Joint Planning Commission and City Council Work Session   7/13/2023

Yeah, there are some people still coming.

Just from a logistics standpoint, this is going to be a work session format, and so we won't have any verbal public feedback.

We will take written feedback.

We have pens and cards in the back for folks that want to provide that.

I understand some folks in the room have a paper that they would like to provide as well.

And then any emails that come my way per the instructions during the meeting time will also be attached to the minutes of the committee.

Good afternoon, borderline evening, everybody.

So we have effectively a two-part meeting.

Our first part, we're going to talk about the residential A, B, and C districts in particular, which we've had a lot of different conversations on.

I'm hoping that we can clarify a lot of points today, and I know there's a number of things for discussion on that.

We have for that part of the meeting our consultant team all together up in the top right corner of our screen.

I'll let them introduce themselves when they come on, and they'll have a presentation for us, and then we can move into discussion of that.

And then the second part of the meeting will be to talk about module three.

And then if there are other questions or topics that folks would like to take up, I'm happy to do so at that point.

We can call that the third part.

Let's just do two parts.

That's fair enough.

If there is any questions for me before we get started, I'm happy to take them.

Otherwise, I will be kicking it over to our team from Code Studio.

Awesome.

Thanks, James.

Can y'all hear me okay?

This room seems to be a magic.

I'll keep talking occasionally.

It's still lighting up.

Can you see the participant panel?

You can keep talking.

Not that mute.

This mute down here on the left corner, the little carrot.

This one?

A little up arrow thing.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Great.

Okay.

I'll keep going.

Does that sound good?

Ish?

No.

Can you hear me now?

Nope.

I think the room is muted.

Can you hear me?

We're just trying to deal with the feedback issue.

Okay.

Okay.

Can we tolerate the feedback?

You'll hear all the things we say echoing in your mind for a while.

Okay, I'm going to share my screen really quickly and we just want to go through some quick illustrations that we did that will help facilitate some of the conversations that you all are already having around bulk and mass and how those compare to what your existing regulations today allow.

versus what some of the proposed are, how they differ, and talk about some of the dials that we may want to fine tune as we're talking about the residential district.

So that's sort of the context setting.

Can you, I saw a hand raised.

We good?

Oh, we can't hear you.

I think the room is muted.

Okay.

He said what?

Slow down.

We can't hear you.

Am I good to keep going?

Sorry, Chris.

Just the problem is the feedback is getting a little overwhelming.

If you could just talk a little slower, I think that will help.

Might help if you guys mute like the speakers on your computer while you talk.

Okay.

Yeah, wave at me.

And Lee has a text notification with James.

So if worse comes to worse, then send that message.

All right.

Speakers off.

Can I get a thumbs up if that's any better?

Okay.

I will keep going more slowly.

All right.

Thumbs up.

Great.

Okay.

So again, I'm going to go through these pretty quickly.

These are essentially

two sets of lots, one a set of visualizations on a 6,000 square foot lot.

So it's just a pretty standard lot size for what you have today, 50 by 120.

And then what would be considered a double lot.

So if you weren't subdividing and you just had a double size lot, what are some of the outcomes and how would they look?

So those are the two sizes we'll look at.

and you'll see throughout this presentation on the left hand side are the regulations as you have them today and on the right side as they're currently proposed of course in draft form and that's going to be part of the discussion of how we want to tweak those styles.

A couple other things I do just want to point out early on these illustrations only represent the they show the maximum build out without including

a lot of other standards that would pare back the actual size of the building.

What I mean by that is if you include parking, tree canopy.

Put it in the chat.

Got some waving hands.

Maybe chat what the issue is.

Let's say echo canceling speakerphone.

That sounds pretty good.

Yeah.

That kind of sounds like our echo.

All right.

No.

Try the middle one.

This is where we started.

Can we get comments down here?

I'm trying to get some people who might be able to help.

You want us to call?

Yeah, give it a shot.

Okay.

Thank you for not normally scheduling in this room.

I will say that I had a meeting in here that was partially Zoomed and we had the same issue.

So I think they're trying to call in.

I think they're trying to call James.

No, no bones.

It's so good to see you.

The rest of you.

I'm pretty sure it's on a scene.

Oh, there we go.

So then we're getting a whole bunch of feedback when they talk.

That's where we started.

We're not getting any audio on that.

Still echoey.

Okay.

How's this sounding?

I'm going to go to the next slide.

Is that turned off by me?

Any better now?

Christy?

Yes.

Yes, I can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Can you hear you?

Very well.

James, in an unideal but reasonable way, if you do want to open with this, I just sent this presentation to Missy.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, it just depends on how aggressive.

This is a television, right?

There you go.

Possibly that's not muted.

Just checking.

I'm not going to touch anything then.

We'll use our phone and computer and we'll be good to go.

Get rid of the participants list.

Yeah.

Was my point heard at all?

No.

Nothing was heard.

We essentially set up some visualizations of a 6,000 square foot lot and then what would be considered a double lot.

So not subdivided if you were just to keep the lot at a double size lot.

So these are the two scenarios we tested and to give everybody a bit of orientation,

everything that you see on the left hand side is what would be allowed under today's standards from a bulk and mass perspective and how those elements are being controlled and then on the right hand side would be how we're proposing the regulations in the draft and of course that's part of the discussion today of how we may want to tweak those dials to you know arrive at the outcome that make the most sense.

So I do want to point out a couple of other things.

This purely is looking at the bulk and mass standards of the zoning district.

So a lot of other elements that have to be considered when building and development would shrink the buildable area.

things like tree canopy requirements, stormwater requirements, any topography, critical slopes, driveways access, getting parking on the site.

So I do just wanna emphasize, we are truly modeling the maximum building envelope, but wanna be very clear that all of those other elements would functionally shrink what could be built feasibly onsite.

So wanna make sure that's clear upfront.

To give everyone a bit of orientation, we're going to look at that single lot first, so that 50 by 120, your sort of minimum lot size today, your 6,000 square foot lot.

And so from a setbacks perspective, you have a 25 foot front setback, a 25 foot rear setback, and a five foot side in your existing standards.

And these regulations that we're modeling in the proposed follow the existing draft for RA.

So in RA, we have the 10 foot minimum, 20 foot maximum or existing range.

So, you know, there's a bit of variation in that front, a four foot side and a four foot rear.

So what does that mean?

What that means is when you're thinking about how you're controlling for building size and building location in today's regulations,

The setbacks and the height are the only tools, the only dials that impact that bulk and mass.

In the proposed regulation, we have a few more dials.

And so I want to make sure that we understand what those dials do and how we can change them to get the outcomes that we may want to see.

And so building location, that's what your setbacks control.

So you can't build all the way maximum to all the setbacks because you have other dials that restrict it.

The setbacks say where the building can go on site.

As far as the building size, the bulk and mass of that building and the new regulations would be controlled with building width, your building height, and that building coverage requirement.

So it sort of breaks apart those dials and gets at building location and building size in a bit more nuanced of a way.

And what we're going to show these illustrations is how the ultimate outcome of the buildings

can be more fine-tuned when you break those dials apart.

So let's take a look at, for example, today what you can build with a primary plus attached accessory unit versus what will be proposed for a two unit in R-A.

So you can build to your maximum setbacks at 35 feet high, which is about three stories.

You know, there aren't story

requirements in your current code, but just to give you an idea.

And so that results in a 40 foot wide building.

And then in the proposed regulations,

It's a two and a half story requirement.

So you can see that that roof comes down a bit and there's a building width.

So you can see the width scoots in.

So what does that mean from a development footprint perspective?

It means that in today's building size, you can get to a building that's about a 2,800 square foot building footprint, but is a bit taller of a building.

So it gets to ultimately a building that's about 8,400 square feet.

The maximum you could build.

Under the proposed, you can see that that mass gets skinnier, but it gets a bit longer.

And I do want to just emphasize something you'll see throughout these drawings.

You can see the difference in the building width and setbacks.

I think this does a good job in illustrating that that building width really is part of what helps control for that sort of rhythm that defines house scale.

and it's an important tool in how we think about that.

So even as the buildings may get a bit deeper and if they have more units in them, they still have that house feel from the street and the width is a really key way that we help ensure that that rhythm is maintained.

So I wanted to emphasize that.

The side setbacks also help give some flexibility for things like rear access, whether it's a sidewalk or a driveway.

So the building can sort of scoot to one side or the other.

It's also a great way to do tree preservation.

If you have a big, beautiful existing tree that's on a boundary line, you can scoot that building over to one of the side setbacks to help stay out of that critical root zone.

So I'm going to go through these pretty quickly just to illustrate how some lot coverage, for example, the dial turns depending on how many units you have.

So if you bump up to a four unit, you can see that that back building sort of shifts back a little bit because you get a bit more building coverage allowance in the current proposal in the proposed draft.

When you go up to four units, the today's regulations stay the same.

So what does that mean?

It means your building footprint gets a bit deeper and your building footprint, your building size.

So when you multiply this building footprint by two and a half, then your building size, the most you could ever build would be about 9,000 square feet.

And then finally, for eight units, and I will say this is

It would be very, very challenging to build this.

These are very skinny, skinny units.

But just to illustrate, once again, that coverage, you can see increases even further in the allowance of the proposed.

And ultimately that building footprint would end up being something like 37,000 square feet with a building size of about 9,000, 3,700.

I'm sorry, not 37,000.

So

Partially what we really wanted to show is the difference in how building width makes the building placement and the feel along the street change.

Show how the building coverage as you get more units, that little bit of calibration, how that changes and what effect that could have.

So I wanted to offer that up.

And then also what the two and a half story means as far as feel and the height.

So when you go from a three story to a two and a half, what the bulk and mass implications of that could be.

So wanted to offer that as consideration.

I'll pause briefly.

It's the same exercise we went through for the double lots.

I think the double lot illustrates it maybe in an even more extreme way of how the building width especially controls for that building scale across the front.

But I'll pause briefly if anybody has any questions before I move on.

Keep going.

You're very small.

I think I saw a hand raise.

Keep going.

Okay.

You're small in the corner.

Okay.

So again, this is going to a double lot.

So this is assuming that somebody would not subdivide a parcel.

Obviously you could, somebody could, but let's just say it's just a larger lot and someone wanted to leave it that way.

So we still have the same setbacks, 25 foot front, 25 foot rear in your existing regulations, a five foot side.

And then for the proposed regulations, that 10-foot minimum, 20-foot maximum, or existing, to emphasize that, 4-foot side and 4-foot rear setback.

So what are the outcomes?

What I think is fairly obvious immediately is that particularly with wide lots, that building width becomes very important.

So you can see that this building under today's standard, if you had a 100-foot wide lot, you could build a 90-foot wide building

Obviously that doesn't happen very often, but it's something you could do.

Whereas even though you have a very wide lot in the proposed draft, you still have to maintain that more narrow building width that conforms more to that house scale.

So what does that mean from a footprint and building size outcome?

You can see that the building footprints are fairly close in this example.

So you have the 6,300 for the existing and the proposed it's 6,600.

But from a building size perspective, the square footage that you can get is significantly more actually in the current regulations and it has to do with that full third story.

So it's

almost 19,000 square feet that you could build today, whereas another proposed standards would be more like 16,500.

And that's for two units because, again, that building size and that building footprint in the proposed is really being calibrated by building width, also that building coverage.

So that's a new tool that doesn't exist in your ordinance.

You can see how that bumps up a little bit once you get to four stories, so you get a bit more coverage allowed, so it allows you to get up to four units.

It allows you to get up to 7,200 footprint, whereas the existing would be a 6,300, and your building size is still larger in your existing regulations, so the building size that would be allowed under the proposed would be about 18,000 square feet.

And then finally, to close the loop with eight units, you know, again, that getting that bit more coverage with the more units that we're allowing, the building footprint gets closer to 7,500, but the building size from a total square footage perspective is still less than what you would see today.

So I wanted to really

point your attention to how that building width really impacts the feel of the development from the street in particular and how we can use that in conjunction with building coverage to think about what the scale of the building is as it goes deeper into the lot.

Any questions about this?

I have one other slide that shifts topics a bit, but I know it's something that's important to talk about, and that's the alternative forms, in particular, the RA, RB, and RC.

I'll go ahead and shift to that.

So for alternative forms, something that we are working on and that you all have an opportunity to see when we release the consolidated draft is more detail and a couple fixes for the alternative forms of what uses are allowed and what those forms

ultimately end up becoming.

So the one in particular that I want to highlight is the shop front house alternative form.

And the intent of this really runs the spectrum from something that is a house, it looks like a house, it's the form of a house, but it has a business.

So this is actually an example of just down the street from us here in Austin.

and it's a restaurant now, it's in an old house and they've essentially created a patio and built up to commercial kitchen but fundamentally it's a house form.

The next sort of iteration of that that would be allowed with that alternative form is the shop front house and that's more of an addition to an existing house and it's some people call those accessory commercial, neighborhood commercial but it really is accessory

that is added on to that existing house form sort of in front of it.

It's what you think of when someone typically says a shopfront house form.

And then the more historic corner store of what you would think that doesn't have necessarily the form or shape of a house and it really just occupies that corner maybe in a more flat roof form.

But that would also be a form that could be built under the alternative form

of a shopfront house.

So that would kind of run the spectrum of lease intervention of looks like a house, feels like a house to something that looks and feels a bit more like a neighborhood scale commercial building.

So one thing that we are working through and would love to get you all's feedback on are some of the use standards that we're associating with this.

So one of the key standards that we do want to highlight is that this use

in R, A, B, and C would be limited to corner lots.

So they're historically found in corners.

So making them a corner lot form makes sense.

They are limited in size.

You know, we've broken down the use table into up to 4,000 square feet and beyond 4,000 square feet.

So that is an important threshold.

Most of these do require a special use permit.

So there's a process associated with that.

And these are most limited in RA.

So things like food and beverage would not be allowed in RA.

Only retail, we're in the draft currently proposing that it would be a special use permit.

And the only things that will be allowed by right are small like personal service offices, small medical uses like that, where it's more of like, you know, think of an attorney's office that is in a house form, that one or two employee personal service kind of use.

And then it, you know, the allowances would increase from there into RB and RC.

So I do want to highlight those, give a bit more detail into that.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

I know it's going to be part of the discussion.

Another thing I do want to emphasize with this are all of the other development standards associated with this, including where parking can be located.

So these all have to be very neighborhood scale, pulled up to the street, pedestrian oriented.

Parking would have to be located behind.

It would have to be screened.

So these are all meant to be

very neighborhood and pedestrian oriented uses and not auto oriented uses.

Make sure that was that was clear with the intent of these neighborhood scale commercial buildings.

And that was it for the slides we have.

Happy to answer any questions.

I'm going to stop sharing my screen.

Happy to jump in and pull up a specific slide if we need to.

So are we for those three options that are alternative forms?

The way it is currently written, all three of these are possible.

Thank you.

That's right.

All of the uses.

Yeah.

So the way the alternative forms work is essentially to say, if this use is allowed, then it can use this alternative form.

It's allowed to use the alternative form.

And so when you go look at the use standard of those uses, so take

General Commercial under 4,000 square feet.

That's the current proposal of the draft, yeah.

And that's for all of the commercial uses that, you know, we've just said that as a starting point.

There are different use groups in there.

So general retail is different from an impact perspective from personal service.

And so it may be that we want to keep certain of those uses like retail or food and beverage to corner, but maybe the personal services are okay mid block.

And so we could modify the standards so that those would be allowed mid block.

Yeah, so just for further clarification for me, when you were describing it before, you said that there'll be no food or alcohol, and then you referred to kind of personal business services.

So could there be like a small store that, you know, you could get milk and things like that, or will you just...

Yeah, so we have a couple different use categories, and those define what is or isn't included in that.

So those use categories can include food and beverage, which is for sale, for consumption, on-site, food and beverage, alcohol included.

So that is more limited in where that is allowed.

and whether it needs a special use permit than general retail.

So what you're describing that's more like a corner store bodega kind of situation that would be allowed to sell some of those things on site, but not for onsite consumption.

That's more food and beverage.

Maybe.

In the draft proposal, they don't have to.

If you think about these in a continuum, so the very first level of commercial use in residential districts is a home-based business, right?

And that's where the commercial use is accessory and the proprietor lives on site.

And right now that set of rules is limited to strictly professional uses for the most part.

There's a couple of service uses that are allowed in that space as well.

And then this is kind of that next

Yeah, gas stations would not be allowed under this use period.

It would have to be a corner of streets.

Does that answer the question?

Yes.

But gas stations would not be allowed.

I believe you said these examples were

for what would be allowed in RA and that RA is the most restrictive zone.

Yes, and I can pull up.

I may need to reference it, but I can talk generally about it.

In RA,

Food and beverage.

In the draft, we're proposing that would not be allowed in RA, whereas it would be allowed for a special use permit in RB and RC.

So it would have to get through that special use permit process.

General retail, I believe is a special use permit in all of our districts, A, B, and C. So it's possible, but again, does have to get through the special use permit process.

And then personal services and general medical.

that are those smaller, under 4,000 square feet, that's the instance in all of these, those would be permitted and these all have use standards associated with them.

I can verify, but off the top of my head, that's the general spectrum.

So you didn't mention lodging.

It's in what?

10 rooms, 10 guest rooms.

4,000 square feet could be a decent sized medical office.

We obviously all understand special use permits in that process, just as like a practical administratively in terms of the process, how it plays out.

What is that non-special use permit process?

What would that look like?

That would be evaluated under the typical development review process.

And so the planning team would be checking to make sure all of those use standards would be adhered to, and those use standards being in Article III.

So that application would come in and James and his team would go through and make sure that all of those standards are checking the boxes, it's in the appropriate places, that it's an allowed use, that's the appropriate size.

Right.

Yeah, if you want to, or I can.

Okay.

So, I mean, it's like your existing process.

So we would need to develop those criteria.

Well, but it's a not limited to list, right?

Yeah, I think it's the same list.

You guys didn't propose any changes to the criteria for the cap, right?

Oh, from the city.

I guess where I'm going with this is, I mean, the leading question, if we were to allow these on all lots, not just corner lots, but we've got the SUP process to kind of moderate that.

I mean, how easy is it for us to say, well,

It's fundamental level.

It would be best if we had a criteria that said something similar to that, that we were gonna look at the question of spacing as one of the criteria.

I would also say, I caution you as to how much

Zoning can really do about the success of a given business.

So we all know that some named, you know, bakeries would be packed and some slightly more no-name bakeries might be really quiet, even though they're embedded in the neighborhood.

And that has to do with, you know, the quality of what they're selling, etc.

So there is some nuance to this.

And that's why the special use permit is really important for things that you are concerned about whether they would have significant impacts.

I think that we, for the most part, know about the impacts that might come with any dentist, any doctor.

There are certain periods of time that are sort of necessary to manage a patient.

You can't pump them through there any quicker.

Whereas, you know, food service and some other kinds of things maybe are a little more iffy.

I'll emphasize the point that Lee made that to the extent that we can identify specific criteria or specific issues that we're concerned about, we put those in as criteria for considerations for the special use permit.

So if we're concerned about the number,

then we list that straight up.

That's the number in a given block or the density of the particular use.

We also have the ability to add more standards if there's something that makes a lot of sense to apply to those just as a use, a standard to that specific use.

So in our districts, for example, if 4,000 square feet feels too big for medical, there can be a use standard that says general medical 4,000 and under is limited to 2,000 square feet in the our districts.

So

Those standards can be associated with the specific use, whether it's permitted and reviewed administratively or going through a special use permit.

So, but I mean, the law says potential adverse impacts to be considered include, but are not necessarily limited to the following.

I agree with that statement.

Absolutely, yeah.

How does that person want to do catering out of their home business?

Sure.

Yeah.

It mostly had to do with the orientation of RB and RC along

more corridors and adjacent to amenity areas.

And that was something that was thought about in the comp plan process and that mapping process.

Can you address vape shops?

Vape is just a thing you happen to sell.

So if the state's allowing you to sell it, we'd have to ask the attorney whether we can allow, whether we can constrain it.

It is possible that we could have, you know, spacing or other concerns associated with FAPE.

We would be talking to the city's attorney before we set up anything like that.

Hi, this is Chairman, and obviously you're working with Ms.

Pandak, but I guess the action is that you can, and I would suggest that you chat with Ms.

And so the point there is that if there's specific subcategories of retail, essentially, they could be more heavily restricted.

Lee, I don't know if everyone caught it, like we can do,

by distance rules, distance from certain other uses or whatever.

Potentially, I think we had felt that a number of these things are a bit of a no-brainer.

A special use permit is difficult for an applicant to go through.

And if you see these as a baby step up from a home-based business to something slightly larger that might eventually grow into something even larger,

It's a real challenge to go through that formal process.

So if you really want to experiment and get corner stores, we would recommend, or corner uses, we'd recommend that you allow some things by right and try it out for a bit and see if you're comfortable with it.

If in fact you're finding you have nuisance issues that need to be managed,

either we need more standards for the uses, even when they're by ride, or we need that special use permit process.

So I would be reluctant to throw everything in that pot, but certainly anything that you're leery about.

I mean, frankly, number one on my personal list would be a coffee shop.

Number two might be a small corner store.

Do I want the corner store to be filled with vape products?

And I don't know, you probably can't sell the lottery in Virginia, but that would also be the next target.

But yes, I agree.

There are some things that you might want to leave out.

This is...

An experiment for you.

You don't really have a major pattern of historic versions of this in spite of the fact that clearly they were there at one point in time in some of the neighborhoods.

So, you know, I think one dial that could be turned for that is like that square footage cutoff, right?

Like right now it's 4,000 square feet for the general retail and for medical, which is a big medical office and a big retail thing.

And thinking about our corner stores around town,

I don't know their square footage, the data quality is terrible, but I assume it's a lot less than that.

And so one way to be careful, seems like it would be, you know, only allowing them to be small than any, if there were a nuisance, it would be restricted by the scale, it would be half as big or whatever.

Where'd you guys come up with four, like why 4,000?

We generally found that in most communities it's a pretty good cutoff of being able to allow enough but keeps a lot of the sort of any sort of big box retailer out of any of those uses.

So it just made sense as a cutoff a lot of local businesses

So would two 2,000 square foot storefronts count as

In this case, we'd be looking at a maximum for the site.

So like that corner store image could be two uses there would need another door on the left.

But that could be two uses rather than one.

But it's really the scale of the building, the scale of the uses in the building that and therefore on the single lot that would be counted.

So if you had a very large corner lot, you still would not be exceeding 4,000.

that any such business not do terribly well because doing well means more traffic, means more noise, means more disruption to the neighborhood.

But from a planning standpoint, I'm kind of grappling with this in part because it seems to me that we as planners ought to figure that we want whatever use we're going to authorize there to work.

But the reality is, as I understand the logic of these sorts of stores is if you're thinking that they're not going to be auto-oriented and therefore they're only going to be walk-in traffic or largely walk-in traffic

What's the likelihood, as I think about some of the places that we've tried to designate for that kind of use, what's the likelihood that you're going to have population density that's going to be sufficient to do that?

You can have people drive to a place without necessarily generating more traffic if it's a commercial real estate burgers are a term for this, but they're stopping by on their way by anyway, right?

You're driving home to your neighborhood, you turn up Grove Road, you stop for a second at the store and grab a gallon of milk.

And I would not be so absolute in saying that everyone doesn't want this thing near them.

at the B&R market on Bowling and Avon, someone bought a $400,000 house last year that they tore down.

It was like decrepit.

It's a $400,000 lot next to a corner store.

So it can't be that bad of a nuisance or an externality.

I think the other thing in here is there's still going to be an inherent limitation on

on the commercial viability of the site.

And be busy, but there's going to be inherent limitation because they aren't going to be able to build out a large parking lot.

They're not going to be able to expand their footprint.

They've got a little footprint.

They've got the space they have to work with.

And so they have to at some point say, I accept this level of business.

This is as much as I can do here.

But the trade-off here when we're in this regulatory realm is essentially do we want to create this opportunity or not?

What this space offers potential for is more affordable entrepreneurial space.

To your other point, Mayor, in terms of preference, I think one of the difficulties is I'm sure it depends a ton about what the specific business moving in is, as well as the specific site.

I mean, there's definitely people I canvassed and talked to who wish they had a corner store or a coffee shop they could walk to.

And we do have examples of that in the city.

At the same time, it's definitely true there would be areas in the city where I'm sure the neighborhood would not welcome some particular use coming in.

I think you'd also find that a lot of these would be run by the homeowner who lives there already in something more of like a passion project kind of way.

where like, you know, it probably is, it's never going to pencil for a like corporate 7-Eleven to like say, I want to open up a, you're a Starbucks to say, I want to open up, you know, in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

But for someone who lives there and wants to set up, you know, a couple of cafe tables and get, you know, a Nespresso machine to be social, to bring together community, you know, they're obviously already paying their mortgage.

They're not like the costs

you know as as rigorous right it's and that's kind of where the lineage correlates scares me because you know I think mostly you're not going to see a lot of these right then the ones who because the bank's not going to finance it you're going to see people who want to do it on their own I'm thinking of a next door post a couple years ago that was like an immigrant who is like cooking all the stuff and was like I'd love to bring it to people I would love to have like a four table restaurant in my living room

That wouldn't be possible under the current zoning, obviously.

You also consider you sort of snuggled up to this in your low barrier to entry for certain businesses and the opportunity for economic activity there for something like a

man, youngster who lives in mom and dad's house, do a little detail shopping shop for a small beauty borrower or something like that.

That's a very low barrier to entry, but that will generate substantial revenue.

So I think in terms of firing entrepreneurial behavior within incidental tax base for that, I mean, I think that's a net good.

What they're proposing here, is that what's in the- No, it's in the latest draft.

That probably should have been clarified when she was describing- A draft that we have not yet seen?

Yeah.

It's the draft that we just received and are in the process of reviewing.

I see.

I, of course, don't know of any secret businesses that are breaking zoning rules in Charlottesville.

They don't exist.

They don't exist.

This draft is the one that's coming out of the feedback we've received to date.

My view is if there's a way to handle this on a special use permit versus being so restrictive that you can only do this on corners is what we should do.

A corner could be just as problematic to someone as putting it in the middle of a block.

One of the things that I appreciated about the write-up that I guess you did, James, speaking to what used to be the case a long time ago, apparently, and I think this is kind of makes sense and was a good thing.

It's a shame that we lost.

People use their location, their property to basically live in it and also have some kind of business.

and that helped them build equity, helped them build a life.

I don't know.

That might be hankering for the good old days.

I don't know.

But I will say that that's worked before.

And I think if we can be thoughtful about what uses we allow, perhaps we do get prescriptive so we don't have vape shops in Greenbrier.

Maybe that's what we need to do.

I realize we could get endlessly at a list that goes on and on and on in terms of what we don't like.

But I think we should err on the side of allowing people to live their lives.

And if they can do something, maybe 4,000 is too big.

Maybe we'd knock it down to 2,000 in RA.

So when I, I mean, I wrote up countless home occupations as a transportation planner when I was doing that.

And, you know, we had guidelines and things, but, you know, a lot depends on the business, but I also had a section, you know, I reached out to the neighbors and got their input.

So a lot really, you know, with water supervisors, you know, just 10 years ago,

who bought this house a lot and not expecting it to be retail or, you know, cars coming in and out and things.

And so a lot really depended on the use and the impact.

And so that's the lens that I will be, you know, kind of looking at it through, because if you bought a house, no matter where it is, and you're just like, well, you know, you look at it and you think about the traffic flow and things.

And so

Yeah, that makes total sense.

And I will say, I don't know if it's possible for them to bring up the use matrix to give people a sense of what we're really talking about.

There's not that many that are actually allowed.

in terms of commercial uses.

For example, you can't have a private club, apparently.

Yeah.

It's pretty limited in terms of what's allowed.

And even the things that are allowed, there's asterisks.

Use standards apply.

Is that right?

No.

That's what we're talking about is what those use standards would be.

So they've proposed at this point their quarter lots.

I guess my point is that if you look at all the possible sorts of commercial uses that are listed, there's only one, two, three, four, five,

In RA or any residential?

RA.

Okay.

But what about the neighborhoods where we've got them designated?

The only difference is food and beverage.

Then I guess general retail would be in SUP right now in RA.

But other than that, food and beverage was the only difference between those.

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

I was going to suggest that, and I know you guys hate doing this with Airbnbs, but owner-occupancy maybe should be something that gets you different, like, to a different standard, right?

Because you're the neighbor anyway.

They're going to come and yell at you if you're being a nuisance.

And that seems different than someone saying, I'm going to go to that neighborhood and open up a 3,000 square foot vape shop.

Yeah, it depends on, you know, in this, I don't think, this is not assuming, as presented here, it's not assuming that it has to be mixed use.

I've seen examples of each of these that are mixed use, but I've also seen examples of each of these that are not.

But if we, if

Well, I don't know about that.

Well, a couple things.

One, corner lots are different.

And they're different for a key reason, and that is they have more frontage and more access options if they want to provide parking, because you can get to the rear yard without going past the house.

So there is a difference between a corner lot and a mid-block lot in most urban lots.

Now, if we're talking about, you know, the larger lots in, you know, one of the portions of town with 18,000 square foot lots, you know, all bets are off.

There's lots of land area, etc.

But if we're really talking about the urban patterns of Belmont and other ones in the neighborhoods, then the corner lot is advantaged for this kind of use and it functionally fits better, gives them more parking spaces along the street adjacent to their property and more options for getting on to the back of the lot if we wanted to provide additional parking spaces.

So that's just one thing I wanted to bring up.

I think the challenge of owner-occupied is an enormous one.

You can ask James about his success in implementing that with the Airbnb regulations.

It's just really difficult to know who's where.

And I also know that many, many successful examples of these are not owner-occupied.

They're for leased spaces.

They change hands over time.

Different uses are in them.

So the owner-occupancy requirement raises a little bit of a red flag for me.

But I'm not sure why it helps...

is a lower barrier to entry.

I mean, if that's the rationale, then the scheme of I'm going to move and I'm going to have my house that I am now vacating turned into a store or whatever, that doesn't strike me as being a lower barrier to entry.

There are plenty of reasons to throw around for why some of these things make sense.

Yes.

Just that same exact point.

That's the barrier to entry.

So maybe make a residency requirement, Michael.

I guess I was thinking owner of the business.

Well, the residency requirement.

If you're going to run a business out of a house, you've got to live in a house.

Well, two out of the three of these spaces could be completely commercial.

The shopfront house has presumably got a resident in the main house and the shopfront down below is commercial.

But you could see the corner store being a commercial unit downstairs and offices above.

And the one on the left, I happen to know that particular example is 100% commercial inside that house.

So the owner occupancy requirement.

I don't know if whether perhaps you need that in the mid block, because the mid block is a little more disruptive than being on the corner.

You know, maybe there is a place to use something about owner occupancy.

That is, the Rx actually allows something in the base of a mixed use, what is dominantly a residential building.

So it would be, it could be, if the lot were large enough, it would be larger in scale than the corner store is here.

I hear you on how corner lots are sort of special and better, but I keep thinking about probably one of the longest standing corner

Stores in the city.

It's not on a corner.

It's a mid-block store, as they call them, on Grady, right?

It's in the middle of the block.

They got, you know, 15-minute spaces for entree parking for, like, just their frontage.

There's, like, three of them.

They do look like they have a driveway in the back where there's probably where the people park who work there.

Never been back there.

I don't know.

It works fine.

Yeah, I'm not just wandering around in their parking lot.

I mean, it works fine, right?

Like, people are only in there for three minutes, so, like, it's not like they're hawking the whole street parking.

Would you feel that there is a difference between the streets in which we have especially designated B and C, which were the streets that work streets as opposed to the internal streets in the neighborhood?

Is there a difference there that's important?

I think there is a difference that mostly manifests in how probably attractive it would be to open a business there and how successful that business would be.

Christy said earlier that historically these stores gravitated to corners.

That wasn't because they were illegal everywhere else.

It's because then you have two streets of people passing you, right?

And so, you know, I think it makes sense that they would gravitate to these streets and to corners, but that's different from we need to make sure they're illegal everywhere else.

Okay.

Is this what we're going to discuss today?

The only thing?

I personally am a little bit disconcerted by the fact that we are discussing something that we haven't seen, that the consultants have apparently propounded some different standards in some different

that we have not seen, and we're getting answers that are based on rules that we have not seen.

Without critiquing it, having read the whole thing.

Agreed.

I mean, we're just sort of shooting in the dark.

What about this?

It's on page 72.

Yeah.

And I mean, we're trying to get to an end point for you all, a final draft and all the input we get here.

Believe me, I'm not listening to what you're saying and waiting for him to say, gotcha, we already got to that.

Like, I just want to, we want to get this input so that we can get something in front of you guys that you guys can work from to land at what you guys

at the end of the data site is an adoptable zoning ordinance.

So every bit of conversation is helpful for us.

Yeah, would it be helpful if we kind of get a general idea of what we feel about the corner lots?

Generally, that should be, it should be viewed differently versus the mid-block as a group, as we even have a common thing and SUPs and how much they're used versus another thing being resident occupancy instead of home ownership.

But the concept of having resident occupancy and RA, for example, is that...

of in the middle of the block lot if you want to do owner occupancy or no.

That was what I perceived your question to be.

Was that not what you said?

I don't know if you guys want to do a strong vote on the three issues as Cruz presented them, or if you want to do around the room and just everybody comments to the extent that they're comfortable at this point.

I think it makes sense to me.

Mr. Hibuppi, please start.

I haven't thought about it enough.

But he asked the question.

I think there's something to say for resident occupancy in RA specifically.

I would be for that with exceptions for specific uses like a convenience store.

and I don't know what that list of uses is until we can dive into, hopefully we'll have another work session that we can dive into the uses or we can send you feedback.

I don't think we should limit it just to quarter and lots on that.

Okay, Mr. Payne.

I'm unsure how feasible

residency requirement would ever be able to be monitored or enforced.

Again, I think all of this is so specific to the specific site location and business that

There are clearly areas outside of corner lots that would work.

There are clearly corner lots that wouldn't really be ideal.

And that variable could change depending on the business, which is why, in my mind, allowing it beyond corner lots, but it is greater use of the SUP process to me makes sense.

I mean, I trust that

Council and the Planning Commission is able to have some common sense and evaluate the specific context of that proposal coming in and being able to manage it that way.

I think definitely got to allow mid-block lots so people who already live somewhere can do this.

For SEPs, I think, you know, I think you can do really small things, smaller scale things than 4,000 by right.

But, you know, bigger things should probably be SEP.

And some uses like actually are kind of special uses, right?

Like food and beverage can have externalities, you know, odor and trash.

That makes sense.

And I would err on the side of allowing more things by SEP that are currently not allowed, like food and beverage and RA.

And then, was there anything, owner occupancy?

So, yeah.

I'm okay with middle of the lot.

I'm also basically just looking again at the use table, unless this has changed in the new draft.

In RA, I'm fine with a medical, which is what you have listed, up to 4,000.

That might be too big, maybe 2,000.

Office, you've got 4,000.

I might be more comfortable in RA with 2,000.

Personal service, I think I'd be more comfortable with 2,000 than 4,000.

and then general retail, you already have listed as a special use permit required.

There's also RB and RC.

I'm speaking to RA, right?

So relative to RA, which I think is what most of the frustration has been about tonight, right, is the RA component.

The pieces that are listed for RB and RC that you have on your use table,

I'm basically good with those.

I think that 4,000 is probably appropriate for those square footages for those areas.

Yeah, I'm basically good with what you've already done.

Again, it's fairly limited if you actually look at the use table in terms of what people can do.

So I'm good with it.

I mean, I think we are too privileged on our seat.

I'm good with quarter lots.

For me, I've probably written... Sorry, I've lost my train of thought.

There was a distraction.

He'll come back.

Oh, I've watched with great interest the battles in other cities over special use permits for ice cream shops and coffee shops within where people live.

He can take years of public process, best amounts of money, incredible drama, relationships torn apart.

From a dramatic perspective, I love it.

It's delicious.

I don't know that it's a good way to run policy.

I'd suggest that we focus SUP process as much as possible on health and safety issues that are real, that we can defend in court, that we can point to.

I appreciate aesthetics.

I appreciate some ice cream is better than others.

I believe that fervently.

But please, let's focus on measurable outcomes.

I see value in.

That is what I have.

I am generally not a fan of

of commercial uses, particularly in residential zones and RA in particular.

The interesting problem that I see, and I commented on this at the last meeting, is that if we're talking about having a small retail store, for example, in an RV lot, and we've decided that we want to put RV lots all around the schools because we want people to live there, not because we want stores there, then maybe, and we're concerned that kids walk

The dramatic example would be the kid who walks by the vape shop and terrible things are happening, whatever.

But the point is that if the purpose of making some of these places more dense for population near a school

If that's the purpose why we're creating that as an RV lot, then why are we also increasing the amount of commercial activity that we want to allow on that lot?

So there's some sort of incongruities there.

The main advantage, the reason I've suggested focusing on corner lots has been that it provides an

of that particular use if they're going to be on corner lots.

That doesn't mean that it's the most intelligent way to ration, but it is at least a legally defensible way to ration, it seems to me.

If there were a legally defensible way to ration some of these uses, some other criterion,

other than what has been sort of suggested of, well, we've already got two on this block and maybe three is just one, two more.

That gets hard for me to understand how we defend that.

Also struck by one of the objections that folks have made to the idea of the zoning ordinance in general

in particular to things like RV lots, and particularly to some of these alternative forms is a question of what do we do about front yard setbacks?

What do we do about the way it presents itself to the street?

Do we specifically say, as I think I remember having seen in some draft someplace, that no, we

I keep thinking about what's going to work economically, and my concern is that what's going to work economically in most of the neighborhoods where we're talking about is a, it's not going to work unless there's a significant increase in traffic, and specifically traffic coming to that store, not driving past the store on the way home to buy a thing of milk.

and so I think to some extent we have tried to find a lot of different rationales for some of these changes and some of them end up being contradictory.

And I haven't quite figured out beyond that a sense of unease with the way that things are unfolding here.

I mean, the easiest way to not have that sense of unease is to say, let's have no commercial activity in RA and let's kind of ration it some in RB and RC.

I'm not 100% there yet, but that's frankly what I'm leaning.

How do you feel about the SUP question?

If we were to think about

what the criteria would be for SUP.

Obviously, a lot of times we have SUP issues that really are impossible to adjudicate without a site plan.

And that was the original intent of our ordinance was that you were supposed to have a real site plan when you had an SUP application instead of what we often get now where the SUP application is granted subject to submitting a site plan.

which is sort of backwards way to do it.

But I understand the economics of why that happens because it's so darn expensive to do it the other way.

If we had some issues where the SUP process and the SUP decision was going to be made on bases that were not going to be so darn expensive to prepare, I think I would be more interested in having more SUPs.

For example, if it turns out to be a valid basis for an SUP grant or denial to say, we're not going to grant it because we already have two stores like that on the block.

Hopefully, that would be something where people would say, okay, we can't have three on the block.

I see there are already two.

I'm not going to boss there.

as opposed to where we kind of get right now where it just seems like everything is so discretionary that people say, maybe I got to take my chances.

Maybe we got to see how that's going to work.

And that's the kind of uncertainty that adds to everybody's expenses in a way.

might.

So I am fine with the mid-block, fine with the corner.

I'm finer with the corner than mid-block.

Doesn't have to be a homework you hide for me.

I would like as much for it to be SUP as possible because that gives us an opportunity to review it based on what's going on in the neighborhood.

So I know that it's costs and more paperwork and things, bureaucracy, but this is, you know, we're dealing with people's biggest impact and, I mean, biggest financial

Asset.

Asset, thank you.

It's been still kind of jetting.

So that they have.

So I think that, you know, I want to have that review.

And the buildings, I like the smaller 2,000 square foot building, but I think a 4,000 one could be done nicely, but the smaller ones, you know, to me, the scale is...

Yeah, that's kind of where I am.

And so also the way I'm looking at this is that not that this is something that we want to do every few years or a few months, but in my mind, if we approve something in December and we get a few

projects in and it's not going the way we want it, then we have the ability to go back and modify it and say, you know what, it's not going when we want it.

And we as council, as a community can say, no, we want to go with $4,000, you know, whatever.

So this is not set in stone, you know, whatever we ultimately decide on.

I am opposed to an owner occupancy requirement.

I think RA, the first letter there is R for residential.

So I would look at these more as a mixed use by right.

That is to say, if you're going to put whatever you're putting on there, you've got to preserve at least one residential unit.

on that same piece of property so that we're not essentially kneecapping our own housing supply, which in case anybody hasn't noticed is a problem.

I think I'm fine with midlots and I think SEPs have their place where we've got a buy right situation so long as you preserve a residential unit and then things are more conditional if you're not and going to a complete

non-residential area.

Another reason I'm against the occupancy issue is that you could easily have a situation where an owner-occupant is renting the storefront to somebody and the owner-occupant then needs to depart and to preserve the ownership of the property, they need to rent the residential unit out too.

And that is designed to preserve their own

You know, things happen to people.

And that is a practical, we actually have some evidence that that is practically useful because in the world of FHA lending, you have to own or occupy it.

If you buy a condominium, they won't let you finance an FHA on a condominium with any sort of deed restriction of that occupancy because they want the FHA homeowner, if they have to rent it, can to keep the property.

So I think that the VA has the same role.

So I think that sort of plays a role.

So to summarize, I'm fine with mid-lots.

I'm fine with quarter-lots.

I'm fine with expanding buy-right as long as you preserve a residential unit in it.

I'm on the fence about mid-lots, however, when we're talking about SUPs and all of the intricacies of what has to happen in order for an SUP to be granted, I think we could

This word may not be the right word, but maybe there's a way that it could be streamlined for what is having to happen.

Because I could see like the corner store being the little bordega and, you know, somebody living on top, but maybe not.

Or you could use the corner store like the gentleman indicated where it would be two

you know, like, you know, the little coffee shop and next door to it, the flower shop or whatever.

But if it was just a strict 4,000, that seems like a lot to me, but where you have the corner store or your shop front, if it was 4,000, you could, you know, divide it in half.

So my little coffee shop or bakery is 2,000 and my little flower shop is 2,000.

The owner occupancy could, in my mind, present a problem long term.

Initially, it may not, but long term it could.

So I think that that's something you need to consider carefully.

But the most important thing is any decision that is made is not irrevocable.

You can always go back.

But I think when we're talking about special use permits,

the way they're currently done, it takes a lot.

And we are not trying to give anybody any extra work, you know, unless you just have, you know, this one, these five individuals that deal with SUPs for these particular categories, which, you know, probably won't happen.

So streamlining your SUP process for this particular set of circumstances, I think is fair.

And you need to know

You need to have a general idea of what the person wants to do.

You don't want to say, oh, well, Leah, you have SUP, and then the next thing you know, Leah's done whatever, and you didn't know that that's what Leah was going to do.

So I'm thinking that there needs to be some something, you know, I don't know, an executive summary or whatever.

So I think these businesses or these opportunities within the RA, RB, and RC districts are incredibly important as a first step to a future of Charlottesville that is more walkable as automobile ownership becomes less and less affordable.

I think we do need to have some first baby steps so that we can get to a denser city.

I mean, I think within the RA, we definitely need to cut the size down of these uses.

4000 is kind of big for most of these uses.

I don't think we need to have an owner-occupant, but I do think we need to have a resident, someone living on the property.

I would say at least 50% of the square footage of the project should be residential.

So that way, at least if it's a nuisance, there's someone living on the site that's experiencing the nuisance.

The reason I'm asking is it actually eliminates the house form that's kind of a traditional house form with two rooms on the side of a center hall.

Yeah, we found in most communities that that is a fairly typical maximum width of a lot of sort of in-town houses, even up to a more colonial style house.

And then once you get into a bit more suburban of a pattern, the houses tend to get wider.

So we found it as a fairly good maximum building width.

It also gives access to the backyard on one side.

If you constructed it that way, you could get a driveway past it to a rear garage.

What a big deal.

I was curious.

I mean, I haven't tried to figure out what side is the front to measure this, but if you guys are capable of that, it'd be interesting to see what the median would be.

I mean, what this would do is it would start forcing smaller typologies within our city.

Also skyrocket all the houses that are bigger.

I mean, it's, yeah, you're forcing the house to go deep.

I generally, I think like, you know, I think we're doing a lot to make it possible to have smaller and more affordable typologies.

Cool.

So I just heard some of the conversations that

Are we still basically committed to that zoning map at this point in terms of where these places are?

I know, Mr. Mayor, you've, I think, a few times have been concerned with how widespread these areas are.

Is that something that the ship kind of sailed with the future land use map?

What is it?

So I guess that's my mind is if we're talking about R-B, R-A, R-B, R-C, we'll have that conversation.

This is a perfect time to have that conversation.

making it difficult to have that conversation, I think, is this idea, maybe insistence from staff that we can only turn that dial one way, that we're only allowed to go down.

Because I think there are places where people have made pretty convincing arguments, or even I have said, well, maybe it doesn't make quite so much sense here, but maybe it makes some sense over there as you do that finer scale review.

I would say it's the basis of our recommendation that turning down, and this is, to be clear, from the land use map alone.

turning down from the land use map, that's something you can do without making any changes to the land use map.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that at this point.

And I admit, I said that we could amend the land use map, but as we have moved forward and the conversations I've had, particularly with legal counsel,

that does introduce a wider range of complication into our adoption process because we would have to simultaneously amend the conference plan and the zoning ordinance.

So the notion of dialing some things up, is that like in the conversations that we had like last week when there were things that we talked about dialing up that are within what is allowed under the land use map that where the zoning started lower, but you could go higher in the zoning and still be within what's in the land use map.

A lot of concern there.

probably don't know this off the top of your head.

Maybe it's a long list of places that's being proposed.

I mean, 33 places.

It's things like, some of them are things like, you know, people are saying, well, you put it RB on Plymouth Road because it's next to Greenleaf Park, but, you know, the entrance to Greenleaf Park is over there a block away.

Why don't you move some of it over there?

Which I think makes sense.

It doesn't, like, net reduce opportunities for it on the whole.

I mean, I think there's reasons to keep it there as well instead, but

So I could go either way, but, you know, we're saying we don't have that option of saying, let's move it from here to there.

So you're saying that if we are, if we do indeed ratchet up in a sense that we're violating the plumb, so we have to make those changes, you're saying that

We can't contemplate a process where we say, okay, we intend to make an adjustment to this ordinance and to this comprehensive plan specifically for this purpose, and we're doing it in one shot.

I'm not saying that you can't.

I'm saying it introduces greater complication into your public option process.

What is the alternative?

Yeah, I mean, you can go back.

at a time, and then you can sequence a comprehensive plan amendment and a zoning amendment.

Do them simultaneously, but focused on a particular set of parcels.

I wonder, Mr. Stroman, do you have any insight you could offer here?

I think that a simultaneous comp plan zoning ordinance amendment as a solution is a, in my experience, at least a heavy lift.

And it also is really not how Landerslaw in Virginia is designed.

The whole idea is that you do comp plan and then you amend your zoning ordinance

there's the idea of a sequential process as opposed to a simultaneous process.

And the simultaneous process, I think, is A, a heavy lift, B, really not, but Virginia law kind of points.

Right.

Well, it started then, right?

September of 2021.

So, I mean, the future land use map identified these areas as medium intensity residential, right?

development of the zoning map.

So we had a future land use map to identify these areas of medium intensity and place them at an up to 12 unit number.

And then as we... Based off the streets that weren't planned.

No, that was... We then, as we were developing the zoning map, we came back to a... We then developed two zoning districts to implement the medium intensity.

One of those, of

the RB up to six units, and then the RC of up to eight units.

With the bonus intensity?

Well, the bonus we didn't propose.

That didn't come until later.

So the bonus didn't come until September 23rd of 2022 in a joint meeting with the Planning Commission Council.

The initial proposal was strictly six and eight.

And in our analysis of six and eight compared to 12,

No, six and eight.

Six in the RB and eight in the RC.

And Lloyd, correct me if my memory is wrong, but I think throughout our council discussion, this is just accurate.

It's what the conversation was, that our conversation revolved around the future land use map being a maximum longer term build out.

The zoning did not need to immediately match the maximum build out on the future land use map.

And the goal was after passing it that there would be a lot by lot analysis looking at where it was more appropriate than on a shorter term time horizon in terms of like

where medium and high-intensity residential went.

So that was our council conversation.

You have now spent more time talking about the future land use map than Council did two years ago.

I mean, we really didn't talk about it at all.

I tried to get Council to say, we shouldn't adopt this plan and change the comprehensive plan as to these parcels without discussing them parcel by parcel or at least block by block.

I couldn't even get a second for that.

So we have not thought about it.

We were basically told we got to get this done before the end of the year.

And we got it done.

Finally, the comp plan done in December before two counselors went off.

And we never spent any time talking about the future land use map in detail.

So is what Michael just said, unfable, I mean, where is it what Michael just said?

I mean, is it, was it,

Was it never actually nailed down?

Was it just discussions, Michael?

Was it understanding?

I mean... Maybe it's not a collection.

I wasn't there.

So I mean, maybe it's... That's why I'm asking him.

It makes perfect sense.

and get down too much this rabbit hole because I'm not sure how germane it will be to decisions and conversations we have tonight.

My reaction is we did have some meaningful conversation around along with two to ones.

I think it is fair that it was not a very detailed, very thorough process and we did not have any discussion of a lot by lot analysis and at least

My understanding of that process was the expectation was a lot by lot analysis would happen once you move to the actual zoning rewrite.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'll do that.

So you could still have a lot by lot conversation based on the information that is being proposed.

Which is where we are now, right?

Right.

Correct.

I think part of the problem is that, well, so it's a longer term version just by definition, so this is going to happen overnight, right?

But like, I think when we had talked about a lot by lot tweaking of it back then, we were thinking of it, you know, and we were in those sessions as sort of tweaks around the margin of saying like, well, we're going to continue looking at this as we have been in this

talked about it as much, but certainly we were, and there will be some tweaks to be made.

And now we're hearing that if we're to do such a lot-by-lot analysis, which I think generally that's a good idea, that we can only make changes in the direction of

of prohibiting this sort of housing in more places that we can't, legally speaking, at least, you know, maybe we could do it down the line next year or years after.

Let me ask this.

Yeah, I mean, I would say six to eight was dialing down from the 12, and that's good.

I think that makes sense.

We can only move it to RA or... It also sounds consistent with at least council's interpretation of the land use map as it was just presented.

That's all I'm trying to get at is the conversation to get a framework.

It sounds like they went to eight and six based off their professional judgment of what they thought would fit in these.

Okay.

All right.

So what does it, so I understand,

Mr. Stolzenberg, your concern sort of puts and takes as we shift things around the board here, you know, what it sounds, I think what you're worried about is we're basically sort of locked into what the comp plan sort of anticipated.

So is the concern that we're just giving up so much that it's deeply concerning or

can we still get like 90% of where we want to be with what we've got?

Yeah, I think that's an open question.

If we can get 90% of what we want,

I think that's fair.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, if we're talking about tweaks around the margin, you know, I suggested the other day to take those 10 at the very top of the Lexington loop off of there.

Things like that, I think, are reasonable.

And I'm not suggesting that because it sounds to me like RARBs are

R.B.

and R.C.

were anticipated with the medium intensive residential.

So in the feathering or whatever that was done around the you described earlier, James, I guess my question for the mayor is, you know, what is a process?

What is a way for us to get to what might be appropriate as a max size for R.C.

and R.B. ?

I mean, obviously, when we draft an ordinance, the ordinance has to be of general applicability.

What I said at the last meeting was that, to a certain extent, the areas that I think should properly be RB will depend on how we end up defining RB.

And until we've defined RB, I can't tell, for example, just judging by the emails in the last couple of days, I can't tell the people on Plymouth and Harrow what RB is going to mean for them when we've designated them as RB.

And the reason we've designated them as RB is because they're right next to the property for Walker.

And then the question is, well, why are we bothering with commercial applications in RB for them?

So is your main concern the commercial piece or the size, the density that's allowed?

So I can understand what you're saying.

Well, I'm having a hard time understanding when you're saying I can't define what RB is until I know where it's going to be, until I know what it is.

Part of when I was asked, I said, you know, I would want to redefine what is permissible in RA, RBRC in ways that will enable us to get to what I think is a good land use.

And if we end up doing one thing over here and one thing over here and never put the two of them together,

We're not going to get a good intelligent result.

And so when I'm looking at the area around, and I'll broaden it a little bit to Rugby Avenue and so on, which we've now, this draft has basically all of Rugby Avenue as RV, all of Grove Road as RV,

That might make some sense.

But to say every one of those lots could now be a store of some sort or a commercial application of some sort doesn't make any sense.

And it gets in the way of our goal of trying to increase housing.

And so one of the questions that I asked last time and have been trying to work

plus is trying to figure out what we really think we're going to do with commercial uses in residential zones.

A, how badly do we want them?

B, how frequently do we want them?

How big do we want them?

Although I would add, I mean, I think

it's a very different calculus in terms of what commercial use means when it's SUP versus buy right.

I think that's just a very different world.

Because I think part of it is not just housing for housing sake, but that you're at least make it, there's some legal mechanism to create neighborhoods.

that have a sense of place where you could walk to a store, a coffee shop, if that's something people want.

And there are certainly areas in the city where people want that, but it's just 100% illegal with no mechanism to get there right now.

As well as kind of these broader goals around, is there a way that even on a small scale, you reduce the need to drive everywhere for every single purchase?

That kind of thing, I think, is in line with some of the broader goals.

Although I do hear your point, especially if you're talking about by right uses, because there are RB and RC areas where if you walk that area, your perception is would be hard to figure out what distinguishes this from some areas that are RA.

What is it on that issue?

We've talked about RA and RB, early on at least, as being based on house-sized buildings.

It's interesting that in, Rory, the stuff that you were giving us over the last little bit, your idea of house size seems to be looking at footprint

where a 3,000 square foot footprint, for example, whereas it's a 3,000 square foot entire house that we're talking about as house size.

And what I was looking at and thinking about was supposing you had a limit of gross, I don't remember what the official term is, gross square footage or something,

of say 4,500 square feet for the entire building, not just footprint.

And then we can start talking about what a house-sized building looks like and what a neighborhood that is built around house-sized buildings feels like.

And when you talk to neighbors who are looking at this and they're thinking, okay, I'm looking at all of these different criteria and I'm not going to try to get into the details there, but it looks like we've got so many thousand square feet of footprint and how many stories that's going to be and all of a sudden,

We're looking at some of the examples we were being shown earlier of 8,000 and 9,000 square footage buildings do not feel, do not look like houses.

And if we're going to be true to what we told people two years ago, then maybe we shouldn't bother.

I personally think we should, in part because I invested a lot of my time trying to convince people that this was really going to be okay, people.

It's really going to be okay because they've promised us house-sized buildings.

That house-sized buildings, that doesn't mean 8,000 and 9,000 square foot buildings.

And so I'm looking at in part what we told the people when we passed this two years ago.

I'm looking at in part at how people I think have a reasonable expectation of

how fast how their neighborhood would change and in what ways.

I'm not opposed to all change, certainly.

And I'm in favor of a number of definitions of building size and building use that would enable

I'm thinking, for example, I have a 4,500 square foot cap on a building.

You could easily have four townhouses in there, two over two.

And my son lives in a place kind of like that in Somerville, Massachusetts, and it works.

There's nothing wrong with that.

In fact, he's a two over two over two.

But the point being that

Which would be in terms of your, do you have a proposal in terms of what would be?

Well, I'm not thinking about RC, because RC, we were not told was going, I think they said for RC, we're talking about mansion-sized buildings, as I recall the phrase.

And I don't know what that means exactly, but it clearly is more than a house size.

But...

I'm thinking for RA, I've said, and this of course goes back to what I said two years ago, that I thought what we ought to be doing is having not designating particular areas for medium intensity residential, acknowledge that the category exists, figure out place by place, block by block,

whether this is appropriate or not.

In the context of this particular discussion, now we're talking about every single lot allowing three units, effectively tripling the carrying capacity.

I have recognized what we all get built out, but that's fine.

And recognizing that that is already a very major change in the way we're going to be building out our community.

and that if we do that and we say everything is RA with three units and let's designate some particular areas.

I suggested earlier a corner just because it has a self rationing aspect to it that we could allow greater density.

That's fine.

Or maybe we have some areas, maybe the RC areas are the places where we do this, where we would still have some size limitations and

that sort of thing, but I've not thought about the details of what that would look like, in part because I don't know whether I've got even a second for the vote on council, much less three.

So anyway, my overall thought, this is basically what I've said, that if we just say let's recognize that the change we're making of tripling the carrying capacity of the residential neighborhoods

is already a big change.

Let's see where that gets us.

Let's look at things five years down the line, and still adding some higher density on corners and so on, and then see where that gets us five years down the line, and who knows?

Your proposal then would allow for the density question, but also walkability because within that area, if someone wanted to do a corner store or bodega or whatever, they could do it.

on a corner lot.

You have more people.

People could walk to the coffee shop or people could walk to whatever, whatever.

What you just said allows that to happen.

I guess my question is if you do the email that Mr. Stolzenberg sent out the other day about

and Missy Middle, Norfolk Six Pack, these other types of housing that are specifically designed for families.

I'm assuming you saw the email and people had a chance to read it.

Basically, it's a style of housing that is set up to allow families to live there and

and the price point is such that they can afford it.

What Rory would say is that your proposal is going to limit, help me here if I'm missing, going to limit the amount of that kind of housing in our area.

I don't know for sure if that's true or not.

His email was persuasive, but I'm not an expert.

What I will say is that

If when we get all said and done with all of this, if we're not thinking about that kind of housing, the missing middle type housing, whether it's the six pack or the eight pack or whatever, I think we're not really realizing the potential or really what we were hoping, what many people were hoping would come out of this process.

So that's the Minneapolis model, right?

I think James mentioned it in his memo, is saying we'll allow three, which is a one unit increase over the current because you can have an ADU, no interoccupancy requirement anymore, but we will force you to do it within the size of a pretty small house.

And so you can either have a house or you can have

or even in an average size house, maybe.

Right.

But certainly not, you know, one that would have ample.

If you split it into three, you can have three tiny units or you can have a house, but you can't have three ample size units that families can fit in.

And so in the end, Minneapolis passed this and they've gotten practically none of them.

Right.

You know, on the order of a few dozen, a

What we need is places for families to live, right? And part of the way you do that is by providing the floor area, the square footage for them to actually live in. And you're not going to get that in the mid-rise zones for all the reasons I laid out. Thank you.

and it's difficult to do at best in the RASM, right?

I think to the extent that you'll see that at all, it will be just a separate house and a lot split situation, maybe a row of three townhouses, but something like that sixplex where you have essentially what you need is a family size unit

you get is the number of units.

And you can do it on this lot.

This is a 42,000 square foot building.

You cannot do that.

We don't want that.

That's not house size.

But you can do this.

If you limit the footprint, you can get, you're right, it wouldn't be a mansion, which I think we have talked about allowing an RC, but it fits on the lot very reasonably with lots of extra yard.

It's not larger than the largest houses, even the largest mansions we have in the city.

And you could comfortably fit, you know, eight families there who could share the space and share the costs of that land and create an accessible environment for that type of living.

I guess the other question I had was I

isn't the notion, James, of this form-based, that's what we're working with, form-based code, right?

And I guess the focus has been on what is the presentation from the street?

Yes.

That's why we've focused so much on the width of those houses and how they, so that you're maintaining an overall streetscape that feels consistent, that feels like consistency within the place.

That's been the target.

That also speaks to why there's the entrance requirements, the transparency requirements, so that the form

on Park Street, there's townhouses, right?

And they fit in with that environment, largely.

They fit in with that environment.

My biggest complaint, if I will, about that project is it has no front on the street, and that's what makes it really disruptive to that overall

Yeah, I guess for me, I feel like that, you know, this is new to us, this type of form-based code, but I think the professionals here that are laying this out have done this in other places.

It seems to me that we could build RC type where they have here laid out, and it would be

It would look fine.

The business about the commercial, I understand that, but I think between the SUP process and I also just, that's the problem with this whole process, right?

When you do the future land use map, people think, well, this is like the plan to build everything out.

But we can't really predict what the future will do in terms of financial returns for people to make financially rational decisions.

But I think it's unlikely that rugby is going to end up having, can I guarantee that?

No, I can't.

But the notion that that would just be one string of coffee shops and vape shops and everything just seems

and realistic to me.

And if we come out of this process and we don't get the kind of housing that's going to help everyone in the community, we spend a lot of time talking about 60% and under AMI.

We're spending a lot of money on that.

It's very important.

But if we come out of this, and I'm not the expert on it, but what I will say is if we come out of this process and we can't feel confident that we're going to get the missing middle type

of the products that we need, then I think this will be a failure.

And I mean, we talked about this a little bit the last one session.

I feel like, do you not feel, Lloyd, one way to kind of square the circle in terms of the concerns is, one, with commercial uses, that SUP piece, and then two, with the concern about basically, even if it's unlikely, theoretically, it would be possible, like every house on one block could all be converted to follow, and I did read your memo, and I know we aren't in a completely analogous situation, so maybe it's not feasible, but Arlington's model in terms of

looking at metering the annual permits as a way.

Because the other thing about corner lots to me is it just seems very arbitrary.

And I don't see the coherent logic for why only corner lots would be

It's a good starting point.

It's a place that you've got more street access, as was noted in the earlier comments.

There are often larger lots.

How many people are going to change the corner lots?

We already have a very limited amount.

The purpose of this, for me, the whole density question is having more

livable, affordable space.

So that if any of us sold our homes today, we could still buy something in the city.

And now everyone seems to be focused on the retail aspect of this.

The retail aspect is not gonna bring people in any of these districts, whether it's A, B or C.

So if you are saying that B is where we can get the density for the people to live, and you're not living in a 900 square foot home, you're living in a 15 square foot home, whether it's a townhouse or whether it's, you know, two single family homes on, you know, two lots.

Whereas before you just had one house on two lots, that should be the focus within your little map over there that you had.

And then to me, everything else falls in line.

If someone wants a coffee shop, a flower shop, a bordego or whatever, your special use permits then come into play.

But if we focus in on the

The outer rim, i.e.

the commercial part, you still aren't going to get any people.

And don't you want, I mean, don't you want people?

I mean, was that not the first concern?

That you wanted people to live.

You've committed money on the city side over a period of years.

to help people within a certain income bracket.

But there is a certain income bracket that's not in Charlottesville.

And everyone keeps saying, we want them here.

We don't want them in Waynesboro.

We don't want them in Culpeper or wherever it is you think they're gonna come from to come here.

So should we not be focused on A, B or C, whichever one you pick, doesn't matter, to make sure that the people are there.

And then you decide through your special use permits or whatever you want to come up with.

Oh, well, you know what?

We've got X amount of people and so and so would like to have this.

Well, is this allowable?

Well, yes.

Well, is there a space for it to be allowable?

Well, yes.

Well, should we approve it?

And I would say what you just described, I think, is what they've laid out.

Just for clarity, what you're referring to is the permit caps, the annual permit cap.

Yeah, so I mean, I think a lot of people are talking about it for housing or commercial.

people, including me, are not calculators.

We're approaching this thing understandably with a level of emotion because it's our home.

There's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like even if it's arbitrary to some degree, if people felt like there was an upper max, we could adjust.

But if they felt like there was an upper max, particularly for this problematic area of the MIR, that

that would go a long way towards helping people gauge what this is going to look like.

Another council could come on board and say, no, this is far too much.

We want to cut it all the way in half.

And that would be their decision.

Yeah, I talked with Lloyd about this a couple of days ago, and I was like, you know, Lloyd, we're going to go through all of this.

We need to make sure whatever we do, we're going to get what we want.

Basically, what Leah is saying, and we really don't know because of the dynamics of the economy and things are so different.

expensive and, you know, but I want to just make the decision, you know, to the Lord, as I'm right now, I'm in the information gathering stage, but I think that this is heading in the right direction.

I said, I know that we have to do something because if we stay on, continue what we're doing now, then in 10 to 15 years, Charlottesville, you know, you know, I tell people that I moved into my house on St.

Charles Avenue.

in 1999.

It's the most probably middle income neighborhood that you can get.

There's nothing fancy about our block.

$140,000, I think.

And my wife and I both were government workers, and it was a struggle for us then to purchase it.

And I don't know what it's, you know, certain assessment now, but that doesn't mean anything.

But, you know, we couldn't live here now.

And I'm thinking about people like my...

like ourselves.

That's why we don't have a community, a middle-class community of color in the city of Charlottesville.

We have great jobs at maybe university, even $120,000 a year, and it would be difficult for you to purchase property here.

So I want to do something to get the results that I think that we want, that the public demands that we want.

And zoning is going to do part of it.

doing, putting money towards, you know, Piedmont, I mean, PHA and other things, that's going to be part of it as well.

So this is going to have to be a lot of things.

And I really want to be able to say, I mean, to be able to pivot.

If things, all of this conversation, when we implement it, is not working for us to be able to change because it's just not working.

So right now, Bill, you know, I'm just, I'm like,

I'm like James and Missy down.

So in an additional topic, because I think you raised this, Lloyd, how much of your concern in RB and RC as well is coming down to this question of subdivisions?

And is that an area where it would be useful for us to have some additional conversation in terms of what is actually allowed, like what is unlikely to happen, but still technically possible?

Because I mean,

Well, I'll say that the question of subdividing and zoning lots, I think, was the phrase that we suddenly came up with, which I continue to think

are going to be an ineffective tool to try to get around Virginia land use law.

But that's a different problem, or at least not land use law, real estate law.

The concern that I have about subdivisions and all that sort of thing is that I'm not sure that I understand what it is supposed to accomplish.

Michael was adding subdivisions, but sublots are also, I mean, you know, one of the problems is a good part of Charlottesville is still governed by restrictive covenants and prohibits subdivisions.

It is, it is.

very much a subdivision under Virginia law.

There's no way around that.

What it does is recognizing that on a lot, under these allowances, one could put three cottage-style units and rent them out.

What we want to do is create an opportunity for those to be in ownership.

option because one of our efforts here is to create more of those middle income ownership opportunities.

Right.

That's the idea.

And I know this has already been discussed, but it's still an area.

Could you walk through for me, like, let's just take, for example, a feedback we get a lot.

Someone is living in RB or RC, and they look at that designation, and they have a concern that all of a sudden this isn't just RB, RC.

This is now the lot is divided into three, and you've tripled what RB looked like on paper.

What limitations or

I don't know if that makes sense.

No, it totally makes sense.

I don't know.

Sure, as long as you tell me you can hear me.

We don't have the phone anymore.

So great.

So it was the intent when we set a citywide across all residential districts minimum lot size.

It was our intent to get more subdivision.

as an equity tool in areas that already had large lots.

As Mr. Snook pointed out, it won't be possible on every lot due to legal restrictions that are already in place on those lots.

but there will be many places where you will be able to create a new 6,000 square foot, a pair of new 6,000 square foot lots out of, for example, a 12,000 square foot lot that exists there today.

So the first step is subdivision and then there's the allocation of rights to the new lots.

So if the allocation was three new units plus you can keep the existing units, so you've got four on one lot

and then you could do three new units on the new lot.

So you could be at seven units across those two lots, which today are fundamentally one house.

Simply the count goes up per lot as well.

So I guess to back up a little bit to kind of, you know, the point some folks were making earlier is like,

If we look at what the broad goals are, right, I think the goal is to change that trajectory we're on and to have a place for more people to live and not be pushed out of the city.

And, you know, we've set out this broad, you know, plan for it and the comprehensive plan that we adopted that said we're going to do it.

with this slightly denser housing forms to medium intensity housing forms, plus all the mid-rise stuff on corridors.

And I think one question for everybody is like, do we fundamentally believe that that's okay?

Or is it bad to have any building be larger than 3,000 square feet?

And so if you're gonna put six units in it, they can only be studios because otherwise they would look too large and be an aesthetic problem.