Planning Commission Meeting   9/13/2022

I see we're at now 5.31 p.m.

I would like to begin the Planning Commission meeting for September 15, 2022.

We have a lot going on.

First up, I would like to hear from the Planning Commission on what you've been up to the last month.

There's only been there's only been one meeting that I actually just and that was the BZA and that was a

We unanimously approved the setback.

The applicant wanted to build an enclosed, inhabitable area on top of a porch and then build another store on top of that.

And again, we approved that.

Tomorrow, the parks and rec will meet for the first time in a few months.

And on Friday, the pack will meet.

And the focus will be on 5th Street.

And the county and the city will be

will be presenting.

Okay, I went to school.

Good for you.

Well, I mean, one portion of my morning to

Attendance was shanghaied by the aftermath of my transportation discussion.

I'm grateful you are.

Oh, about my dispute about local transportation infrastructure use.

Yeah, this was a Preston Avenue.

I was in the bike lane on Preston Avenue heading to downtown.

And there I was in the bike lane.

And there I was in the bike lane.

and as I came up to Harris and the intersection with Reed and Bodo's, it was red as I approached it and I came up along the line of cars.

I was not going particularly fast.

It turned green and the truck at the front of that line, the driver decided he had a desperate need for a six pack of coke or something.

And we had a dispute about the use of transportation infrastructure.

In connection with that, I had an argument with Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics, which I lost.

Thank you, and please heal up quickly.

Yes.

Ms.

Thank you.

Mr. Schwarz, please.

Yeah, I can't top Phil.

Is it tolerable?

I have no reports.

MPO Tech meets next Tuesday morning.

We'll be discussing the Safe Streets for All grant, among other things, and I'm looking forward to more committee assignments and will be careful riding my scooter on Preston, which has now claimed two planning commissioners, I believe.

Yeah, I don't even mind for

Not too much, like everybody else, but we are busy over at UVA.

There's a Board of Visitors meeting Thursday and Friday.

You can find the materials on the BOV website for that.

Just general things I always talk about.

Ivy construction around grounds is pretty jamming right now.

We've got the Ivy Corridor going on.

The public ground part of that is under construction.

The School of Data Science is, I think it's topped out at this point.

it's coming along very well the hotel and conference center that's planned there against that's kind of laminating the parking garage will be breaking ground soon in October officially as well as McIntyre school expansion in addition to Cobb Hall which they're calling Shumway Hall so that'll

kind of back up to JPA, be the most visible aspect of it at JPA and Brandon Avenue and Ruppel Drive as well.

But Ruppel Drive would be close to vehicles, so it would become a three-way intersection.

So that's officially breaking ground in the neck, I think, early October, or next week.

We might have them backwards, but anyway.

That's the highlights.

I have so many things to go over.

Please have patience with me.

The Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission met and sent out many millions of dollars for new internet to rural areas.

Let's see, I have news from former Commissioner Alejandro, who attended a Board of Architectural Review, who was kind enough to email me about it.

He met at the Levy Building to review material samples for the new courthouse building.

During the regular building they issued certificates of appropriateness for a new quartz building design, the demolition of 210 west upon approval of building permit for new apartment building.

The existing building must be documented prior to demolition.

Goodbye.

and a certificate of appropriateness was denied for the following installation of grates at the fountains on the downtown mall.

Momentus.

The Charlottesville Plans Together steering committee met on August 29th, Mr. Alejandro and myself attending.

We were updated on everything you've seen, all the documents that you've seen.

The video is posted.

There were some interesting questions, which I haven't gotten total clarity on, but I think it's worth sharing and perhaps will be helpful for you to think about it.

The nominated committee has met and decided to re-nominate Chair Lyle Solla-Yates as Chair and Vice Chair Liz Russell as Vice Chair.

Contrary to what the roster says.

So I'd like to make a motion.

Do I hear a second?

I see phones.

Thank you very much.

Okay I'm gonna have James come up in a minute because I know he has a few things but we talked retreat so that was one of my checked boxes one other thing our bylaws for the planning commission allow for the commission to change the meeting that coincides with an election day

so our November meeting would be the second Tuesday which is election day so if you all have interest in changing that we would have to know now so that we could do that

I think in the well I know in the past that was that was included in the bylaws because there were commissioners who were involved in election activities and didn't want to miss those

All right we'll proceed with uh with where um we would normally be and um Mr. Chair no no no we're here it's no worries um uh

Mr. Chair, I know that we had talked about perhaps making the announcement about the BAR individual so that they would have that individual for their meeting next week.

Is that still a possibility this evening?

Just want to heads up that.

Mr. Carl Schwarz will be representing the Planning Commission on the BAR.

Well,

And those are my notes.

So I'll turn it over for others from James.

All right.

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

We are echoing this evening a lot, apparently.

As has been noted, but as a reminder, on September 27th, you all have a joint meeting with the City Council to discuss the Zoning Rewrite Project, and in particular the Diagnostic and Approach Report.

Again, that meeting is about getting your feedback, your reactions, so that we can move forward into the drafting phase.

That's drafting the zoning ordinance itself and the map.

So as Chair Solla-Yates has done, thinking about what questions you guys might have.

And if you're so inclined and share those questions in advance, I'm sure it will help us immensely.

But you don't have to.

In other news, I'm very pleased to share that we now have a building code official after a two-year hiatus.

Mr. Chuck Miller started with us on August 29th, I believe it was.

So he's been with us just for a couple weeks at this point, but already is making great strides in getting us very caught up on plan review, which is very exciting.

And he's already making a big difference.

In other news, Brian Haleska in our office, who you guys I know are quite familiar with, has moved into our support services manager position.

So in that role he'll be overseeing our customer service functions, our new online permitting system, and our data services functions.

So he's formally moved into that position, and again, as with Mr. Miller, is already showing, demonstrating improvements in that and helping us prepare for the reopening of City Hall on October 3rd, which you guys may have heard about.

Or not.

And that's what I have for announcements this evening.

So I guess, you know, given how much there is to discuss at the work session in two weeks, and given that there are 12 of us, is there, I mean, is it a typical work session that's two hours?

That's a great question.

I mean, I think our goal is to keep it within that work session.

We've spoke about it being a two-hour session, but understanding that it very likely could go beyond two hours with the active engagement of Planning Commissioner and Council, and we certainly need to hear from you guys in order to move that project forward.

I mean, this is really an essential meeting for that process.

So, I don't know.

We can

Follow-up, Mr. Chair, should we follow up on that question and think about that some more?

Yeah.

It would be helpful, Mr. Chair, if we, walking into the meeting, we knew exactly what the structure and flow, that meeting would be as well, so that we don't walk in and

Yeah, specifically what decisions need to be made, I think.

I'm going to give you the pages that have changed as opposed to the entire document again and there will be a cover memo and we're going to do a brief presentation because again the primary purpose of the meeting is to hear from all of you and your colleagues on council

Great.

Yes.

I'm sorry.

Gotcha.

Just in case we want to punish ourselves?

Great.

And then my last question is about what each of the other commissioners have said and whether we'll, I mean,

Yeah, we could provide that as well.

The comments we got from you guys back in July?

Yeah, since then.

In terms of structure, something that I've found helpful is have questions shared in advance and then go around the room asking the question.

That seems reasonable.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't think we're limiting the conversation with that set of questions, but that can provide a structure that will get us easily through the first two hours.

Yes.

Other questions on this item?

It's a big one.

Thank you very much.

Absolutely.

It would actually include the CDBG because that's not for public hearing this evening.

All right so what we have been doing in this setting is that we ask for individuals who are present in the room if they want to speak and then we go to our virtual audience and we alternate back and forth

as appropriate and until we run out of speakers and so we're going to continue on that path that will be the process that we will use for that so do we have any of our in uh in the room uh attendees who have interest in speaking during matters from the public

Okay, all right, so we do not have anyone currently in the room.

Do we have anyone in our virtual audience?

It appears that we do.

We have Mr. Peter Krebs as our first speaker and for our speakers to let you know that you have three minutes to speak.

I can hear you.

We can hear you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

My name is Peter Krebs.

I live on Tufton Avenue, and I work for the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Tonight, I wanted to speak in favor of the CDBG project that's on the consent agenda.

I was actually on the CDBG task force for Belmont Carlton, and this type of work is absolutely the types of projects that we discussed in that context, and this is

not Carlton, but it is right next door.

I can say that the lower Avon area is also absolutely a priority community.

So I think it really checks that box as well.

You'll hear from staff or have heard from staff a bit more about the project.

But I can tell you that it's part of a planned greenway system that will connect lower Avon Street to Fifth Street coming out around Willoughby, you know, sort of where Fifth Street gets low.

We know it's difficult actually to get across town.

Imagine, you know, getting from the Habitat houses on Avon Street over to Fifth Street, you'd have to walk up a gigantic hill

and this is really a direct connection.

And as a matter of fact, we already know that there are planned improvements like improvements along Avon Street and along 5th Street as well.

Not only that, but this is also part of the gigantic gesture we're working on between really South 6th Street, Willoughby,

Fifth Street Station and all the way to biscuit run in Southwood.

So this is a small but important piece of a large puzzle.

So yes, please flood in favor of that.

And then also just a few couple of other quick plugs.

I did mention the previous CBBG project, which was a Franklin Street sidewalk project.

that is being handled a different way.

And I understand that element of it, the why and the wherefore.

But it's still an important project, and especially with what's going on on Carleton and Broadway.

Let's don't lose track of that Franklin Street sidewalk.

And last of all, great to hear you guys talking about the Safe Streets for All Grants.

The county is very excited about it.

TJPDC is excited about it.

We know that working together is the best way because that's how we live, but it's also more appealing to funders to see localities working together.

So hopefully I'll hear more over the next couple weeks about, you know, this great opportunity and I hope we get it.

I'll check again do any of our in-person audience members want to speak during matters from the public

Okay so I'm gonna turn back to our virtual audience if you are interested in speaking during matters from the public you'll have three minutes you can choose to raise your hand electronically virtually or if you're on a phone number you can hit star nine which will raise your hand

All right, thank you.

At this time, I would like to close that segment and move on to the consent agenda.

Ms.

Second?

I hear a second.

That's acceptable, yes.

Thank you.

I see that pass.

Moving forward to G, fiscal year 2022-2023, CDBG substantial action plan amendment to the consolidated plan.

Okay, we'll turn that time over to the Office of Community Solutions to present this, and I believe they have other speakers associated with the request.

So I can actually start.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm speaking.

Okay.

So good afternoon, everyone.

As an entitlement community, the city receives grant funding from the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development each year.

The funding we'll be talking about is the Community Development Block Grant, CDBG.

As part of the public participation process, the Planning Commission must provide recommendations in all CDBG activities brought forth by the task force.

For fiscal year 2022, CDBG was awarded a total of $414,907 on May 13, 2022.

The request for proposals that the CDBG substantial action plan amendment, the planning commissioners will be reviewing today, amounts to $178,394.34.

On September 21st, 2021, City Council set priorities for fiscal year 2022 for the CDBG program, and the request for proposals were based on City Council's CDBG priorities, the 2018 Consolidated Plan, and HUD's CDBG-3 national priorities.

For the RFPs, they went through an extensive review by the CDBG Task Force as a result of the competitive RFP process.

Today's discussion will be focusing on the following areas that the CDBG Home Task Force reviewed as a result of that competitive RFP process, which includes housing and priority neighborhood public infrastructure.

Under the competitive RFP process, all applicants were required to undergo a mandatory technical assistance meeting with the grants coordinator prior to submitting an application into the city.

During these sessions, all applicants were able to meet with the grants coordinator walk through the grant requirements and talk about their potential CDBG program.

I met with a total of four interested applicants, and we ended up receiving two applications at the end of the RFP period.

The other two applicants realized that CDBG would be better suited for them in the upcoming RFP season for the next fiscal year, so we'll probably see them again.

As a reminder, the city imposed restrictions on this RFP cycle with regards to timeliness and having shovel-ready projects.

Anyone who did not meet that requirement or who had outstanding balances with current CDBG funds were considered ineligible to apply.

And this was shared with the task force and all applicants prior to application season or the RFP window.

The CDBG Task Force has recommended the following activities for approval into the substantial action plan amendments.

So the first one under priority neighborhood public infrastructure is the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation and estimated benefits for that activity includes construction of the bicycle pedestrian ADA accessible bridge to connect Jordan Park to the developing Moores Creek Trail between Avon Street and Fifth Street at $171,655.34.

And then under housing, the ARCA Piedmont was recommended for HVAC replacement of their Shamrock group home and estimated benefits include replacing their 30 year old HVAC system in the group home benefiting up to seven developmentally disabled individuals and the funding recommendation was $6,739.00.

I'm here for any additional questions and Chris Ganczyk is here from Parks and Rec.

I guess I've got one question for Chris A commenter earlier mentioned that it would connect up to Willoughby or is it just Fish Street near Willoughby?

At the moment, we don't have plans to bridge Rock Creek.

This is a developing system, though, and as we move, there's a sewer line there that gets you to Fifth Street between Brookwood and Willoughby, so you meet the sidewalk and the bike lanes there.

Should we ever cross over to the Willoughby side, that would be something that gets you to Willoughby directly.

Thanks.

Additional questions for staff on this item?

I hear a motion.

Would a roll call be helpful on this one?

Let's do that.

All right.

Mr. Mitchell?

Yes.

Ms.

Russell?

Yes.

Aye.

I believe that passes.

Right on time.

Yeah, indeed.

We've got one minute.

Let's just relax, enjoy ourselves.

We've got six seconds.

Oh, are we good?

Very good.

Do I see three?

All right, I'm getting some audience feedback that we need to continue to work on speaking into our microphones so that those in the virtual world can hear us.

Thank you.

I don't want to throw a thing.

Oh, my.

I see 6 p.m.

I call this joint public hearing of the City of Charlottesville I'm pointing at you, Chair.

What are you pointing at me?

Oh, no.

6 p.m., joint public hearing of the City of Charlottesville Planning Commission and City Council on the issue of a request for a planned unit development at Mount View.

All right.

So you guys are going to hear from me.

Ms.

Farini is not able to be here this evening, but she has prepared us as much as she possibly can.

And between myself, Brennan, and Alex, hopefully we can assist on the staff side with any questions.

So I've got a narrative that I'm going to work through.

if you all prefer me to stand up there I can do that whichever works out even if we're like halfway through and you're like Ms.

Chrissy can you move over there just tell me it's all good um all right well uh we'll start this way and see how it goes um all right um

So background on this, representatives from SHMP Engineering who are here and will be talking with you all later are acting as the owner's agent and submitted the application pursuant to section 34490 seeking a zoning map amendment to change the zoning district classifications

of a number of parcels from R2 to family residential to PUD subject to proper development conditions.

Under 3441, City Council may grant a rezending request and should consider factors set forth within 3442.

So that's the city code section, the zoning ordinance.

When evaluating a proposed PUD in addition to the general considerations laid out, City Council and Planning Commission should also consider factors specific to the construction of the PUD as specified in sections 34 and 490.

And throughout the report, if there are code sections, those have been outlined for you all for review.

The comp plan.

The proposal does meet some goals of the comprehensive plan by providing additional housing options within the neighborhood and in proximity to Burleigh Moran Elementary School and commercial properties on Long Street, which is also the 250 bypass.

however staff is concerned that while the proposed development includes multiple smaller building these building buildings are not house-sized in relation to the surrounding neighborhood and no improvements are proposed for existing streets such as River Vista Avenue beyond the entrance to the development the 2021 conferences plan feature land use map designates the subject parcels as general residential general residential allows additional housing choice within

existing residential neighbors.

Floor should be compatible with current context, including house size structures with similar ground floor footprint area and setbacks of surrounding residential structures.

Up to three unit dwellings, including existing single family splits, accessory dwelling units, and new housing infill are noted as uses.

four unit dwellings are also permitted in this land use category if the existing structure is maintained general residential recommends allowances of additional units and height under an affordable bonus program or other zoning mechanism

staff finds that the proposed number of residential units do not meet the limits of the general residential category and the proposed ground floor footprint areas are larger than those of the surrounding residential structures the next topic area is the streets that work plan

So this development is surrounded by four different streets, St.

Clair, River Vista, Otter Street, and Lindonia Circle.

And they're all designated local streets within the plan.

And local streets are found throughout the city and provide immediate access to all types of land use.

They don't have priorities.

and neighborhood A and B design elements priorities as laid out in the streets at work plan should be evaluated when determining design elements.

So that specifically the local streets don't have the level of priorities that are denoted in neighborhood A, B or when you get into arterial or other streets when you're making those choices, but neighborhood A and B are the closest to those.

Staff's concern the proposal does not include completing the sidewalk network on the south side of River Vista where the development is located or providing pedestrian access from the development to Long Street via Londonia Circle and therefore does not meet the recommendations of the streets that were planned and Mr. Duncan gave you all some information in the pre-meeting and

and we can review that as we move forward throughout the evening as well.

Let's see, the PUD plan does propose on-street parking on Londonia Circle in line with priorities noted in the Streets That Work plan.

A multi-use trail is proposed for Otter Street right-of-way, which can substantially be considered for acceptance.

which could subsequently be considered for acceptance as a public facility by a council if standards are met let's see okay so the subject properties and most of the surrounding properties are currently zoned R2 family residential district

two-family residential.

The R2 district was established to enhance the variety of housing opportunities available within certain low-density residential areas of the city and provide and protect for those areas.

The R2 district consists of quiet low-density residential areas in which single-family attached and two-family dwellings are encouraged.

Staff finds the proposed

Physical characteristics of the PUD generally align with allowable characteristics of the surrounding R2-2 Family District.

The proposed maximum height aligns with the allowable maximum height in R2 District.

Staff is concerned that the setbacks for the PUD are smaller than what are permitted in R2 District, but the PUD plan proposes to disperse the multifamily residential units throughout Block 2 and several smaller buildings

scale or similar to the neighborhood imposes landscape fence buffering to minimize the impact of reduced setbacks on surrounding community.

Staff finds the proposed multifamily residential use is not in line with the purpose of the R2 District, but does align with some objectives of the PUD District, such as promoting a variety of housing types.

Staff is concerned that uses such as daycare facilities, which currently require a special use permit in R2, which I'll note that we had a clarity during

during our question and answer on this.

In 2020, there was a change to that and facilities in R2 do have more flexibility and there are some that are by right.

So just wanted to provide some clarity on that one.

Thanks for bringing that to the table there.

would be permitted by right and would not be subject to additional review provided by the SUP process.

City traffic engineers noted that the majority of generated traffic shown in the study is created by the proposed daycare facility use.

Staff is concerned that the by right development of a daycare facility could create unmitigated impacts to the surrounding neighborhood.

the additional non-residential uses proposed in the PUD plan are generally limited to block one and are of smaller scale but may still impact the neighborhood code section requires any non-residential uses proposed such as art workshops consumer services and general retail uses to be at least 75 feet away from the perimeter of a PUD

however these uses may impact neighborhood traffic patterns regardless of their location within the UD the traffic study indicates river vista avenue and Londonia circle can effectively handle the increase in traffic the city traffic engineer has noted that the vast majority of traffic impact for what the study shows is driven by the daycare use and not from the residential uses

the city engineer finds that traffic engineer finds that the surrounding streets could sustain the development including the daycare facility but notes that again that the daycare is the main traffic generator provided in the scenario in front of you

So the P&D standards of review.

Staff does not find that the proposed development is designed in a particularly innovative arrangement with regard to building placement, open space, or environmentally sensitive design.

While proposing the multifamily units within smaller buildings better fits the context of the surrounding neighborhood, staff notes that most of the proposed residential units are separated from the central green space by surface parking lots and include minimal building adjacent green space for residents

the proposed multifamily residential use is not harmonious to the surrounding residential neighborhood and no transitional use is provided between it and the existing single family and two family dwellings adjacent to the proposed development however a portion of the development is adjacent to commercial property fronting on Long Street and does provide a transition use between the commercial area and surrounding residential neighborhood

staff finds that while the proposed buildings have a larger footprint than the surrounding homes the townhouse style layout with facade and roof differential lower building heights and topography changes and additional screening minimize the apparent size of the buildings and better align the proposed development with the patterns of existing development

Non-standard road design.

The applicant is proposing street improvements to the River Vista Avenue and Londonia Circle Public Rights Way in the vicinity of the development.

Staff notes that the PUD development plan references at least one street that may be difficult to design and construct in accordance with city standards.

At the present time and without the benefit of specific engineering details, it appears it would be difficult for a street to be constructed in compliance with the development standard in city code 29182C, maximum allowable street grade, which is 8%.

However, the city engineer has the ability to grant an exception up to 10% for that.

By city ordinance, this determination will not be made until the time a site plan is submitted for review and approved by city council.

The P&A plan is going to lay out the conceptual layout as we were talking about in the pre-meeting for the proposed streets, but the actual details come to play once a development gets into the site plan phase.

And so we talked a little bit about that.

earlier so according to the attorneys the city attorney's office if city council were to approve this PED plan and proffers the legal effect of that approval is that the landowner can pursue the necessary development approvals under the provisions of the current zoning and subdivision ordinances okay

Council approval of a PED and related proffers does not guarantee approval of any particular design plan if when officials officially submitted they don't comply with the applicable zoning or subdivision standards in these circumstances the landowner assumes the risk that if construction plans cannot be prepared to provide for street improvements that meet applicable grades

and the burden will be on the landowner to either amend the PUD and proffers or identify some other solution.

The applicant is applied for a sidewalk waiver request for River Vista Avenue in order to construct sidewalk on only the western side of the street.

The sidewalk waiver request will be heard by Council along with the rezoning request.

However, staff is concerned that no improvements to the existing River Vista Avenue sidewalk network are proposed.

The existing network on the southern side of River Vista Avenue where the proposed development is located includes multiple gaps where no sidewalk exists.

Staff is also concerned that no pedestrian connection through Lindonia Circle to Longstreet is provided.

and those are points that we made in questions that came up during the pre-meeting so we've talked about that a bit already.

Staff believes development as proposed does not provide adequate external connections to facilitate pedestrian access to and from the development.

all right so proffers there are a couple of sets of proffers there are some affordable housing proffers i'll go ahead and kind of give a review of this if there are any questions that we end up with this we'll get some assistance from Mr. Ikafuna's office

on that.

One of the first properties, the owner shall provide affordable housing within the property.

Three dwelling units shall be for rent, workforce, affordable dwellings reserved for rental to low and moderate income households having less than 80% of the AMI, area median income.

where the monthly cost of rent including any tenant paid utilities does not exceed 125 percent of the fair market value four units shall be for rent affordable dwelling units reserved for rental to low and moderate income households having less than 65 percent of the median income where the monthly cost of rent including any tenant paid utilities does not exceed the fair market value

The affordable dwelling units shall be reserved as such throughout a period of at least 10 years from the date on which the unit receives a certificate of occupancy from the city's building official.

Notwithstanding, the housing income limits identified if after a period of 90 days of marketing,

and available required affordable dwelling unit no lease agreement is executed with tenants or tenants having the income that is noted as identified then no household income limit restrictions for prospective tenants in the available unit shall apply throughout the duration of the lease agreement between the landlord and any subsequent

consecutive rental periods, therefore.

We'll put it in English.

So basically there's concern about the short period of time and how the marketing would occur, which we'll get into a little bit more in detail.

Staff would like to see assurances that the allowance for any tenant supplied utilities the utilities and services that are not provided by the landlord will be subtracted from the proposed rents staff would like to see a longer rental affordability period and assurances that vouchers would be accepted

An acceptable marketing plan on how to market the designated affordable units should be provided to the City's Office of Community Solutions prior to the certificate of occupancy of the proffered units.

When completed and occupied, the owner shall provide an annual report on affordability compliance as well.

If an affordable unit is not leased in 90 days to an eligible tenant then no household income limit restrictions for prospective tenants for the unit shall apply throughout the duration of the lease.

And so here's a little bit more detail on the concerns from our housing staff.

There are no assurances or presumptions on the extent or seriousness of the marketing of these affordable units.

There would be no timeframe to find a qualified tenant and enter into a lease agreement.

If a unit is proffered to be affordable, it should remain affordable for the entire affordability period.

the marketing plan should clearly identify how the owner has a current wait list of qualified tenants or will be working with a partner that would have such a list the applicant noted reservation and bright to make changes to the affordable units the city would consider changes if they're reasonable and would not result in segregation of units or unit reduction in size of units

based on those comments the office of community solutions finds the proffer not consistent with either the Charlottesville affordable housing plan nor the comprehensive plan and they recommend that you reject the proffer in that it doesn't guarantee affordable units and or does not provide for affordable units for a significant length of time the next proffer relates to construction entrance

construction entrances for site development and construction on the property shall not be permitted to connect to River Vista Avenue the traffic engineer does not believe prohibiting construction traffic on River Vista will cause a negative impact on the community some construction activity on River Vista will be required to construct the entrance into the development staff agrees this proffer may limit impacts to the surrounding neighborhood during construction

And then the final proffer relates to a screening fence on the site.

A screening fence shall be installed in the locations that are shown on the PUD plan and may be comprised of generally opaque materials approved by the Director of Neighborhood Development Services.

the screening fence shall be a minimum of 10 feet high unless a lesser height is agreed upon by the owners and the owners of adjacent property where the screening fence is installed along a common boundary if at the time of construction the screening fence an adjacent owner has erected a fence along a common boundary line the screening fence requirement could be waived in the location where the adjacent owner's fence is constructed

the screening fence must be constructed prior to issuance of the first certificate of occupancy for a residential unit within block two staff agrees that a screening fence will provide additional buffering between the proposed development and surrounding neighborhood staff is concerned though that the provision to allow a waiver when an adjacent owner has constructed a fence will not be sufficient to ensure adequate buffering

Staff is also concerned that the fence may not be constructed until the first certificate of occupancy as installing the screening fence earlier in the construction process would actually provide buffering from the construction activities on the site

So in conclusion staff finds the proposed development as presented in the application materials could contribute to some of the goals within the city's comprehensive plan and provide additional housing options in a development that seeks to minimize impacts on the built form of the neighborhood through a series of smaller buildings

Thank you very much.

Impressive.

At this time, I would like to hear questions from Planning Commission and Council.

So, I want to talk a little bit about the recommendation.

The recommendation is to deny.

In the way I read the report, there are three broad reasons.

I can summarize them at the end.

The first is it's not consistent with the plumb.

The second is the affordability component is not consistent with the proposal from the housing group and not consistent with the comprehensive plan.

And the third is there are connectivity issues relating to this.

It relates to pedestrians and to CAT and other things like that.

I wonder if, and again, your report does a really good job of walking us through

the reasons it's not consistent with the film.

Page 16 through 20 does a really good job of walking us through why

the affordability component isn't consistent with what the HACC or the housing allowance program and what the comprehensive plan does.

But I wonder just for the public in very layman's terms, and for me in layman's terms, if you could walk us through why it's not consistent with the plumb.

Is it the density that this is going to drive?

That's question number one.

Question number two is if we could find a way

to make this consistent with the affordability objectives of the comprehensive plan.

Could we then allow for increased density considering some sort of a housing overlay, affordability housing overlay?

And then the other piece is item number three, I think the third thing that you suggested that

What can the applicant do to improve the connectivity?

And again, we talked about it a little bit, but I think if you could just net it out in very layman's terms for me and for the public, that would be of value.

And to the applicant, when the applicant gets up, if they would be good enough to offer rebuttals, their perspectives on these three concerns, that would be helpful to me.

And Mr. Chair, if I overstep my time, please cut me off.

That was fun.

All right, so question number one, we're looking at the future land use map that was recently approved.

Actually, it's been almost a year now.

And the general residential.

And so I outlined kind of what is called for under general residential.

And also we take into perspective the location.

Now, no one can see this.

I know it's super, super far.

but the area where this parcel is is in an area that's completely general residential so

and except for what's fronting on Long Street.

And so that is in a mixed use corridor, of course.

We don't have any medium residential in this area necessarily because the thought pattern for putting that in,

had to do with being on major corridors so there is one couple blocks over off of Locust and Calhoun but in this area there currently is not a very good connectivity which is kind of that last section now there's some proposals as part of this that could lead to some some better connectivity but

if you look at where we are now with the site, the connectivity and reaching the site, it did not meet any of the principles for a higher density because of those pieces.

So that's one thing, that's where we stand right now on that.

Affordable housing, so what they have proposed is,

what they're choosing to propose for affordability and that is what we have to evaluate at this time it was evaluated based on the plans that we as a community have been working through

from an affordability standpoint.

I think really kind of the big keys with this was there's really no guarantee of affordability with some of the language that's included in there.

And the length of affordability,

was of concern because it was short.

And then the criteria that they've used for the percentages of affordability are not in line with the plans that we're moving forward.

So, I mean, it's their opportunity to provide this language,

we have all of these new studies and all of this new information that we've put together as a community and so it made sense to evaluate this proposal based on that and provide you all with that data moving forward

Now, we don't have anything currently that would be an overlay for a different type of affordable housing, but in this case, there's a lot of guidance in our current housing documents

that could potentially use some of the material from the documents that we've put in place as a community to create an affordable situation with the information that they currently have.

So number three, connectivity.

As we talked about, and if you've been to the site, it's a complicated site just because there's a lot of things that just didn't come together.

On paper, it looks very different than when you're actually there.

we had Mr. Duncan talk a little bit earlier about the sidewalk we can have him review that again if we need to as well as some of the entryway concerns and

Yeah, that's very general.

One very last and very brief point.

Maybe Liz, Rory, and Lyle can correct me.

The affordability overlay is not explicit in the comp plan, but I thought it was sort of implicit.

Well, there are a lot of criteria that have been discussed through the diagnostic, which you guys will be talking about in a couple weeks.

as well as within the inclusionary zoning information that you all will be talking about.

And that is going to feed into the codes that would move forward for the zoning aspects of things.

a lot of interest especially we talked about the general residential where some of the criteria there was allowing for bonuses for affordable housing if you keep and maintain the current existing units so there are a lot of criteria that are going to be built into the new code

Well, we were just looking at the comp plan.

So the comp plan does mention one time, as far as I can see, affordable housing overlay.

It's kind of a sub-strategy.

What I remember was the consultant not thinking an overlay would be as effective, but really wanting us to use the inclusionary zoning.

As the tool, I have not listened to all of the meeting, the steering committee meeting, but I just had stopped listening when the steering committee started kind of questioning the inclusionary zoning and essentially, like, does it actually do enough?

I guess I know under general residential it says allow additional units and height under an affordability bonus program or other zoning mechanism, which is I guess sort of the same concept as we were talking about with the overlay.

I guess the question is whether this is more than you would expect as a bonus and gets a little weird because this is one big lot versus a lot of small lots, right?

Actually, I think I've worked through the balance of the affordability piece based on what Ms.

D'Oronzio said.

I'm content.

Wonderful.

Ms.

I have no questions for staff.

Mr. Schwartz, questions for staff?

Wow.

Yeah, I have a couple short questions for staff.

Well, I was going to ask what that purple mixed-use corridor heights were, but since I just pulled up the comp plan, maybe I lost it.

It's five stories up to eight at key intersections.

That's like to the south.

And then...

I did have one question for the Office of Community Solutions Report.

There was one part of that discussion of affordable housing talking about whether utilities would be included.

My read of the proffer, it kind of says, means a dwelling unit where the monthly cost of rent, including any tenant paid utilities, does not exceed

the amount different for the two ones.

Is that not enough?

Good evening, Commissioners.

after everything is added up, you know, it's within the affordability of the tenant.

Based on the inclusionary zoning project that is going on right now and the recommendation is the affordable housing plan, you know,

Anything above, if you add everything up and it's above 60% AMI, it's extremely difficult for those beneficiaries out there.

What do you mean by difficult?

Yes, yes.

Just because, I mean, the rent is less than 30% of the income that the limit is set at, right?

Are we saying that the range is too small?

Yeah, when it goes above 60%, it becomes a problem, very challenging.

And if you listen to the comments at the Planning Commission, but for the most part at the City Council meeting, what we are getting is that 60% range.

And the Deputy City Manager at this time is preparing to go to the City Council to change

that affordability target instead of 80% AMI to be 60% AMI and below.

For 3412?

Yes.

Okay.

I guess maybe my question would be, I mean, in the standard 3412 regulations, which this proper is fairly not standard, but the income limit is 80%, but the rent is fair market rents, which is a little bit under 60% AMI, right?

And so if you lower the limit to 60%, are you also saying we're targeting rents lower than fair market rents?

Which is about fair market rents.

I mean, fair market rent, I think, is like 58% depending on... And then I think that I'm below and also...

the level that we are the applicants looking for housing can use the vouchers.

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely agree with that concern.

Well, I mean, 30 is under 60, right?

I'm not sure what you mean.

So my understanding is the rents for this are going to be fair market rent.

The income of the tenant has to be 65% or lower.

If they are engaged with the vouchers, yes.

But the point is that if you're above that,

where folks can compete on the free market side, the 65 and the 80s don't help you in terms of that population.

You mean if there isn't a voucher holder able to attach?

Yeah, I mean the 90 day thing I think is, we'll talk about that.

Sorry, I have one more question for staff.

So one time when we did 209 Maury, I don't know, four years ago-ish almost, we did a comprehensive plan amendment to change the map along with the zoning code.

And I mean, this seems like maybe a case where that would make sense, where it is general residential.

you know we heard from several other churches that they wanted to provide housing and we kind of switched them to high and I mean this is a big mostly vacant lot we've heard from many people and I think it really came through in the comp plan that we want to maximize the use of vacant lots so that there's less change within already built out neighborhoods you know I could conceivably see a pretty decent argument for changing this to I don't say medium

Dentsy Residential, which is, or Intensity Residential is fairly close, I think, to what is proposed here.

Is that, is a ComPlan amendment, I mean, it's a living document, as we've said a million times, is that something we would, like, consider for an application like this, where it wouldn't necessarily comply with the flung?

or is that kind of extra overhead where maybe we can consider that in our heads but not bother with the paperwork or fold it into any amendments we make next year?

What did we do with that one time and not

In the other situation, there were areas that were similar land use.

And we're not surrounded by, I mean, this would be

Yeah, I mean, I think you can make an argument that, you know, the plan calls for transition zones.

This would be a transition from that five to eight stories.

I mean, I don't want to, you know, make that argument here.

I guess I just want to understand, you know, when we would consider a comp plan amendment or who even, like, did the applicant at 209 Maury propose comp plan amendment?

I have a question on what is a house, what is house sized, which is a larger question, but specific to this area, the homes fronting on Landonia are duplexes.

They have a larger footprint on the ground.

Is that a house?

Very good question.

Let's see if the outline there.

I was trying to see if there was any specific data.

I mean, we don't have a definition in the zoning ordinance that says house size.

Boom.

Yes.

It's more the compatibility with the surrounding area that ends up being the focus.

I think the duplex you're talking about is 2,000 square feet.

What about the church?

No.

Yeah, I guess this gets to what Mr. Stolzenberg was asking.

Maybe in the new regime as things evolve with the new zoning rewrite, will we still have, will PUD still be a thing that we do?

That is a very good question and that is definitely one of those items that we'll be evaluating as part of this review I can see why there would still be some value in having that tool because I think that in this case for example it's not I think to what Mr. Stolzenberg was talking about Stolzenberg was talking about

you're sort of trying to make the case for how this might be feathered in or whatever to an MIR or high intensity or whatever I can see why one might want to make that argument but at the same time this is sort of like a

is kind of a donut hole, and it's what do we want to do with this donut hole?

How can we make the most use of it for the whole community?

And so I assume there will still need to be some sort of mechanism like that.

I think that the questions of how you would connect a PUD to the surrounding area would be something we'd have to think through.

I live in what I think is a PUD at the end of St.

Charles.

Anyway, that's no real specific information to provide beyond that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I had some, I think a lot of my comments have been addressed and mine was, you know, what I heard is that staff is recommending denial.

Yeah.

So,

My comments were just concerning the conditions, particularly about the affordable housing and marketing.

This may have already been addressed, and it just seemed really complicated, and I was a planner for many years.

And what I tried to do when I wrote them is because we were reading conditions and proffers.

that were done many years before.

And it's like, we have to write them so that we have to assume that whoever's reading them now is not here.

And so the way they're written, I think that you would need, there's so much wiggle room in there.

It just seemed like you could have an elephant to do the shuffle in there.

It just seemed like it's a lot.

And I really didn't understand the marketing thing.

I mean, I just think I can tell four or five people

in the community about, you know, some football housing somewhere and it will be filled.

And so I just think that, you know, housing authority, social services, I mean, I'm in the county, we do that a lot.

I know they do it here.

It's just like you can tell people that now they have units and so you can market it in certain magazines and stuff and no one would know about it.

You say, well,

We tried.

No one adhered to it.

And also had concerns about the longer period, but that came up.

And I understand the concerns about the pedestrian connections and that you have to be there, but as we see now, we're kind of going back and kind of filling in the gaps, trying to address it with the schools, and so anything that we can do

With that, I would like to have that addressed as well.

But it seemed like a lot of my concerns have already been kind of covered.

I'm just kind of sharing some of my thoughts on what I read and what I heard today.

So I don't think there's anything for you to respond on.

I just kind of wanted to kind of put out there where I was at this point.

And thank you.

Yeah, with respect to the

With respect to the affordable housing piece, has anyone tried to do like a sort of conversion of what is in this document, the PUD, the housing language there to what would be expected with the new IZ?

Did you discuss that earlier?

Maybe that was in the report and I mentioned it.

It would be interesting to know that if we were in the new world, what inclusionary zoning would be required in this case in terms of bonus and so forth.

I'm working through the reports now, but I can't say that I could do the math.

So that was the math kind of on what if this were general residential and then, you know, a road was built through it and subdivided into it, what would be the by right?

This is Lyle's question.

Don't look so confused at me.

It was 16 lots with as many as, you know, so that could be 16 three flexes.

Yeah, and then, so 30 and, oh yeah, right, right.

So the big one would be 50 units, including 10 affordable.

And this is the back of the napkin using the few criteria that are kind of set in the code and raw land.

And of course, we know there are lots of circumstances that come into play.

I think that's the step of figuring out in the general residential by right scenario.

I think if you imagine a situation where we were looking at, I don't know, this exact rezoning in a year after we do the IZ ordinance, for a multifamily development, the IZ report would say 10% affordable at 60% AMI at 99 years, right?

Dean Everton, Justin Schimp, engineer for the project.

I have Kelsey Schleim with me, who's the planner in my office, and I've done a bulk of the work on this.

We also have Bryce Craig with Craig Builders, who is the applicant, the builder for this project.

They're remote.

I should also mention Vito Cheta.

I don't think he's on the call, but if you know Vito or know of him, he's an architect around town, has helped us with the design for this.

He's done a lot of great developments around Albemarle County over the decades.

and design developed a lot of the rendering work for us.

So, acknowledgement to all those folks first.

We have a presentation.

Can we get that brought up?

In the meantime, I appreciate the effort that was made of the three factors, right, of this basically, which is, and my short perspective is this, is that one, I think we have some compelling information that says, hey, this meets general residential, we think we can make a strong case, that as it is, it does.

To the affordable housing, I can tell you I would like nothing better than for Charlottesville to have an ordinance

we all like because every I don't know how many years now even kind of going back and forth each project by project to something that we try to get that makes sense and I feel like every time it gets more complicated not simpler so I know that's in process but for the moment we're working with what we've got we started this project 18 months ago I think was the middle of the affordable housing information we put in was probably back in February or March

So some of the stuff that's being discussed, I think some of the latest inclusionary zoning stuff even came out maybe a couple weeks ago.

So if our stuff doesn't match that, we haven't seen it.

So, and we're certainly open to other discussions about how to make that work, but I think the whole, the conversation, all the questions that came about really illustrate how it's best handled in an ordinance that is evenly enforced across all projects and is simpler for applicants, for landowners, for engineers, and those, some of these plans to work through.

So, with that, I'll start out with one final comment, I guess, on the affordability, because it was said, I think, that the staff, if I heard them right, that our proffer is written such that after 90 days, the unit would not be affordable.

But that's not the case.

The rent is locked in.

There's a marketing period which is only marketable to somebody at the 80% and below AMI.

That marketing period ends, the rent still stays the same.

but somebody who makes more money could apply for the unit.

And the origin of that is there's a concern, and maybe it's unfounded, but is the concern that if you have these affordable units, what if no applicant comes along in 90 days?

Right.

And it seems like that shouldn't be the case.

But we left that in there because it's not clear to us, like, is there a city department that has a list of these folks?

Is it some help to get those tenants in line?

And I think that's probably something that, moving forward, we can work on revising and even removing.

But that's the reason it's there.

It's not that the rent would change, but rather if no person qualified comes forward that makes little enough money, then we would be able to still rent the unit out to someone else.

That's what it was.

So starting with our layout here.

This is a Vito's rendering of the project and what you'll see is the layout.

We have sort of larger buildings set back towards the commercial.

What's behind sort of bottom of the page is the Bank of America building and then church, you'll see that label there to the left of the page and the residential neighborhoods sort of top of page.

You'll see here, one detail I want to point out here, and we'll show it in our renderings later, if you look between the two large buildings that back up the bank, there's a little of the pathway in between that goes down to the shared use path, and there's two little sidewalks that go off.

So those each go to courtyards.

So those are units that have a sort of first level courtyard.

that each unit has a little side patio that feeds off to the side there.

You'll see more things here.

We've been creative in trying to figure out ways that every unit has a nice little space to it, whether it be a small unit or one of the three-bedroom units.

Next page, please.

Now I'll cite context.

This is important, I think, in thinking about what part of the general residential and that sort of transition zone makes this make sense to us for the different typology of house we have here.

And what you'll notice here, basically everything in the brighter is a non-single-family residential type use, right?

School, all the River Road stuff, there's a couple, there's a Rivanna Terrace multifamily, and of course there's a Hudson that was just built down on River Road, and then of course all the Pantops across the way, almost all commercial.

So this site is positioned certainly next to some residential, but also adjacent to a lot of other uses, not single family residential.

So if we can go one page down again.

This was a useful map to just look at the 1500 foot radius from that 250 River Road intersection and what you see is that again concentration of zoning not single family.

So to us this says that was part of the inspiration for pushing to a higher density and sort of higher a different unit type is really

is a bank next to us.

There are some residential, but within eyesight of this is the bypass, River Road, all the commercial uses.

So it's a different sort of location than just any general residential.

If we pop page north, the very top of this page, it would feel weird to have that kind of development up on those neighborhoods.

But as we sit, the proximity to what's really a major intersection, where I guess we'd have five to eight-story buildings in the future,

It makes sense to us to make something a little higher intensity, a little more of a buffering and also just provide housing that can be connected to a lot of places.

Next, please.

So here's a more detailed kind of CAD line of our concept plan and there's things to highlight here what you heard about in the proper presentation and there's adjacent to the lower density we have the screening buffer and then also screening fence and then you'll see we have that in the bottom page there's that 10-foot multi-use path that's part of our connectivity so we do get folks

Even without further offsite improvements, we get folks from the neighborhood up to St.

Clair on a shared use path and then Otter Street is, I mean, not perfect, but it's also pretty low traffic as far as getting up to St.

Clair.

There's maybe three houses on that street.

And we have some thoughts about the connection the city is interested in that we'll get into at the very end.

Next please.

so connectivity map just of you know where you can get to from here as again part of our inspiration for this plan of density was looking at this is a convenient location certainly by car but even that even on foot you can get around the number of parks you can get around down to the Rivanna trail

and you can get over to the school all within I think it's 10 minutes to school and 10 minutes to the Northeast Park there for example.

We know you'll see in orange those potential future sidewalk connections.

I think those are the two missing pieces that the city engineer pointed out and we'll go back to those at the end.

We can keep going.

Zooming in a little more, but same concept, again, focusing on that connectivity.

You'll see all the bus stops within the five-minute walk of the site, so we have easy access to those from the property.

Again, minimally using that shared-use path and the Otter Street connection, but again, possibly connecting through River Vista as well.

Next, please.

Now, here's where this, we look at this site and we look at the general residential sort of framework laid out in the comprehensive plan.

This is the, this description is what the comprehensive plan lists.

And it notes about the two and a half stories, the three-unit dwellings we discussed, plus the additional for affordable.

and also note it says consider ways to support townhomes in this category on a site specific basis and that's why when you zoom out and look at this site in the context of being a block off Longstreet being a thousand feet down to sort of Pantops area this is not your average general residential location so we think that really to us says this should be

geared that direction, and then we took the idea of a townhome and said, well, what if we divide that up?

So instead of it being a $600,000 townhome, it's a series of rentals that are much more affordable and gets more density to the broader public.

If you could just move this page down just a little way so you can see the whole map.

Just as an example, so we looked at a couple of lots around adjacent lots and said what if the zoning has changed, this is general residential and you take any one of these parcels and say I've got a .121 acre lot and I'm allowed by right three units on that.

The density of 25 dwelling units per acre.

That's the kind of density we're essentially calling for in the general residential, looking at an example of these lots with three or four units in them.

So if you take our project then and divide that out, you see we have the 72 units max including the sort of future phase, the church block.

That's 22 DUA.

So it's not really different than what type of density you're envisioning in the future land use map.

So that's why if you look in the context of the site-specific location, the provision for townhomes, the thought that these structures could be townhome form but

serve a broader population being divided up into residential small units.

That made a lot of sense to us.

I have some pictures of that.

Next slide, please.

You see townhomes pretty frequently mixed in with single-family residential, actually.

Albemarle, if you're in a certain R4 or R6 zone, kind of their middle density, you actually see it quite often in a large plan.

But just an example of some things around, there are some townhome structures there on Park Street that I don't think ruin anything.

I think they're very nice.

Riverside Village is a project that we did in Albemarle, and it's kind of interesting, that picture you'll see there on the left of Riverside Village, the units that have their back to you, those are actually duplexes.

This picture, the unit across the street, you see kind of a little three-unit townhome there?

That's actually six units.

That's townhome over a basement apartment, essentially.

So those six-unit buildings are smaller than the two-unit buildings across the street.

So to the point earlier about, you know, what's the size of a home, it can vary a lot.

But this is a situation where that form of townhome is very similar to what we're proposing.

And it fits in that neighborhood beautifully.

And the reality is, if this were to be built sort of by right in the current R2 zoning, the structures that you see on the lower side of that page there are what you would get, massive duplexes.

So to think that a large footprint is not sort of going to happen in the current market, it is.

How many people live in it is kind of the question we're getting to.

So go down a little further if you would.

One more neighborhood in the city maybe you've been into, it's Cherry Hill.

Similar, it's a mix of some small lot, single families and some townhomes.

It's a perfectly fine neighborhood.

The townhomes and single families can coexist quite nicely together.

Next slide, please.

So we've talked about some of these, but just to reiterate, in the comprehensive plan, looking at some of these broader goals, we think that one, the map, the language speaks to having this sort of town-home type structure, and we hit the accessibility, and maybe we can improve that in one way, and we're willing to explore that.

But, and we do in fact work, and we'll show you in a minute, we really do work with the grades on this to get this density in a way that does not seem like large structures.

Let's move on to the next slide and show you some of these images.

So here's a breakdown we want to do.

So this is actually a 15-unit

building that looks like a five unit townhouse row and what you have in this picture here the yellow is a sort of a stacked a townhome structure firewalls on each side and then it's one two three units basically a flat unit on each level so it's three units there and then those are two bedrooms I believe and then at the end that unit one is a three bedroom unit below that are two efficiencies

And so in that lower level, those efficiencies then walk out on grade.

They have patios beside them with those walkways connecting them to and from.

So each of those units actually has a really nice private patio accompanying it.

Next, please.

This is a cool sort of background of this.

So this is a project out in Crozet, Wickham Pond, that Vito Cheta, also our architect here, developed himself years ago.

And these were the affordable, in the same way, a stacked unit.

These were the affordable units for that project.

And what we've come to learn is that I think they're about five years out past their sort of limited, they were 10-year affordable.

They still rent for the affordable rents today.

They were structurally designed to be an affordable unit and after the period of affordability was over, they've stayed that way.

It's really something we're trying to do here.

Ultimately, to get the affordability folks want on a low scale, it's going to require subsidy.

But you can also create structures that don't cost a fortune to build, don't require government loans.

Like you'll see all the big apartment complexes you see, right?

They all have pools and clubhouses and all these amenities because they have to because the financing mechanism requires them to do that.

And so you inherently are required to build luxury apartments because that's how you finance them via HUD-secured 40-year loan.

The small guys, the Craig builders who are doing these smaller projects, don't do that.

They don't have the access to that.

They also don't do the alternative, which is your LIHTC and your tax credit, which gets you that.

So this townhome sort of product allows you to build a structure that does not have to have a lot of luxury amenities, does not have to have elevators and things of that nature, but yet with some creative thinking provides accessible efficiency units that will be affordable for the affordability period, but I think also will stay affordable through their lifetime.

and that's really what we have to be thinking about is to get enough housing supply here where structurally we don't have to restrict it that in fact there's adequate supply where rents don't increase 10 or 15 percent year-over-year and create this kind of density with this kind of unit we believe is a really good way to approach it.

So if we could go down, next slide.

Just to the last few slides, and I'll take questions.

Just to give you a little context, we had a design develop, did a nice model for us.

This is looking from the commercial side, and you kind of see the three stories on this side, and that's sort of the premise of this, is that from the commercial looking up, you've got three stories.

From the residential looking down, it's two stories.

We step into the hillside.

Let's go to the next slide.

This is a view from the church, looking kind of down.

You'll see, again, it's hard to pick on this picture, but basically the units right closest to us are two stories on that side, in the basement sort of at grade, exiting towards a shared use path, which is on the right side there.

And again, the upper side, same way.

We have our three unit structures.

The structures up on the residential side, those are sort of three townhome units, so they're about 66 feet wide and 40 feet deep, which is actually about

20 feet narrower and 10 feet shallower than that duplex I showed you at Riverside Village.

So that is like 20% smaller in footprint than a duplex that the market kind of, you know, wants to see, just for some context of what that building is.

And we were intentional in that.

If you look at this, you'll see, obviously, there's the smallest buildings for the residential, the larger buildings back up to the commercial.

Next slide, please.

One more of these, which is the kind of opposite direction.

So you're looking kind of from the entrance of Bird's Eye, from the entrance looking up towards the church.

You see church parking area labeled there.

And this is that little section of units far right of the page.

Go one more.

This is sort of ground level, looking to see the church steeple in the back, and they're kind of looking up that street.

And you can kind of see, if you look on the left side there, you'll see the sort of two-story nature of those buildings.

And that's the same feel you'd have if you were in the residential neighborhood on River Vista looking down towards those units.

It's basically a two-story townhome.

Next slide, please.

A couple of rendered views to give a blow up of that.

So here's the uphill side of those units and that's the 15 unit building right there.

Down to our left would be that little patio space where the efficiencies are and then again those other units above.

All the units have some sort of outdoor space.

They have porches or outdoor patios regardless of their size.

Next please.

Close-up view now from the three-story side and you'll see these would be the walkout on grade, your accessible units would be all across this level.

And that would include, I think all the efficiencies would be to be accessed from that ground level accessible side.

So I think those would be people who are on fixed income, who may, you know, disabilities who need accessibility and affordability, those are kind of structurally for them.

Next, I think that's where our last rendering.

Yes.

I'm sure there'll be discussion on this.

We'll just go over one change.

The city code's a little funny about what proffers can be amended or introduced in the course of a meeting.

What we did hear from discussions after this was submitted to now was that there's essentially a problem with using the FMR or 125 FMR because the voucher pay rates aren't necessarily tied to that.

They're tied to a rate set by the housing authority.

and so our proposed amendment, instead of having three at 125 and four at FMR, we would do all seven at the CHRA payment standard.

That way it's just simple.

Somebody can afford, has a voucher, they qualify for those seven.

and it's just year by year that number may change.

So our rent we can charge will be set essentially by what CHR has the payment standard for that year.

So we thought that was a little cleaner just so there's not, there could be a, I think a comment was under the current standard there could be a gap where somebody didn't, for some reason if let's say the payment standard dropped to 99% of FMR, the voucher holder wouldn't say qualify for the unit.

So we just wanted to avoid that.

The intention was always for those folks to be able to access these units.

At one time, we understood that a 125% was a voucher eligible, and it is for certain funding, but not for all of it.

And so to simplify everything, we said, look, most of the vouchers come from the CHRA, payment standards, whatever it is, we'll accept that as the rent limit.

So that's the amended proffer.

We would, we have a possible solution to the off-site sidewalk, but because the way the city code is written and staff, if I'm wrong, we may need to bring that up sort of between now and city council, because I don't know if we can actually introduce something new at this point in time.

But for sake of discussion, I'm not introducing this as an actual proffer, unless I'm told I can.

We are open and willing to fill in those two missing pieces of sidewalk on River Vista.

We've been by the site.

Those comments didn't really officially come to us until the staff report.

But they were mentioned earlier by some of the neighbors.

So we've kind of been on the radar.

But we went out there and looked at our survey.

We've had some surveying work done since the beginning of the project.

We think that is buildable.

So we'll have to talk about how that can be integrated.

We'd like to be able to kind of move forward what we have tonight with the understanding that

That's a concern and we are prepared to address it.

We just may not be able to include that proffer officially tonight.

Legal counsel is on here.

I've got to stop saying counsel.

Actually, if you would just, I'm done, but if you want to go to the next, there's one more slide, so let's leave up there for sake of if they're discussing any proffers.

This is just an illustration of where the screening fence was specifically proffered, the yellow highlights there was that location.

I think there was some language that folks had a question about.

We said, if the neighbor had a fence and they don't want us to build one, we wouldn't have to.

I think that's, we ran across a situation in Albemarle where we proffered a fence and the neighbor already had a fence.

and we had to build fences, or the county let us out of it, but we in theory had to build fences side by side that there was grass and weeds growing between no one could maintain.

So we're just trying to avoid that.

We'll provide, the neighbors want a fence, we'll provide it.

And on the other fence question of are you going to put this up before construction or right at the very end?

It could be done at the very beginning.

The fence is not in the range of, you know, we're not going to hit it or anything like that.

Construction for block one construction.

Yep.

Hey, guys.

Could you just repeat the question for me?

Ms.

Sure, so there was a question about a change to the housing proper from what's currently provided to a different criteria and that was on a slide a few minutes ago and then the

Yeah, so I think in both cases, because they're relatively substantial changes and relative to what we advertised as would be going forward, then this would be something where we'd want to do

essentially to defer, amend, and then re-refer for hearing with the changes that were made.

So if I could speak, yes.

So I think alternatively, the Planning Commission can make a motion on recommendation on what's before you.

Proffers can be amended, but a new public hearing would be needed but for the City Council meeting is how we understand it.

And so we're just not sure if they're sort of understanding the Planning Commission that this is what's expected to get fixed.

Does it need to go back to the Planning Commission or simply does a new public hearing

suffice at the City Council so that those items can be re-advertised.

I mean the Commission can provide a recommendation.

Preference can change within the code limitations.

Council can hold an additional hearing and then they can choose whether they're going to take an action or whether they're going to kick it back to the Commission.

Yeah.

Agreed.

I think if if it was to to put them forward as recommendations from from the Commission that would then

So the recommendation that we make needs to be based on the application as it exists tonight?

Correct.

Okay, so let's keep that in mind as you deliver it.

What if we can go one slide back?

Can we go one slide back?

Let's do questions at this time.

Mr. Mitchell, please.

I'm sorry.

I'm wondering if Ms.

Takafuna, Alex, can you tell me what I think about the amended proffer on the affordability?

I think there is, like I said earlier, the focus of the city, you know, even the inclusionary zoning that is going on is 60%.

That's the target.

And the proper changes being proposed right now is just still pretty close to what you did.

And there are several issues here we listed.

which the applicant hasn't addressed and they include the affordability period because 10 years before you know it, 10 years is here.

The city is looking for a much longer affordability period and actually with options to renew if it's possible.

The marketing plan hasn't been discussed.

It's easy to say that we can talk to CRHA, but it's more than that because

The applicant, we have to also reconsider his timeline, 90 days timeline.

After 90 days, if you don't hear anything from anybody, that's it.

Well, in the opinion of OCS, that's not it, because we don't think that the 90-day requirement makes any sense, and it doesn't help the city in terms of meeting the affordability period.

So this alone,

is just part of the overall staff recommendation.

There are still several issues here that the applicant needs to discuss.

Just to Alex, really.

Please.

Because amending it to be the amended proper statement as presented, would that potentially mean that those seven affordable units could be always rented by or only rented by people at 80% AMI?

Yeah, the way it is right now, which is we're trying to get a definitive decision on that.

So that's what it is, because it's easy.

for those folks at that income level to find a house to rent.

But the folks, majority of the folks, or largely the folks that actually needs the housing, they are the folks at 60% AMI or lower.

Mr. Mitchell, do you have questions for the applicant?

No.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

I did, and I was wondering if we could go back to a slide, the DUA slide.

So I think my question is kind of related to how you're factoring that DUA and whether it's taking into account blocks one and two.

It's probably like page six or so, seven.

So how would it factor, could you roughly do the math on what it would mean on the actual development?

So 29.

29 and a quarter, yeah.

Two acres, 2.05 acres.

Two and a half, so, okay.

Right, I mean, but you see what I'm getting at, right?

Like you're factoring that whole entire site where the church is and, you know, there's just more open space.

Yes.

I would just add, though, keep in mind, we have a lot of maybe, you know, 400 square foot units among that 29, right?

That also skews a number up, but that's kind of a positive, you know?

So it's a number worth comparing, but you've got to go into the weeds.

You're right.

You've got to look at the whole acreage, but then I would say counter.

If we got rid of those efficiencies and made more two and three bedrooms, we would be right back in line.

But is it a better project?

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I don't know if this is probably a nitpicky question, but looking at your setbacks that are listed on the plan that you've given us and comparing that to the kind of massing plan of where the buildings are and whatnot, I'm just curious why there seems to be a pretty big difference.

You have pretty small setbacks, but you're

what you're describing as building out seems to be pulled back quite far from the much further from the property lines.

Let's go up.

Let's see.

Well, I think you're probably thinking of the, and Kelsey, feel free to join me, because she has the map in front of all those numbers, and I'll tell you wrong.

The side setback is five feet, which is actually, that's the current, the R2 setback as well.

And so really, since our structure height doesn't exceed the R2, it's actually a two and a half story, so I think you can probably be 35 feet in R2 now.

So our structure size, in many ways, is actually not

that different from like a height adjacent to a property standpoint than what would be already there.

The other setbacks are 20, right?

Yeah, we do have 10 off of the property boundary, but I don't know.

You were more so in your presentation kind of talking about the mass and that the two foot mass is adjacent.

Sorry, sorry about that.

You were talking about the two story mass in the presentation, how the two story mass is adjacent to River Vista.

And so we do, we're a little, the buildings that we have behind the homes that front on River Vista are a little further than 10 foot.

I mean, we could make that

setback a little increase.

But I guess, does the city allow encroachment off the top of my head?

I'm getting that confused.

Because I would say another issue with the setback is we could increase it even more, but we do have porches and covered porches on all of these.

And I don't believe the city allows encroachment.

And I guess when, and this is a question for staff, I guess, is when we approve a PUD like this,

Right.

I mean, they're giving development criteria.

They're basically creating the zoning for the site.

And so this is what is referenced as part of

Okay.

Because, yeah, the rendering show, I mean, the maintenance of the buildings is significantly further back than the 10 feet.

But I can see where they've got porches and things sticking out.

Good detail.

Thank you.

Yeah, I've got a few questions.

I guess I'll start with the easy ones.

The green space, would that be open to the public?

I think technically not, as far as like a, you know, it's not dedicated to the city or anything like that.

Hopefully people get along and they come and hang out, but in an official sense, no.

It's a green space for the community for the neighborhood.

Okay.

Landonia Circle.

The engineers have told us it's going to be very hard to meet standards.

It's difficult.

It is not impossible.

The issue would be under the current regulations.

We probably have to put a lot of retaining walls along the edge of the right-of-way, which can be done.

Should it be done or not, we don't know.

So it's a, we would hope that we could work with city staff on the site plan.

It may require some amendments to code or it may require us to be creative with something else.

But it is, it's our risk, essentially.

I think what the attorney has spelled out is, well, you've said you're going to do this.

You can't do it.

Don't come crying to us, essentially.

And so we realize it's our risk.

I think, though, there's a benefit to that connection.

And I think everyone in the city that we've talked to agrees with that.

And so we just need to find the right solution.

And maybe you have to build some retaining walls, and that's the cost that we have to incur.

But it may become some other solution where we can get an easement from neighboring property.

There's other ways it can be done.

It's just a matter of we don't know how folks will cooperate with that or what exact measures will be needed, but it can be done.

It's just a matter of we would prefer it to be done with a different slope, but that will involve potentially changing some codes or getting special exceptions that we just haven't worked through yet.

Yep.

If you were to proffer the sidewalks along River Vista, you know, I know one of the properties in that gap has like a parking pad that is sized about the size of a car and is partially in what is probably the right of way that would be used for that sidewalk.

How do you deal with something like that?

Do you extend that parking pad a little bit back to help them out?

Well, yeah, if they extended the right-of-way, we would basically cut it at the right-of-way line and pour concrete right to it.

So the sidewalk could get constructed, and we would fill in whatever gap is in there.

There's no sense in leaving, like, a spite strip in your neighbor's head.

Oh, too small.

Yeah, I don't see why we wouldn't do that situation where we're working there.

Again, the developer here is a local developer who's been around 50 years.

There's no need to go to your immediate neighbor and anger them over something that's as trivial as like $300 in concrete.

All right.

So down about slide, page 16, anyone else?

So these are the changes to, you know, quantity of units, rent, income limits.

The 90 days, yeah, the 90 days.

No, the 10-year duration, you mean?

That's a little different story.

I mean, I think that

I can't think of a project that's got 30-year or 99-year affordability without some kind of subsidy.

This is already, if you look at something beyond 10 years, this is like a $200,000 basically donation, call it, to affordable housing when you make this sort of reduced rent restrictions on this kind of project.

And so it's hard, obviously.

Could it be 11 years or 12 years?

Sure.

I'm sure it could, right?

But it's just sort of hard to figure these things out on the fly, obviously.

It would be much easier for us moving forward if there was, hey, it's going to be 30 years or nothing, because then we need to do 30 years or we'll do nothing.

And by our standpoint, you could vote her up or down, but we have some knowledge going in.

When prices are negotiated with property owners and land you're buying, it's with certain expectations.

and then so we come here now and say, oh, well, we need you guys to shave another $500,000 off your income for the next, you know, X number of years.

That's what we're talking about if you extend that from, say, 10 to 30, right?

The developer is losing a bunch more rent income, which, you know, they need to still build the project.

And so I guess I understand those concerns.

I think at a high level, though, I just have to ask sort of the question, until like we have a policy that gives us all clear guidance,

Are the folks in need of housing this town better off or worse off if this is approved?

It's saying, oh, well, we don't have our 30 years, deny it until we figure out what we're going to do about that policy.

How much is that accomplishing?

So if somebody comes forward to us, maybe a city council with some kind of specific guidelines we can talk to them about, we're happy to entertain those things.

It's kind of tough to just toss things out, especially, again, we started preparing these numbers, this project, 18 months ago.

And so a lot of this information that came out about what you guys are looking for is way after that time.

Sure.

I guess I would say with regards to out-year rent subsidies, time value of money is a thing.

Money 20 years out is discounted.

Also, your rent as your building ages is going to change and get probably proportionately lower.

That obviously is a bigger conversation than I'm sure we'll get into in depth as we talk more about the IZ report that came out.

Now moving away from the big parameters of an affordable housing proffer, which price, income limit, duration, we have I think come a long way since I first joined the commission in how these proffers are worded so that they can be administered properly.

And I think we've largely moved towards, you know, for the most part, you proffer adherence to the regulations adopted under 34-12 , which provide a set of standard operating procedures for how the city should manage your units.

And then, you know, on top of that, you make changes to those major parameters of how it works.

And you have been involved, I think, in a lot of these proffers over the years.

Why is it that the text of this proffer has regressed to an early 2019 level?

that there's no discussion of how the city is supposed to administer these.

I mean, things OCS is talking about, like a marketing plan, those things, and acceptance of vouchers, those things are all covered in the standard operating procedures, right?

They add a lot of clarity and a lot of ease of enforcement, but you've given us

Sure.

So I think in presenting this amended proffer, we're really just changing an amendment to the rent cap and the income element and how

for those seven units.

I think everything else in the proffer, the reference to the declarations approved in a form by the city attorney, which then that standard declaration references the SOP.

All of those, all of that language that we presented within our proffer statement that we presented months ago on this application

We'd like that to stay for enforcement.

We certainly don't want to do a regression for how these are enforced and evaluated.

But in just presenting this payment standard, it was really just new information that we've received over the

you know past few weeks that you know the 125% with the CISREP vouchers isn't always secured and you know that's a city funded program and that that funding might not be funded every single year and so just using the payment standard might be a simpler mechanism to ensure

Yeah, sorry, I don't mean this stuff.

I mean that original proffer statement.

I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I would probably disagree that saying the written Declaration of Covenant

that would be approved by the city attorney would require adherence to 3412 .

As far as I understand a proffer, unless you write it in this proffer, it doesn't apply.

Sure.

Well, it was definitely never our intent to forego any type of marketing plan or to forego kind of the

many of the items that are brought forth in the standard operating procedure.

Sure.

So let's get into some of those specific things that aren't mentioned in your proper statement that the standard operating procedures talked about.

Mix of units.

Standard operating procedure requires you do a mix of units commensurate with a mix in your project.

In this case, we are proposing a mixture of units.

So it would be roughly proportional, but right now it would be a mixture between efficiencies one, twos, and threes.

Okay.

That is not in the proper statement.

So for us to enforce it, it needs to be in the proper statement, right?

Let's see, the 55th, providing them in the 55th CO, you know, typically we see that they're provided as you build it.

If you were to downside this project by 50% or by 20% or actually even, you know, what, 10%, you would seem to not have to provide any affordable units altogether.

Was that intended?

No.

It was more so intended that in block two, which is where the primarily residential units are concentrated, that the proposed max bill out there, it allows for up to 60.

The design that we've worked up is 59.

And so prior to that project being completed, all affordable units would be provided on the property within block two.

and so that was where the 55 number come it was more so of a in our mind and presenting it that way an assurance that the affordable housing would be provided when this project came off the ground but I hear what you're saying and that's something that we can you know clarify as far as because I know the standard operating procedures also recalls for you know not concentrated and

a particular building or not concentrated on any one floor.

And it kind of covers all of those assurances.

And so that certainly wasn't the intent in presenting the 55.

OK.

Thank you.

And thank you.

The only thing I didn't hear mentioned when I was reading through some of the public comments

There's a statement about stormwater and how you're treating that on the site.

I think the comment was it would be great if more of the stormwater was handled on site.

I didn't hear anything in your presentation about whether it is or isn't and that sort of thing.

I'll just bring that up.

Sure.

So there's a provision in state code, and I actually pulled it right before he came because I knew this would come up, 9VAC25-87-69B.

And that specifically says,

And so I think our hesitation in that and we've had this experience in other localities where we've

explored stormwater completely on site as part of a rezoning or special use permit action, and that was found to be unenforceable just because of the word shall in that section of code that allows for offsite options.

Yeah, so I guess, so, essentially, we have found it to be, Albemarle County told us this, it was essentially unlawful to proffer that we would have onsite.

We couldn't use credits.

However, I'll say this, I've had two projects in the last year where we actually had to do some sort of onsite water quality because you get a quantity benefit from that, too.

If we have good soils that perk, we may very well do an infiltration system here, and that would treat water quality on site.

I'm just miles away from knowing if that's feasible on the site.

So there are circumstances where it's essentially, even if you're permitted to use the credits, you have to use on-site treatment of quality because you get essentially a benefit to your quantity component of that.

That's a question, I guess, if it's called out the plan, so I think so.

Yeah, I think that would be called out on the application plan.

One question.

Why is the church doing this?

Well, I don't think anyone's on from the church to answer that exactly.

What I can tell you, what we know is the

The church and the developer have known each other and they just got together and said, hey, we have this land.

The developer is interested in doing a project.

I think they're interested, obviously, in ensuring that the money for them will be useful in renovations and their ongoing expenditures to the church.

in helping their church grow.

They're also interested in the daycare component.

I talked about that in traffic context.

I'm going to talk about it otherwise.

But the church is very interested in that, and the PUD basically gives them a by-right daycare, which we know is something that's very needed.

And I know there's concerns about that being a special use permit, but we've tried to help some small operators start daycare.

It's hard enough to start a daycare without having to go through zoning.

So we felt like that's something that if somebody in the community wants to do that, we should make it as easy as possible, our perspective on that.

Sorry, Chair, do you mind if I jump in and talk about the family day home thing from your CTA?

Briefly.

Your use matrix seems to be based on an old R2 use matrix where family day homes 6 to 12 are by special use permit only.

That was changed in 2020 thanks to Commissioner Solla-Yates.

But you have those by special use permit in your use matrix or PV.

Would you be willing to change that to be commensurate?

I mean, it seems weird for someone in a three-bedroom, if they wanted to have a family day home or six kids, for them to be the only ones in the city who couldn't do it, right?

We should change that, yes.

And I think, you know, child care is a big problem.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

I don't have any questions.

I guess my thought is similar to other projects that have come before us is I think the criteria we should be evaluating

the affordable housing component on is the inclusionary zoning which now we have defined and I think we should try to stick to that at 10% of units, 60% AMI at less for 99 years which is what's in the inclusionary zoning

report based on a market analysis of what was financially feasible.

So if it were accurate that that is not at all feasible for a developer, then we should really rip up our inclusionary zoning report.

But I'm expecting their market analysis was not that off base.

But, yeah, I mean, that's my general thought, and the affordable housing proffers aren't meeting that standard yet.

I would say, overall, I think it's kind of obvious that this density fits in with general residential, in my mind, and residential uses.

I think this is the kind of density and project that if our zoning rewrite encourages, then it would be a success.

Excuse me.

Sorry to ask such an obvious question.

Are we tonight focused just on phase one or phase two as well?

Ms.

Because we've only spoken about in terms of like the... Right, so we've got the non-church building phase one and two.

Block two, yeah.

Right, that's where the details have been denoted, but they did provide some general parameters for block...

2, Block 1, with the church building.

Yes.

So it's 6...

Okay, sorry.

And are those specified separately?

I mean, they're going for a specific number, but they have noted 60, so we would...

Yeah, so phase one slash block two would have 60 units is what we're looking at, and seven of which at this point are being put forward as affordable by those criteria.

Okay.

So Block 1 might not have any affordable housing.

Okay.

So the max number of units is 72 on this whole site, and if they only do 7, that's 10 percent.

Do you have any questions for the applicant?

No, thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Wade, questions for the applicant?

Thank you.

At this time, I believe we are ready to hear from the public.

Ms.

Sure.

All right we will follow our path such as we did with matters from the public and what we've been doing with all of our our public engagements at planning commission meetings for public hearings so what we will do is we'll have our first speaker called from our in-person audience

and then we will alternate to a speaker in our virtual audience.

So those in our virtual audience, you can be preparing to virtually raise your hand or if you are on a telephone, you can hit star nine for that feature.

And we'll start with our in-person audience.

It looks like we have a number of people who are interested in speaking.

We don't have necessarily a preference if you all have a concern.

Good evening.

My name is Kristen Sakis and I'm here to speak in strong support of the Mountview Housing Development proposed for the lot beside my house, which is on Otter Street, where that path will be.

I served eight years on the Charlottesville City Council

and sat through many of these meetings, and I want to thank you for your service.

I'm having a hard time sitting still back there.

During my time on council and at planning commission meetings, I watched repeatedly in frustration as countless good proposals for denser housing in the city were denied because they were not perfect.

The result of those years of denials and of zoning that encouraged large houses on individual lots is that our city is experiencing a crisis, an unsustainable shortage of housing.

developments have been pushed further and further out into surrounding counties to house people who work shop and play in the city the resulting traffic as people commute to those distant homes morning and evening creates congestion and environmental degradation as well as a reduced quality of life for the people forced to spend their non-working time in their cars this project is not perfect

but it offers what I hope will be one of many responses to that crisis.

We need housing.

We need middle range affordable housing as well as affordability at all income levels.

And we need to be courageous and bold in responding to the trend that is making ours a boutique city where only the rich can afford to live.

I agree with staff recommendations on longer affordability and an assurance of Section 8 type vouchers and I hope the applicant will agree to those conditions.

And I also agree with my neighbors who urge the applicant to handle a majority of stormwater on site rather than relying on credits.

runoff from this parcel uphill and so close to the river needs to be handled carefully but when our city moved to Locust Grove almost 30 years ago or when our family moved to Locust Grove almost 30 years ago it was one of the only city neighborhoods we could afford

The small houses and short setbacks had created a community of working class families who helped one another, talked to one another from their porches, and walked their children to school.

We love Locust Grove, and we want it to continue to be a community where regular people can live near where they work, be less dependent on cars,

and enjoy their diverse, friendly neighbors.

Thank you.

All right, so our next speaker will be from our virtual audience.

Please recommend to the City Council that the request of rezoning of the PUD for this project be denied for the following reasons.

The revised application appears to make little concerns previously shared.

Upzoning to the PUD in this setting undermines the need for medium intensity residential, currently R2 and general residential in the new FLAM.

If you upzone and general residential as proposed here, it creates a question as to whether the classifications in the new comp plan mean anything.

It undermines the basis of the proposed up-zoning currently underway and it creates the impression that exceptions and approvals will be given to do more or less whatever, wherever and whenever.

The architecture is demonstrably inconsistent with adjacent established homes.

It's up to 35 feet tall and lacks the qualities of adjacent buildings, e.g.

sidings versus bricks.

It's also worth noting that scaleless development, 35 feet, may be permissible in medium intensity residential neighbourhoods if adjacent lots are consolidated.

Medium intensive development per the current wording would be by right.

No staff review, no planning commission, no council input.

And unlike this development, no traffic or inadequate parking.

Thus, this development serves as a warning to residents in medium-intensity residential neighbourhoods, such as my own, that apartments of similar height may be approved by Wright, except more likely in an entirely uncoordinated design.

I will note that medium-intensity residential has an extraordinarily low representation among lots owned by the Planning Commission and Council members.

It's also problematic that the church has its parking spaces empty approximately 160 hours a week, while adjacent traffics absorb parking and traffic.

It would inconvenience the church very little relative to the overall impact of the project required shared access to church parking and vehicle access in addition to the proposed entrances on River Vista and Landonia.

Storm water should be handled on site and not via payment in lieu.

It is incredible to have the developer write his own traffic impact study.

It's too conflicted to do this job properly, and there's little evidence that city staff at the time to properly vet it.

The lived experience of adjacent residents does not match the statements in the impact study, basically, that streets can handle the added traffic, nor the denial of any real traffic problem.

258 and adjacent streets are chronically overloaded in the peak hours.

Eastbound is backed up from Freebridge to Locust and sometimes to Park.

The Planning Commission and the Council would be wiser.

to get their long-term and medium-term transport plan in order before approving developments such as this that worsen conditions.

Instead, they've allowed the adjacent county to trample all over this particular neighborhood, i.e.

the northeast quadrant, by their consistent inaction.

See, for example, the county developing a rile corridor that terminates into city residential streets, a county preoccupation with widening 250 outside of the city limits, ignoring the damage done inside the city limits,

while failing to build their promised eastern connector.

Ongoing dangerous conditions undermine the focus on pedestrian and bicycle alternative pedestrian bicycle alternative transport.

The existing zoning zoning is R2 and in the 21 plan clause for general residential

I think residents in the neighbourhood are a reasonable expectation that the zoning around them is stable.

If zoning is not stable, that zoning means nothing.

Ad hoc up zoning destabilises the market and the Planning Commission and the Council ought to owe some loyalty to existing new and long-standing neighbouring residents.

The rezone is particularly contrary to the interests of new incomers who wonder why they bought into the instability of the city residential market when the adjacent county is more stable.

Hi, my name's Elizabeth Alcorn.

I own property and live on Calhoun Street, which is two and a half blocks away from this project.

In the current form, I am encouraging the Planning Commission not to support it.

Like the previous speaker said, we have a serious traffic problem in the neighborhood.

The traffic engineer just looked at the donut hole and did not look at the donut.

I live on Calhoun Street, which was mentioned by the developer as being a thoroughfare going to the park.

It is also a thoroughfare for county residents

to use it as a bypass against and away from Route 250.

During rush hour, we have very, very heavy traffic cutting through from 29 North, from John Warner Parkway, Ryo Road, crossing a North Street

past the park, past my house on Calhoun and down Bellevue.

Calhoun and Bellevue are very, very small streets.

I went out today and measured before I came.

We have 12 feet on Calhoun Street in between parked cars, which are legal.

We also have a bus going through there.

Two weeks ago, one of my neighbors two doors down had her car totaled while it was parked on Calhoun Street because of the narrow width of the street and the heavy traffic.

So until this problem is fixed, there should be no development going on at the neighborhood.

If you do fix the traffic, I would also encourage no access from vehicular traffic from this development onto River Vista or Otter Street.

All traffic should exit 250.

250, the River Vista and the Otter Street should only be reserved for pedestrian and bicycle traffic due to the traffic problems that are already existing in Locust Grove.

The other reason I think that this project needs to be

denied in its current form is stormwater runoff.

As the developer said, you are 1,000 feet away from the Rivanna River.

This neighborhood already has inadequate stormwater facilities.

We have failing stormwater and lack of gutters throughout parts of the neighborhood.

We have clogged storm drains that are not being maintained.

We have been

St.

Clair has been on a map for stormwater improvement and it has not happened until stormwater and let's add on to that groundwater problems in the neighborhood are dealt with any developer building should be required to deal with all stormwater on property just like all the other neighbors in the neighborhood are having to do

Brandon Collins, I can.

Good evening, Planning Commission.

My name is Brandon Collins.

I'm a lifelong resident of Charlottesville.

I live close to where this is being proposed for.

I urge you to take no kind of action on any of this this evening.

It probably comes as no surprise, but the proffer on affordable housing needs serious attention.

But I think it's good to consider, you know, why are proffers there?

And they're really to, you know, if you had a really robust, amazing affordable housing plan for this development, it would offset the number of concerns that came from the staff about the design and development of the property.

And so, you know, I'm not a big fan of the staff chiming in on how

you know people should should build things on their properties but they had a lot there and very little discussion on that this evening and I think you know one way to say well we we can be comfortable with this is is to hear that this is going to provide an a deep amount of affordability in terms of the income levels that are served the number of units and the length of time that these things are affordable and I think

looking to the inclusionary zoning is a good step in the right direction.

But again, as a proffer, what you're looking for is for something above and beyond so that you can do something above and beyond what's kind of allowable or what is desired.

So I think in a number of ways, this whole proposal isn't ready for prime time, certainly not the affordability proffer, but I think also

other elements of the design.

That said, we should be supporting the development of this area and greater density to be able to provide affordable housing for all income levels and we can do better.

I just want to do a quick note about subsidy.

You know, I think it's somewhat insulting to hear that a subsidized property is somehow providing luxury housing because of federal requirements.

If you're operating the property as you propose and you're accepting a voucher, you too will be receiving a subsidy and whether you are or aren't, it's going to be the same exact amount of money as it is for low-income communities that provide additional amenities.

I think you were trying to make a point and it came out really bad so I would really hope you can consider

who gets subsidy, who benefits from subsidy, and how many more people can we help with subsidy rather than considering it a hindrance for others that you don't have.

So I just wanted to throw that out there.

All right.

Good evening to everyone.

My name is Elizabeth Hand.

I live at 907 St.

Clair Avenue, which is just across the street from Mount View Baptist Church.

So what happens with this proposal, I'll be watching out the front window.

I want to preface what I say.

is coming from a resident obviously of the neighborhood but also as a follower of Jesus Christ according to his teachings and therefore within my heart there's a great love for our neighbors and a great desire for their well-being and so I don't want my opposition to the proposed rezoning to be construed as a rejection of growth in our neighborhood growth in our community or a rejection of

of people who need affordable housing.

I want that to be very clear.

My issues with this proposed rezoning is that the number of units is several times higher than the surrounding community.

I believe that many people have already made the comment along the way that

If you were just to look at medium density or general density, you'd be looking at something slightly less than this and not completely outrageous compared to the rest of the community, the neighborhood.

So in terms of the number of units proposed, it is not consistent with the neighborhood.

My main concerns had already been addressed in letters sent to the Planning Commission and also CC2 City Council.

Density was slightly too high to match with the surrounding community.

No addressing of the stormwater treatment or management on site and also the lack of clarity on the affordable housing.

So all those things have already been touched on.

Traffic is definitely a serious problem as many people have already mentioned.

Just one little bit of data to add to this because I don't want to repeat what people have already said.

And of course our car has been struck while parked on the street as well as our next door neighbors just recently.

So we're definitely on the same page on that.

But in terms of walkability and pedestrian friendliness in our community,

Burnley-Miranda is the elementary school across 250.

They currently enroll 275 students.

Of those 275 students due to the bus driver crisis and shortage, 45 of those students are able to ride to school on a bus and obviously they prioritize those students.

There's 60 plus students on the waiting list for the bus line as well.

but the remaining 230 students of those 230 who remain despite efforts to delineate the crosswalk, put it in crossing guards, only about 82 or 83 students actually arrived to school walking which means

Hi, I can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, my name is Josh Kron.

I live on North Avenue in the Locust Grove neighborhood, a few blocks away from the proposed development.

I've been in this house here for about 14 years now.

Since then, this neighborhood has seen almost no new housing being built at all, even though we're

one mile from the downtown mall.

It's one of the least walkable neighborhoods in the city.

And that's mostly because there's no retail amenities, no non-residential uses in the neighborhood.

None of that is allowed.

It's almost 100% single-family residential.

And

So that makes it very unwalkable, and our neighborhood looking ahead is never going to become walkable until we can increase the density to support non-residential mixed uses.

Contra the earlier commenter, lack of density is what's holding back walkability in our neighborhood.

It's not the cause of unwalkability.

The pedestrian connection thing in the staff recommendation was a little bit confusing.

Like I said, there's a lot of problems with pedestrian connectivity, but it's kind of a chicken or the egg thing.

Like if density or new housing is being denied because it's not walkable, those are the kinds of things that will create the incentive to improve

connectivity.

So it's kind of like we're being stuck in a mid-century car-centric world when the neighborhood has a ton of potential and really should be allowed to grow and prosper.

To echo what Ms.

Seiko said earlier, I'm hearing a lot of

technical details about why this project isn't perfect that I don't pretend to fully understand.

But from a layman's perspective, it seems like if we wait around for perfect projects to magically appear, then we'll never build anything and the housing crisis will just get worse.

On an even higher level, I just want to say we make it so difficult for normal people to live in a home, in a place they like, in a community they want to be a part of, and it's really frustrating.

All right, so our next speaker will be in-house.

Do we have any other in-person speakers?

Okay, it doesn't appear that we do, so we'll go to our next virtual speaker, who is Stuart Walton.

Okay, so I would ask that the Planning Commission does not approve this as it stands right now.

I have zero problem with the quality of the building.

I don't necessarily think it matches the neighborhood as it stands now, but change happens and, you know, that's such as life.

But I want to focus more so my request for

Denial at this time is I feel this development has been pushed through too fast without some major, major details being worked out in advance.

I know Josh and Kristen, you guys both spoke to, you feel that it's being, we're kind of getting hung up on small details, but I live at 1212 River Vista.

So the connector road to River Vista is literally right beside my house.

You know, all I hear is that reasons why this shouldn't happen, but then exceptions to the rules are being made.

That's why we're here.

You know, it is zoned R2 for a reason, but we're going to forgo that rule.

The grade of the road going from the development up to River Vista is beyond what is allowed.

That rule is set for a reason.

It is a safety standpoint.

So you guys are saying, oh, we're going to forgo

I think the term was the city engineer will grant an exception.

I'm a father of a three-year-old, and I can tell you I do not want any exceptions when it comes to safety.

When it comes to parking on River Vista, I don't have a driveway.

A lot of houses here don't have driveways.

If we do, it happens to be a one car where each house may have multiple cars.

So River Vista is essentially a one-lane road.

What I'm hearing is that we're going to forego

We're gonna overlook rules that involve safety when you already have essentially a one lane road because there's so many cars parked on the road.

There's also another thing that wasn't discussed at least in something I heard tonight was I believe there's 60 parking spaces for 72 units here in this development.

So the overflow parking is not just gonna fit on Landonia.

It's gonna spill over to River Vista.

So we're putting more cars

in a tight area and then overlooking rules as far as safety in driving.

I don't want to downplay the need for affordable housing, but these things must be addressed prior to the approval of this development.

If that means less houses or less units, so be it.

But these details cannot be overlooked before approving this.

I just don't...

There's too many things at stake here, guys.

Like when it's your three-year-old playing, you don't want to overlook that there's too many vehicles on a small road.

You would feel differently if you were in my position.

Okay, this is the first time I've ever attended a meeting like this, so this is kind of a wild experience.

I will say that a lot of this meeting was somewhat impenetrable to me, which I find, and I have a PhD, and this is a little bit troubling to me from the perspective of democracy and community development in the sense that it is difficult to get here.

It is difficult to wait two and a half hours through a meeting and to try and understand it.

So,

That is sort of a meta concern I have.

What I would like to echo on behalf of myself and my family is we are overwhelmingly committed to sort of the promise of having denser development with affordable housing.

This is hugely important for both environmental reasons and issues of equity, but the promise with respect to environmental sustainability

And equity is in many ways predicated on issues of accessibility and connectivity, right?

These are things that allow us to be less car centric.

These are things that allow people who cannot afford cars to get to places of work, either on foot, on bike, or through mass transit.

And as many of the folks on this call has expressed, this is not necessarily an easy place to live in terms of, say, walkability.

sidewalks, you know, they're only on one side of the street.

They don't extend all the way.

All of these things make it extremely difficult.

And as folks have also articulated, there are many streets around here because of the parking on both sides, they're effectively one lane.

So as it stands, just getting down the road is often akin to like waiting to take turns to go under a bridge.

And so in a sense, we have slower traffic, which I guess is a good thing, but by accident of lack of design.

And so

You know, I'm not sure how I feel about this.

You know, and part of the issue then that happens is, as has been mentioned, there is currently no longer bus service for kids going to school.

Even when there was, they would have to walk up to Locust or the, sorry, I guess it was on St.

Clair.

But many of these kids would have to walk there to get to the bus.

And so at the moment, they're effectively having to sort of be on the street as cars are trying to push off to the side just to take turns.

And so with this in mind, I think while I am overwhelmingly committed to the goals of the project, I have a hard time supporting it in the absence of more substantial and public facing information about, you know, sort of both traffic impact, but also

you know there was mention of sort of you know proffers for connectivity and extending sidewalks but in the absence of a more substantial plan on that front I have a hard time supporting this and I do want to sort of express concern one of the earlier speakers suggested that the traffic feasibility study was done by the developer themselves that seems like you know a substantial conflict of interest that makes it a little bit hard

to justify to the public.

So I know that that doesn't come across as a clear statement one way or the other in the sense that I support the goals of the project, but to have a lot of concern about how it's being carried out.

But I did sort of want to express my sentiments.

All right again it does not appear we have another in-person speaker and right now we do not have any hands raised on our virtual audience I wanted to give our virtual audience the opportunity if we have anyone who is interested in speaking to go ahead and

raise your hand virtually.

If you're on a phone line, you can hit star nine, which will raise your hand, and we can call on you that way as well.

I see, Chair, that we have another speaker on our virtual audience, David Hirschman.

DAVID HIRSHMAN, There I am.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Very interesting to hear my neighbors weigh in on this.

We've had some meetings and a couple meetings with the city, and we appreciate Brendan and Carrie having two meetings with us as the neighbors.

I live on Calhoun Street, been here for 28 years.

And I think what I want to bring up is a little bit different, sort of an observation of what we talked about.

and somebody referred to the back lot as a vacant lot but it's really kind of the backyard of the church and that church has an existing parking lot which is

not very efficiently used.

I mean, it's used a little bit on Sunday.

Obviously, if they do a daycare, be a lot of drop off and pick up, but still not really an efficient use of a big swath of impervious cover.

And as we all know, more asphalt and more paving

is resulted in more runoff, but equally important, it gets hot.

And this is part of our climate dilemma is that we're creating so much asphalt and heat island for the city.

And I think really looking to the future and as we change zoning and we change development patterns, we really got to look at more efficient use of impervious cover.

And in this case,

there was kind of a refusal even with some the neighborhood weighing in during the community meeting that maybe shared parking or just a more efficient use of the impervious surface could be designed into the project but obviously there's other points of view and that didn't happen and so the impervious cover gets replicated to serve the development in the back and it continued inefficient big

We have a swath of impervious cover up front next to the church.

So we're just creating more.

And I guess my plea as we think about zoning in that we just got to get creative with this because I don't think anybody wants us.

We all want density.

We all want housing to be more affordable, but we just don't want to cover everything with asphalt for a variety of reasons.

Creative solutions are there, but it takes a willingness and it takes a design approach that would allow that to happen.

So in this case, it doesn't seem to be happening.

And I just hope as we move forward with the zoning, we can figure out how to turn hard, hot asphalt into cooler green vegetation.

All right we have another virtual speaker Lindsey Tinson Lindsey can you hear us Lindsey are you able to respond

Okay, they lowered their hands.

Are there any other speakers interested?

At this time, I would like to close the public hearing.

and I would like to begin consideration.

I'd like to start with Mr. Mitchell.

So our little city has a housing policy problem.

We ain't got enough houses in the city.

This application and the site that relates to this application would go a long ways to address the housing policy problem that we

What I also like about this, we can increase the density in that area, build a nice little development, and not tear down a lot of trees, so the canopy, our city's canopy would not be negatively affected.

So I like that about this a lot.

Ms.

Creasy, correct me if I'm wrong, we need to vote on the application that has been presented, not the application that we want it to be.

Correct.

is the fact that we can increase the density and address the housing positive problem with this application.

And like the fact that we can do that without ripping down a lot of trees, but we need to get the issues fixed as it relates to the infrastructure, and we need to get the issues fixed as it relates to affordability.

So my tendency at this point will be to vote against

that we should vote against this.

Council still has the opportunity later to address the issues that need to be addressed, the infrastructure issues, the proper regarding the sidewalks that the applicant has suggested they'd be willing to address.

The applicant has also suggested that they'd be willing to work with staff to address some of the affordability issues.

So I would ask council

So, yeah, I agree that

It is on paper a good spot for a high density and I agree that we have infrastructure and material issues with the site.

Part of me is I'm sort of at least two minds on this, one of which is that we can't really work through the site engineering problems while we're trying to improve at this stage.

it really nice if we could, but we can't.

And some of this seems to be in terms of handing that off to the site plan and the engineering issues that if we move forward, if the Commission moves forward, we're essentially making the sign of the cross that that's all going to work out and it will be fine.

So, too, I guess, is the developer, because if it doesn't, they don't build.

and I'm not sure where to hang my hat there.

The sense of the perfect being the enemy of the good, I do have an empathy for that position too.

And then as a larger issue, I think for the next year to 18 months,

we're going to be dealing with the same series of questions that we're dealing with here which is we have an existing set of rules that is changing and we think they're going to change in this way but they haven't yet and we have one foot in each world and we're trying to muddle through and make it all work and I think our options there are one muddle through and make it all work or you know go on sabbatical for a year

and maybe six months from now I'm going to feel much more warm and fuzzy about that second option than I do at this moment.

But it seems to me that we're going to have to make a bunch of decisions with rules we don't quite know.

And in general, I do have a belief that increased density forces and defines the services that follow it.

that have to follow it, too.

Ms.

So I think one of my struggles and issues with this application is the framework in which we're being asked to review it.

We're being asked to review it as a PUD.

And I'm not sure that we can, well, you know, I don't think it does meet a lot of those objectives as outlined in city code.

And that's why I'm sort of struggling with, well, you know, I like some of the things that it's doing.

but when you look at the site as a whole it seems like we're trying to you know this PUD is trying to

shoehorn its way in by really ignoring the church parcel.

And frankly, I'm not convinced that there's any real intent for that phase two to ever be acted upon.

However, I do find, to your point, Mr. Shemp, the point about the daycare use for the church and greatly understand, not personally, but through a lot of friends, the issues with

you know that parents have with with daycare in the city so I certainly see the need it's a shame that there is no better process or you know more viable process to make that easier for businesses so maybe that's something we can consider I'm also a little

concerned about the idea that, well, I agree that we need to find solutions for smaller developers to be able to help contribute in a way that's economically viable to the affordable housing picture.

However, I also understand that our affordability nonprofits can't compete with market rate developers for acquiring land.

And so sort of how do we balance the flexibility to keep open parcels and projects that might be great candidates for deep affordability projects and LIHTC tax credits.

So, and finally, I think I feel hesitation in this plan and perhaps undermining the work and the intent of what we're doing with our comprehensive plan in trying to convince

residents, the public, especially in general residential neighborhoods, that infill development can be, you know, can work within existing neighborhoods and context and scale.

And I'm not sure we're, you know, that we'd be doing that in this.

Don't have a whole lot to add that hasn't already been said.

I think actually Councillor Payne probably summarized my thoughts pretty well, which is, you know, I think this project should, let's try to find a way to make this work.

I think it would be, it makes sense.

You know, to me it seems kind of like changing the future land use map to show medium intensity right there, but I think as a transition from the corridor intensity that was shown along 250, that seems to make sense.

and the big holdup seems to be the affordable housing.

Our comp plan has affordable housing as part of it.

We've got the inclusionary zoning report, which is I guess the best that we have right now.

And again, I think my understanding is that is about 10% of the units are supposed to be at 60% or less for a period of 99 years.

So I think we need to hold future development to that.

And, you know, I guess I recognize the concerns with, you know, traffic and parking, but that seems to be a concern that we have everywhere.

And it is a, you know, the city seems to, we're in the middle of a reckoning on traffic and parking, but we just don't seem to take it seriously.

And I think it's probably about time that, you know, if we're gonna get our comp plan to work, we're gonna have to take it seriously.

Mr. Stolzenberg, please.

Yeah, thanks.

I mean, I'm largely in agreement with what we've said so far.

I have no problem with this density.

The scale is very appropriate.

I mean, two stories adjacent to the nearby homes is eminently reasonable.

And I do think we need to make the most of our vacant lots.

And we have language in the comprehensive plan to that effect.

We have language in the comprehensive plan about transition zones and transitions in height and intensity.

And this provides that from that five to eight story area next door.

you know whether in the exact text of the comp plan or the future land use map this fits the the text of general residential whether it would be appropriate for an amendment that we don't want to do the paperwork to do or whether it you know makes sense just to have that transition zone because it's at an edge between two different designations I think those are open questions that probably don't really matter at least at the moment I

I think as a PUD, it is great in a lot of ways.

I remember watching the community meeting in Albemarle County for Montclair and Crozet, which is this same sort of family-sized, things that look like townhomes with family-size, multi-floor

three-bedroom units on top of efficiencies which are naturally rent for less and are more affordable.

And I remember thinking this is great and innovative and I'd love to see this come to the city and there's no way at all it works in our existing zoning.

And PUDs are for making innovative things work and I think this is a great example of that.

From a connectivity perspective, I live downtown.

I took my scooter up there in about eight minutes today and eight minutes back.

It's a great little commute without getting in your car.

It's going to be very possible for people to commute downtown without driving day to day.

And I appreciate finishing off those interrupted sidewalks, which is an absolute scourge in the city, and this is a particularly bad case with just how easy it is to fix it.

I would note while you're thinking about finishing sidewalks, staff noted your connection down to Landoni doesn't quite go all the way.

There's like a 20-foot chunk right at the bottom.

And maybe think about finishing that too so your residents can get right over to Doodle's Diner right there.

without having to walk in the street.

But yeah, the proffer, I think from the nuts and bolts perspective, if you put all the affordable housing parameters aside, I mean, you basically agree that you would fix all those things, but you gotta fix it.

And I'm honestly a little disappointed in you guys after all this years back and forth on how these texts work that didn't include the basic language.

And on the parameters, I think the payment standards thing is reasonable.

I've talked to Mr. Sales about it in general.

I think it makes sense for helping people attach vouchers.

And the, I mean, just giving a sort of preference or heads up to CRHA so that vouchers can try to attach is a good idea and should be in our SOPs.

But, you know,

How that fits into our IZ ordinance, clearly the parameters in terms of duration doesn't.

In terms of rent, it does.

It's at about 60% AMI.

And then that income limit is kind of where things get squirrely, right?

And this is going to have to be a bigger discussion, but if you set the rent at 60% AMI,

and you set the income limit at 60% AMI, only people at exactly 60% AMI can find that unit, or people lower can, but now they're cost burdened anyway, which might be okay.

It's still cheaper than they can find otherwise.

You probably want a little bit of flex room in there.

I don't know how we figure that out in the long run.

I'm glad to see we're not going to do it the way the county originally did, where you just reset after 90 days and half their affordable homes got sold at market rate.

And, you know, that's going to be an open question, but I appreciate that at least the rents are set at levels that 60% AMI can afford and that people can attach vouchers to.

And from that perspective, I think it's all right to move forward.

Mr. Palmer.

I don't have any comments, thanks.

Thank you.

I rode my bicycle up to the site yesterday with my daughter, whose comment was, where's the park?

You know, it is hot.

It is hot on that parking lot, for sure.

There are no trees.

You really feel it.

In many ways this is a very exciting site.

It is surprisingly accessible.

I went from McIntyre Park to there and then to Riverside and it was actually a really nice bike ride.

I had a nice time.

I think it's obvious that something can fit well at this site.

I'm not sure that this is perfect.

I don't think anybody thinks this is perfect.

but I'm encouraged that this is I do think this is going in the right direction and I do hear efforts to put it further towards the right direction that's very heartening to me.

I don't really have much else to share besides what I already did other than to say I

I just think sometimes the perfect being the enemy, the good argument, well, I understand why it's necessary because the status quo forever was a complete opposite direction.

I think if we accept that we're all working in good faith to try to make it happen and nobody is secretly throwing out any reason they could because they actually don't want anything approved ever.

That argument can just get a little simplistic just for the fact that it's at this stage and when council votes on it are the only time we have the leverage or power to make it any better.