Architectural Review Board Meeting   12/18/2023

Do I use this to start the meeting?

Or you can just do it again.

Anytime, if necessary.

Anytime it's necessary.

For order.

That's right, yeah.

You can start.

Place your hand on the counter.

I can give it to you once.

All right, I think, are we ready, Carolyn?

Yes.

Got everything online ready?

It is... December 18th, 101.

I'm calling the December 18th, 2023 meeting of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board to order.

Yes.

Mr. Stoner?

Here.

Mr. Van Der Werf?

No, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

We'll start with announcements.

Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting.

The public may access and participate in the meeting electronically.

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

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone, both as provided in the Lawfully Posted Meeting Notice.

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.

Disclosures.

Okay.

Thank you, Dade.

No disclosures.

And I do not have anything to disclose either.

Moving on to public comments.

Are there any members of the public that want to make a comment about a project that is not on the agenda for review?

Nobody online either.

Okay.

Moving to the consent agenda.

There's one consent agenda item today.

It is ARB-2023-100, Glenbrook at Foothills Phase 4 Initial Plan.

I don't either.

Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Yes.

Moving on to regular review items.

There is one regular review item today.

It is ARB-2023-101 flow Hyundai initial plan and preliminary architecture.

And Mr. Stoner will recuse himself.

Chris, are you ready with your presentation?

Okay.

Okay.

The application being reviewed today is an initial site plan to establish a Hyundai dealership with associated site improvements.

The site is located along Route 29 and is bounded by Berkmar Drive to the west and two automotive dealerships to the north and south.

ARB reviewed an initial site plan for a different development in February of this year and did not recommend approval.

A special use permit is required for valid door storage, display, and sale use, but application has not been submitted yet.

Once submitted, it will be scheduled for review.

There are few issues with the site plan submitted.

The depth of the planting area along the frontage, shallow planting area along the perimeters of the site, and the distribution of the interior parking area trees.

The depth of the planting area along the Route 29 frontage is inconsistent, ranging from 43 feet to 13 feet.

Existing utilities and a 10-foot shared use path that is recommended by accounting transportation staff along the frontage further limits the planting area.

Regarding the perimeter parking area landscaping, shadow planting strips with shrubs are shown along the northern and southern perimeters of the site.

These shallow planting strips do not allow for the required large trees.

Wider planting areas along the frontage and perimeters of the site will be needed to avoid conflicts and allow for the required landscaping to mitigate the impacts of paved areas.

Regarding interior parking area landscaping, the site plan notes a different number of spaces than what's shown on the plan.

Also interior trees are mostly distributed throughout the western portion of the site away from the entrance quarter.

Regarding the building architecture, the proposed design of the showroom is contemporary and not reflective of the traditional architecture of the area.

The primary forms of building are a tall fascia with a deep overhang floating above a glass box.

The tall fascia results in a top-heavy appearance in non-traditional proportions.

Revising the design to reduce the top-heavy appearance and incorporating more traditional elements and proportions would be appropriate.

Because of site-related issues that have been detailed in the staff report, we do not recommend approval of the initial site plan at this time.

Thanks, Chris.

I don't believe so.

I don't either.

Well, maybe one question.

It's just the... We don't believe, your staff doesn't believe those buildings would be visible from 29.

I do remember seeing that on the staff report.

And Berkmar is not an EC at that location.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Kevin Shaffer.

I am the Charlottesville studio director for design develop architects.

I have with me in the audience today, Justin Shimp with Shimp Engineering.

Thank you, Chris, for the thorough staff report.

As always, it's helpful to have the dialogue with county staff

Before we get into the discussion on the building, I'd like to just note that we're very early in these stages.

We're hoping to have a dialogue, have a discussion with the board as we work through this process.

We'll certainly be bringing a more formal presentation in terms of a landscape plan and a lighting plan and subsequent submissions.

But our goal here today was to engage the board and county staff with a proposal to gather feedback, review some of our assumptions and understand if they allied with the board's expectations.

To talk about process for just a minute and to look at the bigger picture outside of the entrance corridor, recently Flow Automotive has purchased several dealerships around the Charlottesville and Elmar County area.

This change in ownership prompts facility review from national brand representatives and in some cases requires new facilities to be constructed or existing facilities to be updated.

In this case, at Hyundai, the existing location of the facility was problematic for two primary reasons.

First, the existing showroom is undersized for its market and it serves, and it leans heavily on the shared resources of the Jim Price Auto Group, including the service base in the rear of that site.

And now secondly, that facility is on a parcel not owned by Flow.

So for these reasons,

That's prompting the proposal that's in front of you now.

And to continue to talk about the process, it's been stressed to us by Flow that Flow Automotive aims to be a good neighbor and a steward of the entrance corridor guidelines.

However, certain brands are more conducive to alteration and customization based on the governing jurisdiction and certain brands are more rigid in their national requirements.

Staff has correctly noted in their report that the proposed design for the showroom building adapts the standard Hyundai design to the site.

But in engaging the board early here, we're anticipating an ongoing internal discussion with Hyundai national brand representatives to occur.

We still believe the project satisfies the requirements of the entrance corridor guidelines and the project is appropriate, specifically once we start to accommodate some of the staff's recommendations in our next submission.

but we'll get to that a little bit later in this presentation.

As I mentioned, Flow Automotive has invested heavily in Charlottesville and Elmar County along the entrance corridor and will be committed to ensuring that their projects are high quality, they'll be well executed, and they'll be contextually appropriate projects that add economic value and provide important services to the residents of this area.

Flo's already shown this commitment at the Mazda, Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi campus located on Route 250, and they aim to continue that precedent that they've established.

When looking at the Albemarle County entrance corridors, there are two automotive vehicular centric corridors in Albemarle County, and this project is appropriately located on a parcel in the heart of one of those corridors.

The stretch of Route 29 contains six other automotive dealerships, as well as automotive service and repair centers, car washes, and refueling stations.

Recently, several dealerships along the stretch of Route 29, including Malloy Ford and Flow Subaru, have gone through renovations and expansions in order to modernize and refresh their facilities, and these facilities

contribute to the livelihood and the vitality of these entrance corridors.

This proposal aims to continue these improvements by building off the high quality, well-executed precedents that have been set recently.

As staff mentioned, by setting the building so far back, we have limited the visual impact of both the front and the side elevations.

We're talking the associated service area behind the building in an effort to de-emphasize the more utilitarian uses

and to elevate the client facing public areas of the project.

The smaller rectangular forms on the north and south sides of the showroom mass will help shield the side elevations from the entrance corridors.

And as staff also noted in the report, the existing structures of the Jim Price Auto Group's campus will continue to shield and screen the north elevation, limiting visibility significantly for many southbound travelers on Route 29.

In general, staff's comments and their recommendations align with Flow's strategy, which is to set the building back further away from the entrance corridor.

And staff has suggested utilizing enhanced landscaping screening to minimize the visual appearance of the building.

Despite large shade streets being kind of the arch nemesis of new cars for a variety of reasons, Flow Automotive can understand the staff's recommendations and will take steps to incorporate these suggestions into the next submission by increasing the depth

of planting along the entrance corridor and finding ways to introduce more trees of larger varieties along the perimeter.

Good afternoon everyone, Justin Shimp and the engineer for the project.

We worked with Flow, we worked on the Pantops site, the Volkswagen Audi, it turned out very lovely.

One of the things that I hear from folks who look at these plans often is like, well that's so much parking, well they need it.

If you go over there you will find not an empty parking space and that's got 400 and some odd parking spaces.

So these are very parking heavy use and it's very important for us to have the parking in the front

to have the parking function for the users or both folks who are getting their vehicle serviced and folks who want to buy new or used vehicles.

I think the main points of challenge for us in the layout are not really the front landscaping strip.

And Kevin, excuse me, do you have a screen of the site layout here?

Maybe go back to the site sketches that Chris had.

I can show you the conflict points here.

or Chris from your presentation.

Basically the areas, there's two comments about sort of a lack of large shade trees on either side of the site.

And one thing I want to point out, if you look at the, I guess it's page south side here, which I guess is the roughly south, Molloy Ford building there comes up pretty close, five, eight feet off the property line.

So in that location, you know,

Trees would be essentially in the shadow of that building.

That service building is 20 feet tall.

We can measure that and report to you all next time.

But we do wonder a little bit about the benefit of trees in that particular location.

It's a challenge to us of getting them in there.

We're very constrained side to side here.

You know, the property is between two existing uses.

There's no

Adjustments possible.

And there's a certain minimum width to get the service bays required, which you see the 16 service bays there is the minimum number to achieve our service goals.

And we also have the bump out for the service drop-off, which effectively screens that area, but adds the overall width.

And so we're going to say we're space constrained side to side.

And I wondered on the front, if you'll look at the front corner of the parking lot in front of the Malloy Fort building,

I looked at my drawings and I was able to curve that parking lot in so we make room for three trees in that zone.

But it's more challenging to get them back behind the Malloy building.

So I wondered if the board could opine about the need for those trees or if they could be clustered somewhere else, potentially.

Similarly, we have a situation on the north side.

There's an easement up there, a waterline easement for an RWSA waterline easement.

that we can't plant any trees in.

So to create a landscape buffer there on that side we have to move those parking spaces over 15 feet, something like that, which is kind of a

It's not workable for us.

And so similarly, the question of adjacent to those, would the board be open to maybe a consolidation instead of every 40 feet, every 80 feet, clustering a couple of trees onto an island, any kind of flexibility.

And we realized that we're going to make a resubmittal of this.

The plan is not a point when you all would vote on today.

This has a special use permit process it has to go through still.

So our intention is to take these comments, hear any feedback you have, and then resubmit

which could then be an action taken prior to going forth a planning commission meeting a special use permit.

So this is not something we need to solve today but I just point out to the board of the issues in front of us I think we have the flexibility back and front to increase the landscape in the front but given our circumstances being such a wedge in between two existing car dealerships

We wonder if there could be a little bit of accommodation of flexibility on the tree planting on the sides, basically.

Thank you, Justin.

So with all that in mind on the site, I'll have a few more comments just for the board to weigh in.

Regarding the architectural design, staff mentioned specifically to reduce the top heavy appearance of the fascia flow, and we agree that that's a valid comment.

So thank you, staff, for making that comment.

And we are committed to reducing the extent to that overhang in an effort to reduce the top heavy appearance for our next permission.

I would iterate, you know, looking at the project holistically and in the context of the recent automotive showroom precedents, we're satisfying key entrance quarter guideline requirements in several ways.

The scale, building form, and material palette of the modern automotive dealership typology is represented frequently along this section of Route 29, and it's well represented here as well.

Metal panel, commercially scaled storefront, unique entry components are common in this building type.

Unlike the adjacent Mount Malloy Ford,

This project utilizes a warm earth tones material palette to reduce the reflectivity and relate more to its adjacent context, utilizing high quality, long lasting, low maintenance materials.

The project would feel neither out of scale nor incompatible with its context for someone traveling down Route 29.

Consistent unifying materials in a legible building form helped create a cohesive whole.

The sky pattern on the ACM panel will give the facade texture and limit blankness.

The introduction of an ACM front entry element helps break down the curtain wall showroom while introducing an element of human scale and facilitating the pedestrian's interaction with the proposed project.

The large amount of transparent glazing will meet the VLT and VLR requirements of the guidelines and will engage the showroom

with the site creating a dynamic experience for those traveling along Route 29.

The more technical side of things, all mechanical units will be screened appropriately by a proposed parapet wall.

As Justin mentioned, all landscaping will meet the guideline requirements as you guys see fit and allow once we think about some of the questions regarding those setbacks.

All site lighting will meet county standards

and all signage will be submitted under a separate application but will meet county standards.

So these strategies in conjunction with staff's recommendation to screen the project within some enhanced landscaping and some of the revisions that Justin talked about today will make this undeveloped lot appropriate and compliant with the entrance corridor guidelines while providing a value-added service for our area.

We're hoping the board agrees with this assessment.

And if not, we'll help provide specific comments for us to work on and convey to Hyundai.

So we appreciate the dialogue and we hope we've conveyed the process ahead.

Thank you for your time.

And we're here to answer any questions you may have for us.

Thank you.

And I don't have any questions either.

Thank you for your presentation.

Are there any members of the public that wish to comment online or in person?

The ARB will now go into discussion.

You sure?

Yeah, thank you, Frank.

And actually, I realized I had a couple of questions come up for me for staff, probably, if I could ask those.

Interior is hard to determine right now because the parking count numbers appear to be off and what the numbers they're showing compared to what they're showing on the plan.

The perimeter or the 40 foot on center along

the perimeter of the site closest to the entrance corner.

Okay, thank you.

And it's really the applicant's judgment for what they- I believe it's based on square foot, mounted square foot, square footage.

Okay so it's a function of yeah okay thank you.

Well I appreciate very much the applicant's presentation, appreciate staff's comments.

I think I agree with staff's comments about the architecture, I appreciate that the applicant

is willing to consider, especially the top heaviness and the scale of the facia.

This is not an architectural review.

It sounded like the applicant wanted some discussion about the architecture.

I do feel like the

The trademark design is maybe especially detached from the architecture of our area.

I feel like the precedents at the other floor property on Pantops that was mentioned are more grounded quite literally.

I think one of the fundamental challenges of this corporate design is that it has literally no attachment to the earth.

In terms of the architecture of the massing it's just sort of the free-floating fascia so I feel like thinking about some way to probably ground the building would be worth considering and then secondarily I don't understand the massing of the parapet and how it's carved but yet not in a way that

is explored fully.

So that might be another avenue is to explore it as a carved aluminum object but one that maybe more fully investigates that.

So quite apart from the review but offered in that spirit.

And I think in my recollection of the adjacent Malloy property as I recall there are a number of

Island locations for trees in that lot.

And so I think that to me seems like a successful application of the guidelines and maybe would suggest looking at that as a precedent for ways to incorporate additional trees in the site.

I don't know.

Agreed.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation and your submission package.

Very legible.

I would say starting with the site, I think for me, what's important is the frontage landscaping.

So it's good to know that you are looking for ways to meet staff's comment there and provide that increased planting area.

I think the perimeter landscaping will, like, I don't know how much adding trees along those perimeters will have an impact on the

entrance corridor and how you experience the site and this building.

Along those lines, thinking about that expanded, maybe it's those islands right at the front on either end of the perimeter that you lose a couple of spaces and that gets beefed up.

And like you said, it's not every 40 feet, but I think that's an option.

I think as you mentioned, Dade, that maybe adding islands

Something we've seen before and could be a way to get the numbers you need for perimeter landscaping.

And I agree with the comments on the architecture.

I think there were a couple ideas in the precedent image of like national examples where I think one had some columns on one end and there was one that showed

kind of a grill element or a louver element down below the fascia, that those two things I felt like minimize the impact of that heavy fascia.

But we don't need to give solutions here.

I think you've expressed a willingness to modify that and work to satisfy staff's comments, so.

I think anything here today too is preliminary architecture so it's just maybe some guidance.

Thank you guys.

Maybe I downplayed the preliminary approach maybe a little too much.

What could be helpful when we have conversations with Hyundai is kind of some of the specific things that you're starting to address like grounding the building.

Albemarle County wants to see grounding the building, looking at columns on one end.

Would it be possible to bring that slide up?

So maybe if you would be willing to tease out a few more comments on the architecture, that will help us facilitate the discussion internally.

But I think the staff comment regarding the facia is one that

It makes sense to flow, one that we can start to address.

And then, yeah, here, if things start to feel more appropriate, more contextual, I really do appreciate the grounding the building comment as sort of the quite literal, here's how it was successful on Pantops.

Maybe we can look at some of these and start to tease out ideas or opportunities that do fit within the Hyundai brand.

And as you can see here, there is flexibility within that fascia element to start to reduce it.

Hyundai has very specific proportions on the step-down and things like that, but we do acknowledge we need to be respectful of Elmore County guidelines.

And so I'm not asking you necessarily

designed the building with me.

Yeah, I mean, I think the step down is what's making it off kilter and unbalanced and giving that heaviness.

So the images I was looking at here, bottom left and the center image, I thought were two elements that maybe could help mitigate that.

I don't see here if there's anything in these that's grounding the building.

Yeah, I think the bottom right, it looks like the building is sort of, you know, it's a metal rectangular solid that's carved away to the glass.

And I think that's sort of a clear example or a clear example of one way to ground the building as a solid.

There's a hint of it in the lower left where the facia sort of returns down by the column.

I do think, yeah, the step down

and the fascia is an odd element.

And so the ones where it's a more continuous datum, I think are ones that relate maybe more to the order of architecture in our county.

I agree with Frank.

I think that the screening, the solar screening on the central element is a good way to break down the scale and add some texture and depth.

I think some of these also like the depth of the fascia

between the plane of it and the plane of the glass is an important element.

Yeah, agreed.

Yeah, I think if you compare the top two images, the image on the right feels a little better than the image on the left.

I like the idea of this box, a very legible box that gets eroded away, but it's still, maybe it still connects on the side to what you're saying.

And you're right.

It is very helpful to see that on the bottom right side, eroding away a corner is a lot different than the floating, you know, ring.

So that's, this is really helpful.

Yeah.

If there's, you know, again,

If there's anything else that maybe comes to mind or any comments, we're happy to engage in the discussion.

I think these are all still very brand appropriate.

I guess one quick thing to offer, I think some other projects have, one of the ways they've evolved the national design model is by subtle changes in the material.

And I think there've been some precedents where

It actually looks like the lower right corner.

As an alternative for consideration that's been used elsewhere.

This is sort of the idea of a heavy masonry base and then maybe a change of material as you go vertical?

Yes, yeah, that's certainly an example that we've seen and relates to traditional ways of building in the county.

Awesome, thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I think given the Malloy building, that's going to have an impact on this site.

And so you're going to drive down the corridor and get a full view of this.

So that they can move to a final.

We have to switch because we don't have a long enough cord.

Technical.

Margaret usually brings an extender.

We don't have Margaret and we don't have the extender.

So this is rather long.

They're the first couple and then the final site plan actually has 15 points.

Why don't we start up top.

Frank, did you have any comments from one through four?

No.

Right, if you want that.

I think, why don't you go ahead?

You can go ahead.

Agreed.

But that'd be separate of like the displayed outdoor storage.

I'm wondering if we see it next as a special use permit, and the changes are incorporated.

Would it then be to come back to us as an initial site plan?

Or at that point, would it be staff could review it and we would see final site plan and continue to review architecture?

It seems like a lot for us to review it today for initial site plan, then review a special use permit that's focused on the site plan, right?

Just trying to minimize for the applicant how many times we're reviewing site plan at the initial stage.

OK, that's helpful.

Does that mean Margaret's watching?

OK, I'm good with the top four.

and I think I'm good with the rest.

I still need to read them.

Browse quickly.

I see how those all look fine to me.

Okay.

If we could scroll back to the top.

Do we have a motion?

We'll move.

And I'll second.

And Carolyn, could you please call the vote?

Thanks.

All right, moving on to work sessions.

There are two work sessions today.

The first is on the design guidelines agenda for Fifth Street Extended.

Mariah Gleason, Senior Planner, thank you for your continued work on this project.

Today we have a draft of Route 631 Old Lynchburg Road and 5th Street for your review.

This corridor is located between Hickory Street to the south and the city

Line at Morris Creek to the north and has two street names, Old Lynchburg, which is to the south and Fifth Street, which starts at the intersection.

If you can see my cursor, it starts here.

So Old Lynchburg takes a left and goes up to the city.

And then that is where it becomes Fifth Street.

The corridor has two distinct characters separated by the I-64 interchange.

Parcels south of the interstate are mostly zoned in a mix of residential districts but also include mixed-use neighborhood model developments and a few commercially zoned properties including the county office building.

North of the interstate, parcels have highway commercial zoning.

So we saw this as this corridor organized into two segments and the

I-64 Interchange acting as the transition point.

So starting at the southern end of the corridor and working towards the center of the county, the first segment we called Oak Hill.

This segment has a four-lane divided highway with a grassy median and it's experienced the experiences of wooded buffers along

The segment screening residential neighborhoods and then around the old Lynchburg, 5th Street intersections, tree-lined streets become more prominent where office parks and denser apartment complexes establish a more suburban character.

There is a continuous pedestrian facility along most of the segment of this corridor, or most of the segment, consisting of a combination of sidewalks and recreation paths.

This is the precedent image for this segment.

We try to include more recent developments in this image.

So we have the Southwood development on the upper left hand corner, and then the build out of what was previously reviewed as, I think it was the ABC development, and it's changed names since then.

But that's kind of in the middle image and then middle left, middle right, excuse me.

So moving on to the second segment, we named this Morris Creek.

In this area, the road narrows and development is more consistent with the suburban commercial character of the city of Charlottesville.

The prominent development along this segment is Fifth Street Landing, so we included a compositional photo of that site as well as zoom-ins of each of the buildings.

We did not include the old Christian Aid Mission building in these images, since we weren't quite sure what the future of that building may be.

Thanks, Mariah.

Start with questions for staff.

Can you go back to the slide, Mariah, that has the, I guess the, yes.

So characteristics to avoid, we've got un-relegated parking.

My sense is though that most of what's in that corridor is un-relegated.

With the residential complexes, we are seeing relegated parking.

ABC, I'm not quite sure of their site plan, if it was actually supposed to be two buildings that front the street and they've just started with the back building.

The unrelegated parking is true of the county office building in some senses, but the county office building is almost located to the side.

Is there a site that you had in mind that I just... No, I just, I worry on corridors where the practical implications of relegated parking become difficult in the long term.

Like in 29, for example,

It's likely that with the Places 29 plan, more parking is going to end up being relegated toward 29.

I think the wooded and tree lining nature of the roadway in this area is pretty dominated.

I think that kind of side, the peripheral is pretty well lined on both sides instead

maybe 29 South where you have like the Greenwood Grocery and kind of some of these older commercial developments which really kind of encourage that front parking area.

I don't think there are those same developments in this area.

Yeah, thank you, Frank.

Thank you, Maria.

And I do think that the ABC site does have a number of other buildings that haven't been built that will go in front of the parking that's visible right now.

Thank you, as always.

Great work.

And the division and names make sense to me.

It's funny.

It's like there's almost no road around here that doesn't need to change names a couple of times.

So no other comments from me.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it looks great.

Just curious, or I think I know the answer, where old Lynchburg starts as an entrance corridor.

I believe so.

Yeah, it's interesting with the development with the ABC site,

It's interesting.

It almost seems like there's this kind of place that's happening at that intersection with that mix of public, commercial, and office uses, if you will.

They started with a

with a storage unit.

So it's kind of hard to tell which which direction it will really take as it evolves because you don't get to see many active uses as the first build.

It's not that I'm aware of.

Yeah, I'm not sure where.

I think initial site plan was reviewed by staff.

I believe Margaret reviewed that one.

And I'm not sure.

It seems like the days are blending together.

Oh.

May I ask one other question?

How many other segments remain for us to complete now?

I think it might be two, but I don't recall.

The ones that I'm thinking about are 29 South to Scottsville and there might be another one hanging out.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Brian, what would the zoning allow the majority of the commercial district here in terms of height?

Highway commercial, I believe goes up to 65 feet.

Can you guys think of any other sort of guidance that could be provided other than parking and landscape frontage?

I think context helps.

I mean if I remember the ABC development was pretty dense and what, three story, four story buildings?

They were office buildings, right?

Yeah.

I remember two of them were kind of like the sides of them were fronting

That's all.

No, it wasn't, there wasn't a particular reason why.

Yes, part of it is it came in, no, it is fully neighborhood model, excuse me.

We can add an image of the county office building.

It just isn't very visible because of the trees.

It may be okay to include the trees and just talk about it because I don't know, do the trees reflect EC guidelines for

Orange canopy trees might be a good precedent of showing that landscape.

When was it completed?

Does that reflect like 20 or more years of growth?

I don't know.

I did have a question for the board just about this particular set of images.

I included zoom-ins of each of the buildings that comprise or make up Fifth Street Landing.

Yes.

We reviewed that sign.

Yes, we did.

Yeah.

It was related to the Credit Union reusing it and some changes to parking and drop off, I think.

I think it's fine to include these.

It's an interesting site, like Access, and like there's some landform features there that I think might be challenging to develop right at the frontage, if I'm remembering it correctly.

I think there's like big grade change.

I think that's true.

I guess from my character standpoint, do we feel like there's anything being

So the commercial properties along the road are the county office building, which we probably wouldn't see redeveloping.

And then the other commercial property is mostly wooded.

It could potentially develop.

That's the light pink right where it's either 8 or 576 is.

and then the other commercial property is behind ABC and that's where region 10 is currently located.

yeah and I guess there's no highway commercial south of 64 so wouldn't have any retail presumably or limited retail I guess in a C1 you could have or a neighborhood model maybe or neighborhood model does feel like it's becoming a place

Good, I guess.

Now we will move to the second work session.

That's, I will be helping with that.

So Margaret actually put together a couple of things.

So I'm just going to kind of slide it over to the screen and we can kind of go down it.

So

The discussion from our last meeting is contained in the action memo and minutes that were linked to today's agenda.

At the meeting on the fourth, there was consensus among the ARB members that the discussion should continue on the 18th with the goal of forming a recommendation.

I think everybody has read this.

Dave?

I don't think so.

I wanted to start first by thanking Margaret for summarizing the conversation and providing that.

And I think she's pulled out in my recollection the primary points that I was thinking of.

I guess, please welcome Margaret.

Thank you.

Yeah, I don't have anything to add to that.

And I don't know whether we might want to work to formulate it today and then wait until our other two members are with us or forward as a draft.

I'd be interested in your thoughts and also staff's thoughts on the one hand of love for whatever we do.

I do have the weight and the consensus of the full board, but also want to be sure we're timely in terms of providing our input.

So typically comments like that are put into the paperwork that gets uploaded and sent to the board.

It can also be added later.

Do you know if that's correct?

Do we know the date?

I don't know, but I can look.

And Margaret said that we can probably wait until next meeting, but it would be good to know if there's general consensus on each of the points at this time.

I welcome my colleagues opinions.

I guess I think these are good points.

I don't know if Margaret might be able to give a try at formulating it into a, you know, the list is good.

I don't know if it would become anything.

different I think a general statement I think maybe this is a consensus statement is that the board is concerned about the potential impact of the proposed regulations to the entrance corridors this is a summary statement and then I think the first maybe three points are good I wasn't sure whether we want to

foreground the need for ARB review.

Again, well, maybe, sorry, thinking out loud here, if Margaret would like to give up.

Share our thoughts.

I agree with you.

I'm not sure we'd want to make a final decision without the other two members being here.

In terms of the increase from 10 to 30 could cause negative visual impacts on the entrance quarters.

I think there's probably agreement on that.

I think it's very site specific.

Greater clarity is needed when staff can deny an application based on visual impact.

That's a tough one.

Yeah.

Sure.

Neil Williamson from the Free Enterprise Forum.

I'd like to speak just to the larger issue.

When you look at the entrance corridor and you think of one application that I can clearly hear what you're saying, but the regulations that are being proposed reduce the number of towers.

If you have fewer towers, you have less visual clutter.

What was been told to the Planning Commission was that the increase in height would actually increase the propagation, something in the neighborhood of doubling it so that you could have half as many towers.

So I ask you just in your conversations to consider the aggregate, although you guys get to always look at the specific.

The aggregate is fewer towers, fewer roads, fewer entrance corridors with boxes next to towers, less stuff.

But it's taller and it works better.

And the entrance quarters are where we need it the most for safety.

But I just wanted to put that into the thought pattern.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate the point as well.

I think Mr. Fritz in his comments last week suggested that it wasn't certain what the outcome would be in terms of whether folks would co-locate.

I do think in reality, it's a possibility.

I don't know that the regulations are written now in a way that

Do we have the same authority over Dominion with regard to electric power lines?

I know we reviewed some power lines on 29 at one point, didn't we?

Right.

Right.

They put them in green.

Yeah.

And we didn't have anything to say about whether they were getting taller or not.

I don't know.

In site planning, if this were site planning, my response would be no.

They're a state organization.

That one you were referencing, I think it was just reviewing the landscaping.

The landscaping, okay.

That aspect of it, not where the lines were going in and in itself.

It's just out of landscaping, kind of a type of landscaping.

Oh.

I raise it because I think it's in the critical infrastructure sort of world, which I think cell towers are quickly becoming critical infrastructure.

I have very mixed emotions because quite honestly power lines are much more intrusive, unpleasant, whatever infrastructure component than cell towers are.

And I think about the cell tower on 64 in particular as you're coming up.

If you're coming eastbound before you get to 29 south, there's a one up on the mountain there that's rather prominent.

And I must say, I mean, I've seen similar towers like that treated with, they make them look like pine trees.

Oh, we saw one yesterday in North Carolina that was, I mean, it had to be a hundred and it had to be 150 feet tall and sort of pine branches or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do they?

Yeah.

It's not very convincing.

And in that sense, it's almost draws more attention to it.

So.

I don't know.

To Neil's point, I think the ability to reduce the number of towers by increasing the height is somewhat appealing.

Yeah, sorry.

Okay.

So if we reached a consensus January 2nd, that'd give them plenty of time to review it.

Well, I agree, Frank, that it is difficult to the second point here.

Maybe that

Maybe if we rephrased it, then that's maybe the impetus to say that the ARB review is still needed, which is that because of the unique nature of each site and the impacts on the potential impacts on the corridors and the subjective nature of

Well, I guess we're objective, right?

At the subject of the nature of evaluation.

Site-specific.

The site-specific nature of evaluation.

We recommend that a Herbie review of sites in ECs be retained.

I think folks would like we can acknowledge that there may be a long-term mitigation of the number of sites, but it's unclear if that will be the outcome.

Agreed.

Even if it, I mean, to Neil's point, and there's less of them, but even if there's one, you know, we still want to see it, I think, because

And these sites would not be like one.

Yes.

But it also doesn't mean just because we're going to see it, it's going to be denied.

No, no.

That's what makes it difficult, I think.

I do feel like we should allow for administrative review and approval.

Right.

So then I guess the question would be whether there's a consensus to require balloon tests or to do photo simulations or that would support an administrative level review that there's not an impact.

Yeah.

You have another comment?

I think it makes sense to review all of this at the next meeting.

Okay.

Well, can we all agree, are there, yeah.

What in here can we all agree on today?

We agree on the first.

I think we agree on the second.

I think so.

We just need to define one.

We have to go one way or the other.

We just need more clarity.

Well, there's the existing precedent with the existing regulation of skylit facilities not being allowed, meaning that they don't have any tree backdrop and they're basically visible against the sky.

I don't know if that, in this case, that would be from the EC.

Chances are with an increase of 30 feet.

There's no right of condemnation for establishment of these sites, is there?

It's a little different than a public utility that has the ability to condemn.

In this case, I guess the challenge is if the network needs a pole in a particular location and the only site they can get is visible,

I think it would... That set up an instance where like, you know, we might say that visually there's not appropriate screening, but then the board or others would accept it because of public health and safety.

And so there's a process to get there.

That's not our job, I guess.

Right.

Gotcha.

My understanding is, I want to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly, these recommendations will ultimately go to the consultant that's drafting the policy.

Right, so there's a draft ordinance that's being considered by the Planning Commission and if it is approved there, we go to the board for approval and adoption.

So basically, there's a draft ordinance that's out there that's moving forward.

Gotcha.

If we're okay with that, that's fine.

If we have concerns and revisions we think should be incorporated, this is our chance to influence that process.

doesn't mean that they will be adopted.

I don't think we strike any.

I think, again,

For some of these, I think we can answer the question.

What would the criteria be would be an interesting question.

Because there could be some that come to the board and some that are administrative.

At Dade's point, I guess, let's say it was not Skylon.

Would that in and of itself be reason for administrative approval?

To me, it would be.

I don't.

Right.

The other reality is a facility is 30 feet higher than the tree line is going to be a visible way beyond the entrance corridor in terms of impacts.

Right.

Well, it is needed.

I guess I would hope we could

put something on the record.

The existing ordinance and the actions of staff and the board over the last decades have done a remarkable job, at least in my opinion, of limiting the impacts of this technology visually on our corridors.

And I think it allows for public comment.

which is a good thing.

Is there another way that it's buy right?

For a buy right development, there doesn't need to be a public comment.

Well, good work on this today.

I think we could wait for the full board.

If there aren't, well, I'm sorry, she's typing.

Well, wait.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Margaret.

Thank you.

We'll move to other business.

Approval of December 4.

Minutes.

I second.

Mr. Van Der Werf.

Aye.

Any other items?

Any board members or staff?

No?

Thank you.

Next meeting.

So our next ARB meeting is scheduled for January 2nd, 2023.

I unfortunately will not be able to answer.

You're copping out.

That's right.

I just made that decision.

Yeah, but it's good.

Yeah.

Date and be looking to see if you'll be able to attend.

With that the meeting is adjourned.

It's at the next meeting on January 2nd, 2023.

It is 2 19.

The next meeting is 2024.