Architectural Review Board Meeting   12/4/2023

We're good?

All right.

It's one o'clock, so I'm calling the December 4th, 2023 meeting of the Albemarle County Architecture Review Board to order.

Yes.

Thanks a lot.

Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting.

The public may access and participate in the meeting electronically.

Instructions for doing so are posted on 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.

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.

Yes, I do.

I am employed by the firm who's presenting the regular review item for Mountain Top Montessori, so I will not be participating in that part of the conversation.

All right.

All right.

All right.

So we'll move on to the consent agenda.

There is one consent agenda item today, which is SP 2023-95, the Home Depot outdoor storage display sales.

All right, thanks a lot.

Sounds like that's a no.

So would anybody like to move to approve the consent agenda?

I'm happy to move to approve.

Thanks.

Any second?

I'll second.

All right, thanks a lot.

That brings us to our one regular review item today, which is ARB 2023-95, Mountaintop Montessori Middle School Edition.

I do.

Thanks.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Mariah Gleason.

I'm a senior planner in the planning division of Albemarle County.

I'm presenting today ARB 2023-95 mountaintop Montessori for your consideration.

This is the first review of the architectural designs.

The plan requires ARB review due to its proximity and visibility from Route 250 East Richmond Road entrance corridor or EC.

The property is located at 1467 Richmond Road and contains a one and a half story building that appears residential.

The building is oriented at an angle to the corridor set back from it by approximately 100 feet and elevated approximately 30 feet above the street.

Parking associated with the building is relegated to the side and rear.

A sloped lawn with mature trees and steep wooded slopes front the corridor.

The site, including the existing building and parking area, was developed as a branch of the American Legion between 1937 and 1957.

Mountaintop Montessori School purchased the property around 2008 and presently uses the site as a middle school.

Development around the subject property is predominantly commercial along the EC with the exception of the larger Mountaintop Montessori School campus located to the east.

The plan shows renovations to the existing building and a total of 2,500 square feet of additions comprised of a northern addition for classroom space and a southern addition for offices.

The existing building is one of the older buildings along this segment of the corridor.

The form scale materials

and materials of the proposed renovations and additions will generally be compatible with the style and character of the existing building and will have an attractive and orderly appearance along the corridor.

The staff report identified two primary issues, the window replacements and the appearance of blankness on the west elevation of the northern addition to the first.

The plan shows that renovations to the existing building will remove multi-pane windows and window shutters and replace them with single pane windows.

The new windows appear to be smaller in size than the windows they will replace.

The plan doesn't provide details on the infill material, but replacement windows fitting the existing openings would likely result in a cleaner and simpler appearance.

Regarding the second issue, the west elevation of the northern addition has two large windows, but there are minimal architectural details, resulting in an appearance of blankness along an elevation that will have the most visibility from the entrance corridor.

An option to relieve blankness is to add trees along the west elevation of the northern addition.

Other issues identified in the staff report include revisions and additions to plan notes, identification of existing trees and shrubs that will be removed, lighting, and additional information concerning the screening wall shown on the plan.

This is the full set of recommendations and recommended points of discussion provided in the staff report.

Since the staff report was published, one change has been made to clarify condition three,

Revised condition with red lines is provided here.

All right.

Thanks for that presentation.

I will go through with questions, starting with Tara.

Do you have any questions?

Thanks, Mariah.

I don't have any questions.

No questions.

Frank Stoner.

No questions.

Thanks.

And I don't have any questions either.

Thanks a lot.

So if the applicant has a presentation, now would be the time.

And thank you, board.

My name is David Timmerman.

I'm an architect at BRW Architects.

and we're joined today not only by one of my colleagues, Alejandro, but also by a number of folks on the building board at the school, as well as the director of the school.

We're very excited to come to you with this project.

The school has been in need of more space ever since really they purchased the property.

and so finally this particular dream comes true up there and we've had a relatively smooth process going through thus far and I was happy to meet up with Mariah last week when she came to do her site study.

That was a first for me to run into an ARB member on site so that was fortuitous.

As is mentioned in the report, the house was from the 1940s.

It was built as an event space even though it looks residential.

It was never, to our knowledge, used as such.

However, it has that feel of a house.

And while it's not significant architecturally, it's a nice house.

It has a slate roof for one, which is wonderful.

It has the feel of what I imagine, this is before my time, but what I imagine the Bridgman Road feel like 30 years ago.

And so in that way, we feel like the site is actually significant architecturally and significant to the community.

So just know we take to heart what is being offered today and

We appreciate the ARB's guidelines as a way to help steer what we feel is a special site.

I know what the school feels is a special site.

When you have the pleasure of going up to the top of the mountain, you know it's a special place because the views are spectacular.

It's a piece of the Richmond Road that's actually been preserved, unlike quite a bit of the rest of the corridor from the interstate to town.

So that's a wonderful resource.

And so how did we react to this kind of project that we've been given?

We're faced with a little house up on the hill and while it's served the school really well in the last 10 years or 15 years I guess they've occupied it, there have been spatial constraints and the house itself hasn't been updated in quite some time and you feel it when you

So our initiative from the beginning was to protect the house and preserve it as much as we could, but also expand to increase the double the size of the classroom was one of the biggest priorities.

as well as update in general for technology's sake.

There were additional offices needed as well as an update to the lab and the Spanish classroom.

So what we've ended up with is a project that has clear additions.

We thought it was important to separate the new buildings from the old as a way, in a lot of respects, to respect the old.

And so obviously on the north side there's a bit of a separation, a bridge we call it,

between the old and the new.

And as well as on the other side, there's a separation between the old and the new.

And we feel like this works well with the guidelines of separating and breaking down the mass of the building.

And you may have noticed the slant in plan.

That's due to a site analysis that directs the building to optimize a site as one of the

One of the issues with the house currently is you walk in and you don't quite appreciate the beauty of the surroundings.

And we wanted to produce an architecture that then kind of reached out more to the landscape and took better advantage of the beautiful site that surrounds and a site that isn't, like I think I said in the report, an oasis of sorts of above the fray of the current entrance corridor.

I'd like to just introduce Sherry Trezinski for just a moment.

Thank you everyone.

My name is Sherry Traczynski.

I am the board chair at Mountaintop Montessori.

I'm also a parent there.

I've been, excuse my voice, I've got a bit of a cold.

I've been a parent there for, I don't know, 14 or so years.

It really is a special little mountaintop.

A couple things that I wanted to make sure that I mentioned to you is that there's very much a part of the Montessori education that wants to work with the nature of the site, and we do the same with the children too, each individual.

So we were really trying to do that with this building design and working with BRW through this whole process has been really a nice collaborative approach.

One of the things that we did when we got the initial plans and put them on the site as we

ended up twisting that addition that north side addition so that it would stay away from those beautiful mature trees there I think there's a few small like fruit trees the kids have planted and there is some

Apiary project that the kids had worked on those little things to the side will need to be moved but none of those major massive trees that's part of what we really love about the property too and we wouldn't want to change any of that but also the really important thing for us was making sure that the old house and the new house real or the old house and its addition really connect so we were trying to take some of the

Well, I was going to go through the, I was going to go, thank you, Sherry.

I was going to go down the list of the comments.

And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I think, given the fact that this site is, like I say, significant, I feel significant.

We want this project to really enhance the site and enhance the current architecture.

That was one of our main goals.

And so,

I'm looking forward to hearing everybody's comments about that.

Just to go through some of the staff recommendations.

Sherry, the first one talks about identifying all existing trees and shrubs to be removed.

We actually have a civil plan here that shows those removals.

There aren't many and most of them are on the side that's

Not facing the entrance corridor or actually not removing any on the entrance corridor.

So we feel like that hillside is pretty great the way it is.

And one note to make about those renderings.

The renderings that we produced, we actually took a couple of trees away so that you could get a better sense of the architecture.

You wouldn't actually see as much of the building as you do per those renderings.

And I do have an existing and a new landscape plan that I can deliver today or pass around if you'd like to see that.

There was a second point about the replacement windows and I think that might be an optical illusion.

Our plan is very much to just take out the old windows and put new ones in and it's going to be a full replacement so none of this kind of half and half job of cutting the sashes out.

and ending up with smaller windows.

We wanna maximize the openings that we have and we wanna do a full replacement with casements, not only to maximize the opening, but for acoustic reasons, full replacements is gonna create more acoustic separation between the inside and the rather noisy entrance corridor down below.

I think casements help in that regard as well.

So number three, revise the narrative to remove references of multiple brick textures.

That was an early design idea that we had to separate the up above and the down below.

And what we found is that the material, which I believe you have, works so well on both the down below and the up above.

It's a pretty material and I think it's going to really look stunning in the way it presents itself.

So, as noted, that was struck.

Number four talks about revising the plans to identify the finish of the metal roof.

We actually have

We are gonna plan on a mat roof and we're gonna plan on a historic level metal roof.

So a true, not a snap together metal roof, but a true turned roof with a low profile.

We don't wanna replicate the slate roof and we don't wanna do something completely out of character.

And so the color that we're choosing for this metal roof

is going to be one that's very similar to the overall impression of the slate roof.

And we think it's going to be close enough to really kind of jive well, but obviously not a replica.

We're not looking for replicas here.

And number five talks about revising architectural drawings and landscaping to alleviate the appearance of blankness.

One of the things I want to say about the north addition is the reason why we have the two large windows on either side is really a function of the internal setup of the room.

That wall is going to be used as the presentation wall.

You noticed that on the north wall, a rather large window looks out to the views.

We needed some place to put the projector and the screen, and that really works as the best location.

So that's why you have the larger wall.

in between the two large windows.

We did feel as if the breakdown of the three parts of the building, the two new and the one old, created a composition that sort of overrode any sort of sense of blankness.

But we're certainly open to

having this discussion and perhaps looking at some shrubs or some lower lying trees or some shrubs that we could in the front that might give a different impression of the base of the building from up above to help with that issue.

and then I think the seven is just a note and then the eight talks about light fixtures.

The site has an interestingly rural feel to it and so we're not looking to put lots of bright lights up there.

We do have a building sconce that we're gonna use in two or three locations at the entry and we have an image of that that we can provide if anybody's willing to

Take a look at that, or we can send it after the fact.

And then we'll certainly revise all the plans to show the limits of disturbance.

I don't know if Jonathan Showalter is online.

He was going to join in.

But we do have Timmons working on the levels of disturbance, which is very little.

Really, we're not changing any of the drive or parking area.

The main addition to the north is going to be excavated and we're going to use grade sort of in a natural way so there's not a lot of earth movement that's happening.

So at the end I think we've all talked about the Montessori philosophy being both

Looking back in its tradition, but always being about forward looking.

And we hope you find that the project that we've presented here does both of those.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks a lot for that presentation.

We'll just see if any board members have questions for the applicant.

I do not.

Thanks, David.

Appreciate your comments.

I also do not.

Thank you.

Frank?

I don't have any questions.

Thank you.

And I don't have any questions either.

So thank you very much.

Are there any members of the public either present or online that would like to make a comment?

All right.

In that case, the ARB will now go into discussion.

Sure.

Well, I think like the applicants, I think it is a nice resource on the corridor and I appreciate that this project maintains it.

I think that the proposed additions to it are sensitive in their scale and material and complimented.

I appreciate very much the staff report and highlighting a couple of questions.

I think because

The project is fairly diminutive in scale and broken down within that.

I think I'm willing to accept the elevation as proposed and the windows.

I do appreciate the applicant's openness to incorporating shrubbery or perhaps small-scale trees to help relieve the blankness.

I think that would be a useful addition.

But overall I think it's a nice project and glad to see the resource continuing to be used.

Sure.

I agree with Dade.

I think it's a very nice project.

Very thoughtful in your approach.

I really appreciate the presentation.

talking through why you did what you did was very helpful and your graphics were very nice the whole proposal package was very nice and very legible so I appreciate that I don't have anything to add um other than you know what the staff what's in the staff report I agree with Dade on the you know the relieving the blankness could certainly be solved with

landscaping, given that broad foreground.

I don't even know that it has to be right up next to the building.

So thank you.

All right, thanks.

Thanks.

I would echo my two colleagues.

I think it's a nice project.

I appreciate you answering the question related to the window openings.

Sounds like that could come off the list.

I think it sits

Well, back on the site, as we all know, I can barely see the building today.

I think you've done a nice job of sort of blending the old and the new.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, I agree with what's been said, and particularly, Dade and Frank mentioning the blankness issue.

I guess my

Looking at that elevation I didn't have an immediate kind of impression that there was blankness just because the kind of symmetrical composition seemed kind of intentional and I kind of think of blankness in terms of like unintentional byproduct of not having anything.

So I think aside from

From that particular condition, I thought the staff comments were pretty reasonable and I thought it was appropriate and well done.

I guess that concludes our discussion and we'll go to the recommended motion.

All right, so I guess I'll just run down and see if anyone has any particular tweaks they'd like to make, starting with Frank Hancock.

Do you have any?

Frank?

Dan?

Yes, my one suggestion would be item five.

Instead of revise, I would just say consider revising.

That was my one and only comment.

I'd be pleased to move for approval with the conditions listed in the staff report amended as follows.

Strike item two, item three revised to state new brick matching the original brick color and texture will be used.

Item five, revise to consider revising the architectural drawings.

I'll second.

Thanks.

All right, thanks a lot.

So we will move on to our one work session today, which is an update on the Personal Wireless Service Facilities Ordinance.

Just as a background at our last meeting, you all had a brief discussion about the updates to the personal wireless service facilities ordinance.

Thank you.

For those of you who don't know me and that may be listening online, there is no audience left.

Hard to believe people think I'm too quiet.

To reevaluate and reconsider the regulations surrounding personal wireless service facilities.

Yes, that's what we call cell towers because that's what the federal code calls them.

So I will go back and forth between personal wireless facilities and cell and so forth.

So it all is the same thing.

A little bit of background.

1996 is when the US Congress adopted the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

That was the first rewrite of legislation that dealt with telecommunications since 1934.

And it brought us forward to television and exciting things like that.

After that, there were various lawsuits that happened around the country.

Albemarle County was actually involved in one of the very early lawsuits in the country, a federal lawsuit, where we were sued by a provider and we won.

And that's an unusual thing.

We're one of a very small number of localities that has won.

That convinced us that the approach we were taking was correct.

And ultimately we adopted the ordinance in 2004, which has remained essentially unchanged since 2004.

There've been some tweaks here and there, some refinements.

There've been some new, there was a 2002, I believe it was, the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act.

That was the title of the document.

It's a thousand page document and about 80 pages deals with tax relief and the rest deals with telecommunications.

It's a very strange document.

That gave the FCC a lot of power and authority to do administrative rulings.

So much of the ordinance provisions that we've done since then have actually been in response to changes.

forced upon us by the FCC, not by Congress or by the state.

There have been some changes to state law and to some minor federal laws that the Congress has done.

But again, no major changes.

Most of those were in procedure.

And in 2000, the Board of Supervisors adopted the wireless policy

as part of the comprehensive plan, which we've been operating under ever since.

So that document is 23 years old now.

So there's a recognition that as foresighted as the county may have been 23 years ago, time has now caught up with us.

So the board of supervisors directed staff to hire a consultant and evaluate the wireless policy.

So we've now been doing that.

We've had work sessions with the Planning Commission.

We did a survey that we put out on Engage Albemarle.

It was the second most responded to, at least I was told it was the second most responded to survey that we've had.

The first being what to name the street sweeper.

Read into it what you will.

We received, I want to say, 740 some responses when we finally stopped counting them.

I believe there have been some more even since then.

We keep that data refreshed, but we had to stop at some point and say, okay, we're going to start working on the data that we have.

So we did that.

So we stopped and we started working with the information we had.

What did people want?

The consultant did two things.

They did a survey of all the facilities that are in the county.

That means towers, buildings,

Power Lines, anything that is pumping out a signal, they surveyed it.

Can't remember the total number of facilities, but the consultant was frankly surprised that we had as many as we had.

They thought the number would be far fewer than we had.

We have many more.

Part of that is because of the policy, which is a treetop policy.

I shouldn't say it is a treetop policy.

It encourages treetop facilities by making them easier to do.

And a treetop facility is reviewed administratively, and it is one that is 10 feet taller or no more than 10 feet taller than tallest tree within 25 feet of the facility.

There are some other things that go along with that.

For example, it can't be in what's known as an avoidance area.

And the county has a number of avoidance areas listed.

They include agricultural forestal districts, historic districts within 200 feet of a state scenic highway or byway, or where you have three or more towers within 200 feet of each other, a tower farm.

and Agricultural Forest Districts, I think I already mentioned that.

Entrance corridors are not and never have been an avoidance area.

So they did all that, they looked at and all this information was presented and shared, looked at the results of the survey and as a result of that, the consultant drafted an ordinance which we have put out for consideration and is out and we're actively getting responses now.

The revised language of the ordinance updates it to incorporate all the federal and state regulations.

Really nothing exciting there.

We've already been doing it.

Some of it was self-enacting, so we didn't actually need to amend our ordinance, but there have been some changes to definitions.

So we're just bringing everything up to speed.

There's nothing exciting there.

By right height for tier two towers is increased from 10 feet above the tallest tree to 30 feet above the tallest tree.

Agricultural forest districts are removed as an avoidance area.

And that one's a little interesting because while they'd be removed as an avoidance area,

Let me backtrack on that.

If you're in an avoidance area, it doesn't mean you can't put the tower there.

It simply means it's not reviewed administratively.

You have to apply for a special use permit with the Board of Supervisors.

So it just is an additional layer of review.

Some people have the opinion that Albemarle County prohibits certain types of towers.

We do not.

We simply make it easier to do certain types of towers than other types of towers.

So that's a method of encouraging it.

There is no such thing as a prohibited area in Albemarle County, and there's no such thing as a prohibited facility in Albemarle County.

We simply say, if you meet these design standards, antennas tucked in, flush mounted, limited in size, you're 10 feet taller than tallest tree within 25 feet, we'll review that administratively.

If you're something else, you're gonna go to the Board of Supervisors.

It's gonna take more time, there's gonna be more public involvement.

So removing AF districts as an avoidance area may sound like it automatically makes it administrative, but there is another layer that stays in place, and that is it still must go to the Agricultural Forestal Advisory Committee to determine whether or not placement of the tower within the Agricultural Forestal District will adversely impact the purpose and intent of the district as stated by the law.

The proposed ordinance would also allow more than three towers to be clustered together.

That would keep it as a tier two.

It removes the limitation on the number of arrays that can be placed on a tower.

Right now it's limited to three arrays and this would remove that limitation.

The size restrictions of the towers would also be eliminated.

Right now antenna are limited to 1400 square inches, and that limitation would be removed.

The limitation on the projection of antennas from the face of the tower, commonly called standoff, would also be removed.

Right now, it's a somewhat complicated formula, basically not more than 18 inches from the face of the tower.

The Board of Supervisors has been routinely granting special exceptions for a greater standoff.

When you are routinely granting special exceptions, it's probably time to amend your ordinance.

And so the consultant is recommending that that exception be removed.

And limitations on the diameter of the monopole have also been removed.

Right now monopoles are restricted to 30 inches at the base and 18 inches at the top.

And that restriction is proposed to be removed to allow the monopole to be potentially increased in size, which will allow it to be strengthened, which will allow it to accommodate more arrays, larger antenna, and still maintain wind loading and ice loading.

Those are the summaries of the changes in the ordinance.

There are no changes in procedure involved other than

some things would move that are currently a tier three a special use permit would move into that tier two and that's by getting rid of the avoidance areas and some things that are currently reviewed as a special exception before the board of supervisors now increases into antenna size and increases in the standoff would no longer have to go to the board of supervisors they would just be allowed by right within the ordinance

What we have done is we've released the draft ordinance.

We put it out.

When we did the survey, we asked people if they would like to be involved in future work on this project.

and I already had an email distribution list of around 150 people who had expressed interest.

And as a result of the survey, we got 444 new unique email addresses of people who wanted to be involved.

That number has grown a little bit since then.

So we sent out an email directly to well over 500 people.

And so we said, here's the draft ordinance.

Let us know what your thinking is.

We'd like your written responses by December 15th.

All responses will be given to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors at a future public hearing for this.

Our plan right now is we're going to go December 15th.

That'll be a cutoff date.

We'll pick up the comments that we have then.

If people are still making comments after them, we'll try to pick them up and still get them before the board of supervisors.

But we needed, we had to pick a day to say, okay, we're going to stop and we're going to start looking at these responses and see what people have to say so that we can move forward.

We can't just have an indefinite review period.

But we'd like to get written responses by December 15th.

So we can consider that.

We'll go back with the consultant.

We'll consider changes to the ordinance based on what people have commented on.

And then we will schedule a Planning Commission public hearing probably sometime in the late winter, early spring of 2024.

And then we'll probably be going to the Board of Supervisors late spring, early summer of 2024.

and if this body would like to provide any comments, you may do so individually, you may do so as a group.

We would just like to have those as formal comments so that we can pass those along to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors and of course our consultants so we can consider any possible amendments.

And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

That's drinking from the fire hose of 25 years worth of wireless planning.

Thanks a lot for that presentation.

I'll just run through and see if any members have any questions or comments now.

Yeah, that's a good question.

It's in response to a couple of different things.

One,

Antenna design has changed over the years.

They have modified how antennas propagate the signal and some use RF enhancers and some of those are ground-based and some of those are antenna-based to process and amplify the signal so they do different things.

So

Where's the antenna now?

Is it really down on the ground?

Is it up?

What's an array really?

They split things, how they do differentiation between the spectrums.

You have to realize when we first did this, it was all basically in one little piece of the radio spectrum down at the 800 megahertz.

It was all right there and there were three providers and that was it.

And now there's lots of different options that they have.

So there's lots of different antenna design.

The equipment's gotten a little heavier in some cases, and it's gotten a little lighter in some cases.

So it's in response to both changes in the technology, a change by the desire of the service providers to try to use a single tower to do more things.

They will have purchased multiple pieces of the spectrum, so they need different types of antennas

send out that signal and process that signal within there.

And the board of supervisors has been willing to grant exceptions and there's based on the results of the survey, there's an appears to be an increased willingness of people to have larger antenna and more array on a single tower.

And I guess the only other one I was hoping you could speak to is the one I can anticipate people having objections or questions about is the question of height around the 30 foot versus the 10 foot.

So it's always been known that the higher the tower is,

Given a flat surface, given all things being equal, a taller tower will cover a larger geographic area.

And so often they want to get as high up as they can to cover the largest geographic area.

There also is with the changing pieces of the spectrum that they're using, they've gotten to a portion of the spectrum now that is more impacted by

Water and by structures and leaves have a lot of water in them.

And so the signal can be scattered more the closer it is to the trees.

So the service providers would like to get higher up to cover more area, get away from those trees.

It also gives them more opportunity to attach multiple antenna and multiple arrays onto a single tower.

Frank Hancock.

Lots of questions.

Just the public comment.

You just kind of distribute that as it is.

Do you distill it at all?

Part of the reason that we want written comments is because staff and I personally have always been very hesitant to summarize what someone has said.

Let their own words speak for themselves.

Yes, we'll have to go through and we'll have to say something like,

A large percentage of the comments were favorable or a large percentage were unfavorable.

We'll do something along those lines and we may hit some of the specific concerns that people have and say something like concerns raised included, benefits raised included and have a short little summary but refer the

Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors to the actual comments.

The only place was where we did summarize because it was the only place where we really could was in the survey results where we gave people a series of options.

We said, do you like option A, B or C?

And 30% said A and 30% said B and 30% said C. So now we don't know what to do.

And frankly, a lot of it came out

48%, 52%.

There was a lot of that going on.

There was a lot of 33, 33, 33.

If you look at the survey, you'll see a lot of places where a lot of the questions, it's just over the line, one way or the other.

So we're not gonna say a majority, I'm hesitant to say a majority of the people.

I'm gonna say, we looked at the survey results and based on the results, this is what we came up with.

because there's always some nuances in the responses that people gave.

And yes, I did in fact go through, we offered the respondents the opportunity to provide free form text to

give their own comments and opinions.

And yes, I read every single one of those and I'm reading every single comment that comes in on the ordinance.

And you look at it and you can see how they responded and then you can see their written response and you go, not quite exactly the same.

I see where they're going here and why a fixed question may give you a slightly skewed response over here.

No, December 15th is the day we've asked people to say, give us your written comments on the draft ordinance.

And then what we'll do is we'll go back and we'll make a final version of that prepared for public hearing.

And we'll put that out and we'll tell people it's going to the Planning Commission on date X.

If you give us your comments by date Y, we'll give it to the Planning Commissioner or Board of Supervisors, depending on the appropriate meeting.

And this is how to participate in the meeting.

This is how you can show up either in person or virtually.

And then one last question.

Do you see, is it

Is it feasible for retrofits to existing towers as a result of this change in ordinance?

Or are we thinking most of these are new tower sites?

It's a mix.

So I think there are a lot of towers.

Again, we started putting towers up in Albemarle County for wireless services in 89 was our first tower.

specifically for wireless services before then they had attached to some existing structures and then in 1996 I believe it was the county was the first in the country to do treetop towers a company named CFW which doesn't provide service here anymore came to us with the idea of doing a treetop tower and they used wood poles

So there are still wood poles that date back to that sort of timeframe.

They're coming up on 30 years now.

And so a lot of those have been replaced, not all of them, but a lot of those have been replaced.

The ordinance has always permitted the replacement of a treetop tower with a new tower to reflect the growth of trees.

So if you could show that the tree had grown six feet, you could put that tower, you could make the tower six feet taller.

Sometimes they were able to add attachments to the existing tower to do that, and sometimes they had to actually take the tower down and place it with a new tower.

One of the issues there is sometimes you run into a setback problem.

We have a one-to-one setback requirement.

So they may have had a 60 foot tree and they put up a 70 foot tower and they put that tower up 70 feet from the property line, they're stuck.

They can only increase that tower height if they either A, get an easement from the adjoining property owner,

to reflect that spillover, if you will, or go to the Board of Supervisors and get a special exception.

That's an option and it has been done in a few cases.

Very interesting.

Thank you for your presentation.

Thanks.

Thanks, Dade.

Bill, thank you for your presentation and also thank you for all your work on this ordinance over the years.

I certainly appreciate the positive impact it's had on the character of our entrance corridors and the minimal visual impact that the treetop towers and the encouragement of them has provided for the county's character.

I guess in particular I guess normally as we're involved at all in the approval of new sites I guess we're usually asked to make an assessment about whether there's sufficient screening.

I guess my particular question would be for those sites where the board previously thought there was sufficient screening in the context of the previous ordinance which allowed 10 feet of height over trees.

There's some concern on my part that 35 feet or greater could obviously defeat the screening that we thought.

was suitable.

Sure.

So what we've done in the past with facilities that are located close to entrance corridors is we've come to the architecture review board and we said this is under review either by staff or by the board of supervisors.

Give us your comments.

and if it was being done by staff, staff would then consider those comments as they would consider comments from the public or anyone else and we would say, okay, you're commenting.

from the entrance corridor.

You're the public for the entrance corridor.

So that's what we wanna hear.

And so we would evaluate that.

And in some cases we said, we agree with you and this facility should not be approved.

And in some cases, frankly, we've said, sorry, we're going to approve it.

And we've done that.

Same with going before the board of supervisors.

We would consider that and we would say staff's opinion is X, the ARB said,

why or agreed or disagreed with that and so we would simply provide that.

That's not going to change.

We're still going to have that sort of consideration where we involve the ARB but the evaluation will be different.

It will be based on 30 feet being the permitted height versus and the known impacts of a 30-foot facility versus the impacts of a 10-foot facility.

A 30-foot facility is

by and large going to have a greater visual impact than a 10-foot facility.

And I do say that when I say by and large is it's not always the case.

There are some facilities that are more than 10 feet taller than the tallest tree that are in entrance quarters that you can't find just because they're so well-cited.

Because we're still going to have the criteria still talks about it having

for administrative facilities.

It can't be skylit and that basically can't be on a ridge top so it can't be skylit and whether or not it's intrusive but again we're going to have to change our thinking of 10 feet the visual impacts of a 10-foot facility versus the impacts of a 30-foot facility and we're still working through

Staff is still working through whether or not we need to go back through the ordinance and include any potential changes there to make it more clear when staff can and cannot deny a particular facility.

I think the only thing where we got 80% of anything was I'm a resident of Albemarle County.

Seriously, it was that kind of thing.

I don't have any specific questions.

I have opinions but I put them in that context and I won't bore anyone with them right now.

And the only thing I have to say is if the board wants to provide any sort of comments, feel free to do so.

How you want to do it as individuals or as board members.

Obviously, if you do it as individuals, you're doing it as individuals.

If you do it as a board, you're doing it as a board.

And we'll take it, we'll consider it, and we'll pass it along to the Planning Commission Board.

Thanks.

Thanks a lot.

All right, so we will move on to other business.

First of all, that would be a motion to adopt the November 20th, 2023 ARB minutes.

Is anyone?

So moved.

Thank you.

I'll second.

Okay, sorry.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

Just wanted to give you a quick little update on the other topic that we discussed at the last meeting regarding the Presidio or Altoview apartments.

I did have an opportunity to talk with representatives from our county attorney's office and your question was really do we have any recourse when this situation arises and

The question then becomes to what extent do the photo simulations constitute a condition of approval?

The feeling is that they really don't constitute a condition of approval.

They're not like the technical documents like a site plan or the architectural elevations.

So the recommendation is to, moving forward in the future, to define a situation like that.

We want to include a specific condition of approval to address the need for screening.

I think there'll be probably a number of questions that we'll want to add to our recommended questions that we have in our staff report for that sort of thing.

I think we'll want to be looking at asking how the photo simulations or whatever types of drawings they are, you know, how they've been made.

We want to look, maybe try to

Distinguished between on-site and off-site screening and be more consistent in requiring the screening to be on-site.

I just thank you.

I really appreciate your following up with so many parties on the issue.

Great.

Yes, the one item I would ask is following up on Mr. Fritz's presentation.

I think they're looking for comments by the 15th.

Our next meeting is the 18th.

I don't know if any board members are inclined or interested in formulating any kind of board statement for the benefit of staff and the Planning Commission on the proposed ordinance.

But you could

Have continued discussion now, or if you all want to forward me comments, I can compile them.

And if everybody's on the same page, and if not, then we could have continued discussion.

Yeah, I mean that sounds good to me if members just forward Margaret to any thoughts or questions and then I don't know what mechanism we could do to discuss it before the next meeting but it sounds like if

I think that's probably right.

Of the regulation changes that we heard today, it was the only one that jumped out at me as being potentially problematic was the 30 foot.

Yeah, I think I'm concerned that the potential administrative height increase coupled with there being no limit on the size of what devices are mounted or how far off of the antenna they can be mounted.

could result in facilities with dramatically, exponentially more potential visibility.

I do appreciate Mr. Fritz's comments that staff will be looking at visibility and would be interested maybe to understand more

about why some greater clarity of when staff can deny it because I think my concern is obviously more than 20 years of work on the part of staff, applicants, the board has gone into trying to preserve and create the character that's in place today and I'm just concerned that that might be

undone administratively in ways that are quite dramatic.

In many ways, we have more sites than we would if we'd had larger, more visible towers all along.

And so it's not only that towers could get taller and broader with bigger devices, it's that we also have literally over, I think, well, as the consultant said, way more sites than you would expect for a county this size.

I certainly have that concern.

Yeah, absence.

I mean, everything that's been

Well, and we have not had an approval role, but we've had a comment role in terms of whether there's sufficient screening.

And that's typically been demonstrated by balloon tests and other things.

So there's two things that you look at when we bring those applications to you.

But there's not a, when we look at those, I feel like we've provided, or we,

Yes.

It's not like we won't approve or provide favorable comments.

So if it's visible, like we've done that.

So we've certainly said that there's sufficient limitation of visibility for pre-top towers under the current regime where the pole's 18 inches wide, nothing projects more than 18 inches and there are multiple arrays and it's no more than 10 feet taller than the tree.

If all those sites now can be administratively approved to be 30 feet taller than the tree with no limit on projection, no limit on the size of what antennas are mounted, it sounds like there will be provision for staff to consider visibility, but it's not clear under what circumstances they'll be able to deny that.

What about the color of the tower and the equipment?

Right.

I have not heard that that's changing.

Do any of these proposed changes impact tower locations that we would be asked to review as a board?

In other words, are there a lot or any

Proposed tower locations that occur on entrance corridors that are kind of routinely administratively approved or do they typically come in front of the board?

I guess I'm wondering if these changes are more applicable to tower locations that generally we would not be reviewing because they're not close to entrance corridors.

That's a good question.

I think they would impact locations that you would review.

Okay.

Will the applicants still be required to do the balloon test and do the

I believe so.

I don't know.

I think in the past when there has been a proposal to increase the height, I think they just do photo simulations.

I would agree with Bates' concern.

I think I would be comfortable

making that statement or forwarding that to the planning commission, I think.

Is that a lie?

Rob, I guess whatever we all agree on.

I think we can acknowledge that that additional height, additional equipment, the bigger equipment, you know,

could have an impact on the corridor, a negative impact on a corridor or corridors.

I guess we have a joint statement just expressing concern about that potential.

And then would folks be supportive of including a request to incorporate some provisions, I guess, to Bill's point about the internal discussions to clarify when denial

is allowed or alternatively as I was just extemporizing to require any kind of empirical measurement or simulation of the proposed facility.

So I think what I heard was that Dade and Frank and Frank were supportive of Dade's comments about the sort of multiplied impacts, including the potential 30 foot height as potentially increasing negative impacts on the entrance quarters.

Did I get that right?

I think that's pretty reasonable.

I think my only question is just, I think it makes sense for there to be a board position.

I think maybe with additional information, I think that maybe if we're going to have a position, it would be great to know what the alternatives that we would actually be proposing are, or if there's a specific policy recommendation that we could come to.

Just because I feel like

One thing to say, we're concerned.

It's another thing to figure out what the process, what it should be.

If I were on the board of supervisors and I got like, we're just generally concerned, I'd be like, it's kind of hard to work with that.

So I think it makes sense to get clarity from Bill on a couple of those questions.

And I don't know, should we revisit, should we,

Like we could at least hammer out the part where we're concerned.

I think we could try to spend time to identify.

I think to me, height jumped out as the thing that I can foresee some issues around.

Yeah, I mean, I think maybe the report or

The next step is, is there ARB review which provides for a public hearing?

But then it puts it out in the open and all the issues are out on the table and, you know, there's a forum for it other than administratively or staff review.

Yeah, I mean we may take some time because it's like one alternative would be just for the entrance corridors leave the existing regulations in place because we know that they've been working satisfactorily.

Option two would be don't allow purely administrative approval but require a finding that there's sufficient, I don't know, limitation of visibility by the ARB.

and then I guess as an ancillary that would be you know requiring separate from photo simulation a balloon test to demonstrate it but similar to the original establishment of the appropriateness of the sites.

I maybe had more questions for Bill.

What is the public need?

Well, I think it's basically, well, and the board in all cases can ultimately override the full regulations, typically grounded in public health and safety.

And these are emergency telecommunications, so it's very easy to find that there.

I think there is recourse.

Margaret, is there any way we could see sort of

I just, there are lots of facilities in the county.

Yeah, would like fall within our purview.

Like, I'm just wondering, you know, if we

Is there going to be a change in the number of facilities?

Is there a way that we could project back the number of facilities would be?

I think there are quite a few facilities just in terms of what the potential workload resulting from it could be.

So the red stripe is the entrance quarter overlay and the green are the tower locations.

Bill is coming back in the room.

I don't know.

And do we know like a period of years how many when these green dots were?

I guess it's about 25 years.

Yeah, 25 years.

Yeah, I feel like we've seen a lot.

The board members were talking about the potential concern of not just the 30-foot height, but the height combined with the other changes, the standoff and the number and how that multiplies or potentially multiplies the visual impact from the entrance quarters.

Sure.

There are a lot of towers.

So you may remember there was a recent tower on I-64 in the Greenwood area, the Greenwood Tower, as we refer to it.

And that was a tier three, that was not a treetop tower.

But during the review of that particular tower, I counted the number of towers between

the county line at Afton Mountain and the Keswick Interchange.

And I think there are 11 towers in there that are within 500 feet of the interstate and of those other way, I-64 West.

And most of those are very difficult to see

Some of those, if they were 30 feet above, I think would go from not being visible at all, or only visible by someone who really knows where they are, to being visible to some degree by the casual observer.

I'm not sure any of them would be really intrusive, but they would not be invisible the way they are.

Bill, where you have multiple towers in a short distance from one another, I assume those are different carriers.

So right there, if you could zoom in on that one, Mark.

Thank you.

So right there, that's an interesting site.

There are four towers there.

That's the site on I-64 that's opposite the overlook that has the monument to the transportation workers, so the VDOT workers.

And it's really interesting that you come there and you stand there and

Most people look out over the Rockfish Valley, but if you turn around and the mountains there, there are four towers right there.

And those, you can very clearly see those four towers because they're right there, but they do get lost pretty quickly in the backdrop of the mountain.

But those, the fourth tower that went there did have to get a special use permit because there were already three that were there and those are all different carriers.

No, that personal opinion, no, I don't think you will.

I think they're going to continue to want their own facilities.

And even at 30 feet, that's not a lot of opportunity for colocation.

The interesting thing about 5G is you will need more towers, but height isn't

doesn't save you there because what the height does is actually get you farther away from the people you want to serve.

You put it 80 feet in the air.

Now you're 80 feet from the people you want to serve.

You really want that thing to be down 20 feet.

So you're 60 feet closer to the people that you want to serve.

Really need to think of 5G, true 5G is really a super wifi.

You know, it's a

But don't the trees though, the water you were referencing before, doesn't that affect the 5G signal?

And that's why you're not going to see 5G in rural areas because you have to put so many facilities in that also you're covering miles

or thousands of feet with one of these towers, you're covering tens to hundreds of feet with 5G.

It's a very different signal.

Well, you mentioned the staff discussions about maybe developing more criteria for when an administrative approval could be denied.

Sure.

It all goes back to what the wireless policy is, which is visibility and mitigation of visibility.

And a lot of people say that the ordinance

and the wireless policy it's about aesthetics or it's about making them invisible and that's not what it is it's about visibility and mitigating the visual impact so what we said was 10 feet is a mitigated visual impact you can still see it

But it's only 10 feet above.

Now it's going to be a mitigated visual impact of it's 30 feet above.

That's the mitigation.

That's the new unit of measure of the amount of visibility we're willing to accept.

The consultant that we had when we did it, he was great to

describe the difference between visibility and aesthetics.

He would wear these garish ties and he would stand there with his jacket open and he said, you can see my tie, that's aesthetics.

And then he'd pull his jacket closed and he could only see a portion of a tie and he goes, that's visibility.

And that was the easiest way of doing it.

So you're going to see more of that tie.

And we're silent on whether that's

Let's say for example there was one tree and it was 60 feet tall and it was just standing out in a field and it was one tree and it was 30 feet above

Part of what the ordinance talks about is having sufficient screening and mitigation.

So there's not enough trees around it that you can see it.

So you would, if you go to a different angle, that one tree is now not providing any sort of mitigation to mitigate the visual impact of that tower.

So that could be a case where we might deny.

That's right.

It's in the analysis of the sites.

I don't recall.

I don't think.

It looks like a high percentage, I think.

You'd be surprised because a lot of those are more, are so far away from the street that they actually don't qualify.

Would you all like to think about it for two weeks and we can discuss it again and come up with a formal recommendation from the board or do you want to continue now?

We can do our summary minutes for you and have those for you to consider and after in a day or two you can look over those and we can discuss again next time if that would be helpful.

Are there any updates on Mariah's work?

At our next meeting, she'll have the Fifth Street extended work for you.

And we've begun the last one, which is 20 South.

Thanks.

Any other items?

If not, the next ARB meeting is scheduled for December 18th.

I actually won't be able to attend.

All right, so it sounds like, yeah, we'll have four, hopefully.

So in that case, this meeting is adjourned until our next meeting on December 18th, 2023.

And it's 2-28 by my watch.

Thanks a lot, everybody.

Thank you.