Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   6/9/2026

Okay.

It is six o'clock and we are calling the June 9th Albemarle Planning Commission work session to order.

Yes.

Ms. Brown?

Here.

Ms. Firehock?

Here.

Ms. King?

Here.

Okay, moving on to the consent agenda.

Is there any commissioners that would like to pull an item from the consent agenda?

Hearing none, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

I have a motion.

Second.

Ms. King?

Abstain.

Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana?

Aye.

Mr. Moore?

Aye.

Ms. Brown?

Aye.

All right.

Moving to our work session.

CPA 2021-2 AC44 Work Products.

Yes, thank you.

We're excited about this opportunity to come talk to you all about this tonight.

who we call, we adopted AC44 back in October of last year and it became effective January 1st of this year.

Staff's been working on five work products and we wanna talk to you all about that.

We took these to the board for their review and blessing back in April 15th.

The five products are the zoning modernization, there's activity center plans, we can talk a little bit more in depth tonight.

multimodal transportation plan, a rural area plan, and then AC44 administration, which is really about developing metrics and tracking our progress, as well as connecting some of our numerous actions in AC44 to the strategic plan, and then ultimately to the budget to try and make those actions become a reality.

These five work products sit at the center of one of our main central pillars of growth in our community which is our growth management policy.

They're designed to, with Weldon Cooper telling us that within the next 20 years we can expect 31,000 people in our community and hopefully most of those will be in the development area and a lot of them will be in these activity centers.

So these work products are geared toward accommodating those new people.

With the zoning mod update, these are creating regulations that will promote the quality of growth that we expect to see.

With activity center plans, they will establish the vision within these activity centers, as well as identify opportunities to actually make this vision a reality.

With the multimodal plan, we will try to provide supporting transportation to maintain the mobility as we grow denser.

And of course, with the rural area plan, we will try to protect what's important while reflecting what's changing in our community.

And finally, the AC44 administration section will provide accountability and be able to track our progress, hopefully.

So I am lucky to lead a very talented staff and I'm excited to hear what they have to say and I'm excited to hear what you all have for ideas and reflections upon this work.

Sure thing, Michael, thank you very much for that and thank you as well to the Planning Commission for the opportunity to provide an update on AC44 implementation this evening.

Just to walk you real quick through the meeting agenda, we'll take a quick look back at AC44 priorities and just kind of

reorient ourselves with updated comp plan.

And then as Michael was talking about, we'll move on the bulk of the first part of the presentation is kind of this overview of the five work projects.

We'll be looking at deliverables and timelines running from the end of this fiscal year through fiscal year 29.

In particular, we'd like to focus with you tonight on activity center planning, with the idea there being that we actually have three priority locations that we've researched and analyzed.

We'd love to get your feedback and thoughts on those locations tonight.

I think you have maps in front of you that we'll be referring to during that part of the presentation with the thought being that we would be able to take a recommendation to the board later this summer on the first location for the first activity center plan.

So those are the parts of the agenda tonight.

So starting off with the quick look back at AC44 priorities,

Michael mentioned a bit of this, but just to go through that it's a pretty remarkable high-level plan of action for managing the county's growth and development over the next 20 years.

So we are expecting about 31,000 new people by 2044.

It continues the county's long-standing growth management policy by focusing development and public investment in the development areas and then maintaining the rural area for ag, forestry, and conservation.

It updates land use categories and the future land use map to guide where housing, businesses, and industry should locate.

It introduces activity centers and employment centers so we can encourage higher density, walkable, mixed-use areas

that are well supported by transit and that provide access to well-paying jobs.

It includes community design guidelines to encourage connectivity, excellence in design and access to parks and recreation.

It builds on all of the existing county plans, the strategic plan, Housing Albemarle, the climate action plan, the economic development strategic plan, and lastly identifies seven big moves to guide AC44 implementation.

Also don't want to pass by talking about the development of AC44 without mentioning the strong foundation of community engagement across all four phases of its development.

Some of the stats here you can just see the wide range of different approaches that the county used to reach out to community members as part of AC44's development and in the end we had more than 2,700 people participating in those engagement opportunities.

So that brings us through the five work projects.

We're going to go through each in turn, again, talking about timelines, deliverables and details, starting with zoning modernization, then multimodal transportation planning, rural area priorities and the rural area plan, AC44 administration tracking and reporting.

And in bold there, I just I moved activity center planning to the end, since we'll be spending a good deal of time tonight talking about that in particular.

I also do want to pause for a second just to point out these five work projects are CDD-led responsibilities.

So this slide basically emphasizes that there's other ongoing AC44 related efforts that other departments will lead.

So for example, here we have the county's Office of Housing.

The county's planning to update the county's housing policy in the next few months and they're going to be working with new information.

Dr. Pethio will be bringing several proposals to the board in coming months and obviously all of that new data and information will also inform things like activity center planning.

The five work projects are closely tied to AC44's seven big moves, which we've listed here on the slide.

So the big moves are strategic groupings of key initiatives organized by common themes and spanning multiple policy areas while involving collaboration across county departments and external partners.

So just recapping really quick, aligning regulations, increasing affordable housing access and options,

investing in compact and connected development areas with an emphasis on activity centers, driving innovation, expanding economic opportunity, supporting the development of ag and forestry uses in the rural area while preserving rural character and conserving environmentally sensitive resources, mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change, and strengthening social connection and community well-being.

This next slide is actually going to show how the five work projects are closely tied to the seven big moves and actions.

There are 378 actions across AC44's nine topic chapters, and then the seven big moves help guide and prioritize those actions.

And in turn, the five work projects directly address all seven of those big moves and the prioritized actions.

So the next little part of the graphic here just illustrates some of the primary connections

and then also the secondary connections.

So you see when you combine those two, you can really see kind of the fine mesh of connections between big moves, the seven big moves and the five work projects.

Also just highlighting that the fifth work project AC44 administration does connect to all seven of the big moves as well.

That brings us through to the next slide, which provides kind of an overview of timelines and deliverables for each of the five work projects.

So you can see here that we're starting at the end of this fiscal year, moving through fiscal year 29.

We're going to go through each of them in turn in a second.

But I do want to emphasize how all of these activities are going to require coordination and collaboration among county departments, as well as with county leadership, external partners such as VDOT on transportation planning,

as well as the broader community.

So here we are with zoning modernization or Z mod as sometimes people refer to it in short.

This is the comprehensive ongoing update to our 40 year old zoning ordinance to make the regulations clear, more consistent and better aligned with the community's vision for the future.

Where we are right now in fiscal year 26 is streamlining the current ordinance and a format update.

Looking into next fiscal year, there's ongoing community feedback.

And then in fiscal years 27 and 28,

drafts of the final phase two and phase three zoning ordinance.

So that's the first work project.

That brings us through to the second one, multimodal transportation planning.

The first action in AC44's transportation chapter is to develop a multimodal transportation plan.

What is a multimodal transportation plan?

Well, it's a comprehensive, forward-thinking look at transportation across the entire county.

It examines the current system's needs and deficiencies, how the system could best serve its purpose in the future, and what that system would look like.

It includes all modes of transportation and all users, from freight trucks through to mothers pushing strollers, everything in between.

And the multimodal planning process is rooted in land use planning.

It will tie together desired future development patterns with transit, walking, biking, and roadway networks to serve those uses.

And it builds on AC44's goals and objectives with in-depth analysis.

So the outcomes listed on the slide there for the plan, a geographically specific vision of future transportation networks, a prioritized list of projects and policies, programs, and other strategy recommendations.

This is the first time that the county has undertaken a comprehensive multimodal transportation planning effort.

And a big part of the work is going to actually involve taking the many studies, transportation studies done to date and the recommendations from other plans, such as the master plans and small area plans, and incorporating them into this county-wide plan.

So the plan's not going to be starting from scratch, but it will offer a new and holistic perspective.

So in terms of what we're doing now, we're currently working on scoping the effort, identifying process steps, timelines, and key touch points for engagement.

We're expecting that staff will be presenting to the planning commission as this effort gets underway, planning to make that presentation in late summer.

That brings us through to the third work project.

So we've talked about zoning modernization and we've talked about multimodal.

Next up, rural area priorities and the rural area plan.

Basically, in the short term, as you can see there, the shorter term priorities all fall under zoning modernization.

There's four priorities for the rural area, revising regulations for special events on historic and heritage properties, investigating the feasibility of additional permitted uses for registered historic properties,

exploring ways to enable small and appropriately scaled agriculture-related businesses and support services, and considering modifications to expand opportunities for diverse revenue streams for agribusinesses.

Looking ahead to fiscal year 27, the completion of a detailed existing conditions analysis will identify key rural area resources, including important areas for terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, active agricultural lands, historical resources and drinking water watersheds, as well as other key resources that may be identified during future public outreach.

And that analysis is going to result in identifying rural resource conservation areas as priority conservation targets and lay the foundation for the Rural Area Plan.

So you can see there at the bottom of this slide, fiscal years 28 and 29, the beginning of rural area plan work.

Future work will identify additional non-residential land uses that support the rural area economy, including local ag and forestry, recreation, agritourism, and other revenue-generating uses in line with AC44's big moves.

The Rural Area Plan will outline methods for integrating those uses while maintaining rural character and conserving priority resources.

Bringing us through to the next work project, AC44 administration.

Basically across all of the work projects, CDD will coordinate with the county's performance management staff to develop and use a set of project metrics, including the land use build-out analysis to track the progress of the integration of AC44 actions into the strategic plan's goals and in line with AC44's big moves.

CDD will also develop regular project summaries, reports and presentations and engage regularly with county leadership

and collaborate with other county departments as part of AC44 administration activities.

That brings us through to the fifth work project where we'd like to spend a good deal of time with you this evening, activity center plans.

Activity center plans are expected to accommodate a significant proportion of the county's future growth and economic development.

They encourage high density, walkable, mixed use areas across the development areas.

The concept of centers is not new.

We've had it around since the adoption of the neighborhood model principles back in 2001.

But what is new about AC44 is its targeted focus.

There's 22 activity centers and eight employment centers, whereas the 2015 comp plan had more than 50 such centers.

And the last item there, just mentioning that master plan recommendations will be folded into

the next generation of planning activities in the county, which includes activity center planning.

This is the map of activity centers and employment centers from AC44.

So on this map, which I think is one of the maps in front of you, printed as well in case that's helpful, which highlights the activity centers and employment centers.

And you can see how there are several clusters.

There's to the south, the southern neighborhoods.

To the east, you have Pantops.

To the west, you have Crozet.

And there's several cluster centers up and down.

the Route 29 corridor north and south.

So regional centers have the most intense commercial and residential uses with a large makes-to-use core.

Community centers and local centers are smaller.

They tend to provide services to surrounding neighborhoods.

Employment centers are clusters of office, R&D, flex, and light industrial uses.

And their goal is to expand employment opportunities for area residents with good paying jobs.

That last item on the slide there, just want to emphasize how activity center planning is also key to effective multimodal transportation planning, given that land use and transportation are interdependent.

To help enable dense and mixed use and walkable activity centers, we need an effective multimodal transportation system that provides increased mobility.

In terms of timelines and activities for the activity center plans, basically starting on the first activity center plan in the in the near future, basically, in the upcoming fiscal year.

And then based on lessons learned and process refinement, moving forward with the second and third activity center projects in fiscal years 28 and 29.

A little more detail on activity center plans.

We've talked a little bit about a couple of these items, but they also, in terms of components, they also support an expanded housing supply and affordable housing opportunities.

They prioritize catalyst projects and address infrastructure needs.

So each plan will provide a detailed look at a defined study area, incorporate collaboration with property owners and community stakeholders, and result in a list of county-led investments, catalyst projects, tools, and actions needed to achieve desired outcomes.

A set of key questions to be addressed by the activity center plans are here, asking what are the major factors driving development now and in the future?

Where are the best public investment opportunities now and in the future?

What features and amenities are needed to attract quality projects?

What are the major constraints on achieving activity center goals?

What are the timeframes for opportunities?

What policies and other tools are needed to help make activity centers a reality?

And where can county actions and leadership have the greatest impact?

Where do we go with activity center plans?

This slide talks a little bit about outcomes.

Activity center plans will assist and inform strategic public and private investment and decision making in the development areas, provide new opportunities for jobs, multimodal transit, affordable housing, parks and green space, environmental protection, climate action, equity, overall quality of life.

They'll help out with enhanced collaboration across county departments, external partners in the community, and help move towards making measurable progress towards AC44 and strategic plan goals in line with AC44's big moves.

at a very high level here, just generally the four stages of the activity center planning process.

Basically, project design is the stage we're in now, where we're working on selecting the first location for the first activity center plan, project scoping and timelines, background research, and then the second phase, analysis and engagement.

The outcomes there would include an existing conditions, opportunities, and constraints summary.

The third, investments and tools.

Outcomes there would include a catalyst projects inventory, as well as public investments and tools strategies.

And then lastly, for the fourth phase of the process, activity center plan and implementation strategy development.

We'd be looking at developing the final activity center plan report with a detailed implementation strategy that includes timelines, partners, and next steps.

So that actually brings us through the kind of overview of the five work projects this evening.

So we've gone through zoning modernization, multimodal transportation planning, rural area priorities in the rural area plan, AC44 administration, and activity center planning.

If it works for the commission now to open the floor for an open discussion, that would be great.

Thank you.

There are a series of questions.

I'm sorry.

I think probably the best place to start would be, we're going to have to lead in their discussion.

You had the slide that had a series of questions.

Oh, sure.

My apologies for my confusion.

This is the question slide I think you might be referring to, which was specifically on activity centers.

So I didn't know if for the first part of the discussion, if I was to ask a question more generally, it would just be taking each work project and asking if you guys had questions or comments on each of the work projects in turn.

So starting with, if I go back to the discussion slide here,

starting with zoning modernization.

Are there questions or comments on zoning modernization and then working through each of those?

Okay, does that work?

Commissioners, I think the first one we're tackling is zoning modernization and you had any questions around that process?

Well, yeah, I can actually, that's a little bit back, but I can bring that right up in a second.

Perfect.

On the zoning modernization, when I just had a question, this is kind of a broad scope type question.

We've got the zoning map, which you can pull up online and see.

And then I think, aside from the specialists in the room, those of us on the dais and the developers and the staff and all that,

A lot of times we don't realize, oh, there's also the FLM, the Future Land Use Map, this overlay that kind of informs future zoning or zoning changes.

Yeah, well, the zoning modernization effort really has

You recall that, and I think Leah Brumfield was here with you all a month or two back talking about what they're up to.

And there really is three phases.

The first phase they've already completed.

It was trying to create an outline for a new ordinance, as well as dealing with some of the more administrative chapters of the zoning ordinance.

and trying to bring the language into sort of a readable kind of straightforward common sense way and a little bit less jargon-y.

So they did that and completed that last year.

Now they're working on taking the remainder of the ordinance and sort of moving it around into the table of contents, if you will, the structure of the ordinance.

and so that's what they'll be working on this year.

Now to your question of, okay great, so how does this thing start to accommodate the growth that we want?

How does it sort of set the land use pattern that we might expect to get increased density or meet other aims of the AC44?

That's more of a phase three aspect of it and I think in part some of this will be, you can see what we're talking about with the AC, with the activity plan process.

is to sort of go around with some of these areas around within our development area and try and talk about where are the opportunities for either increased density and housing and or commercial opportunities, whether that is sort of infill services in a mixed use setting or jobs.

Now, I think that that leads back to a vision of what does that mean to the zoning?

and I think the zoning in the phase three will be looking at both the standards of what good form development is as well as are the districts that we have suitable?

Do they meet the needs we have?

Do we need to combine some?

Do we need to add a few?

And as we go through that, I think the question about how does that play out on the zoning map and does there need to be a

A comprehensive rezoning or at least a zoning that looks at portions of our development area will be questions that will probably inevitably come up.

Those questions, I think, are slightly postponed while we try and work on trying to deal with a problem we have as an ordinance has been written for over 40 years.

who have what we jokingly call wormholes.

You're reading over in this section of the ordinance and all of a sudden you've got to go back over to here and then over to here.

Because it's amended so many times in some respects, it sort of loses its logical consistency.

So we're just trying to wrap our heads around that before we really start talking about what districts maybe need to be combined or eliminated or added.

Well, and thank you for that.

And I definitely just want to, I didn't say so before, but I really, really appreciate the move toward plain English and better organization and just clear language and simplifying the uses in each zoning category and, you know, the work that staff's been putting in and some of which we've seen.

I really, yeah, thank you.

I'm grateful for all that.

Yeah, I was just thinking

As somebody who tends to put carts in front of horses, my apologies, but in this cart, when I look at the future land use map, it's almost like a shadow zoning map.

I think

The intent here is the master plans really served us as a community quite well.

As somebody who was a planner here in the early 2000s and didn't have the benefit of the master plans, we were getting

Proposals, it was sometimes hard to sort of have the granular understanding of what's really going on in these neighborhoods.

I think as we've used those master plans, they sort of helped us with the FLUM that we have now.

Our FLUM sort of takes all those master planning, if you recall,

land use designations that were sort of varied between the plans and sort of drifted and there was like 23 different ones.

I think we've, we've condensed down to 14.

So now we have a land use map that is consistent and sort of picks up on what those neighborhood master plans sort of did for us.

But I think really what the next challenge for us here is these activity center plans is to focus in on those activity centers and

Really trying to figure out how we can get more density and intensity in those areas.

I think that the activity center plans offer us an opportunity to that point, maybe go back and change the zoning.

who just sort of make this stuff easier to move straight forward if this is what the community wants and try and implement it.

I don't want to prejudge it.

There's a lot of things in there that there may be reasons not to do some of those aspects.

But I think it gets to the heart of what your question is and the opportunities we have for ourselves.

A question.

I was thinking about a few weeks ago when we were talking about some of the zoning language updates and looking at this.

Are there some plans or examples from other counties or cities that are

um you know innovative or kind of leading in this newer common language that you're looking at as examples um that can kind of help guide some of these discussions and decisions um and thinking about that in context of activity centers as well like precedence for those it kind of might help

Yeah, and that is definitely something that's going to be the heart of the next, the third phase we get into.

Again, I don't want to overemphasize it, but the art, the art ordinance can be

It's admittedly difficult to work with.

Again, it's been amended so many times over the 40 years that part of it is just getting it straight.

But yes, definitely as we move into that third phase, there is a need to find, we don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time.

And I can chime in on the activity center plan front precedents that I can think of.

Prince William County, in Virginia, Prince William County, cities like Winchester, counties around Richmond, counties down along the coast as well.

The high level question on the schedule in front of us, I know that we started the work on the zoning modernization.

We're reaching the end of 26.

Yes, in fact, I was looking for Bart, who's really managing this process, right?

But yeah, Leah Brumfield is definitely in the phase two and their work sessions.

We've had one with you all and there's another one with the board coming up and

I think their timeline is they're on the timeline for reorganizing the ordinance and they've been making a lot of progress.

Thank you.

Would the administrative project area be

When it's talking about the metrics of development, would that be where we start to see more?

And I know you mentioned earlier that this was sort of in collaboration with housing, but like the metrics for the needs assessments and those types of things.

I know we'd had one previous that there were a lot of questions about

how accurate that was when it came to determining the max of what we have coming in the pipeline versus what's available in the land area and I'm actually excited to see under the rural area that we would be analyzing the GIS in that area and I know that currently we have a lot of good analysis in the development area for that but

Okay.

I hear multiple things in what you're asking there, and so I'll try and respond.

If I miss anything, please, you know, please ask.

So as far as sort of as affordable housing and how much affordable housing do we have?

And I know that's something that Stacey Pathia is working with the housing update and working with.

They've got a study that's wrapping up.

The Virginia Tech has been doing a lot of analysis.

of where we stand with the affordable housing that we have and what we need in the community.

So that's one major driver of the affordable housing policy.

As far as just potential future build out, right, and how much capacity is there in the development area.

Again, we did the build out analysis we've talked to you all about several months back and essentially what that thing does is it looks at the parcels in the development area.

It takes those parcels where the improvement values what's on the property is

built on the property is less than what the assessed land value of the property is.

So you end up with a subset, a much smaller number of parcels.

And the idea is to think that they're either vacant or the structures on them are not the highest of best use.

And then what we did was we applied with the comprehensive plan

the higher end of the comprehensive plan density recommendations with the land use recommendations were for those parcels and got a total number of units that could be on there and then reduce those by a percentage that was based either on like a percentage to take out what you'd have to have for stormwater and roads and what have you.

and then whatever it might be for environmental features like floodplains or steep slopes to really try and find what a developable area is and sort of adjust the total units on those parcels accordingly.

and with that, we were able to judge what's in our pipeline and what, you know, we've already have approved, but it hasn't yet been built.

Plus these other parcels that we could expect to redevelop, reasonably redevelop in the future.

That's not, I want to stress that that doesn't count all.

There'll be other parcels that will redevelop that don't fall into those two categories.

But this is just a means of the build out analysis to understand, do we have enough capacity to go back and meet this

projection of 31,000 people coming to our community in the next 20 years.

And the response was, yes, that there is theoretically enough capacity.

and obviously we're trying to also push that a little bit farther with these activity center plans to try and find ways to, you know, on some in within areas through identifying investments and identifying and setting up a tableau hopefully the developers will accept as something that can be developed that we can meet those goals for

our population needs within the development area without expanding it.

And then the final thing I heard you talking about the rural area and with that it's not so much of development capacity or how many houses we can get there.

I think the GIS analysis for that is more of a sensitivity analysis and it's the idea of what areas would be most affected by change.

So just to clarify, and I apologize if I wasn't clear the first time, I appreciate the part about the rural area.

I understand that it's about resources and not about development.

And I do see a difference between what the Housing Albemarle might be doing related specifically to affordable units, and I'm more speaking towards

just development of more houses.

And so my concern with the build out analysis that analyses that have been previously presented continues to be the words theoretical and readily available.

And those are all hypotheticals related to what developers might do.

And we have no control over that.

And so the control of that comes from the market, in my opinion.

And so if a space on a piece of land is not marketable as developable, whether we have an activity center there with a pretty drawing on it doesn't actually mean someone's going to develop it.

Well, the hard part about this is it is very difficult to sort of say this is what's going to happen in the future.

you know these parcels will develop and we'll get this much development out and that'll be fine don't worry about it.

I mean we are left with kind of like some of this is theoretical.

Now what are some of the practical things we can do?

I do think the activity center plans do bring value whether or not it's a pretty drawing and everybody in that drawing actually builds out what we're talking about.

At least if we approach that from a very pragmatic and try and work with people who own these properties

to try and figure out what they want to try and do combined with what our vision is and hopefully

I'm going to suggest, because I think that actually does get into the, the activity center and how we look at that and the activity centers that have been identified, right?

Because they have the potential for, for the growth.

They're not just theoretical.

Some of them already are things that are happening in them.

So I think what do we take, take the conversation when we get there and just wrap up on the zoning modernization, if there, if we have other questions on, on that end.

Next.

So we've done a review of zoning modernization.

I think we're saving activity center plan discussion until we've shared the additional information.

So that would bring us down to questions on the multimodal transportation planning work project.

Yeah.

So on the

On the multimodal transportation plan, one of the first things is, what is the county doing to actually make sure that we have products the staff can use to get the data that we need to provide quality analysis?

I feel that, for example, do we currently have a county license for Strava Metro?

or Streetlight or other technologies that can be used to analyze existing pedestrian and multimodal traffic.

I think that's important to make sure that we have the right tools to be able to do that kind of analysis so we can see the kind of detail.

It's frustrating to me that often projects come before us and we always talk about traffic count of cars.

and we pretend like pedestrian data doesn't exist and we need to get to the point where we stop pretending the pedestrian data doesn't exist.

The other thing I think that's very important to consider is I was at the MPO tech meeting recently and there's this talk about, they're talking about several projects involving multimodal transportation and I asked the question, I said, so how does TJPDC reach out and make sure that all walkers, runners, cyclists and other people are engaged

in a consistent way in our processes.

And the answer was, well, we leave that to every locality and then sort of look at Charlottesville and look at Albemarle and say, you know, it seems like there's a lack of consistency and a methodology for how we're reaching out to those user groups.

I strongly recommend that we put together, I mean, it'd be nice to have a committee of some kind, just like, you know, for example, Roanoke has, of citizens that can provide input, you know, on things like cycling, running, walking and outdoor recreation.

We lack that in Albemarle County, so that when we do have these questions about where people are engaging with these activities, we don't have

people to bounce those ideas off of.

I think that'd be really valuable.

When we get back and we talk about what attracts employers to Almar County, when I was at the, when I was in the Blue Ridge Marathon recently in Roanoke, you know, sitting there in Hotel Roanoke, looking out, you know, very prominent in the city was the Wells Fargo building.

And one of the points that was made by Pete Eshelman was, when he came to talk about outdoor recreation and the economics of that, was that one of the reasons that Wells Fargo was in Roanoke was because of their outdoor recreation programs.

So that's a pretty big, you know, how we attract major employers.

is really about the quality of life that we bring to those, you know, the quality of life that we have in our community.

That's one of the big factors.

I've heard it's already been a big factor in some of the recent employers that have come to Albemarle County.

Oh, actually I did have one more thing.

Please don't leave out the rural area when we do multimodal transportation planning.

I hope that we can identify at least a dozen areas in the rural area that are highly used by cyclists, runners, and walkers.

That data is easy to come by.

There are citizen groups and there's, as I said, there's Strava data.

There's other ways to quickly get at that.

I don't think this is a weeks, months long effort.

I think this is a very quick effort.

The point that I wanted to raise was on partnerships with UVA and the city.

I mean, obviously, the multimodal plan has to include UVA and the city.

There's been, you know, UVA has done several in the last decade, or at least one in the last decade, two or three in the last 20 years, which involved

City and County as well.

From the get-go, we should definitely be connecting.

There's been a lot of technology, some of the things.

the commissioner just brought up in terms of awareness of pedestrians and bicyclists, how they're coming into UVA.

There's, I mean, obviously you know about some of the county plans to extend connections for bicyclists and multimodal and so take advantage of that.

There is a lot of

Appreciate that offer.

I know

that obviously the county is like a doughnut and the doughnut hole in the middle is the city and the university.

So for us to be successful and to grow more density, obviously the mobility has to help, especially at the peak hour, to provide other alternatives for people to move about.

So definitely working with the university in Charlottesville.

I think it's one of the major intents of the multimodal plan, which to be quite blunt, we are still working.

You know, you can imagine we've came out of the writing the plan in October and we've been trying to build the details of what these planning efforts are going to be moving forward.

We've identified these major work products as something we have to do.

The activity center plan is one of the reasons we're bringing it to you is we've gotten through a fair amount of detail and we can sort of talk about, hey, this is what we think we're going to do.

The multimodal plan, we are still trying to nail down exactly what that is, but definitely working on those things and trying to get to a granular level.

I think one of the observations is that

transportation planning isn't just a unified thing.

A lot of it's based on the mode of travel that you're doing.

Obviously, walking is something much closer and more finite.

Bicycling is something that it's about linking these activity centers.

And so part of those activity centers are at the university and are

in the city at the downtown or other destinations there.

So it's about trying to, on a bike level, make sure that you, if you're in the county, most of our citizens don't know where the city county line is.

And so making it so that they can get from where they are at to some place in the city or the university.

is important and I know we haven't always worked together as jurisdictions as well as we can.

So I just think all those things work together and we look forward.

Yeah, since you're just starting, now is the time to start having this conversation so it could help inform how you're going to do it and you're right

You know, traditionally everybody's been going into that towards the university.

I mean, that's where the employment is for the most part.

I think some of the dynamic is, is I wouldn't say changing.

That's still happening, but there's other connecting points, which I think we'll get at it at the activity centers because they're

They're well positioned, the one that were identified in AC44.

And I think you're looking for a handful that we should focus on.

And at least from some prior conversations, it seems like you're looking at the right ones.

A lot of the work that we do, at least regionally, goes through the Metropolitan Planning Organization.

It seems like even if you think about bicyclists in particular, there are some that are, you know, their goals are more recreation or fitness.

Then you have the commuters and they all operate a little differently.

And then we have the scooters.

I'm just thinking about Ivy Road in particular between the university and it's just hard to ignore where we meet up with the city too.

There have been a lot of fatalities for different types of users on bikes.

Yeah, I was just curious for the transportation plan.

Indeed.

And I think

We were asked to do a prioritization of transportation projects that we already have in the books, and that was presented to the board last week.

it gives a good sort of viewpoint on this prioritization process, a good viewpoint on how those needs might be met by various projects but I think we can improve that further by like this the multimodal plan and some of these activity center plans especially the activity centers themselves start to lend themselves to a strategy and as we move through this I think a strategy will become clear will help us to prioritize projects and we'll probably undoubtedly through this process

be adding new projects and assessing sometimes some of the projects we have maybe run parallel to each other might serve the same function so it's prioritizing these different alignments and then also we need to like understand costs because and feasibility of construction of projects I think that when we come out the backside of the multimodal plan

We hope to have a stronger set of like, hey, these are really the projects we need to be working on to achieve these goals.

The prioritization process we have now, I think really does sort of focus on safety needs and congestion needs.

Yeah, thank you.

Good answer.

If I could tag onto that too.

I also think you might have smaller, smaller projects or ideas that come out of this effort that, you know, they wouldn't be something you would ask for VDOT to fund, but it's

something you put on almost a wish list or in the plan that a developer comes along and says oh you wanted a trail connection there you wanted a crosswalk because developers don't want to fish around and we often get like okay here's a bus stop and it's like we

I don't think a bus is ever coming up in there.

It's not in the bus stop wish list.

But it's like an easy thing for developers to stick in the bus stop.

But that wasn't what we needed.

We needed a spur to get to this trailer.

Yeah, I think what you're identifying is that a lot of the infrastructure that's built in our community is not built by the public sector.

It's built by the private sector stuff.

So it's coordinating that.

trying to do the best job we can with that but I kind of didn't fully answer your question yes obviously some of this will be for smart scale projects which tend to be these much larger and more road or congestion oriented type of projects

it'll also help us with either revenue sharing or transportation alternative project applications as well as we may find that there are things that are small projects that can be done as a low plan, no plan project that we might be able to fund without a long arduous feed out process to fund.

A lot of those questions

lay out there for us to answer, but hopefully we will be able to coordinate those things better and quite frankly be able to support some of these activity center plans that we're trying to do.

I think there's a synthesis that we're trying to get between transportation and land use and trying to find ways to support this increased density and quite honestly, walkability.

We've been working towards a walkable community since we created the neighborhood model 20 plus years ago and in some respects I'm not quite sure we've achieved these centroids, if you will, or focal points where people can go and walk or that we can ultimately

agreed upon to the surrounding neighborhood.

I had a question on the multimodal transportation plan and some of it's been answered, but I had a, actually the chair of my CAC for RIO 29 was just curious to know, and I've been too, looking at the kind of Gantt chart of what happens in each fiscal year and all these kind of things that are working well.

They're all good things that we're doing, zoning modernization and the transportation plan, rural plan.

Just to expand a little bit more on how those processes kind of talk to each other along the way over the next few years in terms of developing that plan while also developing activity centers.

How do we

And you're referring to the Gantt chart that we just showed a few seconds ago here?

Well, obviously, I think one of the things we're going to be doing is to, A, I don't think we have all the answers.

I'm candor.

But B, there is an intentionality to like sort of, I was trying to touch on that when I was talking about the different modes of transportation.

Some of them are more at a neighborhood scale.

And I think the bike stuff is a good example of something about pedestrian stuff, those activity centers.

as we work around with these activity centers, there'll be a strong focus on making sure that we're tying within that neighborhood.

So for example, let's say, and we'll get into this stuff, pick lower Pan Tops.

The idea would be to try and do the transportation in the Pan Tops, the larger Pan Tops neighborhood with a focus on, you know, not only supporting the activity center, but linking it to the other parts of the

I really am.

And I attended the first CAC meeting I attended when I joined.

We had someone speak about the projects and just the breadth of the projects that are ongoing was like, you know, pretty astounding.

And I don't I don't think that citizens are aware of everything that's happening.

And I would love to help figure out how I can help promote that across

the county for people who aren't coming to CAC meetings because most of them aren't.

Thank you.

And I just would say one last comment since I seem to be doing a lot of talking tonight.

It's a big challenge, right?

Because there's a lot of projects out there and that's a lot of money.

So one more thing to add, and then going back a little bit engaging the activity center plans as well, I think a big part of this is effective multimodal transportation is connectivity between live, work, and play, right?

You know, for example, when I look at the Places29, Airport Road, Ashwood Boulevard State Area, we don't have an employment center identified in that area.

That doesn't mean there's not employers there.

But when we're talking about live, work, play, there's not very many places to work in that area.

And so I think that we need to think about it from that perspective.

I think we also need ground, like on the ground truthing of some of these things.

Thinking about, okay, if I live in this place, how do I walk to recreation?

How do I walk to employment?

How do I get to a grocery store?

And what are the impediments?

I've long thought honestly that we should have like a community event where we pick two points on a map randomly and we say, okay, today we're going to try to walk from point A to point B and see like all the impediments that get in our way to get there.

I mean, whether we do that real exercise or not, I think it's important to think of things in that way so that we're not just

building a bus stop over here and a fragment of sidewalk over here and you know and none of it connects because it's a big complaint that I've heard for years and years going back to the very first days of like Hollymeade Town Center the disconnected way that the things are put together

Then also just going back to beat this to death, when you look at the heat map on a resource like Strava, you can see these areas where you have a bright white area that's clearly highly used by pedestrians here, a bright white area that's clearly used by pedestrians over here, and a dark area in between them.

What's next, the rural area?

I think that would be the one remaining work project to discuss before continuing on to the detailed review of the locations for... You speak a little louder.

Go ahead.

OK.

So first, some of the things I think that should be really included here, too.

The Rural Area Plan, I would expect to see include our biodiversity hotspots.

Those are smaller areas of significant biodiversity importance that I think

You know, should be one of our metrics of preserving those rare places and species that we know about.

Not hypothetical rare places, you know, places that could be in a forest block, but real places that we know on the ground.

Obviously, historic resources, large hogtack blocks.

But also I think we need a stream health analysis.

One thing that's woefully lacking when we talk about water quality is looking at how many streams lack an adequate buffer, for example, in the county.

I think that's doable in GIS.

I think we should identify and correlate that with the streams we know that are impaired.

and so that we can correlate, well here's an area where we obviously need to put more resources through the Soil and Water Conservation District or other programs to get stream buffers in those areas.

I think there should be an analysis of farmland looking at both prime agricultural soils, but also those people that are currently engaged in the land use valuation program or that we know of that are engaged in agriculture so that we can actually have a map of where agriculture is in Albemarle County.

We don't have that right now.

Other counties actually have like A1 zoning, like agricultural zoning.

We could, I think it'd be great to get there someday, but we can't get there unless we even know where agriculture is in our county.

As I said before, I think outdoor recreation is something that we really need to look at.

Other localities like Roanoke have done a spectacular job in this.

Loudoun County, I think we should have a plan for really looking at sustainable outdoor recreation.

and then also community cultural resources and they're really taking inventory of those community centers, other places that provide sort of the fabric of community, be it the Ruritan clubs, the country stores, other places that provide community gathering places so that we can sort of tie that together.

and then lastly and this is more of a question as we go through the zoning modernization we talked about consolidating some of those land uses and this kind of gets to your question you had it seems like there are current areas in the right now the the rural areas all one color and I think

It would be nice to see some of those areas that we have as historic uses in the rural area, be they lumber yards or other uses and get to the point where, at least on a comp plan level, we can think about like what color we might assign them.

And that may not be the same color they had in the past, maybe a more specific color.

That makes sense.

So for example, where we have a place that's right now just designated industrial, maybe that's Lumberyard.

So thinking more specifically about those places.

And then, as I said before, I think there is multimodal transportation in the rural area.

I think we need to make sure that when that piece happens, there is at least, not extensive, but at least some attention to the fact that there is multimodal transportation in the rural area.

and even around some of our communities like Batesville, there's a lot of people that will travel to their country store, to those cultural centers.

Thank you.

I just wanted to chime in and echo one part at least of what Commissioner Murray suggested there, which was the

The part about understanding the rural economy and where the farms are, what they're producing, what's in the land use valuation, just so we have the information and can assess the degree to which those things are supporting a rural economy and agricultural economy.

And I also didn't see in here, and I don't know why, I think, but I just wanted to bring it up, where in a rural area plan might be consideration of potential sites of development expansion, not to

Again, like harp on the raw nerve that seems to come up every time this comes up, but we've got a home with some aunts and uncles and mom and dad that live here and every bedroom's got two kids in it and we're rearranging some furniture to maybe pack another kid in it because mom's pregnant, but mom's pregnant too and there's more kids coming.

So like, where are we gonna get more rooms?

In the future, not today, but in the future.

Couldn't you consider that in the void, right?

So if you say, here's all of our, here's our historic resources, here's our most important natural resources.

Here's our, you know, when you take all that out and then you subtract them, what you're left with, the areas in between, are the places of lower value.

That seems like a decent methodology to begin that approach.

Without, and I think what we the concern was in the past is if you actually designate an area where that expansion should occur then immediately you're going to have

Thinking outside the box on what the zoning of those areas could be beyond the current designations that we have.

So can there be a middle ground for

not two acre parcels, but something minimum half acre that helps to preserve rural components.

also taking into account environmental factors, but not forcing developers to go into the protected rural area and spread even further out.

Well, thank you.

So I think you bring up an interesting question, which is that we've talked for years about clustering in the rural area.

And I think

I think there's an opportunity there to look at, you know, we've had some recent discussion about trailer parks, for example.

I think it'd be a reasonable discussion to say like, you know, people talk about tiny houses or other things.

I think there's discussions to be had at least about how can we use clustering or other methods so that you get maybe a large preservation tract and an opportunity for smaller homes or a trailer park.

and when I think about something like these big farm estates, 21 acres and these million dollar homes on them, that's bad for conservation and it's also bad for affordability.

So maybe there's some middle ground where you can find something that's good for affordability and good for conservation.

I might be okay with the idea of saying like the impact of two to three manufactured homes is equivalent to the impact of one of these mega mansions.

If I may,

I think, you know, again, tonight, staff are kind of coming and sort of saying, look, here's how we hope to get into a lot of these issues.

Through these five work products is how we're going to try and deal with these issues that we've wrestled with for a long time.

One observation I would make is there's an intentionality of pushing the actual start of a rural area plan back a couple of years.

We've got a lot of work to do on the activity centers and stuff in the development area as well as the transportation.

There's only so much resources that we have as a staff to take those on.

And quite frankly, I think there's only so much bandwidth that the community has to sort of really engage in these issues.

So by pushing the rural area back a couple of years, as far as the plan itself,

I think we can at that time sort of get into this kind of issue of how do we use the rural area to advance issues that may not be necessarily the protection of the resources that we feel as states in our comp plan that we want to protect.

So staff's approach to that was to use this next year, the FY 27, to do some of analysis.

It may not be everything that you just suggested.

I think we've listed the things we're really trying to work on.

Biodiversity, both terrestrial and aquatic.

historic watershed agriculture.

So I think we hit many of the things that you're talking about so that we as a community have a good basis for like, these are the areas that can be affected.

They're sensitive to change.

And I think you sort of talked about the different colors on the map.

Maybe that's what that's getting to.

But the idea is to try and identify, hey, these are areas that not necessarily off limits for development, but if development does come into them, they should be sensitive to

that the resources that we're trying to protect or maybe it's someplace that we as a community need to put more of our own resources in to protect.

That does leave a different portion of the development area that may not be as sensitive to change or sensitive to the impact of the resources out there.

At that time when we get into the plan and we can agree on what it is that is important to us to sort of like protect, that leaves questions about how do we use the rest of it effectively.

I'll just add, I mean, other communities have done this work.

So to your earlier point on precedents.

Yeah.

There are other great examples of exactly this kind of planning.

Are we ready to move on to the activity centers?

Please.

Okay.

And are we going to need a five minute?

Do you all need a break?

Good evening commissioners, Ben Holt, Senior Planner 2.

I'll be presenting this next segment where we cover the activity center planning locations that are under consideration.

So the long-range planning team has conducted background research and a scoring analysis for six major activity center clusters across the development areas.

We did this drawing on existing master plans, recent rezoning activity, area VDOT projects, property ownership patterns, GIS analysis, online planning resources, and internal staff discussions.

Locations not carried forward into the scoring analysis included the village of Rivanna, Fontaine Research Park, and county areas along Ivy Road and Crozet.

Our research indicated that these areas were either part of a recent master planning effort or they were lacking in development or redevelopment potential and meaningful county leverage points at this time to make activity center planning productive.

The effort identified three priority locations for activity center planning.

Those areas are the Route 29 North area from Airport Road southward to the vicinity of Ashwood Boulevard, second the Route 29 area in the vicinity of Riah Road, and third the South Pantops area adjacent to the city of Charlottesville and the Rivanna River.

For reference, the other three locations evaluated included the northern portion of Route 29 from the county line south to Airport Road, also the Route 29 area from Dominion Drive to Hydraulic Road, as well as the southern neighborhoods.

These particular areas did not score quite as high as the three priority zones that we're discussing.

So to look at our first area, this is Route 29 from Airport Road to Ashwood Boulevard.

We'll share some of our highlights from our research and findings for these three priority areas, and then we'll acquire your thoughts and your feedback during our following discussion period.

I'd also like to note that after this meeting, we'll be taking our recommendations for the first activity center plan location to the board in the coming months.

So this first location, Airport Road, it features significant areas of planned residential development, a county-owned parcel with trail easement potential, undeveloped land in the adjacent rural area between Route 29 and Berkmoor Drive, and an extension to Berkmoor Drive that could potentially improve north-south connectivity.

With the Places 29 Master Plan now more than a decade old, strong private sector interest from multiple landowners, and major nearby investments underway at North Point, North Fork, and Rivanna Futures, the area could be ripe for a fresh planning effort to address land use, multimodal connectivity, new housing, and affordable housing, and to consider this location's development area boundary in a coordinated manner.

The county could consider expanding services and facilities in the area.

Fire and Rescue facilities that would serve as a northern hub for new residents and businesses in the area, as well as an investment fund for a county-led affordable housing effort.

Working in this area would be a county-driven effort that does not require coordinating with other nearby localities, which could help speed up the project's timeline.

And I'm going to move on to the next location and then we can come back to each one during our discussion period if there are further questions.

So moving on to the Route 29 and Rio Road area.

This long underperforming commercial corridor, which has aging buildings, fast surface parking, declining retail, includes the Albemarle Square Shopping Center, the Fashion Square Mall area, and the Arden 2 property.

The 2018 Route 29 small area plan focused on turning the Route 29-Rio Road intersection into a walkable mixed-use urban center.

There are multiple development and redevelopment factors to consider in this area.

This includes recent development with Home Depot, a Sheets gas station application, and areas with redevelopment potential such as the Putt Putt property and aging housing like Mallside Apartments.

Staff finds that county leadership support and strong multimodal potential make this an area where activity center planning could help the county address multiple priorities.

The county could also take the lead in addressing the need for major park recreation open space facilities in the area, building on the Hillside Pocket Park and serving as a catalyst for renewed private sector interest.

Constraints facing an activity center planning and effort in this area include high through traffic volumes on Rio and 29 in particular, limited transit resources, uncertain property owner interests and timelines for redevelopment of Albemarle Square,

High current and projected future demand for county services including EMS calls, premier circle transitional housing, high resident turnover in rental housing, and the potential for city-county coordination to require a longer project timeline without further relationship building.

So that brings us to South Pantops.

An area that is fast-growing and a destination-rich corridor along Route 250 east of the Rivanna River.

This location includes underutilized Pantop Shopping Center, major nearby institutional anchors such as Sentara Health and Martha Jefferson Hospital, Peter Jefferson Place,

We also have significant undeveloped land holdings with whirl development and Centara Parcels flanking South Pantops Drive and State Farm Boulevard.

The area also holds potential for coordinated efforts with the city around free bridge and extensive natural and recreational resources along the Rivanna River, which includes the new free bridge lane pedestrian amenity.

The area, however, also poses several challenges.

Free Bridge remains a regional transportation bottleneck.

Route 250 is difficult and unsafe to cross on foot or bike.

State Farm is vacating 41,000 square feet of office space with leases expiring in 2028.

and over 95% of residents commute by car.

An activity center plan here would focus on redevelopment and reorientation of the Pantops Shopping Center so that it relates to the Rivanna River as well as a focus on the South Pantops Drive State Farm Boulevard corridor supporting mixed-use development, multimodal improvements,

including a pedestrian bike bridge over Route 250, city-county coordination around the Rivanna River, considering a new bridge across the Rivanna River, and catalytic engagement with major property owners.

If the city and major property owners are interested in engaging over the longer term, it may work well to consider designating this activity center planning effort for the future and spend the intervening time laying the groundwork for the effort with project partners alongside activity center planning efforts for one of the other two study areas we just previously noted.

And so with that, we'll pause for our discussion period.

So some of the things to keep in mind.

We are going to be doing all three of these study areas at some point.

So we want to talk through the pros and cons of each of them.

What are we missing?

What should we be thinking about as we discuss those details?

Sure.

There's a lot of questions that I'm sure we'll have sort of a meandering discussion, but I wanted to ask some sort of broad questions first, or at least process-y type questions first.

One is just that we had that small area plan for Rio in 29 that was adopted in 2018.

Yeah, that's a good question.

Each of these things is so we can be joking, like, which one's your favorite child, right?

You know, it's like, they all have their pluses and minuses.

And they all try and do something slightly different than the other one, because they're different in some respects.

I think that the opportunity to do more of like a master plan, we're really trying to think about land uses and broad concepts of where roads should run is something as an opportunity more in the

Hollymeade area that we talked about.

Whereas we've done a lot of planning in this corridor right next to 29 and Rio, we tried to, as you'll notice, focus in on a smaller area even than that.

I think this planned opportunity is to really, if there is

My interest from property owners in that area to redevelop it is to really get down to the brass tacks of what has to happen, how do we coordinate three to five to six properties in there.

And so this one's on the other end of the scale.

This is about really getting down into almost taking that opportunity plan and pushing it to

Hey, this is what needs to be done.

This is how we coordinate it in a way that you can't quite do if you do a rezoning on one parcel without working with the other parcel owners at the same time.

I acknowledge that we've done a lot of planning up there and that people are going to be, wait a minute.

We're doing a plan for doing a plan for doing a plan, but this is like, we sort of set now, this is our vision for the, for that area.

We're going to bring you the final draft of the form-based code here in the next couple of months, which sort of sets that template.

And this then becomes, if we, this area was selected, there are opportunities boiling around.

The,

Could you characterize the activity center plan as like a vehicle to carry out some of the small area plan things?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that activity center plans may not always be a one-size-fits-all.

Sort of related to the sort of

waiting on the private sector, in a sense.

Just with the experience we've had with the small area plan at Rio 129, it took

like seven years for sort of any movement.

And then we just got kind of a Home Depot, which is not really particularly compelling form based code thing.

No aspersions against Home Depot, which is not the sort of, you know, urban style that we that we spend all that time working on.

What kind of lessons did we draw from from that so far?

One of the things I would say is we need to consider different types of catalyst projects.

Within the notes for these different areas, we talked about opportunities to expand recreation, particularly in these two Route 29 areas.

They need some more cohesive trail networks.

Greenway trails.

I think there's opportunities for some smaller green spaces and parks that are hopefully connected.

So, you know, when thinking about those types of projects, I think that could be something that could kind of spur investment nearby, probably raise property values, would make adjacent properties.

Really desirable for residential development, especially the high density residential development we're looking for.

Well, I would just note one effort that we're, so tonight we're bringing to you guys three areas that were sort of risen to what we think are areas that we would be beneficial for us to study as a community.

We're working towards a recommendation of what area we study to the board, as well as what exactly that plan would be.

We are also talking in a process of reaching out to members of the community.

be it developers or commercial brokers, some of the architects in our community, folks in the city, to try and get better understanding of what that plan, what should be in these plans to make them a usable tool for them to try and make that something that will spur the

that development.

And we have to like try and find some way to get to this change that we talk about.

And I think that's also an effort to try and get us out of planners, creating plans for planners.

And so in some respects, I think, you know, as we work through this, we're here hearing what your all's ideas are.

And I think that's maybe a little bit of what I was starting to think about as I read through the

the documents for this meeting was sort of how expansive or creative or transformative might we as a county be able to get in terms of like public investment in either you know is it not particularly transformative for pocket parks and some nice greenways or more transformative in terms of like a real magnet or what could have been the courthouse but isn't or other kinds of things that are that are sort of larger scale that would really be a hub.

And so I didn't know that's, again, me putting cars in front of horses.

I own it.

I think that the RIAA road study area seems like

It seems like an easy place to prioritize because it's surrounded already with a lot of residential areas.

You have these vast tracts of underutilized commercial and parking lots.

The impervious area just makes me want to get out there with like a jackhammer sometimes.

It would almost be easy to kind of create like a vision for what those parking lots could look like.

What could this, this could look like a really healthy, you know, sustainable and, and interesting commercial district, like with some pretty simple moves.

And

I mean, that just seems like kind of a, and it has like interesting grade changes, right?

You have the overpass, you have these, you know, even the fashion square mall has the big berm along 29.

So you have a lot to work with.

Like, it's not just laid out there.

It could almost be like a,

a challenge that's put out to the public for design.

I think it's there's lots of room for improvement with some easy moves there.

And I think about their areas in Cook County, Illinois, when they

I don't know how long ago it was but you know one of their requirements for develop became keeping like fill in place on site and so it makes for very interesting landforms and plantings around hospitals and shopping centers because they have to work with it pretty creatively and add vegetation and think about all the public parks and kind of green spaces that could be integrated

That seems like an easy place to start and a lot of possibilities for investment opportunities there just because there's a lot to build on.

Pantops obviously seems like more of it.

You have a lot of infrastructure challenges there.

They're not going away, so I think they do need to be tackled.

The bridge, the difficulty of crossing 250 even in a vehicle.

I mean, those are priorities that have to get worked out.

They're harder and they'll take a lot more effort and thinking and investment.

I don't mean to hug it, but if we're getting into the specific maps and preferences, I actually was going to exactly echo my colleague here in a lot of ways.

I think also the Rio study area is the first one that comes to mind for me, again, with the low hanging fruit, a lot of existing interest, a lot of big surface lots.

I might actually, I'm wondering if it's possible to extend that study area down to about Greenbrier Drive.

or the city limit on the east side of Highway 29.

I don't know that it's sort of like functionally culturally all that different from what's immediately to the north.

I'll just say that yeah there's been a lot of debate on our team about how big to make that area.

I think two countervailing forces.

One, we're going to learn a lot from the first plan that we do.

And so what we tackle and bite off, we want to make sure that it's something we can do appropriately.

Conversely, yes, the question is, even if you went down to Branchlands and didn't go all the way down to Greenbrier, you start talking about that area along Hillsdale, which inevitably will become a bit more of a Main Street type of thing for our community.

And so there is some reasons to expand it.

And we've gone back and forth in our own shop, even as recently as today, talking about it.

Totally, yeah.

No, I feel like Upper Hillsdale is going to become more of a main street regardless in this if we go through with all these plans.

It just sort of seems to kind of continue to the south.

I'd be on the side of go ahead and expand the study area.

My, I think, main question is more about the process that we have within the county right now related to specifically the community advisory committees.

The structure of those committees speaks specifically to master plan areas.

Yeah, obviously the CACs were big and instrumental with the master planning for these larger neighborhoods.

I think we definitely feel that they would be part of a technical advisory group to help us in these smaller areas as we work.

There is also an importance to have the people who are actually sort of in those properties who are going to make some of the changes.

play a large role in this process.

So I think it's a combination between, as we try to look for opportunities on these parcels and to try and increase the density, part of it's like, what are these people's intent to do with it?

How do we work with them?

How do we sort of incentivize that?

At the same time, yes, the CACs are directly affected by that.

I think incentivization can go in a long way.

I think right now, I think one of the basic things we're willing to commit to is that it's about, you know, part of it is just sort of getting it down on a piece of paper that this is the type of density that we would entertain, that we would entertain in this spot as far as actual incentives.

And I think that means cash or somehow that I don't know.

I just have a few comments.

I would just say that of these three, I mean, I do think that Places 29, Rile Road area might offer the greatest opportunity, especially because of Fashion Square Mall.

I mean, it's a mall that's gone through bankruptcy and receivership and all that.

And I know we spent a lot of time talking about it for the form-based code, but I think for a lot of reasons the tool didn't realize what the county hoped it would.

but there has been a lot of planning around there.

But I think it also has the greatest opportunity.

The Airport Road area, the Ashwood Boulevard study area that you drew, there's also, that feels like the least planned area to me.

I mean, you could make a counter argument for spending more effort up there because we haven't invested as much time.

And I mean, I don't think you're taking any of these off the table.

You're just talking about priority.

And then South Pantops, I mean, there are already, we have had time and time again, citizens stand at this podium and ask, why can't we have crossings over?

the road to get from one side to the other.

We've talked at great length about reconnecting with the river.

Like this has all been discussed.

This is not something like we haven't heard from the public and what they want to see at Pantops.

There was also was a more involved planning effort that took place several years ago up there.

And we got so I feel like we have a lot of fodder to know what to do with South Pantops.

I understand the state farm changes with that have kind of

you know, provided a spark for like, wow, we need to do something more here.

You know, when I was trying to buy a new vehicle, I remember driving around those roads just to see, wow, how fast can I corner this car at this intersection?

Because there's there's nothing there.

OK, I'm not I didn't speed and break the law.

But, you know, the point is it was kind of like a no man's land that I thought if I'm not driving this new truck correctly, it will be OK because I can't run into anyone.

So.

There's definitely opportunity there, but I feel like for the reasons I stated, perhaps starting with the rail road again, even though it seems like we've spent a lot of time there, I think these are all worthy places to work on.

The Rile Road one, I know that one of the UVA professors has done a lot of work with their students to try to reimagine those spaces into a lot of renderings and things.

Thank you.

I want to pick up on a point that Commissioner Firehock

brought up, and I'm going to actually propose the airport road as a priority area.

That would be my highest priority.

One is for the very point that Commissioner Firehock brought up.

It just seems like that's the one we've paid the least attention to.

We have quite a bit of information on the two.

We have two area plans for each of those.

We have the pentops, we have obviously the railroad form-based plan.

And I know that the planning staff has spent some time doing a, maybe it's too premature to call it a post-mortem, maybe not.

on the form-based code and that area plan.

But I think this may actually supersede it, so that's why I'm going to use that term.

I know you spent some time with that.

So there's been some lessons learned, maybe codify them and then bring them to this.

It's like, well, what are we going to do different this time?

I think that that is what you transport to the other three, to the other two, as you think about them.

The reason why I would recommend Airport Road is, one, the development that we know is coming just to the north of it.

And the airport.

Well, and the airport.

But thinking a little bit beyond, so I'm thinking beyond the center itself.

The center may be where we have some housing, we already have some food there, maybe that attracts some more, you know, retail around the housing.

But then there's major opportunities for work that's going to be in that area.

And then there's a connectivity between that area there north of Airport Road, Airport Road and UVA.

So the multimodal plan needs to play into this.

This is part of that infrastructure.

That's one of the infrastructures.

You might think schools were mentioned that, you know, that that's being obviously thought about in that area expanding.

So that's part of the infrastructure that we need.

The multimodal we need.

And the other piece I would say is how we partner with economic development, right?

So that is the hand-in-glove part of this equation that needs to come together on all three of these, right?

So you got to partner with that to really understand the planning that can go into this.

We know what's happening up there.

and it's not just AstraZeneca, it's not just some of the things that the county is doing with data centers, potentially it's UVA and North Fork, it's the airport.

So we're talking about potentially thousands of jobs, new jobs in that area.

How do we connect people and where do they want to go?

They're not all going to live there, but a lot of them could.

There's opportunity for development, but they also want to connect back to UVA.

So a lot of what's coming is biotech.

There's biotech at UVA.

There's biotech being developed in Fontaine.

They're going to be going back and forth.

And so I would promote that that is the one that we need to focus on first because of what's coming and because it's the one we've paid the least attention to.

That's it.

You know, we know more about the opportunities in Pantops because we've done the area plan there.

And then we, you know, you have, here's industrial, here's, I mean, it's laid out and it's a good plan.

You know, we've certainly studied Ryle multiple, multiple times.

So we haven't, we haven't studied that area and there's just so much that's happening and that's coming that it's an opportunity to be proactive.

in our planning, and I would encourage you guys to really think about that.

How can we be more proactive?

We know what's coming.

And if you decide to do that one first or whenever you get to it, the one, you know, the airport 29, whatever that's called, Ashwood Boulevard.

I also want to encourage the county to connect with its own historic preservation staff, because if you recall, a few meetings ago, I talked about the African American community that had been pushed out.

by the airport over time their properties have shrunk and shrunk and shrunk but they're still there and they were promised a historic preservation marker they never got from the airport and just some inclusion of and understanding of the history and the culture of that area it's not just a blank slate that we can just keep paving that there are people who are part who have been there since you know slavery have been literally right there and are still there so try to

engage them and trying to bring a sense of place or bring back some of that character, not plantation character, but just what they call home, what they recognize, because we're talking about great big, you're talking about big corporations that I'm just trying to remind us about the people who are there now, who have been part of that fabric, but have been

displaced, ignored, et cetera.

I don't need to go on my, I'll get off my soapbox, but just that thing.

So that's super important for that.

And I, and I don't know if it would be sent front and central in your minds necessarily.

I would also say that Riot is a very, very close second.

I would talk about that first.

I mean, I think we definitely with a rightward side, we need to prioritize the barriers to redevelopment.

That's the big thing we need to do there.

I feel like we've had places like Home Depot and other people come before us, you know, and we've come up with on the spot incentives that would help with those situations.

I really do strongly feel that we need to have a menu as it were of things we're willing to consider maybe we don't say like straight up these are incentives we're going to give you but we should have we should lay it out like here's the specific things we're going to look for and hey why don't you talk to us let's see what we can do for you here's some of the things we can do for you and I think that that's that conversation needs to happen so we can

You can deal with that.

Also, there's some zoning issues with some of those that I don't know that we fully addressed yet.

We need to make some of the outcomes permissible in our zoning so that my understanding of the Fashion Square area right now, residential is not allowed by Ray.

So unless that's changed.

But I mean, I think we need to address some of those issues so that we can get some of the uses that we want in those to be able to retrofit those into those places.

And just to say the obvious here, I mean, the big thing in the Rile Road area

is structured parking.

If we really want to get that to be a walkable, dense, useful area, we need to do the opposite of what has been done for decades, which is we need to get structured parking in there and we need to make it clear to anyone that's interested in those areas that like, hey, this is a priority for

and be willing to put some public incentives or say at least we'll say we'll be willing to consider some public incentives like TIF that would help defray some of those costs of doing the structured parking.

but I will say that Airport Road has a lot of issues and it does have suffer from a real lack of planning right now I think I agree given the new employment that's going to be happening there I think it deserves more attention

I think we need to look beyond just large employment.

I think it's been developed along old ways of thinking about planning and zoning.

And I think the sort of concentration of commercial uses in some areas, the concentration of residential areas, I think we need to think more creatively about including some other employment opportunities in that area so that people can live, work, play.

I think just looking at the heat map of that area of pedestrian uses, not to beat the bush on beat that to death, but you can see the gaps in pedestrian connectivity very obviously about where people would really love to be able to cross to get from one place to another place, but they can't right now.

So even if they wanted to walk to one of those from their neighborhood to one of those commercial areas, it's not safe.

Correct.

Okay.

I mean,

The Rye Road area is dear to my heart, and so it is with great trepidation that I propose any area that is not that area.

I didn't mean to.

For whatever reason, I thought we started with you.

We are gone.

That's why I had gone.

I thought that was the last one.

So my apologies.

No, it's a very good conversation and thank you all for a few points that we may not have emphasized and some of the things that reconfirm what we've been thinking.

I serve at your pleasure.

We'll take a five minute break and then we can

Commission back to order and let the record state that Commissioner Brown needed to leave and will not be here for this next presentation.

And now we were

So presentation on the publicly initiated comprehensive plan amendment process.

OK.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

David Benish, development process manager.

Can you hear me OK?

I think so.

I'm going to give you basically the presentation that we gave the Planning Commission.

And then we'll answer any questions or comments that you have afterwards.

Feel free to jump in if you got some clarifying questions as we go through.

Thank you.

Action item in the updated comprehensive plan directed staff to consider establishing an application process for public initiated comprehensive plan amendments.

And since the adoption of AC44, staff has been evaluating the need for the CPA application process, including benchmarking other localities.

In consideration of the public initiative application process was based on in large part, one, interest from property owners and developers and their representatives in having a clear, efficient and predictable method of presenting proposed plan amendments to the county and the Board of Supervisors, and two, the ability to address warranted modifications in a timelier manner than waiting

for the next scheduled comprehensive plan or master plan update.

Briefly want to, hopefully briefly want to highlight some legal parameters regarding comprehensive plan amendments and the county's history regarding application plan processes.

The Code of Virginia does not require a locality to have an application process for public initiated or requested CPAs.

Further, the Code of Virginia authorizes only the Board of Supervisors to initiate amendments to the comprehensive plan.

Citizens cannot directly initiate an amendment through an application process.

Therefore, that process, that application process really serves solely as a request for the Board to consider such an amendment.

and any CPA initiated by the Board of Supervisors must go through a public hearing process with the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.

The county had a public application process for CPAs until 2028.

Our experience was that most applications received through that process were not initiated for further study or approved by the board.

So to more effectively align staff resources with work program priorities, the board approved just continuing that CPA application process.

in 2018 and adopted a policy requiring that all CPA proposals originate either with the Planning Commission or the Board of Supervisors.

So individuals were expected to bring their request directly to the board or the PC through the various

And just to clarify, only the board can actually take action, so if it comes to the commission, you can make a recommendation, but that recommendation has to go to the board for affirmation.

After performing an evaluation of the possible approaches, including benchmarking other localities, staff did not recommend reestablishing a separate application process.

Rather, the staff concluded that such requests should instead be processed through one or two existing pathways.

That is the continued use of the current direct contact process established by the board that we just mentioned.

and this would continue to be the preferred and recommended approach for those requesting CPA amendments, CPA requests.

If a formal application process is preferred by the applicant, then they could submit a zoning map amendment or special use permit application with the proposed CPA included as part of the submittal materials.

This approach mainly recognizes existing and already established processes.

And again, the basis for that recommendation, we felt like what we had experienced up until 2018 that most of the requests that we had received through a SEPA application process was kind of frivolous and were not supported by the Board of Supervisors.

and we believe the same would occur with another application process.

We also felt that requiring individuals to seek direct board support through the existing direct contact approach helps prevent frivolous and non-viable proposals and ensures that there's demonstrated board interest before significant staff resources are committed.

For those seeking a formal application process, the CPA and ZMA and SP process gives me approach does provide some advantages to a separate application process.

They are familiar processes that applicants and citizens are aware of.

Those application requirements provide more detailed information

then you would normally get from a CPA process so it allows for better evaluation of the impacts of that CPA and also the cost and those requirements again prevents frivolous applications.

The impacts for a SP and ZMA process with a CPA embedded

First of all, there would not be any significant changes to the actual milestones and processes for reviewing a ZMA or an SP.

The modifications would be more for the internal review practices and that there would include some development of review factors to consider for this type of proposal to help staff in their recommendation.

PCA work sessions could be used as needed in early stages of the review to provide additional input and guidance on the proposal and the CPA component.

The thought process for when we get these applications is that staff comments and recommendations on that CPA component would be provided in the first round of comments on that ZMA, which usually goes out about 45 days from its original submittal.

and part of the evaluation is to determine whether that type of review, the scope and scale of that review is acceptable to be reviewed as part of that ZMA and SP process or whether the CPA warrants additional study because of the complexities and scope and scale of that activity.

And that's a separate study separate from and before an action could be taken on the ZMA and SP.

The third sort of option is that it's an unacceptable CPA proposal and it doesn't warrant any further evaluation.

It's so out in left field.

A recommendation is just made for denial in all likelihood or a modification to the ZMA to address that inconsistency.

What we've put together are what we kind of call factors or considerations.

so that in developing staff's early round of comments, they can have some common factors to think about as they make that recommendation one of those three types of recommendations.

And the concepts for what to talk through and think about is sort of listed here in these bullets.

Does the proposal address comp plan goals and objectives?

other comp plan goals and objectives in a more efficient or significant way?

And how significant is that benefit?

In other words, what's the trade off from addressing those other goals and the inconsistency with the FLUM?

Is it consistent with other goals and objectives?

of the county, which may not be in the comprehensive plan, but highly important initiatives for the county to consider or have out there.

Are the impacts of the proposed change isolated to the subject properties, subject to the rezoning?

So the change is really impacting just those properties.

Does the change affect the plan's recommendations for nearby properties and neighborhoods?

Does that change affect the ability of adjacent or nearby properties or neighborhoods to develop in the way the comp plan calls for that type of consideration?

What's the impact on infrastructure development design or development design recommendations?

Is the scale or the magnitude or type of change such that it generates more regional or comprehensive impacts to the comp plan?

Again, are there much broader issues?

How significant is the impact to our overall industrial inventory if there's a change in that land use?

Is there an undesired precedent created for future actions by the action?

That's a bit of a catch-all, but those issues can come up.

And then the importance and need of making the change now as a protein

as opposed to waiting for the next comp plan update.

So these are really not so much checklists, but sort of standard questions to kind of work from as you work through that proposal that might have comprehensive plan components embedded in it.

And again, the general intent is really to sort of make a determination of what the scale and impact of that CPA is with that rezoning.

and whether it can move forward without any more significant study or comprehensive study.

And by being acceptable in moving forward, it doesn't necessarily mean it's automatically recommended for approval.

It's really saying that the scope and scale of that change can be evaluated within the context of that rezoning without warranting a separate study.

Otherwise,

Projects that have a regional impact and broader scale of impacts really should be looked at more comprehensively under a CPA study.

And I, since you opened the, for some questions.

So can you go back to, so when you,

Yeah.

What we're saying is that scope and scale of that change, it can be assessed through the information provided in the rezoning.

So that rezoning moves forward through the planning commission and the board of supervisors.

You may recommend denial of the proposal based on comp plan issues or not.

If the board were to agree that they're with the proposal and approve it, there is a decision that needs to be made whether there has to be an official amendment to the comp plan or whether just the action on the rezoning takes place.

It's moving forward for really a further evaluation.

It's just going to move forward for about, yeah, everything that any rezoning or special permit is going to move forward for a public hearing and that's your opportunity to weigh in.

Again, just a quick flow chart.

I'm not going to go through to save time, but if we need to kind of see how things flow, we can come back to that.

And just to summarize,

There's no new separate application process.

We're going to continue to use that direct contact approach with the board of supervisors.

Ultimately, with the board of supervisors, things could come to you, but ultimately a board decision.

And that continues to be the preferred and encouraged approach.

But if a formal application is desired by an applicant, then the ZMA and SP application process

would be the option that's available to them.

One thing I failed to mention, trying to cut this presentation short a little bit, this is really only for amendments to the FLOM.

Obviously, if someone proposes a change to the housing policy, you can't use a zoning application process for that.

So I think that this was reviewed, as you know, by the Board of Supervisors on May 6th, and they accepted this

concept moving forward.

Appreciate it.

That was very, very clear.

Well done.

I had one sort of small process question and then maybe the wild hypothetical that may or may not matter, but the small process question was if an applicant did the direct contact, just basically went to their local board member or their supervisor rather, would the, and the board member, the supervisor said, yeah, okay, maybe it has merit.

Yeah, so the way the process would work is the board at some point in time reaches consensus and directs staff to undertake a study and then it comes to staff and then that process kind of mimics the type of process that you would see in a rezoning.

There'd be a formulation of what the scope of that comp plan amendment would be in the board.

We usually draft some type of resolution to outline what that scope is.

And then we go to staff review and most likely, depending on what that proposal is, use community community meeting process.

And the wild hypothetical was if there was some citizen or citizen group, some civic organization that wanted to request or propose a conference and plan amendment, but it wasn't on their own property, their own sort of proposal to build something.

They pretty much just have the option one, just like basically petition their supervisor.

That's right.

Yeah.

I don't know if that ever happened.

It will happen, but it would require a property owner.

Great.

Thanks.

And you have seen these already, as you know, Chestnut Grove, Beaver Hill Mobile, Hoban Park.

So these things are happening now.

So one advantage of providing for us a little bit more considerations and factors is it helps organize how staff reviews those when we get them and come back to use as a little bit more of a

Yeah, I think I'd underline the key point here.

If it's something that's kind of not a major change, we may continue to move it forward through a rezoning and I think examples of that are some of the parcels along Berkmar that were commercially zoned, there was steep slopes and residential almost made more sense there.

We just processed them as rezoning application.

some of those ones that David just mentioned are not consistent with the comp plan and it would have been nice to have had the vehicle to come to you and say hey let's check on these major questions relative to the comp plan before we get into the detail of do they have the buffer right and all those other types of stuff so I think is that we're trying to thread the needle here

we didn't want to create a whole separate process and create more bureaucracy for everyone involved and if you think this is flexible enough and it's hard to know how exactly it will be used in the future because it will be highly dependent on the applications that we get and I think one question that you all asked when I mentioned that we had gone to the board with this was is this going to be a vehicle to expand the development area and I would just say as

I guess it could be, but it's going to be a fundamental question.

I mean, somebody can put a zoning application in today to put that.

They have the right to do that.

And as they do that, this process would allow us to come and talk about that fundamental question.

And that may be the type of thing that would, the board may be sympathetic to it and look at it as something that, okay, we need to pass a resolution of intent and study it as a comprehensive plan amendment in a little bit of a holistic manner.

as opposed to just to the rezoning.

So that's why this thing is, there's lots of gates, if you will, for this thing to travel through.

And the objective is to give early comment back to the applicants so they can decide what to do with the application.

But keep in mind, as Michael indicated,

If a zoning application is submitted, we have to review it.

We can't reject it for inconsistency with the comp plan.

And if it's the B alternative that we suggest further study before we review the ZMA, it is up to the applicant to defer to allow that to occur.

But you could also move that forward and recommend denial until that study takes place.

But just understand that

Application processes for rezoning, we don't control the outcome once they're submitted.

So, I think one of my first, I mean, one question would be, what does the study include?

And maybe to provide some context to that, just because an applicant provides, puts an application for something they want to do for a use.

Let's say, let's say the Trail of Park application was just recently proposed.

what are we doing as a county just to sort of step back and say okay well we hear this is a use that someone wants to provide but there should be some kind of analysis to say is that the best possible place so we say whether we're gonna increase the use or not is this actually the best place for that increase to occur it seems like some of these should spur larger conversations the community

about, okay, whether it's a new industrial area that we're proposing, or a mobile home park, or even a new residential area, how are we having that larger conversation about, well, let's plan for where the best place would this be.

Maybe it is where the applicant says it is, and maybe that can proceed, but maybe it's not.

Maybe if we're going to expand, maybe there'd be better places to expand than the thing that's proposed.

I think about the public, it took us years to go through the comprehensive plan, AC44.

And so there's a weight, I think, behind the community engagement that occurred in that process.

And so before we make additional changes,

I wouldn't want them to be ad hoc in the sense that's the opposite of planning, really, without going back to the public in some substantial way to get that input from the public.

I was here in the audience for that vote.

But there's also been other proposed expansion of the development area, as you noted.

They've been quite controversial.

And the people providing input were not just from that district or from the neighboring properties.

They became county-wide discussions.

And so having that avenue for a

taking this back to the public and making sure that the county at large knows there's a conversation that's occurring about that particular use.

And you sort of address some of the things about scope and scale, which I think is important.

And I think knowing when we really do need to go back to the community at large and have that larger conversation about, hey, we're about to make a big change that alters 30 years of policy.

Yeah, so in some respects, it's hard to answer that hypothetical, right?

I think something that is a big change is probably going to end up as either a recommendation for denial from staff or recommendation to look at that larger comprehensive plan amendment that you're referencing.

If something is not as major, and I think there are examples of things that can happen, how can we be flexible to meet something that's reasonable without pushing it off until we come back to the conference and plan?

There will be opportunities.

And I think in many respects,

I think that the input we got, what staff's reflection upon this was also looking more about how we make the development area more flexible.

I think the fear that you're articulating, and it's a real potential, is the development area expansion or the impacts on the rural areas.

And I just think when it's something that is

And mechanically, a rezoning and special permit are required at community meetings by the zoning ordinance.

So that community meeting is sort of a mandated step.

For the broader amendments that come out separately, I think, as Michael said, that

We'll have to determine that scope and what level of inputs needed.

But almost in all of my history, CPAs have usually had some kind of meeting and public engagement and work sessions with the commission and the board.

I think the approach has generally been the plan is intended to stay static, not changing so much.

People don't know the lay of the land.

So the difference is to maintain the plan.

I guess my concern, I wouldn't want it to be, I think, if we think about if we're going to make a new ordinance, for example, whether it be the riparian buffer ordinance and the time and effort that's gone into that and the many times it's come before us, before it was passed, I want to make sure that I think if something is significant, there are some decisions that have a level of significance that we probably shouldn't see them just once.

I just say I think one of the lessons that came out of some of those Chestnut Grove especially was that

We didn't have a work session early on to talk about that and then a public hearing.

Can I just say that

I think it's really ironic that you keep bringing up the need to plan for where we will expand the development area because that's exactly what personally I'm asking for.

Like, we are currently doing the opposite of planning by not talking about it.

So it's like, are we going to allow Beaver Hill

to go across the street where there's already infrastructure in place to provide super affordable housing, which is an easy win for everyone.

No, because you don't want to go a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit there and be haphazard and not think about it.

But then everyone keeps saying we can't talk about it.

So it's got to be one or the other.

I agree with you.

We need to talk about it now, not

15 years from now.

So yes, yes, Commissioner Murray, let's talk about where is the right place to expand the development area in the future.

Let's talk about it now.

And earlier, you mentioned speculation, and I have to push back on you because the concept of developing a new area

whether that's 100 acres or another 1% or another 2% of the 95% that's being preserved.

If we identify that area now, that property is going to sell at market rate.

So you said it wouldn't be affordable because of speculation.

We're not trying to build affordable.

We're trying to build more.

We have to be able to increase the supply of housing quickly.

It's important.

And so if we keep going back and forth about how we're going to do it and not actually start talking about where we're going to do it.

You're going to be in trouble.

31,000 people.

It was in the report earlier, four different times, staff highlighted 31,000 people by 2040.

So I mean, I guess the question is, I see this as multiple phases, right?

I mean, we had a big discussion multiple times, are we going to expand the development area?

And the question came up multiple times and the answer was no.

So at some point, from my point of view, if the answer is no, the answer is no, right?

I mean, and if we suddenly decide that the answer is yes,

then we need to take a step back and we need to reevaluate the whole thing from the beginning.

So if we say okay well I know we said no multiple times that we're not going to do this expansion but okay we've changed your mind and now the answer is yes.

Instead of saying yes for this individual property we should take a step back and say okay

We've changed your mind.

It's now yes.

Now let's think about where.

And I think that's the next phase.

So it's just a matter of state.

And just respectfully, I wasn't here when that no was discussed.

Like I'm pretty new to the Planning Commission, but I was on the COCAC.

I was showing up at every single town hall for every single AC44.

It was a specific section, obviously, of the AC44, and that was a direction that was decided.

There was a recommendation from this body, but then obviously the Board of Supervisors approved it.

So I don't think we need to relitigate that here.

What I'm hearing and the process that has been put in place is that there is a process if there is a change.

and it does open it up back to public comment.

And I think some of the lessons learned from Chestnut Grove are good, and I'm glad that that's being recognized.

So there is that opportunity for public comment.

Obviously, it's got to come before the Planning Commission and it's got to go with the Board of Supervisors.

I'll just say I'm in favor of the current proposal and it's already been approved by the board is my understanding, right?

So this is really just for our information.

And I'll just note, I'm not going to name the development because it doesn't really matter, but we had a situation where a developer came.

to a work session that this body had.

This is before some of your time and said, I have this idea to build these kind of cottage houses and this kind of arrangement.

And I just want to see if the planning, if this is kind of pattern would be even something you'd be interested in.

And it was unanimous, like, yeah, we think this is fantastic, creative, great use of land.

And it was built.

So it, but there, there was a process for them to kind of run a trial balloon before the

paying for hundreds of thousands of engineering and all this stuff by that developer.

Thank you very much.

No, maybe somebody else go first.

I don't have any.

Okay, all right.

Okay, so the MPO tech meeting happened and one of the most relevant items I thought was identification of STARS and project pipeline study locations.

OK, I know what you mean.

I was just trying to get my exits in my head.

I was driving down the road.

I got it.

Yeah, yeah.

Barnes.

We're not there yet.

Not yet.

some board of supervisors meetings I think there's two of them right May 27th and we have a little bit of an error here okay supervisor meeting on 27th they actually met on the 20th we kind of talked about that at our 26th meeting so I'm just gonna give you the highlights of one which was for June just reading my notes

Yeah, I know.

I appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

So we're talking about for June 3rd, 2026.

In the afternoon, staff had a presentation on our transportation project prioritization

We talked a little bit about that in this discussion earlier and as part of us coming back to talk to you about the multi-modal plan we're going to talk a little bit more about that prioritization process for you all just to make sure you have an understanding how we got there on that so more to come.

If you have any questions, happy to answer them.

There were three public hearing items that evening.

The first was a conveyance of easements on Free Ridge Lane, which sounds a little bit confusing.

We just went through a discontinuance process.

But what happened is we discontinued the road and VDOT needed to access easement back to a stormwater facility that's on the road.

So this conveyance was to provide them that easement back to that.

The second item, and that passed with the board.

The second one was Crozet Fellowship Church.

That's the property out in Crozet, sort of in the southwestern quadrant of the 250 I-64 interchange.

It's the south there.

And that was when they were expanding the church fairly significantly.

That too passed with the

the board.

And the final one was the Parham Circle.

You'll recall that was down off of Avon Street across the food line back behind sort of the bank and the Exxon station that is right there.

And that was for self storage building with the multi-story self storage building.

I'm just afraid I'll forget.

Everyone's been at work for 100 hours now.

Tomorrow night, I'll be back here in the county office building for the Barnes Community meeting presented by Wooley Engineering about a property along Garth Road between Timber Creek Road and Garth Lane.

It's just west of 2149 Garth Road.

The applicant is going to talk about an agritourism use

of an existing agricultural property.

So I just found out about this meeting on Thursday.

Usually I have more notice for these things.

But luckily I'm in town and I'll be right back here.

And you're all welcome to come.

And you heard this through the developer telling me there's a community meeting coming.

And so I'm like, okie doke.

Usually they will

email you ahead to check the schedule of the supervisor and the commissioner in question to see if they can attend.

This one is just like, hey, it's happening.

So, hey, good, I'm going.

I saw that zoning sign.

I was wondering what that was.

Yeah, I can forward you the developers thing that they sent out if you're interested to have more information.

Yeah, please do.

Thank you.

Any other new business?

Any old business?

No?