Planning Commission Meeting   10/11/2022

I see.

5.33 p.m.

I'd like to begin the Charlottesville Planning Commission meeting.

I'd like to start with Commissioner Reports.

Yes.

There were a couple of meetings.

The Lupec group did meet on the 16th in a number of topics.

One was presented by Mr. Duncan, and he presented the Fifth Street Study.

This is something he already presented to this body a couple of months back.

Just a couple of brief reminders about Fifth Street, because Fifth Street is something we're going to be talking about a little later on today.

In that area, there have been 95 crashes since 2017 and 2022.

Four people have died in those crashes, and six people have been hurt pretty badly in that area.

Also recall that you kind of walked us through some possible fixes.

There are fixes included roundabouts, guardrails, road diets, that's where you limit the lanes, photo enforcement, and bike lane enhancements.

We are waiting for some direction input from council as to, you know, which of these, which or if any or all of these fixes we're going to embrace.

The county presented as well, they're worried about safety, but their big issue is congestion, traffic congestion.

And they've got a number of projects that will address that, but they'll also address other issues.

They're talking about another bus stop or bus

found about at 5th Street and Old Lynchburg Road.

And they're talking about shared paths and things like that.

A concept designed for Raya Road, the Raya Road corridor plan was presented.

And this really focuses on the eastern side of Raya Road.

So the eastern side of Raya Road as it crosses 29.

Another interesting report from Albemarle was the 29 and hydraulic intersection and the improvements they're thinking about there.

And the improvements will make it more pedestrian-friendly and pedestrian-safe.

They're talking about, as we've all hoped for a long time, a bridge that goes from west to east or east to west across 29.

And I think they're looking at that being somewhere between Costco and...

and Stonefields, the bridge in that area.

They're also talking about putting pedestrian crossings, marked pedestrian crossings in that area as well so that you're not putting your finger in there and darting across.

And interestingly enough, they're talking about a roundabout at Hydraulic and District Avenue.

And that's when you're leaving Stonefield and getting onto Hydraulic.

And we'll see where that goes.

I sent you guys all the presentations.

The presentation's going into a whole lot more detail than this, but you guys got presentations on all these things.

Parks and Rec.

Busy summer at Parks and Rec.

I sent you a copy of Dana's report.

You got that.

That'll be in your email.

If it's not in your email already, it'll be in there before I finish speaking.

A couple of personnel ads.

We've got a new Adaptive Recreation Manager

Vic Garber who's been with us for a while.

He's leaving us and he's going to Harrisonburg to be the assistant director, assistant director of Parks and Rec.

It's kind of a bummer but we wish Vic well.

There is a new app that should be online maybe now that our users are going to be able to use and you're going to be able to use that to go on and look at

when facilities are going to be available, when programs are going to be available.

And I believe you're going to be able to use that app to actually go on and reserve and schedule stuff within parks and recs.

It's supposed to be online in October, maybe online now.

We got a bunch of capital improvement projects going on.

Interestingly enough, a lot of those improvement projects we can't get bids on because we can't get folks to come out and bid on them.

I mean, folks are just busy.

Thank you.

No meetings congruent with my duties as commissioner.

I did make a brief appearance in my personal capacity at the County Board of Supervisors to express my

encouragement of phase two of the Habitat Southwood development where a discussion by everybody but the public happened on Lynchburg Road and the traffic there that was not a concern.

Theirs in particular, everyone seemed to acknowledge that it was a mess.

That was sort of what also further delayed the project.

Other than that, I do not have anything on point.

I had two meetings.

The first was the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee.

We met September 21st.

We had a little presentation on the Long Range Transportation Plan kickoff.

It's the 20-year plan that's federally mandated, but it really looks at the next five years for funding.

So every regional projects have to be in the long range transportation plan to receive federal funding is my understanding.

I think the general from the MPO tech committee, the general push on this is to focus on choice of transportation and mobility and efficiency of system operations.

And when we're talking about transportation, we're talking about rail, air, car, all that stuff.

And then the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee will be helping brainstorm public engagement opportunities as part of the public engagement plan for this process.

And I also found out I think Seville needs to, or Charlottesville needs to create a comprehensive safety action plan as part of our, one thing that's required to receive some

funding.

I don't know if somebody else here knows more about it.

The other meeting I had was the Tree Commission, and that was October 4th.

Some things to note, I think there was a press release last week about some trees on the downtown mall that have to come down.

There are about nine trees, five of which are oaks, or the smaller pruned trees, so there should be not significant tree canopy loss.

and it's been long overdue.

They're going to come down sometime in January, February next year and we still have not, there haven't been any discussions on what's going to be replanted in their place but that's something that will happen with public input in the future.

I assume Relief did an outreach campaign at the 10th and Page neighborhood which is the hottest neighborhood in Charlottesville to try to plant some trees they went out to homeowners and I believe there are 25 to 30 trees that are going to be planted in the neighborhood which is great

And then there's an RFP going out at the end of November for planting of 150 trees next year.

I think that's Parks and Rec.

And then there's tree pruning that's taking place at Garrett and Second Street this week.

And this is a general, I guess, statistic that there's a 10% mortality on trees planted in the spring, which is a good number that most trees that were planted then are doing well.

Thank you.

And Mr. Schwartz, please.

Well, I'm not sure how much you want to hear about the BAR, but we, of our projects, one item of, one larger item was an apartment building on Portland Street around the house that was named, or the owner of the house, his name is what

I forget what his name was, but it led to Wortland being the name of the street, so important old house.

The house is staying, the apartment building is coming back again, we deferred it.

Or for UVA librarian.

to this historic house and it's being preserved.

I believe there actually, there is a work plan to preserve the house in addition to adding the apartment building, but nothing's been approved yet.

Some discussion on 612 West Main, which is...

future apartment building where University Tire used to be.

That will be coming back next week.

They're changing some exterior materials on it.

We also, next week, I believe, we'll be looking at the step backs on 218 West Market Street, which is the... Where...

under the, not under the roof, the little shopping center off of, at the end of the mall by the Omni.

Anyways, it has a special use permit from you guys from- Your place?

No, end of the mall.

Why am I forgetting- Vinegar Hill shopping center?

The Artful Lodger.

Oh, there we go.

Sorry.

I was going to get it at some point.

So yes, it looks like this month will be probably busier than last month.

Bike Pet Advisory Committee, we talked about crosswalk signals, and we are going to be doing some evaluation, measuring how long the signals are, trying to give some advice to the city on some recommended improvements.

Thanks.

So I had one pretty exciting meeting of the MPO technical committee.

Kareem kind of stole a lot of my thunder here, though.

Well, I guess first off, I am now for some reason chair again for another year.

So I'm not off the hook like Carl is.

Yeah, the two exciting things.

We are just beginning the planning for the 2050 long-range transportation plan.

which is the high level plan

that all of the projects that we'll eventually submit to SmartScale and build will come out of.

It'll be a roughly two-year process with lots of community engagement, lots of stakeholder groups, et cetera.

There's a whole Gantt chart on the TJPDC website, if you'd like to take a look.

It should be wrapping up in roughly May of 2023.

Oh, sorry, 2024.

So that will be a super important process.

And I'm sure I'll be telling you guys a lot more about it over the next couple of years.

And then Kareem mentioned the Safe Streets for All grant program.

That's the federal grant funding that came out of the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Basically, it's the first phase where you have to create a comprehensive safety action plan with

you know ideas and projects and problem areas and then once you do that you can submit for more BIF funding in future tranches so TJPDC is spearheading the effort to create this comprehensive safety action plan for all of the localities I believe in the district

and that will be kind of the first year of funding.

We're obviously getting in Safe Streets for All grant for that.

And then once that's complete, we can leverage that to get future infrastructure bill funding.

I would like to hear from the university.

Yeah, sure.

I don't have any, like, meetings to report on.

I just mentioned how, you know, happy the university was to be able to get the air rights over Emmett Street to put in a new pedestrian bridge that will connect the Contemplative Commons over to, like, the Newcomb Hall area.

Long overdue to have, you know, an ADA compliant and bikeable route that traverses that.

So we're happy about that.

Thank you.

Two items of note.

In my personal capacity, the Virginia Department of Housing Community Development Code Update Committee met, and I spoke in favor of allowing six-story single-stair homes, which would save, I think,

$380,000 per building if the number may be wrong, a very large amount of money per building if the second staircase is not required.

So it could be a significant affordable housing benefit.

My understanding, I was not physically present because Richmond is far.

My understanding was that that did not go forward in this code cycle.

So it will be another three years into the next code cycle.

But affordable housing will be officially considered as part of that cycle for the first time in Virginia history.

So I'm very pleased on that note.

In my Planning Commission capacity, I spoke to the Nest Realty Group talking about Charlottesville plans together and to work on the zoning rewrite.

NDS was very generous in giving me some slides already prepared, which was very helpful.

I appreciated that very much.

I believe that was productive and got some good questions and feedback on that.

Okay, we didn't necessarily coordinate, so I'll do a few and you can do it for you.

How about we'll work it that way.

So we have things clarified for the Planning Commission retreat.

The Planning Commission is going to be retreating on October 22nd, which is not this Saturday, but the following Saturday from 1.30 to 4.30.

We have reserved the pavilion on the stage under the pavilion.

We are going to monitor the weather and we also have this room reserved that we have backup depending on what we need at that point in time.

the chair myself and James talked with our facilitator today and she has put together some agenda based on some of the goals that that we're hoping to to move forward with so a good opportunity for commissioners to get to know one another as well as

to hear what's happened in the past for those who are newer most and to plan for life after a new zoning ordinance.

So a lot of exciting things coming up with that.

So we look forward to seeing you all then.

Did you want to talk East High or I can, either way.

Okay.

So we have a lot of projects that are going on in the community.

We have some pretty exciting ones on our agenda this evening.

And then also we have received a site plan.

It's titled Zero East High Street.

It is a property on the floodplain.

it's also known as the old fairgrounds it has some frontage on East High it has some frontage sort of on Caroline just wanted to talk a little bit process we've started to get a lot of feedback from the community and I know that it definitely is helpful if you all are aware of what's going on from a process standpoint so

the applicant has submitted a buy-write site plan so this site plan is in their opinion adhering to the regulations that are allowable in the code right now the site plan is under evaluation by the technical reviewers and there'll be comments that will be provided

There are a number of concerns that have been raised by the community.

And then there are technical concerns that we know are coming to pass as well.

So the technical review continues to move forward at this point in time.

And I don't have the touch point, but Carrie may have the date for us here.

And then once that

Letter goes out with the technical details.

Typically we get additional feedback.

Site plans are ministerial, as you all well know.

Site plans that are by right typically don't always come to the Planning Commission, but there is a code section that outlines moving a site plan forward to the Planning Commission for review.

and there has been some public feedback about interest and having that occur.

Yeah, so there are many ways that it can potentially come forward.

And it would be a ministerial review.

It would be specific to the code requirements that are involved.

But it would give an opportunity for some additional public review.

And because there is quite a lot of discussion, that is definitely something to consider.

Need slopes.

No.

Interesting.

Yes.

Yeah, those two.

Not at the moment.

You all may have questions.

Again, it's in the midst of the technical review.

A lot of the concerns that are being presented by members of the public are concerns that are being looked at specifically during that review.

Any questions or thoughts on that, Ed?

Carrie?

Yes, so sorry.

So we anticipate we will be able to send out the staff comment letter by October 28th, which is a Friday.

And a note regarding critical slopes, there are critical slopes on site, but the applicant is not currently proposing to disturb them.

Okay.

So good evening, Chairman and members of the Commission.

James Freese, Director of Neighborhood Development Services.

So just by way of updates on the topic of transportation, I just thought I'd note that in that we did work closely with the PDC on creation of that application for the

comprehensive safe streets and roads plan as a first step towards accessing those grant funds so we worked on that and then we're also working with the county on a grant we are a formal partner on a county grant application

under the same bill under the Reconnecting Communities grant program for a project that would extend on Route 29 North from the intersection with hydraulic all the way up to the river.

So there's a portion of that that is part of the city.

So we have two projects under that overall infrastructure bill that the city is part of grant applications for.

I try and always do an update on the zoning rewrite.

I don't have much to say at this time except that we're meeting tomorrow with our consultant team to look at the schedule going forward for our review process internally and for when this is going to be able to come out.

So I should have a schedule that I can share at the November meeting, if not beforehand.

and I also actually did want to also thank you all for what we felt amongst ourselves and the consultant team was a very productive meeting with planning commission and council back on 27th I believe it was ages ago but really appreciated the time and the thought and contributions that all of you all made for that so thank you for that and we look forward to continuing the conversation and getting into some more details

I forgot one thing, too.

So the Climate Action Plan, a number of you all were part of the presentation that occurred at the Council meeting, and I believe there were some communication concerns, because I think it was anticipated to be more of a dialogue and not just you all discussing, or not discussing, but just watching.

So we appreciate everyone who was able to take a look at that as part of that.

We've been working with the staff who are on that to, they're working through their process of moving that forward to council.

and so one of the steps will be coming to the Planning Commission for an abbreviated presentation with a link to the longer one that that was held because many of you were part of that and then the opportunity to provide feedback so we are working one or two one of the November dates either our regular meeting or the work session depending on some timing things that are coming to pass so just wanted to

Let you all know that that is continuing to move forward and you all get to be a part of it as well.

If you do have any written comments that you had from that opportunity, they're more than excited to take those at this point in time.

Cool.

Any questions for staff?

I think we're good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

At this time, I would like to hear from the public.

Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Pinkston, did you raise your hand?

Yeah, I just want to

I know that the mayor and folks on council, we had hoped to vote on the CAP, I think the first meeting in November, is that the 7th, Mayor?

Yeah.

That's sort of what we've been kicking around.

So I guess if y'all still have more work to do, then we would need to wait and do that later.

I don't know.

We have not begun our work.

Right, at this point.

And so, yes, there were many discussions concerning scheduling this morning and a couple of discussions trying to make sure that the feedback from the community groups does get integrated into that prior to it coming to Council, but there is definitely an urgency of getting that to you all.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but the process we're looking at is including the Climate Action Plan as an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan.

So the Climate Action Plan is identified in the Comprehensive Plan as something that should be done.

It's one of the action items within the Comprehensive Plan itself.

Oh, oh my.

When the mayor shows up, maybe he can give more input.

I mean, from my perspective, if it's delayed because we're waiting for more input, then that's the right thing to do.

So please don't hear.

We definitely appreciate the feedback and we'll communicate to have the schedule once it lands to you guys.

And part of it is the advertising requirement and negotiating through that.

So yes, but the urgency and commitment on this is definitely high and we're working through those processes but also trying to manage that.

At this time, I would like to hear matters to be presented by the public, not on the formal agenda.

All right.

We'll work this how we've been working our usual matters from the public and public hearings, where we'll have an opportunity for individuals who are present physically in the room to speak, and then we'll alternate with our electronic audience, our virtual audience.

and we will continue until we don't have any speakers or this evening we do have our counselors coming a bit later so we do have a little bit more time but if we end up having a number of speakers that kind of hit the time for them

public hearing, then we're going to be flexible about opening another opportunity.

So just to keep that in mind, if we have a lot of people who are interested in speaking during matters from the public tonight.

So our first request would be is if there's anyone physically in the room who would like to speak to any matters that are not up for public hearing this evening.

All right, I don't see anyone in our our room, but we do have some virtual hands raised.

So we'll start with our first speaker, who is Deb Jackson.

Deb, can you hear us?

I can.

Thank you.

All right.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Let me find my notes.

Good evening.

My name is Deborah Jackson.

I live in the Belmont Carlton neighborhood.

and I would like to thank the city staff who were involved in reviewing the critical slope waiver application or CSW.

Their comments were thorough and insightful.

The points that I will make are related to the stormwater management systems that have been proposed.

My comments come directly from the city staff report dated September 13, 2022.

of critical importance is the fact that city staff, I quote, cannot recommend approval under either finding number one or finding number two, and that, quote, City Council shall consider the potential negative impacts of the disturbance and regrading of critical slopes and of resulting new slopes and or retaining walls, close quotes.

I will also comment on the response letter from Collins Engineering to the June 9, 2022

City Staff Technical Review.

In particular, Collins Engineering has not reached out to the adjacent neighbors, with one exception, which was this week, to discuss their plans, inquire about neighborhood concerns, or act in a manner which shows concern for the Belmont-Carlton neighborhood.

My first point, it's impossible to review the CSW without an approved site plan.

Collins Engineering requested the approval of the CSW

without reviewing the site plan.

The two go hand in hand as the three stormwater management systems are dependent on the final site plan.

The site is complex and reviewing the waiver request without the side plan is indeed challenging.

I quote, it is challenging for city staff to provide insightful engineering concerns or comments without engineered plans at this stage.

My second point

has to do with the release outlet that dumps into a stream which flows into the Rivanna River.

It does not appear to be filtered.

And why is there a need for a release outlet?

Why doesn't all the water go through the biofilter?

And why does this outlet release water onto our adjacent property?

Why is it not directed to the east towards the developer's property?

It is unlikely that, I quote, it is unlikely that there will be any substantial groundwater recharge to offset

the reduction caused by the extensive grading and additional impervious surfaces.

In the city report, I quote, at no time shall concentrated water be directed toward the critical slopes without adequate conveyance and down and beyond the slopes to an acceptable outfall, close quotes.

Without the site plan, how can you determine this?

My third and final point, the retaining walls which will be required for this site will be monstrous.

There will be 20 to 30 feet high.

They will have a huge impact on the neighborhood, filling in the ravine, regrading the site, adding more impervious surface to the area.

How will these walls be constructed without the use of heavy equipment on adjacent properties?

Thank you very much.

All right.

I will ask if we have any individuals in the room who are interested in speaking for matters to the public.

All right.

Not at this time, but we do continue to have a virtual audience.

Our next speaker, Elsa Spencer.

Elsa?

Yes, I think I'm unmuted now.

Okay, so I don't know Ms.

Jackson who just spoke, but she did a fine job talking about my concerns about the critical slope.

So I will leave those in her fine words.

I think she did a good job.

I'm also a neighbor.

I live on Chestnut Street, so parallel to Spruce, and then the proposal would be behind Spruce, so pretty close neighbor.

And I think given that she covered the slope concern about the functioning stormwater, as far as I can tell, functioning stormwater management currently in place that would be disturbed

potentially.

I would focus my concern that I wanted to state about basically pedestrian safety in this neighborhood.

We have 16 children in just this tiny block of chestnut, spruce, myrtle, like just the little four streets that if, again, I don't have the final site plan, there has been, I've seen some plans that have a proper street, not just one direction, but a two direction road coming out, emptying onto spruce street.

which is currently right dead ends by the tracks.

And we have this small W horseshoe, double horseshoe type of situation with like a 16 children, 17 dogs who currently feel pretty safe moving around.

And my concern is having a street access to this new development coming into what has been a pretty safe area where the children have become accustomed to minimal car traffic

and mostly focused on, you know, traffic that's just to the small neighborhood.

So I think that's, I think if we, I mean, I understand it has to be two exits.

And so if we can just have both of them on Carleton, that would address my concern just fine.

And it also seems more, what's that word, more convenient for the people who would live in the condos to access.

They're going to want to get to Carleton, not to our neighborhood.

That would be it.

Okay, we have the same individuals in the room, so I'm going to go back to our virtual audience.

If someone in the room does want to speak, just get my attention at some point, but we will continue with our virtual list.

Our next speaker is Kimber Hockey.

Ms.

Thank you very much.

I'd just like to second what Deb and Elsa stated and I'm going to add that from the outset this is an inappropriate development for this site and the mere fact that the applicant has applied for this critical slope waiver proves that point.

It does not follow good planning practices and should not be approved.

The development is too much for this environmentally sensitive area.

The City needs to respect the environmental concerns of each site and the environment here is proven not to be appropriate for this development as per the staff's recommendations.

So we also hope that you will deny it.

The area has been compared to the lungs of Belmont.

We've already suffered significant tree loss in our neighborhood due to inappropriate development.

You mentioned the climate action.

This is a great time to take action for the climate and preserve the environment as much as possible, which this site does not do.

There are other concerns about the size of this development with the projected 900 plus car trips per day.

All right, our next speaker, Mark Cavett.

Yeah, just unmuted.

Yeah, I also want to comment that I hope that the Planning Commission will not approve this waiver, that you listen to what the staff report had to say.

I won't repeat everything that Kimber Hawkey and Deborah Jackson said, but also echo their comments.

I also want to make a comment concerning the Carlton road area as far as the traffic.

If you take two cars coming head on on that road, they can't pass unless somebody pulls over into the parking area.

And if you've got cars parked on the side of that road, somebody's got to back up.

I've actually done that and watched that traffic there.

So there's a potential future issue that's coming down concerning that aspect also.

All right.

All right.

Our next speaker is Kat Muir.

Okay.

Thanks, Missy.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Well, first of all, I want to thank you, Missy, for being so incredibly responsive.

I have no idea how you

answer all the queries that you do in a day.

So I'm just incredibly grateful for that.

And as well as the NDS report.

So I know this is about the critical slope waiver.

I do want to give a little background, though.

As a neighborhood, we've been given four, five, six, I don't know how many site plans.

And we go through them.

We have an architect.

We're really studying it.

This is

where we've lived for 20 years.

This is a vital, vital place for Charlottesville.

So we go over and we care about it.

And then what happens is they are so full of errors.

And then NDS does this deep dive in recommendations.

It's almost as though the city is this consultant and they're handholding this company

through this development.

And so even the last one, we've been through this before, Neighborhood, Commercial Corridor, and can you still hear me?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, because my...

My image came off.

So then you go through and you give all these great recommendations.

And so it's very concerning that they don't have their own consultants.

This is an incredibly large site, very special, very tender.

you know when it says that City Council may thereafter grant a modification upon finding that public benefits outweigh leaving it as is they don't I mean we have reduced stormwater velocity absolutely not increasing impervious surfaces where is all this water going to go

There's one little green area.

It looks like a septic zone, to tell you the truth.

I think it's just to collect water.

I don't even know public health if people can play there.

So the other issue is trees.

You all made the brilliant recommendation.

I mean, not just performative climate change,

you know three to one ratio replacing the trees and I know that you all said it doesn't look like it's landscape but we live here I cannot tell you the number of foxes there's this huge ravine I'm not naive enough to think that's going to stay but the wildlife here is unbelievable so I'm so grateful that you all you know gave a huge pushback and I really hope

All right, and this is actually Becky Reed.

I'm on my wife's computer.

So my name is Becky Reed.

I live on Cherry Street in the neighborhood next to the development and wanted to echo a lot of the same concerns that have already been voiced.

I would say my concerns mostly focus on

again, sort of safety in our neighborhood in terms of increased automobile traffic, construction traffic.

I am a parent of one of the small children that plays in the neighborhood.

Most of our neighborhood does not have sidewalks.

Others from the neighborhood could correct me if I'm wrong.

I think about two or three houses have sidewalks in front of them just because of the dates and the

you know codes that were in place when those homes were built so that would definitely be a concern if we are routing more automobile traffic through our neighborhood which I don't think is necessary and don't think is of interest to the folks who are going to live next door to us they're also going to want to get out to Carleton and we don't want folks kind of flying through our neighborhood trying to get where they're trying to go I'd also like to echo the concerns about just the multiple site plans we've seen I've

want to voice my support for density.

I know affordable housing is a massive challenge.

I don't know how much this particular development addresses, but I know density is a key way of housing folks close to their jobs and where they need to be.

But I think there are just maybe some smarter ways that we could do some of that.

And I think sort of preserving neighborhood character and safety through more connectivity for walkers and bikers

which was part of the plan that I was part of a you know meeting that we reviewed so I reviewed that and felt okay about it and then come to find out the plans are changing again so I understand it's all part of a process but yeah I mean I think some of the commenter right before me some of her comments just about how maybe they need to get these plans vetted before they come to neighborhoods and kind of sell them and get stamps of approval and then things that are important to the neighborhoods change

and it's hard to keep track of.

I'm doing double duty here with dinner prep.

So I think I can go ahead and wrap up my comments.

I do share concerns about our water and the environment, but I wouldn't say I'm an expert on that, but I would just like to make that part of my statement that I hope that can be carefully reviewed as part of the site plan as well.

All right, our next speaker is Vivian Stein.

Vivian?

This is not Vivian Stein.

This is her partner, Norman.

Anyway, I echo, of course, the concern about the critical slope issue, 30-foot massive wall and so on.

But I live on Cherry Street, and there's only like five houses on Cherry Street.

And this is a closed, boxed-in area.

As mentioned, there are limited sidewalks.

There's like five houses that have sidewalks.

Other ones do not.

The street, of course, is not all the way up to the property line where the sidewalk would be.

So in bringing the lot that was purchased, I believe last November, they purchased that lot that it connects with Spruce Street there.

And that lot will be paved over, which again will bring more water down to the creeks and so on.

The idea of bringing that kind of traffic in this neighborhood would require sidewalks for the safety of the children and for parking.

Who will pay for that?

Who will pay for the sidewalks?

But more importantly than that, just the amount of traffic that will come into a small closed residential area, it's just dangerous.

There was comments earlier about street safety.

You'll be creating a street hazard

by allowing this development as it's currently laid out.

I'd like to also point out the lot that they purchased is a residential lot.

They have not done a thing to maintain it.

They haven't cut it once.

It's weed infested.

And like I said, they're not showing their good neighbors by not doing anything to take care of the lot.

That's about all I need to say.

All right do we have any other speakers from a virtual standpoint or no one in the room virtually if you're interested in speaking during matters from the public please raise your hand virtually I don't think we have any telephone callers but if we do you can hit star nine which would activate that for you

One last call for speakers at this moment.

All right, we have a speaker chair.

Ms.

So I'll just to provide another voice from someone in the neighborhood.

I live at 900 Belmont Avenue.

Say that I did appreciate that staff requested that this project actually make a street connection over to Spruce Street.

I recognize my neighbor and share my neighbors concerns about pedestrian safety and about the amount of traffic in the neighborhood.

But I do feel that it would be valuable for this new development to be knitted into the city street network to the degree that that's feasible.

That's it.

All right.

Do we have any other speakers?

Seeing none, I'd close public comment on this item.

Thank you very much.

I turn now to the consent agenda.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

I see a second.

And can I get a thumbs up if you agree?

You have something to read.

No, no.

And I'm sorry, I had my microphone off.

Yes, I'm not going to read it verbatim.

I'm not going to participate in the approval or disapproval of the consent agenda as pursuant to the Preston Commons matter I have what might be the appearance of the perception

of the idea of a conflict in that my firm has a very extensive relationship with the principle of that firm.

And although I have no interest in that project,

and took one meeting which I said, I'm not the person to help you with this three years ago.

Yes, that should be fine.

Thank you very much and thank you for that.

I return to voting on the consent agenda.

I see many thumbs.

I believe that passes.

Four thumbs.

No, this is scheduled for, oh, sorry.

This is scheduled, the hearing's scheduled for six, but we were awaiting quorum, and we were able to complete that comment period, so

Council is in order.

Delighted.

Thank you, sir.

Matt Offley, City Planner, Neighborhood Development Services.

So tonight, Chair, Commission, you will be holding a public hearing and making a recommendation to City Council for a proposed special use permit at 1113 5th Street Southwest.

The SUP is for an automatic car wash at the intersection of Harris and 5th Street Southwest.

The applicant is proposing to demolish the shuttered bank on the site

The new car wash will have a main building fronting on 5th Street Southwest with parking, pay stations, vacuums, and a dumpster, an ingress-egress from Harris Road.

Offsite improvements include pedestrian markings across the entrance to the Willoughby Square Shopping Center,

Staff has reviewed the application and finds it meets the general standards for a special use permit and recommends approval with conditions outlined on page 14 of the staff report.

Staff's main concerns with the proposed use is any noise created from the vacuum station, but staff is confident these issues can be mitigated during preliminary or final site plan review.

by construction of either a small wall or physical barrier to reflect noise back on site, planting large shrubs at time of construction, relocating vacuums to more internal location of the site, reducing the number of vacuums and or installing low noise vacuums.

This concludes staff's presentation.

Other city departments, such as traffic and myself, are here to answer any questions prior to you holding your public hearing.

Let's see.

Yeah, questions for Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan, thank you for your presentation at the LUPEC meeting a couple of weeks ago.

Very good.

And I think we looked at that presentation, this group looked at that presentation about a month ago, maybe a couple of months ago.

In the report, you suggest that you do not suspect that this

this implementation, this installation is going to have any significant impact on traffic.

But I want you to think about your presentation to LUPEC and to this board as it relates to the Fifth Street Safety Improvement Plan that you've been working on.

I'll do my best.

I don't know that it's necessarily going to improve, you know, having this project isn't going to improve safety, but as far as being able to compare it to the existing use that's there from a traffic generation standpoint,

Thank you.

No, sir.

Thank you very much.

I had a quick question on one of the conditions we're saying basically a way to control the noise or mitigate the noise.

And this comes from a public comment.

Is staff confident that that is an appropriate condition or do we tie it to a specific decibel number?

How do we kind of control that and have something measurable?

So it is really of staff's opinion that the noise, there are several ways to mitigate the noise.

And the applicant during the presentation will talk about, they're very prepared to talk about their noise study.

And the conditions really outlined to address it at site plan, I don't think tying it to decibels

is really going to be appropriate just due to, one, enforcement, and two, falling kind of outside that realm of the noise ordinance.

Thank you.

Mr. Schwartz, questions for staff?

No.

Yeah, I've got two lines of questioning, one on noise and one on traffic.

So I'll start with you, Matt, since you're here already.

I guess, first off, they kind of gave the ambient noise at the area because of cars.

I'm trying to understand how to consider the noise being generated by this use with regard to the ambient noise.

You know, in my read of the noise ordinance, it doesn't say, you know, you can't emit loud noises unless other things are also being loud, right?

Well, I think the noise is absorbed into the ambient background noise, but I do think there is, you know, there is some noise that needs to be mitigated and more has to do with just the off and on of the vacuums.

I don't think the actual machine of the car is going through the automatic car wash.

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me.

We also did get a public comment about music.

Well, there are speakers.

When staff went up and looked at their one up at Hollymead, there are speakers, but in staff's opinion, that's a noise that could be produced by right.

Okay.

And then...

Looking at their noise measurement data on page 104 of the packet, or page 6 of their noise analysis, their max noise levels that they're measuring, all but one of the eight sites they're measuring go above the 65 decibel max.

Some of them are 75.

One's even almost 80 decibels.

It's not the average noise level, but, you know, the noise ordinance, we should be looking at the maximum level, right?

It doesn't say as long as your average noise level is below 65, it's okay.

And then I guess another kind of

How the noise ordinance is written actually does not apply.

It only applies to noise created within a residential zone district or the residential portion of a mixed-use district.

it says to create a sound level in any residential zone blah blah blah in excess of and i i mean i guess it depends on whether you say cause any source of sound to create a sound level or i guess well arguably it depends on whether you create a sound level refers to creating it in the residential zone or you know

having the sound level be that in a residential zone.

But certainly my interpretation was never, I live downtown, that I can blast noise so loud that people in Belmont, I'm breaking the noise ordinance, right?

Is that a question we should ask?

Back to my office.

That sounds good.

And so, like, let's assume for a second that the noise ordinance applies.

Should we use the noise ordinance as our basis for thinking about noise as an adverse impact?

No, I mean, I think noise should be handled when we're looking at, you know, how are there ways to mitigate and how staff looked at this is when you're looking at a by-right development in that site versus an SUP at that site.

One of the really only, the factor that staff came up with is sound would be the difference between a by-right and what is being proposed and mitigating that.

and some of the proposals that staff has put in that condition and then I think some of the stuff you might hear from the applicant tonight, staff feels would mitigate that noise.

Okay.

I would say yes.

I mean, you know, when you're looking at some of the uses in the use matrix and you're looking at what could be done here by right versus, you know, what impacts do those produce versus an SUP if it's producing impacts that are outside that norm of the by right impacts.

Yeah, so I guess I'm wondering whether it's really not an impact because there's one by right use that theoretically could go there that would be very impactful versus, like, the probable by right use or, you know, some other by right use that, you know, if it was, I don't know, a veterinarian, it wouldn't make any noise.

That's actually probably a bad example.

You know, a massage...

Parlor or whatever, right?

It wouldn't be making a ton of noise, I would think.

Bad examples here, probably.

A mattress store?

But some of the other special use things, like drive-thru, where the adverse impact maybe is increased congestion because of backup at a drive-thru.

So I think it just depends on the use as to what created that to be an SUP.

And it doesn't necessarily mean noise would be the impact for a car wash at every location.

If this was located probably a little further in that development, the Willoughby development,

Yep.

And then I'm kind of also thinking about traffic, right?

Like you could put a Bodo's here by right.

And, you know, I would guess that Bodo's is like possibly the biggest traffic generating use of anything possible in the city, except maybe raising canes.

And, you know, that would produce a lot of traffic.

And so we...

I think from a staff standpoint we would shy away from that just because even a by right this is traffic oriented you'd be you know the amount of cars going to a bank or a sit down restaurant that is by right that's the same traffic you would probably be getting you know at a car wash the same

Mr. Palmer, do you have questions on this item?

I know it's been several months.

Yeah, because it tries to just compare what the current traffic situation is with that not having been in operation.

And then only other question is you've estimated that the amount of traffic would probably be similar to that bank that was there.

I don't have any reason to guess that that's not the case.

I would say no.

It would probably actually be less.

There tends to be less, or how's the best way to phrase this, more off-peak trips, so there's less congestion during the

The peak hours just based on and a lot of this is based on the ITE trip generation books that are published.

So that's where we're comparing the existing use of the bank to propose use of a car wash.

But yeah, generally speaking, I mean, every location is a little bit different.

But when you're when you're trying to plan these, you're looking generally and generally car washes have different operating

like peak hours than a bank would.

So I don't think that this would have any adverse impact on that intersection.

Okay.

Those are all the questions I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think you already said this, but what is it that's pushing this project over into requiring an SUP versus buy-ride?

From a technical standpoint, no, I mean, in the use matrix, this is, it just requires an SUP.

A car wash in general?

Which means?

Highway corridor.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

The question, I guess, that I'm curious about, I'm thinking about effects that the statute or the ordinance talks about that we're supposed to consider as possible negative impacts.

And one of them is dealing with the question of impacts on community resources, I guess is the way they phrase it.

And one of the things that is an impact for car washes, depending on how they're constructed, is how much water they use.

There are some car washes that, like the one on 29 North, I can't remember, All-American Car Wash, I don't remember, Henry Wineshank's organization in any event, where they brag about the fact that they recycle 90 to 95 percent of their water.

There is another example on, I think the folks with the car wash on 250 East, just in Albemarle County, have the same claim.

We do.

I don't know that number.

The applicant, when they give their presentation, they will speak to the water that they do recycle, but they do.

Okay.

I will say just from a staff perspective and kind of in general when we're talking about approving an SUP, we are talking about the use.

We're not talking about the applicant being

so-and-so, you know, it is that use.

So if City Council were to approve a car wash and the applicant that built the car wash then decided to sell, that use goes with the land.

I mean, obviously, and this touches on an email that I sent to folks about 5 o'clock when you all were starting to do other things that were more interesting than read my emails, but it gets back to sort of the question of, are we supposed to be looking at what they're proposing and we approve it unless we find a reason to disapprove it?

or are we expecting to look at it from the other side to say prove to us that you are doing something worthwhile so that we ought to be giving you this benefit, this boon of approving the SUP and I'm

As I said before, I'm frankly concerned that if we spend all of our time trying to evaluate whether there are enough negative impacts so that the negativity rises to the level to say no, that we're looking at the question backwards.

I did.

Chair, I apologize.

I did have one more question.

Please.

I think from a safety plan, you know, when traffic looked at it, they did.

I would say not from an improvement plan other than it was outlined in the report.

Thank you.

Please.

Yes, it ends as it approaches the intersection and goes into the right and left turn lanes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Ruff, hopefully.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission.

My name is Valerie Long.

I'm with the law firm of Williams Mullen, and we're here representing the applicant for this special use permit application.

We do have members of our project team participating remotely so they can hear us, and I want to just introduce them briefly.

We have Craig Van Bremen, who is the Director of Development for the applicant company Green Clean Car Wash, and we also have two engineers with Kimley Horn,

who prepared the concept plans that we'll show you as well as the noise study that's been discussed.

I do have some slides.

I understand that someone, you'll be, okay, great, thank you.

So I'll show those.

And I guess I just let you know to advance each time.

Okay, thank you.

You all are generally familiar with the site.

This is a rendering.

We'll show that again later.

This is the general location.

I know you're all familiar with the location.

I just wanted to clarify the zoning of the site and the parcels surrounding it, as well as those on the opposite side of both Harris Road and Fifth Street.

As noted, the zoning is the highway corridor district, which as stated in the ordinance, the purpose of which is to facilitate development of a commercial nature along auto-oriented corridors like Fifth Street.

Next slide.

And then likewise, the comprehensive plan designation for the parcel is urban mixed-use corridor, which contemplates a higher intensity mixed-use development arranged along corridors between employment, commercial, and civic hubs of the city, which I think is an appropriate designation for this parcel.

These are images of the existing property, the vacant bank building there, and these are from Google Street View, by the way.

Just one thing here I'll point out is obviously with the bank vacant, you don't see a lot of activity there now, but I also just point out the state of the landscaping and plantings on site.

It is certainly

not up to your current standards, and we'll show you some renderings and plans that will be much more what you all would expect.

Next slide.

Likewise, this is just the view from the existing travelway, looking at the bank building, Fifth Street not visible but in the beyond.

Next slide.

This is a version of our conceptual plan.

Without a cursor, I can't use it quite as well, but I'll sort of walk you through those.

Happy to answer, of course, any questions at any time.

Maybe I'll start at the very top center of the page is a proposed sidewalk that does not exist now that would go across the travelway entrance and would help, among other things, with obviously pedestrian safety, particularly given the location of the elementary school down the block.

Starting on the left side of the page, you can see hopefully that is the entrance and then the three rows of the queuing of the cars and the pay stations that are there.

The cars would then pull forward into the building, proceed through the building during the wash cycle, and then exit the building on the right side.

and then come around and obviously those are parking spaces and next to each of those parking spaces is a vacuum if people want to use those vacuums not all of them will but they are an option and of course you can see a sidewalk internal to the site as well next slide

It's a copy of the landscaping plan that we also submitted.

I circled just for reference.

I know it's very hard to see, but that is just a note indicating that the proposed planting strip adjacent to Harris Road would be an S3 category buffer, which most of you all probably know is the highest level of buffering and screening that your zoning ordinance contemplates.

So that would be proposed and then the rest is conceptual.

Obviously, it's intended to demonstrate the ability to comply with the landscape ordinance, but all of those specific details would be worked out at the site plan stage.

Next slide.

Some renderings, conceptual renderings we had prepared.

There's obviously an overhead view looking at the site if it were developed as planned, and that's Fifth Street in the lower side of the page in Harris Road on the right.

We have a few more that's maybe a little easier to see.

Next slide.

You can see the building there adjacent to 5th Street, parking along in the parking lot.

You can see the black fixtures for the vacuums, which we can talk more about, and the planting buffer there.

These are obviously just conceptual rendings, not necessarily exactly as shown on the concept plan with regard to specific plantings, but we tried to demonstrate consistently what it would look like.

Next slide.

Another view just from the opposite direction.

Next slide.

This is a conceptual rendering, obviously, from Fifth Street.

I will note that this slide, the proposed plantings across the front of the building do not show up very well here.

We have a few other slides where it shows it better, but I just wanted to point that out.

It'll look better than that once it were if approved and built.

Thank you.

Next slide.

This is conceptual rendering obviously from Harris Road looking towards the site.

The plantings there probably would be more, that probably doesn't represent a true S3 level screening.

It would be more than that and the ordinance calls out very specifically what an S3 screening landscape plan requires.

You can see the black sort of hoses that represent the vacuums that would be used.

and you can obviously see in the distance the additional parking in the building itself.

Next slide.

Similar view from the corner there at Harris Road and the entrance to the shopping center.

Next slide.

And similarly a conceptual image looking at the site from the shopping center entrance road.

Next slide.

One issue I'll touch on now, we appreciated the questions and comments that were made about the concerns about noise.

We had a community meeting last month and heard similar concerns and questions about that.

So we wanted to at least provide some ideas of what we have in mind in terms of addressing those.

So in addition to those that Ms.

Raffelli mentioned, our team worked hard over the last few days, actually,

to come up with a few other ideas that we wanted to share with you.

So this is new to you all, but just as an example, the two smaller red circles, the more round ones, those are areas shown on the plan that are listed as a vacuum pad.

The technical term, I'm told, is the vacuum producers.

and Mr. Van Bremen again with the company tells me that with regard to the vacuum noise it's not so much the vacuums themselves that make the noise or emit the noise but it's the vacuum producers.

So once I understood that better in noting the one that is adjacent to Harris Road

I started asking questions about what could we do to minimize the noise.

If that's the noise emitter, we need to be sensitive to the fact that it's right adjacent to Harris Road where people have concerns.

And then the one more central is just a second one.

So they came up with some really good ideas if you'll go to the next slide or a really good idea The proposal is to relocate both of those vacuum producers inside the dumpster enclosure

so the dumpster has to be enclosed anyway and so they can expand that dumpster tuck those two producers inside and the dumpster is enclosed and that will we feel very confident will not only reduce the noise generally by having them enclosed but also by moving them away as far as possible from Harris Road and then the residents on the far side of Harris Road will make a significant difference

So that's one proposal that the applicant is willing to memorialize in a condition if it's the commission's preference.

And then next slide is the second proposal we have.

Oh, sorry.

I have these conceptual writings where I showed generally where those are now, and then the next slide shows where they would be relocated to.

there, the dumpster.

So obviously moves them significantly further away and then you can see the conceptual rendering of that enclosure.

Next slide.

Second idea we had was in looking at the, again, the original plan, in the bottom right circled is a small retaining wall.

That wall is actually going to be more sort of going down the hill, given the slope there.

But also, we have an opportunity to use that wall to sort of reflect the noise away from Harris Road, because there is some noise that comes out of that end of the car wash, the fans that dry the cars.

So on the next slide we show a conceptual improvement.

That is a longer wall.

It extends further down Harris Road.

I guess that's west.

And then we're proposing to extend that a little bit and then add a few feet to it so that it could serve as a potential not only a retaining wall but also a potential screening wall and sound mitigator.

Next slide.

And just clarifying from the renderings where that location is.

The wall's not really drawn correctly in that way, but it actually helped give us an idea of how we might use that to help it serve multiple functions.

Thank you.

So again, the proposal would be to extend that wall pretty much to the edge of where that circle is.

Next slide.

was everything I had there on my slides.

I would like if I could just take a few minutes to address a couple of the questions that came up at the beginning.

Mayor Snook, in response to your question about water recycling and recapture,

Our client tells us that they average about 80% of their water is reclaimed and recycled.

And they tell me that that is better for water usage than if individuals were washing their car in their personal driveways, where it, of course, then just runs off into the storm drain system or elsewhere.

And he's available if you have more questions on the technicalities of how they reclaim and capture that water.

I believe that is everything.

Obviously, we're happy to answer questions.

I will just reiterate again, we are very thoughtful about the challenges the city's facing right now with lack of school bus drivers and children walking to school.

Children walking to school is generally a great thing, but we want to make sure it's safe, so that's why we added that sidewalk along the entrance there.

Mr. Mitchell, questions for the applicant?

It would certainly be, I'm not certain that it's reflected in that rendering.

If it is, that's great, but I'm not sure.

But certainly that's what the condition of approval that staff recommends would require and we are agreeable to that requirement.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm going to go for it.

You've got 21 vacuum spaces.

What's the approximately how many, does the owner or the applicant have an idea of, you know, what the right percentage of filling those would be?

but it seems like a lot of spaces to provide is there a formula for how many cars they anticipate using it at peak hours I'm not certain but I know that they will be so I will ask Craig Van Vreeman if I don't know if he can unmute himself or if someone needs to unmute him he has a panelist and he can answer your question Mr. Schwartz Craig can you unmute yourself and speak we cannot hear you

Also, he tells me there are 20 vacuum spaces, not 21, but regardless.

We're not hearing you.

Craig.

We may need to come back to it.

This is the challenge of the hybrid in-person virtual meeting.

Since he wasn't able to be here as well, I don't know if

Yeah, there he is, Craig Van Bremen, third one down.

Yeah, it looks like he's unmuted.

No, I'm just using this for text messages to help me answer questions.

Mallory, can you hear me now?

Yes, now we can.

Go ahead.

I'm so sorry for the technical problems there.

Yeah, I did hear the question.

Thank you all for your time.

I really do appreciate it.

So we provide those as amenities.

And no, I don't think those vacuums will be used, you know, all 20 will be used at any given time.

But we do like to provide that as a service to our customers.

And we find that customers like to have a little bit more room on either side.

So even if they're just using one vacuum, you know, in the center there, it's nice that they can open both their doors and kind of work side by side.

So

I missed it.

How many generally run at the same time?

Do all 20 run at the same time?

Could you hear that, Craig?

How many vacuums typically run at one time, if there is a typical?

Looks like you're muted again, Greg.

Here you go.

Okay.

Okay.

So the vacuums are on a central vacuum system, which was, those are the vacuum producers that Valerie pointed out earlier today.

So the vacuums are running consistently, but the noise that is produced by them really does come from those vacuum producers.

It's more, once you're out of the actual vacuums, and I encourage you to look at our site on 29 if you have a chance, an opportunity to.

But it's really more of just like a suction sound that's actually on the vacuum themselves.

Yeah, we don't really quantify the vacuum usage in that way because it is an amenity.

It's something that we provide our customer as a complimentary service.

So we don't have as much data as we might have about actual wash mines.

Well, even, okay, forget the vacuums.

Maybe is there a peak hour?

Yes.

When are you most busy, Craig?

What time of the day?

What days of the week?

Yeah, we're

Yeah, it's Saturday.

Well, actually, the busiest times for us are generally on the commute home from work.

And thank you.

Yeah, that's helpful with the sort of distribution of sound between the producers and the hoses.

That is correct.

So regardless of how many vacuums are being used at one time, the same noise level is emitted.

Is that correct, Craig?

And then in your second to last slide, I think, you showed the retaining wall kind of up against the edge.

We haven't looked at that specific issue.

There is some landscaping that's also proposed there and some existing vegetation, but certainly, you know, the thought was that the wall would be several feet off the ground, and I say several just in very general terms, but certainly I think I guess I'll ask Craig if he comfortable saying that that would be high enough to block, I guess, typical headlight height.

Yeah, I'm on.

Can you hear me now?

Great.

Yeah, so typically when we're blocking headlights, even if it's just with shrubs, we try to go to 36 inches.

So we're flexible on this wall, whether it be 36 inches or possibly 42 inches, which is standard fence height.

That would certainly block all the headlights.

in addition to that on the opposite side or the right-of-way side, street side, we would have significant plantings as well.

So yeah, I don't think any headlights, our goal would be certainly to block all the headlights leaving.

I can't answer that question.

And the sound engineer just texted me.

Yeah, we haven't done that calculation yet or done that study.

But that enclosure, I can tell you, is generally about eight feet tall.

So it'll be the same height as the producers.

It's a block enclosure, eight-inch block plus a brick facade that generally matches the building.

Okay, thanks.

And then lastly, sort of in the spirit of pedestrian safety for our kids walking to school, I appreciate you guys offering that crosswalk.

I guess a question for you.

It sounds like our staff are fairly adamant that the traffic is not an adverse impact here.

But in that spirit, and since you're already out there laying paint, would you be willing to do sort of any other paint treatment, for example, to the bike lanes?

I could speak for them.

Yeah, obviously.

Safety is a big concern for us, too.

We're happy to work with staff.

There's something that we can do while we're working there right away to make sure that students can transit the property and get to the school up there in a safe way.

Great.

Thank you.

I don't have anything specific.

I was kind of curious in terms of

There are.

I believe, and Craig Van Broomen can correct me, but I believe the plan is for at least three staff members at all times.

I know I was at the company's existing site at 29 North.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

We always, our sides are staffed all the time.

Every time, all hours that were open, there's at least three staff members on there, sometimes four staff members.

And we really do.

We work to provide, this is a little bit of a slide, but we really do work to provide good high-paying, good quality jobs for folks.

We're a fast-growing company in the community.

not just in this community, but we're providing opportunity for our employees to really have some upward mobility.

Thank you.

I have no questions.

Thank you.

No questions.

Yeah, I would just note that the sound like light follows the inverse square law.

So the further you get it away, it's a geometric falloff in terms of versus linear.

So I think moving the vacuum producers the way you did will make a significant improvement in the sound.

I was just curious.

I would have thought that headlights were not really a relevant concern, because I would have thought that most people would wash their cars when they could see what they were doing.

Is that not the case?

Well, there will be light poles on site.

But as well, the operating hours, I believe, are till, I think, 8 p.m.

on weekdays and 6 p.m.

on Sundays.

It's puzzling to me.

It's often an issue that comes up with drive-throughs, just taking a look and making sure that it's not light for a drive-through restaurant or coffee shop are not going to shine right in someone's living room, for example.

That's all I had.

I just puzzled.

Good questions.

Thank you.

All right, so we will follow our similar procedures.

We will call on our audience member who's present, and then we will alternate to our virtual audience, and we have a speaker in the room.

I'm John Valle, I live on 513 Harris Road on 533 Harris Road and we live directly across from the intersection not only talking about a wall breaking sound we live on a hill you don't put a wall up that high I feel very negative about this thing matter of fact note to you guys had two ambulances hauled two away today right at that corner the the deal is

The noise, I don't mind noise, but I don't want a continuous noise.

How would you like to somebody run a vacuum inside your house all day, a wet, dry vacuum, can y'all stand it?

I mean, it may be loud, it may be strong.

It's a pitch of a thing.

and it's just not right.

I mean, I don't push my music on nobody else and I don't believe in letting somebody else push their music onto me.

I love music, but I want to be able to turn mine off and know what I want to and not mess with somebody else.

I have nothing against the car wash except it's not the proper place for it.

Each of a community, residential community,

I mean we can't sit in our front yard or have a picnic or something in our front porch without letting that something continues running.

I don't care if it's low or high, you're hearing it.

I mean it's just the wrong place for it.

And if it was on down the other end of the shopping center, fine and good.

I have no gripes about it.

But the deal is putting it right there on the edge of the residential community.

is wrong.

And I'm sure, if y'all go and look at the one on North 29, walk down through there and see all the, they show some pretty pictures here.

You don't see all the pipe in there and think all the mechanical work's running across like the one down on 29.

They show that, but this is a eyesore to me in my front yard.

I mean, we gonna be overlooking, anytime in my yard, we gonna be overlooking all of that.

and it's not right, it's devaluating as far as I'm concerned as residential land is devaluating it.

If y'all want to sign my land commercial, I'll put a car wash up.

So, I mean, that's the way I feel about it.

And I wish every one of you, go down there and look at the one, walk from food line lot down on North 29 down to it, and you can hear it running.

Over top, all the 29 traffic, which is 10 times or 15 times more than on Harris Road.

So I think y'all really, really need, it's not fair, really.

I've been there 52 years and I don't think it's right.

I thank you.

Oh, by the way, I did send a letter, had an email thing sent in today.

Received.

Thank you very much.

All right, we will now move to our virtual audience.

We have a speaker, Claire Denton-Sbalding.

Claire Denton- Hello, I am able to hear you.

Can you hear me?

Claire Denton- Yes, ma'am.

Claire Denton- Okay, great.

Claire Denton- Go ahead.

Okay, great.

So I, my fiance and I live at 137 Old Fist Circle, which is directly across the street from where the car wash is proposed across the street of Harris Street.

So we, I, you know, extremely urge you to deny this application.

We're really opposed to the development of the Green Clean Auto Wash because it already, you know, at that intersection, there's already a ton of traffic.

There's a huge car accident there today that stopped traffic.

at 3 p.m.

It's a difficult and deadly intersection where we both walk and bike and adding a car wash would attract cars to the area and make it more traffic heavy.

I believe some of the speakers today have noted that the bank has been closed for quite some time, so the direct comparison between a car wash and a bank

isn't one-to-one with the current situation.

So in addition to the increased traffic, we're concerned about the increased traffic.

It's already overcrowded.

It's a difficult intersection.

Car Wash will already track cars.

It's just increased traffic and danger.

It's also a car wash is not pedestrian or biker friendly.

Over the past two years we've attended some meetings and contributed to re-envisioning a 5th Street.

I know there are plans to make 5th Street more walkable and bikeable and adding a car wash and that increased traffic would just

to counteract those plans.

And if Charlottesville truly wants to become less car dependent, the city ought to seek new forms of development that don't directly service cars.

So we are urging you and I'm urging you to deny that application with a special use permit.

All right.

Do we have any other further speakers that are present in the room?

I don't see any at this time.

Do we have any virtual speakers?

Please raise your hand, or if you're on a phone line, press star 9.

Thank you very much.

I'd like to close the public hearing at this time.

I would like to move to discussion of this item.

Well, I ain't got much.

The little bit I've got is that I think the noise issue can be mitigated based on some of the things that we've talked about.

But I, again, 95 accidents up and down that corridor last three or four years.

We've lost four lives.

There have been six fatalities.

I mean, six serious injuries.

Yeah, I'm not sure I have a lot either, but I'll

trying to be succinct and valuable despite my dispensation from the mayor.

So as to the noise, yeah, I tend to agree with

Commissioner Mitchell, there seem to be ways to mitigate that.

I'd also sort of, you know, I deplore this, but in fact, background ambient noise disappears because anyone who is standing in the middle of their house when the power cuts off recognizes how many little motors and engines there are in fact in their house that they don't hear minute to minute.

Not to minimize it, but I think that's going to tend to apply.

And then on to the traffic point, right now it's a vacant bank.

Any use is going to be substantially more.

And to Commissioner Stolzenberg's earlier point, if BOTO's rolls in, no one's going to have a word to say about the traffic issue.

There's no place to make that complaint.

They're going to roll in, and they're going to start

moving traffic through there.

So I'm not really sure.

I don't see the traffic in and of itself because of this is particularly dramatic.

And I understand that we've got 20 spaces, but I imagine that some of that is not for a full-fledged vacuum.

It's to pause for a second to throw your trash out or whatever.

You're not actually...

Well, yeah, I mean, just not to argue with the example, but you're going to get a whole lot of tires rolling into that parking lot if you open a Bodo's or something similar there.

No, I agree.

I think the looking at it, you know, as a noise issue mainly and everything else is, you know, could happen with the Byride Project.

I think the applicant moved, you know, moving those vacuum producers into the site as, you know, shows that they're listening to the complaints and trying to address them and I'm confident that it could be mitigated later on.

Yeah, I feel kind of stuck on this because it's, you know, we're current uses that are by right are, you know, a gas station or a repair service shop and, you know, a repair shop can be pretty noisy.

So I guess I'm, you know, a little bit to Mayor Snook's question, which was, you know, are we looking at this as something that's

a negative that we need to mitigate or do we will we only approve it if it's going to bring something better to the area and I realize that our existing zoning and even the entrance corridor guidelines you know talk about car oriented buildings but then you know our comp plan talks about

mixed-use and five to eight stories in height, and this is a really sad use for this quarter.

No offense to the applicant, because I'm sure it's a fantastic use for them, but as far as planning and zoning-wise, it's a little depressing.

So I don't know if, again, if we're looking at it in terms of

You know, a use that any negatives can be mitigated and then we'd approve it.

I think they can accomplish that, as others have said.

But if we're looking at it in terms of it needs to bring something special to the area, it definitely doesn't pass that.

I will say just a quick commentary with the bike lane on or lack of bike lane on Harris if you look at the city's bicycle pedestrian master plan the maps that they have in there for level of stress there is a up and down Fifth Street it's all level four which is the highest and there's an itty-bitty little spur of level four on Harris Street which is the north border of this property which is where the bike lane ends so

I don't know that we can require this applicant to improve that situation, but it definitely, the city I don't think should look at this intersection as complete and satisfactory as far as bikes are concerned.

Mr. Stolzenberg please soapbox thanks oh yeah I got one of those uh yeah so I agree uh with Commissioner Schwarz uh in a lot of respects uh certainly my first impression of this um as a guy who also drives around well doesn't really drive but has a dirty old car uh that doesn't go to a car wash is that it is kind of a sad use for this intersection and what we hoped it would be

and it made me wonder if the seller's broker and or the applicant were aware that there was a zoning determination that the highway corridor has unlimited density by right until we rewrite the zoning code but alas that's this is what's before us

and you know I think I'm fairly strongly of the opinion that if you believe that we shouldn't have car washes in the city it's not really an invalid opinion and that you know almost got the last two car washes shot down I think they passed three to two in council but I think the venue to do that is a zoning text amendment that removes car washes as an allowed use and not

by denying an SUP for vague reasons that aren't related to adverse impacts.

That said, I think there are adverse impacts here.

I think noise and light pollution are some of the very most classic adverse impacts that we're supposed to be worried about as a body that does zoning, even though our

profession has gotten away from that over the decades.

And I think noise in particular is something I'm very worried about, especially with this noise study that basically promises to violate the noise ordinance.

I do think that the move of the noisy things into an enclosed area would probably mitigate it significantly.

And I'm wondering if we can craft a condition that limits the noise to some fairly strict level measured from the property line or the nearest residential property line, ideally beyond

what the noise ordinance would require.

It seems like it's an engineering problem that can be solved.

You could bury the vacuum producers in a pit 20 feet underground, it wouldn't produce any noise.

It's just a matter of engineering it, right?

And I don't know the extent to what putting it in a dumpster enclosure will do, since I just heard about that five minutes ago, but I think...

a noise study or something of the like by the time the site plan rolls around could say well this will be less than 50 decibels the property line or something like that similarly with lights I think we should add a condition that headlights won't bleed over into the neighboring properties I think it's not really required in the code and

It's good to hear that they plan on mitigating that, but I do want to, you know, enshrine that as a condition.

Similarly, full cutoff lighting.

And then I think what Commissioner Schwartz said on traffic and bike facilities is also dead on.

While it may be a small percentage of trips at the Harris Fifth intersection, it's still probably a fair number of trips in that driveway Harris intersection.

We're talking 42, 43 trips at peak hour, which I would have appreciated being in the application, incidentally.

and I think if we can get bicycle improvements at the very least paint treatments to that intersection that would be very much beneficial in mitigating those impacts I guess I would ask staff if we can enshrine their representation that they're willing to work with transportation staff as a condition on this but I do appreciate regardless that they will hopefully do that

Mr. Palmer, please.

Of course.

Briefly, I would say that I'll be very pleased for the property owner to be able to do as they desire with their property.

I see a benefit to that.

I see a benefit to the jobs.

I see a benefit to the revenue.

I do see troubles.

I believe that.

But I agree that there are engineering solutions that we can use to mitigate those.

Yeah, you know, the mayor raised, I think, an important point.

And as I read it, the applicable standard, which is council may approve in its discretion whenever the public necessity, convenience, general welfare, or good zoning practice requires.

To me, it would seem that our default would be to look for reasons to approve an SUP.

meaning we should look for is there a compelling reason how this benefits the general welfare and that is completely within our discretion to approve or deny and there is absolutely no requirement that we need to look or should look upon an SUP of something which we default to approving.

Quite frankly, it seems like our legislative discretion is broad enough that we could use whatever standard we want that we consider to be advantageous to the general welfare.

But in either case, this proposal would fail either standard to me.

I do see there being adverse impacts on the adjacent residential neighborhoods in terms of noise, light and traffic.

as others have mentioned the traffic at that the smaller neighborhood intersection as well as at the main one and more broadly one of my concerns is you know there's the principle of economies of agglomeration in other words if you

build one car lot.

Why are there a bunch of car lots that pop up next to them?

Same with drive-throughs.

I would consider this to be a drive-through use.

It's just that it's a drive-through for a car wash rather than a restaurant.

And my concern is that if we approve this, it's basically going to be creating a lot of path dependency where the pattern of development in this area will be more drive-throughs and more car-centered uses.

We know that there's already been a fatality at this intersection.

As others mentioned, there was a crash today at 3 p.m.

at this intersection, which I hope, to my knowledge, is not fatal, but was serious enough that it could have been if you look at the pictures of it.

There could be a by-right development which is as negative for the neighborhood in the community but there also could be a lot of by-right uses which are way better and by-right uses that include residential development as well

All that to say, I don't see how this benefits the community or that neighborhood.

I do see how it has adverse impacts in terms of the traffic.

I don't see how this conforms with our smart scale applications, the safety improvement plans long term, or the recent action we just took to reduce the speed limit here.

It seems like we're basically saying, you know, if we approve it,

Hey, let's use our complete discretion to greenlight a national chain drive-through and kind of forget about all the things we said we were actually going to plan to do on this corridor.

Yeah, I don't have anything to offer in addition to what's been said.

I'm listening to what people have said.

I can see...

how this might be an amenity to the community to have this option.

I think even in Charlottesville people might like to wash their cars from time to time.

And so I could see how it would be an amenity to the community and the things that Mr. Solla-Yates mentioned in terms of, you know,

perhaps the commerce that would be derived by having that there and jobs and so forth, I can see those things too.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that it's the best use for that space.

I do have concerns in terms of the noise and the light and the traffic and how it fits into our smart scale work in that area.

So I'm still on the fence about it.

A lot of the discussion tonight has been a discussion that's appropriate to the consideration of a site plan.

Can you mitigate various effects?

Can you deal with screening of the neighbors of sound and light and so on?

That's not, although that's part of the SUP consideration, that's not all of it, as I noted in my earlier comments.

I just feel like an SUP application and SUP granting ought to contribute something to the community in return for getting a variance or I shouldn't use the word variance that has a technical meaning in return for getting a deviation from the norm and I've voted to approve I think every SUP application that has had a housing

ramification because I could see that we needed more housing and that was a definite positive.

I'll say I'm not morally opposed to car washes.

My number one son worked at a car wash in high school.

It gave him a great opportunity to make some money, and I fully appreciate the effects of the economy.

But I think we have to consider more than that.

And I don't know what this project, I mean, it would be different if there was no other place in the community where you could get your car washed.

it would be different if there were not zones and property zoned accordingly that allowed for the installation of a car wash.

There's no particular reason that a car wash is necessarily needed or appropriate here.

And I confess, I don't know what I really have in mind for that stretch of the entrance corridor, but it's probably not a car wash.

Thank you.

Am I mistaken, but isn't there a car wash about 400 yards down the road?

Farther down Fifth Street?

The intent of the zoning district is for auto-oriented uses.

Should we have a zoning district that's encouraging auto-oriented uses in 2022?

Additional discussion on this item?

I guess, well, I'd like some help crafting conditions if we are going to recommend some.

Or we can recommend denial.

But you know what?

to I think what a couple of people over there said about BOTOs.

I think the point I was trying to make was less that you could have a BOTOs here, and so there could be lots of traffic by right.

Therefore, we shouldn't be considering traffic as an adverse impact.

My point was more that that's kind of, to me, almost a reductio ad absurdum, right?

That yes, there could be a BOTOs.

Anywhere there could be a BOTOs, traffic for any use can never be a by right impact because nothing could beat a BOTOs.

And, you know, to me, it seems obviously true that in SEPs we've considered here before, you know, many of them were even in places where there could have been a BOTOS, which is not a drive-through.

And yet, we found traffic was an adverse impact.

And so, you know, I don't think it's a completely unmitigatable one, but it does seem to me that there is one.

I was hoping we could craft a condition on noise

I do.

And then the question, I suppose, would be what is a reasonable noise level to restrict it down to?

You know, 65 is the legal limit, 60 is an air conditioner, 45 is a fridge.

We have no idea how much putting it in that enclosure will help.

Can I get some clarification on where you're going with the noise you want to say?

So what's X?

That's the question.

What does that look like in reality?

I hear a motion and a second, please.

I guess the way I'm looking at this is, I mean, I do not like that it's going to be a car wash, but it is looking at the zoning itself in the highway corridor district, and we're at the stage where our comp plan doesn't match the zoning that we have and how do we review these applications, and I think that's where we're all

kind of struggling.

I do wish it was more ambitious and would fit our wonderful future land use map designations.

But it does kind of meet what is currently in the zoning to some extent, even though it's not by right.

But looking at what is there now,

and what the intent of that district is.

I'd kind of like to piggyback on that comment, and I've mentioned this before.

We're in this liminal state where we have an existing set of rules that we should be applying in some sort of consistent way.

Because they're the existing set of rules,

even though we don't exactly like them and have all sorts of hopes and aspirations for the next set of rules that do not yet exist?

And do we paralyze ourselves?

I mean, if that's a tension, should it really be a tension?

I mean, or should we, or are those things that should be compartmentalized?

We have something under the current rule that's being presented, we're going to evaluate it that way.

and when we've developed and crafted new ones we're going to evaluate it that way but otherwise I don't think we're being fair or you know we're way far away from being transparent or clear on what the city will and won't do and wants and won't want and we have a set of rules should we be applying them

Yeah, and not that it's absolute either.

I mean, but that's, shouldn't that be our default that that's where we start.

These are what the rules are.

We have a car-centric zoning.

And to that point, to bring it back to Mayor Snook's point about 34-157, the all-discretionary zoning decisions and how to decide on them, one of those things is public necessity, convenience, general welfare, or good zoning practice.

And to me,

kind of informally saying something is a prohibited use without actually taking it out of the use matrix seems like bad zoning practice.

And we hear from developers

Rory Stolzenberg, Rory Stolzenberg, Rory Stolzenberg

Plow through and keep doing it unpredictably until we make a whole new system?

Or do we try to do good zoning practice in the meantime, even if the conditions aren't always ideal?

Though we do have the opportunity here to mitigate the adverse impacts, I think.

And, you know, things like having a crosswalk so kids can walk to school, you know, it's a relatively small and cheap benefit.

If the city isn't doing it itself, then it is a meaningful benefit.

So I guess I might be the swing vote here.

Also, Jose, I think if you were hoping that we could avoid all that discussion of conditions by denying, we do usually recommend conditions even if we recommend denial.

That's fair.

I'm just kidding.

Much appreciated.

Sometimes, yes, but usually in a separate vote.

So we still have to figure out what those should be.

I just wanted to quickly add that, you know, at some point in the past, somebody decided that car washes would be a special use permit.

So they're not, I'm not sure that by denying this we're, you know,

using bad zoning practice.

We're actually conforming to what is currently in the code.

And I'm not sure I see a disconnect between applying that with the future comprehensive plan, which is just about more intensive uses.

Anyways, it just, yeah.

I don't think we're violating anything by

denying this since it's not a by-right use to begin with.

I guess I would say my thoughts for what they're worth is that if you were to deny it to say, oh, it's on the edge of highway and right across from residential, so it's not the right place to do it, that's a reasonable reason to deny a special use permit within a zone that allows it, even if it mitigates all the adverse impacts.

Additional discussion on this proposal?

Ms.

All right.

OK.

Mr. Mitchell?

Yes.

Thank you for it.

So we need another one.

Indeed.

All right.

I'll do that one.

Your service is appreciated.

I just want to land on the ship.

So optimistic.

All right, I move to recommend approval of this application, application being Special Use Prevent Application SP22-0007 with the three conditions listed on page 14 of the staff report.

And I'll open up to friendly amendments.

yes I'll second that motion and I'll suggest well the two new conditions will be easiest the first it will sort of mimic three for light it will say the applicant will work with staff during final site plan review to ensure any

light created by patron headlights will not escape the property in the direction of the residences across Harris.

Is that a reasonable wording?

We're gonna run with that one.

The second will be echoing the full cutoff language we used for Lind Hall, which I definitely have somewhere here.

it says outdoor lighting shall be provided well I don't know about okay all outdoor lighting and light fixtures shall be full cutoff luminaires can we say the lights spill over from luminaires onto public streets or a budding lot shall not exceed one half foot candle

a spillover shall be measured horizontally and vertically at the property line or edge of public right-of-way or public easement whichever is closer to the luminaire that's the condition we use for Lynn Hall is that appropriate here even though the budding property is also highway um so that that sounds like the the lighting ordinance specifics anyway yeah i guess we could stick with full cutoff so i guess where that came up in Lynn Hall is the lighting ordinance doesn't apply

to all light fixtures, only those over 3,000 lumens, whereas this condition could apply to all of them.

Is that a reasonable addition?

Yeah, again, I mean, it's pretty basic, same language as the Lynn Hall, full cutoff lighting.

In fact, it was almost boilerplate language on our SAP conditions at one point, and then isn't on this one for some reason.

I didn't think that one would be controversial.

I'm not ready to accept that as a penalty amendment.

I don't know how we're going to enforce that.

Yeah, so those are hard to enforce after the fact.

And we see that with Southern Crescent, right?

That had a proper related to noise that can't really be enforced because we don't have zoning administrators out there at 10 p.m.

with a decibel meter.

Yeah, three is already about the site plan review, so it would be about, you know, creating conditions within the site plan to mitigate noise to that extent.

The question is, you know, what extent?

I mean, that's...

The noise ordinance?

That's the noise ordinance.

That still seems a bit high to me.

I think we can do better.

I mean, the noise ordinance is like you're blasting music.

It's not really contemplating continuous noise every day of the year forever.

So, you know, I feel like that's a bigger impact than what the noise ordinance is generally, you know, crafted to cover.

To me, you know, at least that like 60 decibel level at this property line, the air conditioner would be appropriate if not as low as, you know, 50 is a bit louder than a refrigerator.

I think it would be much more helpful if we had any idea how much we're thinking about mitigating, which I think the applicant might have something to contribute.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Stolzenberg.

One, we do have available the engineer with Kemley Horn who prepared the noise study.

So I obviously am not an expert, and I would defer to him on technical questions like you raised.

And so I would ask him to weigh in in a minute, but I did want to mention just a couple things for what it's worth.

We do, they, the experts, do say that they expect, they're very confident that the proposals we've made, particularly regarding relocating the vacuum producers to the center of the site and enclosing them within the dumpster will make a significant impact.

We're very comfortable with the condition as it was written by Mr. Alfie to work with him to mitigate the noise.

As you can see, it says any noise.

It's even more strict.

Frankly, that's a little bit

a little more vague than I might be normally comfortable with.

But nevertheless, I wasn't going to object to it because I wanted to convey the message and the point that the applicant is very willing and concerned about reducing and preventing any noise impacts on the neighbors.

So we thought that was the best way to handle it in addition to committing to the two new changes

relocating and closing the producers and adding the wall and extending the wall.

To the extent that is not sufficient, we are happy to work with more.

With regard to a certain DB level, I will just note, in case you're wondering, Albemarle County has a noise ordinance.

that has a nighttime limit of 55 decibels and a daytime limit of 65 decibels and that is in the so-called residential receiving zone or and it applies they have so that's what the limits are in the county for what that's worth I will also tell you that the county has very many challenges with enforcing their ordinance they do not have the technical equipment necessary to do it I've handled noise ordinance violations matters in the county and

they had to rely on our clients' technical experts.

So it's challenging.

And again, I'm not an expert, but in your comment, Mr. Jolzenberg, I think it was Table 1 in the noise study where you noted levels of 78-something.

Again, I'm going to ask the expert to confirm this, and I'm told he's ready to chime in.

But I believe that's the sort of max limit and that that's not the standard

That's sort of a one-time over an average.

I think it's a weighted five-minute average or something.

What's the highest that we ever heard?

But that's not necessarily how you measure it.

You measure on an average.

Anyway, let me let sort of the equivalent could be it could have been a car horn.

Great.

Well, thank you for the time, and I appreciate the conversation and the focus on noise and noise-compatible land use planning.

specific to table one, as you pointed out, the LMAX values that are listed there are one minute max readings from when we took noise measurements on site.

We were on site for an hour and collected noise measurements at two locations on the site.

And so the one hour LEQ noise level that's presented there is the equivalent noise level for that one hour period when we monitor

noise levels, and typically when we are looking at the application of noise ordinances across the country, that one hour LEQ, that one hour equivalent noise level is typically what's used for enforcement and planning purposes and ensuring that a particular use is consistent with the adjacent environment.

We do like to capture both min and max noise levels while we're out there because we recognize that noise levels fluctuate not only throughout the day, but even the course of an hour or a few minute period.

And so what we presented here is just the data as we collected it.

In regards to specific decibel limits at property lines, I think this is one of the challenges with noise ordinances across the country.

And you've kind of run into it through the discussion tonight.

How do you set a noise level limit that's enforceable?

And frankly, how do you measure what that noise level is from one particular site because of the contribution of lots of different sources in the environment out there?

So what we've shown in our table is that during the course of an hour period on a typical Thursday, noise levels are higher and lower than what's currently specified in the ordinance.

And we are looking to plan for and mitigate noise on our site to be consistent with the existing ambient noise environment.

The inverse

Square Law was mentioned earlier, point sources of noise will typically degrade at about six decibels for every doubling of distance.

So if we're predicting a noise level of 65 decibels at 25 feet for the vacuum pump producer, we would expect that to then be 59 decibels at 50 feet

and then 53 at 100 and so on and so forth from there.

The concrete block wall that Ryan mentioned that will surround the dumpster enclosure could have a 20 to 30 decibel sound transmission loss or prevent noise transmitting through that material to that level.

And so just again, kind of order of magnitude, you're looking at a 20 to 30 decibel reduction by putting those vacuum producers inside of an enclosure.

I'll pause there.

Yeah, I think that was really helpful.

I mean, I kind of reject the idea that it matters, that it was a momentary noise and not the five-minute average, because the noise ordinance didn't say anything about a five-minute average.

I recognize it's usually hard to enforce noise ordinances, but since this is a constant noise,

and ideally I would think something that could be modeled in advance.

It seems more doable.

The numbers on how much we can expect a reduction from what you proposed earlier is very helpful.

And I guess my question for you is,

Are you not confident enough in those numbers that we could take what your projections were and subtract, say, 20 decibels from them and call that the limit?

Yes, that's a good question.

We did not specifically model and predict future noise levels for the site.

So we took measurements at the proposed location to measure the ambient background noise levels.

We took measurements at another Green Queen facility and then made a comparison and made some observations

about how those two different sets of noise measurements compare to the noise ordinance in Charlottesville.

We can absolutely create a noise model that would give you predicted noise levels in and around the site based on anticipated usage and the sound levels of

the various pieces of machinery and any potential abatement measures that would be introduced on site, whether it's the dumpster enclosure, the screen wall at the exit of the dryers, et cetera.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I guess I was just assuming that in your current proposal, it would be no more than 65 decibels at the nearest residential property line because otherwise it would be illegal.

That's correct.

Would that work, Erin?

I can't do it this evening, but we're certainly happy to pull that together.

And then a possible consideration for the commission would be, do we want to make that a condition of the site plan as part of granting this SEP, or are we uncomfortable with approving anything until we have some idea what's going on because we have insufficient information right now?

We got a motion we're crafting.

Mr. Mitchell, are you still amenable?

I think for just the noise sound one, the intent is to specifically, it's the equipment that make the vacuum equipment, right?

That's what they're measuring, and that's what we're designing around.

or just to kind of give direction to how we want to craft our... Yeah, I mean, I think it's reasonable to restrict it to the vacuum, which I'm assuming would also make your noise or your study model easier.

I mean, I don't want to require a model if it's, you know, just sort of an exercise in pleasing us to meet some condition and it's not, it's going to tell us something we already knew, which is that if you enclose it, it's not going to make much noise.

What's the default output of this thing at 20 feet or whatever?

I would prefer to hear from the staff at this time just to focus the conversation.

Sure.

Understood.

Then yes, please.

I'm sorry, were you speaking to me, Mr. Chairman?

Yes.

Yes.

Erin, could you please repeat the statement?

I couldn't catch your statistics, but you indicated when you were discussing your estimate of the noise reduction by enclosing and relocating the vacuum producers that at 50 feet it would be X and 15 feet something else.

I'm sorry.

Sure, so there were two statements that I made that I think are getting joined together, and so I want to just be clear that they're two separate discussions.

The first is that I would expect the enclosure around the vacuum producers and the dumpster enclosure to reduce noise levels at the source by 20 to 30 decibels.

The second piece of the conversation was an example of how point sources of noise reduced by six decibels

in the ambient environment for each doubling of distance.

So the example I gave was if you have a 65 decibel noise source or that's measured at 25 feet, that at 59 feet you would expect that same point source to then be 59 decibels and that at 100 feet that would be 53 decibels.

I guess the question I was asking was, you're saying if it were 65 decibels, then it would be.

At any reasonable length.

Sounds like pretty loud.

If I could ask Erin to also speak to, I don't have the noise ordinance with me, but I assume that it states how the measurement is to be taken.

So then how would it be enforced when you have ambient noise at the same time as the use occurring?

How does that work in a typical situation?

Just for clarification, so the applicant can't tell us how loud their producers are in a static environment.

I mean, I think we can if we undertook a specific measurement with that focus.

And I think we can do that.

Please, Mr. Pinkston.

Yeah, I mean, if you just had the cut sheet on a piece of equipment, they would be able to say this is what the DBs are at 10 feet away, and they should be able to tell you if you erected a CMU wall of this height, this is what it would be past that.

45 decibels verified by a sound study in the site plan configuration.

So it's something to be enforced at site plan via you guys creating a study.

I'm sure Kimberly Horn is happy with that.

And that I think memorializes essentially the 20 decibel reduction we can get.

And for the neighbors, that would sound like a refrigerator running at the property line.

And is that too much?

Is that unreasonable?

I don't think it's an issue with regard to the demand of a study.

I think I would say, again, I'm not an expert, and I will invite Aaron, who is, to chime in.

I would like to have less back and forth with the applicant at this time.

This is for discussion of the Planning Commission.

Sure.

I guess that's my proposal for condition.

I think that is a reasonable proposal.

My question is, how is it practical?

If they can produce a study that

And they say it's, you know, noise at this source.

It dissipates with this amount for distance.

There's this topography and, you know, there's a big wall blocking in and maybe they have to add a roof to the enclosure or whatever to block a little more noise.

the hard part here?

I don't think the study is.

Ms.

Long, please, no.

Let's focus on the Planning Commission.

Oh, I'm sorry.

This is not a question for the applicant at this time.

Okay, I thought Mr. Stolzenberg was asking me a question.

He was not.

I assure you.

Sorry.

It's physically possible.

Yeah, that seems fair.

I mean, that said, you know, it seems to me that there are additional mitigating measures you could take, like a dumpster enclosure doesn't normally have a roof.

So in any case, it seems like it's not going to matter what conditions we propose because Council is not looking favorable in this.

So in the interest of wrapping up the discussion with what I think is a fairly reasonable proposal,

which again is the bottom end of the reduction range they thought 20 to 30 so again that condition will be the applicant or the applicant will present a sound study demonstrating that in the site plan configuration the noise produced by the vacuum producing equipment

You had the lighting and you had the sound.

Those are adding up.

Those are adding up.

Those are my motion.

We talked for so long.

I guess the last thing I have, do we want to leave the site plan design open?

I would suggest that if we're asking them to do a sound study to make it quiet in the property line,

it could potentially be more be broad because we don't know what those treatments exactly would be and they're not going to know until there's a configuration but you know something to the effect of working with staff for any additional appropriate traffic markings

Yeah, adjacent to the site and at the driveway intersection.

Reasonable?

Maybe Ms.

Creasy can tell us what she's got.

Okay, so it was noting, so I don't have it written down, but I'll work through it here, that the applicant would work with the city or the

Was this your intent?

Perfect.

Thank you very much.

Additional discussion on language, or are we prepared for a vote?

Can I ask if that last condition just seems reasonable?

Please.

It's something they sort of offered on their own.

It is, but the sound noise standard, as our expert is telling me, is not reasonable.

Too harsh.

If you

Yeah, I mean, so I guess

That kind of creates an issue, right?

We're proposing a condition that's impossible.

It kind of alarms me a little bit that if it's a 20 decimal reduction at the nearest property line where it was required to be 65 before and they're not confident, they're confident that now it complies, it implies that they were not confident before that it complies with the noise ordinance.