behind parking.

It has parking behind it.

It's just seas of parking.

39% of this district is parking lot or paved area.

So this was always going to be a challenging place.

And you're right, most form-based codes come into areas that the streets are already kind of built.

And when they're recommending new streets, they kind of are just connecting streets that exist that are currently disconnected.

So I think this is a challenge, and we are struggling with incentives to be able to encourage development.

I think one of the things with denoting core areas was being able to say to the developer, we see you as a destination, and they want that too.

So there's some overlap of intention behind these designations.

In terms of building out new streets, I think one of the things that we have to realize is that we have a code in effect now, and it's not quite working very well.

So this part of this effort is to make it work.

It will still have those struggles, and I think we'll need to talk through that more.

And they might be policy-oriented versus regulation.

And finally, I think you did that well.

And I think finally, we talk about new streets.

I think the one that the county is most trying to solve how to make work is realignment of Hillsdale.

Yeah, that would come into Fashion Square, crossover Rio and tie into Albemarle Square.

Okay.

Well, my last thought is when it comes to having the street type be the framework,

are you then inviting too much not form?

So basically, the developer might say, well, I don't want to have to meet this requirement, so I'm going to call it an avenue.

In some ways, but I think in other ways, the development that goes first kind of has more

They have a greater ability to decide what kind of street that's going to be, and then the next developer has to continue the street.

I don't think we're going to ever see a street that goes from Avenue to Boulevard to local street.

That's just not something that would be approvable.

So there's a continuation of a design, and the first development in gets to choose that direction.

I think in this there's an emphasis on where are the most impactful accesses that we are encouraging pedestrian travel and then once you get to those smaller blocks that are 400 feet or less that's if you're looking in your mind as an example of what is a 400-foot linear

block size, it's about the size of the longest length of the Water Street Garage.

So that is something that's walkable.

You can progress through a district and feel comfortable in that kind of scale.

The only last thing I'd say,

Thank you.

You know, our last question is, what do you all want to talk about next time?

We have some of the things we want to talk about.

So part of this is the relationship with the cross section of the street.

The next one is sort of how does it get administered?

And we have thought about that because there is a little bit of latitude, a little bit the agent can sort of like hold back on some of the stuff.

Another challenge we're going to have is public and private streets.

And part of that's going to be driven by what we can get VDOT to accept as a public street.

We'll get into all of that next week, or when we come back to talk to you.

But your insight is good because you're like, well, how are we going to make sure that this network actually functions?

If you're going to allow a developer to come into you, propose what he thinks or she thinks works best, what control do we still retain to verify and agree on that?

And do we all feel kind of ready to keep going?

Okay, great.

So shifting away from streets and back to the proposed zoning map, in addition to the character areas, the zoning map identified where certain types of publicly accessible recreation space, also known as civic space in the code, are required.

So I know you've seen this map before, but in these maps, the civic spaces are identified with black dots, and the required linear parks, which are a type of civic space, are shown as black lines.

Several changes have been made in the proposed map.

The first change aligns required civic spaces with known development plans or guidance from Albemarle County's Parks and Recreation Department.

The result was the removal of three civic spaces circled on the left and adjusting the locations of two others shown with arrows.

Second, the proposed map also revises the types of civic spaces to align required civic spaces with the revised design standards.

And lastly, the proposed map recommends a new linear park space along the northern boundary of the Albemarle Square property to extend and connect the planned linear parks in that area.

So this addition is consistent with the recommendations of the RIA 29 small area plan.

And I just want to be clear, by removing these spaces, we haven't removed the requirement for recreation.

It just gives the developers

opting in on those properties, more flexibility regarding the location and the type of civic space that would be required.

So on that note, again, every development that opts into the form-based code is required to provide a recreation space.

With the first few developments, particularly one with smaller recreation space requirements, we realize that the current regulation, which requires all recreation spaces to be dedicated to the county, could result in a county maintenance of around 60 individual and dispersed recreation spaces.

This obviously creates an operational and maintenance challenge and risk the long-term quality of the spaces.

So recognizing the importance of recreation spaces, we didn't want to lose that aspect, but we needed to find a way to balance how recreation space is provided and its quality.

So the proposed change offers an alternative approach

where in recreation spaces that are one acre or more in size would be dedicated to the county.

Required recreation spaces that are one acre or less would be privately owned and maintained.

This approach concentrates county ownership and maintenance on larger higher impact sites and could result in theoretically 20

that the developer is implied to the public.

Well, this is green space.

There's open space.

And we hear this a lot.

There's a lot of uncertainty about what is green space and what's not green space.

I can see definitely for larger areas dedicating those properties to the county for the county to own and maintain.

But there's a middle ground there, too, where I think we could be using easements.

Easement that is a trail access or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, even like, you know, if you have a, you know, let's say you have your one acre community garden or whatever, I think it's still worthwhile for the county to have an easement on that one acre garden that says like, this is dedicated green space so that if at some point, you know, you still have a developer controlled HOA, the developer turns around and say, you know, actually, I want to put an apartment building there.

Well, I think I'm sorry to cut you off.

So one aspect is the easement for access temporarily until a redevelopment occurs.

In that scenario, it allows the developer to redevelop however that

or whatever the uses might say is most relevant for the recreation space that most fits the use going in on the property.

That gives the developer some flexibility and especially as the property turns over over time.

It does not however negate their requirement to provide a recreation space.

Excuse me, it's late.

So they would still be required to have a recreation space on that property.

It doesn't, it doesn't waive that requirement.

Yeah, I hear that and yet I think that, you know, there's a certainty that's provided by putting things under easement that I think you don't get by just simply, I mean because I think as

Board of Supervisors change and time goes by and I think it provides a certainty that

that can be lost.

Exactly.

And then, you know, then you have you have a certainty like, oh, yeah, we have an easement on this.

It carries weight.

That's not the same as that.

Oh, well, you had a special use permit or you had a rezoning.

This was a part of that.

It's interesting that the discussion with that direction.

For me, my vantage point in coming in and looking at this was under the current ordinance, you see, we could end up with 60 publicly maintained open spaces.

Yes, that would give you a lot of control over it if they're publicly owned and maintained.

And I think there was sort of a pragmatic realization that if we have to have 60 spaces in here, and we want to try and do the same form based code, maybe in some of the other activity centers we've planned, it starts to multiply on itself a number of public spaces that might need to be maintained.

The previous code, when they sort of set that up, the commitment to

maintaining those maybe wasn't quite as clear or was well thought through at the time.

So we spent a lot of time working with the Parks Department, sort of like, how do we sort of try and right size this thing?

And interestingly enough, we sort of gone down on the number of what we envisioned to be publicly owned spaces.

And as a result, we still think we need some recreation.

That's why we have a second category to try and people that are, you know,

required to have less than an acre, well, there's going to be privately maintained open space.

And if you're really small, you can do cash in lieu and buy out completely.

But the idea was to have these public spaces be public parts.

And in some respects, that was to try and get to that

statement we've heard through AC44 and others that the county needs to have a more robust urban park system.

So that's really kind of where we were going with this, Mr. Murray.

And it's interesting what you've brought it into is, well, in this middle category that's less than one acre, should we be putting an easement over top of it to ensure that either, I guess, maybe the public has access or that the developer at certain point can't go into a different

type of zoning district or rezone their property to get rid of that open space.

I'm less worried about that last thing.

I think that the code will require those open spaces.

I think that's what Mariah was trying to say.

I'm just saying there's a middle ground between the county owning and the developer owning.

And so I think that there's that you may just consider there's multiple models in there that you can accommodate.

That's, you know, that's sort of what I'm saying.

I do think too, one of the nice things the comprehensive plan gives us, one of the changes we put in there was the ability for the, as I think you just implied, the developer to contribute to a parks fund in lieu of providing a pocket park.

And I think that that's a tool I think could be really beneficial in terms of flexibility in some of these spaces.

Sometimes the individual piece being rezoned at that moment is not where you need the sidewalk.

There's certainly leeway in it.

Just to address one point, once a property opts into the form-based code, it cannot redevelop under a different zoning district.

It is opted into the form-based code permanently.

So I don't think we would really be dealing with so much of developers coming back and changing their land uses to get rid of recreation spaces.

So just to highlight that last year we retained the option to provide a cash-in-lieu of recreation spaces, recognizing that it might be challenging for those smaller parcels to provide recreation spaces on the site and funds that are contributed to that, as you said Mr. Murray, would be used for district-wide recreation investments.

Can I ask for clarification on that?