Architectural Review Board Meeting   11/7/2022

I'm calling the November 7th, 2022 meeting of the Albemarle County Architecture Review Board to order.

Yes, sir, I am.

Mr. Stoner?

Here.

All right, thanks.

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 is provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

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

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

All speakers, when is your turn to speak, please first state your name for the record.

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

Staff will let us know when the 15 minutes are up.

If applicants in the meeting room have team members attending virtually who will need to present, please make that known when you come to the podium.

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

Do any ARB members have anything to disclose?

All right, thank you.

There are no consent agenda items today.

There is one regular review item today, which will be presented by Chris Taggart.

It is ARB 2022-83, Forest Lakes Self-Storage.

Application I'm presenting today is the review of architecture and final site plan to construct a self-storage facility in addition to associated site improvements.

The site is located along Werf Crossing, west of the Werf Crossing Regent Street intersection and approximately 365 feet east of Route 29 entrance corridor.

The ARB reviewed the initial site plan in 2021 and again earlier this year due to the approval of the initial site plan expiring.

Staffs in the board's comments on the initial site plan mainly focused on the building design.

A revised building design was presented at the March 2021 ARB meeting that satisfied those comments.

No changes have been made to the building design since the 2021 review.

Since the initial review of the Forest Lakes proposal, another extra space storage building has been proposed, with both building designs sharing similarities in the way they addressed the county's entrance corridor guidelines.

In both building designs, brick was added to the upper levels of the building.

In the ARB's review of the Fifth Street building design, board members commented that the added brick might make the building appear more massive when viewed from the Fifth Street entrance quarter.

In the Forest Lake's building design, this is expected to be less of an issue due to the building being a story shorter and more frontage building and landscaping along the entrance quarter.

However, the building design is massive and the walls are largely relieved only by false windows with minimal recesses or projections.

Providing perspectives that illustrate the view from both directions on the frontage road with and without landscaping would help to clarify any potential visual impacts on the entrance quarter.

Staff recommends approval of the final site plan with the changes listed in the staff report to be reviewed by staff.

All right.

Thanks a lot, Chris.

Yes.

Thanks, Chris.

So this is review for final site plan.

Is that correct?

Correct.

It'd be up to the board's prerogative.

The way the staff is written, it would be any, or there's no revisions requested to the architectural design, but the perspective is provided with Reese Middle, right, as it's written now would be reviewed by staff, but the comic can be changed, the recommendation can be changed, or we could bring those perspectives back as a other business item.

Okay.

Taro?

All right, thanks a lot.

They're both here.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rachel Moon.

I'm a planner with SHMP Engineering.

I'm here today with Kelsey Schlein, another planner at SHMP, and Barry Bird of Barry Bird Architecture.

They're here virtually with us to answer any questions.

Together, we're representing the developer for the project, Centennial American Properties.

Oh, actually,

Hang on one second.

No, you're doing fine.

I do this for literally everyone in every meeting.

You're totally good.

Okay, we're here to represent the developer for the property, Centennial American Properties, who seeks to construct a self-storage building within the Forest Lake Shopping Center.

The site is located off of Route 29 on Worth Crossing.

It's located within the Forest Lake Shopping Center, which is across from the Hollymead Town Center.

South of the shopping center is the Forest Lake's residential development, and right to the north is the recently approved Maplewood PRD.

The initial site plan for the project is approved, and we are currently working on submitting the final site plan for review.

The site plan proposes a building footprint of roughly 35,000 square feet, which is proposed as three stories totaling just over 100,000 square feet of self storage uses.

The site gains access from an existing right and only from Route 29 and would connect to the shopping center's parking area and vehicular circulation.

There's also a new entrance proposed off of Worth Crossing.

Additionally, there is an outdoor sitting area that's proposed adjacent to the Maplewood PRD, and there is a 10-foot multi-use path that's proposed along the Werth Crossing frontage.

The site section was submitted as part of the final ARB application and shows that the property is downgraded from Route 29 and is approximately or is over 300 feet from the entrance corridor.

the southwest elevation which would face on 229 showing the tower elements at the corners the brick facade coming up two stories and the false windows along that edge another view of that perspective also showing the vehicular loading area that cuts through on the other side of the building

and a face-on elevation which shows a dashed outline of the rooftop equipment which would not be visible from the entrance corridor.

So most of the staff comments on the civil side pertain to the lighting plan, one of which we addressed prior to the meeting, which would be the pole finish of the lighting fixtures.

This would be a dark gray to match the adjacent shopping center lighting fixtures and any building mounted lights that we do propose will be coordinated with the architects and they'll be submitted with the final site plan for review.

And that's it for my side of the presentation.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We'll go to questions for the applicant.

Sure.

Thank you, Chris.

I think

Building on the last presentation for the similar complex at, I guess it's Fifth Street extended, I appreciate the applicant had a number of proposals for ways to further break down the scale of the elevations.

I think contrasting brick colors, a little more relief.

And then I think also a little more

Not uniformity, but similarity in terms of the expression of the tower elements.

I appreciate staff's comments about maybe avoiding the two facilities looking exactly alike.

All right, thanks, Dave.

All right, thanks.

Frank?

These are questions for the applicant?

Yes.

Do we want to ask the applicant to speak to what they did?

Sure.

Sure.

I'm sorry, this is Barry Bird.

The question, I'm not sure I understood.

Sure, yeah, thank you, Mr. Byrd.

So I appreciated the suggestions of additional strategies that you're considering for the facility at 5th Street extended to further articulate and break down the scale of the elevations.

And as I recall, those included using possibly contrasting brick in the openings and increasing the relief in those openings.

And then I think also you were going to look at developing

More consistency in the tower forms in terms of either having them all be punched or all be sort of a banded strip window at the top.

And so I was just interested to ask whether you're considering any of those strategies or you think any of those might be applicable.

OK.

And that's one question.

The second might be, I think staff made a good point about the facilities having a lot of similarities visually.

Okay, got it.

Appreciate the question.

Due to the limitations of our system, we cannot display the presentation and have our remote participants talking at the same time.

Got it.

Well, the items that you discussed, one of them was to highlight the windows on Fifth Street by, one, putting a little bit darker brick inside those false windows and also recessing it a little bit more.

I think we would actually like to do that on this project.

The things, the ideas and the thoughts that were expressed by the board really were very good.

and we thought they would also help this particular project so we were going to propose doing that also it adds a little bit more contrast to those windows the top band was going to be three punched windows rather than a ribbon window so that that similarity follows the building all the way around

Those were comments from Fifth Street and we thought they were excellent suggestions and so if the board would like we would certainly like to do them on this project also.

As far as the similarities in the building, there are similarities, but Fifth Street's a four-story building.

It's L-shaped in design.

This particular one is more rectangular in design, and it's only three stories.

So even though the buildings will have a similarity, they will also have their own distinct personality and look.

All right, thanks a lot.

I do not have any questions that haven't already been covered.

All right, thanks.

The ARB will now go into discussion.

I guess my feeling is that it would be good to discuss the issue of the similarities between the buildings.

I don't know that I have a strong feeling of the need to differentiate them, but I'd be interested in hearing if any other board members do.

And then as far as the earlier issues around the detailing, I think

You know, if the applicant is amenable to including those in the next set of drawings that they produce, I think that that's a reasonable thing that we could just include it for the submission as well.

But yeah, does anyone else have a thought on the similarities between buildings?

Is that something we should be?

To me, I feel that the buildings, even though when you look at them side by side in the renderings, they look quite similar.

I would tend to agree with you, Taro.

I think just the design of the two buildings, although similar or not,

particularly trademarky to me that you would identify one if you're driving across town and then see the other one and say like, oh, that's another one of those self storage places.

I agree.

I tend to agree as well.

Frank, do you have any additional comments?

No, I think it's a nice application.

All right, thanks.

No, thank you, Chris.

All right, I guess there's one other.

Did we see like a landscaping plan or they

I guess my only comment would be, and we kind of covered this when we talked about the Fifth Street application, is the straight on elevations show the kind of the backside of the raised tower elements and even though I suspect that you might not see them

from the corridor, or for that matter, from anywhere else.

It would be good if, and this gets to one of the staff comments too, to provide some perspectives from the corridor.

We could do that.

We'll just run through in the same order that we did the comments if anyone has any changes they'd like to make to the motion.

So I guess what would be the best way to include, I guess we could summarize, consider, you know, contrasting brick color at the false windows, window recess at the false windows as well.

In addition to number two,

If I'm going too fast, then just let me know.

Provide perspective renderings from both directions on the entrance corridor street.

Thanks, Frank.

Just a quick question for staff.

Did I miss it or was there only two site plan sheets in the package?

It was a landscape plan and a lighting plan.

And is that what we're talking about with number three, to provide the additional sheets?

Okay.

And that was probably a response to comments or clarification.

Thanks, Dave.

I don't believe so.

All right.

I don't either.

Could I get a second on that?

I'll second.

Yes.

All right, thanks a lot.

We'll move on to our work session.

There is one work session today.

It is on the Entrance Corridor Design Guidelines Addenda.

I will in just a minute.

Oops.

Hello, everyone.

So today we're going to be looking at Route 250 East and assorted revised sheets that have been before you before and required revision.

There's one corridor that we did not include the revised sheets for, that's 240.

You'll see that in one of the upcoming meetings.

So first I had a question about whether you'd kind of like to go through these as spreads or as sheets.

Great.

Okay, so the first one for your review is Route 250 East as a corridor.

So this corridor was broken up into three different segments.

The first was, and this is one of the first, or one of the last corridors that is organized by starting at the city of Charlottesville and emanating out.

This is the last one you'll see like that we've previously talked about organizing them such in a way as to come into and head towards the city of Charlottesville.

So just to acknowledge that you'll start to see a change of direction after this corridor.

So looking at this entrance corridor, again, three segments.

Gateway is that beginning segment from Free Bridge to about the high point, the topographic high point at kind of Rock and Road.

And that area is more commercial in nature.

And then suburban office park goes from about State Farm Boulevard down to the intersection of or the energy 64 interchange.

And that is

More where we see development start to face inwards with very robust landscape buffers.

And then from the I-64 interchange down to the intersection of Route 22 is our last segment and that's rural commercial.

It is like its name, rural in nature with pockets of commercial.

So I didn't have any suggested revisions, but really appreciated, Mariah, the way you sort of synthesized the segments and really appreciated the addition of the background on this corridor, the history and development.

It is very interesting along this corridor.

Okay, so next we move to the gateway, which is our first one.

The images for this spill over to a second sheet.

And this is that more commercial aspect.

It's also in a comp plan called, which is the Pantops master plan.

It's referred to as dealership row.

So this is that more commercial one.

And just to acknowledge here, we did do some updates across all of the sheets to clarify and abbreviate some of the headings that we used.

I guess I was thinking about the question of scale, because they are like one, technically one story buildings, but they are tall.

Yeah, this is a very popular corridor segment at the ARB.

We spend a lot of time talking about this stretch of dealership row, I guess.

So just want to make sure it captures maybe a lot of the buildings we use as reference points.

I know I use the bank building, so that's here.

That's good.

I talk about that a fair amount.

I'm trying to think if there was another one recently.

One of the things we talk about a lot with this corridor is the topped trees example.

It's a great example of what not to do.

I don't know if it's still there.

Are those trees still there?

I can't.

The ones that are topped.

Yeah.

But just knowing how we see a lot of applications on this corridor that

Maybe careful consideration to what images we show here.

The new dealership that's just opened.

We spent a fair amount of time on that.

I think the Luxor is good.

Next segment.

Yes, it's around, I think it's State Farm Boulevard, then Peter Jefferson, if I'm getting the, that's a road, right?

Yes, that's State, oh wait, State Farm's up.

I'm thinking of the entrance to Martha Jefferson.

Isn't that called Peter Jefferson?

Yeah.

Yeah, Frank, I think that's a good point, that this one comes up a lot.

Yes, and I think in terms of scale, we did acknowledge in the write-up that most are one story, a few or two stories, and there is room for height.

One of the things that's been a factor in this corridor in the past has been the view from Monticello.

And I'm wondering how that actually factors into a future consideration under these guidelines.

Is that still a factor?

So the comp plan talks about maintaining the viewshed from Monticello and we have some policies in place for applicants to coordinate with Monticello.

We do not have specific guidelines and it's not the ARB's charge to make sure that that is done and actually in

In some cases, the view from Monticello is the opposite view that you would have from the entrance quarter, depending which side of the road you're on.

One more quick comment.

All right, moving on to the suburban office.

This is a one sheet.

Is there a view you can get of that?

Okay.

Oh, I think there is some zoning that's residential and some zoning that is commercial, but there is a pocket where those across the street from Peter Jefferson Parkway, that's residential.

Is it C1?

Yeah, I think it's a higher elevation than 250.

Plan Development Shopping Center.

Oh, Plan Development Shopping Center, okay.

I'm not sure.

We can look into that and get you some more info next time.

I have the master plan pulling up, but it is a large document.

So it's taking a little bit of time.

So that's the second segment.

The third segment is rural commercial, which goes from the I-64 interchange down to the intersection of Route 22 where the Exxon station is.

The developments in this segment are a little more visible, less of a landscape buffer, but some of them do have a landscape buffer.

There isn't much development, but we did include kind of those bookends of development, which are the first images and the last image actually.

Yes.

That was landscaping and setback.

It is in front.

All right, so that concludes kind of our new corridor and segments.

Now we're moving into the revised sheets.

Could we go back to the suburban office park for a second?

I guess we're going to call out the Peter Jefferson entry.

Is that right?

No, I think like anything that, well, maybe.

I guess I was just thinking it would be good to reference that it just because it's such a

Not very visible from the corridor, but it's a very, it's like the main thing here.

That's all I had.

OK. OK, so this one, our rural areas west and east of Ivy Depot.

I had previously shown two different versions of a combined corridor.

One with a lot of maps and one with a lot of images.

When it came before the board last time, we said that we really liked the maps and we liked the big images.

So I put them together on now a two sheet spread and updated the maps accordingly to to be compatible and cohesive with our other maps.

And there was also a comment to identify where on the corridor historic elements existed.

So you'll see a marker on the

east of Ivy Depot maps numbers one and two, and those correspond to the picture images top left corner.

And in the final publication, I guess this would be a spread where you would see from, cause I didn't really pick up on that when I was going through it myself.

And I guess just cause I was looking at it, how we're looking now, just page by page.

Yes.

So in a spread version, it would lay out and you might want to close your eyes.

Could we just put like a little note or something in the map, like on the single page, if you just put like 1.3470 Ivy Road or something, just so that if you're looking at that spread, at least you know that the number one and the number two correspond to something.

But I think you can just do that with text.

Good.

Yeah, or are there more resources throughout the county that we would want to like number sequentially?

And you've addressed that in a table of contents or something and there's a list somewhere of all of them and then they're peppered throughout.

I don't know.

This is the first time we've seen this, right?

With the numbers?

Well, I think the importance here is that you're in two different locations.

So it's more vitally important to know which historic areas or which historic photos correspond to which areas.

So you get an idea of where, like which segment we're even talking about locationally.

on the historic precedents that are located on east ivy depot but more to have context that they those might are on the same corridor so oh i'd like to think about that suggestion a little bit because i i like it a lot but um i don't know how much more work that would be to um i don't want to be the one creating more work definitely

But in the original guidelines document at the end, there is a list of buildings that are precedents and the addresses.

And this would be just sort of an updated version of that.

Oh, we're in the spreads.

Okay, now we're at Rinehart Road.

This is, again, along Route 250 West.

The comments last time this came before the board were to change the typography of the presidents, the description of the presidents that have been grouped and also provide some separation.

So we've changed the typography.

Yeah, this is great.

The next one is the Route 29 bypass.

The change in this one was the maps, the label, the title labels of the structures, landscapes, elements of orderly and attractive development.

The other change was to acknowledge in the bottom right image that if the sound barriers are continued that they should coordinate with existing ones in texture and variation and should have increased landscape buffers.

And then we also included a placeholder box to take a photo of the St. Anne Belfields School.

But in Google Streets, all of the leaves are on in all of the years, so you can't see through to the development.

And then in terms of these next couple of segments or corridors, I'm sorry, Frank, am I cutting off?

No, that's fine.

OK.

These are map updates and label updates.

Again, an update to the map.

The precedent images state the same.

Yeah, I think this is looking really good.

Feels like very finished, or not like it's, I mean- Polished?

Well, and I think just the fact that there were the revised sheets added to the new sheets that we were seeing, I for one just started to get a sense of like what the whole thing is gonna look like just after

So I hesitate to bring this up, but I will.

Because it came to mind as I was working on the 20 north corridor, I started thinking there are a number of corridors that have very similar characteristics.

Yeah, we've talked about that.

That makes makes a lot of sense.

I'm not sure which which is the best way to do it.

But if you're finding that in one of the quarters that you're currently working on and you've seen us already review that and something that's done, you could just like make a note of that and just say, you know, what we said on this other quarter absolutely applies in this segment.

One of the things that I was thinking about with this when we had already looked at grouping to disconnected areas was, is there room to add more to it?

Say we had three or four segments, would it all fit on a sheet or how could we organize that to keep kind of grouping?

Yeah well I guess not to like make it more complicated but like uh the the images of the stone walls for instance are just like a helpful that that image is very helpful that's sheet even if it's not technically located in a different corridor like I could see the benefit or the wisdom and like looking at it as a whole set of

I don't know how you would do that exactly.

I think it's nice that it's organized along the whole corridor.

I wouldn't want to necessarily chop it up and move these things all around to group them in a different way, but I guess you raise a good point.

We could maintain the corridors as they are and if the language and the descriptions and all that is the same from one segment to another segment in another corridor, we just pick up on that consistency.

And I just think as we're moving through the corridors, we're realizing that, you know, some of these sorts of things are just, you couldn't have foreseen.

So it seems like that's good to go through each quarter individually, and then you start to see patterns and maybe ways to simplify the order.

We anticipate working on this for the next three or four years.

Cool.

Awesome.

Great.

Thank you.

And we'll move on to other business.

First of which is the draft rules of procedure, particularly the remote participation aspect of that.

So we can actually adopt the revised rules at this meeting if we so choose, so I'll just

Go through and see if anyone has any comments.

And I guess if there are no comments, we'll maybe just adopt them at this meeting.

The only thing that I think would be helpful is to see if we had a resolution.

I just remember somebody had a question, a sort of semi-legal question, if that had been resolved.

I do.

Actually, I didn't, but I had to look it up and I have it here for you.

There was a question about how

the two meetings or the 25% was calculated and I'm just going to read from the email from Andy Herrick in the County Attorney's Office is the limit of two meetings or 25% is just for the personal matters that was described in item D in the

in the Rules of Procedure, and that limit is calculated for each individual member and not for the board as a whole.

As long as each individual member invokes a personal matter no more than twice or 25%, it's theoretically possible for every meeting to have at least one remote participant.

So if somebody had like a them or a family member with a chronic illness or something going on, they wouldn't be restricted to only using two meetings or 25%.

It would only apply to the personal something is correct.

All right.

Dave, do you have any comments?

I don't.

Thank you, Chris.

I don't think so.

But why the two for that one item?

That is beyond my ability to answer, sorry.

Do you guys find it easier to run a meeting that's both in person and virtual or no?

Oh, that's a state law issue.

Oh.

Frank?

Great.

Second.

All right.

Sure.

Who made the second?

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

So on to the approval of the September 19th, 2022 minutes.

Top notch set of minutes.

So I could get a motion to approve.

So moved.

Second?

Seconded.

I'm sorry.

Oh, okay.

I always draw my motion.

October 3rd, 2022.

All right.

So what I just said, only October 23rd minutes.

October 3rd, sorry.

Trying to think if I was at that meeting.

You can move.

That's right.

That's right.

I was absent, so I will.

So, other items?

Well, we can ask after the meeting.

Okay, it moved, so it's no longer tomorrow.

Okay, great.

No.

Okay, sorry.

Okay, thank you.

So if there are no other items, this meeting is adjourned to the next meeting on November 21st.

On my watch, it is 2... 2.03 p.m. Got to get up there.