Planning Commission Joint Work Session with City Council   2/28/2023

You're the only person left in the process of elimination.

That's right, this one says D'Oronzio.

Just a couple of logistics before you start, James.

Welcome, everyone.

Glad everyone's here tonight.

For those in the public, just wanted to let you all know that we are only taking written comments this evening, and that was part of the instructions that were provided.

You can either email them directly to me, Creasy M, C-R-E-A-S-Y-M, at charlottesville.gov,

or if you are in the room, you have the opportunity to provide us comments per note card.

We have pens and note cards for you.

Any emails that arrive during the course of this meeting and note cards will be attached to the minutes for this meeting.

activity.

So just wanted to provide that.

And moving on to James, but do, when we get into the speaking part, you will get prompts for the microphone.

I apologize in advance.

All right.

So let me also extend a welcome to everybody.

Excited to have everyone here to talk about the zoning ordinance for us who are working on this and working through our draft product with a goal of getting something in front of you in the next several months.

This is really essential.

This is the feedback that helps us move forward.

Now, we've gotten a lot of great feedback already from the public.

We're getting a ton of comments through our online portal and encourage people to continue to submit through the Seville Plans Together website.

We read every single comment that comes in that way.

And then we also had our open houses last week.

I know a handful of people from here were able to attend one or more of those.

We had a little over 200 people to come through over the course of the three days that we were open.

Of course, we were in three different locations across the city.

I know I participated in a number of really great conversations around different parameters of what's going on in the zoning ordinance.

I'm sure others did as well.

So

We're learning a lot as we go and thinking about how that leads to changes with the zoning ordinance and the zoning map.

So we back on the 14th, we polled the Planning Commission members about if there are any particular topics that they wanted to touch on.

So that's our starting point in terms of what we put together here, but of course are open to other topics and do our best to answer any other questions that come up.

All right.

Philip, you don't like me?

All right.

All right, so the first item we had on our list, let me just stop, pause there for a second.

Any questions or anything that anyone wants to note before we just dive in?

Yes.

We have the notification online on the agendas and minutes page.

Oh, okay.

Okay, so.

Okay.

All right.

So the first item that we were looking at was this question of setbacks for odd-shaped lots.

So I'm going to rely on Patrick to pull up sections of the zone ordinance as I go.

So it's really just a process following the zoning ordinance as it lays out essentially a process for identifying how you determine setbacks on any lot.

But it's particularly important to follow that process clearly when you have an oddly configured lot.

So the very first question that comes up is where's your front basically?

What's the front of the lot?

And that's in the section that's identified a street designation.

which is on page 2-60, Patrick.

This is the section that gets you, basically helps you identify what is your primary street.

And a lot can't have more than one primary street, but the starting point is where's your primary street.

And from that,

You can then identify what are your side lot lines and your rear lot lines, and then your setbacks are going to come off of that.

So for an oddly shaped lot, let's say one like if we go to, yeah, that's the page.

Can you zoom in a little bit?

Actually, what page are you?

Go, I'm sorry, go a couple pages past that.

Okay.

So the graphic there down at the bottom of that page shows basically

lays out how to determine your primary street lot line and then any other side lot lines.

Where there's a street, you're going to have a side street lot line.

In each case, later in the ordinance, the yard provisions and the setback provisions are going to really depend first and foremost on what is that defining lot line that you're adjacent to.

the when you get to the defining the rear lot line this is one point where there's kind of an interesting provision because it well you can have multiple primary lot lines your rear lot line is always going to be the one that is farthest from the primary street lot line generally parallel to it that is not also a primary street lot line so in that graphic you can see you've got two primary street lot lines

because there's a street behind as well, and so the rear lot line is that one, is that other one.

This is the rear lot line?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Sorry.

So your rear lot line is always going to be opposite your primary street line.

So this is our primary street lot line.

Oh, but it's primary street.

But they both are.

The rear lot line is...

This one can't be a real law line because it's a primary street law line.

So when you look at it, the real law line is going to be .

But say this slot ended here with whatever reason.

The real law line will shift to the progress one.

And then I won't go to the graphic for it, but if you're

A lot can also be like this one that has no rear lot line at all.

You've got two side lot lines because of the nature of the lot.

In those situations, a rear setback is still determined and there's a formula provided within the ordinance that basically creates a line there that's basically parallel to your primary street lot line and the rear setback can be drawn off of that.

There's a graphic that describes that.

in the ordinance.

What's that?

Nothing.

So we could go, I started to look at different permutations of what an oddly shaped lot is, but at the end of the day, it's about kind of carefully following the rules, starting from the perspective of identifying your primary street lot line, identifying the rest of your lot lines once you've identified

All right.

So also on the explanation front, height.

The question was raised, when we measure height by stories and feet, does that create a scenario where it's one or the other or both?

It is both, right?

the height in feet has a little give in it so theoretically you could cram more units or more floors in there but the story height caps that as well so if it's five stories and even if it's five stories and you know 100 feet it's still five stories is your cap you can't have any more than five stories now what the reason we're looking at both height in feet and stories is essentially to prevent cramming

The building code allows us to have, I'm not going to remember off the top of my head, but right around seven feet is the minimum floor height necessary.

So one could theoretically, within a strict feet standard, cram a lot of stories in there.

It's our preference and our recommendation that we regulate by identifying a story limit as well and that defines essentially the livable floor area that can be established on a site.

So we're regulating height for the reasons we always regulate height in terms of access to light air and those types of things.

Stories is creating basically that limitation on the amount of floor area that can be produced.

Overall, other than that, we're proposing in this ordinance not to impose a lot area per unit standard, which is something that was called out in the comprehensive plan.

So among the things that allows us to do, one of the other advantages to doing stories and height together is that actually produces, allows for the market to produce a variety in heights.

When you do a straight height limit in feet, people tend to build to that to the greatest extent possible.

whereas when it's both stories and feet you get different roof patterns because they've got, they don't have the incentive to push all the way to the top so they have a little more, they have basically space to work with to vary the roof type and you also see differing types of floors, right?

You can see a mezzanine come in on one of those stories.

And so that overall leads to a variety in your heights.

You had mentioned something a moment ago that suggests that

you and perhaps others in the room have had a conversation that I have not been a part of and I'm curious.

Sure.

You mentioned no lot area per unit as though that was something to be perhaps avoided.

Why?

Sure.

So lot area per unit essentially creates a

Sorry, I'm trying to put my thoughts together on that.

Lot area per unit, it's one of the recommendations right now in zoning to move away from lot area per unit.

It essentially drives you in a direction of defining minimum unit sizes and kind of directing

development towards what are the size of the units and therefore the value of those units over time.

Right.

So the more we tie, the more we say that you've got to have this much land area in order to accommodate this many units, you're raising the cost of that project.

Okay.

Perhaps, I'm just trying to think about incentives back and forth.

It may also create an incentive to, you know, have fewer units but larger units.

Yep, exactly.

Well, I'm thinking about it again, just sort of remembering history.

Back when we were particularly caring about JPA, being horrified at the notion that JPA was a student-dominated neighborhood back in the 1980s, we were commenting that how strange it was that these students would choose to have four-bedroom apartments rather than having perhaps a two-bedroom apartment.

And the obvious answer was because they had a certain number of units that they were able to put on those lots.

And so they could cram more bodies, therefore more leases into the same space.

Now, I'm sorry, in that scenario, are you describing that the... Where you've got a lot, a minimum lot size per unit, and therefore you're seeking to maximize the size of the unit, you may have four-bedroom apartments, but if you're only going to have two units,

You've now got eight people living there instead of four people.

That's all I'm saying.

Right.

And in this case, we're focusing more of our attention on is what is the form the building itself takes.

It's height, it's massing, it's lot coverage and how it relates to other buildings, how it relates to the street, how we transition between a higher intensity district to a lower intensity district.

for single-family units.

Square footage of lot requirement minimum is 8,125 square feet.

So in medium intensity, there's still the lots per unit, right?

Yeah, I mean, when we get in the parlance of this zoning ordinance, the residential A, B, and C, or in the general residential and medium intensity, if we're looking at the land use map, both of those regulate the number, put a cap on the number of units and can be incorporated on a lot.

Okay.

I've gotten a lot of emails about the number 32.

Why 32?

For RA and RB?

Ah.

Well, this is one of the items we have down below, isn't it?

Yeah, because that becomes a policy question.

And that's our next town.

So where and how are stacked townhomes allowed?

I mean basically that building type could potentially show up in both the RB and the RC.

The analysis that was done in the report that was released in August that looked at the rate of change report identified townhomes as the most likely development type that we would see in both the RB and the RC.

RB you probably could only get a two over one and probably only in a bonus scenario the RC readily accommodates I think both but so that's that gives you a parameter but there's nothing otherwise that would prohibit or prevent stacked townhomes from occurring RB and RC are your two districts where that can happen

Are there any other clarifying questions that would be helpful to try and answer at this point in time?

Okay.

So let's get into the policy discussions which are...

where I hope to actually hear less of myself talking perhaps.

All right.

So the first one that was identified was the front yard parking prohibition.

So a number of people have asked questions about that.

Yeah, and I think I asked some of my questions about that.

Yeah, right.

The front yard parking prohibition is really just looking at that issue of what is the character of our street safe going to be, particularly as denser housing types occur on a street over time.

Right now the ordinance, and I did another read through of it, I don't see anything providing any kind of restriction in terms of front yard parking today that I could find.

Missy, am I missing anything?

Because I dug through the whole ordinance today.

In the existing zoning ordinance, sorry.

In the existing.

Today's zoning ordinance that we have today, no prohibition.

It's like right on page three.

Yeah.

It's not allowed.

As proposed, it's in all of the residential, particularly the low density residential districts, right?

It's saying straight up RA, RB, RC, front yard parking would be prohibited.

I think there's a specific clause that also says somewhere way deep down there that you can't park in the driveway.

Right, right.

And again, all of this is aimed at that issue of protecting the quality of that streetscape, the walkability of that streetscape.

because as you get more units, you have more of a potential for that front yard to become essentially a parking lot.

The driveway, I guess to kind of ask along the same line, would you be able to pull a driveway and then have your parking?

Is that when it's kind of behind the front yard portion of the lot?

Because you have lots that have prohibition.

Maybe.

I mean, if you had side and front and you weren't allowed to do both in that zone, then your parking would have to just be in the rear.

So I don't have a parking lot.

I don't have a driveway on my house on Grave Street.

And there are other houses.

And they're very small, just little like pull-ins.

And I've always thought if that was ever something I wanted, like if there were more...

if there was an apartment building coming and I thought this was going to be a problem I would think there would be a case for an exemption because of the existing street pattern and so that's how I've approached that and you know that seems reasonable to me as a homeowner that

Or rather than a waiver you could also just call out an exemption and say this doesn't apply to locations with one or two units on them.

And you cram them all in the front.

Could you also just say, you know, you can have basically a driveway width and that's it, right?

So you could have three units on the site, but only the one facing the street gets the regular driveway, like a single-family house.

Everyone else comes in from another side or doesn't have parking or...

has a garage or whatever.

See what I mean?

Because I think there is a clause like that for basically a driveway that goes through a building on the side or the encouragement part of the ordinance.

There's like driveway plus four feet of clearance and that's all you get.

Yeah.

I would tend to think that an exemption in the one and two units, I mean, it's pretty, from my perspective,

I think it's pretty much required in a certain respect because if we're increasing density and we're increasing cars and now we've got to pull cars off the street from somewhere and if you make it so much I mean there might be a motivation on your part to say apartment buildings going in I don't want to struggle and fight every night I'm you know you'd be out there with your sledgehammer breaking the curb the next day

I would take that and just say exempted from the RA entirely and just have a when you get to Module 2 just have a maximum payment width or a curb cut width.

Right.

And that should theoretically take care of most of it.

I think one thing to be wary of with just changing things just for RA is like the existing pattern in a lot of RB and the pattern that will still exist for a lot of decades except for a few lots is going to be similar and then you're adding those restrictions like

I mean, to me, a fairly elegant solution is just, like, let you park in a driveway.

I mean, it's not, if you have five parking spots in the back, people are going to be mad at you if you park in the driveway.

I mean, I think that's where you limit, that's like what the existing ordinance does, right?

You just limit the curb cuts.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is, in your example, you've got a person, you say, okay, we've got four spots in the back and a driveway you can park in the driveway.

Well, if you've got someone in the driveway parked and someone wants to get around it, what you do is you put in a dirt driveway, a de facto dirt driveway.

Yeah, it would apply in an existing condition if you didn't already have a parking space.

Or even if you were to change something to put three units in an RA space.

I'll note just to make it part of the conversation that we need to remember every time we add a driveway, we add a private parking space, we're taking away a public parking space from the street.

We're taking away a shared resource and essentially privatizing a parking space.

And can we limit that?

That's an interesting question.

We don't necessarily, we don't regulate it that way today.

I don't know.

No, I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, you're right, yep.

Okay, so, and the curb cut for the driveway would be 12?

Yeah.

Okay.

No.

So, yes.

Okay.

I mean, 20 is what you get for, like, a drawn parking space to give you room to maneuver.

On streets where parking is tight, I feel like it ends up being less than that because they're not painted spots, right?

No, we can also look at...

You still have to back out of those spaces.

Yeah, but I like the idea of, well,

Or a future zoning administrator.

Exactly.

So I mean, at this point I'm going to...

Well, I do want to point out, someone just sent me an email and they're right.

The most important thing I think when you're talking about parking in driveway is just to make sure people don't block the sidewalk, right?

Yes.

And just making sure the driveway's long enough that that doesn't happen.

And also, I mean, I don't know if this is possible, it may be a standard design manual thing, but like if you can, you know, establish a preference for a sort of level sidewalk cut where the curb cut is, you know, further along.

I don't know if that's even in our SADM right now, but

Yes, absolutely.

Right, right.

The accessibility issue along the sidewalk itself.

And I totally agree that the vehicles hanging over onto the sidewalk are actually a major accessibility issue.

Yeah.

So when you say one and twos, do you mean someone in RA if they decide to, let's say,

I mean, it might be sensible just to have, you know, if you're going to have that exception driveway, it has to accommodate, you know, if it's two units, you need two spaces.

It seems kind of messy to have it be broken up within

and existing zoning designation.

Like, it's zoned for more, but you're now asking your zoning administrator to look at how many units are actually in that parcel.

I mean, that's something we can assess that.

We'll figure out the best way to insert that change into the ordinance.

I mean, this was something that

came up in conversation as a solution.

So if it seems too onerous, we'll bring it back.

So I guess the question is, what is so special about one and two versus three, right?

I don't know.

I mean, I'm thinking about where I used to live, which was kind of a street or half a street full of duplexes, and each one more or less got

its own driveway, or it was joined to the one next to it, and then you could tandem park within the driveway.

Which, of course, those were twos, so I guess they would fall under this exemption, but you can imagine maybe you broke off one of the basement of those into a studio, and then that person has to figure out tandem parking with the person upstairs, but it's only two people, so it's doable.

That's a lot cleaner.

I would say a maximum of two curve cuts, though, right?

Because that's what we're really worried about.

No, we don't want more than one curve cut.

Sure.

Right.

I mean, if we simply say it's two maximum of two parking spaces within a front yard, frankly, that could be one or two curve cuts.

Right.

But the first might be more taking into consideration more of the site.

Right.

Recognizing that the conditions on any given site might warrant.

Okay.

All right.

So you want to talk about reduced heights in RA?

I mean, this is very simply one of the objectives, and I know I bring this up all the time within the zoning ordinance, is we're attempting to accommodate additional density, additional units in all neighborhoods of the city while respecting that existing neighborhood design characteristics, or however you want to phrase that.

That comes up.

in the vision statement relative to the land use plan, and it's something that we keep coming back to.

When we looked at heights within the city, it's relatively rare that any single-family neighborhood is actually hitting what is currently allowed in terms of height.

Since I think this one was one I brought up too, can I make a pitch for three?

I think, you know, one thing to me that really drives why three makes sense, right, is something where Snook brought up that

I think your briefing to council last week or whenever that you know if you're trying to have more units without taking up a lot of or covering a lot of lot right like we have fairly high lot coverage limits here

By making the building shorter, to have the same amount of floor area, they kind of have to sprawl outward a little bit, right?

They're kind of short and squat and cover up more of the lot.

If you just add that third story, which conveniently doesn't trigger any bad building code changes, like a second stairwell that makes things very difficult,

you're able to say have those three units in RA in you know a compact three stacked triplex form that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise right you'd have to have you know a duplex one over one and then a third unit somewhere or three you know townhomes next to each other each with their own stairs and so

Did you get us a whole bunch of square boxes, though?

You could do it that way or you could go back to 35 feet and then get you slanted roofs.

I mean, I think a lot of people are tied to pitch roofs.

I don't totally see the appeal to me.

I think we're just talking about a change in, right, a change in character.

Yeah, and I want to clarify, like, moving away from the feet, like, the stories is really what we were looking at.

We said two and a half stories is what we typically see across the city for the most part.

And so we did two and a half stories, and then the standard we're using for two and a half stories is 32 feet.

I mean, to support...

Commissioner Stolzenberg's issue question there.

The other thing is, it's a cost issue.

If you've got a two-story dwelling, you just knock the roof off and build up.

You don't have to, I mean, that's a lot less hairy than actually having to engage in demolition of the footprint, changing the footprint, putting something on the ground, more impervious area.

You just knock the roof off the place and build up.

Pop-tops in Richmond.

So I've certainly seen pop-ups from one story going up.

I don't know that I've seen a two-story building pop-up of three.

And the height, if it's a flat roof, of course, that's pretty obvious what the height would be.

But if it is a pitched roof, it's the midpoint.

And so you have additional height that is occurring there because of that.

Yeah, on heights, I gotta say, like, 44 feet sounds like a lot to me for RA, but, you know, 35 seems like plenty to have three stories and a pitch roof, right?

Like, I mean, maybe you have, like, the bottom floor is raised up a couple feet, but if it's not, you know, 10 feet, give a foot for, you know, the actual floor structure, you know, 9 feet is the height of my perspective.

luxury apartment, right?

Like that's very much normal.

And then if we're making the rule 14 feet, you know, that seems like you're giving a lot, plenty of leeway.

But you could do 10 feet and probably most people would because more than that is very tall ceilings.

Well, I would think it moves in the other direction if you allow the threes with the three story.

That's what I mean.

It means you have, you can fit the three units that you get with the one unit bonus in smaller footprint so you can squeeze it in more easily.

Well, that's what they're doing now, yeah.

Could you craft something about roof pitches under certain circumstances, too?

I think if you really wanted to incentivize pitch roofs, you could just

take any non-inhabitable attic space under a pitched roof out of height calculation.

And I think you could even, it's conceivable that you could make the height dependent on the number of units just like we do with the lot coverage.

Does that seem unreasonable?

As always, I want to chop a baby in half.

Aesthetically, I care about how things look from the street.

I don't really care what's going on in the backyard.

If there's a pitched roof from the street, but then it goes back a ways, I don't know that that's true.

Do we care about that?

I think it's more about just like, are we opening up the floodgates to drastic change that I have reservations about?

The height as drafted here?

Yeah.

In the existing zoning ordinance, so, which is 35 feet.

I mean, it, so, again, it's just coming back to that.

We're coming, no, but we're coming back to the, I mean, we could up that to 35.

That's not really the issue.

What we're suggesting is that what we see when we look at the majority of the city's existing neighborhoods is two and a half stories and less.

Now we've seen teardown activity.

I haven't looked at where the teardowns are occurring and to see what the scale is of those new buildings that are being built.

It's not uncommon for editions to be three stories either.

There's that one on Avon that comes to mind.

Avon and Bonocello Abb.

Yeah, so I think the way I was thinking about this originally was like,

you know I very much see what you're doing with stories versus height for the mixed use zones because we want to encourage more height so that if those buildings are flexible in the future can we convert to other uses.

For the low density residential zones you know I wonder if that is so necessary and if maybe we can just say

Don't have the story?

Yeah, just say 35 feet.

And then, I mean, is it cramming?

I think that's plenty to

You have like 11 feet or so floor to floor.

Yeah, it's not like you're at seven and a half of the heights.

It also, I mean, it seems like the way that we're setting it up with two and a half stories and it has to be

Yeah, the way a half story is measured, you have to have a pitched roof.

But the way it's... I thought the way it was defined is the half story is...

Well, because you've got a sidewall, Max, as well.

So it seemed like it had to be under a pitched roof.

I think just having the third floor simplifies that half story by itself.

I guess Commissioner Russell to your point I don't know what kind of

And those may not be affordable.

I'm not saying we all agree density is needed, but

We've articulated that we all want to see a certain type of, you know, we want to see more affordability in that density.

I don't know what I've got to back this up.

So I'm sort of spitballing this.

But it would seem to me that the third story option in terms of the expense factor

and making it less expensive to do that by keeping your existing dwelling and essentially remodeling it for a third floor, that you're actually incentivizing owner-occupants or current owners, not sales.

Because that's a manageable thing to do.

If you're in your house and you're like, I want to put an extra unit in here, or it's your rental property, you want to put an extra unit in there by popping off the roof and going up, that's a manageable thing.

in terms of cost for an individual.

When you look at

The affordability of a stacked triplex versus, say, three townhomes next to each other.

And in the IZ analysis, they basically said townhomes probably win in most economic scenarios, right?

to the extent that we can make a stacked triplex work more easily, you know, the third floor in a third floor, third story, three story walk up is going to be the cheapest because no one wants to walk up two stairs all the time.

It's cheap to add that third floor if you're already building two stories of it because, you know, you're just tacking out an extra floor to what you're already building.

You already have the foundation laid.

And then townhomes also have, like,

Each of them have a stair.

You're wasting a lot of space in circulation.

And so those are going to be more expensive units from both a cost and, you know, market price versus a stack triplex.

Yeah, I mean, I don't hate the idea of limiting it to a smaller height for single family.

I mean, we're already doing that on RA for lot coverage.

It seems reasonable to do for height.

Yeah, it's easier to do if we don't discard the whole story idea.

Oops.

But you could say a lower, you could say 25, 28 feet or something, I guess.

Or you could say two and a half or three stories or two and a half or whatever, which I either...

Because you still, I mean, you have those now in two-story homes with a walkout basement that if somebody wants to finish,

Yeah, it all depends on how much the section on height talks about that six-foot reveal, right?

When you exceed six feet, you're a story.

As long as the reveal is less than six feet, it's not a story.

It doesn't matter if it's a unit or just living space.

What will be interesting is we're looking at how we manage height on these sloping sites, right?

And we're talking about a walkout basement in the back.

The front part of that building where there's less than a six-foot reveal, your ground story is that first floor, let's say, fronting the sidewalk, right?

But then as you move back in the site, you get past a six-foot reveal.

That basement now becomes the ground floor.

that's something that we're looking at and in particular and so you're on the record not concerned of yours but we're in particular looking at how do these houses appear from to their rear neighbors because I think there is when you're dealing with a heavily sloped site you're

A two and a half story house from the front might appear as a three story, four story house from the back.

And maybe that's less of an issue in a lower density scenario, but

I mean does this not become, I mean if you want to sort of employ that

on the idea that we've got a concern with viewshed from the neighbors behind you or to your side.

I mean, we've got these things that, I mean, my house is built on a fairly steep slope, and the house is perpendicular to the slope.

Yep.

So, you know, that creates everyone down the hill can see my walkout basement door, which is right there.

Yeah, and we have been modeling all different permutations of where a slope falls, not just the slopes down or slopes up from the street, but we also did some modeling on diagonal slopes, you know, because nature is...

I like stack triplexes.

I've seen them a lot in Richmond.

I think they work well.

I don't think they do any harm to the public.

Do we have feelings about stack triplexes?

I'll say, I mean, I think if you kind of structured it the way Commissioner Stolzenberg outlined in terms

The height restriction goes up if it's not a single-family home.

That makes sense to me.

My larger concern is if you don't do that, the market responding with teardowns from, again, institutional developers like Stanley Martin just building a large, extremely expensive single-family home.

They could be doing that today, right?

I guess I'd say advice for builders, invest in that fancy subfloor stuff that deadens the sound of people stomping around above you.

Well, I don't know, I mean, what we've gathered.

Is that the decision?

Well, we're not making final decisions here today, right?

We're looking for direction.

I do generally.

You know, I'll say the other reason I prefer stories is because they're more easily communicated.

People can look at a building and tell me how many stories that is.

Because people are scared of tall buildings near them and don't want more of them, right?

That's not what I said.

That was a paraphrase.

No.

I mean, what we said is when we look at our existing neighborhoods, the majority of those homes are two and a half stories.

Right.

That's what we have today.

What we're suggesting is that where there is an allowance for additional units, we allow an additional height.

The concern I think justified with going up to three stories across the board is that I do think three stories will incentivize a greater degree of single-family teardown.

just from my prior experience in markets where, I mean, we're seeing single-family teardowns today.

Just to be clear, we know that's happening in the city today.

I've been in markets where that's a lot more rampant, where that's happening to a much greater degree, and it's all about square footage.

And I think part of what's driving that is the elevation, first floor elevation allowance.

Right.

Do you use the story language?

Adding a few extra feet and keeping the stories where they are, I mean, at least it does give you some more flexibility if the topography is all funky.

Right.

I think if we say three stories and 44 feet on the other, like the RB or whatever, I'm not too scared by that.

I mean, someone's going to get smart and insert a mezzanine somewhere.

Yeah, I think in practice, not so many, yeah.

What's the purpose of the sidewall max so that you're not looking at a huge flat surface in front of you?

Yeah, this is one area where I'm less clear.

Yeah, and I'm sure it probably is steering towards pitched roofs or that type of roof type.

Coming back, I mean, when I even look at the intent statement associated with it, it's coming back to that notion of traditional neighborhoods and what's accommodated within our neighborhoods.

But we could also argue that Charlottesville has a strong history of incorporating modernist structures into our neighborhoods and generally successfully.

I'd just say, if you're going to have a flat roof, you've got to put cornices on it.

Sorry.

Rory, you're killing me.

But while we're on the topic, for the RC heights, you mentioned earlier that you could do a stacked, a 2 over 2 stacked

No, you're probably still running into that height limit on a 2 over 2.

Now I've got to come back to it.

I'm sorry, it was a 2 over 1 you can do.

within the base, two over two, you're in bonus territory in the RC.

The bonus is basically only for 100% affordable, right?

2-11.

It's not a bonus so much as a 100% affordable overall.

So, which we'll talk about in module two, but I think that'll be the general gist of it regardless.

But to me, it seems to make sense to go up to three and a half there, so you could do a one and a half over two or whatever.

Yeah.

Or both?

Two over two, ideally.

Got it.

I believe the ones, the only place I know of in the city that's doing stacked townhomes is that PUD at, shoot, Meadow, no, what is it?

The church one, Mountain View, thank you.

So in the RB, your 2 over 2, your height limit, even with the bonus, you're tapping out at 3 stories.

And maybe I'm not understanding then what 2 over 1 or 2 over 2 means.

I would have thought that it would be 2, well, I don't know.

Okay, I thought it was referring to two townhouses over two townhouses.

Very often on a sloping site, so basically you've got front doors at ground level at both streets.

Which I'll say, also a good example in the county, RST, the LIATEC development going up next to Forest Lakes, there was all that brouhaha over May following the progress a year or two back.

They were going to put in stock townhouses, well are, and I think at the time they were saying the ones in Brookhill were selling naturally, at market rate, at about 80% AMI.

32 instead of 35.

That's the number we use for two, that was recommended for two and a half stories.

But I think really the conversation is in that stories category.

Nice round numbers.

Say it again?

Yeah, I mean, I think three and a half makes sense if people don't like four, because then you can do a one and a half, which is still a townhouse and not a one-story apartment, and it's over a two.

Get the pitch roofs.

Everyone's happy.

We've gone into the

Item 6.

And I also don't want an assumption made that we're all in agreement that our A should be three stories.

Yeah, but our conversation was going into six.

That's about the bonus unit for the saving the existing house.

It's sort of separate.

I don't think we've gotten to that.

The topic of five is that we would keep that reduced RA as compared to the current zoning, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think

That's true.

Yeah, sorry.

Let's call an RA.

Anyone want to talk about RA?

That's okay.

Well, and just a clarifying question.

You said earlier you'd seen in other markets the concern over increasing the rate of teardowns.

Yeah, I think the interesting, I mean, the market's changing over time.

It always is.

and I don't I haven't run pro formas on on any of this but when I look at a three unit versus single family I suspect that there's there's going to be an interest in developers often picking that single family in our market as incomes increase the generally where where people when people are moving into the city they have higher incomes to begin with

If I'm selling a single family house, I'm targeting an income range.

The single family market is completely different from the rental apartment market.

Generally, the rental market is still, I'm not low income in terms of qualifying for affordable units, but as a lower income, there's a rent cap in there that kind of defines what revenue I can get out of that, and my cost for producing three units is high, because I got to accommodate three kitchens, bathrooms, and all these other, I got to make three units.

I've had the thought, and I don't know whether it's a valid thought, maybe you all can correct my misapprehension, but my thought has been that we would have a very difficult time trying to control the vanity project of some rich person who wants to tear down a house and build another.

I'm thinking of this house that's going up on Rugby Road right now.

where, I mean, it was a small house that had been on that lot.

They had torn it down.

They're building a much larger house there.

It's clearly intended, I am assuming, to be a single-family residence, and somebody just decided, I want to build it and probably didn't care too much what the amount of money was it was going to cost.

But that's not an economic decision they're making at that point.

But I think it's certainly true we can't control all of it.

I actually think the point about the one-off, someone moves here and wants the big vanity project,

is probably the biggest driver, but I think this would be effective in stopping that because, you know, if I want to come in and do a vanity project and build my 40-foot tall house, like, and I'm now limited to two and a half stories, maybe I go down to Whittington in the county and, like, do it there instead, right?

because here you could build, or if you got the height bonus or the extra height we're talking about, you could build your McMansion here.

Yeah, I'm generally in favor of what these guys over here talking about in terms of if it's

If it gives us more units, fine, give the extra height or story, whichever one we want, the unit we want to use, but if it's for a single family, I am concerned about the teardowns.

Do we want to struggle, just to see where we're standing?

Let's do it.

Ms.

Yeah, go ahead.

So I think the proposal is to allow a third story in RA and RB if four projects of multiple units.

I guess you could do a single two over two with two units, or wait, that doesn't make sense.

I don't know.

We'll say multi-unit projects, three stories in RA and RB.

So that's two, right?

Okay.

Yes.

Allow three stories instead of just two and a half in RA and RB if

I'm not sure that has, like, the pro forma muster that I'm interested in and, you know, we're all speculating on because we haven't looked at it.

I mean, A fancy due.

On a lot of the lots in the city, it's, no.

Well, they could be taller.

Well, they could be taller, but still they're... You know, I'm just going back to, you know, what we have told residents that this increased density will do, which is that it will be okay.

It will be compatible with our existing residential and neighborhood context.

Yeah, I'm with Commissioner Russell on this.

I think it's three units for three stories.

Okay.

I'm fine with that.

Sure.

Three units for three.

Are we changing with the height?

32 is 2 1⁄2 and 35 is 3.

That was my understanding.

I think we can let them figure out the height.

Architects have concerns about that.

Okay.

All right.

Ms.

Creasy, virtual strong roll, please.

Okay.

Okay, so this deserves some explanation.

So right now in the RA, Residential A District, a density bonus of one unit is offered where the existing building is preserved.

And so we'll have more, in Module 2, there's going to be more detail as to what it means to preserve, but we're basically looking at not just the front facade, but a substantial portion back.

We're identifying a line that's basically the line between you're allowed to do an addition, but it's not a de facto teardown, right?

Because we're trying to promote infill development over teardowns.

Right.

Infill broadly understood as being infill of vacant lots or infill of a backyard with an ADU or an addition onto an existing building.

So in the existing, as we've written it right now, this bonus unit is only available in the RA.

And the proposal was put on the table.

Should we expand this and allow it also in the RB and the RC?

So I don't have really anything more on that.

I don't know.

That's the question, right?

I think we put it in the RA district because that's how it was written in the comprehensive plan.

Could we expand it into the RB and the RC?

I certainly think we could.

I think, quite honestly, you've got a lot of

The units that are allowed in the RB and the RC at 6 and 8, 99% of the projects we're going to see in the RB and RC, leaving aside the bonus allowed for affordability, are going to be 6 or 8 or less than that.

Let me just say more clearly that there's a density bonus already allowed in the RB and the RC where a project is 100% affordable.

which allows you to go double.

I think the vast majority of projects, because the vast majority of projects aren't going to be 100% affordable, are going to be up to six units, up to eight units.

I don't know how much a density bonus of one unit gets you there.

If you're already doing four, six, or eight, or what you're saying, then this sort of extra... Unit may or may not count for anything.

No.

I think it's something we could add in.

Now, the other side of that is not every project is going to go all the way up to six, even though that's allowed.

The reality is site constraints of various types may reduce that.

So maybe there is a benefit in having it.

Maybe we just leave it at a policy question.

Do we want to create an incentive?

Why wouldn't we?

Maybe there's no reason not to.

Yes, more succinctly that's what I was trying to get to in my comments.

Well, to your point about site constraints, I mean, I don't see, I see possible good to sort of applying a similar rule at RB and RC about the preservation for a fourth.

And I don't see sort of excessive harm, but I think it gives, I think there are lots in situations where it might provide an option that

with RB and RC as they are, it might make things simpler for some folks, is what I'm saying, in some circumstances.

Yeah, that too.

It may never apply.

Is it?

That might be physically impossible in a lot of places.

I think it's true, but not maybe universally true.

And I mean, I think it's a good idea to provide a positive incentive to do it.

And I think, depending on the lot shape and topography, if a house is situated fairly close to the front and there's a driveway running around back, it doesn't seem too impossible in some places.

Certainly a wedge-shaped lot, like you would get in a cul-de-sac, which is not really where our B and our C are, that would be doable.

I would say, yeah.

Anymore to say on this topic?

Say that again?

And I really was just throwing that out there as a question, because I do think we're going to, as we've said, we're going to get a lot of teardowns.

So it's just like, do we value keeping the existing house?

If we do, then we probably need to do something drastic.

If you started knocking down

It just seems like a way of torture architects and force them into like weird stuff.

I mean, not that I'm against that.

More billing hours for Carl.

That's right.

Let's see where we're going here.

Kareem, does it work that way?

Could I see some thumbs?

Do people like giving a bonus for RBNRC?

I think it doesn't do anything.

I think it's just a waste because it won't happen.

Yeah, I don't see it as an incentive.

I see it as this might, in some circumstances, because of site conditions, allow or incentive, in those particular circumstances, might be helpful to one, two, three, four, five.

I think it might make a difference in half a dozen situations in a positive way for that property owner.

So, therefore.

Why not?

And most of the time, it's not going to apply at all.

It's going to be irrelevant.

I mean, I don't, yeah, not to say something that I might get yelled at later.

But not everything is worth saving, too, right?

Like, you can tear down one place to build six units or eight units.

On the areas that we designated where that's okay.

And looking at our map, we should also remember that still most of our zoning map is RA, where there is that incentive and actually does make a difference.

I think another reason not to say drop a unit and say you only get that eighth or sixth unit if you keep the existing is like seven and five are prime numbers, which makes it a really weird building, right?

Like you can do a six unit building by having two units per floor stacked on top of each other.

I don't think five or seven.

I mean, we'd have to really drop it.

to actually make a difference.

So I do think one way or another we're making a stand.

Either we're saying, well, okay, we're fine.

There's going to be some teardowns.

There's going to be a lot of teardowns.

Well, no.

Anyone who redevelops will very likely tear down.

Who knows how many spots will be redeveloped.

I think we took a stand against teardowns by saying in RA we're limiting you to just three unless and it's much more reasonable there that you could keep it and that will make a difference and then in the few areas of the city much reduced from the original maps where we've left as medium intensity

Is that up for debate?

They do.

Right, and we are seeking confirmation on exactly that point.

Right.

And I think we, again, also reminded ourselves of the scale of the issue and that what, you know, one of the studies that rate of change analysis that was done and was released back in August said we could anticipate in the general and the medium intensity areas a 2% increase in units on an annual basis.

except for all of the other factors that might come into play like site conditions, you know, changing demand and all of those things.

Like that was just basic supply side analysis based on what's our existing rate of turnover and property ownership and things like that.

I guess there's a lot of different conversations going on right now, but I guess for the policy question, the only thing, the main thing that concerns me about teardowns in RB and RC is I know our goal was with the sensitive areas to prevent this, but are there any areas we've missed particularly that are all or majority renters

where incentivizing teardowns is going to result in those people losing their homes.

And I think even just going through the interactive map, I believe the mobile home park off of Franklin Street is not designated a sensitive community and is in, I can't remember if it's RB or RC.

It's RX3.

Okay, so RX3.

And I think

I think there are some areas we've missed where there are renters who are going to get screwed over by that.

And that's not a reason to undo it everywhere or anything like that.

I think the conversation about where, if anywhere,

do we want to reduce the base density in RB or RC and then the bonus allows you to go above that.

My thought on it right now is we definitely wouldn't want to do that across the entire RB or RC category.

I just don't know if there are specific parcels or areas we've missed that create a risk of displacing people.

That almost seems like a zoning map conversation and not about this specific point, right?

It is, and as we've laid out, as it was laid out in the comprehensive plan, the sensitive communities designation was put over, I believe just the RA districts, maybe RB and C, but I think it was just general residential RA as it was conceived.

Right.

So the basic concept here is particularly, so first off, this applies to properties where they are within 20 feet of the street.

And it suggests that those properties should be, that the first floor elevation should be elevated between, yeah, thank you, two and five feet.

from the ground in those areas.

It does a number of things.

First and foremost, as is noted in the intent,

It elevates the position of the occupants of the house relative to the street, promoting natural surveillance of the street.

But it also is a nod towards the privacy within those units.

If you go into traditional neighborhoods where the homes are closer to the street, they are frequently elevated in that way so that there's a greater degree of privacy.

So you maintain that surveillance, that connection to the public realm.

that potential for interaction between the home and the street, but you give those owners just that little degree of additional privacy from the street as well by elevating them up.

So you can accomplish ADA access.

It does.

But it's doing well.

You mentioned Habitat.

I'm sorry.

You go on.

I mean, that is Habitat.

Their model is they require a zero-step entry.

A lot of ramp there to navigate.

And it gets even more complicated overlaying.

I keep bringing this up because, honestly, almost every project I worked on has topographical challenges.

We did look at the topography issue.

I mean, it's manageable because it's between two and five feet.

but I hear you on the ADA issue and I'm sorry the notion of the requirement is that you must have your finished floor two and a half feet no minimum between two and five feet above grade

Let the architect do what they want to do.

I mean, if you want privacy in your unit,

So, I mean, what I initially took as the intent of this, and I think maybe we should try to stop, is, like, you get units, Huntley kind of has these, where, like, the first floor is totally a garage, and there basically is no other, nothing else there.

And I think, I thought the idea was to prevent that.

Absolutely, that plays into it.

We're just, you know, the whole first story of the house is a garage, and there's no, there is no finished floor.

It's another Habitat model.

Is it?

Which means you have a great garage.

Which means you have no...

Think of subdivisions with what are called, in planning, I think they're still called as snout houses, where it's just a big garage facing the street, and you actually walk in.

like recessed back from that.

I mean, the ones in Huntley are that way because of the grade.

I don't know, it just seems like it's, in many cases it's a single family house or a duplex, and I don't know why we're, I mean there's a lot of regulations that want to strip out of the RA in general, but definitely we're going to, that height is going to cause a lot of problems for ADA.

Yeah, sorry, I may have missed it, but what's the motivation for the two feet, like the lower bound?

I mean, privacy drives it.

But that would be the upper bound.

Yeah, you have your porch.

I agree with Mr. Schwartz about letting the architect

Is there any example of a one foot step up or something like that?

There's houses that have one step into the porch.

I mean, a house should be above grade just for water purposes, but every foot is 12 feet of ramp, at a minimum.

One foot, I'm just actually picturing what the stairs, like, it's two steps.

Yeah.

Flip planes are elevated.

For this?

Only in floodplains.

In floodplains, you're right now one foot above base flood elevation, right?

Of course, yeah, absolutely.

I'm just not kind of maybe not knowledgeable as to what we might be missing.

I think this is part of our consultant's preferences.

I guess, not to extend the topic, but I believe this also goes into multifamily buildings.

I thought there was a regulation that the residential component needed to be elevated.

So if you've got like a commercial street front, like the flats, for instance, if they had residences on the ground floor, they'd have to be elevated, which is also very weird for the internal circulation.

I think it was maybe buried in the regulations later on.

Yeah, but these are in all of them.

And then the conversation around the English basement, is that where you could walk down and then have your apartment, you know, sort of like split thing stories?

But in that case, you're still going to have to have stairs up to the ground floor.

It's going to have to be elevated.

It doesn't.

I think what more precludes it is the six-foot reveal, right?

Which is once you get to six-foot reveal, then you're

then you've got a whole floor.

That's true of the building code too, right?

It would count as a floor if it's more than six feet above grade as the second floor.

So I guess if we're sticking with this min-max thing, I guess I would vote for the max being six instead of five just to standardize it across the

the reveal clause and the building code, and it seems like it's a fairly negligible difference, but just then it's all the same.

Right.

The five was only at the front of the building, and I don't... It was at the front of the building.

For the max, do I have no meaning?

Yeah, I would say that.

Or figure out a better way to deal with a garage issue other than this framework.

You said no minimum six foot maximum, correct?

I guess a question I have is, what is, help me understand what is so bad about the garage if we assume a large amount of people will still have cars until we have

a much better transportation system.

It's not opposition to the garage per se.

It's about how much of the front of the building is occupied by the garage and how much does that, garage is non-habitable space.

It's essentially dead space for the building.

And one of the things we're looking at promoting, and this is related to our goals around walkability and community and those types of things, resiliency within the community is promoting that connection between the residents of the building and people on the street.

The connection between the private realm and the public realm.

Or limit the degree to which it dominates the front, right?

There's a lot of different ways you can cut it.

You can force it to the back or you can limit the degree to which it controls the front.

Yeah.

I guess what I'm just misunderstanding or don't know is how much

Does that change the feasibility of it being included in projects in any way?

It depends on your site every time, right?

If at the end of the day the width of your front facade is driven by the width of the lot to a certain degree, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, I would also say governing or restricting garages even more than that is the build to width and the active depth, right?

Because the garage doesn't count for your build to width.

So in RA, it's 50% can be garage, except that's 50% of the entire frontage, which includes your side setbacks.

And then in RV and RC, that your build to width goes up to 65% on your primary street, which limits 35% of the front, no, 35%

Yeah, the garage plus the setbacks, right, which is almost impossible, I think, because 65% has to be active and in the build-to and not a garage and not in the setback.

Am I getting that right?

I'm not sure.

Does that actually belong in the RA districts as well?

Sorry, that's off topic.

Is there something, I'm reading a little more about, you know, I appreciate that James is your explanation, you know, that has to do with privacy and separation from the street and public, private like separation.

I encourage everyone to think about if you've ever been in a house that is that great or sat on a front porch that's that great with the street and it's a little bit like there is something about

that feeling a little bit weird and it seems like there are when it's not physically possible to raise above the grade or sidewalk there are then additional or it's not desirable for an ADA perspective and you can't do a ramp or don't want to do a ramp like there would be other

design components in play to sort of like ensure that good design that we want.

I don't know exactly what that is.

It seems like maybe different setbacks.

Referring to not abandoning completely the minimum ground area elevation thing.

There's a reason that we build houses the way we do.

We built them without that regulation.

It's not like we had it before.

Having had construction isn't exactly expensive, but that's for a purpose.

I am thinking of, you know, the streets in Tenth and Page, like on my street and West Street behind mine.

I think half the houses have front porches that are level with the street.

Well, an even more dramatic would be off Cream Street against, what, 6 1⁄2, 7th Street, that little Star Hill cut-around, where you've got at-grade, no setback,

I think the main thing I heard was zero minimum, six maximum.

Because you could have a weird site where you might have to embed the first floor a foot in the ground in the back or something.

I misspoke, thank you.

Does that get us in a weird situation with...

I don't think so.

I think what that does mean, though, is you might get a property that slopes up toward the back, you can still get in the front, and it can count as a story.

Well, so that kind of, I think, resolves some of that conversation, but then there was the, should we do something about garages, or is that covered by the six maximum?

Or will, but then you have the, you're basically prohibiting garage with a build, too, and some folks had concerns with that.

I don't think the six max is actually going to prohibit garages.

And you don't even lose a whole story.

I think if we're off the street, Belmont Lofts, for example, not Belmont Lofts, Belmont Village being an example of that, we've got first floor garages all over, it's a parking lot, but it's first floor garages all the way around that are taking up

Not my aesthetic, but... Something I've seen in Japan is a lowered, like a recessed kind of parking area, so the property goes down and under, which I think would be a lot of for this.

Anything more of this?

The map, please.

All right, so we got, so let's talk about the map.

We've pulled up the interactive version, so if there's places that people want to zoom in for whatever reason, we've got it available.

In terms of creating the map, it's readily apparent the starting point was the land use map itself that defined the boundaries of most of the zoning or all of the zoning districts.

There are a number of places where either the land use map itself suggested that there would be a split in districts or

where we chose to split the districts like in the medium intensity where we used other tools to then identify which district would apply.

So for example in the medium intensity the starting point was that there was RB districts but where a lot was within 600 feet of a key intersection according to the Streets That Work plan

fronted on a mixed-use A Street, again, drawing from the Streets at Work plan, or where there was existing townhomes, or in some cases, larger non-residential vacant lots, I'm sorry, larger non-residential or vacant lots, those were also identified in the RC district.

600 feet?

600 feet from an intersection, yep.

And then there's the, I believe it was on the land use map as urban corridors where we had the notion of allowing five stories on the corridor, eight stories at key intersections.

Those are divided up into two districts, the CX5 and the CX8.

So key intersections were identified again according to a Streets at Work plan and the CX-8 was also applied in locations like adjacent to downtown.

So in each case, so we were looking at existing conditions on the ground or the streets at work plan to drive district designations as we drilled down past what's presented in the land use map.

So then the other thing is we had conversations around where are there districts that perhaps should change from the land use map itself and frankly our conversation there really focused on the medium intensity which is where most of that attention was in all of the conversations.

and there were two factors at the end of the day while we debated some particular locations we didn't make any changes and that was driven by two things one the decision to lower the intensity of the of the medium intensity districts to begin with remember those allowed up to 12 units on the map but then they came down to six and eight in the zoning

And then the other factor was really coming back to the basic reason of why we put medium intensity in this to begin with.

So the objective there was to the intent of medium intensity in particular was to ensure they were distributing the opportunity for meaningful housing throughout the city to every neighborhood.

We know that the product of our existing zoning to a large extent directs development towards certain locations in the city in particular frequently to those areas within or adjacent to our lower income neighborhoods

and so the goal with medium intensity was to create a house scaled district and we remain we believe these standards keep us within a house scaled framework to create a house scale district that

allowed for some meaningful amount of density to occur in every neighborhood of the city.

And then in terms of identifying locations, it was what are those locations in each neighborhood that offer greatest proximity to existing amenities like schools, parks, transit routes, etc.

It wasn't, we didn't look at the entire city and say where are the locations that have those amenities and put it there.

We looked at each neighborhood and said what's the best location in the neighborhood to accommodate additional density to create that opportunity citywide so that we're theoretically and hopefully less focused on where development has gone to date.

So I'm going to pause there.

Any comments or questions from that?

Right, so I can repeat, see if I can restate it.

What we were looking for, in particular, there's a lot of places on the land use map where it said that key intersections should see a different treatment than the remainder of a corridor.

and so we identified key intersections based on the intersections of streets identified within the Streets at Work plan.

We had some public comment about the RB versus RC distinction.

Yeah.

Can you speak to that?

Why, I mean, why, why, I mean, why, why RC is located where it is?

Right.

RC was identified for in locations again coming back to that streets that work plan where we had higher classifications of street intersecting and then we established the RC district within 600 feet of those intersections and in locations where there were existing townhouses or existing development where the RC was the appropriate district so I have

So R.C.

was also identified in some cases for larger vacant lots or non-residential lots that could conceivably convert over to residential that were within the land use designation of medium intensity.

Right.

I think, I mean, one of the things that we were balancing as we're looking at this map and looking at the distribution of densities is that we know that zoning is just kind of one piece of what's necessary for housing production to happen, right?

A lot of our impetus here, while we have objectives and goals around climate change and walkability and economic development and all these other things,

A lot of the driver in this comprehensive plan is about housing production.

And we looked at housing production.

So zoning is one factor that needs to happen in order to produce housing.

It's an important factor, but it's actually a pretty small part of the overall puzzle, right?

Because for each time to get housing production, you need the zoning or the permission.

You need the owner.

You need a willing seller, basically.

or a willing developer who already owns the property and you need a buyer who has the financing, the investor pool, the money to do the project, right?

You need those three factors.

And so if you think about it from kind of a probability perspective and we kind of look at the map from a probability perspective, the less land area we allow housing production to happen in, your probability drops.

The lower the densities, the probability drops.

The more land area, the higher the density, the higher the probability.

And then the more the regulation that's applied to that development, the more rules and requirements that are applied to it, the lower the probability.

So just from a kind of thinking about the map as essentially a probability game,

we were trying to limit the degree to which we were reducing the probability of housing production in any given year.

Does that kind of play out?

Sure.

If you want to get into that.

That is the next item.

If we're done with this item, then we strongly support you.

But it's probably also useful to note on kind of process from this point forward.

We are getting, in terms of the map and changes to the map, we're getting obviously lots of comments of all different types in terms of

changing the zoning as proposed on the map.

And we got more from commissioners.

We've gotten a lot from the comments based on the open houses that were held and then comments that are coming in.

We're going to be producing a map that basically identifies each place where we've gotten a recommendation and that map is something that we intend to make available to folks that basically helps people see like quite transparently these are the places where people have asked for some form of change to the map and we're going to assess all those and come back with a recommendation and you guys get to decide

So, very simply, that's the process plan.

And some of those changes are simply changes in zoning maps.

Some changes may, in fact, relate to a change on the land use map itself.

And if that's the case, as we said a long time ago, when we bring forward the zoning ordinance for adoption, we can bring that, in conjunction with that, a set of amendments to the map as necessary.

The land use map and the comp plan.

Last column, number eight, mapping logic.

So I have a question about, Patrick, can you zoom in on Locust Grove where Locust hits Calhoun, where that brown line takes a zigzag on the upper right?

So I guess I have a question about how the whole like key intersection thing works and like where the six foot rule was applied versus a little up and right.

So kind of upper right of what we're seeing there.

You have that one intersection that like literally the four lots around it are bar C. It's neighborhood A intersecting with neighborhood A on one side and neighborhood A turning into a neighborhood B and a

neighborhood A turning into a local.

And clearly the 600 foot rule didn't apply.

I guess the question is, why not?

Is it only at the ones where neighborhood A running all the way through intersection with neighborhood A running all the way through?

No.

I mean the rule generally was if you've got a neighborhood A intersection you're at 600 feet around.

So I don't know exactly why but it may be that in this instance they made a determination on this map to shrink that up for some reason.

Yeah, or maybe just somewhere in between those.

I think as a whole, Locust Grove as a neighborhood has been fairly pro-medium, certainly, relative to other neighborhoods.

That one really caught my eye because the ones on the right on the east side are like double width and the ones on the other side are half the size and just didn't make a neat little square in my mind that it was driving me crazy.

A big design idea we talked about a lot in 2018 that we haven't been talking about as much now is the sort of new urbanist idea of like facing a lot.

Roughly stuff should be similar across the street.

That was, that is, I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that one.

That is also a key part.

Generally, we're aiming for like faces like.

There's at least two places on the map that I know of where that rule is violated.

I have a deep explanation of one of those.

if we want to get into it, but this is the place where the lake facing lake is, I mean, is violated is up in the, on Ryo Road.

Tarleton, I'm sorry, I thought you said Carlton.

Tarleton, yeah, that's one of those places because, and it was because the, the,

The lots facing RIO itself are of insufficient depth to accommodate the development of the scale contemplated.

Now there's a couple of different ways I could take that, right?

You can reduce scale.

The other options are to reduce scale or just eliminate entirely.

Well, to take that as an example, that's one of the first things that jumped out at me as I looked at things, is you've got the potential of a 100-foot-tall building on Ryo, and then because it's now two lots deep, on the other side you've got Tarleton, which is right there is primarily one-floor ranchers.

And although they would be able to go up to 40 feet,

going from 40 feet to 100 feet right next to it.

It's violating the rule of like facing like.

So we ended up digging into this one, unfortunately, after the map was distributed.

But there are two things that we were talking about.

There's the two that I mentioned, right, reduce the intensity or eliminate entirely the

CX5 I believe it is.

The other option that we looked at is in the next module we are talking about our rules for transitions, right?

Right now we don't have those transition rules applying across streets, but we can certainly write that in.

This was the only place that we identified where that might be applicable.

So there's a number of solutions in that space.

But when you see the rules related to transitions between higher intensity and lower intensity districts, it's making use of setbacks, landscaping, and step backs.

Yeah, I mean, the transition rule we were talking about would basically say where you're fronting, even if it's across the street, a lower-intensity district, we could restrict the use to residential and we could restrict the height and effectively make it so that while the district itself allows the taller buildings and the mixed-use, you really, in that instance, could only do a commercial, taller, mixed-use building on the Ryo frontage, and then you would be restricted to no more than, say, like, townhouses

on the Tarleton frontage.

But the key issue there is because the lot depth is not terribly deep, you can't fit structured parking in if you restrict that CX-5 to just the frontage.

So you're either bringing the density down and really getting away from it being mixed use at all,

I guess my question would be whether you would be, and maybe this is a process question that if I missed the answer somewhere along the way, I apologize.

Are we contemplating that bonuses are going to be essentially

If the applicant asks for the bonus and they've filled everything out, they get it?

I can understand why that might be, as a general matter, a good idea, but this strikes me as one place where maybe if there was some way to make it, like maybe the transition rule would be, it's not by right.

One way to make that work might be to give it a lower zoning designated now, like a CX-3, and if they wanted to do a taller thing like that, they would have to request a rezoning, and that would be discretionary for you, right?

Okay, so yeah, if we did a

No, so we looked at that option.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

But what we came back with was, so that CX-5 is going to have structured parking, right?

And you couldn't put structured parking in a lower zone?

How about special sites?

Yeah.

And we don't necessarily have to call it a special use permit, but that there would be some element of discretion in a transition zone.

As long as we're keeping a capital S in special, right?

We don't sort of use it as, as Commissioner Russell said, it's a useful tool.

Right.

Yeah, but even so, I mean, we have streets that, we have lots that front it.

It should be, and it's an entrance corridor for them.

It is an entrance corridor for them.

I think we should make it an entrance corridor.

I think that just makes sense.

It is an injury structure by any definition of the word.

You do eventually.

You just go through some county first.

Or if you turn on Greenbrier Drive, I guess.

Let's call on mapping logic.

So I guess the other big case of like not facing like is you've got these little, around several schools, there are like these little circles of RB on the school side.

And we drew it that way in the Petrolani's map.

Both of them, sure.

Our call was that those are both still within that same, the group of districts called residential.

that are all aimed at house scale.

Like enough.

I don't know.

Is there ever a situation in which the Planning Commissioner goes back and does a zoning map amendment that applies to more than one parcel, you know, and is sort of like out of, derived out of a small area plan?

Yes, absolutely.

In fact, I think that's exactly the anticipation.

And in that, so in that light, it's hard to go back from an up-zoning.

Is it?

No, that's all good.

I mean, similar to what was discussed before, so maybe it's kind of just repeating the same thing, but I had some trouble understanding the logic of what determined what some areas that were zoned as CX at eight were.

Some of them seemed almost kind of like

was just random to me.

I couldn't figure out why, like, certain areas were, certain weren't.

Like, the one on East High, like, it was just CX-8 around that one intersection at Meade and then nowhere else.

So CX-8 was very specifically tied to key intersections.

Again, identified as locations where there was an intersection of two higher classified streets.

Yeah, I mean, that's helpful, but I mean, and I'm sure it's not the only example of that.

where obviously the conditions of that intersection like eight to ten foot story buildings there under its current road conditions kind of seems bizarre.

Right, we aren't looking at a final map right now.

So there's absolutely opportunity to continue to identify and look at particular sites, look at particular districts and whatnot.

So while we're talking about CX zones, I don't know if this was a problem for anyone else, but I felt like the colors were too close together and I could not keep track of what differences were.

I turn us now to proposed changes to the draft zoning map.

Mr. Schwartz, can you start us off, please?

I'll be first.

I mean, some of mine were just, it seemed like

around the perimeter of the city we've got the best infrastructure and we have very limited impact to any sort of neighborhoods.

I'm confused as to why we're limiting height when you know if we really need housing and although it's not necessarily walkable to downtown it is very close to bus lines and roads and whatnot it just seems like why not maximize those areas so you know the area along 29 near you know hydraulic

I don't see any reason why that's not index 10.

Same thing, you know, down in the Barracks Road area, the topography is really low.

You've got, you know, big roads down there.

We're up against the University.

Again, I don't, I mean, Rory made a point that they'll probably never redevelop Barracks Road Shopping Center, but if they did, they put a hotel there.

I mean, it's a 10-story hotel.

It's not going to hurt anyone.

West Main Street, and I think we got an email about this.

I'll just go ahead and own the fact that that was actually a mapping error that came down to when the

And at the very least, the train station should be.

I feel like for some reason, none of us in the city have talked about this, but there's all these Amtrak and DRPT documents talking about a quarter-billion-dollar investment in this train station that

could happen, and the study they initially did was limited by the current zoning, and it was

For some of the BAR conversations that we've had on some of the newer buildings, I know that

There's been times where we've been like, well, what if you make the building bigger, but just articulate the base a little more and like, oh, we've already maxed it out.

So I think there, I don't think there's a reason to limit it to CX-5.

And again, just let the BAR do their job in that area.

I know that scares some people, but it, yeah.

And then there's, you know, JPA, same thing.

It's set really low.

And I'm not sure what we're,

exactly what we're protecting over there.

I do know that the one little spot that's marked CX-8, two of those lots are unbuildable.

One's an IPP and one the City Council has 10 years ago said, you just can't build on it.

You guys will be getting that.

I'm sure that'll be an appeal.

Yes, an appeal that's coming up very soon.

Yes.

There's a stone house over there and the corner was... On the corner of the EPA and ML.

Oh, there's a deed restriction on the adjacent corner parcel that says it's unbuildable.

It doesn't apply anymore, and that's why the owners want to change it.

that you could probably stretch CX-8 further around just because, again, it's the topography so low down there.

And isn't the building we just approved, that was more than five stories, was it not?

2005, five in the back.

Okay.

Plus that's a lot of tax revenue if they live off grounds and not sending their kids to public schools because they don't have kids because they're students.

Half a million a year per, right?

I think at least along the west side of JPA.