Architectural Review Board Meeting   12/5/2022

All right.

It is 101 by my watch.

Yes.

Here.

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 it 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.

Carolyn 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.

No.

All right.

Great.

All right, thanks.

There are no consent agenda items today.

Although there are two applications listed under regular review items on the agenda, we will only be reviewing the first one today.

The applicant for the second item, ARB-2022-94, RioPoint, has requested deferral.

So we will move to ARB 2022-93, Galaxy Farm Preliminary.

Yes.

The proposal in front of you today is the final site plan and preliminary review of architecture for 16 attached townhomes in addition to 43 detached residents with associated site improvements.

This initial site plan for this project was approved in August of 2021.

Site is located on Galaxy Farm Lane, which is on the north side of Route 20 near the intersection with Mill Creek Drive and Route 20.

The surrounding area is mostly rural and residential with some commercial parcels interspersed.

Town homes are grouped into one group of four and two groups of six units within the development.

A complete landscape plan and architectural drawings have been included with this middle.

The landscape plan shows a mix of deciduous tree species between lot 4 and 5 and 15 to 21 in the entrance quarter.

They're expected to filter views of the development from the entrance quarter.

However, there are a few interior tree and utility conflicts that would need to be resolved.

Regarding the architecture, a single design is shown in the color renderings and multiple designs are shown in line drawings for the townhomes.

Power designs have not been keyed to the site plan, so it is unclear where they are located.

Keying the various designs to the site layout will be needed.

Design shown in color renderings has a brick base with a mixture of horizontal and vertical siding above.

The rear and side elevations feature material and color changes as well as changes in depth and that help add visual interest and break up the elevations.

However, one of the colors proposed, Arctic White, which is used in several locations on the front, rear, and side elevations, is one that has been limited by the board in review of similar developments to trim and decorative features.

Common theme of the design shown in the line drawings is a stone base that varies in height with either a single type or mixture of horizontal shake in vertical side and above.

The rear and side elevations of these designs feature a single material and potentially a single color.

Due to distance and sight elements between the entrance quarter and the townhomes, the views of these buildings is expected to be filtered, limiting the need for additional architectural features.

However, wall colors and warmer earth tones that vary from one townhome to the next would help both blend the buildings into the surrounding context and reduce the scale of the townhome blocks.

Staff has provided three recommended points of discussion and we've listed a number of recommended changes in the staff report.

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Sure, just a couple.

Thanks, Chris.

Given the kind of distance from the corridor, do we consider the landscaping as like frontage landscaping?

Does it have to meet those requirements as far as the

Larger tree sizes.

Landscaping in the buffer.

In the initial site plan review, we considered the nature of naturalistic arrangement.

Okay.

And then just curious, what kind of governs the plantings that are shown as far as requirement?

Is that a buffer requirement or is that more,

and a staff level review that prompts that landscaping.

Okay.

Oh, my screen went blank.

Can't see the plan.

Thanks.

I don't have any more questions.

All right.

Thanks.

Tara, do you have any questions?

No, I don't.

Thank you.

David?

Chris, thanks for the report.

So the area of riprap is these areas, there's some here, and I think, yeah, I think that makes up all the areas.

So the existing vegetation along 20 here,

It's shown in the staff, the photos taken in the staff report.

And then with the site visit, the riprap was below 20.

So it was initially thought in the initial site plan would be more visible, but with a site visit, you get time for really low visibility.

No other questions.

Thanks, David.

I don't have any questions either.

Nice to see all of you.

I just have a brief PowerPoint that helps basically key us into exactly where the various designs are on the units are on the site, if that might help the discussion at all.

and I also have Scott Collins with me from Collins Engineering if you all have any engineering related questions of him.

This is an overall color rendering of the site so you can see the features a little bit better, all of the open space.

The site is primarily single-family detached homes with the three areas of attached

product that staff has already mentioned.

As you can see from this, for any of the units we're at least 300 feet away from the road if not more with a variety of buffering via landscape happening in between those areas or

built single-family homes.

So we recognize there will be some visibility of these units, but it's probably going to be pretty limited.

And then if we zoom into the area that we're discussing today, you can see that it's three different unit types that we're talking about.

So in the brownish color here, those are front-loaded townhomes,

The kind of pinkish reddish color is a two over one product that is more front loaded.

And then we also have a townhouse product that is rear loaded that will have the frontage along this open space amenity shown as block eight.

So the first grouping we'll talk about is lot 22 through 27.

and today we're really looking for

Feedback.

So this is showing kind of the general design of what this unit type will look like, but you'll notice this is even one short of what it will actually be.

So this is not an exact depiction, but we would love any feedback like we've already gotten from staff on the concept, the colors,

the features, that sort of thing would be really helpful.

But this shows you that rear elevation and how you would access the one-story units down below which will be affordable units on the site.

And then there are those side elevations and I guess the areas of the lighter Arctic white that staff commented on would like to see

Different coloring and warmer tones on the site.

So that's those areas.

And this kind of goes through the general material choices for those units.

So let's see the next grouping.

We're gonna go 18 through 21.

So these are the ones that are closest to the entrance corridor where you will have buffering between the rear of the lots, but they probably have the potential to be maybe a little more visible than some of the other units.

So this will be the front elevation, which is, will not,

be visible at all from the entrance corridor.

And these are the same elevations that you all saw in your packet, but you did not have the render.

This is just the colored version of those.

And then, yeah, the rear elevation of those.

And this is that front elevation that would be directly on the open space and

Yeah, I would say.

And then there were also questions about the fencing on site that will certainly make sure that we have those details in the next submittal.

But this gives you an idea of general privacy fencing or security fencing on site.

So we can go back to any of those slides if you want to

speak specifically about one section or the other.

But yeah, basically we've got two different home builders, three different architects, so different choices going on in those areas right now, but we'd love to get your feedback on the concept as it stands now.

All right, thanks.

Let's see if board members have questions for the applicant.

No, I appreciate walking us through the elevations.

Let's head, I guess you're looking for preliminary feedback now.

Well, I guess, yeah, we'll do that in discussion maybe.

We'll just see if anybody has any questions.

I guess one question maybe going to the next group of townhouses and maybe the next elevation.

It looked like

Well, all of these, but one, it seems have the same eve height, I assume floor elevation.

Yeah, Scott Collins, civil engineer.

Well, I just noticed in this one that there's very little other than the one unit at the end that steps up in height.

Oh, to be the same height.

I believe we could probably make them all the same height.

That'd be more desirable.

And then I guess I appreciated maybe in the, well, sorry, we'll reserve comments for discussion later.

All right, thanks, David.

I don't really, other than a quick question on 22 through 27, is that it?

Really just more curiosity in anything.

You guys are using black vinyl on the front.

Yeah, I think something is strange happening in the rendering because it looks like

in this central portion of the rendering that it's white, but I know in their material package that everything's called out in black.

Sorry, where is that?

It's the adjacent piece of land, yeah.

That's all.

Sure.

Thank you for walking us through that.

That was very helpful and to see this color rendered plan.

My question was about the fence.

Just curious in updating or clarifying, are you going to show location?

Is that the main question?

I don't have any questions.

All right, great.

The ARB will now go into discussion.

I guess the only thing in the staff report there was an image of the current street view.

Is there any way we could pull that up?

I guess my sense is

I don't know how visible a lot of this would be from the entrance corridor.

And to the extent that the applicant is able, at the next time we meet, to provide some sort of way of visualizing against this image of what's there on the side of the road, if there's any way we could just at least get a sense for where those buildings will be and their massings.

But otherwise, they don't have a lot of concerns about the project as presented for that reason.

Yeah, that's kind of how I'm feeling right now.

Sure, I agree with Taro.

I think it's far enough away and it benefits from the stream and open space and existing trees that are going to remain.

So, no, I think it's not going to have a huge impact on the corridor, so.

I agree with my colleagues that I think the distance from the EC coupled with sort of the layering of landscape mean that I don't think this will have a very significant impact

and I would be comfortable with the overall approval and deferring to staff level review at this point.

I think the designs presented I think are appropriate.

I think the first complex presented has a nicer maybe variety of forms and features and less repetition in terms of sort of the dormers and the roof scape.

Thanks, Dade.

I agree with everything everyone said.

I don't really have anything to add.

I agree with Dade.

I think the first set of townhomes, which is obviously a different architect and probably a different builder, may not have the opportunity to expand that.

But I thought that was a nice composition and something we haven't really seen much of.

All right.

I'm also in agreement with everything that's been said.

I didn't see anything objectionable about it and I think the buffer is of a significant enough size that visibility would be pretty limited anyway.

Yeah, my feeling was that, you know, sort of going off of what Frank had mentioned earlier, that the composition had a decent amount of variety in that context.

I think that Arctic White is appropriate if the applicant wanted to pursue it, but I know we had already had this conversation.

So I think it's a reasonable use of it and that it recedes a little bit given the darker siding on the more prominent portions.

So I'm inclined to let it go.

But if anyone else has the

Differing Opinion.

How was the guideline written?

Yeah, the decision was to limit it to trim and what was the word?

I can certainly take that back to the architect to see if they have other thoughts on colors that they might want to use.

I think we were talking about the pink area.

So this is the grouping that you were concerned about.

That's the pink.

Yeah.

So what would, I guess, primarily potentially be visible is this side elevation is what faces

The entrance corridor, it's probably, I don't know, 350 to 400 feet away.

But I agree with you.

I, for one, tend to agree with what Tara said.

I think it's enough of a variety of colors.

The Arctic white isn't dominant.

OK.

Certainly take that back to them.

Thanks.

Okay so we've got the list of comments that were in the staff report one through nine and I just took a few notes while you were having your discussion.

Yeah, for me personally, that's not critical.

Okay, 11, make the drawings consistent regarding the black or white windows.

12, maybe submit a visualization of the development from the entrance corridor street.

13, consider adding more variety in blocks 18 to 21 and 54 to 59.

And 14, consider limiting Arctic white to trim and decorative features.

Thank you, Margaret.

I guess.

Just a suggestion, so it doesn't matter if it's if we're asking for something.

Did it only apply to the units that are visible, which would be.

Then should we limit our comments to the units that are- Sure, if the board believes those are not visible, then no need to comment on them.

I kind of think just given that we have our impressions of what's visible or not, but we don't really

We haven't seen that demonstrated as a graphic.

Again, anything that's a suggestion you can take or leave.

While you're thinking about that, let me just add one other item we should have pointed out earlier.

We need a boundary line added to the site plan to show what is that exactly required on the site plan itself.

The single family detached houses on those individual lots don't really

I think we just wanted a clarification on

Number 12, if this after today is going for staff review and we, I guess we intentionally didn't come forward trying to say that this is not visible from the entrance corridor.

We recognize that it's limited visibility or I think we can probably all agree on that.

I guess I'm wondering

I didn't see anything that I thought was objectionable in the presentation, even if it was just bare dirt between the,

the road and those buildings so I just personally I think if we took that off the table I would be comfortable just with approving the buildings subject to you know staff review

just from what I've seen.

I think I agree, Chris.

I think the elevations that were presented today with the key plan were helpful in understanding what would actually be there in a way that the submission didn't provide.

I agree.

And then just what I didn't quite understand what you were saying about 15 other than the fact that single family detached is running on its own.

Without a boundary between what is required to be shown on the site plan and what you're just showing, because it's convenient to have everything on the plan, then we'd be looking at the street trees all the way through where the single family detached is, technically without that line, even the architecture of the detached.

So it's just the, yeah.

We haven't been consistent with that in the past.

We just need to get that on the plan now so that it's clear what's falling within the entrance corridor.

Exactly.

All right, does anybody have any further adjustments or questions?

I'll move for approval of the Certificate of Appropriateness for ARB 2022-93 Galaxy Farm with the following adjustments to the recommendations in the staff report.

At item 10, consider adjusting the eve height to be equal in blocks 18 through 21 and 54 through 59.

At item 11, make the drawings consistent regarding black or white windows.

At item

Welles, consider adding more variety in blocks 18 to 21 and 54 through 59.

At item 13, consider limiting Arctic white to trim and decorate to fig features.

All right.

Thanks, David.

Anybody like to second?

Thanks, Frank.

Mr. Stoner.

Mr. Stoner.

Hi.

Mr. Hancock.

Hi.

Hi.

All right.

All right, there is one work session today.

It is on the entrance corridor design guidelines addenda.

All right.

Thank you for your time.

Today, we're going to be looking over the draft agenda for the Route 631 portion of the entrance corridor and associated segments.

This is for the Raya Road West portion of the corridor.

So looking at the corridor sheet for the portion, again, this portion of Route 631, which is west of Route 29.

As you may know, the survey for the portion east of Route 29 has not been completed at this time.

OK.

Within the corridor map, we've added a new layer of symbology to reference the overlapping Rio 29 form-based code area located along the corridor, symbolized in yellow.

In addition, we included a minor stylistic update to the template.

We've replaced the colon in the title with backslashes for a lighter, cleaner, updated feel.

We as staff did question whether this corridor should ultimately be combined with another portion of an entrance corridor.

The ones we discussed were whether it should extend across Route 29 to include the route 631 East, which is Railroad East, which again has not been surveyed, or should it be combined with the route 743 Hydraulic and Earlysville Roads.

So that's the corridor sheet.

The corridor was divided into two segments.

The first segment is located between Earlysville Road and Woodburn Road, which is more rural in nature with wooded frontages or backdrops and several single-family residential properties located along the segment, although there were a few instances of commercial developments.

This is the associated precedent imagery.

We cataloged commercial and residential developments along the corridor.

And then the final segment is what we called the Rio West commercial covering the portion of the corridor between Woodburn Road and Route 29 Seminole Trail.

Like the Route 29 segment from our last meeting, this segment falls within the Rio 29 form-based code area.

Following ARB's previous feedback, we included a map of the Rio 29 form-based code map as well as descriptions of the character areas and their recommendations which communicate the desired form and feel of each respective area.

Just to note that the edge area of the form-based code

does not intersect any portion of this corridor, but we still included a description of the edge character to provide a complete explanation of the regulating plan and to shed light on the flex area's transitional qualities between the core and edge areas.

All right.

Thanks, Mariah.

See if anybody has any questions or comments.

Sure.

Great work.

I like the added symbology.

It's beautiful and makes a lot of sense to your question about does this want to combine with the other corridor?

to me it kind of resembles the character of the corridor east of 29 and that could make sense then the question is how far you know yeah how big and unruly it becomes but I would be okay with that I don't have anything else to add my initial thought was

Our initial question I had was, do we want to outline the county-wide certificate of appropriateness condition for the form-based code, but maybe that's not necessarily needed in this place.

And an applicant would probably be aware of that.

Thanks, Frank.

I'd echo everything Frank Hancock said.

I think I could go along with the idea of combining those two segments as well.

One of the questions I did have related to the rural section to the West, in light of what I think is a multifamily development project coming in in front of that nursing home,

Development, and I haven't seen the site plan.

I've seen a preliminary site plan, but this building's not oriented parallel to the E.C.

Street, which I agree with.

My memory is that they are.

I guess for the issue of the segments,

No, go ahead.

So then all that's one chunk.

And then everything west of that, of Woodburn, I guess, could go with hydraulic so that those are governed together.

So then we've kind of cut it, cut at least one out.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

So I think that really falls in line with Tara's suggestion to just make that one segment with its own rules and precedent.

I thought that was great.

I do have one follow-up question.

When it comes to putting the corridors together, would it be okay if we're combining segments along 743 and 631 to combine those corridors into a single corridor sheet as well?

If the segments will span both corridors, should we also combine the corridors together?

on a corridor spreadsheet.

Yes, because, so the segments, if we're saying that the segments can extend across two corridors,

It seems to me to make sense to then do a corridor sheet that includes both of the corridors that one segment would extend across.

So if the Rio rural segment is going to go from Woodburn on the west to some point along Hydraulic

then this entrance corridor sheet would then be revised to acknowledge 743 and 631.

And so, so we would essentially in the table of contents, if we were to think about it like that, they, they would be listed together, reference one page, and then with the segments for each of them, they would have a range.

So it would go and they would have an overlapping range.

Oh no, I'm sorry, they wouldn't.

And does 631,

So Rio is 631 or?

Yes.

Okay, and when it becomes the John Warner Parkway, is it still 631 or is it something else?

Something else.

Okay, so does it simplify to Route 631 and Rio to the John Warner Parkway becomes the segment?

And then the others, or maybe that's what's already planned.

And then hydraulic south of Earlysville is another segment.

So Rio Rural would stay in the 631.

Until Hydraulic gets renamed Rio South, then Lincoln.

If the characteristics are the same or similar enough,

We'll come back around to this question next time.

It is interesting that this actually acts as a ring road in some ways.

Were there any other comments?

We plan to get an updated photo of the Blake Senior Living Center or Senior Living Community once it's complete.

Sadly, I think that big oak tree died.

I think that's right, Pam.

Well, thank you.

So moved.

Seconded.

All right, thanks a lot.

The next ARB meeting is scheduled for December 19, 2022.

This will be an in-person meeting.

Are there any board members who will not be able to attend?

I will be away.

I will not be able to.

Okay, well, let me,

And the next meeting after that is the third, the Tuesday after observance of New Year's Day.

And just as a heads up, we're not planning to make any changes to the standard schedule.

Great.

Well, thanks.

This meeting is adjourned until our next meeting, which may not be December 19th, but it is 1 57 by my watch.

Thanks a lot.