Architectural Review Board Meeting   9/19/2022

OK, I will pause it.

All right, I'll throw you back up.

OK.

I'm calling the September 19, 2022 meeting of the Albemarle County Architecture Review Board to order.

It's 104.

Sure.

Mr. Stoner?

Here.

All right.

Thank you.

Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting.

The public may access and participate in the meeting electronically.

Instructions for doing so are posted on the Albemarle County website at the Albemarle 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.

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Everyone who is participating virtually, please mute your microphone until it is your turn to speak.

No.

Nope.

No.

All right.

That's great.

There are no consent agenda items today or regular review items.

There is one work session today.

It's on the entrance corridor design guidelines at Denda.

Great.

Let's start.

So today we're going to talk about where we have for you Route 240 and Fontaine Extended.

You've seen, so two corridors, you've seen this one in parts of, sorry, a portion of these segments so far, but I just wanted to go through those again and show you, we had this

Corridors sheet before, but we hadn't had all of the segments broken out.

So just to show you it with all of the segments broken out and then revisiting the first couple of segments because we've changed the maps on them.

So instead of having two very finite endpoints graphically communicated with circles and a thick red line, we've changed those to thinner arrows.

That allows a little more context to show through in terms of the streets relationship with neighboring properties and it also communicates a certain level of flexibility, permeability, and

Transition between segments so it's not a finite boundary anymore.

So Lickinghole Creek for you again, as well as three notched residential.

So being the first two on the on the eastern side of the segment and then going through the segment again we have Crozet Industrial between Union Mission Lane to the west and Parkwood Ridge Drive to the east.

And I guess I should stop here and say, would you like me to go through all of the segments pretty quickly and then we can go back and focus on each one?

Would that be helpful?

And then we can circle back.

Mm-hmm.

So Crozet Industrial, that includes Star Hill Brewery, and then Railway, which is just the residential portion that has the railway on the southern side and residential on the northern side.

That stretches from Union Mission Lane to Firehouse Lane.

And then Downtown Crozet is a spread.

So we see both sheets here as they would lay out in a printed book

Fashion.

I also have each of these on a single sheet on a single slide if we need to kind of blow it up a little bit so you can read it.

But this goes from Firehouse Lane to the east to Taber Street.

It rounds the corner of Crozet Avenue and goes down to the intersection of Taber Street to the south.

and then what we called Rolling Residential, which is between Tabor Street and Davis and the vicinity of Davis Lane to the south.

Then the vicinity of Davis Lane to the intersection of Route 250 South, and that's the end of the Route 240 corridor.

Excuse me.

So going back to the segments you've not seen, the first one would be Crozet Industrial.

Just one quick question.

Is there a recent, or maybe not recent, last 10 years or so project in this segment that's been under review?

Just curious if we, I mean, it's always helpful to include something that's been through review.

Okay.

I think, I guess I was wondering, I mean, maybe it's,

I think it makes sense, the division of this segment into the, this one on the railroad segment, but I kind of wanted to maybe revisit that question to make sure I was understanding.

It is, it is, that segment is 0.3 miles, so it's,

perceptionally it almost acts as this kind of gateway between two built areas it's zoned for residential use that's not to say that it will always be zoned for residential use but right now it is and there's some pretty buildings along that area but actually now that I think about it the Crozet Industrial did have one building that's gone up in the past well since COVID in the past two years and that was a car wash

In the third picture at the bottom, it is in that a graded area is now a car wash, but it's set back pretty far from the road.

Okay.

Thanks.

I don't have any comments either.

And we can always go back and talk about the relationship between all of them.

Sure.

So I appreciate, I think it does make sense to keep this separate just because of how different the context of use and landscape is.

One question I had in terms of the characteristics to avoid was on landscaped lawns, because I guess the central photo at the bottom talks about the front lawns giving a pedestrian scale.

I wasn't sure if that's actually a condition that we're discouraging or encouraging.

Maybe just to clarify, when we say on landscapes, what portion of landscape we're saying is missing.

I don't have any comments on this one.

I don't have any comments either.

A pretty important section just because of the diverse architectural styles and just collection of buildings here.

I think there's a lot to draw on.

The one thing I would maybe point out or bring up for discussion is how we think about the tower building.

The senior, I can't remember what the name of that building is.

You know, one question is like, is any of the zoning around it would allow for anything even to be that tall?

Okay.

And then I will note, I think that's a really nice mural.

I think it does help to, oh, I'm sorry.

I think it helps to soften that edge by having the mural especially with the distant view beyond it coming from south to north.

There's a view of the mountains in the background and I think it helps to blend nicely between the kind of ivory buff or the very light color and then the mountain views to the side and it gives almost a sense of

destination, like a viewpoint that is more central to the development.

Well, I know that we've done it previously.

Yeah.

I mean, we do have zoning as one of the sections we use on some of these sheets.

I don't know if it's on this one.

I am involved in the redevelopment of the Barnes Lumber site, which is a good portion of the three notch Dan 240 Crozet Avenue.

Review District.

One of the things we've been wrestling with is the fact that essentially Main Street, there will be a new Main Street.

So 240 is more like an access road.

And so the buildings that are on Main Street, which will be south of the railroad tracks, will actually back up to the railroad tracks.

So the rears of those buildings will be visible from 240.

and struggling to figure out how do we just, you know, that's a very different condition than Crozet Avenue where you're kind of in the downtown district.

And I understand why these two are unified into kind of a downtown district because the zoning supports it around it, but I think

I'd love to just get some thoughts from you all because we're in the process of working with Margaret Mariah to develop the updated architectural guidelines for the Barnes property, trying to make those sort of interface or connect to the county's ARB guidelines for this corridor.

And so we don't want to build buildings that have two fronts because that seems

sort of duplicitous, expensive, contrived, et cetera.

But there is some need for treatment on the back.

Correct.

I mean, it seems- Unfortunately, there's not a lot of space between the tracks.

It's pretty tight.

Seems analogous to like 64, for example, like, you know, the Wegmans building, the back of the building faces 64, and it certainly can't be confused with the front of that building, but it did receive

you know, at least a certain amount of treatment to, you know, make it presentable from the corridor.

In light of this, do we want to look at maybe breaking this into two segments?

Well, I guess this kind of goes back to my question about the railroad segment, because I think you could potentially make an argument that this north segment of three notched could extend to the edge of the industrial zone, because there are, I mean, even though there are a collection of sort of downtown structures in this portion of the downtown, what's currently the downtown Crozet district, I mean, if you leave just one building over, it does assume a pretty similar

you know residential character and so if we extended this segment over to the the railroad overpass essentially and think of that as the threshold to the next segment of the downtown district then it would maybe let us treat everything north of the railroad as having a particular character and relationship to the stuff on the other side of the railroad because

You know, I understand the problem with this.

I hear the problem that you have with this property.

And in my mind, at least experiencing the drive up, I don't think of the stuff on the other side of the railroad tracks as having the same relationship to like the entrance corridor that the stuff that you pass as you're going down under the railroad overpass and seeing the rest of downtown Crozet.

And I think the dominant element is the railroad tracks.

Yeah.

And I think the other thing from the Wegmans is, I guess mainly it's in VDOTs right of way, but there is a little bit of a planting buffer.

It's not as deep as I think some of us would desire, but I think to the extent the railroad is an edge, if there were a reinforcement of that with landscape that was consistent, I think that would be desirable though.

Yeah, it's just dimensional challenges, cause you know,

One of the things we talked about that stuck with me is there's an opportunity here to provide glimpses into what's kind of beyond those buildings and then having those backs up against the corridor adds to the feeling of like, oh, this is a town, it's more dense.

And then perhaps giving those glimpses in, that's kind of your frontage on the corridor is like,

You know?

Yeah.

But I think I like Taro's suggestion of sort of combining the north of the railroad track segments and then south of the intersection.

Yeah, I also like that suggestion because the, as was said, the tracks themselves seem dominant throughout that whole

at least that side of the road.

If there were to be a development in the future that is in that more commercial portion of downtown, would, or the segment that Frank Stoner, you were saying, would the backs of those buildings be evaluated from the railway segment and then the fronts of them be evaluated against the downtown Crozet segment?

Good question.

That is a good question.

Well, I don't know that the ironically, I'm not sure that the fronts of those buildings are actually visible from any corridors.

I think the way those parcels lay out, though, it's it's the entire that whole area.

to have a development come in and it be evaluated against two segments.

I think in any case, they would have to be somewhat cohesive with one another just because they're right beside each other along a pathway.

Yeah, I think the only concern would be if you had it developed, like in an, I don't know if there are other, I think maybe the segment of 29 that I'd looked at an airport road where you could potentially have a development with two entrances, I guess.

Sheets project.

Yeah, the only thing would be, I can't imagine

I don't think it would be that much of an issue if we evaluated them according to separate criteria.

There are still requirements that a single development have some level of

bit of coherence, right?

So it's okay if we evaluate the Crozet Avenue side along Crozet Avenue contextual considerations and the railroad segment along railroad contextual considerations and the applicant's job would be to figure out how to make that all work as one application.

Yeah, because I think the segments, I think this is more of a resource than a set of hard and fast rules.

You know, so I think as a resource, you can draw from either one.

So this work that we're doing now is one of the important things that will come out of it is we'll know better what needs to change in the actual guidelines.

So with that in mind, we might want to be a little more specific somewhere when we're talking about the railroad segment.

Yeah, because I guess there's still, even if you were to treat the railroad, for instance, as the rear of that development, there would still be

At least from my perspective, it would be nice if we needed to put a finer point on what we were looking for would be to emphasize that corridor landscape planting applied at both sides and was still important at the southern edge.

I think because the rail topography kind of blocks the pedestrian zone of the buildings and development on the other side, that

Part of the overall guidelines likely might not be all that applicable, but the overall guidelines attention to material scale order would seem still to apply to the buildings, at least for me.

that are developed there.

And that's one thing I think from the study of the 64 corridor in terms of an update to the guidelines and one that would I think require interface possibly with planning and zoning and the supervisors would be looking at whether we can increase the requirements for landscape buffers along some corridors to try and protect the overall rural character of the county in those zones that are not yet as intensively developed.

I think the emphasis in this corridor and some of the text on preserving mountain views is good.

I think as we're looking through the corridors, identifying areas where there are view sheds that might be compromised by future refrigerated building high rises or other things may be something at least I would be interested in considering.

I don't know why there are others.

And so toward that extent, I think the northern edge of this zone by the railroads

I don't know what the zoning is for this area too, but to the extent the buildings don't become too tall, then the mountainous backdrop of Crozet can remain.

Does anyone have any questions or comments on this segment?

Sure.

So this segment is characterized mostly by wooded borders.

It has a lot of residential development on it, and the road tends to go with a topography.

So you kind of see these

Kind of distant views, but also wooded.

It's it's really characterized by its topography.

There aren't many developments on here that would be reviewed currently by the ARB because they are residential in nature.

So a lot of the pictures at the bottom you'll see have that you don't really see a whole lot of buildings in them.

Wasn't there expansion on, or one of these?

I can't recall exactly where it was.

But it was set pretty far back.

I think they did an addition and parking, but it's set back and kind of down.

And that's closer into town.

And then you get past that it's pretty residential.

Yes, I think that was one of the things that I think is of interest to me in terms of any future update would be to what extent in residential areas we could make at least some landscape, some corridor landscape guidelines applicable to residential development, because I don't believe they are currently.

For the most part, a lot of it's been very well screened, but there are sporadic instances where it's coming very close to the corridor and there's no real buffer to it.

So to Dade's question or point, if it's single family detached, there's not even a land, we can't even impose a landscape buffer provision.

And that's, we see like monument signs, like a neighborhood sign, or is that also exempt, like?

That is a good question.

Okay.

Well, it would be a change to the ordinance of zoning text amendment, but I think probably the route that makes more sense is to when we get back to considering the

Back to the arterial issue and the quarters that were not arterials and thinking about when we have the final list of those that wouldn't be arterials, what other options would we be looking at?

Possibly historic districts, possibly scenic highway.

I think some of those other options are probably better suited to address that issue.

And I guess I have a question about that, the single family detached development being outside of the ARB's typical review.

I guess I just wonder if that creates an incentive towards single family detached development where someone would propose a

where there might be situations where a townhome or a multifamily development would be more appropriate and could provide additional screening or whatever or be more desirable addition to the corridors if the opportunity to evade that level of scrutiny or review is like a deciding point for anyone searching to do a project or if it's just like we do single-family homes and that's our thing and they never really think about the ARB and it's not a big deal.

I guess I'm wondering if

Others might be better able to answer that question.

Yeah.

Not necessarily.

I think the zoning is more what's going to dictate

because the zoning will help dictate price.

And if somebody is paying for multifamily, they're not building single family because those numbers don't work.

Maybe townhouse, you could argue, but I think, yeah, typically their developers are going to seek to maximize their density.

The A or B screening guidelines is probably not a significant factor.

I agree.

We're pretty important, but we're not that important.

Just kidding.

I think single families just would be an existing R1 lot that either has a house or could be a house, but if it's anything other than just a single residence, I think

Yeah, and it's, you know, outside of the developed, you know, kind of urban ring, you're not going to have much or any multifamily, right?

I'm not quite sure where the development area begins and ends along this corridor.

It might be fully contained within the corridor.

I need to look that up.

Based on the development pattern, it's around some very large developments, so I don't think it would be

I don't think it's safe to say that this is cordoned off from more dense residential development in the future, especially with its proximity to downtown.

There's Old Trail below it.

There's Glenbrook above it.

Yeah, I guess if I was thinking about if we're adding this requirement along corridors, like you mentioned, that would be maybe scenic byways or highways that I don't think the zoning in any of those instances would allow.

I think we're dealing with single family detached in most instances.

Yeah, so if it's just a single parcel and it's not somebody developing multiple parcels, all is detached residences.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

We'd have to, I don't know exactly how it would work.

Right, it looks like in the Crozet master plan, it looks like the DCD ends a taper on the

It could be, I think it would be,

Along corridors, I think in urban design, it's nice to have a similar context on both sides of the street.

So if you have an active place, it's active on both sides.

And if you have a passive place, it's passive on both sides.

So they reinforce each other in terms of activity and also a stopping point because like in a

like a very downtown feel and segment.

You want that to ideally be about a third of a mile long, I think is best practice.

So I don't know that you would really want that kind of activity, particularly that's appropriate in a downtown to extend only on one side of the street longer than it wants to.

If Taber Street is where that district ends on both sides of the street, then I think that's appropriate as an ending point.

I think it raises a natural question about why the DCD was extended south on the left side, but not on the right, to your point.

All right, any additional questions or comments?

Brownsville is the last segment along this corridor, and it ends at Route 250.

Because two corridors with somewhat different characters intersect at 250, we take the storage facility that we reviewed recently.

That's a good question.

And then I think I wonder if this one might be joined to the segment we were just looking at previously as one with different terminus.

And isn't that corner parcel the only thing that's sewn differently?

It is.

The structures are kind of different.

They have a different relationship to the street.

Some of them are subdivision focused and they have internal streets.

They also have kind of the ones in this segment are newer in nature, so they are larger

Lot coverage of the buildings.

There's not as much landscaping, not as much of a wooded buffer.

And the structures in general are a lot more visible in this segment.

And the views that you get driving in the northern direction are more of the mountains, which is and then in the segment just north of it, the views are more of a rolling landscape and less distant.

in nature.

But that might not be coming out in the segment sheets right now, that differentiation.

Yeah, I guess this is one of those tricky questions of like,

are the, like to what extent this project documents and reflects the existing built fabric of what's along the corridor and to what extent it's like which segments should be treated similarly as a matter of policy.

Because it does feel kind of like, I kind of can both see the idea that they feel similar when you're driving these segments and just that, and it kind of raises the question of,

If you were looking at a development at the other segment we just reviewed, would the development that happens in this segment be an appropriate, you know, contextual reference to be applying to that other situation?

Or does it make sense that they would be treated separately?

Because that's kind of, I feel like that's kind of the central question, right?

It's like, if we treated them as one segment, then this is an appropriate reference for what the context is.

That's right, yeah.

There'll be some careful wording there.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay, the next, oh, did, are we ready?

Sorry, okay.

Just realized that I might not have read your cue, great.

Okay, so the last segment today is Fontaine, or the last quarter is Fontaine.

This we viewed as a single segment and a single spread.

So graphically, the map uses the same graphic language and layout as the other corridor sheets where it's a finite end to end and then highlights what is along it to be reviewed.

There's a portion of the segment that's inside the Charlottesville boundary.

We don't control that.

So we kind of viewed it as what would Albemarle County be fine with and what it is authorized to control.

Most of the developments along this segment are owned by the university.

They have deep setbacks, very mature landscaped buffers with larger trees.

The Rivanna Trail is in this area as well, but we focused on the landscaping as the biggest portion.

There is some, you can

Is the Route 29 bypass on our list of entrance corridors or no?

It is.

Could we go back to the previous slide too?

I guess one, to add things to Mariah's graphics plate, is if there are corridors that are shown in other maps, I think it would be helpful to know, just like on this one,

All the property on the north side is zoned R1.

I sort of gathered that from the summary, the last sentence and the characteristics.

I guess this is kind of where I get a little bit maybe confused or just, because in my mind, knowing that the Fontaine Research Park is slated for redevelopment, I don't necessarily have any opinions right now about whether it needs to retain the character of being a research park, you know?

So,

It might turn to a deeper look at what are the characteristics to avoid?

Like what would incompatibility look like more than when is it appropriate to break compatibility?

It looks like the zoning on the north side is primarily R1.

The university as a state entity is exempt from this board's review.

Does that apply as well to the real estate foundation?

Okay, excellent.

Is Fontaine on the city side of BAR?

I don't know.

It might be an entrance corridor in the city.

They were talking about actually changing that.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

So all those properties, 764587, those are all owned by UVA.

I mean it's kind of an interesting situation where like the whole corridor could be in theory

that by the university that there's, you know, it's not like it would be like, oh, this lower part has to be compatible with the R1 neighborhood across the street.

A lot of time.

All right.

No.

But I guess as with all the previous drafts, we'd just like to say thank you to Mariah and Margaret for the work.

It's really wonderful and really appreciate what you're putting together, the questions you're raising for the board and the process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

When I plugged the computer back in, it didn't seem to go.

Just a last comment on this.

Maybe since there wasn't kind of any, a finite feeling either way as to how the corridor might develop in the future, might this be an area where we just peel back a lot of the information contained and just focus on the characteristics to avoid instead of noting what is currently there since it's all under the control of one

Pretty sizable landowner.

Maybe it doesn't need structures at all if the board feels like a lot could be compatible in this area and would naturally be compatible with itself.

Okay.

That's the end of the segments and corridors that we have for you today.

We just wanted to go through the next round of corridor assignments.

That's okay.

So the dates that we projected for you all to have your surveys completed, if you look at the column that's furthest to the right, you know, that's just to give us time to get through them all.

So we won't

You know, process them immediately.

Yeah, it doesn't need to get something done.

Someone needs to be on time.

Right.

But I do have a question about the maps.

As you were doing your survey, were those maps helpful?

Were they not helpful?

Very helpful.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you all.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

I guess we'll move to other business.

Approval of the September 6th, 2022 minutes.

Sure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the next ARB meeting is scheduled for October 3, 2022.

This will be an in-person meeting.

All right, sounds like we will have a quorum.

I do have one thing.

I'm having trouble hearing most of you.

So I think if everyone can try and bring their mics closer and they'd not to pick on you, but I'm wondering if maybe we could switch you and Taro and so that you're not having to move back and forth.

Or I could go further down the road if that works.

Is it possible to turn these up?

What makes it difficult is all of them are on the same panel.

Really what needs to happen is

There needs to be an insulated receiver in between lanes.

Can we pin them to our lapels?

So, Dave Benish, somebody turned the mics up.

Somebody turned the mics up already?

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Dave Benish had reached out to me about attending Places 29 resident planning.

I thought I was going to be able to attend.

It turns out I'm going to be out of town.

So thank you for bringing that up.

I think David was going to contact the chairperson for that CAC today.

Our recommendation is that we wait until November and do it at that time.

So we'll figure out what that

I appreciate that.

That was my concern also.

I could physically be there, but I would have preferred someone with more tenure on the board be that representative.

So I wanted to raise it.

It could be beneficial.

We don't necessarily need to limit it to one person.

Two ARB members could attend.

We wouldn't want to do three because then it's a meeting of the ARB.

What are the issues, Dean?

Like for what purpose?

I believe that some CAC members want to hear directly from ARB members how applications are considered and reviewed and approved.

Okay.

All right.

Does anyone have anything else?

No.

This meeting is adjourned to the next meeting on October 3rd.

Thank you.