Planning Commission Work Session   8/31/2021

I can't see quite all of you now, so if there's anything I need to see, if you're making a gesture, I might not see it.

That's what I'm trying to say, so that's all that one, Lyle, thank you.

So tonight, this is our agenda that we've proposed, and I'll go relatively quickly through the first few items, as I know there's a lot to discuss about the land use map.

The order is good.

Okay, great.

Yeah, just to enable the annotation feature in Zoom so that it can draw on the map.

Sure.

Sorry, I'm trying to find my way around this Zoom screen here.

OK.

I believe I just did that.

So if we get to a spot where you'd like to annotate and you can't just let me know.

But before I dive into the agenda tonight, I want to note that this is a draft that we're presenting, chiefly the Future Land Use Map draft, and we'll be taking feedback received from you all tonight.

We're excited to have this discussion with the Planning Commission.

We also have a discussion with our Steering Committee tomorrow at 4.30 until 7.

But yeah, this is a draft and we expect there may be adjustments that are made to it.

So I just wanted to clarify that for others who are who are on the call today.

You know, if we do make revisions to the map after tonight, the future land use map, we will make it clear how, where and why those were made.

So we met with you all last, well, in a more extensive way on June 29th to give a recap of the community input at that point.

But I want to briefly go through what we spoke about at a high level.

So as you know, and as many on the call probably know, from May 3rd to June 13th, we received community feedback on the draft comprehensive plan, including chapters and the future land use map, which was the May draft at that time.

And we had over 2300 interactions.

That's what I'll call them, which is emails, you know, Wikimap comments, survey, form, submissions.

have compiled that input we got.

We summarized it in a summary document that's now posted on the website that we sent out by email.

There's a link to it there at the bottom of the screen.

And that includes

A summary of all the survey information.

Last time we spoke with you on the 29th, that was a summary of what we had heard at that point or what we had sort of summarized from what we heard at that point.

But given the short amount of time between when the engagement period ended and when we met with you, there were a few updates.

But generally, the themes stayed the same.

We also posted a response to Commonly Asked Questions, an FAQ document.

And so if you go to the website, you can see a link to that as well.

And I want to note

We won't go through all the feedback we got again tonight, but we will talk once we get to the chapter piece and then the future land use map piece.

I'll briefly summarize what we heard about each of those components.

But since we've already spoken with you about community feedback, we won't focus on that tonight.

Before we get to that, I want to touch base on the schedule.

So we met with you on August 10th.

I popped into your meeting to review the timeline for next steps for the rest of the comprehensive plan.

And so this graphic is just the graphic representation of the timeline we talked about, which includes an October 12th Joint Planning Commission hearing with council, and then a council hearing in November, November 15th.

As you know, we're also scheduled to be with you in a couple of weeks from today to discuss the chapters, particularly the implementation chapter, but also to gather your feedback on other chapters.

And we do, as we discussed at the last meeting, we have set aside September 21, I believe it is, as a potential additional work session if needed.

So that wraps up sort of the intro piece before we jump into the real meat of things here.

Pardon me as I take a drink of water.

A lot to say tonight.

So the first thing I'm gonna talk about is the chapter, and we're not going through all detailed chapter revisions tonight, but we want to go through some of the highlights.

And so as a reminder, there are seven topic specific chapters in the comprehensive plan.

There's also going to be an implementation chapter, as mentioned.

The chapter we're talking about tonight is the land use, urban form, and historic and cultural preservation chapter, which for time's sake, I'll just call the land use chapter.

But all of those pieces, land use, urban form, historic and cultural preservation, and thinking about how they're balanced is an important part of this chapter.

The reason we're really focusing on this chapter tonight is that I want to make it clear that the land use map that we'll be talking about does not sit on its own in the plan.

The land use map is connected to a variety of not only goals and strategies, but also this overall chapter vision statement about what Charlottesville wants to be in the future related to land use, urban form, and historic and cultural preservation.

So everyone's keep that in mind.

There will be details about supporting implementation of the future land use map that are described in the chapter.

And that'll be reviewed with you as we move forward here.

So this slide shows some of the feedback that we received related to the chapter, the land use chapter.

And so in the table here on the left, you can see some themes from the survey.

And then on the right, themes from emails and the Wikimap and other ways we received input.

And we reviewed this with you when we met last on June 29th.

This has evolved slightly in sort of numbers, but I think the themes have stayed the same.

So if you look at the survey, the majority of respondents that we heard from, but not all respondents

were people who live in neighborhoods that are currently mostly single-family neighborhoods.

And there was a lot of expression of concern related to community character, development scale, and whatnot.

But I don't mean to diminish anything by saying whatnot, just for time's sake, summarizing.

But I wanna note there were also a lot of comments in support of more housing, affordability, and density in the city, in the survey as well.

among other comments that we heard outside of the survey.

Those again are here on the right.

And we heard a lot of different comments across the board, but some of the top comments there are in those first few bullets, which were sort of having context sensitive planning.

I'm sorry, there are two bullets that accidentally combined.

The city commitment to enhance multimodal infrastructure is a separate bullet.

And that's a big one that we heard a lot about from a lot of people, that the people want the city to commit to having improved infrastructure for walking, biking, transit, getting around town without necessarily needing to use a car, even though we certainly recognize some have a need or desire to do that.

I won't go through all these, but you can see the sort of variety of topics that we were looking to consider as we moved forward with revisions to the plan, to the chapter.

So I've listed out on this slide some of the

Revisions that we're finalizing now.

There's sort of in three categories here.

One is clarifications where we're refining information.

Some are additions.

And then there's one other note on there.

But in general, some of the major things we wanted to clarify in the chapter were how the strategies and goals really connect to and support the future land use map, which again is a piece of the chapter.

So there was connections to the map throughout the chapter.

We wanted to make that more clear.

We also wanted to tie it more clearly to the affordable housing plan, the map and the affordable housing plan together.

And so that happens both in this chapter and in the housing chapter.

We also added clarified emphasis on some of those principles of design that improve walkability, connectivity, livability in the city.

It's important to us that that comes along with additional development as well.

It's important to the community based on what we heard.

In terms of additions, we've mostly been discussing the future land use map in separate documents, but that again will live in the chapter.

So we will create a section introducing the map in the chapter, having the category descriptions in there.

We've also added a discussion of urban development area, that sort of designation for the city.

And we have added some potential new small area plan locations.

And so we'll talk, there's a slide that shows those in the presentation.

The other note here is that we have worked with city staff to make updates to the narrative appendix that goes with this chapter, which includes descriptions of sort of historic resource processes and design control districts.

All these sort of pieces that are very detailed, but that play a big role in implementation of the future land use map in the city.

So these are some of the major updates.

There are updates throughout the chapter.

Next time you see a version of the chapter, it'll be a red line so that you can very clearly identify where changes have been made.

All right.

So with that, let's dive into the future land use map.

So as you know, this is the draft map we shared in May of this year, and on which we received comments during that comment period through June 13.

So for those who aren't familiar who may be on on the phone or just to sort of recap with this May draft, our goal with this was to

support the overall community goals of more housing opportunities throughout the city at a variety of scales to support the affordable housing plan.

So that's looking at both multifamily opportunities, as well as additional, or I should say multifamily opportunities at a variety of scales.

One of those major changes that

we sort of kicked off discussion of at this point was changes to the sort of base residential land use.

And so at this time in May, you can see the light yellow, general residential.

What we were talking about at this point was allowing up to three units on those sites.

And a lot of those right now are currently zoned for single family use only.

So that represented sort of a potential tripling of what was allowed in those areas.

There are two other sort of residential-focused land use areas shown on here.

Sorry, I just remembered I have annotation power.

The tan areas, which you can see along

the corridors, as well as a long sort of in some nodes throughout the city around some of the main amenities such as schools and parks.

Those are medium intensity residential uses.

And in May and June, we were talking about those allowing four to 12 units, which again, represents a departure from what is in most of those areas today, what's allowed in most of those areas.

And then the other residential category we were discussing was the higher intensity residential, which is that darker brown residential land use.

For example, you can see here around JPA.

Looking at some of the other land uses that we were talking about at this time.

There's neighborhood and urban scale mixed use nodes in corridors, and those are the pink and purples that you see on this map.

And the intention with these was to provide opportunities again for additional housing, maybe at a higher intensity and some of those other areas.

but at a variety of intensities, but also allowing for commercial uses or retail, a wide variety of different types of uses throughout the city.

I want to note though those are not the only areas where commercial uses would be allowed.

Even the May draft did propose including some opportunities for retail and commercial throughout the city in all of the residential areas.

And the idea was that sort of the zoning ordinance would define where that might be most appropriate in which types of zones.

But that was the vision in May and continues to the revised version.

In addition, also the dark red is the downtown core, which is, you know, a mixed use area and the sort of mauve purple, purple-pink color.

Sorry, we should have really had a better name for this color.

These represent what we're calling business and technology areas that are also

allow for mixed use, potential additional residential uses where feasible, but also they do allow for a continuation of some of those uses that might be there now, some light industrial commercial uses, along with that potential for mixed use.

I want to be clear that when we're talking about sort of nodes and corridors in the city, we do have those land use categories that are called mixed-use nodes, mixed-use corridors.

But when we talk about having a development pattern that's sort of node and corridor-centric, we're also looking at things like residential corridors, you know, nodes of residential intensity.

So I want to be clear about that because in developing this map, we did take this sort of node and corridor approach to this.

which is something we've talked about throughout this process.

Along with that sort of node and corridor process, we've looked at how can we put potential intensity in your schools and your parks.

And that's been important from the beginning of this process.

So this was the May version of the map that we shared with the community.

And we've talked a bit already about feedback we received at that time.

So I won't belabor any of this, but I will clear that line from the PowerPoint.

I think it's important to note that of those comments we got, the vast majority of comments we received supported additional housing affordability in the city.

There was not always agreement on how to get there, but there was seemingly widespread agreement on the topic in general.

We also have listed here in the blue box on the left some of the general ideas that came out of feedback.

Some of the top comments were received were ensuring displacement protections for black and low wealth residents, considering areas for additional infill development in currently single family zoned areas, focusing on homeownership opportunities as well as deeply affordable rental housing, and considering up to four or five units in the general residential category.

In terms of, and I want to note that in no way represents everything we heard, but those are some of the main themes that we saw come up in many different places.

In terms of the sort of concerns that we heard, you heard some of them in the chapter discussion.

You know, when people reacted to the chapter, in many ways, they were reacting also to the future land use map.

We heard concerns about some locations of the medium intensity residential and the mixed use nodes.

We heard concerns about the city's ability to plan for infrastructure in advance of development and that includes traffic, transportation, utility, stormwater, other types of infrastructure.

we've also talked we talked already about sort of concerns about character but I do also want to call out there were concerns about student housing both in terms of well mostly in terms of you know if we build additional housing will this will this be only students that can live there you know how do we how do we figure that out and so

One thing we know to the FAQ is that students are an important part of Charlottesville.

They often become long-term residents.

But it is important for us to see how university, both as a draw, but also as a potential impact on affordability for other residents in the city.

So that is something we're thinking about as we move forward.

I will also note that one of the major themes we heard in terms of the questions listed on this slide was, you know, concerns about how this map supports affordability.

We heard a lot of people who said density does not equal affordability and we 100% agree with that.

You know, the land use map alone will not get to the housing goals that we have for Charlottesville, that you all have for Charlottesville, that the city has for Charlottesville.

So I just wanted to be clear, we agree with that sentiment.

So I was mentioning the community feedback.

I wanted to talk through briefly another piece of feedback we received which was the Housing Advisory Committee discussed a future land use alternative framework that you see here.

And we have spoken with representatives from HAC to make sure we sort of understood what was being proposed and we have sort of considered it.

And we'll talk more about in the presentation how we've

you know, sort of reacted to it.

But I want to go through some of the major things we heard here.

There was a call to potentially establish a low intensity, low intensity, below general intensity, general residential intensity, sort of as a land use category to help protect those historically Black and low income neighborhoods that we, you know, heard there was a community concern about.

You can see those here highlighted in orange on the map.

There was then an idea to, outside of those low intensity areas, maintain general residential uses outside of those as a base residential, and then allow for additional density anywhere in the city if it met certain affordability requirements.

So allowing for medium intensity or high intensity residential if it met affordability requirements to be determined.

It also called for defining of affordability thresholds.

And there's additional information that comes with the framework as well.

I would suggest if anyone's interested, you can view the July 13th Planning Commission meeting recording.

I think it was a good discussion that happened.

So,

talked a bit about what we heard in a variety of ways.

So I'll go through the revisions to the map.

And again, this is our draft map proposal.

We look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

I wanna note, we've certainly heard a lot of feedback already about this.

We've received hundreds of emails and I know the planning commission has as well.

There are 260 people on the call right now.

I'm letting you know the number in case you can't see it for those who are on.

So we know there's a lot of interest in this and we look forward to talking about it.

So this is the August, 2021 version of the map.

And I'll let you all look at it for a second while I get some more water.

All right, so I'm gonna walk through some of the map, so overall adjustments briefly, and then we'll get into it in more detail as we go.

But one important note that was called to my attention is, as you'll see, we have a discussion of identifying some sensitive community areas on the map, and they're not shown on this map.

So I want to make it clear that when you see those in later slides, please recognize that our intention is that whatever those may end up, if they end up being in the document, they will be a part of the future land use map.

There'll be a layer on the map.

They're really important.

So I want to make sure that was clear.

In terms of changes that we made on the map, let's see, would it be easier if I went to the comparison slide?

Okay.

So let's see, let me turn on my annotation.

So there are some major highlights of changes I wanna highlight here.

And then in a couple of slides, we have some more detailed information about changes that were made.

So we can go through that at that time.

But overall, in terms of map areas, not the descriptions themselves, but the map areas, you can see that this generally follows, in many ways, the same pattern of development that we were showing in the previous version, but we have made several adjustments.

Starting with the sort of mixed use areas, we have reviewed the location of those sort of pink, well, mostly the pink neighborhood scale nodes and corridors.

and in several cases, including around the barracks rugby area, Greenbrier, as well as the rugby av mixed use area there.

we have pulled back on those.

And part of the reason we did that was that the sort of level of mixed use we were thinking of in that area in some ways can be really achieved through the medium intensity residential use in terms of the commercial aspects.

Again, that medium intensity tan color allows for and will encourage in certain locations incorporation of neighborhood scale retail and commercial.

but it does remove some potential for higher intensity at those locations.

And part of the reason we did that was, I mean, I think it's no secret.

We've shared with you that we've heard, we heard a lot of comments pushing back against those.

And one of the main themes of those comments was not only concerns about height, which were prevalent, but

noting that the barracks corridor, excuse me, the 29 corridor is a large node in and of itself on the map.

And that represents a great opportunity for a variety of uses, including commercial uses, which are already there as you know, but also to incorporate infill residential at a fairly intense scale.

Again, we'll go through some of the other changes, but there are two more I want to mention here in terms of the residential areas.

There are two spots where we made more major changes to the medium intensity residential.

One is in Belmont, we heard a call from many residents of Belmont and others to look at Belmont as an opportunity to increase medium intensity residential and so

We have considered that and we actually in our March draft of the map, our very early draft, we had included Avon streets as a medium intensity corridor.

And we have added that back because we believe that's a direct route to downtown makes a lot of sense.

We've also added the Elliott Avenue corridor is a residential corridor in the city.

We've made some adjustments in north downtown.

Part of those adjustments were made to better reflect this sort of corridor concept that we were putting forth.

And part of the reason for that is that we think that can really better prioritize areas for these bicycle, pedestrian, and other sort of multimodal improvements that we think are really important to get people around town safely.

The other place we reduced medium intensity residential is in Lewis Mountain.

And that's a fairly significant change on there.

We've reduced it from much of Lewis Mountain to Alderman Road.

And one of the main reasons for that is similar to North Downtown, where we wanted to make it more clear, take a more corridor approach to that.

But I want to note, particularly in Lewis Mountain, but throughout the city,

There are parcels that are quite large and there are opportunities potentially, you know, people may desire to subdivide parcels.

There are opportunities here where if it's a desire to take advantage of it, there are still ways to provide more intensity in these areas.

But again, we look forward to discussion on this.

So it's important to me that we talk about this sensitive communities concept before we dig too much into the other details of the map.

You know, a really clear theme that we heard from community input was concern for certain neighborhoods in the city that are most sensitive to displacement risks.

And so

We have identified what we're calling sensitive communities, sensitive community areas.

We can talk about what the right term might be for that.

But these areas are areas that are proposed for additional tools within the zoning rewrite process.

You know, this could be things like incentivizing affordability levels.

It could be allowing less intensity in these areas.

as well as prioritization of funding and other initiatives for affordability.

And so we've outlined those here.

And we do have a slightly more detailed sort of methodology in the appendix slides, but not much more detailed, but I'm happy to answer questions about it.

In general, we looked at data from the ACS 2018 five-year estimates, and the two things we looked at were household income, percent in a black group that had less than $30,000 a year in household income,

which equates to about 30% of AMI area median income.

And then the other factor we looked at was percent of people of color, which we defined as percent of the community that was not white, non-Hispanic.

So when we put that information together to these black groups, these were those that sort of jumped out.

They had the highest sort of points in the analysis that we did.

I want to note a couple things.

We know the Black group is large.

These Black groups are much larger than maybe actual areas of sensitive communities might be.

And so that's one thing we're thinking about as we move forward here.

but we also know there are a lot of other factors that we'd like your input on about things that you might like us to consider with this as well.

That could be not only housing costs and sort of change over time, it could also be looking at sort of what's on a site now in terms of how likely is it to be redeveloped and also things like age, we're thinking about aging in place with this, disability status and then

One of the key things that jumps out to me is the impacts of historic land use decisions.

We talk about sensitive communities where this is looking at who's there now, but it's not looking at who was there many years ago, who's not there anymore, because decisions were made.

I'm thinking of Star Hill, Gospel Hill, I know there are potentially others as well.

So I just want to flag that as something that we've

notice with this, but we wanted to take this initial sort of data driven approach to have a discussion about it.

There's also a slide with our sort of response to the hack framework and I'm sorry it's all text it just seemed easier that way to get it out there.

But so I'll go through this really briefly.

I'll try not to read the whole thing.

In terms of the, again, this is the Housing Advisory Committee's future land use framework that was discussed.

The sort of main points from that are on the left and then our responses on the right.

In terms of establishing a low intensity residential land use for those sort of at risk communities, again, that we've, instead of in the future land use map, reducing the allowable intensity in those areas, we are proposing this sensitive community overlay

that could then potentially include less development intensity in the zoning.

But we have heard sort of mixed opinions on whether allowing less development in those areas would be

Preferable for those who may be in those at-risk communities.

We want to make sure we're not impacting potential wealth building in those communities, for example, for those who own property.

So that's one thing we're thinking about.

In terms of number two, we have maintained general residential as the sort of base lowest intensity residential land use.

including within those sensitive community areas.

Although there is an important change to that is that we have added a fourth potential unit to that general residential land use and we'll talk about that on the next slide.

With number three, the sort of hat concept, again, both three and four.

The proposed concept was to outside of, excuse me, the concept was that if a certain level of affordability was achieved, then medium intensity or high intensity residential could be allowed anywhere in the city if it achieved that level, the levels established.

And so, as you've seen, we've maintained a largely sort of corridor, both mixed use and residential corridor focused and community amenity focused approach to these medium intensity areas.

And we've also added, you know, we've tried to make it more clear that an affordability requirement should be strongly considered for these areas as part of the zoning process.

Let's see here.

In terms of number five, there was a request to allow for gradations of middle intensity or higher intensity residential throughout the city.

And our note on that is that the zoning process will break the land use categories down into smaller zoning areas, which will establish those transitions.

So we've not broken that down further on the land use map.

And then with number six, defining unit affordability thresholds.

We've noted that the inclusionary zoning process and other zoning mechanisms will establish those thresholds.

But I would also note that the affordable housing plan does establish sort of funding thresholds that I think will be tied to the ways that the city is spending funding, which could play through in the land use map.

All right.

Still with me?

And I'm talking at you a lot.

You don't have Ron to break me up.

So I wanna go through, we went through the map changes.

And again, we can walk through some of those key updates in a second, but I think it's important to reiterate some of these category changes, the changes to the descriptions of the categories that was made.

What you see here is the general residential and the medium intensity residential.

I know it's a lot of red, but the red was meant to call it out for you what we've changed.

So hope that helps.

In the general residential, as I mentioned on the previous slide, we have added a fourth potential unit in those areas if the fourth unit is affordable.

We've noted that the tools and zoning process will sort of regulate what that affordability level is, as well as sort of what the maximum allowable development might be on any given parcel.

There may be those gradations we mentioned.

Another change we've made in the general residential area is instead of having a description of up to three and a half stories, we've reduced that to two and a half stories.

And we believe that's consistent with most of the housing throughout the city.

And what we're looking at with that is allowing up to two and a half stories and 35 feet.

and you know we believe that on the parcels in the city you can achieve you know with the size of most of the parcels in the city you can achieve you know a good size of units with within those parameters.

I will ask if Lee or Christy wanted to clarify anything about that.

All right well I'll let you jump in later and do that if you'd like.

I know Code Studio has a lot of experience with zoning codes to make sure that not only the form requirements, but also the other requirements related to zoning codes, think of parking, think of setbacks and whatnot, that those really support achieving these density levels as well.

In terms of medium intensity residential uses, we've added that we're thinking these would be sort of house sized or house scaled in many ways.

We've added that previously this was listed as four to 12 units, but we have specified just up to 12 units.

And we have noted, again, those affordability requirements that we think should be established or at least considered to achieve the housing goals that we have.

In terms of height with a medium intensity residential, we've clarified up to three stories with a fourth story allowed where it's compatible with existing uses and sort of the context as well as where it meets additional affordability goals.

So outside of these categories, there were no

I believe there are no changes made on the other land use categories, but we will walk through them in a bit to reiterate what they were.

So I know it might seem like we're going back and forth between the map and the descriptions, and we are a bit, but it's because we don't want to get bogged down in just looking at where things are on the map.

So I didn't want to start off the conversation with all of that.

I've already walked through many of these.

This slide has residential area changes.

The next slide has mixed use area changes.

And I apologize if there was any confusion.

In some areas, there are a lot of concentrated changes.

I know it may have not always been clear where the numbers were pointing.

So we're happy to clarify anything with that.

I think it may be best, given where we are at the conversation, if we hold further description of these changes for clarification in discussion later.

I want to make sure we have enough time to get started with hearing from everyone.

But I will note that, besides the changes I've already discussed, some of those more major changes, there have been

Some smaller changes throughout the map.

Some were small items that we had just needed to adjust that had been, you know, where maybe, for example, on High Street, there was a mixed use, a couple parcels that were brought into the mixed use corridor, but they actually are not accessible from High Street.

So those were brought out of it, you know, for example, like that.

There were a couple places in Fifeville and Johnson Village where we added additional medium intensity residential near the school to reflect that goal that we had brought forth, I think in Belmont as well.

We did reduce the residential intensity to the east of Belmont Park and that was something that was a response to what we'd heard and recognizing again how special that place is and recognizing it's an iconic view for the city.

We don't think that the medium intensity residential is necessarily a scale that would impede that but in order to perhaps support the community feedback we heard we did step that down.

Yeah, I'm happy to answer other questions about changes to the map as we get into discussion.

In terms of the mixed-use areas, I think I've described many of these changes already earlier in the discussion.

I'll note we, for example, in Lewis Mountain, we talked about the residential changes earlier, but we did recognize there was a school property that was included in the mixed-use corridor.

Previously a private school, so we've pulled that to general residential.

See other changes.

Locust Avenue.

There was a mixed-use corridor.

sort of a corridor node, if you will, sort of four corner corridor at the intersection of locusts near the park.

And we have pulled back on that and created that, shown that as medium intensity residential for similar reason to why we pulled back in barracks rugby and greenbrier that we think the sort of commercial we're trying to achieve there, the mixed use can be achieved through the medium intensity land use.

All right, again, happy to answer more questions about that later.

So we feel that this provision still addresses these goals that we put forth, this vision.

And this breaks down a bit some of the pieces of the chapter vision that are put out.

We're looking to contain a variety of housing options throughout the city, including allowing for greater intensity in areas that currently only allow single family development.

That's still a major priority.

We're looking at addressing inequity related to the distribution of land, land uses, and increasing the supply and affordability of housing throughout the city.

Ensuring there was an efficient transportation network with a variety of options, which may seem strange to have in the land use vision, but to have improvements, we want to have more people living near those transportation improvements.

It goes for transit, but also for other improvements.

And we've also included, you know, protecting the national environment, protecting the sense of place of Charlottesville within, by still achieving these goals of more affordability and intensity, but still keeping things Charlottesville.

And then also number six, maintaining and improving this commercial vitality and opportunity throughout the city.

And again, that's supported in both the residential land uses and the mixed use land uses.

So we maintain, you know, committed to this variety of housing types throughout the city.

It says missing middle housing here.

We're showing this graphic that many of you are probably very familiar with.

We're calling it soft density in the affordable housing plan.

The missing middle sort of straddles the line between the soft density and the medium intensity.

And so this is still the,

This is not our exact vision.

This is not a graphic we made.

I want to make sure that's clear for everyone, but it's meant to just to clarify that we are looking at a wide range of housing options that can achieve various levels of affordability in many different ways, excuse me, different levels of housing options in many different ways.

We've included here, we've got a set of slides with the descriptions of all the land uses, pairing the description with the map.

I'm gonna go through these fairly quickly because we've discussed them, the changes already.

But again, as I was just mentioning, in terms of the residential land uses, we remain committed to these sort of principles we put forth previously, which we've discussed

Again, this is where the general residential land uses play out, as you've seen in the previous maps.

This just shows the general residential with the description we've already discussed.

This really emphasizes to me the corridors that pop out with the medium intensity residential.

Again, we're not only talking about those mixed use corridors when we talk about corridors, but we're talking about these medium intensity residential corridors, which also are mixed use, but in a different kind of scale.

The higher intensity residential areas are shown here.

And in many ways, you haven't mentioned any areas that we changed on the map for these, but there were a few spots that were adjusted that I'll call out here.

We did receive several comments about this parcel up on Park Street.

We received many emails about supporting higher intensity of use on that site.

And so we have increased that from medium intensity to higher intensity.

And along JPA, I meant to mention this earlier, we did previously show this all as higher intensity residential.

And we have pulled back a bit in some of those areas.

And I believe the reasoning for that was due to environmental constraints and other, at least on the south end, the southwest.

In terms of the other, the sort of the northeast portion here, I believe

We stepped back there to sort of reflect the existing conditions in that area.

That may be one I need to confirm with Rana.

Again, these are the mixed use areas.

We haven't changed this general concept a lot.

Just, again, calling out where they're located in the city.

We have, as I noted previously, pulled back on some of the mixed use nodes that were previously in Barracks Rugby and in Greenbrier.

But again, would like to reiterate this large opportunity on 29 Emmett Street that is in that area to provide both sort of higher intensity housing and that commercial use.

Again, there's no red on this slide, text-wise anyway.

The descriptions of these areas were not changed from what we previously discussed.

So we did swap out the neighborhood mixed use node picture to better reflect sort of what we maybe were envisioning at that scale.

This is just the mixed-use corridors shown here with the business and technology areas.

Again, there were not major changes to these areas.

The two changes to the neighborhood mixed-use corridor area were, again, a locust av and a long rugby av.

And again, with those areas, we envision that the medium intensity could still allow for a focused area of medium intensity residential with commercial.

The one clarification we did make in this category was just to note what we meant by key intersection for the urban mixed-use corridor in terms of height.

And so we've identified that that means some of these major roads notified in the Streets That Work plan.

So just wanted to clarify that.

Last time we met, I think we talked about

development considerations, you know, how this would actually play out on the ground.

And so, again, these have been slightly adjusted in some ways.

We've added a note about the design control districts, which as of now is something that will remain in place.

We've also added under environmental issues, you know, we know there are a lot of different things to be considered.

Critical slopes obviously is always a topic of discussion.

We've got the stream corridor protection area on the map because it's an important thing to consider.

We also know that stormwater runoff, you know, consideration for the floodplain, those are important.

And then topography.

That's something we heard a lot about in the last round of feedback.

The other thing I would note as we think about what might be considered in the sort of the zoning piece of this or as we move into implementation, these last two bullets I think are really important based on the feedback we received in May and June.

Tree canopy is one major priority that we heard from a lot of folks and I think that goes for everyone throughout the city.

You know, not necessarily

pulling back completely on development opportunities due to a tree canopy, but supporting it as much as possible, retention, replacement, and additions to that tree canopy.

So we're working to make that more clear in the plan, because it is a priority in there.

And then transportation, which we already discussed.

Transportation improvements need to be a major priority related to land use, but also in general in the document.

I'm also going to call out the small area plans.

These are the current small area plans, sort of the most recent plans.

There are details in these plans that should be considered for any any development that happens within these areas.

You know, the land use map does not show every single detail of these these plans, but they remain a part of the comprehensive plan document and need to be considered.

And we've also proposed potential locations that we think could be considered for future small area plans.

And these are listed in alphabetical order.

But they include areas that we know have been, many of these areas have been talked about for potential small area plans previously.

Not only Will and Mills, but I know Rose Hill, Harris Street, Preston Avenue area has been called out previously.

JPA.

You know, I think a lot of these areas have been on the list in the comp plan for a while, but we think especially given potential for land use intensity in these areas, they could be potential candidates.

The other thing I would mention is just we have some examples of how this might actually look in the zoning.

You know, which I know you all are intimately familiar with zoning, but we just want to make it clear that this is not the last piece.

It's not just the land use map that gets implemented.

We'll be moving forward to a zoning rewrite.

And so these are some examples.

These are not examples that have been developed for Charlottesville.

These are examples from other places.

just showing how we can describe ways that this can really work within these neighborhoods.

How do we fit four units in?

Here's some examples.

How do we fit more than that in?

There'll be examples in a variety of ways in the zoning.

And we'll also lay out what else needs to happen to really make these units work.

So I want to make it clear that this is

We look forward to coming out in the end with a zoning ordinance that can fully implement this vision.

All right, I'm almost done.

Just want to reiterate, we talked about the schedule.

We look forward to meeting with you in a couple of weeks, talk about chapters.

But this is available on the website as well.

All right, Mr. Rice, what we'd like to do is open it up.

And what we'd like to do is just get your input.

I'm not certain that we're going to be able to get into a back and forth between the public and the consultant, because there are a lot of people that want to speak.

And the commissioners want to get into a back and forth with the consultant.

And council may want to as well.

So what I'll ask you to do is just be got some thoughts, give us your thoughts.

Mr. Price.

Thank you, Chair Mitchell.

And we do have 238 registered attendees joining us tonight.

And thank you all for your participation.

We have 31 currently with hands raised.

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

And we will call on first Michelle Rowan, followed by Fred Borch.

Michelle, you're on with the Planning Commission, and you have three minutes.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

So we recently purchased in Charlottesville, moved here.

And

Honestly, had we known before we purchased, we would not have purchased here.

We had no idea that the ultimate goal of Charlottesville was to have this high density area.

We specifically look for something close to the hospital, R1 coming off of acreage.

That's what we were looking for.

We kind of feel like we were a little bit

It would have been nice if you guys would have taken the opportunity to spread the word.

It kind of feels very much like you guys did this fairly underhanded and it was not a well-known fact.

That's a very strong idea in the community.

We're in the happy yellow area.

What I see as happy yellow is the R1.

That's great.

But we're almost surrounded by goldenrod.

Once one place in goldenrod goes on the market, a builder's coming in to build 12 units.

That's the way that, according to the statistics, according to what you guys lay out, that's what's going to happen.

that makes R1 next door not so happy because they were looking for R1, right?

Otherwise they wouldn't be there.

Then what happens is that eventually the golden rod becomes a circle of noise, roads, people, sound, like people that were there in R1

They don't want to live there anymore, but we're stuck in the happy yellow.

But the happy yellow is not so happy anymore.

But the people in the goldenrod area?

They got the buyout.

They got the money to be able to move.

The people that are really getting stuck here are the ones in the happy yellow, because that's not being rezoned.

And there's no builder who's going to be able to come in and buy us out.

We get stuck.

We get stuck with the noise, the confusion, the traffic, the chaos, the high population that we didn't buy to begin with.

And guess what?

That happy yellow, it's also the protected people, those sensitive areas, they're in the happy yellow.

This didn't work in the 60s and it doesn't work now.

And next, we have Fred Bortch, followed by Ellen Tully.

Fred, you are on with the Planning Commission.

There you go.

OK.

How's that?

All right.

Well, good evening, one and all.

And let me just say, to begin with, that this has been a very interesting presentation, and I've enjoyed listening to it, and I've learned a lot.

I've been a homeowner in Charlottesville for 30 years and I've lived off and on in Charlottesville for 40 years.

So I know something about the city and I love the city.

And I guess my bottom line up front is I'm a professional historian and as I've studied history more and more, beware the law of unintended consequences.

And I think that as I hear about the future land plan, which a lot of thought has gone into, my first question for you is, what are we trying to solve here?

What's our goal?

Is it more housing?

Because if the goal is more housing, we're definitely going to get more housing with higher density.

No question about it.

but I think the goal really should be more affordable housing and so then my question to you is are we well what's affordable housing I don't know it's sort of like Pontius Pilate saying what is truth I'm not sure what affordable housing is but I guess my

My thought for all of you would be, is it really an issue of affordable housing or is it really an issue of poverty?

Is the issue really poverty rather than whether or not housing is affordable?

As I look at this and I realize there's been lots of comments and lots of changes to the future land plan, which I applaud, and it shows me that everyone is listening,

I'm not sure that the solution for the future of the town is to really increase density so markedly.

I'm totally in favor of more housing if it's affordable.

I realize that it's a difficult situation, but I'm very concerned about the law of unintended consequences.

The beauty of a neighborhood of Belmont, for example, is the beautiful old single family homes.

I don't live in Belmont, but it's a great place to be, and I know people who do live in there.

The same with Greenbrier, and once you start tinkering with our existing zoning, I think that we just have to be very, very careful.

I would encourage you in my remaining 15 seconds to go back, please, and do additional study.

Are we really going to reach affordability here by doing all these changes to zoning?

Ellen, welcome.

And you'll need to unmute your mic, Ellen.

Here we go.

Oh, there she is.

I'm new to Charlottesville, but I'm not new to the issues of developers and unintended consequences.

And my experience over my

Well, I guess it's 50 years that I've been living in urban areas is that developers only interest is in the bottom line.

And if you're going to have zoning that opens the door

extreme growth in residential neighborhoods, the developers are going to take advantage of it.

And it's going to be very important that you make it clear what is limited and what is possible as you set up your plan and your zoning.

Next, we have John Thompson, followed by Peggy Pearson.

Welcome, John.

Thanks.

Can you hear me?

Great.

Okay, I just want to try to make this brief.

I just want to say what you're doing here is it's worthy, you know, it's a worthy goal.

You're trying to change the zoning to make

for more affordable housing, and I appreciate that.

But I just wanted to get down, drill down to something specific.

So in some cases, it looks like this map is carving up existing neighborhoods into something that looks sort of like a gerrymandered map.

I mean, I don't know.

On an earlier map, I think what you had was Grove Road designated as general residential, like the rest of the neighborhood, and now it's up to medium intensity.

And basically what that does is it cuts us off from the rest of the neighborhood.

And for years, really decades, we've just had to bear the brunt of traffic noise and congestion in our neighborhood.

And so I know I'm speaking for a lot of neighbors when I ask you to please, please redesignate Grove General Residential.

And I'll just wanna say one thing quickly to the people who wanna be able to walk to a coffee shop, you already can.

if you don't mind a good walk, okay?

And please don't ask for this if you don't wanna be able to, if you don't wanna walk next door to a coffee shop, okay?

If you're not willing to do that.

So it really, the larger issue here was what I, the way I see it is whether individual neighborhoods really have a say in their futures.

And obviously we all know that all levels of governance, the common good has to take precedence.

So all we're asking here

in our neighborhood, at least Long Grove, is that neighborhoods have some say, okay, no matter how much or how little taxes you pay, okay, we're just asking that we have some say.

And so I'd ask you, please, let's think about smart change and not just change.

And I know you all are trying to do a lot in pleasing a lot of different groups.

Next up, we have Kaki Pearson followed by Ted Pearson.

Okay.

All right, thanks very much.

I'm having a hard time with the pointing the finger.

It seems like

It's just the city that has this issue.

Now, granted, over the last, oh, I don't know, 10 years or so, we've seen huge numbers of apartments and townhouses, condominiums, on East Rio, East Water Street, Fifth Street, West Main,

Ridge, Cherry, Preston Road.

But how much have they really helped the affordable housing?

Census data has showed that the constructions of new homes in the city has outpaced the city's population growth.

I agree, we need affordable housing.

So why didn't councils, frankly, in the Planning Commission, act to ensure that there's meaningful percentages of affordability to all these units that have been reserved for people who can afford them?

And then they increase the rents, they keep increasing the rents before long,

Nobody can get in, except students.

But I just, like in the dairy market project, for instance, that's really recent.

Only 15% of the 180 units are classified as affordable.

That's 8%.

I think that's kind of pathetic.

Council has blamed Charlottesville's single family homeowners

and it's, is it really us?

I mean, they've allowed the planning to go on.

We're not the government.

The residents are not government.

Government should have been looking at this for decades.

As you can see, I'm very frustrated.

And why isn't the county involved?

You know, there's the circle around the city, but there are bus services into the county.

And it seems to me that places like, besides the county, but old Kmart, above stores on Preston Avenue, Albemarle Square, Fashion Square, there's so much that could be done there.

and Dewberry Living on the Down Palm Wall.

Okay.

Thank you.

Wonderful points.

Ted, welcome.

Ted, do you need to unmute?

Just did.

You're good.

Hi.

I'm a Ted.

Now, I just want to just start by just re-emphasizing disrupting of the existing neighborhoods.

Even on small lots, you can build larger dwellings that take up

space, loose trees, greenery, and you have issues of parking, traffic, you know, existing infrastructure.

How's that going to affect it?

I'm a member of Mason-Oxford Hills' new neighborhood, and our street is very narrow, widely used for walking, biking, running, and

It's also a quarter between Rugby Avenue and Rugby Road.

And on Rugby Road, if you start building those larger complexes in areas of the single family dwellings, a lot of people have bought those and renovated them over the years, many lately in the last year or so.

So you're gonna be disrupting that entire neighborhood that adjoins my neighborhood.

We don't want it to look like 14th Street.

And also developers recently, why haven't they built affordable units only instead of higher priced apartments and dwellings?

In some cases, I've read that they've paid cash to the city of Charlottesville because they did not build or add on affordable units to their projects.

So where does that go?

And also with minimal controls, zoning developers can do pretty much what they can do to make their money.

So why can't the existing controls, your regulatory controls, do something to make things faster

for these developments or hold them to what make affordable units.

It just takes too long now for them and the time is money for these guys and also make use of the existing vacant

Real estate and commercial areas because they're underused and they could be used.

And also where's UVA in this process?

I'm sure they have plans for affordable units.

Get them involved as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ted.

Next up, we have Martha Bass followed by M. Simpson.

Welcome, Martha.

You need to unmute your mic.

Okay.

I'd like to echo what all the speakers so far have said, in that I worry that whatever we're doing, we have not been able to allow affordable housing in any of the new development that we've done.

The developers seem to be able to pay a fee to get out of doing affordable housing.

We only allow affordable housing for a certain number of years, so I'm very skeptical about that whole thing.

But I wanted to address a specific issue tonight and that is the allowable height in medium density residential.

Now, I saw on the new plans that they've reduced that allowable height to four stories instead of four and a half stories.

But the other day I had the opportunity to getting a tire, a flat tire fixed at Settle Tire.

I walked down West Street to the end of West Street alongside of 10th Street and saw what a four and a half story building looks like next to a residential single family home.

And it's pathetic.

And if we have allowed that in the past, I mean, I don't know how zoning or planning commission allowed that to begin with, but there's a little dwarf, little

single family homes, by the way, in a historical black district, which we're trying to protect at this point.

So I really think now that I see that really this allowable height is going to be decided by new zoning rules.

I think I understand that's what you said tonight.

I challenge everybody on Planning Commission and everybody listening tonight to get out of their cars and walk down West Street and stand at the bottom of a four and a half story building that is right next to a single family home and see that that is incompatible with anything that Charlottesville wants to do.

So that's my comment tonight.

And next we have Mark Simpson, followed by Martha Smythe.

Welcome, Mark.

You'll need to unmute your mic.

There you go.

Can you hear me?

Great.

Okay.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak.

This is my first time speaking out.

I've heard a lot on these calls about redressing racial historical wrongs with this new upzoning plan.

I'd like to share with you some of my own history.

In the 1950s, my great grandparents purchased a brownstone in the city of Chicago.

The brownstone housed my great grandparents, my grandmother, and her two sisters and their respective families.

When it was time to collect the D, my great grandmother sent my great grandfather to the bank.

During that time, it was a man's world.

Women were discouraged from attempting to transact business.

For a black woman, it would have been impossible.

My great grandfather being illiterate was deceived into signing over the deed back to the bank.

My family was forced to move.

The families dispersed to different locations and were never able to return to living under the same roof.

As a descendant of racial housing injustice, what is my recourse in 2021?

Do I go to the city of Chicago and demand that they up zone that neighborhood with the hope of making it more affordable for Black people?

Or do I go to the owner of the brownstone and demand that they hand over the property to me because it was stolen from my family?

Those options sound and they are absurd.

The current owner of that building has nothing to do with what happened to my family.

And why would it be okay for me to demand that the city of Chicago dismantle that neighborhood to accommodate apartment buildings and commercial businesses of which would not guarantee affordability for Black people?

If the city of Charlottesville is serious about redressing housing racial injustices, they could create a program to target individuals and families, much like the voucher program created in Evanston, Illinois, where aggrieved African Americans only need to show that they were descendants of residents during a certain time period.

These individuals are awarded cash.

This approach is narrowly tailored and offers a remedy for those who were or could have been impacted.

The city of Charlottesville could easily adopt a similar program.

Instead, our government is proposing to dismantle single family neighborhoods like mine.

Yes, I will be punished twice.

Let me be clear, I don't want 12-unit buildings or commercial establishments in my neighborhood.

I don't want the traffic, the trash, the noise, the crime, and all of that which naturally accompanies denser neighborhoods.

No homeowner would sign up for this.

Not a black one, not a white one, not a purple or green one.

Thank you very much for your time and I hope you will

Rethink this whole thing of destroying neighborhoods.

And thank you for staying on time.

You nailed it.

Next we have Martha Smith or Smythe.

After that is Kemp Hill.

Hi, I did not sign up to speak.

So I don't know quite how that happened.

But

I'm learning a lot.

I like the changes that you all have made.

I think some of the comments tonight are right on the money and I hope that they get incorporated in the next iteration of the plan and the map.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak and I really would just like to make a huge plea to slow down the process and expand it.

We are still living in a pandemic which has altered everything and we're talking about a rezoning which projects to alter everything in the city.

and I see no reason to rush it.

I think it's a worthy objective to increase affordable housing in the city.

I'm a 30-year resident here, but I see no reason for the rush.

We're talking about a wholesale change of the city.

and coupled with the pandemic, it just seems foolish to not expand it, to include, as others spoke about, both UVA and Albemarle at the table and also to use creative solutions.

Increasing density is one option, but there are a whole other host of options, like the earlier spoke, individuals spoke about

subsidies and direct grants.

So I think Charlottesville is a talented community and I think there are a whole host of solutions that we haven't even tapped into.

So increased density, that's an idea.

Let's bring more people and more ideas and more time to the table.

And next we have Julia Williams followed by Philip Harway.

Julia, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thank you.

I live in Belmont and was interested in the comment made by Jennifer about how creating these medium density corridors helps with connectivity.

And I think you suggested that included pedestrian and non and multimodal safety.

And I question that because it sounds like more density

means more parking and more, a lot of things.

So I was curious about how you can explain that, how the corridors, maybe it simplifies routes and you have a designated lane, but anyway, that's one item.

The other item I had is the areas, Elliot increased density.

That's a very fast road.

It's single family pretty much all the way along it.

Going to medium density would probably

make it, instead of Elliott, it'll be more like Cherry, I guess.

It becomes, you know, we have hotels on Cherry, we have high rises, so what you are doing is creating a swath through Belmont that instead of slowing traffic is going to speed it up, I think, if we go to this median density.

So I'm very curious about how you envision that being part of the pedestrian safe and multi-middle safe and controlling speeds with the density allowed along Early Street.

I do know some of those lots are quite big, so I see that

but exiting onto Elliott is not a safe thing as it is.

Crossing Elliott is tricky.

So zoning will have to take very careful look at what it means, how you enter that road, because it is a major corridor.

The decision to go to four units from three, I thought the initial argument for three was that it maybe discouraged teardown because it was analyzed by lot size

and three would maintain validity of existing homes.

And so I'm curious about the four unit.

Maybe it does need to be tied to lot size, even though I believe this ordinance was trying to pull away from lot size, units per lot.

I'm not quite sure about that, but I think you ended up pulling out units per, what was it?

Units by acreage maybe, and now it's units per lot.

but I am worried about a lot of these lots being now pressured for redevelopment that might not have been if we just had three units allowed.

So that's a concern.

I would actually extend a compliment that I feel like this has been well communicated to the community.

If you paid attention to the city website and paid attention to your neighborhood associations, this topic of the rezoning has not been hidden from us.

And I'm sorry a new owner didn't understand this and didn't force the realtor to tell them what all was happening, but this has been in conversation for a long time.

So I'm frustrated by that comment because, boy, I've attended an awful lot of meetings over many, many months.

I think that's it.

I'm sure the neighborhood has other concerns.

Let me just say thank you for acknowledging the communications.

NDS and the Commission and the consultants appreciate your acknowledging that.

I'm sorry, I think we lost you.

I may have had a cutoff.

Forgive me if I did.

Next up, we have Philip Haraway.

After that, we have Leonard Shappa.

Philip, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thank you.

As the overwhelming purpose of redoing our comprehensive plan seems to be to achieve more affordable housing for the citizens amongst us who are having difficulty and also to take this opportunity to try and write some of the injustices of the past, I would like to focus on one element of this strategy.

Since finding out about this new comprehensive plan only in March of this year, and at that point getting myself educated and involved in this discussion,

It very much feels to me as if I'm watching a football game where the home team decides that it's time to throw the Hail Mary pass because we're losing the game and time is running out.

Instead, we should realize that we have time to concentrate on formulating a concrete strategy to succeed with the more affordable housing goals and bring along the majority of the citizens of this city to that commendable goal.

This plan being presented by the consulting team is what I believe to be an ideological blueprint for pro-density interests.

We're asked to sit by and watch our representatives put all of our eggs in one basket and hope that up-zoning will lead to affordable housing.

The proposed plan is built on the premise that building more density will create more affordability.

What is lacking here is anything concrete that will dramatically produce affordable housing.

other than just hoping that it does.

To me, there are more direct actions that should be recommended and acted on right now that, if done correctly, would be more productive and, if not, should be reexamined again in five years.

rather than throw open the whole city to a dramatically altered cityscape of more density.

The concept of the small area plans targeting vacant lots and underutilized properties for fast tracking are a step in the right direction, as is the proposed allowable fourth abode if affordable in R1 zoning.

The rest from what I see is just that hail Mary, that the proposals will work.

Well, what if it doesn't?

And there are plenty of studies that show they might not.

Are you so willing to go big without assurances and guarantees, not accomplish any concrete results besides increasing density with many of the problems this will likely create?

It's my understanding that as recently as 2010, the city actually appeared to make affordability less of a goal

rather than encouraging more development.

It used to be that making a developer offer affordable for a period longer than 10 years was in our laws and that was changed.

I'm not as cynical as some of the comments I've read recently suggesting that the city just wants to build more so they can tax more and that they're not concerned with affordability.

But return to that longer period of affordability in this next phase.

A period of 30 years, as is the case in many other areas of the country, would show a commitment to make a real difference.

Add some teeth to the enforcement of zoning, proffers given and promises made, because there's much skepticism in the community as to whether when promises are made, they're kept and enforced.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Leonard Shappa followed by Maria Montegudo.

Leonard, you're on with the conversation.

Welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment and all the work that you're doing.

I want to reinforce a lot of what you're hearing from people around the city today asking you to slow down and recognize that what you are proposing in terms of soft density in the general residential areas with three or four lots

is already accomplishing a lot.

These have been considered quite radical changes when they were adopted in Minneapolis and Portland, and we haven't even had a chance to see how they're starting to change there.

I was very interested in the frequently asked question which asked what can we learn from these other cities examples and what I read there was some concern that it wasn't happening fast enough that people weren't building those apartments above the garages or converting their basements into affordable apartments fast enough to bring down prices and so

I get the sense that the reason why you want to go to 12 units in the medium intensity residential is because you think that if you offer that level of density, there will be a lot of developers interested in purchasing single family home lots and building 12 unit apartments.

So you could get something that happens much, much more quickly, depending on the details of how this is zoned.

That's where I want to focus my remaining comments.

I see that you want the buildings in medium intensity to be house sized.

I'm hoping tonight in the discussion I'll hear more about what that means.

When I looked at slide 40, where you had a sample zoning details, one of the categories there was mentioned as medium.

And so I thought, well, maybe this is what they have in mind for medium intensity residential.

What it says, if you do the calculations, is that if you have a quarter acre lot,

that's considered large, you can have 12 units.

and taking up 60% of the lot, you can build up to three or four stories and you could have a building 20,000 to 26,000 square feet, okay?

So I wanna, we heard earlier about the dairy market example.

I think some people might've assumed that that would be impossible to build in a residential area, physically impossible to build.

But what we learn in this zoning code, the sample zoning code, is that the way this is implemented could allow buildings of 26,000 square feet, four stories tall, in the middle of a residential neighborhood that currently has 1,500 square foot houses.

Most of them are one story ranches.

Some of them are one and a half story Cape Cobs.

We are going to be even more dwarfed

If we build such buildings in the neighborhood where I live, then the house is right next to dairy market.

So I know that a lot of people have bemoaned that outcome.

and I'm sure hoping that you will offer us some reassurance that house size means house size.

In our neighborhood, the houses, as I mentioned, are quite small.

So if you, house sized around here is 30,000 square feet.

If that's what you have in mind, apartments in a 3,000 square foot building, I think that's something that the neighborhood would be quite comfortable with and I'm hoping you'll tell us more about that.

Next up, we have Maria Montegudo, followed by Benjamin Heller.

Hello.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk.

I live in a neighborhood, a Greenbrier neighborhood.

for about 20 years and I have been in Charlotte for 30 years coming from abroad.

I'm one of the foreigners in this city.

I really oppose to the high density plans and I cannot be more than agreeing with most of the people that have been talking before me.

I have two more points to mention.

I recently discovered that many of my neighbors had never heard or had vague idea about the future of the land plan.

Everyone should know about what's going on.

So I think more need to be done in this matter.

and the third point is I have like a question that asks to everybody.

Why there is such a rush to this drastic action that will significantly affect the city and no one can assure us that the lack of affordable housing will be solved by increasing density.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Chair.

Those next three people are Benjamin Heller, Crystal Passmore, and Maureen Burkhill.

And first, we have Benjamin Heller.

Hi there.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to our concerns.

You know, I read the Affordable Housing Plan when it came out and the PSH underlay analysis that underlay it.

And I was pretty shocked, to say the least, that you can search the word student in that document and it comes up a handful of times.

I think one was a footnote.

And that's just analytical malpractice.

We're a city of 47,000 people around a university with 16,000 undergrads, 8,000 graduate students, only a small fraction live on grounds.

with poverty or rent burden are massively distorted by students.

The census did a study of the effect of off-campus students on poverty statistics in 211 counties with large numbers of students.

Moving students, Charlottesville's poverty rate dropped from over 25% to just under 15%.

That was the 11th biggest drop out of the 211 counties in the study.

Over 9% of our households are 18 to 24-year-old households.

The number for Virginia is 4%.

Who do you think these people

with their spending power.

Among households in town with an income of less than $10,000 a year, a higher percentage live in rentals costing more than $1,250 a month than households making $35,000 to $50,000 a year.

Who are those people?

Who do you think they are?

And they almost all show up as severely rent-burdened.

Only 250 18- to 24-year-old households are zero income and thus excluded from rent-burden statistics by the census.

So it's clearly a tiny fraction of off-campus student households.

We have somewhere north of 1,000-burden households

that are a pure statistical artifact.

And even if they were truly burdened, this is UVA's responsibility to solve.

It's not fair for the city and its residents to have to bear the entire financial and physical cost of customers of a rich institution, rich in money and rich in land.

I see all the gray on that map.

that serves the entire state.

The only question I have is this a result of laziness?

I don't think it is.

You've all worked hard.

Is it a result of incompetence?

I don't think so.

We have award-winning consultants.

Or is this dishonesty?

And that's what I think it is.

Planned proponents trying to create a false crisis narrative with exaggerated statistics without proper consideration of students.

You haven't given us a plan for Charlottesville.

And next up, we have Crystal Passmore, followed by Maureen Birkhill.

Crystal, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hi.

I live on Forest Ridge Road.

Thank you for taking my comment tonight.

My husband and I are trading off watching our very active three-year-old, so that we would both have the opportunity to talk to you guys tonight.

I also know a lot of parents who are not able to talk to you.

This is a major timeframe for personal childcare for people who have young children.

I just want to point out there are voices you're not hearing tonight.

I also want to point out that you had a long period of feedback as well as a lot of feedback.

Your feedback summary is 33 pages long.

I was looking through it and I know that one of the top comments you received was to make historically exclusionary areas more dense.

to protect minority communities and to generally increase density across the city.

Those were the top three comments you guys received by email and by voicemail, which is where you received the most comments, over a thousand comments.

So I feel like these are the closest thing we have to representative of how the city actually feels.

It does not seem like you took any of these notes.

The current draft, you specifically allowed less density in the historically exclusionary areas, where most people asked for more.

You decreased the maximum building height when people asked for an increase in density citywide.

Over and over again tonight, I heard you say the things that we want out of these areas, that the things we want are still possible.

You kept saying still possible.

without saying the rest of the sentence, which is that they're still possible even though this draft makes it harder.

What the city wants is currently possible with the draft you gave us tonight, but it's less possible with the changes between the last draft and this one.

You're giving us the opposite of what we asked for as a community.

I don't know how you got to the current map with the comments you received before.

I will also say that homeowners bought their home, they didn't buy the city.

If a homeowner does not want to turn the house into a duplex, they do not have to do that.

More than half the city rents.

and the people who rent want more housing.

They want more affordable housing.

They want housing in areas actually close to jobs and stores.

The people who are talking here tonight are often not the ones with young families.

They're not the people working two jobs.

They're not the people who need affordable housing.

The people talking tonight already have housing.

They don't have the problem that Sage is trying to address.

And I can tell it's hard for them to even imagine a person having those problems.

Thank you so much.

I hope the next Mac will reflect the actual community we live in, Charlottesville as a whole, not just the demographic of people who have unlimited time to come here and speak at these meetings.

And next we have Maureen Burkhill.

Maureen, you're on with the planning commission.

You have three minutes.

You'll need to unmute your mic.

Maureen, would you like to speak?

Your mic is muted and your hand is down.

Mr. Rice, go to the next person if you like.

And that would be Andrew Grimshaw.

Hi.

I'm sorry we're going to close off.

So I have a somewhat different opinion than the person before me.

I'll try to be brief.

First off, I want to confess that I do not share your goal

of increasing density in the city.

And I don't recall that ever being on any ballot presented to the citizens.

I've voted in every election since I was 18, except once when I was overseas.

Second, you basically have thrown alderman under the bus.

If you look at alderman, there's 22 houses in that stretch that's going to go to high density.

If they all go to 12, that's 264 houses on alderman, which I think it will do.

And those will pretty much be all filled by students.

If you don't think they're going to be filled by students, you're not paying attention.

All of the multi unit

in the area is already filled by students and it will just be filled more by students.

And then finally, and I'm going to try to be very brief here because I really disagree with not just the whole process, but some of the fundamental perspectives that you have, particularly aspect of punishing neighborhoods because of the behavior of people who live there in the past.

and by the way, I come from the upper Midwest where we didn't have many of the things that are complained about in that thing.

So I've seen this before.

I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, another college town, approximately the same size as Charlottesville.

It's a bigger university there, but it's the same basic thing.

There was a street called Atwater and the street behind it that I can't remember the name that was converted to allow higher density housing.

Within 15 years,

A 30 block area had degenerated into a giant student ghetto.

Houses that weren't well maintained, trash on the streets, all of that stuff.

I mean, even now, if you look at Lewis Mountain, many of the houses where the students live are basically trashed.

So what you're proposing to do is throw alderman under the bus,

make it more difficult for the neighborhood, which is a walking neighborhood, just so we can have a bunch of students trash the neighborhood.

And that, you know, that's the way I feel about that.

And I'm sure there are many people who disagree with that basic premise, but I don't think this is the way cities are supposed to operate where cities selectively decide to destroy neighborhoods to meet some particular political goal that they have.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Let me chat with my colleagues and see how they look to do this.

I do want to give us a chance to interact with the consultant while we're still moderately fresh.

So

My recommendation is we take a few more, maybe six or seven more, take a break, and then we engage with the consultants.

And after we've engaged and given council a chance to engage, then allow the public back in.

I think one thing I've seen council do when there are many people who'd like to speak is to change the time on it from three minutes to two minutes.

Okay, I think that's reasonable.

Any objection to the order that I suggested that we take a few more people than you guys engaged, council engages, and then we opened it back up.

Ms.

I do have some hesitation about changing the amount I'm allowed to people while you are in the midst of the public comments.

As a general rule, it is more advisable if you know you're going to have a lot of comments to go ahead and vote to change that time before you begin taking the comments.

Is there any objection to me opening the floor back up to the public forum

for comments, and then us engaging the consultant and counsel engaging the consultants, and then opening it back up to the public.

Ms.

Robinson says, no.

My colleagues, are you guys either, what do you guys want to, Rory, is that a, I couldn't tell.

Ms.

Russell, Ms.

Ms.

Debbie, Bob.

All right, so let's take five more comments, and then we'll take a bio break, and then we will engage the consultant.

Thank you, Chair.

The next five speakers will be Brendan Novak, Caroline Kloskow, Dan Miller, Anthony Artuso, and Don Morin.

And right now, we have Brendan Novak, and you are on with Planning Commission.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Amazing.

Okay.

So, um, real quick, uh, just to tell you a little bit about myself, I just moved back to Charlottesville after being away for a little bit.

Um, and frankly, uh, searching for housing in the city was kind of a nightmare.

Um, you know, I'm a young professional.

Um, I was looking basically for like mid range, um, apartment in the city where I can walk into a bike, um, to everywhere that I need to go.

Um, and looking through that, it was pretty clear to me that

If those did exist, they were rare.

And it was not an easy process.

I ended up getting very lucky.

I was able to find a unit in basically converted large house in the Belmont area that has been turned into four apartment units.

And so I find myself very fortunate for that to have happened, but I don't understand why that can't be

Something that's available to more people and something that's available more easily.

So I don't feel like I kind of lucked into a perfect situation where it's something that if people choose to live that way, they can do that.

And so listening to the comments here and kind of understanding the plan, I'm a little bit puzzled at all the outrage behind what's being proposed given that

The unit that I live in currently is pretty emblematic of a lot of the proposed changes in this plan, as far as I understand.

It's a converted house.

It looks just like all the other houses on the block.

The only difference is that I can afford to live there, whereas I could not afford to live in an entire single family home, for example.

But looking at it from the front, you would not be able to tell that it was different than my next-door neighbors, my left or right.

And then in terms of the traffic impact, something that was really important for me again, like I said, was the ability to walk and bike to the places that I need to go.

And that's just not an attainable thing if we don't have things close together.

So, in order to achieve that, I think you can't both not want traffic and also not want density.

It's kind of an either or thing in my opinion.

So it's just a little frustrating to hear

All of the outrage because I think like ultimately you have to choose.

So, you know, to conclude, I don't want to ramble.

I know we're limited on time, but I appreciate the work that you guys are doing.

And very good.

Next, we have Caroline Klaskow.

Hi, thank you.

My name's Carrie.

I'm here for CLIC.

That's the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition.

Just a few comments about the map.

First of all, I want to draw people's attention back to the HACS proposal.

This is the map that introduced an affordable housing overlay throughout the city.

and it allowed medium density intensity by right development for all projects that include affordable units.

Now we think that the HACS proposal is preferable to the current version of the future land use map for two main reasons.

One is it answers an objection that we've heard many times from commenters just tonight and that it ensures additional density will be dedicated to affordability.

that it won't be used to build luxury and student apartments.

Two, it actually writes a clear plan for protecting historically black neighborhoods into the math.

Now we appreciate this identification we've heard about tonight of the sensitive communities.

We're on the same page with the commission and Seville plans about which communities need protecting.

but we think that the map needs to unambiguously prevent developers from taking advantage of the low cost of lands in certain neighborhoods which are historically black and low income.

Something that we noticed when we were looking at the side by side slide of the August map and the main map is that there's in general a lot less gray in the historically exclusionary neighborhoods.

So the white neighborhoods

North Downtown, Lewis Mountain Road, Locust Grove, Barracks Rugby.

There's less allowance for medium density under the current version of the map than there was in the May version.

We think this is a step backwards.

We're disappointed by this.

Finally, and probably most importantly, we would ask the commission to tell us what they mean when they say affordable, to write this into the comprehensive plan.

We want a definition of affordability that lifts up our most vulnerable community members.

And specifically what we would ask, we would ask for it to be set at 30% of the area median income.

And that is about $28,000 a year for a family of four.

So we'd like that definition.

And overall, thank you all for all your hard work.

We

We see this as a pioneering effort to undo the effects of 100 years worth of housing discrimination.

We think it is very important we are on board with what you're trying to do.

Next we have Dan Miller.

Welcome, Dan.

Hey, everybody.

I'll try to be quick.

I just wanted to say, in general, I'm supportive of density in general.

And for that matter, I'm supportive of targeted reparations to right past wrongs.

And I think that's probably a more direct way we can make some of the changes that we want to see as a community.

I'm concerned about a couple of things with the plan.

First and foremost, that you seem to have targeted here folks who happen to live on arterial roads.

I, for example, live on an arterial in Belmont.

I just bought a house here recently and I would agree with the previous speaker that the HACS plan seems to be better and that it doesn't sort of gerrymander off different parts of the community or in some ways sort of make that, I don't know if I want to say discrimination, I don't think that's sort of a strong word for it, but I do think it seems to me to divide up neighborhoods.

and sort of related to that a point I haven't heard anyone make is you know really developers here are an enemy that we all share right and I'll use an anecdote from living in Seattle for 10 years I never once met a human being living in Seattle who got a deal on their rent in a commercial property I knew many many many people who had good you know what I'd say oh good they have a great rent that they're paying and it was always to a single family home owner

and that's just how it inevitably works.

Those are where the deals are going to be.

So I think when I saw originally that my house was in a general zone, I was excited because I thought, okay, I could do an ADU or I could even do townhouses or there's all kinds of things.

It was very, it seemed like there was a lot there to be done to create affordable housing.

And I started to look into that, moving that from medium to medium rather where you're talking about perhaps a 12,

Thank you.

Good.

And next we have Anthony Artuso.

All right.

Very good.

Well, I want to offer my thanks to the planning team and others in their efforts to try to incorporate input from the community.

They've clearly attempted to try to better

to accommodate the various and potentially conflicting goals of the land use plan.

So I do appreciate that.

However, I still think there's much, much work to be done.

If you look at the document, and the categories of land use plan repeatedly throughout the document, it refers to future planning efforts, additional zoning activities,

local area planning, affordable housing planning efforts, future efforts that will make this land use plan workable and achievable, achieve some of the critical goals.

I see no reason why the planning commission should adopt this land use plan as a final plan until those future efforts are completed.

The planning team should come out to the neighborhoods

Yes, there has been these types of input session, but no one has come out to my neighborhood to meet with the neighborhood association and review block by block the proposals for those elements, explain to the neighborhood what they mean by a housing four story unit that meets is in, you know, characteristic of the neighborhood and

and fits in with the other residential units in the neighborhood.

What does that mean in practice, practically, specifically in the zoning code that might alleviate some of the concerns we've heard here?

So I really urge the planning commission take the time to do that additional planning.

There's no reason to adopt this land use plan as the final plan.

You can take it under advisement.

You can use it as a guide for that future efforts.

You can also be using the housing,

advisory committees document along with that, but really need to come out and meet with the neighborhoods, go block by block, need to complete your housing affordability plan with funding behind it, not just hopes and dreams, need to complete the infrastructure planning that underpins this proposal.

You need to complete the interaction with UVA.

and with the county and report that back before final land use plan should be adopted.

I think there's many good ideas in this, but there's also many that are missing.

If we're talking about affordable housing, we need to have much more community ownership.

This is all predicated on private development.

and maybe, as the last speaker indicated, homeowners that hopefully are gonna do the right thing and build an additional dwelling unit and offer it, you know, supposedly.

But we need more, you know, community development corporations, more urban land trusts.

Thank you.

And next we have Dan Morin.

Dan, I'm sorry, Don Morin.

Don, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thank you all very much for taking all the time to do this hard work and for giving us the time to speak with you and to provide quality with your comments.

I agree with all the statements made in opposition to the plan, which are really asking you to take more time to get more information.

When it was first brought to my attention in March of this year that there was this plan, did a little research and I found that the consultants at RHI had performed work for Sandy Springs in Georgia.

Population of 100,000 with projected growth of 40% in the coming years.

Our projected growth in Charlottesville is only 1% over the next 20 years.

It's very important.

I want to get back to it.

but the plan RHI created, and it was an excellent plan.

I really learned a lot about Sandy Springs that contained traffic flow studies, detailed demographic information, detailed assessment of housing needs, census data showing projected population growth, critical environmental economic data, topography and water studies, studies looking at where and how growth would occur, visualizations of what that growth would look like.

And at the end, there was a list giving the actual price and source of funding for every recommendation.

All of this is absent from the plan, but you've heard from many of the people tonight that they'd like to get that information.

And then finally, every neighborhood in Sandy Springs contributed to and signed off on the plan, and the plan's number one goal was the preservation of its existing neighborhoods.

We've heard that comment over and over again tonight.

People want you to come out to the neighborhoods and explain to them what this plan is and then to listen to their feedback so they can provide you with information to help you in this planning process, which is overwhelming.

So the RH plan for Charlottesville, as far as I can see, doesn't take into account the true population growth projected by the Weldon Center, UVA, the gold standard for demographics, which is only 1% over 20 years.

There is no population explosion in Charlottesville.

There is a need for affordable housing.

And I think everybody who's calling in tonight says, let's work on getting affordable housing, but let's do it together.

The city of Charlottesville and its residents should be congratulated for what they have done.

$10 million a year is devoted from our budget for affordable housing.

Charlottesville spends more money per capita on affordable housing, $140 per capita, than any other jurisdiction in the entire state.

Richmond devotes only $35.

Our unemployment rate is 4.2%, nationally it's 5.4%.

I'm running out of time, so I've got to run to the end.

I agree with the comments that the pandemic kind of didn't help you in getting the buy-in of the community.

I'm asking you to get the buy-in of the community.

And so to increase affordable housing, there are many alternatives to this plan.

Many things can be done and have been suggested.

So I ask that you come to our neighborhoods, listen to us, we talk to you, we engage in the neighborhood by neighborhood and get buy-in.

And Chair Mitchell, that was our final speaker before we were going to address council and commission.

What I like to do with the permission of the commission, you guys can redirect if you like, is take a break.

When we come back, do the left to right thing, giving every commissioner five minutes to ask questions or make comments and go around.

Give council a chance to chime in.

Then toss the ball back to the public.

Once the public has done their thing, they come back to the commission.

Is that comfortable for everyone?

I'm concerned that if we save our comments from the very end, we may lose council.

Okay, thank you.

Is that okay?

Yeah, fine with me.

I just wanted to make sure that I, before I started, I usually go right into comments.

It just ends up because, you know, this is my last chance to do this to you.

We're going to go right to left.

We're going to start with you.

Chair Mitchell, um, sorry, this is Councillor Hill.

Um, I don't know that council, we have noticed this meeting is a joint meeting.

We're here listening, but I just want to caution us from participating.

Robinson can... Typically I do invite you guys to make a comment, but, um... That's when we have a joint meeting, I think.

Ms.

I think that's up to your discretion.

I think we're getting down to the short strokes.

And I think it's important that they hear it from you guys, if you're willing to chime in.

Again, I'll leave it up to you.

If you want to speak, great.

If you don't, that's cool.

Can we now do five minutes, please?

Thanks for watching!

All righty, hopefully everyone is back or on their way back.

I think Jody is trying to prevent me from going right to left.

Oh, there he is.

And is Jenny back?

And is Ms.

Creasy back?

Yep, I'm here.

Let me see.

So I have five minutes for questions and comments.

Yes.

We'll come back to you later, but for now, yeah.

OK.

I would like to know from Roadside and Hardwell, for the R1 district that you're proposing the up-zoning,

three units and then the possibility of fourth that's affordable.

Two questions.

One, I have been doing a lot of reading and most of the literature that I have come across has concluded that

Simply adding density does little to nothing to adding affordability to a city or affordable units to a city.

Why is that still a recommendation?

And number two, what's magical about the fourth unit being affordable?

Why wouldn't developers simply turn single-family parcels into three families?

residential units take the money and run.

Is the fourth unit based upon some kind of data, some studies?

Thanks, Jody.

And I'll welcome others to chime in on the response as well.

But in terms of the general residential district, you're mentioning the R1 districts.

We agree that adding density alone does not add affordable units to the city.

I want to make sure that that's clear.

I agree with you on that.

are not inherently, you know, adding affordable units at maybe the levels that Charlottesville's greatest need is at, in particular.

There is an opportunity to provide units that are more sort of naturally affordable, if they're at a sort of a size that maybe is not available in a neighborhood right now.

So it may make, have more affordable options within the neighborhood, relatively speaking.

But I think there are,

You know, pairing these lineages map with the affordable housing plan, different priorities identified in there for funding, you know, funding for homeownership opportunities, for example, you know, the map on its own needs to be paired with some of those initiatives as well.

So that would be my response to that.

In terms of the fourth unit, we did hear a large number of comments calling for showing up to four or five units in the general residential areas.

So this was a comment that not only, you know, it came through a lot of conversations we have with folks as well as through the email, which is where it really came out.

So we wanted to consider it.

We, at the time we were proposing it, we're concerned that just adding, you know, that that could be a way to get to a way where there is some affordability sort of required within that sort of base by right, general residential levels, maybe even outside of some of those larger initiatives from the affordable housing plan and whatnot.

Because I think this scale of housing

You know, like I mentioned, can be really sort of naturally affordable.

But if we, you know, require some required level affordability, that could be a way to get some of that deeply, more deeply affordable housing available within those general residential areas.

I'm not sure if that made complete sense.

You're right, Jody.

There's no specific evidence that that fourth unit is somehow magically more affordable.

It is just a trade-off that we felt was reasonable for adding to our original three that if you were going to add more, we needed some guarantee that some portion might be affordable.

Interestingly enough, I think in most cases,

The existing house would be used as the affordable unit because it's more affordable to renovate an existing house than typically than it is to build a new.

Thank you, Lee and Jenny.

Make them now?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, I've given this a lot of thought.

I've been up until now keeping an open mind, wanting to listen to all the hard work from our consultants, doing a lot of reading, podcasts.

I think it's time that I came up with some conclusions.

The density issue,

R.C.

Elko about 10 years ago did a study that said we needed more housing across the board and that that would naturally trickle down.

And I threw this at Tania many a times over the many years.

I apologize, I'm wrong.

I've read too much that has said that the land has become more valuable now than the buildings that are on it.

And given the opportunity to provide more housing units on the same parcel of land through up zoning, developers will build more units, but at market rates that will not meet the affordability definition.

Because of the desirability of living in Charlottesville and the surplus of people that can afford the purchase of rental of market rate units, there will never be a trickle down impact that provides affordable units.

Therefore, I don't support up-zoning R1 districts that would allow more market rate units.

Instead, I support affordable housing overlay districts that for R1 district would allow up to three additional living units provided they meet the definition of affordability at various AMI levels and are permanently affordable.

Similarly, I support portable housing overlay districts for all land use districts, residential, commercial, business, and industrial.

Secondly, protecting what we like about Charlottesville.

The number one comment by the survey respondents is concern for community character, history, height, or scale.

In other words, those existing physical features that make Charlottesville distinctive and livable.

The identification and recognition of our historic districts represent for residents what is special and unique about Charlottesville and they must be protected.

Land has become more valuable than the buildings on it, as I said before, even the historic ones.

The current demolition requirements protecting our designated historic buildings, they're weak.

In most cases, a developer would simply have to wait 12 to 18 months for a demolition application to run its course before destroying a historic building, an inconvenience that can be built into the business plan.

Therefore, I cannot support up-zoning any property within an existing historic or conservation district.

Instead, I would support an affordable housing overlay district that allows compatible infill and accessory dwelling units that solely provide permanent affordable housing.

What an evolution over the years, wow.

I had to switch machines midstream.

Oh, what a night.

So broadly, tons of changes.

I spent most of my weekend trying to understand all the changes, and I think I understand them.

The one that really sort of surprised me was sort of that the area near the university, just sort of very high cost, as Mr. Alejandro said, very expensive land.

And the houses are expensive too.

It's a high cost area near the university sort of on the northern end of the city.

and there we see

It's interesting to me because the Opportunity Atlas really calls that out as a spectacular place where low-income children can build a life, can move up in our society uniquely versus anywhere else in the city.

Pretty special place.

So I was expecting really great things there.

And I only saw really large reductions in potential affordable housing there.

I didn't understand it.

I understand that there has been public comment calling for less, especially among the highest income homeowners.

That's sort of the biggest group that's really been pushing this story.

And I hear it and I understand it, but I'm concerned about scale.

Have we gone too far?

Is there a happy balance between

All middle and all general.

That's possibly some definition to balance people who need things versus people who like aesthetics within a certain realm.

Moving to aesthetics.

I believe in aesthetics.

I teach aesthetics.

Buildings that look the same but have different contents.

I don't understand why we are regulating the contents if they look the same.

If there are 12 homes inside or two homes inside or just one gigantic disgusting mansion.

Why is that a problem for us?

If it's just aesthetics we are concerned about, why are we regulating the residents?

The Belmont Park is an interesting example where it is a beautiful place and I hope more people can enjoy it.

But buildings that look the same versus buildings that look the same, aesthetically, it seems the same to me.

I hope that helps somewhat.

Otherwise, a lot of what I see makes sense and I understand it.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

Dowell.

Oh, Ms.

Dowell, by the way, welcome back.

Are you there?

First of all, welcome back.

Have you mended?

Is everything good?

Is your daughter safe and everything's happy?

Well, first I would like to say thanks for having me back.

And we are still mending, but we are grateful.

Things could have been a whole lot worse than what they were.

I'm glad things are all right.

She was in a pretty bad accident a couple of weeks ago, so we lost her for about a month.

Thank you.

And I do apologize, but I was eager to participate tonight.

Jody, thank you for your revelation.

It is very much so appreciated.

I too have some heartburn about the density that comes with this plan.

I would also want to support, as Jody has already said, and I'm not going to reiterate a bunch of things.

We've been here for a while tonight.

but I do want to support the overlay district of affordable housing throughout the entire city.

It's hard and even listening to her respond to Jodi, I believe her name was Jenny, I'm sorry, to not be able to really fully

And so the question of if density does not create affordable housing, then why are we increasing density in these R1 neighborhoods is very troubling for me.

Also, it doesn't seem like it's just troubling for me, but from the comments that we've received tonight, and also from the additional comments we're going to receive, it seems like it's very troubling to our citizens as well.

Um, the one other thing I did want to say is I do appreciate some of the, um,

Thank you very much.

No, no, Mr. Bob.

Mr. Bob.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

Can't remember the orders.

See if I can keep my comments organized.

But I just want to say thanks for all the work.

And I'm happy to see a huge response from the community today and also via email for the past couple of days and from some young UVA students who are concerned about their impact on the city's vulnerable communities.

I think we had 100 plus emails, the majority of which were saying kind of like, you know, the changes were headed in a little bit off the deep end on the wrong direction.

But I do want to also thank you for including pieces on the rezoning the common kind of explaining a little bit what is what we're looking at and the rezoning process.

I want to start and say I think we need more assertive language regarding affordable housing and the affordability of the affordable housing throughout all different intensities and zoning requirements, not generally just the general residential one.

I think it could apply to most of them.

I don't really get why the overlay does not mesh well with the corner node

I guess the thing that we're doing, I think they could work together when we were looking at the medium and high intensity and how that could overlay with more affordable housing.

And I think there was a letter by Hack earlier that we can, I think, maybe explore having the affordable unit come in the beginning of the development instead of the end.

of the development instead of like the fourth unit becoming affordable one, maybe it's in the beginning of the process, that way we can ensure that.

I wanna look at the change of the, I think there was some language change to limited commercial instead of like neighborhood scale or neighborhood supporting uses.

I don't know if that was on purpose or if that was changed, but I understand the logic that the nodes and some of those medium intensity

zones kind of share the same meaning in that sense, and I don't find that problematic that that was changed.

I think since we rolled back on some of the medium and node intensity throughout, we can probably bring some of that back into the general residential.

I think three and a half floor of homes exist, and that's not a concern.

I don't really get why we moved back to two and a half floors.

and even the unit count.

I think I'm supportive of the increase of the units in the general residential, echoing what Lyle said earlier, if it looks like a house, and it doesn't matter, really.

But if you look at page 19 and 20 of the sensitive communities areas, you'd notice that a lot of them have a lot of different

intensities and nodes within those communities.

And the rest of the map has most of the general residential.

So it seems like we're not really changing or anything in those sensitive communities in a way that it seems like we're preserving all the different neighborhoods and down zoning them in this latest plan.

And the areas that have been impacted still continue to be impacted since they're already majority, not general residential.

I don't know.

I think part of it, we could also consider moving townhomes and cottage courts from the medium intensity to general residential.

I don't see a problem with that.

Regular homes you see walking down the street, especially the cottage courts, that would be very fitting in general residential neighborhoods and help us achieve more affordable housing.

Especially all this, I want to reiterate, ties into having more assertive language to ensure that we have affordable housing and not just density.

Those are most of my comments.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for staying within five minutes.

Sure.

I'll start with a question to Jenny, or to the team.

How do you decide whose opinions matter?

We've heard many hundreds of people's feedback.

Many people are arguing for one thing, while others argue for the direct opposite.

We've done surveys, we've had input, we've had pop-ups.

We've received, I think in many cases, not a particularly representative sample of the populace.

I think in the survey it was 11% renters.

I think we've heard tonight from a whole bunch of homeowners in a couple of very specific neighborhoods.

Thanks for that question.

I'm glad you recognized, you know that we haven't heard from people who are necessarily representative of the community.

That's why we've been looking at demographics when we can, like on the survey, for example.

Two comments on that.

One is that we have been going back to the equity and affordability overarching goal that we came to this process with.

And we have the affordable housing plan and we're trying to make sure the land use map can react with or play with that and make change effective.

But in terms of who we are listening to, we are trying to make that equity and affordability piece maintain strength, and we think we have, while also making compromise.

We're not swinging wildly one way or the other.

I would say if we did that, if we really

said, you know, listen specifically to certain neighborhoods.

A lot of these neighborhoods would, outside of those sensitive communities, even would not have any additional increase in potential intensity at all.

So we have tried to strike a balance between, we think it's important to, you know, keep some of that base level of residential intensity throughout.

But also, I mean, we can't,

It's a balance.

We've made compromises, but we don't think they compromise the final goals.

That's what I would say.

OK.

Then I guess I'd like to know a little bit more about this claim that there's no help from density or from housing supply.

Is it the case that denser housing in our city is more expensive or even as expensive as detached housing in our city?

Is it the case that more supply will not bring down the cost of housing at all?

I'm not saying that we don't need subsidies to reach, of course, our deepest affordability levels, but we hear more and more that people higher and higher at the income level are teachers, first are teachers, then are firefighters, people getting paid more and more can't afford to live here.

Does it not help?

Thank you for asking that, too.

I appreciate a chance to clarify earlier comments.

What I was speaking to was increasing density in land use certainly does not necessarily naturally help the lowest income households, that level of affordability.

That's something that's clear in the Affordable Housing Plan.

It's laid out that requires subsidy.

And that's why, as you mentioned, we have that as an element.

I was trying to get this when I was responding to Jody's comment earlier.

having different sizes of units available throughout different neighborhoods.

A smaller unit is going to be more affordable sort of naturally.

And so I, again, appreciate the chance to clarify that.

I think there are benefits to be had in terms of affordability from market rate affordability to have these smaller potentials, potentially types of smaller types of units.

And when I'm saying smaller, I mean not a standalone single family home, but an apartment or a small multifamily unit.

I know I thought I just lost, but I hope that helps.

Yeah, I do think that's helpful.

And so I think when talking about this fourth unit without an incentive, I don't understand where that's coming from.

or who will build that fourth unit?

It sounds to me like you're asking people to build it out of the goodness of their heart and as we all know developers do not do things out of the goodness of their heart they are profit seeking.

To me it seems we need to create incentives if we want to get mandated affordable units.

The flip side of that is there needs to be some reason to build them.

And, you know, as far as I'm aware, I know Portland made its reform for six units on top of its base.

Four units in their general residential, they had six units of half are affordable, but they were hoping for nonprofits to build those.

And my understanding in talking to our local housing nonprofits is that

We have a couple of rental oriented ones that don't build buildings that size.

And you need at least 40 or 50 to get to a live tech application.

And then we have housing oriented or a home ownership oriented ones like Habitat and the Community Land Trust.

And for them, I think what they're really seeking is for townhomes and in particularly stacked townhomes, they keep saying stacked townhomes, that's the fastest path to get affordability because land is so expensive and you can have the cost of land.

I just don't understand why for all this talk about home ownership opportunities, affordable home ownership, access to home ownership, attainable home ownership, we're not talking more about townhomes and about stacked townhomes.

Both for non-profit builds, for deeply affordable and for market rate.

So, Rory, let's get an answer.

I mean, that was about it.

My input is we need townhomes.

I mean, I'd add, I don't really see the corridor thing.

I think if I'm in a corridor with bus service and there's a bus stop every eight blocks, if I'm four blocks from a bus stop, I'm a lot worse off than if I live a block off the corridor or right from a bus stop.

So, I mean, that's the other big piece of feedback.

Also 2.5 floors and 35 feet means 14 foot ceiling heights.

OK.

So Ms.

OK, thanks.

OK.

So I want to echo support of the inclusion of an affordable housing overlay.

I think that, can you hear me OK?

I think we have to be intentional about affordability if we want to see it and not sort of just open it up and hope it sort of happens.

And I really see the affordable overlay as being intentional.

I also see some conflict in the rhetoric of the land use chapter and how the future land use map looks.

I support the vision statements on slide 25.

And in the FAQ that was shared earlier, it states that the plan prioritizes retention of structures wherever possible with a focus on adaptive reuse and infill rather than demolition.

But I have yet to see how this is actually carried out.

To Lyle's point about

A house is a house and we shouldn't regulate what's inside.

I agree, but we don't have anything providing that, you know, larger single family homes would get subdivided as opposed to speculative demolition.

It also seems like in this scenario, our wealthier neighborhoods might actually be protected from that speculative demolition because the economics would not likely work out to

tear down a large home with a value, embodied value in it.

So what I would wonder is how we would protect the more modest structures in our neighborhoods that are already serving a purpose, modest houses along Elliott, for example, that are rentals or some modest homes.

And then finally, for the sensitive areas, I just want to be sure that we, in addition to potentially limiting wealth accumulation, which, which Jenny did mention, I question if in already gentrifying neighborhoods, we wouldn't actually be sort of reinforcing the gentrifiers or sort of

benefiting people in renovating older homes, older existing duplexes and turning them into large single-family homes.

How does that actually benefit the neighborhood?

I would encourage us to work with legal aid and the neighborhood leaders to continue this conversation about protecting those sensitive areas.

I don't think I have any questions.

I do want to note that it seems that the definition of missing middle housing is two and a half to three stories.

So if that's what we say we want, then that explains the reduction from 3.5 stories.

Finally, I think that

We should be advocating for a range, a choice in housing, a range of housing opportunities in a way that's sensitive to the built form of our existing neighborhoods.

I think that's what SEVA plans is working towards.

And I think it's our role as planning commissioners to guide the density more specifically and not leave it to the market to decide what is built and what is affordable or more likely not.

Thank you.

So I,

I tend to be a cheerleader, but I'm not gonna be a cheerleader tonight.

I'm just gonna tell you how I feel about this, because this is my last meeting to be a cheerleader, because it's gonna be somebody else's responsibility to moderate these meetings in the future.

And I'll just tell you how I feel.

The latest iteration disappoints.

The affordable housing plan that the consultants put together

was designed to promote zoning and development that increased multifamily development in a way that buoyed equity and buoyed affordability in Charlottesville.

I think back to the invasion of Charlottesville many years ago by Mr. Bartolomeo when he brought his ideas about

exclusionary zoning to Charlottesville and it was embraced.

And I'm not seeing where we are today is combating that, combating the ravages of exclusionary zoning that he brought to Charlottesville.

The affordable housing overlay that was proposed on July 13th went a long way to buoying or helping to buoy because it all helps because it is genius it over and over again.

You can't do it just by zoning and land use map.

But it went a long ways to buoying the affordable housing stock in Charlottesville.

we embraced that.

And I would like to see the affordable housing overlay actually get embedded in the future land use maps so that when we move to the zoning ordinance, the zoning ordinance has some governing principles that define that.

I also believe that

Four stories in general residential districts is not a bad thing where it makes sense.

I hopefully will keep that in mind.

I also think that eight units, eight unit dwellings in those districts where it makes sense is something we ought to give some thought to.

But I do believe that we need to do all these things that I'm just talking about and also protect the sensitive low-income areas.

Mr. Schnook.

Chair Mitchell, thank you.

I have a number of comments and a couple of questions I'll ask at the end.

The first thing is I think we have to remember that the future land use map is part of the comprehensive plan.

It is only about three pages of the comprehensive plan.

The comprehensive plan, the purpose of a comp plan is to plan to deal with current and emerging problems.

It is not particularly, frankly, to only preserve existing neighborhoods.

Though, in some instances, that could be a problem that we're trying to address.

In this particular case, I think we're looking for a comp plan.

And you've got to remember, of course, this is the comp plan that was supposed to have been rewritten three years ago, but it foundered on many of these same issues because we didn't apparently want to be or were not able to confront some of these

these difficult problems.

The three values that I think have to underlie what we're doing are number one, racial equity.

Number two is climate change.

And number three is dealing with all varieties of affordable housing.

We have to recognize that at the moment, Charlottesville is becoming increasingly unaffordable for virtually everybody.

And that includes people who are making 100% of AMI, not just 80% or 40% or 50%.

We all have heard the stories of people, as one testimonial this evening made clear, of folks who have tried to buy something in Charlottesville or even to rent something in Charlottesville that they couldn't find.

We know about the houses.

The one around the corner for me that had been assessed at 420 was listed at 470 and sold at 520.

Or another house I know of in Greenbrier that was

assessed in the 400s and sold recently for 705.

We know that we're having prices fast outpace the expected rate of inflation.

The reason obviously is demand.

There is more demand than there is supply.

We have more people who want to live in Charlottesville than we do places for them to live.

And that is true at all levels of income.

and I think when we confront when we characterize this issue as does market rate housing have to be built and if so is it going to help out the the under 30 percent AMI neighborhoods obviously the answer is no not there but supposing we did something about both categories supposing we did something that not only increased the housing supply

people who are looking for the, you know, the $300,000 house that doesn't exist anymore in Charlottesville, that kind of thing.

So I think we have both that we have to deal with.

There is a question about population growth.

The Weldon Cooper Center some years ago came out with something that projected 1% growth between now and 10 years from now or something.

The same Weldon Cooper Center in 2015 projected that we were going to have

as substantially higher growth.

And the reason was that they were responding very specifically to the growth and the numbers, the pure statistics that had come from the massive increase in apartments on West Main Street.

The point is that the Weldon Cooper Center doesn't deal with discontinuities.

They deal with projecting the last trend.

And I think it's clear that one of the trends we've got is that the university continues to grow

It continues to grow on an average about 1% a year.

And if you annualize it over the last 40 years, that's about what we get to.

Charlottesville's housing stock has not grown correspondingly.

It was doing OK until about 2015.

But since that time, it has slowed down.

And during that time is when we've seen the inflation.

So that's a problem that we need to deal with.

It's a comp plan issue.

And that makes it a land use map issue as well.

I haven't mastered all of the, oh, one other point related to that.

When we talk about missing middle, we're not talking only about form, we're talking about missing middle income.

We're talking about the people who can't afford to live in Charlottesville anymore, and that's a change.

The couple of things that I, basically two questions.

One is, is there any way that the consultants could kind of work up some pro formas of what it would look like if,

if you were to take a lot with a price of X number of dollars and build out however many units because that would be very helpful to try to figure out and I'm not sure I've got the competence to work it out myself.

The other is a broader question which I would ask is to what extent do does any variety of these plans envision that the limits of the limits on the units based on for example the size of the lot

Putting eight units on a quarter acre lot would look very different from putting eight units on a half acre lot.

Does that enter into the calculations?

And could you have, for example, a setback requirement that said it will give you that extra story as long as it's a certain number of feet away from the boundary line?

Thanks, Lloyd.

I'll ask Lee to respond to the second question or Kristi from Code Studio.

But in terms of your first question about can we work up pro formas about what it would look like to develop lots, that's built into the process that HRNA has been brought on to do in the zoning, which is the inclusionary zoning aspect.

They've got it written into their scope to do that.

It's not something we had planned.

And that's really where our capacity is to do it.

But they may have examples we could share.

I will speak with them and see what we may be able to provide that can give some idea of what we're thinking in terms of what would it take to develop lots.

And then Lee or Christy, do you want to respond to the question about, you know, does this envision limits on units based on the size of the lot?

Absolutely, yes.

This is Lee.

There are lots of tools for making

Larger buildings more acceptable when they show up next to smaller buildings.

There are lots of transitional tools and certainly stepping height down is one of those.

I'm not certain we would have to talk a fair amount about when to apply a rule like that.

It would have to do with the width of the lot more than the acreage of the lot.

and that's why in many cases we're more interested in that issue of sort of how much bulk and mass we can actually fit on the lot has much more to do with the lot width in many cases than it does the area.

The other thing that I think is missing from some of this discussion

is that you have many, many lots which are much larger than the minimum lot size in the existing zoning district, much less whatever the lot size might be in the future zoning district.

So you have lots which could be subdivided, whether through a lot split or through a more complex subdivision in the creation of a new street.

In your lowest density district today, you have a very, very large acreage size.

Some of that may be due to topography, some of it may be due to the stream corridors or wetlands or other things.

There are plenty of reasons why those lots might be larger.

That doesn't mean that they are perfect to be split and made into subdivisions.

But I want to put on the table that part of this discussion should include the acknowledgement that on a large lot rather than just simply adding to the units in one building that fits on it,

One thing we would prefer to see is a series of buildings.

One of the ways we can get that is by subdividing it.

So I just want to mention that.

But yes, there are probably lots of tools that we could look at once we've been given slightly more direct guidance, which I believe we're getting tonight.

Let me see if there are any other councilors that want to speak because I did promise the public that we get back to them.

Walker?

I think, you know, as I'm sitting here listening and

knowing how many years that this has been going on, long before I was even on council attempting to get the previous draft, you know, the previous comp plan completed and hearing from people who I think are just now starting to pay attention.

which is very typical when it begins to affect them and in a way that they maybe don't necessarily want.

I think we just have a lot of work to do in terms of collective wellbeing for the community.

A point that my colleague just made in terms of his three points, the first one being racial equity,

And then it's totally conflicted with the creating housing opportunities for all people without prioritizing which housing to start with.

And I understand that a lot of people are challenged by, you know, Charlottesville, what has happened with past developments, the increase in pricing of housing and land.

But there are certain members of our population who without us prioritizing them, and especially the lower AMI, they won't be able

to figure out in Charlottesville or existing areas.

Also, Roy's point about who is listened to, it appears from looking at these two land drafts that some of the changes from the high intensity to medium intensity shows

whose voices are being listened to.

And I think that while it's important, we also have to take in consideration the historical context of why these neighborhoods are the way they are.

And I don't agree with, I think her name was Ms.

Simmons, that it is not the responsibility of the current landowners.

It shouldn't be looked at as an individual,

If we're talking about collective well-being, then we know how we arrived at a place.

We are going to have to all work together to change that.

And so I'm hoping that we look at some of the changes that have been made, but also understand

with some of the examples that Lloyd just gave in the Greenbrier area, something being listed at 420, which is completely unaffordable for most people, even if we're talking about 80 to 100% AMI.

And just what the affordable housing overlay would mean to guarantee that we are not just giving developers

kind of a blank canvas to build throughout the city without having to prioritize affordable housing.

Some really interesting comments about people who are just noticing like what a development like Monticello Dairy, what that looks like in a neighborhood.

And that's another area that we have to be concerned about just long term.

that is attracting a lot of students, what that looks like for the neighborhoods that used to be predominantly Black neighborhoods and that is rapidly changing and how do we assist those families and

Ms.

Russell made some very good points, too, about limiting, even with some of the recommendations from the HAC, how does that limit families that are currently in those areas who are not the families that we want to place those limitations on?

So I think we have a lot of work to do, but I will say, as all of the Planning Commission members know and all of the members of staff and council know, that

This has been a very open process.

We have been, you know, putting this information out to the public.

This isn't something as a previous speaker said was underhanded.

But we do have a lot to work to do to ensure the affordability, but I'll also ask

The public to really think about why they're making the comments.

And I've said this before about whether the affordability is the Is there a real issue.

I think any development, including the affordability and especially when you start

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, I'm here and I'm listening.

I apologize.

There's just other things going on in my household too that don't put me in the best position right now to comment.

Yeah.

I guess a couple questions up front for the consultants is,

Could you just recap again, what were the reasons you deviated from the original recommendation of the affordable housing overlay?

Thanks for that question.

To clarify, the sensitive communities layer that we're showing is meant to speak to the recommendation of the HAC to have some protection for those communities they outlined in the, what they identified as a place to have lower intensity residential.

That's the, on their map it's Fifeville, Rose Hill, and 10th and Page.

So there was a recommendation

from them that these were draft areas, they wanted our input on how we thought that might play out.

So we have identified similar areas, but we have the differences that we're not necessarily saying they should be limited to current land use levels or current zoning levels, which is, as I understand it, the recommendation from the proposal.

But we're saying this needs more, they need

additional tools to prevent displacement.

And that could mean in the zoning that they do have less intensity there.

But we can identify that here.

So I just wanted to clarify with that.

And in terms of the overlay concept in general, the hack presented, we did not include that in this proposal because we

Again, we have used this sort of thought process of having a greater intensity, both in terms of mixed use and residential intensity along corridors or places where we can focus improvements.

And when I say, I don't just mean in transit, I mean, you know, making sure it's the walkable, they're bikeable, they have, you know, but they're really livable streets and places for people to be and travel.

And so that's why we were focused on these sort of corridors and nodes.

And we were concerned that with an overlay, if we're not directing that greater intensity of residential uses or other uses, that it may not be as conducive to some of those improvements that may be needed.

But certainly hearing tonight, what I think I'm hearing from Planning Commission is that you would all would like us to re-look at that.

So with inclusionary zoning, for those who aren't as familiar, that would mean that in the zoning certain categories or locations would be required to include a certain level of affordable or certain number of units affordable at a certain level or there may be incentives provided to provide affordable units.

And so

We know that the greatest potential for that is often in areas that allow higher intensity.

The study that will happen with HRNA, and I'm sorry they're not on the phone right now to provide more clarity here, but they will be looking at potential for inclusionary zoning elements at a variety of scales within this land use framework or whatever the final land use framework is.

Yeah.

And I guess just, you know, final comments I have, you know, at this point are, you know, if others have said, you know, I think it's very important to think about

the housing ecosystem throughout Charlottesville and zoning is one piece of that which is very critical and opening up the opportunity for more affordable home ownership and rental opportunities throughout the entire city and directly confronting the reasons that those opportunities aren't available and allow more affordable duplexes, triplexes, townhomes

to be built instead of having a system where you can only build an expensive single family home that's selling for $600,000, $700,000 in many cases.

and that connects with our affordable housing plan as well in terms of prioritizing, providing housing for people at 10, 20, 30% of AMI.

But again, providing opportunities for wealth building throughout the ecosystem and providing a ladder ship of home opportunity.

And I do have some concerns both with some of the changes and especially the affordable housing overlay that maybe we've stepped back from that original goal, at least to some extent.

and that that has to be our priority for what we're working on and I think it absolutely can be done and can be done in a way that, you know,

does not connect with a lot of the fears there are.

It's just allowing more homes that look like homes that again are duplexes, triplexes that are opening up homeownership, rental opportunities, and wealth building to more people in a way that is not disruptive and is not going to create any problems.

And I think we can absolutely

And then the final thought is, you know, we've been working on this for coming up on four years.

We're two to three years behind the original date that we plan to adopt a comprehensive plan update.

and the reality is is every day you know we aren't making these changes both in our land use map but more importantly our zoning which is where the rubber really hits the road is every day week month and year the status quo continues and we know exactly what the status quo is it's gentrification it's displacement it's

All the things that, you know, people continue to highlight as problems in our city.

And so, you know, I do have some concern that, you know, we can't just continually drag this out for more years without making any changes.

Because again, we know that the status quo, as is, isn't working.

Right.

Are there any other comments from Council?

Well, with that, I'll just echo what Council Payne said.

And I'll echo what livable Charlottesville said.

The longer we delay this, the longer we extend the housing crisis.

So we cannot delay this.

We just need to move quickly on the input that you guys have gotten.

And we need to remember that this is an iterative device.

So it will repeat, repeat, repeat, and modify, modify, modify.

With that, with the permission of the commission, I'm going to open it back up to public comment.

Everybody, okay.

Thank you, Chair.

And next up, we have Mary Whittle, followed by Nancy Baxley.

Mary, you are on with the planning commission.

Hi, can you all hear me?

OK, sorry about that.

It is bedtime.

So one thing I just want to quickly say, I wish this whole thing had been kind of approached in a different way, because it's been just so divisive.

And I just am sad to hear the citizens of our community kind of so

One thing I just want to say is that it seems to me that the entire

dialogue such as it's a dialogue has been about, you know, whose neighborhood is going to be ruined, or whose neighborhood has been ruined in the past.

And I just want to say that it seems to me that we're ignoring some very obvious and frankly, just very positive solutions that we could take and I haven't heard anybody talk about these.

Council, it seems to me that you've acted as though there are no possible solutions to Charlottesville's affordable housing challenges, except to rezone the entire city.

and that's been upsetting to people in various different ways.

Some people want more and some people don't.

But the reality is that there are a couple of immediately actionable steps that you guys, the city could take if you chose to.

First of all, why not consider taking land that you already own on Melbourne Road, on Water Street where the downtown farmer's market is off Preston Avenue close to the Jefferson School, which is land that the city frankly could be argued you own illegally.

as a result of demolishing past neighborhoods.

Now, how about doing something like providing that land to developers through a 50-year lease free.

In exchange, you get those developers to commit to building 100%, 100% free housing.

None of your baloney where you guys get tricked.

We want 100% affordable multi-family units.

Some of those could be for sale.

Some of them could be townhomes.

Some of them could be rent.

but they're all the way from affordable to deeply affordable.

The second thing you guys need to ask for, tell those developers you want the city to be involved in the architectural review process so we get something nice for people, okay?

And then you get a commitment from them.

What you're gonna do there is dramatically cut the costs of home ownership because people aren't paying for the cost of the land, they're paying for the cost of the home.

All right, bingo.

There's one thing you can do.

UVA is actually in the process of doing this right now.

It's a land lease process.

They've got it going on.

You guys would just have to duplicate it.

UVA is also promising to do 1,000 homes.

If you guys did this on Melbourne, I want my time here.

And if you did it downtown,

You guys would easily get to your 3,000 units.

Not only that, you would reach all the goals that you wanted, okay?

People would be in great neighborhoods.

There'd be close to schools, parks, walking, biking, transit.

That area on Melbourne is beautiful.

You're in a great school district.

and downtown, likewise.

Guys, think about some of these other things.

I'd also like you guys to grant current single-family homeowners the right to rent a single apartment or accessory unit.

Okay?

And that's going to give you some elasticity in the market and it's going to diversify the neighborhoods, which we really need.

Okay?

I know my time is up.

I want to see you guys think about some other solutions besides just rezoning who gets it, who doesn't.

Next up, we have Nancy Baxley followed by Kevin Hildebrand.

Nancy, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You have three minutes.

Thank you.

Okay, perfect.

I just want to be quick about this.

I think there have been a lot of excellent comments on both sides.

I am concerned that Charlottesville, you know, having in the past and voted as, you know, a wonderful place to live and a great place to retire and all these type of things and hearing

Mr. Snook mentioned that houses that are listed at $420,000 are sold at $520,000.

And again, those are single family home dwellings that are selling at that they're not buying duplexes and that kind of thing.

I am concerned about developers coming in and turning Charlottesville into generica.

And I, I look at what happened on West Main.

I look at

different developments that are happening.

I see the same architectural designs that have been put in other cities because developers know they can make money.

These four over ones and these kind of things, you see the exact same look.

You drive through so much of America now.

You look at everything.

You have no idea what town you're in.

You have no idea where you are.

I'm afraid that Charlottesville is going to lose its Charlottesville-ness, or however you want to put it, by turning this over to an ad hoc who's going to make the most money.

And if you leave it up to a developer, they are going to go for the lowest amount of money on their end.

that gets it done.

Again, another concern has always been about the tree canopy.

We are very important about this in this city.

Latest articles that in historically black neighborhoods, tree canopies have been eradicated.

This needs to be preserved.

And I see that in a couple of these slides that I looked at that you can

The land use map allows the building up through to four feet from the property line.

And this type of thing encourages trees to be cut down and all of that.

My proposal with my last minute here is that to do more of a surgical approach to this, a more incremental implementation.

target certain areas.

Do this, Evelay.

It's fine to have the grand plan, but start it out incrementally.

Let's pick these areas.

Let's do the areas that we can show the town, hey, believe in us.

We know what we're doing.

Here's what we're doing in this area.

See how we can do it well.

You do it well architecturally.

You preserve the historically Black businesses.

You bring in architecture firms that are from historically Black

people that can design these things.

Let's do this in smaller areas to get bigger buy-in.

And I appreciate the time you all are putting into this.

And next up, we have Kevin Hildebrand followed by James Groves.

Kevin, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You're gonna have to take, yeah, there you go.

Yeah, okay, thank you, I apologize for that.

I know we've talked about this before, so I'm going to talk about something a little different, and that is I'm concerned about the plan's reliance on corridors for a medium intensity development.

Those corridors tend to align with major circulation zones through the city.

And right now, they are pretty congested with single-family use of driveways going on to those streets.