Architectural Review Board Meeting   9/7/2021

All right, well, it's 1 p.m. and I'll call to order the September 7th, 2021 meeting of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID disaster.

A quorum is present.

Architectural Review Board members present electronically are Fred Missel, Frank Hancock, Chris Henningsen, and myself, Zade Van Der Werf.

Frank Stoner may be able to join us by phone but he's not present currently.

Opportunities for public access to this meeting are posted on the county's website at the county calendar.

The public has real-time audio visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone, both as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

This meeting is being recorded and will be made available on the county's website.

This online meeting is a public record and subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

For all speakers, when it's your turn to speak, please first state your name for the record.

And for everyone participating today, please keep your microphone muted unless you're speaking.

Applicants who are making presentations know that your presentation is limited to a total of 15 minutes, which you can divide among your team members.

And Vivian will let us know when the 15 minutes are up.

We'll move to disclosures.

Yes, I do, Dave.

Thank you, Frank.

Chris, any disclosures?

No, I don't have any.

Thanks.

Great.

Well, there are no items on the consent agenda.

Thank you.

Well, we'll move to regular review items.

There are three today.

Chris Taggart and Margaret Maliszewski from the Planning Division of Community Development will be presenting these.

The first one is ARB 2021-92, the Albemarle Business Campus Apartments.

Sure.

I'm trying to share my screen.

Great, let me make one more change here so I can see what I'm doing.

Okay, this is a proposal to construct five apartment buildings with associated amenities and site improvements at Old Lynchburg Road, Country Green, and Mountain Wood Roads.

It's part of the larger Albemarle Business Campus Development for which you've already reviewed a self-storage building and an office building.

The parcel on which the apartment buildings would be located is not adjacent to the entrance corridor street.

It's set back approximately 380 feet or more and is located behind other buildings and behind some wooded area.

These factors are expected to reduce visibility from the entrance corridor street.

The applicant has supplied some images to illustrate the level of visibility.

With off-site wooded area remaining in place,

and the other ABC buildings constructed, the drawings show that only a portion of one building would be visible.

If other changes occur further south or west along Old Lynchburg Road, visibility could change in the future.

The proposed buildings have a contemporary appearance.

Materials proposed for them include fiber cement siding and brick in shades of tan, brown, gray and black.

These colors are compatible with the colors proposed elsewhere in the development.

With the colors and materials and the reduced visibility, these designs appear to be appropriate for the entrance quarter.

In the staff report, we did note that there are a few landscape and lighting recommendations, a few changes to be made.

The action required today is to act on the initial site plan.

We've recommended approval of that plan, but today you'll also want to provide comments on the architectural design and provide comments for the final site plan submittal.

You might also want to discuss whether the final plan should come back to you for review or whether you prefer for that review to be done by staff.

And that's what I've got for you today.

Thank you very much, Margaret.

Frank Hancock, do you have any questions for Seth?

I do not.

Thanks, Margaret.

No, thank you.

Chris?

No questions for me.

Thank you also, none for me.

Thank you, Margaret, for your presentation.

Thank you for joining us.

Just like Margaret said, this is the apartment portion of three affiliated projects through the site plan.

Thank you.

Do any members have questions for the applicant?

I just have a quick question, and I'm not sure I didn't see this in the materials.

I may have missed it, but I know that staff mentioned if the forestation, the greenery goes away,

between the parcel and the entrance corridor, then it would be clearly visible.

We have site sections.

I'm not sure if we're able to show those that were part of our ARB submittal.

They do show the grade rising above the, behind the current mobile home park.

Yes, so that top section is the one cut through that mobile home park portion that shows 5th Street at the far left side.

And then the building in orange is one of ours.

Does that address your question or do you have a follow up?

Yes, that addresses it.

I'm sorry, I was on mute.

Can you tell me what is the difference in elevation?

Is it like five feet or I can't read this.

There we go, first floor.

I got you.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Got it.

Thanks.

and the proposed self-storage building is, just to clarify, is that directly between the apartments and the entrance corridor?

Okay, all right, thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Frank Hancock?

I don't have any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't have further questions either.

Let's see.

Thank you.

Well, we'll go into discussion.

Sure, happy to.

Based on the distance from the entrance corridor and the visibility and the likelihood that if that parcel does, that's between the development and the entrance corridor does ever get cleared, more than likely it's also going to be filled with something.

So it would probably mitigate the viewshed.

I don't have any concerns with

the requested action based on what I've seen.

I think eventually the architecture would become more developed and the landscape architecture would be more refined as it gets further along.

Thank you, Fred.

I agree with Fred.

The only thing I would add.

I think moving forward, I would be OK with kind of staff level review, just given the distance from the corridor and what we've seen so far with this overall development and then this specific application.

The other piece, I think it's a really nice package

I really appreciate the site sections.

Thank you, Frank.

Yeah, I agree.

I think the applicant made a convincing case that the development's not going to be all that visible.

I think even if it were closer and more visible, the architecture to me is appropriate.

And so I don't have any concerns about it either way.

I agree with Frank.

Great.

Thank you, Chris.

Yeah, I appreciate and agree with what my fellow members have said.

I think like Frank and Chris, I would be comfortable with the staff level review.

I appreciate the applicants providing the site sections and demonstrating the minimal visibility.

And I think for the location relative to the corridor, the architecture is appropriate.

So those are my similar thoughts.

Hey, Margaret, the only thing and the only thing I might recommend is with number six, we include simple kind of statement as to why that's the case, like due to distance from the entrance corridor,

mitigating visibility and appropriate architectural concept drawings.

Right.

No, thank you, Fred.

I think that's a great suggestion.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other suggested revisions?

I'm happy to move that we forward the recommendations outlined in ARB 2021-92 Albemarle Business Campus Department staff report to the agent for site review committee with staff comments as written and the addition of number six under regarding final site plan submittal

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Thank you, Chris and Vivian.

Yes.

Mr. Hancock?

Aye.

And Mr. Van Der Werf?

Aye.

Okay.

Thank you.

Could I just add one sort of nitpicky clarifying thing is if I were one of the applicants,

I would want to make it clear that although the staff is reviewing it, staff would review it anyway, right?

Thank you, Fred.

Thank you, Margaret, and thank you, Fred.

Great, and thank you to the applicant.

We'll move on now to the next regular item, ARB 2021-96.

The application I'm presenting on today is a final review of the renovation plan submitted for the Manske Subaru Building.

The site is located along Route 29 at the intersection with Hilton Heights Road.

ARB has approved the number

in 2003 and 2005 for the original building design, and in 2013 for renovation of the phase two building.

Condition one in special use permits is that the design of the phase two building shall be compatible with the phase one building, as determined by the ARB.

The ARB at the June 7th meeting determined that the design of the phase two building was compatible with the phase one building.

The changes to the renovation design since the previous submittal include

revising the existing brick along the east elevation north of the tower element to remain unpainted covering the existing brick along the east elevation between the tower element and canopy structure with ACM panels and changing the color of the metal coping along the top of the building elevation from blue to metallic silver.

Leaving portions of the existing brick unpainted and changing the color of the coping does help to introduce a warmer color and remove some of the trademark nature of the renovation design.

But covering the existing brick between the canopy structure and tower element with ACM panels both increase the amount of use in the design and results in the northern portion of these elevation.

some way to establish a more unified building design.

Regarding the landscaping for the site, the existing condition on site does not match the previous approved plan.

Providing two trees and landscaping gaps along Hilton Heights Road, as well as shrubs along the parking areas adjacent to Hilton Heights Road and Route 29 and along the eastern side of the building will help integrate the site and renovation design into the surrounding context.

Thank you very much, Chris.

Great.

No, I don't have any questions.

I don't have any questions.

Thanks, Chris.

Thanks.

I was just trying to pull up, my computer's too slow.

I was trying to pull up the site plan amendment.

Chris, at the end of the staff report, there are two landscape plans, one for phase one and one for phase two?

Right, yes.

Got it, thank you.

That makes sense.

Thank you, Chris.

Thanks for your report and presentation.

I was trying to recall our main comments from the previous application or submission.

And as I recall, there were some concerns about how branded the proposal was.

And as I recall, the coping was a branded color that's been changed.

Other key revisions, make sure I'm not, okay, make sure I wasn't muted, was noted in the staff report leaving the brick unpainted, and then the addition of the ACM panels.

Yeah, thank you.

Super.

Vivian, do, sorry, actually, we'll turn it down to the applicants for their presentation.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Can you hear me?

Carolyn, would it be possible to promote Bob Pinnio to a panelist?

He's actually going to be doing a presentation today.

OK, I'm going to turn this over to Bob Pinnio.

All right.

Thank you, Kevin.

There we are.

First of all, I want to thank everybody.

Chris and Margaret, thanks again for all your your effort here.

Great staff report.

Easy to follow.

And we basically don't think we don't really have that much to discuss from our perspective.

The three major elements of the staff report were the lighting, the landscape and the use of brick.

Lighting, I think we've worked out a path forward with Margaret.

We'll be revising that as per her direction, which makes a lot of sense.

So we accept that comment.

Landscaping, we do accept all the idea behind that and making sure that what was approved was put back into place.

As far as the brick massing goes, I think that we're open to a discussion about it.

We spent a lot of time trying to understand and playing with it in model form and trying to understand it.

Overall, as you know from our presentation, there's a lot going on in the site.

There's constriction with where building mass goes.

And because of that, relative to a stormwater main, the Subaru requirements, there are kind of these

of objects that are kind of attached to the main mass.

And because of that, the articulation of those masses becomes complex.

And it's almost dealing with that complexity is something that we tried to do.

And it seems from the last meeting that you didn't have any particular issues with that.

So it was an extension of site

constriction and also articulating specific program requirements that help articulate the different types of massing.

So we try the idea of mixing the brick back in because the building form is so articulated and there are a number of

different masses we thought by including the brick, it started to muddle the idea of clarity.

So we decided not to include, and it was a relatively small amount of brick anyway.

And this I'm referring back to obviously the staff's recommendations.

We spent a lot of time, and I think this is I was reviewing

Our last presentation and you had a really smart comment about the difference between using metal panels as punched openings relative to almost structural panels that had a lot more to do with the actual movement of the facade and articulation of the openings.

So we spent we kind of went more into the idea of articulating the panels in a very

discrete and elegant way relative to opening, spent a lot of time trying to compose those.

So we went in that direction.

Willing to talk about it, I don't think that we're so hinged on the idea that there wouldn't be this inclusion of brick, but we felt in the end that because there's so many massing movements, it was better to clarify elements.

And there's also this parti idea of the back of house and front of house, which corresponds to that elevational change as well.

So brick is kind of back of house.

We have basic three elevations that indicate use and indicate how the building is composed and how it's used.

So again, that was another reason why we stuck with that.

And besides that, I don't think that we have

We're open to discussions and hopefully we've met the outline questions that were brought up last time.

I'll jump in with just one final point, which is the existing landscape that's on the site is very robust and there's a robust amount of landscape

on that hillside as well, which kind of reinforces the idea of this background building, which is, you know, the brick side, the service side of the Subaru structure really becomes screened heavily from the entrance corridor.

And so the move, the energy that was to interject, you know, this new renovation happens primarily at the viewshed from the entrance corridor, which is the corner of the Route 29 entrance in Hilton Heights Road.

So that's our primary viewshed and therefore that's kind of the primary area of emphasis and allowing that brick to be a background building.

So that's all I had to add.

Thank you, Bob and Kevin.

No questions, just appreciate you're looking at the elevation and recessing the Umansky Drive aisle

a little bit to help offset that.

I think that really helps that helps.

It's a little thing, but it really helps.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

Thank you.

No questions for me.

Thank you so much.

No questions.

Appreciate the development in the

expression of the metal facade that you described.

Great.

Thank you.

Well, we'll go into discussion now.

Sure.

I think it achieves what we discussed at the last meeting.

I think those two moves, leaving the

Existing brick unpainted on that end of the building, changing the coping color.

I think really, really successful.

I think it's a nice connection to the phase one red brick along the corridor.

So I know it's a great package.

I feel like there are no surprises with all the visualization.

You can kind of see it from every angle.

Thank you, Frank.

Yeah, I agree.

It was a great presentation.

I think changing the coping color really helped.

reduced that kind of branding appearance.

I do tend to agree with staff that the leaving the brick unpainted, in my opinion, does kind of create a little bit of a disjointed appearance.

I thought the previous version where the brick was painted gave the building

a little bit more internal consistency than it has with the unpainted brick.

And I know that move was made to kind of satisfy comments that were made during the last discussion, but I think the overall result just to me is that it makes it look a little bit more like

Something was just not done on the existing building.

And I think the painted brick kind of wraps it up into a more consistent whole, even though we're losing that red brick.

But that's just my opinion.

I think it helped previously to have it painted just in terms of the appearance of the building itself.

Thank you, Chris.

Thanks, Dave.

I don't have really anything to add.

I agree with my colleagues that it's appropriate.

Great, thank you, Fred.

Yeah, I agree with my colleagues that it's a nicely developed building.

I think the changes, subtle though they are since the last time, have made it more coherent.

I think I agree with Chris that perhaps the painted brick would be still more coherent internally for the building, but also quite happy with the current result for the connection to the phase to the north.

But as always, appreciate, Bob and Kevin, your team's presentations and visualizations.

In the stat report, the comments were being offered as recommendations for additional changes, but it sounds like the board members are pretty happy with the design at this point.

Thank you, Margaret.

From the discussion, I guess option item one could be deleted.

Let's see, Frank, you commented about the landscape.

I think we keep that.

And I know the applicant referred to working on item two.

Same for item four,

Yes.

Sounds good.

Great.

Great.

I'll move for approval of the certificate of appropriateness for ARB-2021-96 Manske Subaru building renovation with conditions listed in the staff report amended as follows.

Strike item number one.

Thank you, Frank.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Thank you, Chris.

Yes, Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Mr. Hancock?

Aye.

Mr. Henningsen?

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Yes, let me get this open and share.

Great.

This is a conceptual review of a proposal to construct a self-storage facility with associated site improvements.

It's located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Route 250 West and Route 240 Crozet Avenue.

The existing site is occupied by a convenience store and fuel pump canopy, some additional commercial buildings, and some residential buildings.

The proposed building would be three stories tall with a 30,000 square foot footprint.

And the building shown on this plan measures 250 feet by 120 feet.

The applicant has submitted three different conceptual designs for consideration.

Each design uses brick as a primary material, which establishes a minimal connection to the historic architecture of the area.

And each design addresses blankness with architectural details, windows, and material changes.

The primary concern as outlined in the STAC report is the scale of the building given the character of the surrounding area.

The building scale is significantly larger than the existing buildings located nearby.

It's expected that the scale will not contribute to unity and coherence along with water.

In the STAC report, we've also noted that the stormwater facility and the dumpster are located very close to the entrance quarter street where it may be difficult to fully integrate them into the landscape.

Finally, we noted in the report that street trees are provided consistently along the corridors, but we wonder if a less formal and more irregular arrangement of trees would be more appropriate here given the character of the surroundings.

We've listed a number of recommendations on the plan in the staff report, and this is a conceptual level review, so the action is to provide comments for the next to middle.

Thank you, Margaret.

I do not have any questions.

Frank?

Oh, that's right.

Sorry, Frank is recused from this one.

Thanks, Dave.

I know this is outside of our purview, but I'm assuming that the zoning allows for the density that's being requested.

Okay.

I think that's the only, so there were no renderings that showed this from

The Street View, right?

OK. Just want to make sure I wasn't missing something.

That's great.

Thank you.

I don't believe I have any questions, Margaret.

Thank you for your presentation.

Hey, thank you for having us today.

I'm Andrew Lewis with Merchants Retail Partners, part of the Protective Life Insurance Company.

And we're here in Birmingham, Alabama, and really appreciate you taking a look at this with us.

Just want to say that this presentation we've given is really just the very beginning of our design process.

And we wanted to go ahead and solicit some feedback early so that we could hopefully make a high quality submission when we're ready to go forward.

So that's really how I would like to just kind of keep that in mind today in relation to the comments and the materials presented.

So I did put together a slide deck that just kind of talked about the use and why we chose this site.

It really kind of boils down to the zoning and then that it's just a nice quiet passive use and is appropriate for this site when you consider the surrounding neighborhoods to the rear.

And if you were to

Compare this use to another like retail or high density residential type use that would be allowed in this zoning.

You'd really wanna look at those impacts and we're a very low impact development.

We don't generate very much traffic at all.

Would be less than what's there today.

We only require a handful of parking spaces.

We don't have a lot of visual impact in terms of light

or Noise or anything like that.

It's a very quiet use, almost acts like a buffer from the neighborhood residents to the rear of us.

And we would have a very secure place with 24 hour security so you wouldn't have to worry about, you know, late night activities and things like that that are sometimes, you know, can be a problem for a more high density retail type establishment.

And then lastly, you know, very low water and sewer

as well.

So I just wanted to highlight those as just kind of being benefits of our use on the parcel, although we're zoned correctly, just wanted to kind of mention that.

So also wanted to let you know that, you know, we're really excited about being in this community and we plan to build a first class product here.

It may or may not be like anything you've seen from self storage, you know, your visual

Your vision of your own vision of self storage might be a single story with the roll up doors that can be a little more industrial.

These actually look more like an office building or something of that nature.

We do a really good job and hire the right design team to help find ways to make them fit into a site like this.

So we are planning to build that kind of product here and recognize the importance of presenting that to the entrance corridor along 250 and Crozet Avenue.

So with that,

We just kind of took a quick look at the surrounding architecture in Crozet and tried to develop a talking point, if you will, with these examples we've given you.

One is one that you've approved in your county recently, not to say that's appropriate here or not, just as a talking point really.

And then the other two designs are just other projects that have been built that

seem to be kind of like what might work here.

So again, just want to reiterate the preliminary nature of what we submitted and appreciate the feedback we've gotten and look forward to talking through the comments.

I can kind of quickly introduce my design team too.

With us, we have Clint Shifflett with Timmons Group and Valerie Long with Williams Mullins.

And Clint, maybe you could touch on the physical site and some of the stuff we've done

Sure, as soon as I unmute there.

Yeah, like Andrew mentioned, I'm Clint Shifflett with Timmons Group.

We're helping out with the site design side of things.

Looking through the staff comments, you know, from a site perspective, the comments we receive are all pretty straightforward.

And I think that we can,

can achieve a good result in some revisions to meet those comments and concerns.

A particular note, the dumpster item that you guys mentioned up against 250, looking at the site grading and the site layout a little closer, I think we can flip that to the back of the site.

The grades are gonna be such that there's probably a small retaining wall on the back end of the site adjacent to the residential units.

So we think that will help to provide screening from the folks from the residential lots on the back side of the site to help minimize an impact to them while also taking that impact away from 250.

So I think that can be achieved relatively easy on our end.

Of course for the landscape comments, we'll come back to the table with the more robust design of the stormwater management facility and some more detail given on the street trees and the plantings for the stormwater management facility as well.

Good afternoon everyone.

I'm Valerie Long with Williams-Mullen.

Fred, I was glad you asked this question about the zoning and I'll just reiterate some of that.

The property is zoned highway commercial.

It is located on the edge of the development area in the Crozet area.

The parcels surrounding it are largely zoned residential.

And then the parcels on the south side of Route 250 or Rockfish Gap Turnpike are all outside the designated development area, but they've all pretty much developed with residential single-family homes there, particularly right across the street just in the last year or so.

There's been a recent subdivision and some new homes.

constructed.

So again as Andrew said this I think does work serve to function somewhat as a buffer between the growth area and the development or the rural area.

It is consistent with the zoning but as Andrew mentioned the you know there's not really any impacts from a land use perspective in terms of

Traffic, noise, etc.

I think probably traffic would be the biggest concern at this location.

There's a lot of by right uses that could be allowed that might have a smaller scale, for example, but would potentially create some significant traffic impacts along this corridor.

especially during the peak hour with the schools down to the west where there's some pretty significant impacts and some delays on Miller School Road as well right now at that intersection so we thought it was a good use that's consistent with the zoning it's also consistent with the Crozet master plan designation for commercial use but without creating those impacts that I mentioned so and as Andrew said we're looking forward to some feedback on

sort of you know design ideas and so forth that Andrew and his architecture team can take back and work to find a good design that can be a strong submittal.

So I'll share my screen.

Yes.

You're good.

So I'll just

Start at the top and roll through it.

So just kind of reiterating what was already said, we're a passive operation, low impact development.

We have very few renters per day, six to eight.

So not much traffic, not much parking.

We won't have your typical other types of things associated with the retail use or a restaurant.

There's no drive-through

Gotti customers or alcohol or anything like that.

I don't know if I should go too much into the whole drivers for why self storage is needed.

But if you're interested, these are some reasons and things that we've put together to kind of demonstrate why you might see this in your community.

As well as just sort of an argument for why this is the best use of this property.

We do believe it's complimentary and we do believe that it helps

kind of give a gateway approach into the Crozet area if designed appropriately.

So again, it kind of solves a lot of problems that you have there with that particular corner.

This next slide is just simply a comparison of retail residential use versus a generic self-storage use just to discuss some of the things I already covered.

You got the aerial photography of the site here with the residences around the north and on the eastern side as well as potentially a rezone commercial site but on the west as well.

Brownsville Road surrounds the site and this is also the property line.

Today there's a gas station with a small office building and two residents on the site.

These are the views, eastbound, westbound looking

down Rockfish Gap or Highway 250.

You can see the gas station canopy there and a piece of the gas station as well.

And then looking from the other direction, you see the small office, little red building down there on the westbound view.

Looking northbound and southbound, the northbound photograph is sitting in the intersection of Crozet Avenue and Rockfish looking down Crozet back towards town.

was pretty heavily screened there with some brush and kind of ivy type vegetation with some trees.

And then when you're standing at Brownsville Road and Crozet, looking south back towards the intersection of Rockfish and Crozet Avenue, it's very much the same.

This is the survey in topo.

The only thing I'd like to point out here is that there's, you know,

A fair amount of relief on this site from north to south.

So Brownsville Road is elevated above Rockfish Gap or Highway 250.

And so that enables us to design the building to kind of hide it more into the topography, which is what we're proposing.

This is straight from the

Albemarle County GIS, information regarding zoning and where the entrance corridors are designated by the stars.

And some of the slope features are shown here too.

This is our layout.

So we've kind of attempted to push the building as far as possible up on the corner of Crozet and Rockfish to really adhere to the code there.

To kind of give it more of a building massing on the corners is required and the minimum and maximum setbacks there are something we'll adhere to and then put the parking kind of off to the side there to kind of screen it.

As Clint mentioned, we can flip the dumpster pad up to the top there to hide that more and as well as hide it from the residences behind the changing grade there, which is this demonstrates the changing grade.

These are just some shots of existing buildings in

Crozet that we just thought might be something to look to, to kind of grab elements or pieces of.

This one in the top left corner is the buildings together that, oh, there's that small restaurant bar that everybody's probably familiar with right there.

It's Far Downers, the restaurant you're referring to.

Right.

And so the sort of chamfered off edge of the corner there, you know, the 45 degree angle of that building, the darker brick one is something we kind of thought, all right, that might be something to mimic.

This is the depot train station.

Really, there's no way the building will ever look like a depot train station, obviously.

It just really is more like a way to kind of demonstrate a historic architectural building in the area, using brick as the primary element.

And then bottom left is the library and with the mixed use retail in the front using some brick and stone.

And then the final picture there is

This is called Piedmont Place, a newer development.

You're all probably very familiar with this.

These are not necessarily things we want to build, like we just thought these would be good placeholders for a conversation.

And then as far as like a proposed building style, this is just a style that we have designed in the past.

We felt like it could work here, or maybe at least elements of this building could work here.

and then this one is another building that's existing that has more of a apex kind of roof line with a large front element on the corner.

I'm not sure this is appropriate here or not, but again, just kind of showing you how these buildings can be designed.

And then this one you're familiar with is the one I mentioned before that is approved to be built in Charlottesville.

Thank you very much, Andrew, for going through that.

I think why don't we just go sort of around the circle and invite members to offer any questions and also share any comments they may have.

Thank you, Dade.

Thanks, Andrew, Clint, Valerie.

You guys have done a really thoughtful job of putting together images and really appreciate this opportunity to be able to kind of have a work session with you.

I will say that you probably picked one of the most challenging structures to put at an intersection that is kind of a mini gateway.

to Crozet and to this area.

Maybe I think it is that because I oftentimes come in from the road that's opposite into Crozet.

So for me, it is sort of a gateway past 250.

I have a bunch of comments and I'll just kind of throw them out there.

If you'll allow me to.

And these are just I'm not sure how well organized they are, but

Number one, yeah, you know, it's a gateway building.

So what does that actually mean?

And do we all agree that that, in fact, is what it is?

So I think it's something we can't disagree on is the fact that it is a four way intersection and that you need to figure out somehow how to address that intersection with the building, in my opinion, and how to do that appropriately.

And you used the example of Mud House and that

Really kind of cool chamfered edge that is at that intersection.

And I've always loved that entrance because it addresses both sides of the street.

It is the central entrance.

You know as a pedestrian, that's where you walk in.

It's got great detailing.

It's super visible.

For all those reasons, it works.

If you're going to, again, all this is sort of, I guess, maybe hedging a little bit dangerously towards the side of opinions.

Trying not to.

You know, if you're gonna have that chamfered corner, just thinking about how that is different and special and programmed and utilized for this building.

And if that does in fact become an entrance, then does that really make sense with where your parking has to go?

The square, the Crozet square that Valerie mentioned, you know, the great architectural

Benefit of that is that it's two buildings.

It breaks down the scale.

It's very well detailed.

There are a lot of things on it that this would have a challenge recreating, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend you try to recreate it.

You mentioned hiding the topo, the fact that there was some relief.

It looks to me like unless I was reading it wrong.

I don't see how it's when I when you said relief, I meant I thought you meant that it was sort of like recessed into the ground a bit.

and I was trying to pick that up, but it looks to me like the ground slopes, it slopes up in the back corner, right?

So the corner that's facing the road, Rockfish and Crozet Avenue, that's the tallest if I'm, is that right?

So that's the tallest elevation.

So I would imagine, I was thinking that it would be flipped where you have the benefit of recessing it along the street edge and then having it build up.

as you move away from the street to sort of help with that kind of towering feeling.

You also mentioned in your summary that it was a maximum utilization of the parcel, which is not necessarily a great thing when you're thinking about scale and pedestrian and the appropriateness.

I get it as a developer.

That's what you want to have.

But I would encourage you to think about landscape buffering, what that looks like, how best to

to do that.

Is there room for you to push the building a little bit further back from Rockfish Gap Turnpike and actually still allow yourself to be able to get the square footage that you're looking for?

One of the reoccurring themes over the years in these kinds of buildings is false windows and how you deal with that.

And, you know, it's also stair towers or stair towers, the right word in this case, but stairwells anyway.

You know how you deal with that from a visibility standpoint.

You had one example in one of your, in the upper right, it was an example where it was sort of just a tan background, like a false window with a tan background.

I think window transparency is something that's going to need to be really taken a look at and addressed, as well as lighting at night.

You know, there's this image.

Thank you.

It's great timing.

This image shows sort of a higher, you know, sort of a higher mass on the corner.

And that might be a way to think about this.

But again, usually when you do that, we've dealt with this on other buildings that marks entrance.

So I think that'll be something you have to think through.

I'm almost done.

I was looking at Google Earth and kind of going a little bit further, I guess it's east, and thinking about Harris Teeter.

I mean, Harris Teeter is very low relative to this.

It's much less of a mass, but the actual building facade is pretty simple.

I'm not saying that's a great example of what you should do, but opposite that on the other side is a much more residential scale.

But thinking about that,

as a precedent.

I mean, it was approved in this county, so it's something to think about.

And that is the only last thing I'll mention is just thinking about circulation around the building for pedestrians and how they interact with the edge of the building along the roadways.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, Fred.

I really appreciate those thorough comments.

I guess based on the staff report and just my own experience driving through that area, to me the big concern is the just overall mass and scale of the proposed building combined with its proximity to the entrance corridor.

And

As alluded to, that's really dictated by the zoning.

So it's, in my opinion, not ours to really have any control over that mass and size and proximity.

So I think it's more about, from our perspective, how that mass is handled.

And I think

It would help if strategies were used to break up that mass and maybe try and get this very large tall building for the area broken down into maybe component parts that have a scale more in line with the

residential and even commercial development that's further down Crozet Avenue.

And I think that can be done.

I think right next to the Harris Tier that Fred was talking about is a big box, the Cardinal Home Center, formerly Blue Ridge Builders Supply.

And I think, you know, that's literally just a box.

This proposed building is even

Bigger, so I think something that would break up that large mass and give it a little bit more interest I think would be better received in this location.

Yeah, thank you very much, Chris and Fred.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with what you've offered.

Fred, I think you started with the question of gateway building.

I'd certainly agree with your suggestion that this is a gateway to Crozet and the county, and would echo the importance you placed on figuring out a suitable way to address that prominent intersection.

I think, Chris, yeah, I agree that the mass and scale of this, though permitted by zoning, is definitely something that is

out of the established character of the area.

I think I would encourage the applicant, the majority, there's photos of the square, almost everything in Crozet is two stories or lower.

And so this building at three stories is a full story higher than almost anything else there.

So anything that can be done to minimize the height and the volume of the building and to

give it a sense of a two-story scale over some large percentage of its facades I think would be helpful.

I think as Chris highlighted, I think the square also there are sort of lengths of facade that are common in Crozet and that are typically much shorter than this building.

So if it's possible to make one building look like three or even five in terms of its

Massing.

I think that may help to at least make it feel like it's more of the fabric of the surrounding area.

Appreciate, Fred, you mentioned Harris Teeter and I think it's called Clover Lawn Village across the way.

I think that is an example of a building that it's, albeit two stories, but might be a useful precedent to look at for how to sort of articulate scale.

Certainly appreciate

The suggestion of using brick and stone, and there is a nice variety of materials throughout Crozet.

I think in our recent survey of the area, we've identified that in many ways, the area has a pretty rural character, and this portion of the 250 corridor is starting to head toward the western part of the county where it becomes more rural.

So, you know, brick, stone, siding, stucco, some diversity of materials may be another way further to

break up the facades and appreciate Chris and Fred highlighting the question of setbacks.

Certainly if there is a chance to create any more relief to the entrance corridors, I think that might allow perhaps both more robust landscaping and also potentially if there are any opportunities for layering devices such as porches or trellises or other things to break up the facade that might be also in keeping with and appropriate for other expressions in the area.

Dave, could I add one thing?

Sure, yeah, Fred.

Just from the standpoint of the applicant, I mean, I think you've already done this, but if you focus on the design guidelines and you focus on page 11,

There's a lot of things under the structural design that when you come back with your work, you will, at least in my opinion, I'd like to hear you say this is how it achieves an appropriate scale that relates to the site.

And then you explain it and those types of things.

I think there's one on there, window glass should not be heavily tinted.

Again, things like that are areas you'll have to kind of focus on.

I'd recommend you spend some time looking at that, especially.

Yeah, I'm assuming so.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Thank you for that feedback.

I really appreciate it.

This helps us a great deal and I guess you know kind of at least gets us going in a direction and maybe just kind of thinking through next steps and how to most effectively achieve the goals that you guys are looking for and that we're trying to achieve too.

Are there ways for us to communicate in a less formal nature just kind of

As we keep throwing ideas together and thinking on ways to address the comments, specifically breaking up the size and scale is the big one, how can we maybe sort of directly less formally involve the board in our thoughts?

I believe the most readily available format is a work session.

Typically those can be scheduled fairly quickly and we can continue this sort of informal dialogue without having an actual action or staff review required.

Other applicants also sometimes will develop proposals and then meet individually with board members, although I think there's a benefit to the work session because it allows probably for a better

Great.

Then we will seek to do that.

I think we'll kind of maybe take this a step further and find some examples, some photographs, maybe some renderings from our, you know, back of examples that might be a little more suited to what I'm thinking I'm hearing you guys ask for today.

And

and flip that back.

And then from there, we're definitely gonna do full rendering sections and complete plans and all that.

Yeah, Andrew, if I could add to Dade's great ideas.

First of all, you have an incredibly experienced staff in Margaret and Chris, who have been in, I mean, Margaret, we've worked together for like 25 years or something.

So I mean, we know, Margaret knows the area.

So I think, you know, what have you seen?

What's been successful?

What hasn't been successful?

Not to put Margaret on the spot, but I think that'd be great.

background and information to get.

The second thing is I would say, and I'm sure you're doing this, you know, first of all, in Valerie, you've got one of the best land use attorneys here.

And I would say, you know, she also knows the sites.

But also, if you can't come to Charlottesville and take photographs of precedent images here, for me personally, one of the

Things that goes the long furthest is to be able to say, hey, this was approved in 2016 as a way to mitigate scale.

And it was very successful in Albemarle County.

We'd like to try it.

We'd like to do that.

Here's how we're replicating it or here's how we're utilizing that design tactic on our building.

And then the third thing I'd say is, yeah, absolutely.

Don't get too far down the road spending a lot of money and wishing you hadn't.

Right, money and time, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So thank you for that.

I've been to your market there and your town a couple of times, but I will look for ways that, and I'll work with Margaret too.

By the way, we had an informal Zoom with Margaret with another version of slides that were way across the board that she helped us kind of

Thank you.

I just had a few other questions, if I may.

And these are things I probably should have mentioned when I spoke for a couple of minutes.

One of the issues we struggled with was, frankly, how close to have the building to Route 250 versus not.

And knowing that typically in the development area, you know, you prefer the buildings up close.

to the road, frame the streetscape, et cetera, but for the reasons you all said, we recognize that one, we needed to have more than enough room in between for appropriate amounts of plantings, but also that it wouldn't in this location be an appropriate

Be appropriate to have the building right up against the road.

So we were trying to find that happy medium.

But at the same time, knowing that there's residentially zoned land behind the site, trying to find the balance, we didn't want to overwhelm those residential lots.

with three stories on that side.

So that was part of the balancing effort that we tried to meet.

And so to the extent there's any more feedback on that, I totally get, I can't remember which one of you said, it might be better to flip the building and have the short side on 250 and the taller side behind, which frankly was my original suggestion.

But then I also appreciate the merits of having the shorter side

adjacent to Brownsville and those residentially zoned lots.

So that was I just wanted you to know that was part of our struggle.

And if anybody else has any specific feedback on that, but also because there were some comments about building height and other buildings in the area,

We also looked at that and I just want to mention that obviously this area is zoned highway commercial and downtown Crozet, as you all I believe know, has the downtown Crozet district zoning, which although most of the buildings there are shorter, most of them haven't redeveloped yet.

In the zoning regulations for the DCD district actually have a minimum building height of two stories.

You need a special use permit if you only want to be one story.

And it has a maximum building height of four stories by right and up to six by special use permit.

So again we recognize there's different zoning.

Highway commercial you could actually go to 65 feet.

We were trying to find the balance there and recognizing okay it's taller than other uses in the immediate area but perhaps as downtown Crozet hopefully redevelops in the coming years it won't be out of scale

with buildings there.

Piedmont Place being a good example, although that one's built on a slope, so I don't know how many floors that's considered to be.

But anyway, I just wanted you all to know that we have thought about those issues and will obviously continue to do so in working with the architecture team on site.

Thanks, Valerie.

Fred, I think you mentioned the question of citing.

Anything you would add to that in response to the question?

The only thing that comes to mind, you know, when I look at the precedent images and think about it,

You know, the library, for example, the building on the bottom right, I can't remember the name of that one, and then the building on the upper left, they all have at the street edge where you are walking as a pedestrian a different material and articulation and a real clear kind of separation between first and second, third, fourth floors.

I think if you're going to remain close to the roads, you need to address that pedestrian scale with

really clearly defined landscape and first floor building at a minimum.

A couple of the precedent images that you also shared, proposed architectural styles, two of them kind of do that, one of them kind of doesn't, but I think that's an area that really needs to have some of your focus.

So I'm okay with it being close to the road as long as

As a pedestrian, you don't feel like you're walking by this towering edifice.

Thank you, Fred.

Don't get upset.

Was having more like a around tower element on that corner, and instead of doing the chamfer edge, which I think is not what we're looking for, in your opinion, would not really address that concern.

Is that just a fair statement, just trying to characterize some of the thoughts we've had, besides what you're looking at?

So more like a, I guess what I'm saying is there are ways to kind of enhance that corner with maybe more like a rounded off edge that would really kind of draw your eye to that focal point and kind of make that corner more prominent as opposed to trying to chamfer it off like we've drawn.

and I'm just trying to understand how you would perceive that.

That's really hard to answer that question without looking at something that shows it but I'm kind of thinking of ways to make it look more like the gateway but also break it up.

Yeah, well I appreciate that.

If you all want to develop some asking concepts and then through a work session or another means, be very happy to keep the conversation going.

I know round forms here conjure the rotunda and other things which are often pretty significant civic elements.

So I think to the extent this is commercial and to Fred's point about whether or not there's a real pedestrian entrance, it's definitely a tension to sort of, oh, we're sorry that marks the corner, but also doesn't

signal incorrectly that it's where we're all headed and what it's all about.

So thank you for all of those and look forward to having a chance to continue the conversation once you've had a chance to develop some massing concepts for the site.

That's great.

Thank you.

Great.

I don't.

Does anybody else on developers have anything else to add or mention?

Okay, thank you.

Absolutely.

Thanks for doing it so thoughtfully.

Dave, I can share the list of comments that we had on the staff report.

Do you want to look at those quickly and see if those are all good to go?

I'll take a look at this list.

Can you see the word document now?

Chris, Fred, anything?

Sounds like, Margaret, you'll add a few more comments about mass and scale inciting from your discussion.

Yes.

Yeah.

OK, great.

Well, thank you.

OK, our last item today is other business and approval of the minutes for August 16th.

Thank you, Chris.

Is there a second?

I was absent for those, so I'd rather not second if I can, but maybe Frank can.

Frank, are you able?

I'll second.

Sorry, just getting my paperwork straight here.

OK, that is a motion for approval of the August 16 minutes.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Mr. Henningsen?

Aye.

Aye.

Great.

Well, let's see.

So the next meeting is October 4, 2021.

It will be a virtual meeting again.

The September 20th meeting has been canceled and no items for that agenda.

So I hope everybody enjoys and appreciates the extra time that afternoon.

Great.

Super.

Anything else before we adjourn this afternoon?

Thank you all.

Great, thanks everybody for your time today.

Next meeting is October 4th and we are adjourned at 2.25.