Architectural Review Board Meeting   1/3/2023

Okay, it's all yours.

Before we begin, I'd like to welcome everybody to 241.

And if you haven't already been in here, I'm going to do a very quick spiel about the microphones.

So instead of having those super convenient gooseneck microphones right in front of you, these ones are in the ceiling.

It's these two glowy green panels.

So they're really cool.

They're programmed to capture audio all around the room without a lot of effort, but it still requires you to project a little bit and more importantly, not talk into documents or your laptop.

So every once in a while, if I just say, can you please speak up?

That's just because we've lowered the level a little bit.

We want to make sure everyone on the far end hears.

All right.

It is one out of five.

And this is the ARB's annual organizational meeting.

I am calling the January 3rd, 2022 meeting of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board supporter.

Yes, I can if I unmute myself.

Mr. Hancock?

No.

Okay.

Thanks, Carolyn.

A couple of announcements.

First, 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 County Act.

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

Any more announcements, instructions for attendees?

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.

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.

Okay, as I said, this is the annual meeting, so the first item of business is election and chair.

Okay, are there any other nominations for chair?

And a second for that motion?

I'm sorry, I didn't see you.

Okay, that's fine.

Mr. Matsuno Aye.

Mr. Henningsen Aye.

Mr. Van Der Werf Aye.

Great.

Alright, thank you.

Would anybody like to second that?

I'll second that, I guess.

Are there any other nominations?

Can I get a second?

Second.

Yes.

Thanks.

So now we're down to the 2023 calendar.

The draft schedule has the ARB meeting on the first and third Monday of each month, with meetings moving to Tuesday when the Monday is a holiday.

Does anyone want to make a motion to adopt this schedule for 2023?

Thanks.

Would anyone like to second that?

Second.

Thanks.

Mr. Henningsen?

So the rules of procedure.

Would anyone like to move to approve the rules of procedure?

So we see the rules of procedure.

They were unchanged from last year with the addition of the remote meeting.

Thank you.

Yes.

Mister Van Der Werf?

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

Disclosures.

All right, great.

There are no consent agenda items today.

There is one regular review item today, which is ARB-2022-97, the trading post.

Chris, do you have a presentation ready?

The application being reviewed today is a request to reface the existing fuel pump canopy and install a new pylon-free stain sign in BP branding.

The site is located along Route 29 at the southwest corner of the intersection with Taylor's Gap Road.

A certificate of appropriateness was issued for the fuel pump canopy in 1990.

In 2004, the board approved the refacing the canopy to its current appearance.

The changes to the facia can be seen in this slide, a two-colored 3D band and a multicolored helios graphic on the northeast and west sides of the canopy.

The entrance quarter guidelines for fuel pump canopies call for the use of one principal color and a minimalist design.

However, the dimensional design and the color variety do not meet either guideline and would emphasize the canopy and differentiate it from the existing building and surroundings.

Revising the canopy to limit the fascia color to one principal color would be consistent with entrance quarter guidelines and other BP approvals in the county shown in the slide.

Regarding the freestanding sign, the pylon form, height, and colors are expected to result in a sign that does not relate to its surroundings.

Staff recommends that advocates consider revising the pylon sign to a monument sign or revising the base of the pylon sign to a brick

providing landscaping to integrate either side style into the surrounding context.

Staff recommends the changes to the proposal be reviewed by the ARB at a future meeting.

However, the board could choose to approve the application with conditions.

All right.

Thanks a lot, Chris.

So questions from ARB members.

Tara, do you have any questions?

Frank, any questions?

I don't.

Thanks.

Yes.

When applied to specifics for the BP specifications of the branding, understanding that there's restrictions in that particular zone, we would ask if the canopy, the Helios on the canopy, those signs, they're not offered as a

who the white portion doesn't light up.

Is it possible that those could be illuminated or they have to remain non-illuminated?

Those, the signs.

So it sounds like the applicant is saying that that particular sign isn't offered with any portion of that background being able to be opaque.

So I think

Chris, can you put up the two precedent images in the county?

The one that has the white, just has the white face

No other color.

Probably wouldn't matter as much having a white background of the Helios illuminated, white on white.

So it's too certain that both Helios that are certain on

We specified an OP background in the documents that were approved.

And the other one, we're not quite sure.

So I understand that the colors, the striping is not allowed, correct?

So we'll have to go with the white, like the version on the left, correct?

Either example is a precedent example that has been approved.

The white would be approval or the

Yes.

Right, so just to be clear, the guidelines say one principal color and that has been interpreted to mean a single color or one band with a primary color and then a secondary color as you see here.

So the stripe could be green, for example, instead of black.

That's what I was wanting.

So the background, the black portion could be green with a white trim, say top and bottom like that, it's white on the black.

This could be white on green?

Correct.

Okay.

But not the lighter portion in the center, which gives the

Their standard design is that there's a light strip that goes in that lighter green portion.

Obviously, there's no light strip going to be on this one, but the light green would not be allowed, correct?

Correct.

OK. And the Helios, was it?

I'm sorry.

Part of the conversation there about the illumination on that.

Do any board members have specific questions for the applicant?

No, I don't think so.

The property owner is still acquiring the

the easement for the area from the DOT where the sign is going to be installed.

So we've kind of, I guess pulled back from that portion until I know you guys need that information before being able to move forward on the sign anyway.

So I think based on what we have applied for,

size, illumination, so forth on that.

Well, I guess, yeah, we'll get into discussion on that.

But the staff comments kind of suggested that it could

used some more fine tuning.

We'll just finish up with any questions and then we'll kind of go into discussion.

Taro?

No questions.

I don't have any questions either.

No, sir.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

So now we will go into discussion.

And we'll get comments from the board members, starting with Taro.

Just overall, I appreciate staff putting together the report.

I think given that there are a couple of precedents for this project in the county, along the entrance corridor, that a lot of the recommendations made in the staff report are pretty well backed up.

Great.

All right, thanks.

Could we put the recommendations up?

OK. Dade, do you have any comments?

No, I think, like Taro, I appreciate Chris's report and support the recommendations in the staff report.

Great.

Frank, do you have any comments?

I also feel the same way and also thought dates, suggestion to move this to administrative approval was a good suggestion.

I would support that as well.

Yeah, I think so.

OK, thank you.

Notice that removing the

The light bar on the sides of the sign, not a problem.

Then having the opaque background on that's not a problem.

Now the sign, as far as consider revising the Freeston sign to a monument style sign with lower horizontal profile,

which we could do a monument sign but I understand it needs to be some landscaping around the base of the sign and the concern with going with a monument style sign is that you know the vegetation can of course is going to grow and it's going to block a lot of the

Visibility on the sign, that's right without staying with the overall height limit with 12 feet and then having the space at the bottom, it would allow, you know, for the landscaping to be present.

There's three feet of area there with a skirt on the sign.

So there's no active area down there.

And yes.

So we could, you know,

It's important to emphasize that the comment about the landscaping associated with the freestanding sign isn't necessarily meant to limit it just to the right around the base, particularly given that there's that green space there.

so I mean the other way you know we could possibly put the sign I mean that's just ironic that there's a mound of dirt there but I'm with if we're allowed to do something like that and landscape would kind of be down the slope away from the sign you know just just like I said the concern is with a monument style sign in landscape you know the the prices and so forth are so close to the bottom of the sign that it doesn't take

Yeah, the recommendation is kind of more so, less so the

Can you go back to the slide that shows the sign itself?

So it's that middle image would be the... That shows the total fleet sign.

And the portion that is recommended to switch to brick, would that be that lower third of it?

Yes.

So this question is for the applicant.

Yes, it could be.

It could be brick.

Because I think the recommendation was to go with a more horizontal sign, but that didn't sound like a requirement, whereas I think the brick, they kind of tied that whole sign back, make it look more like the building, seemed like a stronger recommendation.

Yeah, we can certainly do that.

And we can do a monument sign.

It's not a problem.

We've actually got a design.

It's a standard design for a monument type sign, which is what we originally planned on going with until we realized the landscape requirement.

I mean, I could say I could show you

The drawing of the monument sign, if you guys like to see that or see which way you prefer, let's go.

I think, Chris, you had that drawing.

There it is, yes.

That was what we originally had.

That makes more sense, yeah.

We could raise the base, yes, if that would be okay.

I mean, it could be a taller space there.

Yeah, I agree.

You could put the whole thing up on a brick kind of pedestal, which would be one way to get it up away from

It certainly would.

I'm not sure what type of landscaping you require.

I think we're saying they can go either way, right?

Okay, so if we have to go with the landscape, we would say go with the other taller sign and go with brick, the three feet of brick,

Yeah, take the light bar off the sides, yeah.

And remove the light bar from the sides.

Correct, yeah.

All right.

All right, so I think if you're willing to do that, it sounds like that would meet the intent of the staff comments.

I think we wouldn't need to modify the staff recommendations.

We can go to a motion.

Or I guess one change I would consider just going back to

I have a motion set up for both of them.

So it sounds like all of the comments that were listed in the staff report are good to go.

Would anybody like to second that?

We'll second.

Thanks.

Yes.

Thanks a lot.

So action items.

There is one action item today.

It's on the town-wide certificate of appropriateness for the Rio 29 form-based code.

The board of supervisors adopted the Rio 29 form-based code

and the overlay district down in September of 2021.

And when the form-based code was being developed, there was an effort to streamline the review process for sites that were both in the Intersporter overlay and the form-based code overlay.

And staff coordinated with the ARB at that time on the standards of the form-based code to help align those two processes.

So the message established for streamlining was to add a category and county-wide certificate of appropriateness.

That was completed with the adoption of the form-based code.

And that's the highlighted, the gray highlight that you see on the slide here in this text of the code.

This is a section of the entrance border overlay ordinance.

It's the addition of a category of County-wide certificates for development in the BIO 29 form-based code area.

As you know, the County-wide certificates are application types that allow for streamlined review by staff

Those applications don't come to the ARB, so there's no staff report, there's no meetings, so it just helps to streamline the process.

The entrance quarter section of the ordinance also provides for the creation of design criteria for each of those categories of countywide certificate of appropriateness.

Although the new category of countywide certificate was added with the adoption of a form-based code, the ARB has not yet established

The design criteria that goes along with that.

This slide shows here on the right side, this is the list of countywide categories that exist.

This is just an example of the design criteria for one of those categories.

This is additions to structures or improvements when there was already a certificate of appropriate use issued.

It's just an example of one of the design criteria.

So today we're asking you to adopt the design criteria for the RIO 29 form-based codes

Countywide certificate of appropriateness.

The design criteria to be adopted will be the architectural design standards in section 20C.10 in form-based code.

That section addresses transparency, facade articulation, materials, planting requirements, lighting requirements, and requirements related to mechanical equipment.

So it's this section, architectural design standards, that will be used as the Countywide design criteria.

Thanks, Laura.

So we'll just go through.

Frank, do you have any questions for Stan?

I appreciate having this item and getting this work incorporated and the work that staff did to help us consider the guidelines and standards and I'm prepared to support the motion to do this.

That's a good question and I think as we're starting to review the first couple of applications that come in we'll be figuring that out.

Well actually that's another really good question that sort of depends on the, well the process would be the same.

But we're, we are prepared to do a sort of phase two code work on foreign based code.

So we are, Mariah in particular, is putting together a list of fixes that are needed,

I don't know of any exactly for the, they were specific to the items that the ARB was most interested in when we did the work review, but we are getting ready to start that work in the new year.

Well,

Technically, that's right.

I think they would need to have your input.

No, that's just a little piece of it.

It was just a little snap because we're just going to insert the little materials.

There are lists of things about facade articulation.

That was helpful.

So just to

as that once we see, once you all see the set of projects that are coming through this process, there's a set of fixes or changes that might need to be made.

So this would go through the Board of Supervisors process.

We might have input on any necessary changes to the architectural design standards.

And if that takes place, we could re-adopt the amended architectural design standards for the county-wide certificate of approval as well.

Basically to have that track what the length, like I think generally, I think it makes sense for the countywide certificate to track what's going on in the zoning text.

Right.

Yeah.

I don't know if legally you would have to readapt the countywide certificate if that portion of the code changes.

But, you know, the point is to have it coordinate.

Thanks a lot.

And that was really my only question, too, was about process.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Would anyone like to second that?

I'll second.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks a lot.

So now on to work sessions.

There's one work session today.

It is on the entrance corridor design guidelines addenda.

I do.

Thank you.

Happy New Year.

Welcome back to the county.

Today, we're going to be reviewing the entrance court, the draft, and its corridor addendum to the Route 743 entrance corridor and its associated segments.

So this corridor consists of hydraulic road west of Route 39 intersection and a portion of Earlysville Road south of Woodlands Road.

There's a variety of building types, uses, forms, and scales here.

But overall, the corridor has a rural wooded character at the northern end and an urban commercial residential character at the southern end with a transitionary area in between.

We organized this corridor into three segments.

I also wanted to indicate that you're gonna see a line on these slides.

The line indicates where the book binding is in relation to the sheet.

So in this case, the book binding is to the right.

There were some questions last time about how the document would lay out.

So I just wanted to start showing that.

So the first segment is Earlysville.

It's the portion of Earlysville Road

It's a rural character with wooded frontages, deeply set buildings that are mostly residential, and a narrow curvy two-lane roadway that is around the terrain.

The one exception is at the intersection of Earlysville Hydraulic and Rio Roads.

And this is the precedent imagery for that segment.

And you see how the intersection at Earlysville and hydraulic roads is different in character, but really with the way that we've done these segments and corridors, developments in those areas can choose which way they want to fall.

And we'll kind of explore more what happens at the intersections in later phases of the agenda.

But just wanted to note that here.

The second segment is Albemarle High, where the roadway becomes wider with four travel lanes and usually a center turn lane.

There's a lot of diversity in this area, in large part because of the underlying zoning where the properties exhibit a rural character east.

Oh, well, the properties that are east of the corridor fall within the development area and the properties west fall within the rural area of the county.

So for properties within the development area, most of them are currently zoned for residential uses, although there are many religious buildings along the segment.

Most prominent development is Albemarle High School, which has a very notable open view of the mountains as its backdrop.

Then this is the precedent imagery slide for that.

And Albemarle High School is the last image.

And then the third and final segment is Stonefield, which is located south of Georgetown Road.

The urban character becomes more consistent here because both sides of the road or of the street exhibit highly visible development.

These buildings are located close to the street.

And then these are the precedent images for the developments, elements, and aspects that we wanted to highlight along the segment.

So I'll go back.

Well, actually I'll show you the zoning just so you can kind of have it in your mind.

This is, this follows Earlysville Road down to the intersection, and then this is Hydraulic.

And then at Georgetown, you see more urban zoning on this side of the road.

Or when I say more urban, I really mean just not rural area.

And then I'll go back to the corridor slides if we can start from there.

I do not.

But I can look at that.

Yeah, there's like a storage building.

There's a three-story office building.

Well, I think the identified, you know, segments seem to make a lot of sense, backed up with the zoning.

I think the way you've organized it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I agree.

I also agree.

I guess my only comment would be on the last slide, there are two photos of Trader Joe's.

I was trying to see if I could zoom in, but this middle image is speaking to

the geometry of the sign relating to the geometry of the intersection and then the second one is about how the landscaping the effectiveness of using landscaping to minimize visual impact of the parking area and then the building form material colors and details kind of precluding the

visual element of blankness against the wall.

Yeah, I agree there's a lot that's successful there, like that Arbour

I assume this was subject to ARB review when it came in originally.

Lots of went before my time with you.

First we're done.

Can we go to the map again?

Just seeing this now.

Oh yeah, okay.

It's all good.

We know where all the zoning on the west side of hydraulic is, where all that property all flows to,

The water is in the watershed for the reservoir.

I think it probably is because it fell down slow.

I think it's just past here.

But yeah, the intersection at Georgetown, hydraulic, that site, it's recently built, but it slopes down to the replacement complex.

I think it slopes down everywhere.

Yeah, so it is.

It's all unwarched.

Thank you for your continued work on this.

We've got one corridor left that we have information on that you're working on.

I'm actually going to recommend that we cancel the January 17th meeting.

Right.

And that's the last round.

So we'll be done at that point.

So there's actually run a few other business items together here.

Last month we learned from VDOT that the requests for the arterial status upgrades on some of those entrance border streets, all the ones we requested were approved.

So that actually adds some more work.

So we'll have to figure that out.

I'm just beginning the process of figuring out where that is and how we get back to reapplying the entrance border regulations in those borders.

So we're just starting to do that.

There's a lot of research that needs to be done in the county.

And that means that basically VDOT's traffic counts support the volumes that

I would assume so, yeah.

Did we request Avon?

I guess we did.

I think as far as this item goes, I think it looks great.

We appreciate the progress.

So we'll move on to other business.

I'd like to make a motion to approve.

I'd like to make a motion to approve on December 5th, 2022.

And we'd like to second that.

Thanks.

Yes.

Mr. Matsuno?

Aye.

That sounds great.

This will be an in-person meeting.

Each location has its own good points and bad points.

Yeah.

But I agree that this format of being closer to one another and given the size of attendance.

I think

I think also Carolyn, this was this group's first meeting in this space.

And you do need to speak at a volume that's a little bit unnatural.

So as groups have repeated meetings in this space, they've gotten a lot better at just adjusting and remembering.

I think we need to talk about it.

Did you get, how was your presentation?

I was able to kind of make shift work, work it out.

I'm comfortable sticking with Lane.

Nope.

So the meeting is adjourned until the next meeting on February 6th.

By my watch, it's 2.02.

Thank you.