Planning Commission Meeting   11/12/2019

Oh, give him 30 seconds.

He heard that there are stones.

We've got to start with Bill, can't we?

And good evening.

I believe we're ready to begin our deliberations.

And I'm going to shake things up a little bit.

I'll be quick.

That was quick.

Mr. Stolzenberg.

I know you've more on the spot.

So let's see.

We had a police task force meeting last October 10th, where we got an update on the plans for the parking garage or facility at the on Market Street between the eighth and ninth, where Guadalajara and Lucky Seven and that service parking lot are now still no really firm plans on that.

So we'll see as that develops and as the CIP process plays out.

We also covered potential changes to ADU accessory dwelling unit regulations and we're currently in a program with Portland State University to review those and issue some recommendations.

So we should be getting that report sometime this month or soon as well and then from there we will hopefully make some recommendations.

Ms. Dowell.

Good evening.

Mr. Solliot.

The Barracks Road-Emmett Street Improvement Project Steering Committee met again on October 30th.

We discussed the results of the survey, which found that there was a strong preference for pedestrian safety.

That was the standout priority that came out and discussed two different options for how to do the engineering, one wider than the other, which would provide for a separated

So since our last meeting, the Board of Architectural Review met on October 15th.

I was unable to attend because we were doing a form-based code workshop ourselves at night.

The Tree Commission did meet on November 5th, and I attended that.

We had a presentation from Brian Wheeler with public relations with the city.

He reviewed for us the public meeting requirements for city council appointed bodies, which were very helpful.

Paul Josie, our chair, reviewed the State of the Forest presentation that he made

to City Council last week and he shared the Commission's concerns for inadequate tree preservation from the past year along with highlighting the Charlottesville area tree stewardship partnerships to plant trees in Belmont.

We had seven tree nominations that were approved for legacy trees.

And then lastly, last Saturday we had a wonderful morning of planting 25 trees in Belmont.

This is the tree commission along with the CATS, Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards.

and this was on private property.

Thank you.

So at the last Parks and Rec meeting, the director of Parks and Rec announced that he was leaving.

This is a major loss to the city.

It is a major loss to Parks and Rec.

That group has built a world-class Parks and Rec infrastructure.

The parks are a gold standard.

The trails are a gold standard.

The facilities are a gold standard for small cities and small towns.

So we will miss Bryan in a big way.

There was, in fact, good news.

And the good news is that Mr. Todd Brown will be joining us as the deputy director for parks.

And he's got about 28 years in Fairfax.

And he managed over 420 some parks.

So he's got a very, very good background in parks and rec.

So good news is that he's on board now.

And I think he actually did replace Brian when Brian left Fairfax, so a little continuity there.

There was also a bit of a philosophical discussion.

Then the question was asked, and this is a question that our leaders are going to have to answer in the next year or so.

Do we want our Parks and Rec organization to be an organization that enhances the lives of the people who live here in Charlottesville?

Or do we want Parks and Rec to be a revenue-generating entity?

Or do we want it to do both?

And if we want it to do both, exactly where on the continuum do we want that to be?

So that debate shall

Shell will become more lively as we begin thinking through the budgets that we've got.

Very briefly, we have a work session on November 26th and that is going to be on the CIP.

We'll be preparing for the hearing that we'll have on that in December.

We also have a busy December coming up.

All right, what I'd like to do now is open this up to comments from the public.

And the comments should be relative to things that are not on the agenda.

Well, wait till we get to the agenda items to talk about those.

It's on the way.

Good evening.

I'm Jill Trishman Marks, Executive Director of the McIntire Botanical Garden, or MBG.

Thank you for this opportunity to lend my support to the CIP budget item that is being proposed by our partners at the Department of Parks and Rec for the infrastructure for McIntire Park East.

And thanks for that introduction to the stellar Parks and Rec department that we have in the city.

Until recently, the majority of the access to McIntyre Park East was limited to the golfing community.

By supporting the infrastructure proposed in the 2015 Mahane-Reichel Master Plan for the park, the City of Charlottesville took the first step

in committing to making one of the city's largest assets both equitable and accessible.

This infrastructure includes ADA accessible restrooms and a park pavilion, a parking lot, underground utilities, and an ADA accessible bridge across the creek to features on the southern end of the park including the skate park and the Vietnam Memorial.

Because of its proximity, MBG is unable to begin construction until the infrastructure has been implemented.

We've just completed the first phase of three design phases for the garden, the schematic plan.

Support for the garden has never been greater.

We have about 150 volunteers who have donated over 12,000 hours of time since we started counting

in 2017, and our financial donations are up by 2500%.

These statistics are from before it was announced that the schematic design for MBG had just won a National American Society of Landscape Architects Award.

Among other things, the Department of Parks and Rec chose us as their partners to fulfill the city's mission to provide environmental education.

Last month, the MBG board voted to implement the design and construction of the children's natural play area as its first priority.

At this point, the approximate time accumulation between budget, bids and construction of the park's infrastructure means that we're at least three years out from the delivery of these services.

And every year, this infrastructure is not included in the budget, delays these services further.

As a part of the schematic plan, the firm of Downey and Scott provided a cost estimate for the construction of the garden.

including the proposed visitor center.

The cost is estimated at over $25 million.

This is an ambitious project, but the board of directors is committed to raising the private funds needed to provide this gift from the community to the community.

We only ask that you help us to build on the momentum we've gained thus far and hope will accelerate

because of the National ASLA Award.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Lily McVeigh.

I have lived in Charlottesville my entire life.

I have been an adult renter in Charlottesville for the past 13 years, and I am really angry.

One of the reasons that I am really angry is that I think that Charlottesville has offered no affordable housing in any community in Charlottesville.

and where we are able to find apartments that we can afford, renters are given no rights in this city and I'm going to use myself as an example since this is very recent and my conversation that made me so angry came from today talking to neighborhood development.

So I live on Oak Street and on Oak Street there's a family that has purchased five properties in the same neighborhood.

This is a really small street in Fifeville.

They plan on putting private driveways on those property that will take out public parking space Which is already extremely limited And when I called to say that this was a concern of mine one being that our neighbors next door have six kids That parents are dropping off and picking up this provides them no more parking spaces to do this Like I really think it's an issue.

I was told by neighborhood development that if I was wealthy enough

and I could buy my own property, then I'm allowed to put in a driveway and public parking doesn't matter at this point.

As long as I'm wealthy enough to have property.

So there are two solutions that they gave me to this problem that I have of us not having parking.

The first solution was that I could move to a different town.

That if I can't afford to live in Charlottesville, that I am welcome to move somewhere else.

That if I can't afford as a renter parking somewhere downtown, I can move somewhere else.

Or I could ask my landlord to put in a driveway, which is an

Absolutely preposterous request because most of the landlords in this town don't fix structural damage that has to do with the houses that their renters live in, much less put in a personal driveway for them to access because other people who own multiple private properties side by side have taken away all the public parking on one street.

and that's just like a very, very small tip of the iceberg of the issue.

Also with the idea of having like multiple developments where the agreement is that these people can develop in these areas if they offer affordable apartments.

Those affordable apartments are like $1200 for one bedroom.

That is not affordable.

I used to be a city employee and I had trouble paying my rent in Charlottesville.

I worked for social services and I worked for human services for many, many years and struggled to pay my rent.

living in this town as someone who grew up here and someone who worked for the city of Charlottesville.

No one here can afford where they live and nothing is being done to address that except for we can move somewhere else.

That'll be the next public hearing.

This is anyone who wants to speak about anything that's not on the agenda, on tonight's agenda.

That'll be next.

If there's no one else who'd like to speak, I'm going to close the public hearing.

And now we need to vote on the concern agenda.

Is there a second?

Actually, I'm sorry.

Two tiny modifications to the minutes.

One was the work session on the SAA when it's talking about the removing the 80% AMI option.

It says that was my idea.

It was actually Tania's idea.

She deserves the credit.

I was just a cheerleader.

And the other was talking about the 208 Maury.

I think it says, you know, removing, it was me saying,

If you remove all the bamboo, you get to see the architecture.

I think it says, I can't see how it would be better.

It should be, I can't see how it wouldn't be better than the previous.

And those are the only changes to the mix.

Actually, I have a couple too.

Sorry.

I know I'm terrible.

Page 11.

I'll find it.

Page 11, I said similar to front doors on the street.

I do know what doors are.

And on page 26, I said phasing out parking requirements.

I did not advocate parking requirements.

And page 26.

Review page 11 for me.

That's almost at the bottom, just before Charles Riddle speaks.

All right.

We'll go back to that.

Yeah.

Oh, page six as the as its number.

Similar.

What is similar to?

Front Doors on the Street.

Yes.

OK, so that is your page 11.

And then we have the other page 11.

Sorry, just want to make sure we get these clear.

All right.

But where this does not.

OK. And then page 26, Lyle, which is what is the page number at the top of the page?

All right.

That's great.

What?

Let's see.

Rory's helping me out here.

At the top, it says concerning parking commissioner Stolzenberg.

Oh, Solla-Yates noted there should be some parking requirements.

So eliminate.

I think you said potentially phase out.

Okay.

All right, I'm caught up.

Thank you.

Second.

Any opposition?

Any abstentions?

The consent agenda is approved.

Yeah, yeah, I mean hopefully she...

We're going to give her another couple minutes.

All righty, ladies and gentlemen, I think we are ready to resume our deliberations.

Madam Mayor, is counsel in order?

All right.

We've got four applications that we're going to review tonight.

Two of those applications are very closely related, and we're going to deal with those together.

So we'll have one staff report, one report by the consultant, and we will then have one public hearing for the first two that are closely related.

And then we'll have two separate votes on both of those two applications.

The first application is ZT1910-02.

This is an amendment to our zoning ordinance and the intention is to add a new zoning district.

The new district will be the Downtown Extended Strategic Investment Area District or DESIA.

In such a district, the following are examples of the kinds of things that we will regulate.

Land use, building and structure type, size, height, mass, the location of these things, open spaces and other things like that.

There are three sub-classifications relating to this new district.

The classifications are T4, T5 and T6.

The T4 sub-classification allows for three-story buildings with one additional bonus building.

You get the bonus if, in fact, there is a proper configuration of affordable housing in that bonus building.

The TE-4 allows for four stories by right.

But you get a bonus of two additional stories if there is a proper configuration of affordable housing built into that.

The TE-6 allows for five stories.

Then you get an additional four story bonus.

Once again, if a proper configuration of affordable housing is built into this.

Now, it should be noted that the DESIA regulations differ from the downtown extended mixed-use regulations.

With the downtown extended mixed-use regulations or rules, you get five stories.

No, you get four stories, but you get a five-story bonus.

But the difference is with the downtown extended

The bonus happens when you have mixed use.

With the downtown extended SIA, the bonus happens only if there are affordable housing units.

So this is something we'll need to keep in mind as we go through our deliberations tonight.

The second application that we're going to review that is related to this is ZM19-10-02.

And this establishes the boundaries for the DESIA.

And the boundaries that we're going to be talking about are projected above me.

Could you tell us the street name there?

Yeah, I can't, but if you want to go onto the MDSU website, they're very well outlined.

If you will get with me or one of the staff folks, I'll walk you through how to get there.

There's a little process you can go through to get there.

I'll walk you through it.

I can actually start by orienting everyone if I can.

The northern edge of this property, of this area that you're looking at, is the railroad tracks, the east-west railroad tracks that run through, you know, on the southern edge of what we typically consider downtown.

So that large blue-purple parcel at the bottom with the green square in it, that is the Ix property.

So the southern edge of this is Elliott Avenue.

The Long Street that you see up here that appears to form most of the eastern edge of the property, that's Sixth Street.

Monticello Avenue is the road cutting through at a diagonal there between the Ix and just north of Ix is the Friendship Court property.

Over here on the other side, that's the little purple strip over there on the east end is Grave Street.

The two properties above it are 100 and 110 Avon, which are also known as the National Optronics and the Innova site.

and ACAC is the kind of rectangular purple block right through there.

That's also where the Gleason Building is.

And then as you get further over to the western edge, the western edge is 4th Street, so one block in is Ridge Street.

And then you've got two properties south of Monticello Avenue.

The other ones there are on the block between Bridge, Garrett, Gleason, and Monticello.

And then those colors, just so you're aware, the light, kind of the lavender color is T4, the dark purple T5, and the ring down here at the bottom around the green, that's the T6.

Doesn't show up great on this, but just so everyone understands what we're talking about.

So members of the commission, councilors, this is the downtown SIA zoning text proposal and zoning map proposal.

The SIA process, just so you're aware, starts back with the actual SIA plan that was started review in 2011.

There was a process around that, including a lot of public outreach that was done at that time.

Ultimately, that draft was presented to the city in 2013, the end of 2013, and adopted

into the comprehensive plan as an amendment in 2014.

The first step of that process was breaking down the overall strategic investment area, which is much larger than what you see in front of you here, into phases so that those phases could be individually reviewed for potential zoning changes.

The phase one for the foreign-based code was we selected a consultant to help us work on a foreign-based code for phase one in 2017.

and that draft was delivered in 2018.

We've done some additional outreach since the initial draft and ultimately it's in front of you for review.

You did a work session in October on this item and it's now in front of you for public hearing.

A couple items and I'm going to be very general because obviously the draft in front of you is 70 pages long and has a lot of detailed technical regulations.

The main point of a form-based code is to focus on the built form in an area, to look at the architectural designs, particularly on the ground floor of those buildings, and focus on the actual design and how they interact with the road and the public realm in front of them.

and to de-emphasize what's going on in the buildings, the uses.

So traditional zoning focuses a lot on how we use buildings, not so much on the design of the buildings.

This flips things around, focuses more on the buildings and what people experience as they go through an area and less so on the actual use of the building and the internal space.

Some concepts that the SIA plan and our comprehensive plan talk about that should be reflected in this map and text amendment.

One is the primacy of Second Street southeast through this area.

The SIA plan talks a lot about Second Street as a

perpendicular kind of spine of the SIA area that would ultimately come down into the public plaza that's shown on the Ix property and that becomes kind of a complimentary piece to the downtown mall, a new pedestrian connection and the plans focuses the vitality of the area on that

on that corridor leading from Main Street all the way down to the end of 2nd Street.

So you will see some of the regulations speak very much about Second Street and how we get the type of activity that we're looking for on that corridor to meet the objectives of our plan.

Additionally, the SIA identified maximum heights in the area, generally suggested keeping them at around five stories, which obviously is much different than some of the buildings that have been approved and have been constructed in the downtown extended zone.

But that's part of the reason why you see a lot of T5 zoning here.

It's partly because it was trying to uphold the SIA plan and our comprehensive plan and the desired heights stated in our comp plan.

Few other items that have come up in the review.

One, there is no maximum density in this zone.

We're controlling the buildings for height.

We're controlling ground floor heights.

In some cases, there's requirements of commercial use on the ground floors, particularly along that Second Street corridor.

But there is no maximum density, so developers could potentially size those units however they wanted to, provided they can meet the parking requirements for them.

Currently, downtown extended, you're capped at 43 dwelling units per acre, which in some buildings can be two floors if you're doing single and two-bedroom units.

We talked a little bit in our work session about T5 and T6.

There was some direction about some other properties that might be appropriate for T6, as we talked about in the pre-meeting.

One of the requirements of T6

zoning in your code, I think it's Section 3 that describes those transects.

T6 buildings are supposed to front on a public's open space, and that open space category is C and D, which are the plazas or the squares.

So the rather limited area that we have for T6 is contemplated around one of those squares.

So any other property that were to be zoned T6 would also need to kind of identify where that public space is going to be and we'd like to have that shown on a map so in the future people can adhere to those regulations.

So while the Commission did want us to look at some of those properties as T6 at this point,

The proposal you have in front of you is what staff is recommending with the opportunity to look at properties in the future as where the potential trade-off of height for additional open space in those areas.

We followed your directive on the affordable housing bonuses.

That is shown in your packet.

That's the one changed from the draft that people have seen.

So this is the new table that is within the draft that you're looking at tonight, table 1.2.

You may recall in October, you had two options for it.

So you gave us direction on what you wanted to see in that table, and that's reflected.

You'll notice the 80% of AMI bonus is gone.

It's now only 50 and 60% of AMI gets you the bonus stories.

There was some discussion, we've had some discussion about the retail prohibition section that's I believe section 2.16, but don't quote me on that, that states that the framework plan, and I can turn to the framework plan real quick, that there are certain areas where there are, there's mandatory commercial, there's suggested commercial, there's a section of the code that says that retail

Is it permitted unless you're on Second Street or around that plaza?

Staff is recommending that that line be struck from the code for the final draft that we will require ground floor commercial along that spine, but if someone wants to do it off of that area, it's fine to do.

And it's permitted in our use matrix that's in the code.

So as Chairman Mitchell stated, there is a map amendment in front of you that would change the zoning map and there is also zoning text amendment that would change our zoning text.

So those students work in concert.

So the map in front of you is the actual

is this.

Just trying to keep those things separate because I know there's two items, there's two votes.

They should work hand in hand.

You also have a framework plan in your map.

This is just additional guidance for developers in terms of how their buildings front on properties, what they can and can't do.

So this is not the zoning map.

The zoning map is the previous slide.

This is additional information for people in terms of the regulatory environment that they're working in.

Two items for you tonight that I know you expressed interest in discussing further.

One is parking.

You directed us to at least hit the parking modified zone regulations, but you expressed some interest in a potential reduction or possible elimination of minimum parking standards for certain lots of certain sizes.

or below a certain number of units.

That's not reflected in the draft, but I know we have in your supporting document memo, there's a line about I think 7,500 square feet or six units.

That's staff suggestion.

And finally, open space.

I know that's been a big item, so there might be just to tee that up, the mandatory open space and the open space categories.

There was a lot of input about that in terms of how that was that setting the table for further regulations that would allow open space.

A few big questions.

In the pre-meeting, there was discussion about the T6 versus the T5 zoning and the relative amount of housing each could provide, including the possibility that T6 could actually reduce housing because a big open space, relatively small T6 area.

Can you clarify that?

I think it depends.

It's hard to say at this point because you don't know the design of the buildings and what people are going to do.

It does allow them more flexibility in that T6 zone in terms of

Square footage and what they can do in that building.

The way I think you have to look at this, though, is that the T6, particularly in that area, is almost sort of an offset for that public space.

So the regulations are very much designed that if you're going to build a T6 building and get that additional three stories above six stories, you need to, there's an open space trade-off there.

The T5 is where the SIA landed in terms of that.

So I know that there was some concern from the commission about whether or not we allow more T6 so that we get more housing.

And I think you potentially could get more overall units, but you're right.

It depends on how the open space gets applied.

And some of that, I think, needs to be thought through more, particularly on a site-specific basis in terms of what open space makes sense.

The X property is shown as having required open space.

It's an 11-acre site.

When you get on a one-acre site, what open space

I know TIFs.

The difference between the regular TIF and the synthetic TIF is something that eludes me at this point.

Tax increment financing is an exchange of kind of setting a baseline for what's the taxes that are currently collected in a zone and then any redevelopment capturing that value and placing it towards affordable housing.

I'm not sure how the synthetic part works, so I may have to punt to someone who knows more about how that happens, but that option's been on the table.

I think people that have looked at it have said you might want to aim bigger in terms of a bigger area.

This certainly relies on, if you're going to do a TIF on this area, it relies on people building in it and replacing one for one at least the dollar amounts that you're getting now.

Oh, absolutely.

There's nothing related to TIFs in here.

That's a taxation decision that gets made by council at a different area.

It's not zoning.

Okay.

Pass.

So it sounds like there's still a few things that are kind of fuzzy or up in the air.

You know, we just mentioned this issue of T6.

There's a few things in the document that are kind of still, you know, commission should decide or placeholder for later or just kind of strike throughs.

Do you expect us tonight to kind of hash out each of those different questions and come up with the final wording and place a vote?

Or what is the expectation for how those issues get resolved?

I think it's up to the will of the commission on that as to how you want to proceed.

Certainly what you're comfortable in doing is ultimately something you can decide.

There is an opportunity.

One thing I think that should be stated is staff has been pretty clear in

Whenever this gets adopted, there's going to be a certain amount of time prior to it going into effect because there's a lot of policy issues in here related to things that the Director of Neighborhood Development Services has been given authority to do, things about review process, just general review of the staff to be ready for when something comes in like this.

So you do have a bit of a time period there where we could fine-tune things.

But you generally want it in pretty good shape if you're willing to put it in your zoning ordinance.

You don't want to have a lot of lingering questions because you really want to give that lead time, we would say six months, from the adoption to the implementation of it to find all the stuff that you haven't already found, which happens with every code.

I got it back.

In public comment, there was a concern that when these come before us, there could be sort of a hack.

Instead of slicing up additional floors, the developers could just propose one floor, one home, one floor, one home, and only need to get one affordable home for a very large building.

Yeah, there was a concept, so people are aware of the, and I can actually turn to the table so we know.

So the concern was those 10 to 15% numbers and the way that it was done, it was based on units.

And so 10% of units or 15% of units in the additional floor is shown in that third column.

And if that third column, if the plus one story in T4 or plus two stories in T5 are larger units that keeps the unit count down in those bonus stories, could you then say

My first four stories, I'm doing all residential, I'm doing 40 units a floor, and then on my bonus floors, I'm doing 10 units total.

So 10% of that, I've got one unit that I have to do at 50% AMI based on the way that this is done.

Staff has a couple of recommendations.

One would be potentially to go through and say that's percentage of square footage.

That's one way of tackling that.

Another one is potentially looking at something with an average of the unit size to say, you know, if you do 10 large units, that's going to get factored into an averaging to the average size of the unit that you have to provide.

The ADU cannot be, you know, less than say 90% of the average unit size in your building.

So if you do a bunch of 3,000 square foot units, that's going to push that, you know, your affordable dwelling units are going to get bigger.

in order to accommodate that.

So that's one.

The other item that is not related to this but we did mention a little bit in discussion is potentially a requirement that those units be dispersed throughout the building and I'm mentioning potentially one per floor until you can start doubling up.

You don't put them all at one end of one hall at the bottom floor with a separate entrance or anything like that.

So those are some ways of tackling that.

The other item I know that we mentioned in the pre-meeting that I want to come back to, there was a question about the bonding of affordable units that's currently in the code and whether or not a developer could post that bond, build their building, all market rate, forfeit that bond, and get the additional height without providing any affordable housing.

And our attorney's office has recommended that we also do a covenant

provision in the code that would require any developer to enter into that covenant prior to getting approval and therefore be a legal action against them if they fail to provide those units.

It's not just the money.

They have to deliver the units in order to get this bonus height.

Last one, I swear.

In the code that I see, there's a provision saying that instead of providing affordable housing, there could be an onsite or offsite provision of a computer lab or child care.

Child care, I know we have provisions about.

Do we have provisions on computer labs?

I've noticed that, too.

It's a one unit reduction.

I think, depending on if you provide that, you can reduce by one unit.

And I can quote the code section because I just saw it.

I don't have a, yeah, it's 1.610 on page 9.

And so business support computer lab.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that we have a lot of provisions in the zoning ordinance about that.

It seems like it's an amenity that would be in a building.

I don't, you know, I can't say I have a real strong opinion about that.

If you were to strike it, I wouldn't.

Do you know what it's just supposed to mean in normal words?

What are they going to be, like incubator space or sort of like what we have in the market?

Something along those lines where it's something that's kind of structured.

A facility that would potentially allow people that are looking to start a business to kind of have a space to work out of, shared space that's

I think it's available that gets them kind of moving down that path.

Yes, no, you're on a roll.

He promised it was the last.

In the form-based code district we're considering, there are three small areas that are historic districts, architectural design, control districts.

We have pointed that out before and talked about it, but I don't see that there's been a resolution.

There is no proposal in front of you tonight to alter the ADCs in any way.

They are still there.

They are still on the map.

They don't change as a part of this.

The BAR's authority over those areas is still there.

That's still a process.

So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what are kind of seen as the flaws of the existing zoning code in place and then separately from that or maybe as part of that, if you could talk about how certain projects or proposed projects might have gone differently under this framework versus the existing framework.

And I'm going to just throw four at you.

Feel free to cover them or not.

Flaws in the downtown extended zoning, which is the primary zoning for this entire area.

One is obviously a lot of the projects you've seen until the fix that was put into the code regarding mixed use, there was no definition of mixed use and it led to this

This weird situation in the zoning where you could get, you know, a 61-foot bonus by doing a mixed-use building with no kind of restriction on what the proportions of that use is.

The definition of a mixed-use building at the time was a building that had residential and non-residential uses.

So you have two structures going up, well, one going up now and one that is soon to start that have between them three residential units.

Two nine-story, roughly nine-story buildings.

The Apex Building is, I think, eight or seven stories, actually.

So that was one of the flaws.

There was a definition of mixed use that allowed for increased residential density, allowed you to request increased residential density if you hit that, I think, 25-75 ratio, but it wasn't in the height.

You get 43 by right, but if you do a mixed use building, you can ask for up to 240.

So that's one of the flaws.

The other one I would mention, a project that is not what you're talking about, but the ground floor condition along 2nd Street at the Gleason Building.

The Gleason Building is oriented towards Garrett.

The side of that building does not interface very much with Second Street at all.

I think there's an entrance there, but there's not a lot of permeability.

You don't have a lot of transparency.

It kind of turns its back on Friendship Court, which is across the street.

So that's an example, I think, where this code would have made a big difference.

Similarly, that brings us to 323 2nd Street, which is oriented towards 2nd Street.

And so we're beginning to see what that facade is going to look like on Garrett.

Once again, no requirements to do any kind of permeability, any kind of, you know, addressing the street at all.

So it can kind of, you know, you have these buildings that kind of turn their side or, you know, their shoulder to or their back to the surrounding area.

The use of both Apex and 323 Second, well obviously they're too tall at this point, so under this code they would be capped at 50 feet, provided, you know, and the only way to get additional height would have been to do affordable housing, so the internal mix of those buildings would be very different.

You would have a five-story office building, I assume, with no housing, probably, and if those continued to be commercial.

So that covers those two.

Friendship Court had this draft when they were doing their plan.

So they were well aware of it.

They are confident that what they have complies with this.

They're not asking for heights above, I think above 50 feet for the most part on their buildings because of just cost of construction concerns, elevators moving past stick built and things like that.

So they're well aware of that.

And some of the stuff that you see in the framework plan is

is some of that's in the Friendship Corps plan.

It's not all of it.

I think there was a suggested.

Hinton carrying through all the way through the site.

They're not doing it all the way through to Hinton, but there's obviously a pedestrian accessible path through that part of the site.

The 4th Street connection is in the current plan.

There is open space sort of in keeping with what's there now, what's shown on that plan.

So they've done a pretty good job of emulating, of getting pretty close to what has been proposed here.

The last one, the 323 studios, depending on the pricing of those studios, they very well may have been able to use the additional height.

So nine stories, yeah.

So they couldn't have gone to nine stories.

They would have only been able to go to six under this, but I think they would have been able to get that bonus as a matter of right.

And so how'd that go last time?

Right.

They needed a special use permit for the residential density that they were looking for.

They went to the council.

Thanks.

And so I'd like to point out, too, some of the disadvantages of the downtown extended zone.

I went back and reviewed our zoning and the map.

So you could have a 101 foot tall building anywhere on Sixth Street, on Dice Street, anywhere in this purple area, and be across the street from single family

That's the current zoning.

That's by right.

But a mixed-use building gets under one feet.

But if they get that, that is a ministerial review that does not come in front of the Planning Commission for a special-use permit.

So what that means is you can make that nine-story building, but you're limited to a small number of apartments.

Yeah.

OK.

But at some point, it isn't a choice because you'd have to ask for the special use permit if you made it any smaller.

If you did.

I think you could do a, based on the current zoning, you could do, say, two floors of residential.

Fairly moderately sized apartments, potentially on the top two floors of a larger building, and get the bonus, was it four floors?

Okay, well you get two more floors of office there basically for doing that residential.

Why 20%?

Thank you.

We'll hold that question.

Any questions from Council?

Put my glasses on so I can hear you.

No?

Okay.

If something's here, I think she may just be here to answer questions.

Can you repeat the question?

I'm sorry.

Pedestrian streets may not exceed 20% of the total street center line length within this framework plan.

I'm Marta Goldsmith.

I'm with the Foreign-Based Codes Institute.

I am knowledgeable about foreign-based codes.

I am not a code writer.

But I think the idea in defining that, in setting a standard, is to maintain the scale that if they're narrower,

than that, then they don't feel safe.

There's not light and air that comes through.

I think we're talking about length here.

I don't think we're talking about width.

That's that section right there.

In going through it and kind of looking at it, I guess the concern is why cap it at 20%, why not do more?

And I guess maybe perhaps from the code writer's perspective, one of the issues is you do need to maintain all abilities to get through there, so the more pedestrian streets you have, Safeguard.

50% pedestrian streets you now have the potential for businesses that you know business spaces that may be tough to activate because they have no ability you know how they get deliveries things like that so that might be a percentage that they've seen in the past where it's like once you go above 20 you start having some of these issues I know we've had issues in some of our smaller scale commercial areas with deliveries because

we're not a large enough market to get the box truck and the tractor trailer has to get in there and we've all seen our package deliveries at City Hall pop up on the sidewalk because of parking concerns so that may be a number and you may see you know maybe it's 25

I'm not terribly concerned about this because we're talking about new streets in this.

And there's only really one property that we're talking about with a new street network at this point.

Friendship courts, they have their plan.

So we're really talking about the ICS property at this point because that's the only one I think where you're going to see, according to the framework plan, breaking it up a little bit.

And you could potentially see some really nice pedestrian streets, but they don't want to go beyond.

And it's the total framework plan, so you've got

And again, it's a number that you could go higher or lower.

It's not written in stone.

It's just that from experience and from the nature of this place and given what the scale of the place is, if you have a lot more than that,

Then as Brian says, you really have an access problem.

And I think that's real.

Gotcha, so no bikes or any?

No, I mean it would be non-automobile.

Question about table 10.2, the shared parking table.

Is this a table you know?

It's a doozy.

What is this?

This is a shared parking table.

The idea is that different uses use parking at different times, need parking at different times of the day.

So the idea is that if you can allow

different property owners who have different uses to count if you have minimum parking requirements.

If you allow them to count, to share the count so the commercial property owner can count that space during the day and the residential property owner can count that space during the night, you end up with fewer parking spaces overall

and a more efficient use.

So that's why this tells you sort of what is the equation that you use to decide how many total spaces you need.

And so now you want to know where this table, who says.

and that I can answer because this came right out from the Urban Land Institute who has done many years of research and analysis on this topic, on shared parking, and they publish a report every few years that looks at person, that updates this table and looks at sort of what is the optimum.

It's a standard analysis, but it's applied pretty well.

For each use for each property, yes.

I see here a sample required minimums to change as needed.

It really depends on how much time and resources you want to put in.

Thank you.

And now this is a sample because it has like specific numbers for each use and then shows us based on the percentages.

But is the are the percentages in this table the thing that's actually the rule that the table is communicating?

Yeah, the percentages are really what's driving in it.

You know, if it on large mixed use properties versus small mixed use properties or if they're urban in a very urban area versus a smaller urban area like this, it may vary.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Good to see you.

OK, so I had a question on the use matrix.

So my kind of high-level perception of a form-based code versus a use-based code was that in a use-based code, you really care about what's going on inside of the building.

So if I have a structure, depending on who's inside of it, it's either a single-family use, it's a two-family use, it's a fourplex,

You know, it's a home above and a retail below, whatever.

And you know, in use-based codes, we separate those as different things, which is to say that we ban all the ones that aren't single family.

And then my understanding of a form-based code was you're kind of more agnostic about what's going on inside.

So I guess my question is, is it typical for a form-based code to have like a three-page use matrix listing out all those different uses and how they're regulated?

Remind me what page the U-Space table is on.

We've got 59 through 61.

What we tried to do here is that typically there's a continuum from

purely used base codes all the way down to pure form-based codes.

But every form-based code that I've ever looked at or ever worked on has a use table.

because you do want to separate out certain uses.

So what this is really is that you can, this divides it into categories and we tried to reduce it from your current use base table as much as we could.

and this is where we ended up as we talked with staff as to sort of how far they were comfortable going given what the city is accustomed to now.

And over time, this could become more and more general, but this was what the staff was comfortable now by grouping these and reducing some.

But in fact, because you'll see that you could

Okay.

That was going to be my next question.

I don't know.

And that's pretty typical.

I mean, to go from 11 pages to one page is kind of scary.

Okay.

Well, I have a quick question.

Can you give us some examples of some successful localities where obviously affordable housing is something that is very important to us.

Right, so the closest example is Columbia Pike, the Columbia Pike corridor in Arlington County here in Virginia.

where they actually adopted two form-based codes.

The first form-based code was the commercial properties along Columbia Pike itself and just the one property's depth.

And that was primarily focused on the commercial form, increasing heights, increasing walkability, creating through increasing

density, but also facades and the quality of the open space and the overall intensity.

The second form-based code that they adopted a few years later focused on the neighborhoods that are adjacent, mostly single-family neighborhoods, that are adjacent to the corridor.

And there they were very intentional about

primarily retaining market rate affordable housing which some of which existed in the corridor but was outdated and at risk of being torn down and they wanted to enable that to be preserved by allowing it to remain and to be improved and to stay in the corridor but they also have a significant amount of new affordable housing because of the increased densities and because of

When you say affordable is this

What's the range of affordability there?

I don't have it in front of me.

So I don't want to say I know we've done presentations on Columbia Pike to the commission and the council, but I don't have those numbers in front of me.

I can get them for you on what the mix of their affordable is.

But it's it's a wide range.

So clearly, and this is not just for this evening, but this is form based code is one of those those

Trigger words where everybody's, we don't really know what it is.

So is this typical, because I mean, the county's doing this and everybody's up in arms, you know, the fear of the foreign-based code.

The fear of the unknown.

Yeah, I think so.

But what I'm seeing a lot from where I sit is that many communities recognize the desire to have mixed use, walkable, urban form.

in their downtowns, whether it's a small town, Flominton, Alabama, which has less than 2,000 people, recognizes that to stimulate economic investment on their main street, that they need to have better urban form.

They don't have zoning at all right now.

They don't want zoning, but they understand that they need to regulate the form.

all the way up to the City of Miami.

And so what I'm seeing a lot, which adopted a city-wide form-based code, I did the City of Buffalo, New York.

What I'm seeing is communities know they want that form and so they update their comp plans to talk about these districts where they want walkable, urban form, mixed use and then they take a look at their zoning and they say this zoning is not going to work for this plan, for this comp plan.

and we know we want this kind of development.

We've rewritten our comp plan and now we know we have to rewrite our zoning.

And that's always hard.

I don't know if you followed us.

As a professional looking at this, do you think that, again, this has been successful, you've seen our housing numbers and the need for housing that we have.

Do you think this is any way possible going to get us to anywhere close to the numbers that we need for

Adopting the form-based code to get you the 4,000 units that the needs assessment said, no, it's not going to get you anywhere near that.

But neither is the current setting you have in this area.

That's the first thing.

The second thing is that this code

was written to create

have a commitment to increasing affordable housing citywide.

And some of those units will go in this area.

This area will have its share of those units.

In order to do that, you're going to need multiple levers in a housing strategy to do that.

And we've talked with the staff and with the council and with the commission about doing that.

We were tasked with figuring out what kinds of provisions we could put in this code that would incent the private sector to build affordable units.

Because right now you have, other than your SUP process, your zoning has no incentives to get the private sector to build affordable units.

And so that's why we wrote in the height bonuses that we wrote in.

Also, by focusing on form, you can increase the number of units in these areas because right now, if you can only do 43 units per acre, none of them is going to be affordable.

So this is

One tool in the toolbox, two tools in the toolbox, but again, focusing on shaping the behavior of a private developer.

I think you have some excellent non-profit, your housing authority and the Piedmont Housing Alliance are big players in this area and they are working hard to retain and increase the number of affordable units at a variety of levels and this code is intended to create a framework to do that and we've met with

the Friendship Corps folks and looked over their site plan and looked at this code and made some changes in the code in order to meet their site plan which was ground up.

They developed themselves and we felt that while still retaining the character that there were things we could change in the code to be consistent with their site plan as well as perhaps the other way around.

Does that answer your question?

Let's keep the ball moving.

What I'd like to do is open this up now to public

So what I'll do is I'll go through the list.

And once I've gotten through the list, I'll see if there's anyone else who would like to speak and give you a chance to speak.

When you approach the dais, please state your name and keep your comments to three minutes.

So public comment is now open.

I wanted to speak in opposition to the form-based code relating to establishing the new zoning area because

I'm dependent on Salvation Army for my meals from the soup kitchen and I need that to not be taken when you do rezoning the property of Salvation Army or Greyhound station and the fire department fire station or any of the other properties really.

What I did, the reason why I need that to not be taken is because this needs to not go to Donald Trump or anyone in his administration, but I am the man that meant life continued on the world when the world would have become lifeless in 2007.

And I made a continuing of all additional years since 2007, except for 2012.

and I will not be able to make it continue via what's the Charlottesville area, transit buses with my assistance on there or when I go to Blue Ridge House via Region 10 if I die because I can't do anything from that.

Greyhound, if it moves somewhere, I won't be able to catch the greyhound.

If I would need to leave because of not being able to live.

If I were to leave, I would have to leave on my disabled card.

It's called Able Now.

That would be the only way I could leave, really.

So that's it.

And thank you very much, David.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Mitchell and planning commissioners.

I am Mary Joy Scala, 2320 Highland Avenue and Fry's Spring neighborhood.

I'm speaking as an individual tonight, but mainly as a former city planner.

I worked in NDS for 15 years and have been retired for two years, but have attempted

to follow the progress of this code.

I sent you a letter with four main concerns regarding the current draft a week ago regarding the impact of the code on the Ridge Street and downtown ADC historic districts, regarding the rezoning proposed on one side of Grave Street in Belmont.

I don't even understand why that's included.

Also regarding the disconnect between this code and the approved SIA plan, which it is supposed to implement,

and finally the unnecessary new sign regulations and other general regulations like lighting and landscaping proposed for this SIA neighborhood alone.

We already have all those regulations in place.

I wonder if the proposed differences have been explained to you, perhaps with a chart comparing the code with existing regulations.

Tonight, I want to mention two better ways to accomplish the goals of the SIA for your consideration.

First, I was still working at the city when a form based code was proposed on West Main Street.

At that time, I was concerned that the code was a misguided attempt to replace the Board of Architectural Review's excellent design and historic preservation review process with a cookie cutter design approach.

Fortunately, that did not happen.

But instead, we planners were asked to choose

specific parts of the code that we thought would result in better developments along West Main Street.

And those changes were incorporated into the existing zoning to create two new districts that were easily understood by the public and by staff.

You can read the West Main East and West Main West mixed-use zones very short.

They have bulk planes and buffers to transition to low-density neighborhoods.

They have maximum building width, minimum and maximum heights, setbacks and step backs, all understandable rules that create desirable forms without being overly prescriptive.

That would work here.

Second, the County Planning Commission is holding a work session this evening

on their proposed form-based code.

It is interesting to contrast what is going on there.

Their staff actually wrote their proposed code, which means they understand the proposed changes better so reviews can be expedited and they have more buy-in for the outcome.

And the Albemarle code is recommended to be optional

like the one in Arlington County, a much more reasonable approach, giving developers a choice to use existing zoning rather than the code and that would work here.

Ideally, city council should delay consideration of the code until the comprehensive plan and affordable housing strategy have been completed.

Regardless, you should take time to carefully consider the impacts of this code on the neighborhood and how these regulations can be improved.

I live in Fairway Avenue in Woolly Mills.

I'm concerned about implementing the form-based code within the SIA.

In recent years, the character of Main Street has been altered dramatically and with what I believe is zero or nearly zero affordable housing.

I fear that the implementation of form-based code will allow similar sweeping change and a similar lack of affordable housing in a neighborhood with low income and rental housing.

I ask that you reconsider this process and prioritize affordable housing instead.

Once this code is unleashed, the neighborhood will be transformed.

Instead of implementing the form-based code, I prefer that development in this crucial neighborhood prioritize affordability.

We need additional housing.

Hi, I'm Fran Joseph and I didn't really do my homework but I do have some concerns and some questions.

I mainly want to just ask you to slow down the process and to really think about this in the context of the comprehensive plan and the upzoning that I hear may be implemented across the city and really look at it in a comprehensive way rather than doing this in a piecemeal way which feels

too quick and too difficult for people who live in the neighborhood streets to really understand.

I live on Goodman Street which is around the corner from Graves and I've got to tell you I'm really concerned about this.

I've been to meetings for that building on Avon Street that goes back into Goodman.

And when I look at that and I look at Grave Street, I heard the consultant talk about walkability.

I think she said it like three or four times.

Well, if you look at Grave Street, we have a son who's in a wheelchair and there's probably about four other people who are in wheelchairs in that North Belmont neighborhood.

They can't use their wheelchairs on the streets.

They're not ADA compliant.

Two people can't walk across that sidewalk together.

One person has to be in the street.

And I know I hear a lot about this is going to be walkable, it's accessible.

Well, I live on Goodman and half the houses are rentals and some of them have two, three apartments.

Every single person in those rentals has a car.

They may bike ride to work and they may walk around to the restaurants and to the farmers market, but they all have cars.

And I don't see how the infrastructure of these streets can possibly accommodate more density.

I know that there's a better way to do it and I think that this in a piecemeal way is just a rush, feels really rushed to me.

And I think that I'm going to just ask you again to step back and to look at this in a comprehensive city plan.

and to not rush into this.

Thank you for having me.

Caitlin Fitzmaurice.

Very close.

I'm a homeowner on the 600 block of Hinton Ave. And our block is typical of most of the blocks in Belmont in that it is entirely a two-story detached home.

So on this map, our block is bordered by 6th Street and Avon Street.

And it directly touches this new zoning piece.

Our property is directly back up to the land that is currently an empty parking lot and the one-story building that houses community bikes and the Urban Architecture Collective.

And there is an unpaved maybe 10-foot wide alley behind the back of our properties to where this zone would start.

And I am highly concerned that this plan as written would allow a six-story building to be constructed directly in our backyards.

It immediately jumped out to me from this map that our block is one of the very few places where an existing neighborhood of two-story houses touches the rezoned land.

and everywhere that there, even where there is a street between the zone and the existing houses, most of the places on this map, including on Sixth Street, there is a hundred foot minimum buffer that has been zoned as T4, so a lower height building, even with a street between that and the houses.

And I'm questioning why it is different for our block in that this is only approximately 10 feet away from our property.

and is being zoned for a maximum of six-story building.

I strongly believe that if this land is going to be rezoned, it should be included in the T4 zone here, allowing a six-story building on this piece of property would not be consistent at all with the surrounding neighborhood.

That building would tower over an entire block of two-story homes.

To your point earlier, sir, about what could have been happened on Sixth Street before,

and I think it would significantly damage the property values on our street.

So I would strongly consider, urge you to consider potentially changing that piece of zoning on the land that is bordered between Avon Street, Garrett and Sixth Street.

Good evening, I'm Travis Piedla from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

We appreciate the hard work that the City and its consultants have put into developing this draft form-based code.

This has been a challenging process, but it's an important one.

Changes to the flawed downtown extended zoning are long overdue, and this form-based code has the potential to advance important goals for this area, including building affordable housing, making it more walkable and bikeable, and creating quality public spaces.

We also understand the motivation to get better zoning in place as soon as possible.

It's a missed opportunity every time a development is proposed under the current zoning.

But it's also important to get the key pieces nailed down in this new code before it comes to a vote, so that council, developers, and the community all know what to expect.

Along those lines, there are few remaining areas we think need to be further clarified or strengthened to better match the language of the draft with the goals it's meant to achieve.

Starting with affordable housing, we think the code should provide clear direction in whether affordable units tied to height bonuses must be built within the same building or may be located elsewhere in the same development or on an offsite location.

The current draft is not very clear on this issue.

We also want to restate our concerns about how the bonus height provisions could play out in certain scenarios.

For example, the current requirement to provide affordable units is only shown as a percentage of incremental units built in the bonus floors.

That means a developer could just build one large penthouse-style unit on each bonus floor in exchange for providing as little as one affordable unit in the entire building.

We don't think that's what the city envisions for these bonuses, so we urge you to consider adding some sort of backstop to close this loophole.

And we were glad to hear earlier that staff is considering options to do so.

We also remain concerned with the lack of open space required in the draft code.

It appears to only actually mandate one single open space throughout this entire area, and it can be as small as two-tenths of an acre in size.

We should be able to do better than that for what is an essential component of healthy communities, and we offer two suggestions.

First, the mandatory open space should be either a park or a green, so it would have to be at least a half acre in size, or the code should otherwise require that a plaza or square at this location will meet this higher threshold.

Second, section 2.4.3 includes an open space requirement, but only for blocks greater than one acre which are wholly redeveloped.

This is too easy to avoid.

We recommend instead requiring that every development of greater than one acre provide open space to one of the types specified in the ordinance, regardless of whether it covers an entire block or is wholly redeveloped.

Good evening.

My wife and I own a property on Grave Street.

And presently, it's a two-story house.

It's a duplex, two apartments.

And as I look at the code, it's kind of incoherent

The actual layout of the place and what the code seems to be implying.

The code seems to say you could build a three or perhaps four-story building there.

I believe it also says every dwelling needs at least one parking spot.

None of that makes sense on that street.

So I'm trying to imagine, as a thought experiment, if I tore that house down,

What could you actually do there that actually fits in with what this code is suggesting?

five residences if you bought the next-door neighbor's place, tore it down and put a parking garage.

It's just unclear to us what's really implied and what's really envisaged in the future as to what that property would be used as.

I mean, do you all have any answers to that?

I mean, I'm not objecting to the general plan because I think it's actually pretty good, but it doesn't

Really makes sense unless you're imagining all these houses get torn down.

This is just for your comments.

really makes sense along that street.

If you've been along that street, no one can park there now.

So you're going to have to buy three houses, tear one down, make it a parking lot so that you can build apartments next to it.

Good evening, my name is Joy Johnson and I reside at 802A Harley Drive.

We have asked City Council to delay this until the strategic plan is done.

To approve this and not wait until the strategic plan is done, to me it's kind of asinine because we've been talking about this for so long.

One of the questions when this first came up, we had a meeting with Mr. Carisi and her staff and one of the questions we asked was, what is the impact of this on poor people?

And that question was never answered.

We have asked this question to the consultants.

What is the impact on poor people, this farm-based code?

And they still haven't answered the question.

Now I'm asking all of you on this commission, what is this impact?

What impact will farm-based scopes be on poor folks?

Because when I look at what is being designed, all I see is height,

You can either do five or you can do six, T4, T5, T6, but you only have minimum affordable housing.

And what is the price of the affordable housing?

What is the price?

Is it truly affordable?

We need true affordable housing.

Thank you for reducing and taking out of the plan the 80% of the AMI.

But 50 and 60 ain't going to cut it.

Most of our folks, my daughter works at UVA, make pretty good money, and she can't live in this city because she can't afford anything.

She can't afford to rent or buy in this city.

So I'm saying delay.

Kathy, I'm sorry that you're leaving in December, but this plan can wait.

It's your baby.

It can wait.

Delayed, let's do the strategic plan, let's really think about how it's going to affect.

And I live in Hardy Drive and there's that monstrous thing that you all let build on West Main Street that has really insult us.

And if that's what we'll have to look at throughout this whole city, reform-based code, I think it's an insult.

We have six properties.

CRHA, you served on that board for a long time.

We have six properties, three undeveloped land and three developed land in the SIA corridor.

Yes, yes, yes.

Hi my name is Anna.

I'm not a resident of Charlottesville, I'm a resident of Almonte County, but I represent Showing Up for Racial Justice Charlottesville and we're just, I'm speaking for our organization, we're here to reiterate that we oppose the form-based code as written.

We think it's premature.

You just hired a consultant for the comprehensive housing strategy and now you want to pass this

Code, it seems a little rushed.

We're asking you to delay it by at least three months.

And I just want to reiterate, housing justice is racial justice, full stop.

And our organization has had housing justice as a part of our campaigns for a really long time.

I've been trying to understand form-based code for about two years.

I'm not an idiot.

I still can't really fully understand this.

And it's not because I'm stupid or I need to learn more.

It's because it doesn't make a lot of sense.

And you had people coming up here saying it's a solution to a

in the past, like poor zoning.

But if this new solution, if you're hearing from a lot of people here and a lot of people in the community that they don't understand it and it doesn't sound good, why would we be fast-tracking a horrible solution to fix something, to just put a Band-Aid on another one?

Whoever had the PowerPoint about whatever, it said the AMI would be at 50% and 60% for the potential

at SIA Area.

You didn't put what the AMI is in Charlottesville.

I think that was purposeful.

The AMI for four people in Charlottesville is $89,000.

So 50% of the AMI 80% Oh, is 89,000.

50% of the AMI would be around $44,000

There are plenty of people who work in Charlottesville, who reside in Charlottesville, who make a lot less than that.

And we need to incorporate those people into our plans.

This feels like crumbs.

This feels like you're giving us the drags.

It doesn't feel like an actual sustainable fix to our affordable housing problem.

And lastly, I want to say I'm a service worker.

And I work in barracks, so I do feel like I

I should have a say about what happens in Charlottesville.

Basically, none of the people I work with can live in Charlottesville.

A lot of them live in Waynesboro and Harrisonburg, and they have to commute in.

People travel from Lynchburg to come to work here.

What type of community are we if we can't make affordable housing for the people who work in the city?

I don't think that's a great community.

It's not a community that, like,

Linda, Linda Abby.

I want to talk to the next issue.

Okay, cool.

And Kurt.

Okay.

All right, I will open it up to anyone else who would like to speak.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Good evening Chairman Mitchell and members of the Planning Commission.

My name is Maynard Seip.

I'm a planner and land use attorney.

I've been a planner and land use attorney for well over 20 years and I've been intimately involved in work in both Charlottesville and Albemarle and 24 other communities.

I'm here tonight representing Monticello Associates LLC who are owners of the ICS property.

I submitted two letters to you that listed numerous concerns with this proposal, and I'm not going to cover the remarks made in those letters.

But I had some written remarks, which I'm going to deviate from a little bit based on the discussion we heard tonight.

I want to emphasize two points.

First, in representing the owners of Ix property, I want to make it clear to you that this hasn't been really fully discussed.

This is a significant down zoning.

It substantially reduces the achievable density within the D.E.

area.

So reducing density means you're reducing the opportunity for housing.

In addition to that, the table that was put up tonight in the form-based code about the housing ratios I think was interesting because it was new information to me tonight.

and I've been watching this very carefully.

I'm going to come back to that but I'll say also that the proposal in being a down-zoning reducing density targets only a few parcels in the area and this is because many properties are already built out or have approved and vested site development plans.

You're looking at only a few properties of significance in area and ICS obviously is the largest one.

Because it's targeting only a few properties, it really is a piecemeal down zone and it will be very difficult for the city to defend this.

The next thing I want to say is there's a discussion about the affordable housing tonight.

and I think this project is being sold in some part by the idea that it will promote affordable housing.

I've discussed this with my client and it is quite clear to us that this will not result in an increase in affordable housing and that the idea of trading in a density incentive for this building height incentive is a false premise.

Additional building height

is being allowed if you provide certain affordable units and yet it will be more practical simply not to build the additional height.

The economics do not work out.

That table that was put up tonight has eliminated the 80 percent AMI category, and I understand the support for that.

But at 50 or 60 percent AMI, you simply cannot build additional stories as allowed under this ordinance and build affordable units in that unless you're going to force the property owner to subsidize those units for the length of time they're going to be maintained as affordable.

There needs to be a public involvement and a subsidy process that's not provided for to go along with this.

And that's not that we're against affordable housing.

I'll try to wrap up quickly.

My client supports affordable housing.

He also, it was made earlier a comment that there's some fear of form-based code.

My client has no fear of form-based code.

He wants to see a form-based code done right as in Arlington, Virginia Beach and Portsmouth.

where there are options for the developer, not mandated restrictions that prevent new development and creativity.

And I'll wrap up by saying someone commented, I believe the consultant, that they want to create a place where people want to live.

I think people already want to live here.

I think people do live here.

I think the downtown area is desirable already, and we can create better spaces and built environment, but we need flexibility

Not more restrictions.

Hi.

Thank you for the opportunity.

My name is Stacy Miller.

I live on 6th Street, Southeast.

on the southeast border of the proposed property.

And I've been following loosely the SIA plan from the beginning.

And since I moved here eight and a half years ago, I've noticed a dramatic increase in the number of pedestrians that use Sixth Street from the south going towards downtown and in reverse as Charlottesville continues to grow.

which I think is wonderful.

And I've noticed in that time zero investment in the sidewalk and bicycle infrastructure in that area.

Sixth Street is used as a bypass to Avon and my fear is that that will become increasingly the case during the Belmont Bridge project.

Cars go way too fast.

The speed bumps don't do anything.

There's no effort to provide a framework for where cars should park.

There are no lines on the street.

I have so many questions about this.

I don't really know where to start with comments.

But I noticed that I don't know why the bicycle clauses in 2.2.6 seem to be crossed out in the code.

I don't know what that's about.

That's the only area I noticed where there were redactions.

I'm curious about that.

Why?

And I'm not sure I understand the provision for sidewalks and things that are public amenities and whose jurisdiction that is to provide those.

A lot of the streets that connect to Sixth Street on that sort of westward-facing slope

Hinton, moving on southward, bowling, Montrose, have zero sidewalks.

They're on kind of severe slopes.

My son bikes on them and I nearly have a heart attack every single time because I feel so unsafe and that any evening he's just going to get creamed by a car turning right on those streets.

I'd like to know where the investment comes from and why are we waiting on developer investment in this area to make this a livable community, a livable neighborhood.

And by that token, I also wonder why this particular area seems to be used as a guinea pig for form-based code in Charlottesville.

because I feel it's an untapped playground for developers that are already getting rich making million dollar condos the norm in our city.

And that scares me.

And I want to be able to live on my street for the long term.

And I feel that a lot of what I'm seeing is so inscrutable to make public input

make public input ambiguous or negligent, like that public input will be ignored.

And the way at the form based code was described to me initially years ago was that it is specifically community led.

And I don't feel like this is a community process.

I feel like we're getting something that we're not sure about.

And and we're using this neighborhood as a guinea pig.

My name is Michael Payne, Charlottesville City resident.

I just wanted to speak about perhaps one of the elephants in the room, which is that the timeline for

The Planning Commission and City Council implementing this form-based code is fast-tracked to happen before January when any City Council would be sworn in.

I just wanted to reassure the Planning Commission that myself, and I feel confident speaking for the ticket mates I ran with,

We want to be proactive about working with the Planning Commission, the Foreign Based Code Institute, and all relevant stakeholders to make sure that any potential foreign based code is as thoughtful and effective as possible.

And if there are any concerns about things that have been mentioned such as the

The Affordable Housing Requirement, having certain loopholes that could develop developers to only build on certain floors.

If there's a desire to have a more thoughtful market analysis, take into account lots that are already developed or have capital investment in them in terms of

the impact of the total number of units that could be built out under this framework versus existing zoning.

If there is a desire to think through in a deeper level the implications of the height bonus given the fact that construction costs are not linear, the incoming council wants to be a partner with that if that timeline is a concern for any decision you make tonight.

Good evening, commissioners.

Don Gather, city resident.

Faith teaches me that when prayers go up, sometimes when the answer comes back, it's yes.

Sometimes it's no.

Sometimes it's wait.

Well, not right now.

I don't think that we should necessarily rush through a process haphazardly with so many questions unanswered, especially on the front end, and that those that deal with

The fact that this doesn't at all deal with or approach to touching our affordable housing crisis does nothing whatsoever to answer that.

So I'm not suggesting that we throw out the baby with the bathwater, but at least take the time to read the instructions on specifically how we need to put this crib together to make sure that it's functional and doesn't fall apart on the back end.

One of the biggest concerns of the community is that

The SIA won't only affect this immediate area, but once it's in, it will cover and encompass the whole city.

And also once it's in, there's no opportunity for public input.

Public can't come and speak against a project.

with the thought in mind that, well, you had the opportunity to speak on it before the SIA or before this project was voted on.

So I ask that you just slow down.

Let's take our time.

We don't need to do this in the immediacy, especially with so many questions unanswered on the front end.

Yeah, please.

My name is Kimberly Hawkey, city resident.

Again, I look at this area, why this area, it seems also pretty interesting that this is also an area that has been historically a lower income area.

and again used as a guinea pig.

The other thing that came to mind, someone had said something, I'm sure there are a lot of people who want to live here and that's great but the people who want to come and live here, it doesn't take, their wants and needs do not take precedence over the people who do live here and who have lived here for generations.

And I can just envision, I mean especially this whole thing with Grave Street, why is that included?

You're cutting a chunk out of our Belmont neighborhood and you can envision, as the gentleman said, that someone would buy up some of those properties, raise them, promise to do affordable housing, again, whatever affordable seems to mean here, to create a very large building that doesn't fit and that's not appropriate.

And again, what's appropriate in size and scope seems always to be an issue.

You know, you look at SAT4, it's a three-story max, but then with the affordable housing added, you can go up a story and then, you know, is it going to be a penthouse on the top and the end?

There's just a lot of unanswered questions and, you know, devils in the details and there seems to be some loopholes and we definitely know that developers are going to exploit those loopholes.

And I just am concerned about our historic neighborhoods and seeing houses raised to put up these large buildings that don't necessarily serve

our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Liz Russell.

My concern, you know, first I want to just say I live in Belmont.

I live on Grave Street.

Lavender portion, which in a previous map extends to my house, but seems to somewhat vary in either bisecting Grave Street or not.

So my concern is personal, but I just want to say that I echo everyone's concerns and I'm honored to be part of a community who speaks so strongly about affordable housing issues.

You know, I agree that this just seems rushed and also doesn't seem in spirit to speak to the true need of affordable housing.

It almost just seems like a penance to affordable housing issues.

I live on Grave Street, like I said.

My house is a hundred years old.

I renovated it with my, you know, blood, sweat and tears and the neighborhood is

You know, it's great.

It's a lovely street.

All these houses face in, they back to a commercial property so I can kind of understand that DE or some sort of commercial component to the back of my block.

but Grave Street itself every single house is a contributing resource to the Belmont Historic District.

It's not however under local design control so it would be threatened because there's no local design control.

And you know finally I just want to say if the city is concerned about affordable housing issues it should consider that on my street there are at least three properties that are individually owned

Thank you.

And that's a violation of the zoning ordinance, correct?

Round them up.

My name is Walt Heineke.

I live on Ehema Street.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Thanks for taking time to consider the impact of this particular policy on other policies.

That's what I wanted to talk about tonight.

Somebody mentioned earlier the notion of incoherence.

and I think this whole notion of trying to pass a form-based code in one part of the city when you have a zoning code audit going on, a comp plan audit, a comp plan that's not finished that's due and an affordable housing strategy plan that's going to be a part of that comp plan that's not finished is just a recipe for disaster.

There's so many moving parts that you don't know how this is going to interact with all of those moving parts.

So it seems completely irrational and incoherent to me just from sort of an engineering policy point of view that you would consider doing this now without thinking about the other moving parts.

And to reiterate something that was stated earlier that I think Ms. Johnson said,

In every enlightened city that I've ever lived in, there has been something that is the equivalent of an environmental impact report, but it's called an equity impact report.

And you see those in places like Seattle that are cities that are concerned about differences in community.

and creating inclusive communities.

So I don't understand why we don't have an equity or an affordable housing or a racial impact statement that comes along with this form-based code approach.

Lastly, it's not clear to me that this is going to increase anything close to affordable housing in our city.

It's probably going to increase property values in the SIA, which are going to drive people out and displace people.

There's probably going to be less affordable housing unless you have an affordable housing strategy.

I could have sworn that I heard

at Crescent Halls that the consultant said that they anticipate that form-based code is going to increase housing prices in the SIA and therefore it's probably going to drive people out and displace people.

So for those reasons, I really hope that you stop and think and think about delaying this process.

It doesn't have to be done now.

It doesn't have to be considered a vanity project.

It can be done later.

As Mr. Payne said, there's going to be a new council.

in a matter of months.

Let's cool our jets and slow down and think about how this fits with these other moving parts.

And if you do anything, let's light a fire under getting the affordable housing strategy done, the comp plan done, and the zoning code audit done.

Let's get that done quick because we have other priorities in this city right now in terms of affordable housing.

Mark Cavitt, Baltimore Street.

I've been following Foreign Based Code for many years.

I've gone to many meetings over on it, both here in the city and in the county.

I've seen other communities where it's been done at and have developed nice communities when this has been done.

Some examples are the Glen Allen area here outside of Richmond.

North Virginia has a few.

Orlando, Florida has done one that I've been to and was very impressed with.

It'd be nice if Charlottesville was not growing and we could remain kind of the traditional city that we are, but we are going to grow and we are going to be needing more housing.

And this may be a good location for it to do something of this nature.

Yeah, it probably needs to be tweaked a little bit, but we need to stop moving on this.

We've been talking about it for many, many, many years.

And it's just time to move on it.

I think we're kidding ourselves, though, if we think that we're going to achieve affordable housing by development in this area and building new construction.

You're not going to achieve affordable housing with new construction unless you've got government paying into the course of it.

New construction is expensive.

This is, but my other one was on non-agenda related things.

So I am back.

My name is Lily McVeigh.

I'm a Charlottesville City resident for my entire life.

I also live in the neighborhood that this plan would be affecting.

I really would hope that you all would focus more on the displacement of people.

I think that as the majority of people in this room have already expressed, and even the consultant, that this would not address affordable housing.

And what is affordable housing?

Like when city council and city just had to pass $15 an hour for city employees,

and still can't live in this city off of that hourly rate.

Again, I was a city employee for many, many years and struggled every single month to pay my rent, use the food banks in this city, used every everything that I could access to maintain living in the city and actually had to move outside to Crozet for a year because I could not make my rent.

I could not make my bills in the city.

It's very clear that this plan has nothing to do

with addressing affordable housing or bringing housing to the people.

You know, they were talking about making this a more desirable place to live, as someone said earlier, and I'm happy to echo, this is a very desirable place to live.

There are people who've been living in this area for generations, and we're selling them out so that we can get like another Potbelly's Deli that will put one affordable unit that's $1,200 a month for one bedroom.

Ridiculous and I can see by your facial expressions as you all have been sitting up here tonight that I know That you all agree with us.

I know you think this is ridiculous.

I appreciate the questions that you are asking Him and his consultant that we're talking about this plan so again, I I don't have much more to say I think that everybody's

said it pretty well so far.

I would just hope that you all would delay this and really focus on the displacement of the people who already live in these neighborhoods or the people who are getting pushed out of these neighborhoods, the people who've already been pushed out of these neighborhoods.

Good evening.

I just want to bring it to you guys' attention that you've heard from

the resident organization that represents CRHA.

Wandae Johnson.

Thank you.

So there's that.

I will echo Joy and advocate for you guys to go back, finish the housing strategy.

and then tackle zoning.

I get it.

Zoning sucks.

There's so much space for improvement upon our current zoning.

But I don't think this is the answer.

And if it is, it needs to be refined.

We need to be entirely intentional

with the citizens.

I was born and raised in Charlottesville.

I can remember when our motto was a world-class city.

We made a world-class city for everyone but the people who were born and raised here.

We can fix it now.

Delay this.

Get the housing strategy together.

Come back to the zoning.

Thanks.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak?

My name is Phoebe Stevens.

I live on Paoli Street.

I also am from Charlottesville, Virginia, born and raised, so I'm really glad to see

A lot of us here.

So I just want to say that I'm going to speak to this in terms of the dairy building that's going up on Preston.

When I went to the meetings for that, they specifically said, Lee Quill, specifically said that this building was going to encompass, was for family residents.

And there's going to be the stalls in the bottom, and there's going to be these residents up top, and they're going to be

Scaled to I guess if you make a certain amount you to qualify for this style of resident and so on and that it was specifically for the community and then they had a groundbreaking one day and they didn't send anything to anybody just a few people from I guess City Council came along and

and all of their developers.

And when I just happened to come back from work, I saw them.

So I pulled over and went over to say, hey, I'm from the community.

Didn't get anything about this groundbreaking.

And one of the side conversations was, oh, this is really great because it's on the UVA.

It's right close to UVA.

It's right on the bus line.

Specifically was told, this is not for UVA.

So this being a community to me,

feels like no, this is probably for people who are making lots of money who do want to live in this city because it is so desirable because it's an awesome city and it's not for anybody like me who's been living here forever and struggled to find a place and all of my friends who live in the city or slash don't live in the city that can't find housing.

This doesn't, this sounds just like the dairy building where they're going for people who are not from the community

making lots of money and then yeah, pushing everybody who's been living here out.

So I'm just reiterating that and also the parking.

They didn't have anything addressed with the dairy building for how traffic was going to be affected and parking and I'm just wondering in the gridlock that is downtown Charlottesville, how is that even being addressed?

So that's all I have to say.

but a new office like to speak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm Valerie Long with the law firm of Williams Mullin.

We represent Avon Court, LC, the property owner at 310 Avon.

I'll just be brief.

We want to just reiterate the comments that were made at the October 15th work session with regard to the proposed designation for the 310 Avon property for all the reasons stated that evening and sounds like

There was a majority of the commission that agreed that this property and perhaps others that are also on the north side of Garrett between Garrett and the railroad tracks should also be considered for T6 zoning.

We just reiterate that.

I understand Mr. Haleska's comments tonight about the importance of open space, and we certainly share that and agree with that.

There are, as I see in the draft form based code, there are requirements for open space for all parcels and particularly those over one acre.

This is a 1.75-acre parcel, so it would be required to have open space.

So if that's not sufficient to address the concern for open space, our suggestion would be to, as many have stated tonight, make sure we get this right the first time, go back, revise the code to make that more clear if it's not already, but not use that as a reason to so severely restrict the areas of the SIA that are designated for T6.

It really is just one small area.

It's an important area, but we think with the

in regards to the fact that one of the three stated goals of the SIA, in addition to increasing affordable housing and housing of all types and improving connections within the area, it was also to increase employment opportunities.

And the T6 is pretty much where most of the employment opportunities are located based on the use matrix.

That being said, I think there's also some good improvements that could be made to the use matrix because there's a lot of areas in T5

that don't allow some of these very important employment opportunities and centers.

An easy example that we talked about all the time when I served on the SIA Advisory Committee was the idea of a commercial bakery was often cited as the example of an employment opportunity that would be perfect for the SIA and we wanted to make sure we could accommodate a use like that.

Those uses would not be allowed in T4 or T5.

I would think they would be appropriate in the T5, but when you limit

T6 to such this one area, there's a lot of uses that are contemplated to be squeezed into that one area.

And I don't think that really achieves the goal.

So we appreciate your time.

And again, we would suggest that some time be taken to address this.

Let's finish all of the other initiatives first so we don't make any mistakes going forward.

All right.

Is there anyone else who'd like to speak?

Going once, going twice.

The public hearing is now closed.

We've got a lot to noodle on.

Who would like to begin the noodling?

Yeah, you, Lisa.

You look like you're big.

You want me to start you off?

So I'm probably going to make some statements that are going to make everybody unhappy, but not all the same statements.

So first off, we want to talk about affordable housing, and we are definitely in need of affordable housing.

So I hear a lot of people talking about affordable housing.

But then I hear a lot of people saying, but we don't want too much height.

Look, folks, we're going to have to go high somewhere to get affordable housing.

And so, yes, there's that.

I agree with you this world-class city.

That always just made my head spin.

We're also going to have to increase density in some areas.

We definitely are.

We're going to have to look throughout the city and not just in one area.

Hardy Drive, yes those buildings on West Main but they are a symptom of our zoning that is currently in place right now and yes we, this Planning Commission and that council voted to increase height to give away the farm for one or two units and that is what we got so we have a lot of work to do.

Yes, I've stood on Hardy Drive with you, Ms. Johnson, and looked up and I'm still sick to this day.

So, yes, I did not vote on that, but I'm only one of seven, as you see here.

I know that what I hear from a lot of people is the frustration with the infrastructure we have.

When we start some processes like this, we are going to we're going to have some we're going to have some hurt

We are going to have to make some changes to get the infrastructure and the pedestrian that we need.

It's not going to magically happen overnight, so there's going to be some growing pains that we have to do and we're going to have to see some things and make some changes.

That being said,

I'm also a part of another organization where I'm watching a form-based code being done differently.

And so I see too much draft on this one.

And I am not comfortable.

I know we have to start somewhere, absolutely.

And once we get to a place where we do start and we get to the zoning and we get to the comp plan You all may not like the comp plan either once we get there I mean it is gonna have to be a citywide thing if we're gonna put enough housing in here to get the affordability For certain we're gonna see higher density and we're gonna see some height There's no other way to do this so and With that it's gonna come some traffic

And I want us just to hold on.

We're going to have to go through some growing pages together.

But for me, for this, I don't think I'm going to be able to vote for this as it is, with too much draft.

Just talking about the use matrix, oh, we can massage that.

I want us to get to a place where we have a form-based code, where we're comfortable that this is where we are.

Wow, so Lisa took a lot of the words out of my mouth, which is a rarity.

But yeah, I guess I'll echo by chiding you all a little bit on the same note of, you know, there do need to be trade-offs in height and, you know, in other things, but

I think there's a lot of wariness of what form-based code is in general and how it's, you know, just kind of a scary new thing that's different from the old thing and that sometimes that makes it, or maybe that makes it bad.

Use-based zoning is really bad.

Like, use-based zoning is where we're saying it has to be a single-family house, and how dare you subdivide it into a fourplex.

Use-based zoning is where we're saying you can build a nine-story building on Garrett Street, but if you put 233 studios that all rent for $100,000 a month in it, you can't do that.

But make it a giant office building with one enormous penthouse, that's great.

So in general I think form-based code and moving into that framework or at least towards that on the continuum is a good idea.

That said, I have some serious concerns with this particular form-based code and in the way it's written and it's structured and in the way it seems to kind of provide for in some ways less

less potential housing than in the existing thing where there's a lot less building you're allowed to do, which in theory means a lot less housing.

That said, in the existing framework you have to go ask council for that housing and they'll probably say no like they did the last five times.

And in particular, I think on the idea of public input, there's something really worthwhile to be said about everyone kind of coming together and giving public input in the form of a broad vision or a plan where, you know, everyone's talking in the abstract about what we'd like to see, what we will see in the future.

And it's not, you know, there's going to be

200 people living in this building you know it'll be cheap and there'll be renters like I can't imagine this because what we see in practice is that the public the per project public input system is rigged completely in favor of rich homeowners right like you go back and look at those studios and that the public comment for that and it's it's 12 comments from people in the Gleason saying

I moved into my condo here 18 months ago.

Actually, I bought two and combined them together.

And our building is adequately parked, and we have plenty of parking.

But if you let 233 people move in down the street, they're going to have traffic jamming up the whole neighborhood.

We don't want renters around here.

We want homeowners who care about the neighborhood.

That's what you get in that project based

in that project-based input format.

So I do think there's a lot of value in the way we're trying to kind of make a plan from the beginning.

That said, I think that it is kind of too early with this plan.

I think for the most part this is kind of flown under the radar.

and I think in some ways that's kind of a consequence of it being a consultant-driven process where it's hard to know what the, you know, to see how the sausage is made.

No offense to you guys but, you know, I think when it's a process that the community shows up for and that everyone's involved in, I think you can have good results.

At the same time, you know, it's not just having consultants that makes the community not show up.

Now I see you guys all here and fired up.

So if we defer this, I hope you guys will all come out to the next sessions where we talk about what really should go into this.

But at this point, I see a lot of empty holes in the plan that we're supposed to flesh out.

I see serious limitations on how much building you can put in there, when at the same time, all of the affordable housing we get is on those upper floors.

and to me it seems like it's probably because the people on the sixth floor in the Gleason don't want to live with the thought of someone on the seventh floor down the street renting a cheaper apartment than theirs.

It is a full moon.

That's what we're thinking.

I want to just say one quick thing right now.

You're right.

We need to work on this zoning and we need to get this comp plan done.

We're in a really good spot right now with our state legislation to get some things moved forward.

So if we don't have that, we don't know what we need for affordable housing or that strategy to put in place.

We're not going to know what to ask our legislators to get us in place.

I first want to say I am so glad to see so many people of our community out, especially those who are long-term city residents as myself and we share a lot of the same concerns.

Per the work session for this we had in October, I just want to stand to the original comments that I made.

I know that

We need affordable housing and we do not need affordable housing at 80% AMI and clearly tonight we hear that 50 and 60 are not going to get it done either.

We also in this city need affordable housing where you do not work 40 plus hours a week and have to come get a voucher in order to be able to afford to live.

I do also feel that with so many pieces of the framework in play, I'm going to stand fast and say that we need to finish our comprehensive plan first and our housing strategy before we move forward with any other strategy.

Ah, this kills me because there is good in here.

There has been good work that's gone into this that I see and I appreciate.

I appreciate staff's work on this.

I appreciate the consultants' work on this.

I see, you know, so many people in our community have contributed to make this something that I think will eventually be worthwhile.

but we are not there.

There's so much here that is in draft.

There are good ideas that aren't filled out.

There are exciting tools that don't work yet.

And I want us to get there, but we are not there tonight.

Jeez, last.

I'm conceptually in favor of the form-based code, but there are a number of things in this particular draft that I would like to work on.

I'm not in favor of.

The north side of Grave Street being one of them.

Front yard setbacks not being enough.

But I think it's workable, and I think we could do it in the short time.

So I would defer tonight, and I'm not really optimistic about it happening in a few months either.

And I fear for this community, this area up there, because I've sat up here for six years now.

The last three have been towards a comprehensive plan.

and my term ends in two years and I can almost guarantee you the comprehensive plan is not going to be done in two years.

And in the meantime, we've got this existing zoning in this area.

I'm just sitting here listening.

I don't agree with this particular proposal, but I do have an issue with the statements that there hasn't been opportunity for individuals to weigh in.

So there's been a lot of opportunities, and I just want to point that out when we move into

this comprehensive plan, zoning change, housing strategy for people to get involved very early and voice your concerns very early so we won't end up at the final hour.

And I know that we have a part to play in that where we need to pay attention to what is being said because I know there have been a lot of members of the community who have been talking about form-based code and their concerns.

for a while and we haven't been necessarily paying attention to those but staff has been working really hard.

We've spent a lot of money with this consultant and in the future hopefully those concerns are expressed earlier so that we are not making the investment to then get

to this point and have comments made about there hasn't been the opportunity.

Over a year ago, Alex Acafina said that our zoning code was a wastebasket full of errors, right?

And hopefully your statement about the two years is alarming, and I hope that isn't the case.

But I understand, but we need to make sure that these

that we complete something, right?

And all three of those things are very important and need to be completed.

So that's what I'm over here thinking about.

And I'm just encouraging the public just to be present and in tune very early on so that you don't feel left out as we work through this comprehensive plan and housing strategy and zoning changes.

Mr.

What I'd like to do is get through the Planning Commission.

Yeah, let's get through asking that, because I want to say something as well.

I've heard a lot of good comments obviously for and against this mostly obviously against in terms of getting the affordable housing component right and I think that's very important.

I don't want to rehash things that have already been said.

Things that I've thought about a little bit that I haven't heard as much about a little bit was the green space aspect.

I'm not seeing that fully fleshed out in the diagrams anyway.

Maybe in the text a little bit.

The other thing that I haven't heard a whole lot about is

yeah these transitions between the different zones and might you be able to break up lots like you've done with the ix like it's done with ix where it has different transects on it to kind of create a little better transition or actually get maybe a little more height towards railroad you know up against the railroad tracks or in low-lying areas things like that

It's going to be at least 18 months.

I'm thinking it's going to be a couple of years.

We cannot put development on hold in Charlottesville for two years.

We cannot put the redevelopment of our housing authority properties on hold for two years waiting for a comp plan.

We cannot put New Hill on hold for two years waiting for a new comp plan.

So I don't want to throw the DESIA out outright.

But there are a number of things about the DESIA that do give me heartburn.

And I'm not going to apply on staff because I've walked our staff through a couple of those things.

And again, it's because of the draft nature of the current DESIA.

When you read through the ordinances, for example, as I mentioned, the staff, there are a lot of shoulds and may, as opposed to shalls and will.

And so we need to go through there and clean that up so that it has more teeth when it's implemented.

And when it's a standard and it needs flexibility, say, you either do this or do that.

The other piece that gives me a little heartburn, again, and hopefully we can work through this, is the protection and insurance that affordable housing stock will be built no matter what happens.

Our council has come up with what I think is a wonderful idea.

and to either take out the idea of a developer having to put in a bond that says, if I don't build the amount of affordable housing that I committed to, then you've got to pay me.

I released the bond and you get it.

But Ms. Robertson has come up with an idea that maybe we build a covenant into the deal that says, you've got to do this, or this penalty will be there.

And it'll be a penalty greater than just the loss of the bond.

So little things like that need to happen.

The penthouse idea, where a guy says he's going to build eight floors, but then puts a bunch of penthouses on top above the bonus area.

and we get no affordable housing because of the way the algorithm is written.

That needs to be fixed as well.

So I'm not ready to throw this out yet because I'm not ready to stop development in Charlottesville.

I'm certainly not ready to stop redevelopment.

And I certainly want New Hill to get the momentum that it seems to be getting.

I want it to grow with that momentum.

But I do want to fix these little things that may sacrifice our ability to be certain that we're going to get the affordable housing that we need.

So my idea is that we've got 100 days.

My idea is that we think about this thing a little longer.

I would not be willing to vote against it outright tonight, but I would be willing to entertain a motion to defer.

Well, thank you, Mr.

Chair, especially since my name was said in vain tonight.

And I am Kathy Galvin.

I think it's really important to understand that for me and everyone else, that this process has been going on for a very long time.

And the SIA plan was adopted in 2014.

The first thing that the plan called for was to get new zoning.

and it's 2019 and we're talking about the zoning now, five years later.

And yeah, I did push to get this going because it needed to see the light of day.

It was not going to get a public hearing unless someone pushed for it.

We need to get it publicly discussed.

And there have been a lot of public meetings, but people have not come.

This is the greatest turnout we've seen.

So it's fantastic to see this, and it's also really important that when

the new council look at this, and when the planning commission look at this, that there is an expectation that there is a timeline followed from staff.

I mean, this was a year ago, this draft was ready, a process could have been in place, but it wasn't, it was very slow, it was not moving.

And so, I think it's, again, you're looking at this daunting task, this was for 80 acres of the city.

10 square miles is 6400 acres.

Wow, it's going to take a long time.

I mean, at the rate we were going, it's going to take 377 years to get that plan done with the new zoning.

So I think it's just it is something to consider that there was really important to get this out into the public.

And that is what I did to get it out into the public.

And yes, there are lots of legitimate questions

And I find it really interesting that majority of the developers and property owners felt this was a down zoning.

And the majority of the residents felt it was an up zoning.

Wow.

It might be doing something right.

It's OK, so let's keep this going.

Don't kill it.

And I'm glad to hear the deferment word.

But we've got to get really honest from both sides what's going on.

This has only been about zoning to get the private development sector to contribute its share.

It's in concert with the fact that you've got 300 more units being built on Friendship Court.

You've got 117 more units being built with the public housing community.

All total, with that combined with what could be built with a maximum build out, you'd have 1,000 units of affordable housing within 4,000 units of a full build out.

That's 25% affordable housing.

in that area.

City-wise, it's 10 percent.

So I'm glad to hear phrases like don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, because it's it's bringing up the kinds of considerations that we must make for our our zoning that governs private development to take into account.

So I just wanted to to point that out that, yeah, I did push to get this to see the light of day because it never would have come to this point.

and that is why, the honest to goodness truth, why I needed to push this to get to this point.

And if it's deferred, I will be working on the other side of the dais with everybody else to get us the zoning we need sooner versus later because the existing zoning we have is doing everything that the public is afraid of.

Not the new zoning, the existing zoning is doing everything you're afraid of.

So, yeah, we've got to get to work and we've got to keep the timeline going and we've got to get all the loopholes closed and we've got to have all the details figured out.

Yeah.

I'm not quite sure how to phrase this, but

Before I do, my thoughts are that it does make sense to have a couple work sessions.

Yeah, maybe more than one, to talk this over, to at least hammer out the details and have a final proposal, even if we're going to shoot it down at the end, because I think there's value in fleshing out the details, in understanding this process, because the way our complaint was shaping up, we're going to have to move towards this foreign-based end of the continuum, no matter what, to implement the things we were talking about.

So I'd like to move to defer

indefinitely till after Justice Fuhr?

Cool.

Don't have the specified time.

Great.

Moving probably second.

Is there any further discussion?

Ms. Dow?

Aye.

Ms. Green?

Aye.

and Mr. Mitchell.

I'm going to also say I can't wait for you all to be there so we can sit down and go through this and put this out and and have public engagement, because that's what make this makes this a better project.

And I say that on the heels of just hearing South First Street where that community got together.

And so it's it is one of the best projects that we've seen.

All right, why don't we take a five-minute break?

Five minutes.

Back in five minutes.

I would just start.

I'll give you that.

There's no question about it.

Much nicer.

Alrighty, let us re-engage.

The next application is a special use permit request, and that would be SP190006.

The landowner of Market Street Lemonade LLC is asking for a special use permit to allow mixed use development on 218 Market Street.

Specifically what they'd like to do is they'd like additional height.

Currently by right they can do 70 feet by right and they'd like to do 101 feet, 101 feet.

They'd also like additional density.

Currently they can do 43 units per acre and they'd like to go up to 240 acres.

That translates into up to or about up to 134 units on that site.

on the ground level that will be used for retail and commercial space.

This will also have to go before the bar again before it's finally approved.

Commissioners and Councillors, this is a special use permit for property located at 218 West Market Street, as Chairman Mitchell stated.

This is a request for additional height and additional density.

The by-right height on this property is 70 feet.

You can ask by code up to 101 feet.

by special use.

Additionally the by right residential density permitted is 43 dwelling units per acre which calculates out to about 24 units on this site.

The applicant is asking for the maximum allowable density under the code which is 240 dwelling units per acre which would yield a

account of 134 residential units.

Several items to draw your attention to in your review.

First, obviously, with any kind of increase in residential density, we look at the automotive impact on this area.

This property is accessed via two, has frontage on two roads.

West Market Street is obviously the one that is noticed on the report, but there's also a frontage on Old Preston in the back, adjacent across the street from the back of house area of the Omni Hotel.

So the current conceptual plan for the site talks about using that Old Preston access as the way cars would enter and exit the site.

The traffic engineer has looked at this, has no concerns about the demand on Old Preston.

I did say that it's a part of the site plan process.

We were probably taking another look at the old Preston and Market intersection just to make sure that the additional trips don't create any kind of conflicts there that need some changes to that site.

We also want to draw your attention to parking because obviously that always comes up in these situations.

The parking regulations here are in the urban parking corridor which is rarely seen.

We don't see many developments in that zone so I do want to refresh your memory about that.

This is the kind of

what remains of the old parking exempt zone.

So by-right projects are not required to provide any parking in this zone.

They do have to account for loading and unloading, but other than that, there's no parking required at the by-right level.

By asking for a special use permit, there is the requirement that they meet the parking requirements for the additional units on the site via the means provided in the parking modified zone.

So for every additional unit above 24 dwelling units per acre, they have to provide a parking space per unit.

and that can be met under the provisions of the Parking Modified Zone.

So on-site, off-site and then a certain distance paying to a parking fund.

So obviously at 134 we'd be talking about parking spaces for 110 units somewhere either on-site, off-site or some combination of that.

So that will drive probably some of the design considerations that the BAR will have to deal with as well as the applicant.

This project does qualify for our affordable housing section under 3412.

The applicant has not made any indication as to how they intend to meet that.

They obviously will have to meet that prior to final site plan approval.

They would have to designate how they will meet that.

Additionally, and just because we wanted to do it again, there is an adjacent historic building that is structurally impacted by this one.

You will notice a very familiar condition in there to deal with it.

The adjacent property owner is well aware of that.

The applicant has already had discussions with the adjacent property owner.

It's going to take some care in terms of how this is done because of the buildings are almost kind of joined in some fashions and beams are going through there.

So obviously that's a great concern to the applicant and the adjacent property owners.

But we have a condition that addresses that.

It's the edited version too, just so you know.

You did have a work session on this matter in September 24th.

We have the notes in there related to your concerns about that.

Just to reiterate what your discussion was.

So in closing, staff recommends the application be approved with the conditions in the staff report.

I will not read those because it's about three pages long.

I had a question with the single building requirement in the proposed conditions.

We're also talking about breaking up the massing like the Board of Architecture review asked for.

Little confused why we're including that instead of, you know, leaving it with the Board of Architecture review who's in charge of that anyway.

Two buildings doesn't seem like a weird way to deal with that.

I don't know.

I think given the size of the site and the programming that we're talking about, it's going to be one structure.

Also, we do run into this occasionally with projects of a much smaller scale than this one in terms of what constitutes a structure and pathways in between them and people using them as kind of ways around certain regulations, particularly in low-density residential areas.

So it is possible, but I think given

The scale of what we're talking about and the location we're talking about and the likely sale price of the land underneath here, I don't think you're going to see a lot of open breezeways between two buildings.

So I don't think the applicant has any problem with it.

One item that came up in the work session on this was a connection to the history of the nearby Vinegar Hill neighborhood and the history of our community, which was news to me.

I don't know anything beyond what we talked about in the work session.

Certainly the Board of Architectural Review is a part of their review.

I think the staff that's assigned to that would certainly put forward whatever they've got there.

I think the adjacent buildings in particular are almost of kind of add more to this design, but yeah.

That's about as far as I know.

I mean, if the demolition of this building is going down, then there could be something offered by the applicant in terms of kind of talking about what was on the site prior to that, something like that.

Anything else?

I had a question about waivers in the parking, no, the urban core parking zone.

The applicant is allowed to request a waiver from the minimums imposed because it's exempt from parking except for SUP increments, but they are allowed to ask for those to be waived.

Do they have to ask?

There is no language in the request.

Requests for waivers where they're provided by code have to come in with the application.

Okay, there you go.

So yeah, the SGP process

Permits modification of parking requirements, but I think it's similar to the way setbacks come up.

And if we were hypothetically to change the code to perhaps exempt all parking in the downtown core zone, because there's really not a difference between apartment on the by right floors on the S.P.

floors, you'd think.

There's no number assigned to it, so certainly, you know,

To go back to the old parking modified zone, any large project that was done at that time still had parking.

They didn't, you know, or the parking exempt zone.

That didn't mean that people were building buildings with no parking at all unless they thought they could do it.

But most people, through conventional financing, are not going to be able to pull that off.

So it certainly says that they would have to have a parking structure.

Hypothetically speaking, if they get to 134, I don't think there's any way that floor plate's going to support 134, so they're going to have to look at alternatives.

If you were then to remove that from the code, that would allow them

to get rid of all the off-site, you know, they could let those leases go whenever they came up for termination.

So they would have some freedom there.

But, you know, presumably their on-site stuff, I mean, I guess if the on-site stuff was, you know, at grade or above grade, they could potentially start converting the parking to other things.

So underground, if I'm looking at the site line right, it's below grade from the perspective of Market Street, which is the address, but it's where a livery stable is, right?

That's pretty much what we're talking about.

Question about darkness.

We've gotten a lot of public input on this concern about shadows, winter shadows.

Sure.

The applicant has provided updated shading studies.

There were some initially in their packet and then they've provided some updated ones to you today.

The best thing I can

The point I would make is there is a required 25 foot step back on West Market Street after a certain amount of space.

I think it's 40 to 45 feet.

You have a street wall and then you have to step back 25 feet.

So that takes the bulk of that building, whether it's 70 feet or 101 feet tall, off of the street.

And so a lot of that shading falls on

The building itself.

There is some impact.

It's probably going to be felt late in the day, particularly in the winter.

So you can see that impact.

How impactful it is, I think, is subjective.

It depends on what you think.

But like I said, the bulk of the height is in the middle of the site per zoning.

I just have a comment surrounding the affordability piece per usual.

I just think that is something we should know up front and that we should be asking those questions before we get to the point of a site plan review.

And it's the same comment that I make every time, if by right you would

get 24 units and you could get up to 134 additional units.

And I just heard him say that that probably wouldn't, you know, work in that space.

But it's something that the applicant could propose.

We should know at that by this point what we are approving in terms of the affordable housing piece.

Good evening, Mr.

Chair, members of the commission.

Thank you for having us this evening.

My name is L.J.

Lopez with Milestone Partners.

We were here just a few short weeks ago, actually, for a work session on this project.

Also with me this evening is Jeff Dreyfus with Bushman Dreyfus Architects as part of the project team.

On behalf of the project sponsor, Jeff Levine, not to confuse the two Jeffs, he sends his regrets.

He was overseas dealing with a family health issue.

I alerted you to that earlier today.

I won't reiterate the application.

We understand what the application request is.

I just want to touch on a couple points that were raised for further clarification.

In the staff report, the protective plan, while we've laughed at that lightheartedly, it is I think a carbon copy from what we thoughtfully crafted for 612 West Main.

I would request the opportunity with your consent to

between the commission and the council to recommend some proposed changes to that.

The conditions are not apples to apples.

I mean, is that something we can do?

Is that something?

What he wants to do is change the building protection clauses around the demolition.

And you like to do that after it's approved by us.

Well,

So your recommendation then is they would revisit this with us in a meeting like this.

Could I ask you a question for procedure?

So, and let me make sure I'm getting this right.

We jumped in before I had an opportunity to finish that thought, and so if I could continue with these comments and hopefully clarify and address.

We take no exception to the protective plan, and we think it's appropriate and it is the right thing to do.

the specific property conditions and the contextual relationship.

There's an adjacent party wall, whereas at 612 West Main we had a 10-foot alley easement and an adjacent building that was not common property.

We'd like to enhance this language and make it more specific to the property conditions that better address the protective plan and codify that.

There's no objections to it.

We're not seeking to remove that.

We'd like to make some refinements to it to make it more applicable to the specific conditions.

If you're asking me, Mr.

Chair, I'm still of the opinion that even if it's promised that changes will be an enhancement, it's the job of this Commission to review the application and the conditions so you can make your recommendations to Council.

And so you should be able to make your own assessment of whether the revised conditions will be better or more tailored to this site than the

Could I ask another question because we've had this problem in the past with another application?

Right.

So the question is, if you make changes between now and then, will you have another public hearing so that the public has an opportunity to weigh in on that?

And I'm asking counsel.

East Jefferson is a perfect example of a situation where changes were made and the public doesn't feel like they had an opportunity to weigh in.

That's what we're here for.

I'm ready and I don't take exception to the second public hearing.

So the second issue on the parking waiver, which was suggested as a waiver, the net density increase is 110 and that's what we would have to satisfy in parking.

That's a matrix of both BAR review and what the floor plates and what as we craft and sculpt the building to what gets approved and what density could be included and incorporated within that, a mix between one and two and three bedroom units.