Planning Commission Work Session   3/30/2021

Thanks.

Thanks everyone for joining tonight.

Yeah, you can.

Maybe it might just be Missy that can't hear me.

OK, OK, cool.

Great.

Well, thanks all for joining tonight.

Tonight from the consultant team, we have a whole slew of folks.

You can see on the screen, Dana Roadside's here.

Ron Sessoms is here.

Lee Einsweiler from Code Studio is also here, mostly to listen to comments and to join in as relevant.

But tonight our focus is to talk about the future land use map.

We sent the first draft and this is where the conversation will get more difficult, as we all know.

This is, we're looking at the details.

So this was, you know, we know this is the first draft.

There's going to be refinements and revisions as we move forward.

We've already identified some

potential things that we know we want to update, but we know that you all will have comments as well.

So we look forward to working with you as we refine that.

Sure thing, Jenny.

Great, thanks.

And you can go to the agenda, the next slide.

So we'll start off tonight.

We'll give a brief project update, let you know what we've been up to since we met on February 23rd.

And then we'll spend the bulk of our time walking through the draft future land use map and the different pieces of that.

And then we'll have obviously some discussion around that.

And then we'll talk about some of the next steps, including the sort of community process for reviewing this.

And then we'll have some time for public comments at the end.

We know there's quite a few folks on the line who would likely want to weigh in.

Up you go a couple slides ahead.

So since we met on February 23 we've refined, excuse me, refined the original land use framework that we shared with you last time we met and we drafted the future land use map we'll be discussing tonight.

In the middle of all that, we met with the project steering committee on March 8th and we talked with them about the land use framework and got some additional comments.

We had a really good discussion with that group.

We put some of the comments on the slide just to read through them quickly.

We heard the steering committee wants to see a more clear role for economic development related to land use, some recognition of urban agriculture and food justice, food access.

There's a discussion about protecting vulnerable communities from unintended consequences of this plan or other pieces of land use planning, which we know we've talked about with this group as well.

We talked about on the framework, the different locations and scaling for nodes and corridors.

And we talked about the need for when we're identifying places for potential denser land uses, wanting to focus also on improving multimodal access and safety in those areas instead of just focusing development there.

There was also a discussion about the potential for organic node development as opposed to defining specific nodes for development, which I know we talked about a little bit as well.

And then we also talked about land use issues related to industrial uses, as well as uses along the river and protecting the river.

and at the end we also talked to them about engagement and Latoya cannot be here tonight but she has been meeting with some from our steering committee to get their their input on our public engagement process as we move forward here and we'll talk with you a bit more at the end today.

I want to note at the request of our steering committee member who represents CADRE we met with that group the Charlottesville area development roundtable and we gave an overview of the land use framework the same framework that we showed you

And they raised some issues that were in a lot of ways similar to what we heard from the steering committee.

So one other thing I want to note is outside of the land use map, which we've been working on, we've also been working on revisions to the chapters of the plan.

And we've sent some initial revisions to staff for their input.

And we got comments back at the end of last week.

And so we're working through revisions to those chapters this week based on the comments we received.

and

You know, we're starting mostly from the 2018 drafts on those chapters, and we asked staff to help us both get those up to date and refine the goals and strategies in those chapters, but also to provide thoughts related to implementation, such as timeframes, responsible parties, measures of success, and that type of thing for each action so that we can, as we move forward, use that to create the implementation chapter of the plan, which is something we're tasked to do specifically in this effort.

Let's see, if you go to the next slide please, Joe.

So just a few more notes about our process to date since we last met.

So we talked with you last time we met about the land use planning objectives and we got your feedback on those.

We also got some feedback from the steering committee.

So we have updated those a bit.

We've refined them and Ron will go through those with you.

We also made some small adjustments to the existing conditions maps that we haven't included those maps in this presentation set, but we're using them as we refine the land use map.

We'll talk through tonight from the land use map and our process with that.

So we'll be happy to answer more questions about how we went about in that process.

But you can see here our refined land use framework, which builds on what we talked about last time to make a more detailed framework that we then based the land use map on.

So we don't need to get into details about this here because Ron will talk you through that in just a second.

But I guess before I pass it off to Ron, I'll just ask, are there any questions about work we've done since we last met?

Not necessarily the outcome of that work.

Any questions about what I've just went through?

Okay.

Thank you, Jenny.

Next slide, please.

And next slide.

So just before we get into the details of the future land use map, I did want to provide an update to some of the other components of the future land use map that we have updated to date based on the conversations with you, Kadre, and the steering committee.

We heard a lot of good feedback, particularly regarding the future land use planning objectives that you see before you.

Last time that we met, we had five planning objectives and since that time we have updated them and now we're up to nine.

So this is a list of objectives that we want to make sure that we meet as we think about the future land use planning.

and making sure that we're encompassing these big ideas as we move forward.

Just to touch on some of the highlights of changes, point five, maximizing access to public open space.

We also included schools.

We heard a lot about making sure that we provide density and access to not only public spaces, but schools.

So we thought that was something important to add to our list.

Six, we included this objective in our last presentation, but we did add in UVA.

They're an important community institution and we want to recognize that importance, particularly as we think about planning in the city, particularly around the university.

and of course keeping in the urban ring, the area right outside of the city that lies within the county but has important contextual relationship with the city.

Point seven, we heard a lot about making sure that we touch on the city's climate goal to reduce greenhouse emissions by 45% over the next 20 years.

And we can do that through some of the planning instruments that we have for our use.

And one of those is to increase access to transit.

So we wanted to make sure that we call that out as a specific planning objective.

Point eight, natural and cultural resources.

Of course, we want to make sure that we respect the natural environment.

Charlottesville is a historic, culturally rich community.

Anyone make sure that we recognize that as part of our planning objectives as well.

And then point nine, at our last meeting, we talked a lot about housing, but we also want to make sure that we talk holistically about economic development in the city and economic sustainability.

So we added a ninth point to ensure long term economic sustainability of the city by planning for a wide range of commercial land uses.

making sure that we're not focused just on housing, which is a very important component, but we're also addressing the need for economic development.

One second.

Number eight.

That is a bullet where we talk about not just the cultural resources, but we talk about the environment as well.

I'd like us to be very intentional when we talk about preserving the environment.

So to the point when Matt writes a staff report on a project we're considering, one of the things that Betty points out is what that site plan, especially when we're dealing with critical slopes, takes into account the need to preserve and enhance the environment.

I want us to be very intentional in the complaint when we're talking about that.

So again, when staff rights are important, forgive me for being redundant, but I'm trying to organize what I'm attempting to say.

When staff rights are important, one of the bullet points that the developer needs to think about, especially on critical slopes, is protecting, preserving that critical slope and protecting the waterway at the base of that critical slope.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that later on.

I just want to make certain that we're very

Yeah, absolutely.

And each one of these planning objectives, and they'll probably be more added as we move forward, particularly as we begin to reach out to the public with some of these initial ideas, we'll be sure to include sections in the comprehensive plan that explicitly cover these objectives in much more detail.

so that we can have that as a resource, as you mentioned, moving into the future when we start to think about implementation of some of these future land uses.

So I think that's absolutely important.

Any other questions or feedback about the planning objectives before we move forward?

We can always come back to it too if we have ideas as we go along.

Okay, next slide, please.

So at our last meeting, we had a spirited discussion about how the future land use plan should be illustrated.

We have two options, one a parcel-based approach and the other would be a land use gradient approach.

The parcel-based approach is very similar to what was developed in 2013, where you have crisp lines between different land uses based on parcels.

The land use gradient approach would be more of a fuzzy boundary, you know, there's not hard edges.

It wouldn't be defined per se by parcels themselves, but it allows flexibility in the future because the lines are not as crisp as a parcel based map.

And as part of the discussion, we were asked as the design team to go and provide our professional judgment as to whether or not we should proceed with a parcel based approach or more of a land use gradient approach.

And we have come today to recommend that we we recommend a parcel based approach.

Three key reasons why.

The zoning rewrite is part of this scope of work.

So once we work through the future land use plan, we'll move into the zoning rewrite.

And the more consensus that we have on this future land use plan, the better we will be able to support that zoning rewrite.

So that's something that's very important.

Point two, yes, the gradient map does provide flexibility in zoning.

However, it does offer less certainty to the community about what the future's land use would be.

You know, what happens in those fuzzy areas is undefined, and that can cause confusion and uncertainty.

So the more we can be detailed now up front, the more it will help us in the long run.

And then point three, we want to make sure that, and this is very similar to point one, but making sure that we strengthen the relationship between the future land use map and the zoning map.

The implications are two are very different.

Zoning is legal.

Future land use map is more of a guiding document, but we want to make sure that they're in line as much as possible so that we can know what to expect moving forward and again help us in that zoning rewrite scope that's following as part of this process.

From the last time that we spoke, we have taken our future land use framework diagram, if you all can recall the yellow map with the purple corridors and the nodes and to develop that parcel based approach, we've taken that to define

which parcels are located along corridors, which parcels are in nodes and as an approach to that along the corridors we are thinking about those being more block face parcels and what we mean by that those are the parcels immediately touching a corridor

While nodes can be larger mixed-use focus area, multi-parcels, you know, you can think of an area like along US 29 where you have larger parcels that are not located just adjacent to the corridor.

That would be an example of how load would be developed and we'll walk through that as we go through the different land type categories.

And it might be that after we walk through the map, the pieces of the map, you might have other thoughts that come out of things that you're wondering how they carry over into a parcel-based map.

Sure.

So for now, I'll move forward.

Next slide, please.

Equity, that's something that we talked a lot about on our last call and making sure that we're keeping the issue of equity in the forefront of our mind as we begin to develop a future land use map.

We have developed some key points as to how we're balancing equities considerations as part of your land use map.

We're providing more housing opportunities, including affordable housing, and we're including those areas where people want to live.

This would be places near parks, school, transit, city services, and employment centers.

So we can provide more affordable options to those community amenities.

We can support community wealth building through enhanced home ownership opportunities.

Sometimes when we think of home ownership, we think of single family housing, but that's certainly not always the case.

Home ownership can take the form of many housing types, including condos and townhouses.

So we can provide a variety of housing types that can accommodate a variety of

budgets and allow more people to climb the economic ladder of home ownership by providing more options.

Increasing availability of housing in single family neighborhoods that have been historically exclusionary while minimizing disruptions and displacement pressures on low income neighborhoods.

We heard a lot about how we can begin to

provide equitable housing distribution throughout the city and again doing that through introducing a variety of housing types in different areas of the city that historically has not included that type of approach and also displacement of low-income neighborhoods.

You know we can't solve it all through the land use map and there's a

Wide range of that goes to the next point that the land use map is not a one all be all.

It does need to be taken into consideration.

to other programs and community ordinances, if you will, that can promote the availability of affordable housing within the city.

So it's kind of a balance between what we do in the plan and what we do in policy and how they work together to create the community of equal distribution and provide those,

Less pressure on low-income neighborhoods overall.

Can I ask for a comment on this, on this slide?

Sure.

Is that okay, Commissioner Mitchell?

Sure.

Others may feel differently, but I take pause with the phrase low-income neighborhoods.

I think what the consultant intends is something more like historically marginalized,

No, I would agree.

Yeah, I think because we're looking beyond income, we're looking at a variety, and like you said, a variety of different neighborhood types that could include more diverse neighborhoods, and as well as income based, so we can definitely revise that to be more of the marginalized neighborhood definition.

I think that would be

Certainly appropriate here.

I think it's both.

We certainly do want to look at where there's lower wealth, lower income neighborhoods.

Absolutely.

Any other

Comments here, or we can move on to the next slide.

So here you can see where we were and where we are.

The diagram on the left is the future land use framework diagram.

The framework is kind of a guiding tool that we use to develop the future land use map.

So you can see on the left, this is where we're in February.

And then on the right is where we are now.

You can see the map on the right is much more detailed.

It has certainly evolved quite a bit.

Since we last spoke in February, we've been working hard to make sure that we incorporate many of the ideas that we've been hearing from you, the steering committee, feedback we heard from the cadre meeting.

So I'll just touch on some highlights.

You can see on the map on the right, we have included neighborhood corridors.

We heard a lot about not only just focusing on the major corridors like Preston Avenue, Emmett Street, JPA High Street, and corridors of that nature, but also to consider these more granular corridors that are located within existing neighborhoods.

So you can see we pulled in a number of those based upon feedback that we heard, some analysis that we've done in the city.

Beyond that, we've also taken a closer look at the mixed-use nodes.

You can see the larger bubbles being those larger concentrated node areas, you know, US 29, your downtown, strategic investment area, River Road, Fontaine area, and the Harris Street area.

And then we also have the smaller neighborhood nodes.

And you can see we've switched some things around.

For example, the Dairy Road gateway area, we've removed that node because of topographical issues there.

And we've heard a lot about moving and having more of a community node near the high school at Grove Road and Melbourne Road.

So we moved that node over to that area

We have a spirited conversation about the Locust Avenue Gateway node that we were showing last time.

We did listen, we went back and reevaluated that opportunity and we moved that small community node north towards North Avenue in the park to get away from this high traffic intersection at 250.

down to the southeast of town, the Belmont area.

We heard some concerns about calling this area downtown Belmont, so we renamed it Belmont Center, and also instead of thinking about this area as one big

potential redevelopment area for some of the existing commercial uses.

We've added in two additional nodes along Carlton Road and Market Street and Carlton Avenue just to the east of Belmont Center.

And again, we'll go through that when we get into the details of the future land use map, but I did want to point that out.

Avon Street, we heard a lot about that.

We added that in from the last time and even thinking about and considering the node as you enter into the city along Avon Street.

And then Cherry Avenue, of course, before we were not showing the

Entire corridor is part of the plan.

We did pull that in to have both nodes and corridor conditions in that area.

And then looking further to the west, the Frost Springs Beach Club, we pulled that into the mix.

We've heard that there are some interests for some light commercial uses at that location.

So that could be the opportunity to create some neighborhood nodal activity there at that location.

to see what other big changes here.

Ivy Road, again, we pulled that in.

We heard a lot about that, particularly because of its relationship to UVA as well.

Did you mention the 5th Street corridor?

So we still have nodes at the end of 5th Street at the entranceway into 5th Street.

Yes, we did have one iteration where we had

a larger node right along Fifth Street.

And on that note, I also want to point out the Raya Road area to the north.

We did not show that corridor on our last iteration of the plan.

We went back and looked at this area a little bit more closely, particularly regarding recommendations, including the urban ring, which is outside.

and the county limits that's calling for some mixed use development on the east side of Riley Road.

Which I think was something you all had thought about in your 2018-2019 discussions as well.

So that's a broad overview of the map.

Any questions or anything that anyone wants me to look at, talk about more specifically?

Yes, so before we were showing some woolen mill node in this location, we thought it would be more appropriate to show there's some light industrial office uses right on the south side of the railroad track.

along Carlton Avenue.

So we thought that that would be more appropriate for node versus out in this residential area to the east.

So we went back and took a closer look at that.

So basically, that nodal opportunity moved further to the west to encompass more of this more land that would be more acceptable or amenable to some redevelopment opportunities.

Okay, next slide, please.

So I won't go through all, don't worry, I won't go through all this text at one time, because we're going to break this down section by section, but from that framework diagram, we began to develop the future land-east map.

You can see there's 13 categories of

land use.

However, there's really non-core developable land use categories that range from downtown core, urban mixed-use node, urban mixed-use corridor, industrial mixed-use, neighborhood mixed-use node, neighborhood mixed-use corridor, and in our three residential zones, which include high, medium, and low intensity residential area.

So that would be non-land use categories.

And in the 2018 plan that the Planning Commission developed, there were seven, and then I think it reduced down to six.

So we have about three core land uses more than what was shown in that plan.

Keeping in mind that we are getting into a finer grain of detail with these recommendations.

But you can see the land use categories reflect the corridor and the nodal approach that we described in the future land use framework, in addition to the three residential categories.

So you can begin to see how that land use framework is

beginning to translate down into those future land use plan recommendations.

And we'll go through these non-core future land use categories step by step and describe them with precedent imagery.

So I think unless we have any pressing issues now, we can hold off that discussion as we walk through it step by step.

Next slide, please.

So this is an overview of what the future land use map looks like.

You can see we have the key to the left and then the map to the right.

And even through the colors, you can really begin to see how that framework has come alive through the future land use map.

You can see the corridor is extending from downtown, reaching out to the US 29 corridor and so on and so forth.

This is where we are.

So we can move on to... Can I just make one note before we move on, Ron?

So I want you to know we sent an email to the Planning Commission right before the meeting with this information as well.

But once again, this is the first draft of the land use map.

We know there are going to be things that will need to be adjusted.

So we have noticed a few things, both thanks to the Planning Commission and thanks to some community members who have noted it.

You know, for example, there is an area where a light industrial area extends a bit more than we meant for it to originally.

We can point that out when we get to that section.

That'll be adjusted on the future version.

And I want to specifically note we're showing proffered open spaces here, which are sort of open spaces as part of private development.

And we thought it was important to show that because it really extends out the sort of open space network within the city.

But we did realize that the method that we used to do that was pulling from the personal data that was available to us.

And it pulled in, unfortunately, some areas that are actually developed not as open spaces, even though it's noted as common space in the data.

So we're gonna be cleaning that up, but we want to just throw that out there.

Yeah, thank you, Jeannie.

And on that note, there was also one comment about the area around Courthouse Square, where there's some civic spaces that may need to be refined.

And we're going to take a look at that moving forward as well, make sure that we clean that up.

So as Jeannie mentioned, there will be some cleanup.

We have 16,000 parcels citywide.

So there will be some cleanup on a few of those parcels as we get into the details of the plan.

Next slide please.

So I would like to start with downtown.

Downtown is the core of the city.

It's one of the highest intensively developed areas of the city.

It's a primary employment, civic and commercial hub of the community.

And we see that being the case moving forward.

And we also wanna make sure that we're providing places where people can live close to the amenities of downtown, close to work.

and all that Downtown has to offer.

So you can see here, and again, we have a high resolution map that we can get into if we need to take a closer look at any of these districts.

But you can see downtown here is in the center of the city.

This downtown zone is very similar to what is shown in the current future land use map and zoning maps.

It matches up quite well with that.

So we've pretty much kept that intact.

And we are calling for this district.

We have not specified every building height within that district.

And again, this is a future land use map.

There's gonna be more detail moving forward, particularly in the zoning piece of all of this, but we do recognize or wanted to identify the opportunity for building heights to range up to 10 stories.

The former Landmark Hotel site, that's a 10 story building.

It's one of the tallest buildings downtown.

So that would reach to that height and again these are all preliminary heights, preliminary ideas that we want to and will be working through as we have conversations with you and the public moving forward but as a starting point that's where we are and we include a few present imagery

Pressing the images of downtown kind of core development.

You can see it's very urban in nature.

We can have articulation in the buildings, you know, the setbacks, step backs and other means and methods and urban design tools that we have at our disposal to create a walkable, pedestrian-friendly, good urban design district for the city.

And I'm going to go through these.

Feel free to stop, but we can have a conversation once we go through these different map extractions, or feel free to stop anytime if you have a pressing question that you'd like to ask.

Could you go back?

So this will be a question that can be repeated probably in many of these.

But this is probably the most directly relevant.

The downtown core of the map you show here is also very similar to the downtown historic district.

and you're showing 10-story heights.

And so what is there in here that references the historic districts and their coordinated, their overlays for your intense urban mix and residential and commercial uses?

and not only the city recognized historic districts, but also the federal and state register historic districts.

Because even though the city doesn't recognize them, there are opportunities provided by those historic districts that if they're delisted because of inappropriate development, it takes away economic opportunities for landowners in those districts.

Yes, I think that, and these were kind of high-level descriptions, we definitely want to, and that's one of our objectives, is respecting those historical resources.

With the building heights, we do say range up to 10.

We know there's already a 10-story building,

in downtown.

And we will have to have architectural control for these new developments that will control the character and scale of these buildings, thinking about setbacks and setbacks, proximity to historic resources that will have to be considered as part of those development opportunities.

So you're absolutely right.

That's going to be something that's

going to be very important moving forward, particularly, you know, thinking about this range up to, you know, where do we have the lower, the lower heights within this district and where there are potentials for the higher buildings like around the Landmark Hotel.

So those are things that we will have to consider beyond this

and a more generalized future land use map is the detail of scale, not only think about height, but the bulk of buildings as well and how those buildings are articulated from an architectural point of view.

Yeah, and I know intellectually that all those controls are in the background, but I just worry about the implication of what this might say to potential developers or landowners that, yeah, but the future land use map says I can do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This makes it look so easy.

That's a concern that I have on many of these colored-coded zones.

I would like to suggest, I'm not sure whether this document stays

and is a record of this conversation in time or is used moving forward.

But I would encourage different images.

Those buildings connotate new development, plop down in a cityscape.

And what we have is an existing historic fabric that you mentioned we want to make sure we have good design.

Well, we have good urban design and we actually want to make sure we

retain it and treat it appropriately, as Commissioner Landrieu was saying.

No, thank you, Liz.

That's good.

And we'll definitely think about, we will update these images so that they'd be more contextual.

These images don't show any historic context, how you would treat building, perhaps a taller building where you have lower buildings or historical context, for example.

And I think in the final comprehensive plan, there will be probably several more images for each of these different sections to really demonstrate.

I didn't think so.

So I would make the recommendation that you find an example of somewhere actually in Charlottesville, if that's what the context that we're going for.

I think if we, I know that we have several new structures that have been placed in Charlottesville, I'm sure we can find something.

in the actual city that can be like a reference map.

This is one thing to see it and be like, oh, okay, this is what they're talking about, maybe, but it's a whole other situation where, oh, okay, I know exactly where that building is.

I have a sort of a point of information.

In the 2013 land use key, we didn't list heights at all.

So we're trying to, in my recollections, we were trying to be more specific in having any heights.

because when we saw 10, we knew, you know, maybe, you know, it was a red flag for discussion to have, you know, to have around that.

And I would point out that the hotel is an anomaly within that historic district being 10 stories tall.

It's the exception.

Just to tie it all together, I would love to point out that we do have two historic contributing structures in this zone or designated downtown core purple.

The Wells Fargo building at nine stories and 500 Court Square, the Monticello Hotel at 10 stories.

So I really do like the idea of

adding actual pictures of the city.

Thank you.

Any additional comments on this slide?

If not, we can move to the next slide.

And then the next category would be our urban mixed use node.

These are urban mixed use areas that supports the city employment, commercial and housing needs at key locations.

And this will include the areas of a strategic investment,

area as well as properties along the US 29 Emmett Street corridor.

For example, at the Stonefield development just north of the city's border along US 29 Hydraulic Road, there's a proposal

to develop a six to eight story mixed use residential building at that location.

So we are seeing some demand for more urban style development in that corridor, which is good.

But nonetheless, we think that these areas can support apartments, office buildings, ground floor activated uses that will be your retail uses potentially.

And then we did include a cap here at 10 stories.

These areas are located

For one, in close proximity to downtown, of course, any tall buildings want to make sure that they're stepped down in relationship to the surrounding residential areas.

So, you know, if you were to get one or two tall buildings in the core of that purple area, for example, versus out on the edges, we want to make sure that we say that we want to make sure that we step down development to these existing

neighborhoods and that's defined also in the strategic investment area plan as well, the step downs.

And we'll make sure that we incorporate that and talk about that in the comprehensive plan as well.

So those will be your two areas.

Here's some precedent images.

You can see some urban style.

Residential development with some activated ground uses, particularly at intersections, can be continuous along the entire ground floor.

These areas as they are urban in nature provide opportunities for great public space amenities.

Here's a plaza space that's incorporated as part of a courtyard amenity.

in a mixed-use building, and then a couple other examples.

You wouldn't find this type of development in the strategic investment area that's more urban, but I did want to show the opportunity for more town center-type development opportunities, particularly out here on US 29.

So these areas, they will be more, I think as far as height, these areas would be lower in height, even though the range is up to 10 stories.

We think that there's some opportunity for more of a point tower condition and the strategic investment area master plan identify that

Maybe two block area that had the opportunity for that greater than six story height to create kind of a point tower condition in that zone.

Same could be true along US 29.

I could see these areas being more of

More of master-planned multi-parcel developments versus downtown, which may be parcel by parcel in the field.

I think they also present more opportunity for residential development.

That's right.

Yeah, that's true.

And another issue too, I think that's different between these areas and downtown is parking.

Parking is very, is at a premium downtown.

And it will be at a premium in the strategic investment area as well.

But because we have these multi parcel opportunities, there's more opportunity to incorporate that better in the urban form, to get some of that higher density development.

And certainly along US 29, we have these large commercial properties.

Cool.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is a little bit too aggressive in places to go with the entire SIA, for example.

And like there's already built out, you know, low density single family homes within the SIA, like next to Sixth Street.

I think this is everything west of Sixth Street down to Morris Creek.

and I think in the in the SIA plan it's a little bit more nuanced than that where it really sees the redevelopment being focused in like you know the the big grayfield sites like ICS and then stepping down which I think would warrant you know a different designation in these.

I also feel like there's some places that it should be like for example the CFA building actually

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, Joe, if you could give me that functionality, but I'll just call it out for now.

The CFA building north of High Street at the corner of 9th is one of the biggest just kind of asphalt expanses in extremely prime land.

I think it would be very appropriate to put that there.

Similarly, across the street, the Tarleton Oak site.

And then I would say that like the scrapyard by

like north of the railroad tracks that we see is like the, I think it was the Carlton Avenue node.

Given that it's such a large grayfield site, I think it would be appropriate for it to be.

So put as much density into there as we can in order to kind of help alleviate the pressure on the rest of the city.

I also wonder why, you know, the Fish Street shopping center stuff isn't

The Fists...

And then lastly, next to Meadow Creek up in that top part.

Sorry, it's hard to describe.

I think we should be really careful on the Mickey Drive apartments in significantly up-zoning that.

That is a huge source of affordable housing in the city.

Thank you.

I think another with this SIA area because, and you're right, the plan was more nuanced in the area.

Some of these parcels are so large where they encompass some areas that maybe they were calling for lower density development.

We say a range and we can define that, but I think it may be

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

And yeah, really just, you know, finding those, those already subdivided and built out, like, you know, residential parcels that already exist and kind of pulling those out of the node.

I also remembered, I forgot one parcel, as I mentioned, the Vinegar Hill Shopping Center, like where Staples and Donald's and Wendy's are.

We can look back at events and see how that would fit in with this designation.

I'm curious to know, based on those different potential additions that Rory mentioned, do other planning commissioners have thoughts about those, supporting those questions about that?

I'm not sure that they would all support heights up to 10 stories.

I don't know that that height was expressed in the Star Hill.

I could be wrong, even if it were the more intense part of that area.

Clearly, this is a place where that gradient would actually benefit if we're talking about the step down to the edges.

But I'm not sure how it would necessarily differ from the

Yeah, I think with the vision plan, I feel like it doesn't actually specify stories, but what it did say was that it should be stepped back towards the residential part of Star Hill and that it should be not stepped back towards Ridge McIntyre.

And I would agree with Rory about the south end of Fifth Street.

You all show it as a neighborhood mixed-use corridor.

I guess I've always, I don't know what, it's hard for me to

You can picture that as serving the neighborhood more than the automobile traffic that's coming off the interstate at that point, at that location.

And we'll go back and take a look at that.

I think that would be a nice balance for some additional density down on the southern end of town.

Okay, I think we can... And we can always come back when we have additional thoughts.

I think we're ready to go to the next slide, please.

And then we have the corridors.

These are areas that we want to encourage higher intensity mixed use development that link employment, commercial and civic hubs of the city.

These land uses may include apartment office buildings and ground activating uses.

And these heights may range anywhere from five to eight stories, tallest buildings.

potentially near intersections where we want to have some variation in the urban form.

And you can see these here, highly reflecting the framework diagram where we're showing JPA, well, kind of from west to east, Ivy Road corridor around the university area.

Preston Avenue, a portion of it from McIntyre up towards the Triangle where we have the Derry Central site, West Main Street.

Again, there's a lot of university development on the west side.

and the opportunity for more contextual urban mixed use on the east side that would fall within those story ranges that I mentioned.

JPA is a major route that connects UVA back to the west towards Fontaine.

So we have identified that as an opportunity for urban mixed use.

And then further to the east, the High Street corridor from downtown to the east towards River Road, and then finally Long Street, which connects High Street towards Pantops and that mixed use area right on the other side of the city border in the urban ring.

as primary locations for this urban mixed use.

This area right near the Edge Hill community, near 250 and kind of north of the Hare Street corridor, we are envisioning this area to be the medium density residential, so we will be updating this looks out of place because it is out of place and that should be medium intensity residential around the school.

So that's something that will be and others have flagged that area as being potentially erroneous.

And we will correct that in the next iteration of the map.

So that's why that looks out of place.

But everywhere else, this is where we're calling for that urban mixed-use corridor designation.

I just make a comment as I look at this and the previous map around the UVA area.

I think one thing that we need to kind of get settle on, so to speak, would be like showing UVA versus UVA foundation property.

And I kind of feel like, you know, in maps, you should probably show

UVA Property as UVA Property and then treat foundation properties as any other property that's privately owned.

There's a lot of ways that those could develop in the future, whether it would,

come back to, or whether, you know, UVA would use it or whether the foundation would develop it on their own under, you know, city codes and zoning and everything.

There's just a lot of, there's just like too much uncertainty there.

So I think it would probably be a better way of like treating those properties would be.

So like the one that jumped out at me was like the Arlington Boulevard little notch out at Millmont Arlington.

We went through the information we had and turned off the UVA foundations, at least in the late data set that we have, but we can go back and check that and make sure that all of them

We'll double check that and then we'll circle back with you, Bill, just so you can help us double check that.

So I'd like to talk about JPA for a minute.

I think I've kind of said this before in a general sense, but like

I really think that the existing student areas, we should really focus on just jamming as much as we can into to keep those students contained and stop them from spilling out into the rest of the city.

So, you know, I think a long JPA, it would be appropriate to go, you know, potentially even higher to the urban mixed use

Node destination if that allows more.

I also think there's some tweaks to be made to those exact boundaries.

For example, on Maury Avenue, just north of the JPA extended intersection, like where it meets Fontaine.

I think we have that little shopping center that's like a laundromat and like one hoe and

Anna's and the direct cleaner designated as residential right now, high density residential.

And then I think there's some apartment buildings and things and some parking lots that maybe could eventually redevelop that are also designated as high density residential, but maybe could go more intense.

I just want to expand on the comment of creating more of a node in this condition, in this area.

I guess this is where I get a little bit confused about the distinction between node and corridor.

Obviously, in general, a node is a place and a corridor is along a road, but I guess what I'm saying is more intense land uses associated with that node designation might be appropriate, even though it obviously is a corridor.

It is a corridor associated with UVA where there is very high desire for development.

Any additional comments?

We can move on to the next category, if none.

And then we have the industrial mixed use areas.

We heard in previous feedings that light industrial, light manufacturing has a place in the city and we should explore opportunities to keep that designation while allowing for opportunities for integral land uses.

So we have identified this industrial mixed use designation.

which include light industrial manufacturing employment areas and allows for limited residential commercial development with the height no more than six stories in these districts and Jenny touched on this and I want to touch on it again that we are going back and refining the boundaries of this zone again that Edge Hill area just to the north of this Harris Road industrial area should not be included as part of this so that's something that we're cleaning up

but we did see these as remaining the light manufacturing, light industry areas of the city and there's an opportunity in that as these sites turn over, particularly sites along the river, there's an opportunity for these sites to clean up over time.

We heard a lot about environmental stewardship along the river and the comprehensive plan in our environmental

Consideration section, we will have a discussion about what that means along the river, you know, riparian setbacks, building setbacks from the actual stream, stormwater management, and other environmental consideration that comes with redevelopment of these sites along the river.

So that's something that we are keeping

in the forefront of our mind.

The three images here, you can see this is an example of ground floor maker space or light manufacturing space on the bottom floor with some office uses above.

You can see how that can become integrated together.

With that boundary cleanup, I do think it would be good to see a little more green along the river there at River Road.

I wanted to echo the point that Liz is making.

As it relates, there are a number of intense development opportunities throughout the map.

And I think we need to make certain that we put a little green space or a little stream buffer

indicate that in all of the intense areas that are adjacent to any of the waterways.

No, that's a good comment.

I've wondered if there's any opportunities that align more with the counties, maybe not even industrial, but sort of tech, more tech-oriented industries south of town.

I wasn't, you know, the boundaries are hard to delineate when you're driving through town and it seems like we run out of Charlottesville pretty quickly going down Avon, but maybe over at 5th.

I'm not really expressing an opinion here, but I would point out that these two areas are not the only industrial spaces.

It's a reduction from the 2013 future land use map.

For example, the Harris Street area

who also included some space on the west side of the tracks, both up by Rose Hill Drive and down south near Preston, kind of along Albemarle Street.

In fact, the assembly factory that my company works with is down over there.

So something to think about.

And of course, there's also the whole Carleton Ave scrapyard was industrial space.

And in fact, in the Compline designation, the whole area where Carleton views is now was designated industrial space, which we of course, should not be anymore because it's residential.

There's also like some little spaces, right?

Like down in Belmont by like

Palatine Road, Southwest of Belmont Park, like where Yellow Cab is, there's like a pretty small like half block square of industrial stuff.

It's actually in the old plan is designated low density residential.

So, you know, maybe that stays as a nonconforming use.

I don't know, again, I'm not really expressing opinions, just kind of pointing out that it is like that.

and, you know, maybe we should be intentional if we're trying to say that some of these areas should be changed to envision a non-industrial use.

I also think there's kind of a question of like, when you guys keep saying light industrial, but for example, in Harris Road, there's a concrete plant, which I would not classify as light industrial.

That's pretty heavy industry there.

And like, do those uses, like, are they,

still allowed in this?

Would that become sort of nonconforming?

And then like the lighter of light industrial is I think much less impactful on the surrounding area, whereas the concrete plan is like loud and annoying and polluting.

So kind of things to think about.

I'd also say when you pull back that industrial area near Birdwood Road or Birdwood Court,

I would also pull out the allied street, like McIntyre Plaza from industrial and turn that into a mixed use node since that has already, it's no longer really industrial at all.

It's mixed use residential and businesses.

Yes, and thank you for pointing out the concrete plant.

That would be if this plan as shown here was to move forward, the concrete plant will become a non-conforming use and would not be allowed to expand in the future.

So that's how that would be treated.

And then if someone comes along to redevelop it, it would have to conform to this future land use guidance.

I do have an opinion, haha.

These are two of our largest low-lying developable areas.

Low-lying, large, a place we can develop, to me suggests height.

What would get developed at six stories in an industry?

So we are allowing for limited residential and commercial uses so we want to make sure that you know we don't

characterize these areas as mixed use commercial districts, like our urban mixed use and our neighborhood mixed use areas, but there could be a mix of uses supporting residential and commercial development in these locations.

We talked a little bit about

the light industrial manufacturing makerspace that could be compatible with a residential component.

So we were thinking that on the ground floor you can have some of those makerspace activities very similar to this and allow for additional uses on top that are compatible with that makerspace.

type component.

What exactly is makerspace?

Yeah, so it's more of a space where light assemblage happens.

There could be kind of a technology component to it.

It's below light manufacturing, but it's just an area where you can, you know, have like a makerspace could be something where you make

fencing or robotics or artistic functions like glass blowing or iron work or things of that nature.

So yeah, I got to say the River Road thing really kind of gives me some heartburn too.

On the one hand, it's important to have industrial space in the city to provide those blue collar jobs.

On the other hand, that is all in the floodplain, and that is the worst possibly used to put in the floodplain.

So if we want to protect the Rivanna and make it more accessible, I wonder if we want to encourage that redevelopment.

I don't know.

Yeah, we've thought about those issues as well.

We've been hearing a lot about that.

And one thing that came up was that allowing for redevelopment of this area to include these live industrial uses can incorporate better technologies to protect the river as well, stormwater management and whatnot.

So that'd be one positive of that.

But I think as we look at refining that area, we can also look.

Not only at what Liz mentioned sort of creating a some sort of buffer, whether if it's in green space or maybe some potential another type of use.

We can, we can take a look at what what that might be.

but we're also cognizant there are, there's a planning effort going on.

The river, can't remember the exact name for it but I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, that would be part of this light industrial area.

It could be considered commercial, so it could fall within those, and we don't have an explicit commercial

Definitely something to consider, you know, as we talk about, you know, vibrant mixed use and then sort of trying to relegate, okay, what's industrial versus what is a useful amenity for neighbors to have.

Or, you know, and I don't mean to single out auto because maybe we

Don't think we'll be driving cars anymore, but I don't think that's coming very soon.

This is an interesting one.

I mean, you know, when you talked about the light industrial manufacturing, just because I live near there, I immediately think of the building where Firefly restaurant is at the corner of East Market and Carlton slash Mead.

And it's really kind of an interesting building.

It has restaurant, it has catering, it has light industrial sign making.

There's even metal work.

But then, you know, if it gets that kind of,

I think that's what you're talking about.

Would that preclude businesses like that having a place in a redevelopment of a site like that?

The way that we define that will be important.

And that's why we had originally designated this industrial mixed use where it does allow

residential and commercial uses but doesn't preclude that, you know, if we flip it the other way around then we could start to get, you know, that wholesale redevelopment of residential, ground floor retail, exclusionary of light, industrial manufacturing uses that, you know, wouldn't accommodate those types of uses that you described anymore.

I'm going to suggest we move on to the residential piece because it's 10 to 7 and I want to make sure we have enough time to get through all the pieces and have some discussion at the end.

Next slide, please.

Next category is neighborhood mixed use node.

These are compact neighborhood centers that emphasis

that emphasize a mix of land uses arranged in smaller scale buildings that are compatible.

And the keyword here is compatible and having compatibility with surrounding low and medium intensity residential areas.

You can see in the bottom image, this is an example of a little neighborhood node.

You can see the buildings are oriented to the street with the parking in the rear.

the buildings are no more than four stories some of these include a half a story but in general three to four stories around and can even include some neighborhood services this looks like a drug store that was incorporated on the corner of this development so when we talk about neighborhood mixed-use nodes this is a type of rich diverse type

character we're thinking, and we're thinking at least for these nodes that the range would be up to four stories.

Four stories because we don't want to get too high where it becomes out of context with these finer grain residential communities that surround many of these areas.

So we want to have density, we want to have appropriately scaled density.

What are we thinking about Belmont Park?

Looks like you've surrounded the park with something.

Yeah, so we did hear, and I can't remember if it was the planning commission meeting or the steering committee meeting, was the idea of having some mixed use opportunities around the park and making that a node.

So we colored that purple around the park.

The park will stay, but having opportunities for mixed uses around the park, we saw as an opportunity.

Yes.

The northwest corner of it, I guess, is like B2 or something where Brown's is.

And I think the majority of the area to the east is Latin and R1 category.

OK.

In the interest of time, I think we can see where these different areas are.

Is there another area that we had questions about or concerns?

And maybe that's a place where we don't go to four and

So I'll highlight that as an area of concern.

There's definitely something to be said about places where infill is going to be more appropriate when a neighborhood is, you know, when there's an existing building fabric and to what degree is it even realistic to think about

Yes, so the Fry Spring Beach Club, we learned from planning staff that there has been some

interest from the private development community to incorporate some commercial activity, some commercial activity on that site, which will in turn make it a node for the community, not necessarily a large one, but we've identified it because of that interest in commercial activity on that site.

that we identify that as a potential internal node to that Fry Spring community on the Fry Spring Beach Club site that could evolve over time.

I guess too I was just wondering because compared to all of the other nodes that are mentioned here, other than maybe UVA, I just figured that was private.

You know, you had to be a member in order to even exist in that node.

So that's what kind of drew a red flag for me.

We've talked about some of this already.

Heights, some of these should be way over four stories.

Some of them probably under four stories.

When we talked about this in 2018, we said five stories.

I mean, frankly, it's all arbitrary, and it doesn't make much sense.

And yes, with four stories, we were thinking about how that contextually fits within the residential character and also thinking about surface parking.

The higher you go, the more surface parking you get.

So we start going up to five, even four, four stories with that residential and or office component and the commercial on the ground floor, you're gonna need a lot of parking.

And then that begins to affect the buffer between that site and existing residential.

A lot of these sites aren't that wide.

They're going to be able to accommodate a limited number of parking.

So as we go higher, you have to also keep in mind where you're going to park all of the people that need to access that site.

So we kept it four stories.

It seems to be an appropriate scale that fits in the context.

Up to four stories, there are some areas that we probably want to control and have lower.

We talked a little bit about Belmont Park, maybe even Farrar Spring area to make them conceptual, contextual.

I want to know, we know that parking considerations are something that we'll be talking about more.

So we know, you know, there could be changes potentially to that parking considerations coming, but just we're trying to consider that in general, you know, like I think Liz said earlier, maybe we know cars aren't going to go away overnight.

But the other thing we will be considering with these nodes and with the corridors, as I think we've said before, is how can we improve multimodal access to all of these?

and along them.

I'm sorry, Rory.

Oh, go ahead, Jody.

Just quickly, the devil's in the details for like around Belmont Park.

I mean, these are very small parcels that are being pointed out as going up to four stories.

And those parcels are surrounded by one story bungalows, very small resonantas.

Yes, and I do want to iterate up to

Four stories.

We're not going to go wholesale four stories.

You know, with the Future Landings map, we do keep it generalized with description, much more detailed description than the three bullet points you see before you on this slide.

And zoning will have bulk plane control, setback, step back controls, which is going to drive how high you could even get on many of these sites because if you can't meet the regulatory requirements set forth in the zoning code, then you can't go up.

to four stories, for example.

So we will be using those regulatory constraints to help drive how high and how dense you can get on many of these sites.

So when we say range up to four stories, when we get into the regulatory requirements, what it takes to develop these sites, see some of them won't be able to certainly go up to four stories.

So what I'm hearing you say is that there's going to be more description with your recommendations here that further defines the context for some of these recommendations.

Good, because the Planning Commission will need that kind of description detail in the future as they interpret the land use plan.

That makes sense.

So I feel like we've talked a lot about heights, but I wonder for this in particular, if what we really should be talking about is setbacks and the idea of building two lot line and to the front and side lot lines in particular for these designations where, especially in those kind of inside the neighborhood ones, like the Belmont Park one and the Grove Street one or Grove Road one, I feel like

The height is going to be touchy, but small setbacks make for good, walkable, urban-feeling places.

Think about downtown Belmont right here, for example, or even in a two-and-a-half-story building right now that's 55 units per acre and also has retail.

And then separately, I think some of these sites, like the Monticello Road gateway,

I think could potentially stand to have maybe even like a fifth story, or, you know, you're kind of stumpy like four over one to get that parking podium underneath, so it's not on the surface.

And again, I'd point out that like the main chunk of that parcel is in the floodplain, so we need to give that some consideration.

And then also on that kind of northwest corner of that, there's like a big greenfield parcel

that I think might be appropriate to go more intense with given the context.

I think it's in the next thing.

And then lastly, with the Grove Road one, I think we think that like the exact parcels assigned to it could use some tweaking maybe.

And like, we'll get into this more later when we talk about the civic and education thing, but like, Charlottesville High School is that big parking lot that could conceivably be in part like the easternmost portion next to where that is, like,

Redeveloped.

And so, you know, I wonder if it makes sense to put a chunk of that in there as well.

And, you know, I think looking at my map of like, housing assessments in that area, like, it seems like the ones on the east side of Melbourne Road by the railroad tracks are kind of the cheapest houses, they're all about the median price for a home.

And then

the ones to the west along Grove Road, which I think we had also shown some density in in the 2018 draft.

Those are somewhat more expensive.

They're about double the median price for a home.

And that makes sense.

And then we did take a look at the high school site in that area, kind of on the south, South Anna Grove Road on the northern end of the site, there is a large high voltage power line corridor that extends along that entire parking lot.

And it's one that likely will not change because it's a major trunk line for utilities.

So we did not include any development on the school site on that parking lot site because of that reason.

Makes sense.

But we can go back and look at Grove Road.

We did include, and you'll see on the following slide, some higher-intensity residential along Grove Road, but we can look at it a little bit more closely to see if we can have even higher intensity along that area and not just focus on the area to the east side of Melbourne.

Any additional questions on this slide?

I know we're getting short on time.

We can move on to the next slide.

and then neighborhood corridors.

You can see them here.

University Avenue area along the UVA periphery on the east side.

Cherry Avenue, the areas noted in the small area plan that could support some mix of uses along Cherry Avenue.

We talked a little bit about Fifth Street.

Jody, a little while ago that maybe this needs to be much more intense than a neighborhood mixed use corridor because it is kind of a city serving opportunity.

We can go back and take a look at that.

Monticello Avenue, we talked about that one perhaps being looked at again for maybe a little bit more higher intensity use.

Carlton Avenue, Monticello Road, Carlton Road area, the area transition area along Park Street from this higher density

area along East High Street in the downtown core, extending along Park Street for a portion that can serve as a transition to this lower scale residential area.

Rugby Road, Rose Hill Drive, perhaps some opportunities for some small scale neighborhood serving, mixed use corridor uses.

And then Rio Road, again, mirroring what's proposed on the east side of the road in the county onto the west side so that we can get

A balanced corridor along Rio Road that could provide some neighborhood services for the Greenbrier community to the north.

Just a little bit of description about neighborhood mixed-use corridor.

These would be walkable neighborhood mixed-use areas that will support existing residential districts.

We're envisioning these corridors to include small multi-unit building and support live-work opportunities.

And you can see what we mean by live-work is

In this bottom right picture you can see there's a small retail and or office space on the ground floor which allows for some residential so you know you can live above where you work or work and have people live above where you work as an opportunity.

The building heights along these corridors can range up to four stories.

three stories along constrained sites.

We know that particularly even looking at some of these corridors, the sites are quite narrow and talk a little bit about those narrow areas.

We're not going to be able to get as high, so some areas we're going to get up to the three stories because of

You know, requirements for parking and setbacks and buffers to adjacent residential uses.

And any districts want to allow neighborhood service and commercial convenience uses, particularly near key intersections.

This is a lot of length of corridor.

We know we can't get retail anywhere, everywhere, but if we can at least get them at the corners and

Strategically located along the corridors that would be good to promote a walkable, pedestrian-friendly environment.

And again, here's some precedent images of how the organic that could develop.

You can see this is a very organic urban form that could begin to take place.

And then you can see here some of that three-story type development that could occur along these corridors.

Why not five stories?

Again, we want to think about context and neighborhood context.

And with the parcel and development potential, we have specified here three to four stories because of that reason.

We want to make sure that these neighborhood mixed use corridors that serve the community are contextual to the community that they serve.

So you're talking five stories and all these sites are just... Our recommendation is... I'm sorry Ron, this is for Lyle.

Lyle, are you asking why there are five stories in all sites?

Yeah, I'm asking why none of them could be five stories.

There's no public harm, but our recommendation from an urban design, urban form contextual point of view would to have them range up to four stories, three stories at constrained sites.

We can look at maybe some areas where it may be appropriate to go up to five stories, particularly just looking at some of these areas where we have wider

Parcels where we could have that more of a potential.

We also need to take into consideration shading and buildings adjacent to residential areas.

I remember when we did the future land use framework for West Main Street a couple of years ago.

There was a lot of concern from the community about looming buildings next to adjacent residential areas.

So for one example, I would ask Rose Hill, Rose Hill Tribe.

How is Rose Hill Tribe currently?

OK.

OK, so it's the front end of Rose Hill.

So it didn't get back into the, OK, got it.

Any additional questions or comments?

Okay, let's move on.

I think we have, I'll pick up the pace a little bit.

Next slide, we're running out of time.

But the high intensity residential, so these are areas that primarily are areas that have existing major apartment complexes on them.

There are some other areas that we think could support higher density residential that we've highlighted here, but these will be primarily residential focused developments that range up to four stories.

You can see here kind of your typical stick build height within these areas, and they can accommodate some ground floor activating uses at select locations, so

You know, the primary gist of this is where we have apartments, major apartment complexes, we want to keep them major apartment complexes and have opportunities if they were to intensify in density, you know, they can redevelop that we, you know, kind of retain that primary residential function on these sites.

And then areas that we've identified as new opportunities, we've done that as well.

I'll ask you again about the little brown space in Rose Hill.

Where is that?

So I did want to, and that's a good thing, and I don't know if I described this very well when we talked about the Hare Street corridor.

We did contain the future light industrial, industrial mixed-use area to the east side of the railroad track, and then reclaimed a lot of the area that has some intermittent industrial residential uses on the west side of the railroad track.

back for those more residential and mixed-use opportunities on the west side of the railroad track.

And Ron, I would just recommend that the images shown here, they're aggressively modern.

I think I'd recommend being a little bit more careful with the selected images.

I liked Tania's recommendation that they be of Charlottesville.

And there are traditional buildings that can be four stories tall that don't have to be so aggressively modern.

It's the credibility of your presentation.

Sure.

No, I think that's a good idea, people.

A good point you brought up earlier is that people can relate to the images and understand exactly what we're proposing.

Same stories before.

This was five stories in the previous process.

If we can't do five stories for health and safety, understood.

I was just gonna say that I don't think you have a viable high intensity residential zone down there at the end of East Market.

Okay, we can go back and check that.

And for the apartments at four stories, I think we can go up to five with those without a big issue to capture the previous comment.

Just a little question.

There's a loss of continuity along Madison 14th Street there.

That's sort of a continuous zone in current day.

It looks like we're slicing it up here.

So these are existing apartment complexes in this area and to the west of barracks road.

We can, in our future land use map, we have this as medium intensity residential because there are

Homes within much of this area.

We can go back and look at the continuity of this.

I think it would read stronger if there was continuity of these high intensity areas instead of having it have the gap in between.

So we can go back and certainly look at how the continuity of that or the continuity of that district evolves where we're showing this high intensity residential.

Yeah, I would second that and say, along Greedy, for example, west of 14th Street, some of those might look like houses externally or they're fraternity houses, but almost all student housing.

And so I think it would be very much appropriate to

to add that.

I'd also add like University Circle, for example, is kind of a mix.

But there are some pretty high density apartments along there.

I had a question about the Court Square apartment across from the courthouse.

I mean, that's what a 10, 11 story building.

Is that only that plot?

Yes, so some of the buildings were lost.

I think Jenny had touched on the issue with the common area designation covering up the parcel underneath.

So we were showing the common spaces on the map because we wanted to show the continuity of the green spaces within the city, including public and semi-public and private open spaces.

The parcel data inadvertently showed entire parcel is green.

So we will be, that's one of the things that we will be going back to take a look at is making sure that we have properly, we're properly showing all of those land uses on the map and that we're not covering anything with that park layer.

So that's something that we're gonna take a look at.

Yeah, and just that,

I don't see it.

I think it falls within either the High Street corridor or downtown to its location, which goes up to 10.

OK.

but we will fix all of those open space issues in the next iteration of the plan.

Next slide, please.

Medium-intensity residential, these are beginning to encompass many of those missing middle housing types, including real houses, townhouses, multi-unit buildings, small house size multi-unit buildings that are compatible with adjacent low-intensity neighborhoods.

The height of these range up to two and a half stories.

That is a residential scale so that they fit

Within the context, as you can see, many of these areas are within and deep within existing neighborhoods.

The community has concerns about scale of development, particularly in the core of these neighborhoods, where we're showing this medium intensity residential, so that two and a half, up to two and a half story height, which you see some precedent images of how much, you get many units, and it doesn't sound like a lot of height, but you can get a lot of units in it.

Here are a couple examples of townhouses that are two and a half units.

duplexes and quadplexes that are two and a half stories tall.

So we thought that that would be an appropriate height for this medium intensity residential development type.

And you can see we primarily located them within proximity to open space so we can get a little bit more density around these open space opportunities.

Oh, and one thing I don't want to skip is that this would also include

We're not calling for the demolition of all the existing housing along Locust Avenue but there's an opportunity to provide

More units within those lots.

So let's say you have a single family house and we prescribe up to four units per lot.

You can have three units.

You can subdivide the main house into three units with the ADU in the back.

You can subdivide the house into two units with the extension on the rear of the house with an ADU unit.

There's many ways to approach building in density within existing neighborhoods that does not require the demolition of existing residential structures.

So we also want to keep that in mind as you see these medium intensity residential uses on the map.

You know, we are sensitive to that.

This was a big area of tension in the 2018 plan.

We broke pretty evenly on this.

There was, I think, one vote for four stories and the rest for three stories.

So we narrowly went with four stories for this group, but I certainly see advantages to going lower.

And we also want to make sure we're putting forth recommendations that can be digested by the community and what they're willing to accept for in-field development within these communities.

Four stories is very tall.

We're talking about some of these small lots deep within these existing residential neighborhoods.

Two and a half stories is about the height of an existing two-story house.

and that two and a half story building form can allow for that third floor use within it.

So as technically we are about three stories on these uses, but we can go back and clarify and take a look at that.

We probably don't wanna go higher than three stories within these districts.

So I think the existing R1 height limit is 35 feet, right, which I think is three stories.

And in fact, we see kind of all around the city, a lot of new single family detached houses going up as three stories.

So

I mean, I see the argument not going above that, but 2.5 to me seems like a reduction where

And that's another reason why we went two and a half because of the pitch roof, you know, three stories flat roof that 35 foot height, you get three stories and a flat roof, but you don't have enough height to get a true pitched roof.

But this is something that we can certainly go back and take a look at.

and see, reevaluate the height here with the two and a half versus three stories and pitched roof versus flat roof.

Is there a particular appetite for pitched roof versus flat roof conditions in these existing residential neighborhoods?

I think it's,

important to try to disincentivize speculative teardown and not having a drastic height in some of these existing neighborhoods, I think could help not, you know, make that so appealing.

Because I need to say that unless a neighborhood has an existing historic district overlay, which locus

but some of these other neighborhoods don't, it's going to be right for tear downs to build density and may not result in affordability.

So to push back on that, I wonder if lower height with more allowed in it encourages the tear down rather than the

like using the available open space on a parcel while maintaining and converting the existing unit, right?

Because it reduces the potential, the development potential of the vacant land on the parcel, which I would think means that you would need to add extra space to wherever the existing house is in order to make that pencil.

Could staff chime in on that?

The current zoning definition allows for you to take the middle portion of a pitched roof.

Makes sense.

Thanks.

It does remind me actually of, we talked a lot last time about the topography of the area.

And I think you've seen some places around the city that even somewhat modest houses have three stories just because of like an extreme grade change.

I don't know how you codify that into something, but something to think about, or maybe we should be talking about like visible height at street level, that sort of thing.

And that's something that we'll be accounted for in the zoning piece of this is how we handle the topography with height and making that correlation and having a regulatory framework to control that.

Not to jump in and interrupt, but we do need to begin at our pace because

Oh, yeah, we can pick up the pace here.

I have one more slide that I think is key to talk about.

Low intensity residential, all of the other, pretty much all the other parcels that are existing residential.

We want to explore a wide range of housing types in these districts, including ADUs, thinking about splits of existing single family homes, which

could include two or three units.

Again, the height's two and a half stories, but we'll explore that as we will with the medium intensity residential and allowing, we did hear a lot about organic urban form in relation to having community services within neighborhoods.

So I'll skip the next slide, please.

We can skip, you know, we did some overlay comparisons.

I think a lot of you already looked at the comparison of the 2013 plan, what we're showing.

There's some similarities, yet there's some differences, particularly with intensity and where we're showing intensity within the map.

For interest of time, I'll just keep going through these.

Next slide, please.

Comparison with the 2017 Planning Commission concept.

Again, similarities, differences.

We talked about a lot of those during the presentation.

Keep going.

Next slide.

Urban ring.

We want to contextualize what we're doing within the city with what's immediately outside and adjacent to the city.

So we're beginning to overlay that.

Next slide, please.

So would you like me to continue?

I want to give a brief overview of our next step for this process.

I think this would be an opportunity to let my colleagues chat with you a bit, if you don't mind.

Yeah, so I'd like to give a comment on that, on the low density in particular.

You know, I think one of the real failings of the 2017 map is that, and actually I was just reading through an article about our November meeting and Commissioner Dowell raised the point exactly, which is that like

it focuses all the development on historically marginalized areas and completely exempts the richest and historically segregated areas.

And I look at this assessment map that I just emailed all of you guys and all of those bright red areas in North downtown in particular which is so close to all of the jobs and amenities and in the Rugby Hills area

and to a little bit lesser spent in Lewis Mountain, like those are all kept as low density residential in this new map.

And I think in particular for North Downtown, like that really needs to go a lot more of it in a lot higher, especially since the infill potential is going to be limited by individually protected properties in historic districts.

And then I think the medium could go significantly further into Rugby Hills.

And then I'd also like to add that I feel like the medium is basically what we said the low was in our old narrative or key and specifically two things.

that fourth unit in a fourplex rather than limiting it to triplex is extremely important because that's where the federal or the FHA like federal requirements for accessible units kicks in.

So if we want to have senior housing and age in place housing we really need to allow that fourth unit as well.

And I also really think we need to allow row homes because we keep talking about affordable home ownership

and in particular, fee-simple home ownership where you own the land too.

Condo ownership is great, but if you want to have cheaper homes that you can buy outright, then row homes are the only way to do it.

So to me, I would like to see that middle density bumped up to kind of your larger plexes, like your six and eight plexes and even 12 plexes.

I think about some of the subdivided mansions like Komen Hall and the 908 Cottage Lane,

Thank you.

I just want to respond to one thing which is

Commissioner Stolzenberg, I do think that there is infill potential in historic districts and that shouldn't be written off.

I think the concern for residents and those who find value in historic homes is preventing them from being demolished.

and recognizing one, the significance they have in our community, but also the potential that they serve in the ability to subdivide, sure.

But that's not guaranteed if a zoning doesn't disincentivize demolition.

And also the role that our existing housing stock, some of the smaller housing stocks does play in the affordable housing picture.

And I think we should

So I'd like to echo Mrs. Stolzenberg, Ms.

Russell, and Ms.

Dowell's comment about existing housing stock.

It goes back to my question about the Albemarle Park.

But I'll be more specific and talk about the, as Gary has suggested we talk about this, is the

The low wealth economic community that we need to worry about the black community.

A lot of the property that we live in and own is zoned R1.

So as you guys begin to think about increasing our density, just remember that you need to also

bring equity into the equation and think about, you know, how much of the black community in certain parts of this city are living in R1 areas and we need to make sure that we protect, we protect their ownership, honor their ownership and make it possible for developers to buy them out and build up.

I just wanted to talk about parking briefly.

So a big part of the conversation in 2018 was, oh, God, the parking, what do we do like now?

And at that time, we were talking about different ways about doing encouraging shared parking instead of mandating that everything be on site in building concrete, steel, all the money.

And I'd like to encourage that kind of thinking.

here in 2021.

Yeah, I will abbreviate my notes on the next piece.

But yeah, if you, Joe, can bring up the next steps slide.

I think it was number 26.

There you go.

Thank you.

So based on our discussion tonight, we're going to take your comments that you sent to us via email, that you might send to us via email after this meeting, and the comments we got tonight.

And we'll be working on a revision of this map, working toward eventually a round of community input, a larger community input on this map.

We need to talk with NDS about the best steps for working with you all as part of this process.

So we might do some coordination on that via email.

Joe, if you go to the next slide, I want to give some information about community engagement.

We've talked about that with you in the past.

And like I said, LaToya couldn't be here tonight, but wanted to share some thoughts.

So in this next phase of community engagement, once we've got a refined land use map, once we've got refined chapters, we'll be looking to share those pieces for community input.

And we're going to be focusing on sharing that in a way that can be really

easily understood by folks who aren't used to looking at a 2D map of the city like this.

We want to make sure it's clear what the comprehensive plan and land use map can mean for life in Charlottesville.

And so we'll be looking at sort of distilling it and making it clear what sort of the purpose of our recommendations are and the potential impacts they could have.

We'll be looking to get information from people, making sure they understand what we're showing.

Do they like the direction it's heading?

Does it support what they think is important for Charlottesville's future?

And trying to tie it back to those vision statements that we worked with folks to craft in November and December.

We're also working on being really intentional about who we reach out to for outreach.

Obviously, it's a citywide process.

But we know

Homeowners and developers are very interested in land use in particular, but we want to make sure recognizing that a large portion of the Charlottesville community is renters.

We want to make sure they are also aware how land use could impact their experience in the city in a variety of ways.

If you go to the next slide, please.

And while this will be a citywide conversation, we want to focus our efforts in a few areas.

But one of those will be neighborhoods where we haven't had a lot of participation previously.

But also we want to look at neighborhoods that currently have small area plans or a vision plan in place.

So some of the recent ones, as well as the SIA and others that have been more recently incorporated into the comp plan.

And we obviously really importantly want to talk with those communities that have traditionally been sort of negatively impacted by land use decisions in the city, particularly communities of color, as well as lower wealth, lower income communities in the city.

So as we move forward, we'll be looking at not only

virtual engagement efforts, but pop ups, you know, especially now, hopefully as we're getting toward warmer weather and the ability to do this more safely related to COVID.

We're looking forward to going out more directly to folks and we've been able to do more recently.

So when we're getting ready to roll this out, obviously it's not next week, but as we look deeper into April, we would love to be able to reach out to you all and have you help us connect to residents, business owners, and whatnot.

We know you all have a lot of networks that you can reach out to as well.

So we'll hope that you might want to stay involved with that and help us draw some participation.

Just last slide is the next slide and this sort of speaks to questions we've had from the past from Ms.

Dowell and others just wanting to know sort of who we've heard from previously.

I know this is tiny on the screen, I'm sorry.

But this, the charts on here show

Just two key demographics, sort of race and ethnicity there in the middle and then annual household income on the right.

And these are important stipulations as these are only for the surveys.

And we've done a lot of outreach that wasn't a survey.

And so I want to recognize that.

But you can see the orange bars are the census demographics for the city.

And then the pink bars are our first survey.

our May and June 2020 survey and then the blue bars are more recent November-December survey.

So you can see the different types of responses we got compared to the census.

So we were happy to see some changes between our first and second survey as we look toward

A couple things make you make me go hmm

Fry Springs, which is like, they're incredibly well organized and their responses was not as robust as I thought Fry's, as Belmont might have been.

Actually picked up a bit between the first and second survey.

So anyway, again, this is just one piece of engagement, but Tania, did you have a thought?

I did.

So right before you pulled this slide, that was my very thought.

Okay, where are we at with community engagement and who is actually responding?

What I would be interested in, and not that it's something major, but if you could squeeze that in, I would like to see a comparison of the demographics who are participating now versus the demographics we got from when we did this the first time as the Planning Commission itself.

I just want to make sure that we are indeed, like I do see that we did have more African Americans participate, but those numbers to me still look correlative to the responses that we had the first time.

Sure, well we'll- Tene, remind me, the challenge we had was with African American participation and younger folks participating.

Yes, younger people just over all ethnicities and then definitely people of color so not only just black people but people of color in general had not really chimed in and so I think it would be advantageous to all of us not only to the people who are working on this project not only to the planning commission but to the city

In general, to show that progress.

Missy, I think I know they've sent that out before.

So I think it would be, I would like to see it if nobody else does.

We'll take a look at that.

Thank you.

That being said, I think that was the last slide we have.

I will then defer to Mr. Rice.

Thank you, Chair Mitchell.

If anybody would like to make a comment at this time, please click the raise hand icon and we will call on you in the order of hands raised.

And while they're chiming in, I'll just advise the public that we'd like your comments, but we're probably not going to be able to get into a back and forth dialogue.

We'll attempt to get back to you if you've got a question, but let's just get your comments.

Thank you, Chair Mitchell.

And if you are calling in, please press star nine to raise your hand.

Our first participant is Cecilia Mills.

Hello, Cecilia Mills here.

I live in the Locust Grove neighborhood and I've been part of the community feedback a couple times.

I just want to say though that when I sent this out to the people in my neighborhood adjacent, they were shocked.

So I know that the consultants are doing their best, but there still needs to be better outreach so people know this is coming because they feel like they're going to be

blindsided.

And as you noted, the white participation in the survey actually dropped.

So could you also pay attention to that?

I used to work on Rose Hill.

I now work on High Street.

And so I know this seems obvious to me, but some of these nodes and the development is along places where the traffic is already bad.

So I work in a place that used to be a house.

And I feel like, and my husband works in a building that used to be a house on Park Street, and this seems very obvious, but having lived in other cities, oftentimes I just wish that you could say, let's turn those back into houses and housing instead of six offices, which is what all those houses are along High and Park Street.

So you're proposing

things be torn down and turned into offices or housing, but they tried housing along those streets and it didn't work.

And that's why there are offices there.

So my concern is when you say, develop all that along High Street, those owners will say, great, I've been wanting to offload this decrepit property that six people are renting as cheap office space.

for the few people who still have offices to go to and they'll tear it down and say great now I can put up a four, five, whatever story building that was so and I also have to say again landmark should not be the landmark it's a joke in this town and people hate it and god just take that out of any presentation you ever make again please

I don't understand how you split streets.

Like I live on a two block long street and one half is medium density and the other half is low density.

Somebody on Davis wants to know the same thing.

So that needs to be clarified.

And I don't want to look like Arlington and I don't want to look like Roanoke.

We've only lived here for five or six years.

I'd be happy to move if this town starts to be for the highest and best use for the people who

can't afford to live here.

But I lived in San Francisco.

Nobody built me a cheaper place.

So we either live in a capitalist society or we don't.

But as somebody who's finally living in a house that I own, it kind of upsets me that now suddenly we're going to upset the apple cart and remake society just in Charlottesville.

So I didn't know I was that worked up until I started speaking.

And on Rose Hill, I don't understand why you're going to put up housing when that's all office space at 11

10 Rose Hill.

So that's it.

Thank you, Mr. Middleford.

Appreciate it.

Next, we have Lucy Middleford.

Lucy, you are on with commission.

Hi, thank you.

Thank you for the conversation, conversation tonight.

Um, I am born and raised in Charlottesville and I just want to, um, hear, uh, say that I'm encouraged to hear about the ideas for incentivizing, keeping the existing housing that we have, or

at least disincentivizing demolitions.

I think a lot of the existing single-family housing stock we have is actually ripe for adding ADUs in backyards or sub-divising the existing larger houses or adding additions to the back of existing houses.

So I definitely think adding density is possible without incentivizing demolitions, but we probably need some kind of codified incentives in order to achieve that.

So I was encouraged to hear that.

Thanks.

Next, we have Andrea Massey.

Andrea, you're on with the commission.

Okay.

Hi, I'm Andrea Massey, a city resident.

Thank you all for your time tonight.

And it looks like we're taking some steps forward and making progress towards changing the racist housing policies and zoning of the past.

specifically in the area of eliminating single family only restrictions, but there's still more to be done and clarified.

I'm here speaking on behalf of the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition to say that we need you to go further.

When I'm talking here, I'm gonna be using affordable housing as defined at 50% and below AMI and not 80%.

So I just wanna be clear on that.

The map right now looking at side by side looks almost exactly the same as it has for decades following the same segregationist lines that were initially intentionally drawn.

What I wanted to say is like, do you have a variance analysis or a change analysis from one map to another?

Because originally looking at it, I hadn't missed actually Locust Grove going up a little bit and hadn't missed Mickey drive going

into commercial out of the high density residential.

So like having that change analysis or variance analysis would be really helpful.

I don't know if it would be street by street or whatever.

The public deserves to know what will change and where past racist decisions will be upheld.

And sort of looking right now, it looks like in the downtown area and a couple of the council members, commissioners,

did say that, which I appreciate, and want to know when the changes are being made, if we get that change analysis, what do you think will happen to each one?

Will it increase density?

Will it add more affordable housing?

Will it preserve neighborhoods at risk of gentrification and displacement?

talked about the significant up-zoning in north downtown in Greenbrier and other historically exclusionary neighborhoods that did not happen and really want to know the reason why from the consultants why that didn't happen.

This is not equitable.

How does the map protect predominantly black neighborhoods from more gentrification that are included in your up-zoning?

How does this stop or slow displacement?

Sorry.

And then in talking about, when you were talking about the 10 stories and we didn't quite get in, oh God, I'm only at 18 seconds left, sorry.

I guess just in the end, I just, how do we end up with not a beautiful map with no affordable housing and the continuing displacement and loss of culture?

Oh, that's a good,

questions and I'm sure the consultants have jotted all that down and we will get back to the community with answers to most of that stuff.

Next, we have Nancy Carpenter.

Nancy, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity this evening to address this iteration of the land use map.

I have to admit that I certainly support what Andrea Massey was talking about as speaking for the CLIC group.

I myself have lived for five years now in the Rose Hill neighborhood, which seems to be touching the industrial uses, the neighborhood nodes, and urban pathways type of zoning.

I want to say the plan appears to be halfway there, 50% there, but on a 10-point grading scale, 50% still has a little bit of ways to go to maybe be 70%, 80%, 90%.

Because I want to see something, because what we're dealing with, what you all are dealing with, are the racist policies from 60 years ago and trying to fix it.

and we don't want to you know I don't want to see because I'm not going to be around for the turn of the century most hopefully some of you will be especially your children and grandchildren will be but you don't want them to be dealing with these same massive headaches that you all are dealing with now so let's not continue a land use map that if you overlay it with the work that's been done by JSAAHC and a lot of community members and looking at racial covenants that excluded

.

I think that is correct.

I think it was really urban renewal or whatever with Preston Avenue and Rose Hill.

A lot of homes were taken down and reparations to mitigate the loss of generational wealth were not given.

Neighborhoods were disconnected without any

I can only think that there wasn't a whole lot of consideration given.

And I can be proven wrong.

And if that was not the case back then, please let me know.

But I seem to think it was.

So I think that we have to really be careful with the words that are used in this plan, the context that's used in this plan, the definitions that you all use in this plan.

And I think there's still a ways to go.

And I'm looking for a very strong, robust public engagement now that perhaps

Some of the neighborhood associations who may or may not have been actively meeting over the last several months or year can get back up into the saddle and be able to be a part of this community engagement so that you all can create, help to create and move along a very equitable plan that I've been struggling with for a long time.

Thank you, Nancy.

Next up, we have Jared Gold.

Jared, you are on with the Planning Commission.

Hello, Jared.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the commission.

My name is Jake Gold.

I live around where the consultants call Belmont Center.

First, I did want to thank the consultants for pulling together this map.

There's a lot of intricacy in the city of Charlottesville, and this is a gargantuan task that they undertook.

I wanted to speak specifically in support of the comments from previous commentators and also Commissioner Stolzenberg about North Downtown and Greenbrier.

At the start of the presentation, the consultants made it an explicit goal that we target previously exclusionary neighborhoods for density and North Downtown and Greenbrier are perfect candidates for that change.

They had a huge number of racist covenants in really the not so distant past, just in less than the last century.

I'd encourage the NEWMAP prioritize what the consultants have called medium intensity development, not just along the major roads in those areas, but also on the interior.

I'd be eager to hear, maybe in future meetings, what the justification is.

for keeping those areas low intensity, even if low intensity does allow for ADUs or duplexes by right.

I'm not sure it makes sense that the areas that we'd like to preserve as low intensity, predominantly neighborhoods of color, low income neighborhoods, keeping that the same zoning as Greenbrier and North downtown.

I don't think that that furthers our goals of economic or racial justice.

Thank you very much.

And if anybody else would like to address the Planning Commission at this time, please click your raise hand icon or press star nine if you're joining us by phone.

So Ginny, the last comment struck your interest.

No, I think in response to a few, thank you all for those comments.

We will do our best to respond to them in writing to you or in our notes from the meeting.

I'll make sure you can see them.

We have been sensitive to

the racial covenants areas.

We've been coordinating with Jordan Yeager working on that project since the beginning.

Not in terms of the recommendations, but he's provided us with the information.

So we've got the latest map from him with parcels with racial covenants within the current R1 zoning.

And so that is something we can definitely evolve.

We did look at that and part of it was there are some

Some difficult slopes in some pieces of those areas that I think we originally showed potential higher density and then we backed off of but I think there's a potential to look at, especially you mentioned North downtown came up in quite a few comments I think we can specifically look back in there and there's other opportunities as well so we will we will look back at that.

Yeah, I mean, it's been an explicit goal from the beginning of this process to have to look at equity and to look at former systemic issues that have been built into this.

So it's something we're committed to doing.

Let me ask my colleagues if they've got any final words they want to say.

So I guess one thing that didn't really come up earlier, a bunch of these categories say like allows X at select locations.

And I'd like to understand more what that means in future iterations.

It seems to conflict with the partial versus gradient specificity since it doesn't say what those locations are.

I think she said no.

Lyle?

I said a lot of terrible things to you tonight.

That's because I think you're doing a good job.

Let me cut back in.

Sorry, chair.

I do want to say that I know this is not an easy task.

I just want to thank the people who are working, the team working on this.

And I know sometimes we can beat you up a little bit.

So

Just reiterate, protect my waterways.

So as you're writing this, make certain that you make it so that the planners can write a document that advises the Planning Commission and advises the guys who are doing the development to do the work they need to protect the waterways, especially in the

the high intensity areas that are near the waterways.

So help the, and this is a good point we get a lot, help the developers know what they need to do to get a document approved by the Planning Commission that we will sign off on that protects the waterways.

The other thing is I'm concerned about R1 in the socioeconomic challenge areas, the black neighborhoods

and making sure that we allow those neighborhoods to continue to exist and we don't rezone them so we lose that property.

So as you're thinking about this, protect that as well.

Anybody else?

Anything from the U?

The U is cool?

You mean university?

Oh, okay.

Thanks.

So Ron and Jenny, good meeting.

Thank you all.

Yes.

We're good.

Take care guys.

Thanks all.

Thank you.