Architectural Review Board Meeting   10/19/2026

So it's, I'll say 1-0-3, and I'm calling the October 19th, 2026 meeting of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board to order.

Mr. Matsuno is absent.

Thank you.

Do any ARB members have anything to disclose?

No.

And me either.

Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting.

The public may access and participate in the meeting electronically.

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

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone.

Both is provided in lawfully posted meeting notice.

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

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 you 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.

All right.

No.

All right.

Aye.

And Mr. Van Der Werf.

Aye.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

This is a proposal to rezone the existing Westminster Cannery or the Blue Ridge campus and additional property to accommodate a long-term phased redevelopment and expansion.

The ARB review of this application is an advisory review.

We've tried to identify areas of inconsistency with the entrance quarter guidelines and when possible to offer recommendations on ways to increase consistency.

This map from the applicant's submittal shows the existing Westminster Canterbury campus within the red area on the left or at the west end of the property and the expansion area to the east.

The Route 250 entrance quarter is at the bottom of the image.

The proposed expansion includes buildings with large footprints and heights of seven and 12 stories and extensive use of retaining walls.

The buildings are proposed on land that's elevated above the entrance corridor, which is expected to highlight the size of the buildings and increase their visibility.

The site sections do show some stepping of the buildings into the slope, but it doesn't seem like that will be sufficient to mitigate the visual impacts.

The submittal shows views of the buildings are available from the vicinity of Glenorchy Drive to the vicinity of the entrance to the Hilton Hotel.

And it does seem like visibility could be greater than that along the corridor.

We've recommended a viewshed study to show the full extent of visibility so that the full extent of impacts can be understood.

Buildings of the proposed height and mass are not typical in the area.

They're not consistent with the scale and general appearance of the surrounding area.

It's anticipated the height and mass will make it difficult to make a strong connection to the historic architecture of the county.

We've recommended generally that visual impacts should be reduced, possibly by using multiple smaller buildings, limiting retaining walls, maintaining wooded and mountain backdrops for buildings as viewed from the corridor.

We've also made a few more specific recommendations, including revising the site layout to maintain the linear arrangement of buildings fronting the entrance corridor, moving the connector road behind the Phase 3 building, moving parking behind the Phase 3 building as viewed from the entrance corridor, and ensuring that entrance corridor landscaping requirements will be met.

The design at this point is conceptual, but we did note a few items to keep in mind as that design progresses.

Those are regarding the color palette for the buildings, the window glass, mechanical equipment visibility, and full cutoff lighting.

All right, Margaret, thanks a lot for the presentation.

I guess we'll start with Frank Stone.

Good questions.

That's all.

No questions.

Frank?

What's the max stories allowed for phase two?

Phase two is the tallest.

The information in this middle says 12 stories, but I think it may depend how you count as it's built into the slope.

Thank you.

Seven.

Okay.

And then by right in phase one and phase four, what is the max number of stories?

Do you know that?

It could be a question for the applicant.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, I guess my question kind of touches on the height issue also.

So my understanding is that this, the desire zoning allows the owner to establish their own maximum height.

Is that correct?

Are there any other

I kind of looked through the zoning code.

I didn't see where there were any instances where buildings over I think 70 was the highest I saw.

Right.

That's my only question.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board.

I'm Valerie Long with the firm of Williams Mullen.

Here we are representing the applicant, Westminster Canterbury, the Blue Ridge.

As you can see behind me, we have most of our team here.

It's a big group, including the president and CEO of Westminster Canterbury, the Blue Ridge, Tyler Kendall.

We also have representatives from Perkins Eastman, the architects who are gonna follow me, and also representatives of Timmons Group.

So hopefully we can address any questions that you all may have.

I'm also going to assume that many of you are generally familiar with this area given its proximity, so I don't want to spend too much time on that.

And you saw the materials here in the project area, the area in the middle that's not part of the project area is Commonwealth Senior Living under completely separate ownership.

The area sort of on the right side, all those smaller lots were plotted as part of the Glen Orkey subdivision back in the, I believe it was the 60s, before the interstate was built.

They have all been vacant ever since and Westminster Canterbury purchased them from the family that was the original developer of those lots.

So they're all vacant.

The existing zoning of the existing campus in that sort of teal color is planned residential development.

It's a combination of numerous rezoning special use permits and a variety of approvals.

Everything in the new area is in the green is zoned R1 residential.

So our proposal is to rezone all of it so that it's consistent

Rather than having a patchwork of many zoning approvals, we think that will be most workable for the public and the staff and the applicant to understand the rules and enforce and stay in compliance with the rules going forward.

the most recent AC44 land use map, the existing campus is there in orange, urban density residential, most of the newly acquired property is neighborhood density residential or green space.

And one thing I'll call out is the area above Westminster Canterbury, the Ashcroft subdivision that is in the rural areas.

It is zoned R1, but in the rural area.

This is our application plan, which shows, we call them blocks, and they sort of correspond with the phases.

We show the existing campus as phase one.

That was originally resumed back in the 80s.

There's no limit on the number of units.

The maximum building height is six stories, and they can have as many units as they want, kind of wherever they want, as long as they can meet parking regulations and so forth.

Phase two in the blue area is proposed to be a new independent living building.

And the architects, by the way, are going to talk more about height, why they chose them, why they cited them in each location.

I just want to walk you through the proposal.

So this would be our application plan under the neighborhood model district rezoning.

So again, the area in blue is, we call it Block 2, independent living facility units.

Down in the lower right, the lighter orange is Phase 3, or Block 3, which would be a healthcare building, which would include, in addition to health services, medical office for the residents, also assisted living, memory care units.

Phase four is, or block four is where existing buildings on the existing campus will eventually be removed and then replaced with new independent living units, independent care living units.

That is currently where the healthcare building is located.

It's out of date, really needs to be expanded and modernized.

So in order to avoid disruption to their residents, they need to rebuild the healthcare building down in block three before they can obviously convert these buildings to more residential.

And then finally, in the upper right, block five is proposed to be more independent living units.

So again, this would all be sort of subject to this application plan upon approval.

There's also a code of development at the very last page of our application plan that would include the building height references, regulations, limitations like other

neighborhood model districts.

And finally, the area here, most of the property is within the entrance corridor, but not these residential lots here.

This is sort of the phase five area.

This is phase two, and this is phase three for reference.

I'm going to let the architects come up and talk more.

I've covered most of this, but this is how we break down the acreage, the maximum stories that are proposed for each.

These are maximum stories.

Westminster Canterbury hasn't designed those buildings yet, but because they're not sure, we wanted to sort of worst case scenario would be this height.

Sorry, this is my last slide, forgive me.

We also have a sheet in our application plan.

There are managed and preserved steep slopes on site.

We are proposing to disturb or requesting the ability to disturb some of the preserved slopes.

This is existing Glenorchy Drive.

It is a private road up to, I think it's right around here.

And then the rest of this road does not exist.

It's latted, but not built.

and so in order to upgrade the road to meet current VDOT standards, it needs to be improved pretty significantly which requires some disturbance to those preserved slopes and or some retaining walls that were early in that design process but we wanted to go ahead and show that disturbance and likewise along this area in order to build the phase two building and this is a new proposed connector road to connect phase one with phase two and the others

There are some areas that preserve steep slopes.

There.

Now I will turn it over to Perkins Eastman to provide more details about the buildings and the planning.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Brandon Dillo with Perkins Eastman Architects.

I'll walk us through the various phases of WCBR's master plan.

As Valerie stated, phase one consists of renovations to the existing buildings on the WCBR's campus.

That pertains to various common spaces throughout their existing buildings, dining spaces, corridors, other common spaces and the like.

And then phase two moves over across the ravine from the existing WCBR campus.

Phase two consists of our 12 story building that we're proposing with two levels of below building parking.

167 independent living apartment units would be in this building.

The ground level of the building that sits atop the below building parking would also house some amenity spaces for the residents, not only of the phase two project, but also the existing residents on the existing campus.

You'll also notice that the building takes a curved shape to it.

The thought process here is that we're working with

the topography on the property as it is somewhat hilly property.

We're also sort of spearheading that building shape within the topography.

So we're touching less of the preserved slopes and sort of threading the needle there of where that building can be situated.

on that expansion parcel, but that also offers WCBR the ability to provide the unit count that we're showing in phase two.

Phase three sits closer to route 250.

This building would be the health center for the community.

As WCBR expands with their phase two properties and the existing residents on the existing campus, all health center units would move to phase three eventually.

And so that takes into account all memory care, assisted living, and also their long-term care units.

This building is also situated using the topography, so there's a stepped approach to it as well.

So it's sort of stepping up the hillside from the lower portion of the site, which is closer to Route 250.

And again, we're trying to preserve as much of the natural elements on the site as we can.

There's existing retention pond that sort of sits in the middle of the ravine that WCBR's campus is going to be straddling.

And it's really important to start to utilize that as an asset to the community and the residents at WCBR.

provides a natural walking trail that can sort of meander its way down alongside that existing ravine and then connect its way down to the phase three property.

As Valerie stated earlier, phase four then moves back onto the existing campus.

It allows for the existing memory care building, health center building, which has the long-term care units, and then their catered living building, which contains assisted living units.

Those can then come down, which allows WCBR to then create a new independent living building on that site.

And then finally, phase five moves back across the ravine.

And you'll notice that it's a series of smaller buildings, each building consisting of 20 independent living units.

This is a slightly different approach to what we're showing in phase two.

Phase five is what we call a hybrid home.

And so it's a much smaller form of a building with roughly

like four to five units per floor.

Each residential unit ends up getting a corner.

So it's a corner unit.

So every unit in those buildings ends up being a quarter unit, which is a different offering than WCBR offers on their existing campus.

And it's something that's a little different than what you're seeing in the larger phase two building.

And again, sort of an aerial view of the property looking sort of northwest.

You can see our phase two building up on the hillside.

You'll note that there's a varying in height.

So we're stepping the building as it's moving up the hillside and again, working within that existing topography.

and the building's placement and making sure that we're trying to stay away from the preserved slopes that are working their way down to that ravine.

Phase three, again, you're also seeing the same thing.

You see a stepped approach from Route 250 sort of up the hill towards the existing campus as well.

Again, we're trying to stay within a preserved building approach there without touching as much land as we can.

And then finally, phase five, again, up on the hillside,

Each of those buildings were showing a maximum height of five stories, but those stories also step up the hillside working with the topography.

Similar approach to this aerial view.

We also wanted to show a couple site sections along with our presentation.

This site section in particular cuts all the way from Route 250 up the hill to the Ashcroft neighborhood.

So what you see starting from left to right is State Route or Route 250, our phase three building, which is stepping away from us in this view.

and you work your way up the hill to phase two.

We're cutting through part of the building here in this view that works its way up the hillside to the property line and the Ashcroft neighborhood above.

This is a similar site section.

However, we're scooting the section over slightly.

So again, you're working your way left to right from Route 250 through our phase three building, which is stepping up away from us in this view, up the hill to our phase five buildings.

And as you can see, the five story buildings stepping their way up the topography.

We chose to have several views to help illustrate massing of the building.

So we tried to keep building massing as simple as possible.

This view is specifically from Route 250.

Looking up the hillside, you see phase three in the foreground, phase two up the hillside in the distance.

We wanted to include a similar view in this image here, which shows just phase two being built without phase three in the foreground.

This steps across the street.

This is at the Peter Jefferson place.

We wanted to show that this view in particular is actually taken from the berm that's situated across 250 from WCBR's property.

and we included an inset of what that berm looks like from 250.

So there's actually a lot of vegetation here that helps screen the development from the neighboring properties across the street.

This view is at the intersection of Pantop Mountain Road and 250.

Pantop Mountain Road is the road that leads up to the main gate for WCBR.

What we're showing in this view are the dashed outlines of where phase two

and the Phase III buildings sit in the distance due to the vegetation and also the topography on the site and the distance from Route 250.

The buildings actually sit way in the background beyond the vegetation that you see.

This view is from route 250 heading west.

And again, you can see our phase three building on the right, which is partially obscured by the vegetation along 250.

And we would propose in the buffer between 250 and our phase three additional vegetation to act as a buffer.

A similar view facing east.

Again, you can start to see how our phase three sits back from route 250.

Phase three, it was a question earlier, sits 250 feet back or 210 feet back from route 250.

It was also asked how far back our phase two building sits from route 250 as well.

And that's around 1500 feet back off of 250.

We wanted to include a slide that shows conceptual materials for the building as well, noting that there is a concern and a focus on what the building would look like sitting up on the hillside.

and with its proximity to the neighboring neighborhoods.

And so our approach to what this building would have as its conceptual materials, we provided three different concepts here.

Yeah, you can keep going.

Okay, almost up.

And then the central is a subdued natural approach to the materials.

And then thinking of our lower levels, the portions of the building, the below grade parking, that daylights sort of having a sort of a stone outcropping approach.

And so all of these materials are really aimed at sort of helping the new phase two property blend in with the hillside.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks a lot for that presentation.

I guess we'll find out if any board members have any questions.

Sure, and thank you for the presentation.

I guess one question, I know there's a maximum number of stories.

So our phase two building is proposed at 12 stories starting at the entry level of the building.

Thanks, it would be 144 feet tall.

Okay, thank you.

I don't have any questions.

Just a quick question.

The phase three buildings showed two buildings closer to Route 250.

Is that on the sort of the connecting site between the two?

Yes.

So WCBR has the ability to develop that portion of their property for townhome develop or cottage development.

Sorry, I'll just add clarification.

Let me, if I can pull that up, if it's possible.

Sorry.

Thank you.

These were approved as a separate, actually two separate rezonings by other owners.

One was Weather Hill Homes.

Some of you may remember Weather Hill Homes.

These were approved for cottages.

So those are existing.

We want to retain the rate for that, although we're proposing to have a bit more flexibility.

Maybe that's administrative offices one day, that sort of thing.

But we wanted to show those since that's permitted under the existing zoning.

It's part of the patchwork of existing rezonings.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions myself.

In that case, the ARB will now go into discussion, starting with Frank Hancock.

Sure.

Yeah, thank you for your presentations.

This is a complex application, although I think for us, it's actually pretty simple.

I mean, I think complex from a zoning standpoint,

for the number of parcels and the history kind of of the zonings.

But for us, it's just an advisory role to the Planning Commission.

So at least in my mind, I'm thinking about it pretty simply of building location, building massing, building height, those sorts of things.

And really kind of the level of detail that's presented in this application I think is

You know, more than sufficient to kind of gauge those.

And I think the site sections, the perspectives and everything provided, I think give us a pretty good idea of what these buildings will look like on this corridor.

and two, I think we asked a couple of questions related to distance from the corridor.

So I think that's also key in reviewing this application.

So specifically thinking about phase two, that's the tallest building of the collection.

Given that it's 1500 feet from the entrance corridor,

you know it's a different conversation as far as what we're looking at you know at the building and you're definitely going to see it and but I don't think there's anything that says we can't see buildings on the entrance corridor and we can't see big buildings on the entrance corridor and given the way it's sited and the how it fits with the topography and how the form varies you know I think all those things contribute to the you know that it won't have this

have huge presence on the corridor given that it's 1,500 feet away.

Granted, it is one of, I think, the highest points of the site, but I still think pretty far away, so I'm not as concerned with that one.

The phase three, that is a little bit closer to the corridor.

In this case, I know some of the staff comments say maybe that building should front the corridor.

I think the way it's sited now, it actually kind of diminishes that presence and might be better sited off the corridor.

I know we like buildings up on the corridor, but I think in this case,

That seems appropriate to me.

And then I think maintaining that parallel road, the interparcel connection, I think is important.

So this plan does that as well.

And then my question earlier too, about the Bi-Rite phase one, phase four, I think, you know, we're likely going to see some, I mean, zoning would allow for taller buildings anyway on the existing campus.

So,

I don't know that adding these is really going to have a huge impact.

And then my final point, I think you can kind of see where I'm going with this.

I think we're the nice thing here is it's there's it's not a super dense plan as far as we have.

There's a lot of green space.

And, you know, it's pretty economical of where the buildings are located and we're taking advantage of the building height to get that density.

and we're left with, I think, probably more green space than was proffered before or that was in the plan before.

So I think that's important and will help kind of reduce the visual impact of some of these buildings.

All right.

Sure, thank you, Chris, and thank you, Frank, for noticing or observing the role of the board in this review and the complexity of the application.

I think maybe to begin with remarks on phase two, I think I'm not persuaded that we have enough information to assess the perception of that from the corridor.

I think the views provided are

from portions of the entrance corridor that are closer to the entrance to the overall development and potentially lower and so they benefit from the screening of the landscape.

I think it would be important to understand how this is observed from higher points on 250.

I agree it is distant from the entrance corridor but I'm also reminded of the apartment development off of 64 by Martha Jefferson where I think in a similar instance we thought that a development would be mitigated by landscaping and it is not.

and I think the phase two in particular because it sits on the podium of the garage and there's you know there really will not be any opportunity for sort of forested screening so I think it's very important to understand

how that is perceived from distant views, because the building is of enough scale that it can have an impact at 1,500 feet and beyond, I believe.

I do think, you know, in some of the views, the silhouette of the building breaks the skyline, exceeds the height of the ridge line of the mountains, and I think in that regard, it is entirely outside the architectural precedence of the county.

It is a jump in scale that it's just very important be considered quite carefully.

I believe the other, well phase five seems to be reasonably stepped into the landscape and I think would not begin to have a similar impact and it seems appropriate in scale.

And then I appreciate Frank's remarks on phase three.

Certainly for the scale of the building that's proposed there, the setback and the step up the slope seems like it does a reasonable job of mitigating that scale.

And I appreciate the applicant highlighting that the continuity or proposed continuity of street tree planting would effectively mitigate that.

But interested to hear others thoughts as well.

All right.

Yeah, I would echo a lot of what Frank Hancock said on a sort of general conceptual basis.

It's hard to argue with the sensibility of the rezoning relative to what's there now.

We're in the growth area.

I think it's a thoughtful plan that does include a lot more green space than we would get otherwise.

And in that sense, I think we

You may see a 12-story building, although it sounds like maybe the vegetative buffer that is available along 250 would mitigate most, if not all, of the impacts of both Phase 3 and Phase 2.

If we didn't approve a 12-story building in phase two, I assume the footprint of that building just gets bigger or there's another building.

And so as I weigh the relative benefits and cost of reducing the scale, given how far it is off the entrance corridor,

I just I don't really have any heartburn over it and I think when it's all said and done my guess is well it will certainly be visible from some areas on Pantops and I don't know about Ashcroft for example looking down on this site but I do think the overall plan makes sense and

All right, thanks.

I agree also.

Overall, I'm in support of the rezoning in general.

And I guess I wouldn't be much of an architect if I thought that just seeing a building was inherently bad.

But I do share Dade's concern about the height, particularly of the phase two building.

So I certainly would like to see in the future if that 12-story option continues onward, I'd like to see a lot more views of potential impacts.

Having said that, I do agree with what Frank just said.

If it's not height, it's going to be more

or Footprint.

So in weighing kind of which one is better, it's hard to say.

But I think certainly some more views about the impact visually from the corridor would be really helpful.

Sorry, a bit of technical difficulty.

Thank you again for your patience.

So this motion is to provide applicant with comments and recommendations listed in the staff report.

It sounds like from your discussion that you will want to delete or change several of these.

I had them divided into

Okay, I guess regarding item one, does anyone have any, that seems

pretty uncontroversial.

Are you talking about all A, B, and C?

Yes.

Well, I wonder if we could be a little more specific.

I mean, there were a lot of good visualizations in the package.

I mean, the site sections, the before and after views close on 250.

Well, not even just proximate, but up the hill.

I mean, I think it'd be fairly straightforward if they have this in a 3D model or even just in Topo to figure out areas that, well, separate from that.

I think other views from the entrance corridor, from 250 in particular, that demonstrate the visibility would be helpful.

There are means that the applicant could do a survey if they wanted to assess which ones were relevant.

Yeah.

I think you could.

It might be worth- We don't need to- I think it's, well, it's distant enough that I think maybe that's reasonable.

I do think it is tall enough that it is, you know, it's gonna be a significant structure.

There is another kind of opportunity.

I do feel like the scale is something which will have a character of its own that you cannot really imagine.

And certainly if the rezoning at that scale makes sense for the county, that's fine.

I think in terms of our charge of looking out for the continuity of the character architecture of the county, this is outside of it in terms of its scale.

I mean, this is written for this corridor.

I think we could narrow the scope a little bit.

And to your point, knowing that it would come back, I feel like maybe it's the top of Pantops at the giant shopping center intersection.

Kind of a high point.

Well, to the point about the larger,

It will be, I agree, architects, we enjoy looking at buildings.

Yeah, it's a very tall building at the top of the hill.

And so I think it's going to be visible from a large segment of the entrance corridor that we're talking about, 250.

Just a long 250.

And we could say from 64 to the shopping center.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not within our purview to request views from

And so we're asking the applicant to provide these

additional views to the Planning Commission because we're making a recommendation to the Planning Commission.

It's not going to come back to us in an advisory role.

The applicant will be receiving comments from a number of reviewers, and it's possible that a revision could be submitted prior to planning commission.

Okay.

Yeah, I just think maybe it's in the minutes.

but I think asking for a bunch of other studies at this point.

I think if we can narrow it down to this point A to point B of this entrance corridor, I think it would help the applicant.

Wouldn't think so.

It's an advisory review unless

I mean, that said, technically, having been involved in some viewshed analyses, it's fairly straightforward with the model and GIS to identify areas that are.

Would it be reasonable to other members to ask the applicant just to do that, assess that there are not other areas, for example, westbound on 64, where this would effectively become a significant element in the entrance to the city?

So that was the easy one.

I think we can all agree it's not consistent with scale of county development.

I mean, we say that, but look at Martha Jefferson Hospital, which is maybe not 12 stories tall.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's bad.

I'm just saying it's like that's inconsistent with the scale of

I mean, this is where we would want it.

I mean, you think further down the corridor, I was at the Virginia National Bank building.

I always use that building as an example.

That looks a little out of context.

It's a little bit taller than the other buildings.

But aspirationally, I think that's the type of building you would want on the corridor.

I agree this is in the density of the county.

It's a different scale, and it will change the architectural character, I think, in particular in terms of how it relates to the ridge and height.

12 stories in the low point of the corridor, for example, would be different.

And just do we really want, well, a 12-story building anywhere in the county would be a jump in scale.

And I think with this rezoning at 12 stories significantly higher than I think as you pointed out, the zoning code allows anywhere as of right in the county.

It's important to recognize it as a significant change in scale and character.

Yes.

Your comments could acknowledge the change in scale and also

What if we limited it to scale and to general appearance?

Many of the existing buildings are just one or two stories, but there's also large areas of six-story apartment buildings with two layers of parking below.

I would renew the historic architecture of the county.

It could end up being fairly consistent.

And we're specifically talking about phase two, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Not the whole development.

Right.

Yeah.

The two buildings that are pulled close to the corridor, that's typically what the guidelines see, so we're okay there.

I mean, the bigger building I thought made more sense pushed back to kind of lessen the impact.

I mean, do we strike B?

I think add phase two.

May I certainly agree with the second half of this?

What do we mean when we say reduced building scale?

I mean, the word can encompass both.

But if we reduce the height, it would be more math, right?

I would think.

Yeah, I could, I guess, revise the phase two height and consider revise it.

I mean, the building itself, the phase two buildings is broken up in plan and turns.

And so it's, it's, you know, that helps mitigate it.

The mass, we're okay with.

Well, it's the dilemma we're going to be facing in the county as it continues to grow, right?

Either growth area gets bigger or stuff's got to get taller.

This is a long-term plan, too.

Right.

I totally hear, yeah.

I think, just speaking for our role as the Architectural Review Board, not the Zoning Board, not the County Development Agency,

You know, we're charged with stewarding the character consistency, the order of the county's character.

And I just, I want to take a moment to recognize that at 12 stories breaking well above the trees, above the ridge line, this is a significant step in terms of the departure from the existing character of the architecture and the county.

Is it above the ridge line?

In some of the views, the silhouette of the building is above the bridge behind.

Again, it's of a scale that is outside, it's unprecedented in the county.

And I think it's important to recognize that.

I think in our role, we're not charged with creating zoning or development strategy.

We're charged with consistency in the order of the architectural character of accounting.

And this is a departure from that.

I'm not saying that it's good or bad.

I just think it's, and I think if we're charged with keeping things harmonious and consistent,

Yeah, I appreciate that.

But I do think there's going to be firsts.

When you look contextually at this corridor, you know, adjacent to an interstate,

close to the city, close into the city.

I think it's appropriate here.

I think it's okay to see big buildings and long entrance corridors.

Well, and I think I don't disagree that we're seeing bigger buildings.

There will be bigger buildings.

I think it's just a question of how much bigger is necessary.

And I don't know, you know, to go from, call it a six-story cap across the county to double it and to double it at a high position.

And it's also doubling it on a podium.

So it's really, you know, it's...

It'll be 144 feet plus the podium, 160 some feet, 170 feet.

That's two plus times the height and vision.

There's land next to it.

There's land up and down the corridor.

You could get a lot of capacity and a lot of development and accounting without

Doubling the height of buildings allowed throughout it.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Right.

Yeah.

And again, this is just one zoning, rezoning request.

It doesn't mean that it doesn't create a right or an opening for others, but certainly it will set significant precedent.

What's driving that elevation?

I'm going to let Brandon come up and answer your specific question.

I think a lot of it is efficiencies.

And as you all have indicated, trying to preserve as much green space as possible, try to limit any, as much as possible limit disturbance to this preserve steep slopes.

But it's about building efficiencies, but I'll let him answer that.

One thing I do want to clarify is this wouldn't necessarily be the first building.

The AstraZeneca facility was recently approved by the board to be up to 140 feet.

Don't know that's what they're planning necessarily, but that was recently approved just in the last few months.

So I acknowledge your comments.

It is a departure.

We do think in this location, for all the reasons you are stating, Mr. Hancock, its proximity to so many other areas across the street in Peter Jefferson Place is one of the newly designated activity centers under AC44.

So it's kind of right across the street near the hospital near Peter Jefferson.

So I just wanted to clarify, although it is a change, we acknowledge it would is not going to be the first building that is 12 stories or in that range.

I think the AstraZeneca building, obviously it's different.

And then in addition to that, what's driving the height in our building, the topography on the site is a big aspect to that.

We're also trying to stay away from the preserved slopes so there's less land disturbance with the development as well as the more compact that we make the building footprint.

Similar to what exists on the WCBR campus now with a central building with a lot of the amenities spaces,

that the campus has sort of grown around.

This is another step in the evolution of WCBR just happening on the other side of the ravine as well.

And so the ability to create that compact footprint offering the amenities that will be associated with the community on that side of the ravine and allowing us to create the amount of residential units that allows WCBR to grow is what's really driving that

I don't know if we want to, we could return to C in a moment.

I mean, to me, that's a consider.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Kind of reducing visually.

Right.

And then item D6.

I couldn't hear you.

Where all the retaining walls are?

You don't know whether there will be retaining walls there or not.

Is that right?

Correct.

We show some walls conceptually, and I may want Brian C. Hockey of Timmons Group to come up and speak to this more as an engineer, but as we discussed the other day, we're still working with the county engineering department and VDOT eventually to figure out exactly how many retaining walls.

It may be there's no retaining walls, but

Again, I'll let Brian say that more eloquently than me, but it hasn't really been decided.

But in order to use Glenorchy Drive as a public road, we have to upgrade it to public road standards, which you all know is an ordeal and requires some additional disturbance, either retaining walls or more disturbance of the preserved steep slopes in that area, some combination thereof, perhaps.

But we're not at the point yet where we have any final plans, as you indicated.

Certainly we would have to come back as part of the site plan stage to, we'll have to get approval of those road plans and all of the individual building site plans as well.

Thank you, Valerie.

Brian Cihaki, the Simmons Group.

So essentially a lot of the walls are coming from the Glenworkey roadway section, which today is subpar.

It doesn't meet PDOT standards.

So we've got a constraint there where we've got existing residential neighbors and we don't have the power of eminent domain on our side.

So all we can do is work inwards into our land.

And that's what we're proposing to do.

And essentially on that side of the existing road is where the preserved slopes start.

So we're widening the road section to make it comply with VDOT requirements.

That's really what's creating a lot of those critical slope impacts.

We're trying to minimize those, hence where the walls came from.

We've gotten some comments from the county too to reduce the preserve slope impacts as well as eliminate the walls.

I would love nothing more than to get rid of some of those walls too.

So we're going to be working with engineering to see what options we have, but we are trying to balance between the preserve slope impacts.

They're dropping.

That would have mattered.

Are we moving on to the stormwater pond?

That's sited where it is for a specific reason.

If there's any play in that, the applicant's going to have to meet the landscape requirements along the frontage, along the road.

So you're proposing striking that?

The lighter shades typically have not been those favored by the Architectural Review Board in the past.

I wouldn't mind.

I mean, I think also it depends on what height this ultimately ends up.

It may need a couple pallets between, you know, its base condition.

Yeah, I think at this point in the development of the project, yeah.

Is there, oh, there's more.

Three, oh no, okay.

Yeah, not another page of.

Was there, I mean.

I guess personally, since,

Consider is written before all of those things.

I mean I guess the applicant could take some of this and revise the application ahead of the Planning Commission to be like okay so

not just an advisory role I guess we are and this goes back to the applicant but so where are we I mean a lot of ways the use of retaining walls like

They've done a really good job maintaining trees and the whole reason they have retaining walls is to maintain the preserved slopes.

Typically zoning could come in and say we want to get rid of all the preserved slopes in this parcel and so we can develop more.

You know, they're making an effort to not do that at their expense because retaining walls are not inexpensive.

The second part about it?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm okay if we say height.

Okay.

What was that building height instead of?

Okay, yeah.

No, in front of phase two.

within the development.

So if it's starting at an elevated position from some, again, I'm imagining it will be helpful to see whatever evidence the applicant may have.

Well, I think Chris and I were coming around to revise.

Frank and Frank are still considering.

It sounds like you all think that it is well integrated into the topography.

Well, I'm sure you have to be casual with that.

Maybe we'll start to argue with that.

No, I mean, I think this is I think we're.

Forgive me for interrupting.

I just want to get some clarification.

And some of it involves questions you all had about the role of these recommendations to the Planning Commission.

We do have a Planning Commission work schedule, work session scheduled in, I believe, early November.

So we weren't planning to make revisions to the application before then.

So we want to just understand how you envision these.

Are these recommendations safe for that work session eventually, or for when the buildings come back to you on an individual basis as part of the site plan?

Sort of one question.

And then in 2D, there seem to be a number of recommendations that

I thought I heard you all say you were okay generally with phase three, but a lot of those speak to phase three.

And I'm personally a little confused about the hype for phase two.

I thought I heard you all saying you were okay with hype because it preserved more open space and impacts, but the comments don't quite reflect that.

So I just want to make sure we have clarity on your comments.

One thing I didn't mention, if I may, is 2D, the one about the connector road, little three, but moving it behind the phase three building is not an option in terms of the terrain and the operationals of the site going through.

There's a stream there that we're trying to avoid, for example.

Thank you.

We're happy to talk more about that, but we just want to really be sure that it captures your comments from earlier.

Thank you.

Maybe we're not there yet, really.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And then I think the Phase 2 height, we're not voting on this, so you won't see it reflected in a vote, but our compromise is adding consider

Margaret, thanks for keeping up with the discussion.

I will move to provide the applicant with comments and recommendations listed in the staff report amended as shown.

Are you ready for a vote?

Mr. Stoner?

Aye.

Thank you very much.

We do not have any work session items today.

So do any board members or staff have any other items they'd like to discuss?

All right.

In that case, our next ARB meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 26, 2026.

I'm thinking I will be able to be there.

We did.

Yeah.

Yeah, I might miss that.

That would be November 2nd.

So in this case, the meeting is adjourned until our next meeting, which to be determined when that is.

And it's 2 32 by my watch.