City Council Work Session   9/27/2023

Yeah.

We have all counsel is here, and Mr. Fraze is here, and Mr. Sanders is here, and Mr. Stroman is going to keep us legal

So, I'll call this meeting to order, and this will be a work session of City Council.

It is not a public hearing.

It is not, we're not going to have public comment.

It's just an opportunity for us to talk, really for the first time that we've ever had, to talk about the zoning rewrite process.

I call to order a roll call.

Will you do a roll call, Ms.

Thomas?

We've noted everybody's here.

Okay, good.

So part of what we were trying to do in all of this was to recognize that the Planning Commission has spent a couple of years going through a lot of things that we have spent almost no time on, and to recognize that, for example, there are certain things that, certain ways that the

the whole zoning rewrite process has changed the draft significantly over the course of the last couple of years and really changing from the time that it was coming through the comprehensive plan and the future land use map so in some ways some of the basic assumptions that we thought we had going in two years ago I think in many ways we've kind of drawn back from and we have to revisit and so I had

has some very broad thoughts on things that I would like to take a look at.

I sent about a 10-page memo or something like that to Mr. Freeze a couple of weeks ago.

That was 14.

But who's counting?

Single space.

And no pictures.

And no maps.

And no maps.

All I can say is a febrile imagination at 3 in the morning.

We're not going to talk about all that tonight, and we're going to get started on a few of the topics.

Great.

Thank you very much.

I want to say something before we get started.

I see Mr. Mitchell is here.

I wanted to say publicly what I said to a number of folks last night after sitting through the work session, sitting in on, let me put it that way, the work session that they had going through the zoning ordinance in some detail that they went through in some areas with great detail and great attention to detail in a way

that I for one greatly appreciate it because it is good to know that intelligent people are looking at it so carefully because it makes me feel a little bit more comfortable with the product and the knowledge that we as a council will not devote the same degree of attention to paragraph by paragraph in some of these things.

to know that the Planning Commission has done and has done so with a lot of thought and contemplation.

I just want to say that publicly.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.

Right.

So tonight is the first of a three meeting lineup we have to talk about what we've identified as kind of background, kind of theory level issues and give you all an opportunity to talk about those issues and ask questions of various staff or experts we have involved in the project.

So I'm going to kick off tonight's the intent of the proposed development code is of course to implement the comprehensive plan and the presentation to discussion this evening will focus on how the proposed zoning addresses the community design objectives of the comprehensive plan.

I'm joined this evening by Christy Dotson from Code Studio, who is with us via Zoom, and she will be presenting on the zoning aspect of the work.

I'm just going to do kind of a very brief introduction.

One of the primary objectives of the comprehensive plan was, as we all know, addressing issues of racial equity in land use decisions.

and the method of that was to be achieved through creating more opportunities for a wider range of housing choices with a range of affordability across the entire city.

So as is proposed today and as was proposed in the comprehensive plan and the land use map, we're allowing small multifamily from three units up to eight units and townhouses to be basically built everywhere within the city.

with more density near important community amenities.

So where we get to the higher end of that, it's closer to amenities like schools, parks, transit, resources with the idea that we want to promote access to these resources for everybody in the community.

We've also opened opportunities for a greater range of entrepreneurial activities so that starting a business doesn't have to mean obtaining a separate location from one's home.

Now I want to note, with this greater degree of rights and opportunities comes a greater degree of responsibility.

We expect new and renovated buildings to contribute to the quality of the community and are recommending a range of rules in the zoning ordinance that accomplish that.

That's something that Christie's going to get into in much greater detail.

Looking ahead, our next meeting is going to be on the issue of displacement.

And the following meeting is going to look at population growth and the housing market.

Sure.

The rate of change is basically how might the housing market respond to the proposed.

Yep.

So I'm happy to answer any other questions at this point.

I would be interested in just sort of a brief recap of where the Planning Commission stands.

I've read this, but this was what came out in late August.

I know you all have been continuing to do work.

Well, I can speak to that.

So first, I appreciate the attention you've given to it.

So thank you for that.

So the Planning Commission met last night to, as the mayor said, go into great detail in their review of the ordinance and identify any places where they might want to suggest a further change.

So the first meeting of that was last night.

They're going to meet again next week to do the same thing with the goal of by either at the next meeting or at the latest we're hoping by their October 10th meeting of recommending making their formal recommendation to council with a list of changes.

We are not at that time going to do a full redraft of the document.

we will be at that point we will be in this meeting process and in a subsequent meeting and what we imagine is that part of our conversation with the council may lead to additional changes or modifications which we will then eventually get to a point of doing a full draft

Understood.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, we're working on that right now.

Okay.

Will there be a rationale from them for why it changed?

If this says, I don't know, page 150 is currently this, but the Planning Commission recommends that page 150 now be this after additional consideration, they will say why or

I think that would help me.

I don't know about the other council people, but if you have something and we're reading it and we're trying to understand it and now the people that have worked on this forever and a day

are saying we need to revisit this and change this before it goes to the next level.

Trying to keep my heart burned down.

Go ahead.

Yeah, thanks, James.

Yes, we can.

I believe you all have a PowerPoint that you can either share on your end.

If that doesn't work, I can share it.

Oh, perfect.

Thanks, Missy.

And I'll just let you know when to move to the next slide.

So thank you for

having me.

I'm going to try to just give you all a brief overview.

You know, this meeting really is for you all's discussion, so I want to save as much time for that as possible.

I essentially just want to give you some points to think about and a bit of context so that we can start to connect, as James outlined, those high-level planning goals with how that eventually makes it into each of these quite technical

400 plus page document and really how they all network together.

So really just hoping to connect those policy goals with how they've ended up in the ordinance that's in front of you today.

So that's the goal.

I'm going to try to get through all this quickly and hopefully it'll just give you a broad overview and then we can have questions and discussion after that.

Next slide, please.

This idea of a zoning buffer, this really is going to tie into that rate of change, but I did want to highlight this white paper that's recently come out of UCLA's Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, and essentially what it describes is looking at some research on the gap between a city's population, the estimated zoning capacity, that's really what they're calling the zoning buffer, and the impacts that that has on affordability.

in the long term.

A couple of the key takeaways they had, and I encourage you all to, I'm sure James can provide a link to this, to dig into the study more.

These are just high level takeaways that when a community does modest subzoning, so that's, you know, just incrementally here and there to keep up with population growth, it generally results in the property owners benefiting primarily from that change.

and it generally makes renting and home buying more expensive and that low zoning capacity really leads to that value capture and windfalls for existing property owners whereas a broader community-wide approach

this study found leads to better outcomes for housing affordability in the long term.

So I think it's applicable to some of the things that you are talking about, as well as, you know, obviously some communities across the U.S.

are thinking about.

So I wanted to offer that up as a resource to you all.

Next slide, please.

I want to touch on a couple of the goals from the comprehensive plan.

The first goal being that there needs to be a new zoning ordinance that

helps apply all the goals from the comprehensive plan, the affordable housing plan, small area plan, standard design manual.

So that really is why we're doing this process because your current ordinance really doesn't have the tools that you need to implement all of those goals and all of those policies that were outlined.

in all the plans that you've adopted in the past several years.

Another key thing that we're going to talk about, as James mentioned, and Tina, this really is focusing on some of the design elements in particular.

Of course, there are a lot of other really important goals that are implemented in the zoning, but I'm just going to try to focus on a couple of the design ones.

And that's goal six.

And that goal talks about Charlottesville's history of architectural design excellence.

Maintaining traditional urban design features, valuing historic resources while encouraging creative, context sensitive, contemporary planning and design that support the goal of the comp plan.

So how are we doing that?

Next slide, please.

One way that we've thought about this through the whole process is this idea of human scale development.

You know, when Charlottesville was

originally founded.

It was founded around the scale of a human.

You know, we really didn't have cars then.

And so that really is something that we've thought about through all of, as we're thinking about district standards, use standards, any of the site and subdivision standards, and even the processes of how do we make zoning that is human scale development

And I'll talk a bit about what that means at a neighborhood scale and at a building scale and how we're really linking up the technical aspects of the code in order to achieve that.

But I think this really ties in well too with one of the strategies in the comp plan.

And it says to implement changes to the zoning that supports community health and well-being, context-sensitive design, environmental protection, and climate change mitigation and preparedness.

And so really thinking about like how we as humans can live in the environment in a way that

that feels right and respectful for the community of Charlottesville.

Next slide, please.

I will say this is really important, even though I'm going to talk about specific pieces of the code, all of the rules work together.

So no one metric, no one rule really stands alone.

All of these pieces work together and achieve the outcomes that were outlined in the comprehensive plan.

So as we're talking about maybe building height,

or a streetscape standard.

Those aren't isolated on their own.

They really are working together to achieve these outcomes.

So you have to really think about all of these things as a system.

Next slide.

So let's dig into neighborhood scale and go on to the next slide.

What is a human scale neighborhood?

What does that even mean?

And these ideas really come from your comp plan and best practice in urban design.

Human scale neighborhoods, they have characteristics like they're comfortable and safe for a lot of different modes of travel.

So whether you're driving, you're riding transit, you're taking a bike or other micro mobility, you're walking,

and really any age or any ability.

You have safe options for everybody.

And it's inclusive and accessible to diverse community members.

And that's diverse in every sense of the word, economically, racially, different backgrounds.

So really making sure that is a complete community that's accessible to everyone.

And it provides places for people to live in every aspect of that word.

Where are you working, learning, shopping, dining, worshiping, or gathering?

making sure that the neighborhood has all of those things.

I mean, ultimately, they're sustainable and resilient.

You know, there's a lot baked into that, particularly with climate change.

So we are thinking about that as well.

Next slide.

So here's some ways that we have been thinking about that through the process and some of the specific metrics that you'll see that really implement this idea of human scale neighborhoods.

The first really started way back when you were thinking about the land use mapping in the comp plan.

A lot of the land uses that got applied were thinking about these things like community amenities.

So this was a really early map.

And then that land use

took into consideration those community amenities to make sure that people had access to that, you know, really is the idea of a complete neighborhood.

And then as we were thinking about translating those land uses into zoning, we also thought about the streets that work map.

And that really is integrating, you know, do these, do the neighborhoods have all of the elements that people need to live?

And then how will they get from point A to point B?

What do those streets look like?

And making sure that we take into consideration all of those for the future.

Next slide.

So blocks and streetscapes, those are two rules that you will find in the development standards article.

And you'll see that one of the ways that we're thinking about that is illustrated by the difference in something like an Emmett Street grid versus a Belmont Street grid.

So we have requirements in there for certain block sizes.

certain block lengths and parameters to get at something that's a bit more walkable and it's safer for all of those different types of transit users.

And you can just tell that inherently the Belmont Street grid, it lends a more human scale than something like an Emmett Street.

So as the Emmett Street area develops over time, we want to make sure that those blocks and those streetscapes, so what does the sidewalk look like?

What do the street trees look like?

That that becomes something that is more human scaled over time.

Next slide.

Another way that we're thinking about this is outdoor amenity space.

So I wanted to provide two examples, one that's more of a historic example and one that is more of a modern higher intensity example.

Outdoor amenity space is something that is required for in most all of the zoning districts.

And we also have specific requirements for the quality of that open space.

So it can't just be kind of a

Green Patch that doesn't do a whole lot.

There are other requirements for the pedestrian connectivity, the building, the way the building has to front the street and how it has to front that courtyard, what the landscaping needs to be.

So there's tree preservation and stormwater elements involved in that.

And so thinking about this outdoor amenity space as that community gathering space is important.

And we're thinking about that in the standards for outdoor amenity space.

You can find that in the

the rules portion of the code in Article 2.

Next slide, please.

Another way we're thinking about that, you know, it's not just the physical form, but it's also the uses that are allowed.

So thinking about that evolution, as James talked about, for economic opportunity, one of the things that we're thinking about

in the alternative forms that you'll find in the zoning districts, as well as on the use table and where certain uses are allowed and under what circumstances.

That really is where you get into some of that smaller scale neighborhood serving retail, neighborhood restaurants.

Even office space, things like that.

I wanted to provide a couple of examples that are historic and existing in the community already, and these really range from this example in North Downtown that is a business that just occupies a house form.

You know, that probably was a residential house at some point in time.

The next example at Tenth and Page is a house that

had a shop front sort of accessory unit that may have been a garage at some point, honestly, that got renovated to be more of a storefront.

So it's sort of an addition version and the Belmont version that really was built to purpose as that more traditional storefront on the bottom with a resident above that sort of shop and resident situation.

So these are good examples of what we're trying to incorporate in those alternative forms and in those neighborhood scale uses.

Next slide, please.

We're going to jump down a bit from neighborhood scale to building scale.

I want to give you a couple of examples of how we're thinking about human scale and the building scale.

Next slide.

So what is a human scale building?

What are the types of things that we're thinking about from an urban design best practice?

These generally have characteristics like they're context sensitive and scale and design.

So that means, you know, how are the higher intensity districts transitioning to lower intensity districts?

And then how are things like the entrances or the transparency of that facade?

How are they responding to the context of that

that existing area.

I think this image does a good job of showing how things like porches, doors that face the street, parking that's either on the street or sort of tucked to the side, it

gives a certain human scale environment.

And that's something that we think we're thinking about in the rules.

And that really ties in the second point prioritizing pedestrian oriented uses and the design along the street.

So one thing that we really focus on the code is being more prescriptive along the street and providing a bit more flexibility back sort of interior to the lot.

And part of that is just reducing the impact of vehicles.

Next slide.

So what are some specific ways that we're doing that?

One for building scale.

There are several, you know, I talked about how rules really work in conjunction with one another.

As you're evaluating building scale, one thing I encourage you to do is not just think about building height or building width or footprint or building coverage.

at as a snapshot on their own.

All four of these fundamentally work together really closely and that outcome of all four of those things result in a building scale.

So it can result in something that's more neighborhood scale development.

So that's the example here on the left.

This is from Belmont where you have, even though it's a modern construction house,

It does still have the same, a similar width, a similar height, and sort of similar entrance feel to its neighbors.

And that really is a result of that height and width, and even the footprint and building coverage is quite similar.

So even though it's new construction, it does feel like it's a similar scale because all those four elements work together.

And on the other end of the spectrum, this is larger scale development that would be in the higher intensity districts.

We're still thinking about what that means for that to be a human scaled environment because these buildings can get quite large.

This is example that shows how building width really starts to incorporate some of that human scale, those human scale elements.

So this is a really long building, but because of some building width standards, there was a break that was required in the middle of it.

So you get this the feeling that it's not just one

You know, 1000 foot long building that just goes on for a very long city block.

It has a break in it and it feels like a bit of relief to provide some interest as a pedestrian and also makes the building feel less looming as you're walking by on the street.

So those rules for height, width, footprint and building coverage, they're calibrated at both ends of the spectrum and they all work together to ultimately result in different building scales.

Next slide.

Another key piece of this is the transition between lower intensity districts and higher intensity districts.

So one thing you'll find in the code is this idea of transitions, and we have both across the street transitions.

So when a lower intensity district sits on the same street from a higher intensity district, we want to make sure that that transition feels, we call it like facing like buildings.

So we want the scale to feel similar

even though it's a lower intensity district and higher intensity district across the street and that's the same for across lot lines so imagine a lower intensity district backing up to a higher intensity district we want to make sure that that higher intensity district doesn't loom over the lower intensity district that's back behind it so we have rules for both of those scenarios and there are several different flavors of transitions I'll call it that are in the code and you'll find that in the in the development standards portion

Next slide.

And the thing I'll end on are all of these rules that we have for building features.

This really thinks about what

It's what we call frontage.

So it's how the public realm, so the sidewalk, the street, really interfaces with that private building face.

And a lot of the metrics that we're talking about, it's the same words, but the differences in the metrics and the number that you see on the table in each zoning district, they result in different outcomes.

So it's sort of the same idea as building scale, but these are really building frontage elements.

And so the way that we control things like ground story height, the transparency and entry requirements, the build to zone and that range.

and the active depth requirement.

Those are the same five things in both of these instances.

So on the mall and then in a more residential setting, but the way those all interact together and what those metrics ultimately say are required result in these different outcomes.

And so we're thinking about all those things in conjunction and it's making sure that we have that human scaled building, that we get things like doors facing the street,

and transparency.

It's the urban design best practice of eyes on the street, having a friendly facade, and it really starts to build that more human scaled community oriented environment.

I believe that's my last slide.

Yes, so we can dig into those specifically, but wanted to give you all just some context to understand how we take these best practices of urban design and the goals that you have in the comp plan and how those end up resulting in these numbers in the tables on each of the zoning districts and embedded in the development standards.

I'm not going to add anything.

James, can we get a copy of that PowerPoint, please?

Absolutely.

It really helped clarify some things for me.

Missy, could I ask you to email that to counsel?

So I had a question on the second slide where they were talking about upzoning and the infrastructure, and for me it was a question of the infrastructure and how is the

Timing and the pacing of that, because some of the concerns that we have received, and I believe most of us have because most of them went to the whole council, is that, you know, the zoning has and will propose being, you know, increased on my street or my area, but my

if there's no sidewalks or the streets are narrow.

So I just want to know about the pace of the infrastructure because I know that we can require

some improvements.

One of the memos that's in your packet digs into the infrastructure issue in greater detail.

That's one that's worth taking another look at.

A couple of aspects to that.

In our upcoming meeting, we're going to be talking about the rate of change and the population aspects of this, but I think the main point to take away at this point is that the rate of change we're anticipating is incremental over time.

This isn't, you know, I want to emphasize that zoning ordinance is not a development plan.

It's a body of regulations.

and so we can anticipate that this change is going to be over time and it's going to be in concert with all the activities that the city is engaged in now to build out our sidewalk network, build out bike lanes, improve our transit system, continue our efforts to upgrade our water and sewer system and all of those things.

Then the other thing to note is, of course, as we do today, every project that's subject to site plan review, part of that review is looking at what are the capacity issues and what are the things that need to be upgraded.

Building the zoning ordinance is a requirement that you upgrade your streetscape when you add in a new building so that we're ensuring that that

Yes, sir.

But, you know, I'm just thinking about in that study that Christy mentioned, you know, that is fascinating.

UCLA Lewis Policy Center, I think it was.

Well, so what that point was making is that if you aim at

The smaller the land area you aim your zoning change at, the less competition you've created in the land market and therefore the more you risk the potential of driving land prices up.

Whereas a broader based rezoning means that if I am

a developer looking for a piece of property, I have choices.

I'm not stuck in a situation where I go to this piece of property and it moves the control ultimately from the property owner to the developer, which is effectively moving it more towards the buyer or the renter at the other end.

Could I add, just interrupting you a second here, you were talking about the UCLA study, which I have not seen, and I wanted to make sure that I understood it, or at least understood the conclusion that was being presented by Christie.

I wrote down the first part, that a modest up-zoning benefits the present owners, and then

The way it was, the adjective that was used was a broad upzoning.

And that seems to get to the issue that you're mentioning, Mr. Freeze, about if you only upzone part of the city, but not all of the city.

and what I'm since whatever we're going to do is highly likely to affect just about all of the city and we're not picking and choosing neighborhoods in that way although some people have asked us to do that I haven't seen any support for that but what I'm more concerned about is if we think about

and maybe the best way to think about it graphically is modest versus broad being a two-dimensional concept.

But I'm thinking of it in a three-dimensional concept where it's the degree of expansion that we are permitting in a particular location.

Intensity.

Intensity, really.

Depths, to use my three-dimensional metaphor.

And I'm wondering whether the notion of breadth

I pulled it up just from the abstract of the paper.

It's defined as roughly 6 to 10 units

on a large share of parcels as defined from 25 to 50% of parcels in the city.

Yeah.

I want to caution against the specific examples that they provide versus the broader perspective that the paper is presenting.

What we like about this paper is that it very clearly lays out the concept that has been behind this approach that's been taken in communities across the country, most significantly and earliest by Minneapolis.

But what it's really getting at is the idea of competition.

If I'm a developer seeking to do particularly small-scale infill development, such as what we're talking about and what we're trying to promote,

Is are there multiple properties available that I can purchase or is there really just one because or a small number because if there's a small number that transfers the leverage to the seller and so whatever value there is is going to be captured by a greater degree to buy the seller of the land so the landowners benefit

Yeah, that makes complete sense to me and I think

The way I understood what they were talking about in terms of a broader zoning would be both geographic and also the degree of intensity.

So I keep getting questions about this as we get our probably

30 emails a day on the topic.

I don't know how many it's been for you all.

When we talk about comparable cities, what are we talking about?

What kinds of cities or what cities are there that have done the kind of rezoning that we're talking about?

We've talked a little bit about Minneapolis.

We've talked, I mean, I've heard about a number of other places fairly recently.

The Pew Charitable Trust study that I sent around to everybody mentioned Minneapolis.

It mentioned Tyson's Corner.

It mentioned two other places I'm blanking on right now.

And when I mention this to the critics of the plan, they say, yeah, right, okay, four cities out of how many thousands in the United States?

And I'm just wondering, is there a...

I know one example is Walla Walla.

And one of the things that I read about Walla Walla was that there was a study that compared their rate of rental increase to Seattle's, which had apparently, Seattle had undertaken a much more vigorous up-zoning

and they found that the rents in Walla Walla went up faster than the rents in Seattle, tending to prove that Economics 101 still applies to the housing market, that more supply helps hold prices down.

But anyway, that's one thought.

When you mentioned Walla Walla, I was thinking about that.

And back to my question, are there, you know,

lists of cities that have gone through all of this that we can look at and say, okay, this is an example that it's about the same size, it's got this, it's got this, it's got this.

Anybody would look at that and say that's comparable to Charlottesville, whereas they might look at Minneapolis and say, no, that's not comparable.

Yeah, I mean, I'd note a lot of the movement in this, because as you guys probably well know, the politics are difficult on this type of strategy, and so a lot of the movement in this space has moved to the state level.

So we've got state of California, state of Oregon, state of Montana, Vermont, Vermont in the last couple months.

Yeah.

I was trying to actually, you mentioned Maine.

And what have they done?

California basically said minimum of four.

Okay.

Oregon said minimum of four in statewide and minimum of six in cities, I think.

I don't remember.

on a statewide level versus what Michael was saying as it relates to comparable because Charlottesville is 10 square miles with X amount of thousands of people and I can see Lloyd's point if you're comparing Charlottesville to Minneapolis Minneapolis is a lot larger the population is larger so are you saying within the states that you were talking about

It seems to be hard to compare some cases to cities, like what happened to cities.

If you had like a Nashville, you know,

So some people would say we're running off a cliff, other than say we're trailblazers.

Well, and it occurs to me one of the reasons why the move may be to undertake it at the state level is that they could change the state's property law as a whole.

That's right.

Whereas we can't, and it's not purely an issue of the Dillon Rule, it's an issue of how municipalities are defined versus the state powers and so on.

Typically municipalities do not have the power to change state

property law.

But I think scale is important, but the principles remain the same.

So the next question that I had and just sort of going back through my notes on the presentation that's directly related to what Christy was talking about was, Christy, you were helping to define the notion of neighborhood scale as a scale that provides places for people to live, work, gather, and there are a bunch of other activities that you mentioned there all at once also.

And it occurs to me that the

In our residential neighborhoods, we have not and we have intentionally not provided space for people to work and to gather and do some of those other things.

To live, yes.

To play, yes.

To go to a local school, yes.

But not really, we have not previously contemplated a zoning ordinance that intended to encourage

in a residential neighborhood, working, gathering, and so on, at least in the R1, R2 kinds of zones that we've had so far.

And so to that degree, that would mark a significant change from how we've been trying to organize our zoning ordinance to think that, hey, we're gonna do all these things in the same neighborhood.

And I'm just wondering,

the government is telling you it is absolutely illegal and there is no mechanism by which you could ever open a business and how we currently have it with the special use permit process I think will give us a little bit of ability to kind of evaluate what that's really looking at in practice although I suspect we probably won't get too many even coming in but in general I think it's a positive thing for

economic development I would think probably we'd have more success if you're looking at replicating areas like downtown Belmont where there's more like a strip adjacent to a neighborhood that is all smaller scale commercial but to have that potentially embedded within neighborhoods if it's something someone's opening in their house I'm fine with and I mean it's just one example I know there's a lot of members of our refugee community who if they had that opportunity to open a small restaurant out of their house

Yeah, I'm going to jump around just a hair, and this gets into some other, I'll call it tactical questions that maybe we can talk about later just in terms of the process.

Philosophically, I am supportive of what Counselor Payne just said.

I think that that is

I don't have a problem with it, and I think that is a good long term.

I would love for our city in 20 years to be the kind of place where those sorts of enterprises could flourish, the ones that are listed in here.

The one thing I will say is that even if we didn't do that now,

The current code allows home occupations, which is distinct from businesses per se.

So it wouldn't be the case that all businesses, you know, wouldn't be able to occur.

Some would not, like restaurants, for example.

All of these things are so interwoven it's hard to know how to pull apart the sweater, but for me the philosophical perspective is one, the other is the sort of

I guess a question just in terms of trying to get the policy right

is we already made a major concession to people who had a concern about that and having the commercial uses be by special use permit versus by right.

So there is a fundamental concession to that concern.

I don't know, Michael.

I think it would depend on

Yeah, it would depend on what the criteria are that are baked into the special use, you know, what, how staff would manage that.

If it just became, I could see one person saying, oh, well, you gave them a special use permit, I'm five doors down, why won't you give me a special use permit?

So fleshing out everything that's involved, I mean, at a conceptual level, yeah, having a special use permit does provide some protection, and I appreciate that point, but

I think there's more that's going to have to be fleshed out there, and I can appreciate the fact that neighborhoods, particularly if we're committed to MIR, which I personally am, if I had to pick one thing in this whole sort of stew to wait on to get the bulk of it through, that is one piece that I'd be willing to And you think it would change their support for the plan?

I don't know.

I don't know about that.

All I'm saying is that if I look across this field or table or whatever metaphor of all of the things between us and a better future state, which I think will involve much more housing across the city, and I am willing to follow my sword about medium intensity.

I'm not willing to follow on something like this.

I don't think the commercial piece is essential over the next five years.

I support it long-term for the reasons that you mentioned.

So we had, last time we had, I mean, at one of our joint meetings, we had a pretty good discussion about this, about the commercial aspect of it, whether it should be 2,000 or 4,000 square feet in, and the concern that came up was, because I like the idea of kind of a neighborhood

or a little store where you don't necessarily have to go... The term is bodega.

Store from someone that's heading out to town, do they want to swing by there to get something?

How do you handle that parking?

I know we talked about maybe some of it could be in the back.

That's what I'm grappling with.

As a transportation planner, I like the idea of having those things close, those things.

It's been about 15, 20 years since I did that, but it brought back memories seeing those slides and things.

Anyway, so that's, you know, I like the idea of ideally having those

One way I would suggest if we do decide to go down that path is maybe I would be willing to even say 1,000 square feet and have the requirement that the owner live on property.

Again, I'm not opposed to the idea philosophically.

I can appreciate the fact that people feel who own their homes and I realize this is only one part of our constituency.

Most of the people that live here rent or are transient, but we also have to deal with the fact or acknowledge the fact that for many people their home is their main asset.

I haven't seen one yet.

I mean, maybe I missed it.

I know there is the notion of a special use permit.

I think it's for commercial.

I think it would not be by council approving it.

The current draft is proposed, and this was maintained last night, the Planning Commission's decision last night, is that the commercial and residential is by special use permit which is granted by council.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I'm just curious of the, when they showed those pictures,

I'm trying to figure it out.

It's like across the street from where the community garden is, one block off of the Preston area.

But I'm trying to get an idea about how big that

like I think that Chrissy said it may have been a converted garage or something like that.

I'm curious to how big that is.

I mean, straw poll, how do people

Again, philosophically, I'm open to the idea.

And I would agree with that and it'll give us a sense to even see what does, doesn't come, you know, I think it's a very first baby step to five, ten years down the road evaluating what it is and

I think the special use permit is a strong practical limit on it, and I think if we completely removed even that, I don't think it's going to address the concerns that people have fundamentally with where the plan is at, to be perfectly honest.

I have two basic issues with the special use permit notion.

The first, commented on last night, is the amount of time and money it takes to get a special use permit.

If you're talking about some refugee family wanting to create a restaurant on their first floor, that ain't gonna happen.

It is not gonna happen with a special use permit.

The second problem that I have is that I'm not sure that I understand how the city would go about, the concept that I've tried to talk about is rationing, how we would ration if we have a whole block long of places that are permitted, that are going to be RB, let's say, or even RA.

however you want to do it so that you could have a place here and a place here and a place here, all commercial uses, how do you say, we've already got two on this block?

Typically supply and demand would not be a basis.

It would have to be a land use basis for granting and conversely denying the special use permit.

But I think the concept of saying, well,

So can we, you know, and this is all theoretical, we can say, well,

the traffic is too bad.

I mean, it's bad on that street.

So, Mr. Vice Mayor, your point is very well taken.

So there are a number of other issues.

But wouldn't that be something in your special use permit you would be considering?

before moving forward you'd be looking at all of those things because Juan talked about the traffic and in some neighborhoods if you look at thank you for the slides Missy if you look at 10th and Page or the Belmont pictures

depending on if those were the types of things that happened there's a certain amount of traffic that goes along with it so if the street is like this and you already have two if you had three the streets not going to grow you can't expand it and so if you're looking at additional factors that's a yes or no

type of a situation.

I think you're correct.

And the way it typically gets articulated is at a point public health and safety becomes an issue because congestion becomes an issue, that sort of thing.

And there are other land use considerations that are jumping to mind.

I'll defer to the expert there.

But again, the focus is on

the kinds of land use issues that revolve around whether to grant or not to grant.

Within that, obviously, saturation.

I'll just put that in quotes.

Saturation leads to those things, but that's very different from saying, we've got two restaurants on this block.

You could in some fantasy novel world where five of the houses on a block have become home occupied businesses.

There's four of them already that have been approved.

There's a fifth.

MR. Correct.

Yeah, I mean, I would be comfortable with that.

I think the mayor's, again, philosophically, I don't have a problem with this notion of having businesses in neighborhoods.

I appreciate why some people do, but I don't.

But, you know, just thinking sort of tactically how we move this down the road, it sounds like

I'm sort of, in a sense, arguing both sides of it.

I don't think that having a special use permit process will allow for this sort of organic, hey, let's get together and have a restaurant kind of an approach because at least present experience has been that it takes a bloody long time and lawyers and surveyors and engineers and everybody else getting into the picture and site plans and everything else

and probably $20,000 to $50,000 in expense to be able to generate an application for a special use permit.

And so unless we're going to have some expedited process for a special use permit, don't kid yourself.

Right.

And I appreciate that point.

But I mean, to Michael's point, at least

Maybe not mom and pop, but maybe mom and pop and uncles and aunts, you know, I don't know, but some Or mom and pop and the community investment collaborative or something like that Yeah, I mean, and maybe the SUP process could be streamlined or made more appropriate for the scale, I don't know, but I do feel like

I mean either we're philosophically against having this you know or we're tactically willing to wait and do this over the course of the next five years or we say okay we do have something that is in place a mechanism to prevent this from getting out of control

But just because you have something in place doesn't mean that, in my mind, just because you have something in place doesn't mean that because it's enacted tomorrow it's going to happen in three years.

That's true.

But it allows

it allows people to make a decision if I want to convert my basement to be the neighborhood bakery and I'm not a baker so don't y'all go there but if I wanted to do that

I would have an opportunity to think it through and do what I needed to do as it relates to the business plan and the this that and the third before I even said well let me do this special use permit and everybody says no.

I mean I think that that's something that people that want to do like what we see here on 10th and Page and Belmont are going to think about this before they do it.

Yeah I agree and I think

I guess after the conversation, and this is why this is helpful to me, because it's not about trying to figure out the political middle here, it's about listening to people, my colleagues who I respect and think are very smart.

I guess sort of where I'm landing right now is I do still have some concerns about

how the community, one part of the community feels about commercial spaces.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, when y'all were talking about that, I'm thinking about, you know, the impact, if you don't want to have anything to do with the commercial in your neighborhood, and when you bought that house 20 or 30 years ago, you didn't, you had no idea that would be there, unlike someone who

recently bought a house by the airport and then complained about the noise and things like that.

I do because I did that many of those kind of special use permits when I was doing planning particularly for home occupations and one of the things that I did is that I talked to the neighborhoods and I included to the Board of Supervisors kind of the comments and the impact of the neighbors and I factored that in So you're saying that sort of the grassroots level you think there would be some checks and balances

It definitely is, and we know in this community we're going to get, you know, we definitely will get some comments from the residents there, but we're going to get it probably from people that aren't, you know, directly impacted, and I think that that's good.

Well, I have a question about

I don't know who I asked but I'm looking at the little slide presentation here and we're talking about rules for building scale and you have across the street transitions and you have across lot land, lot line transitions.

Now when I just look at this

it appears to me and maybe I'm wrong so that's why I'm asking the question it appears to me that the across the street transitions are at one spot but the lot land transitions look very overpowering to the building I mean to to the neighborhood so I think it's the purpose of the step back right the reason

as opposed to what they've got now, Leah, is a step back.

The first edge goes up to certain height, then over.

The overpower?

Christy, can you comment on that?

Sure.

So, yeah, setback is really the key from a bulk and massing perspective.

But another key component of this is in that if you look on the across lot line transition diagram, there's dimension line A and there's some landscaping in there.

and that really indicates that there are transition buffers that are also required and so that requires a setback from that lot line and then there are also landscaping standards associated with that that help screen from that lower intensity district and so it's both a bulk and massing piece but another component is that landscaping and that really helps from if you imagine like standing at the ground level

And we're presuming that we're planting something in this A section.

You know, I'm on the lot land transition now.

So we're presuming that what we're landscaping here in the little A section is going to grow so it doesn't feel so overpowering.

That's right.

And if you have your code book next to you, I think you do.

Those all describe, so if you're in a low or a moderate or a high, so your transition type will tell you what that landscape buffer needs to be, and so let's say you're a low requirement, so you either can do the transition screen low, which is the fence plus landscaping option, or

Transition Screen Low 2, which is a more intense landscaping that has things like evergreens that create a bit more solid, you know, full landscaping screen.

Those are really tied together.

Christy, is it not true that there is a range of different transition types?

That's right.

And so if you want to see those different requirements on 4-48, there's a matrix there.

and you can see that relationship.

So if it's a lower intensity district and it's next to sort of one increment up, then there's the lowest amount of transition required.

Could you talk

I've read through it, but just for, you know, our conversation in more depth.

Let's say you've got our highest intensity uses at 8, 10, or 12 stories next to a residential neighborhood, which is currently in there around 10th and Page East High, other areas.

What does that transition look like?

Yeah, so that's going to be a transition type D.

so that would be on 4-51 if you're looking at a common lot line so across the lot line transition and then on 4-54 across the street and so you'll see that as that building grows transition type D actually requires multiple step backs if you build that taller building so someone in

an eight story district could volunteer to build, you know, a five story building and then they would only have to have one step back.

But if you're going any higher than that, then you have to have a second step back.

So it is trying to further mitigate both in setbacks.

And I will add that particularly on the common lot line one.

So on four dash 51, that that building setback and that buffer requirement is the greatest requirement

of any of the transitions.

Okay.

So it's not just the massing of the building stepping back.

Okay.

All right.

Stepping back just to use a word to the commercial piece.

On the use table say go to 3-5.

Okay.

in terms of commercial uses within residential spaces.

So you can have general food and beverage with a special use.

You can have lodging with a special use permit.

Medical, office, personal service,

Is there any, where did the 4,000 square foot number come from?

And I thought in the meeting that Juan referred to earlier, that was a source of great consternation.

And note that the use table references 4,000 square feet because the use we're trying to divide between basically small scale and large scale of those different types of establishments.

But then when you go to the actual commercial standards, it'll note that in any R district and any residential district, the maximum size for that use is 2,500 square feet.

Okay.

So, Chris, can you give the page number?

That sounds like that's a conflict.

It's not.

Explain.

It's basically saying here's the standard on the use table, but then in this district, the standard is tighter.

That's right.

And that's on 3-32.

3-32.

And I think this is a really good point when you're thinking about

How these things can be controlled and criteria for special use permit is one way.

And obviously there's there are a lot of legal implications with that.

The second is in this use standard.

So right now, as you see on 3-32, there's a specification that any commercial use in the our district where it's allowed, it's limited to 2500 square feet per lot.

And then there's an allowance that you can use the shop front house alternative for.

There can be additional use standards baked into this.

So if there's just some general agreement that, I don't know, there may be some like operational hours, for example, that can be added as a use standard.

Right.

So, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Christy.

I was going to note that the Planning Commission last night, Mr. Mitchell or Mr. Zollinitz can correct me, but I believe the Planning Commission indicated that they wanted to add a requirement in that section to say that there has to be at least one residential unit on the site.

Okay.

So again, that 4,000 is a use category.

that applies across all districts.

In that particular district, it has an S and an asterisk.

And what it's saying is you need a special permit and you have to meet additional conditions.

And then it refers you to the page number that has those additional conditions.

And one of those additional conditions is you can't get to 4,000 square feet.

You can only get to 2,500 or 1,000 or whatever it ends up getting set at.

And then the additional condition that you have to provide a residential unit on the site.

And again, that list can be added to as appropriate.

Yes, and somewhere else you can do 4,000.

As opposed to creating a second line that would allow between 2,500 and 4,000 square feet.

Right.

Okay.

So it occurs to me, and to sort of continue on the question of commercial uses and so on, I don't remember having heard, and maybe I don't have the comp plan in front of me,

that one of the purposes of this entire endeavor was specifically from the beginning to allow for a greater degree of entrepreneurial opportunity.

I guess for me, maybe it's how I interpret the comprehensive plan.

I see references to that concept in various aspects of the land use section and in the economic development section.

I can dig out what references I'm looking at that lead me to that.

I also note, as I did in an earlier meeting, that

in the at the very beginning of this document we have removed one of the purposes that we had declared in our present zoning ordinance which is to regulate and restrict the location of trades industries and residences we are no longer going to to use that as a goal although that sort of seems inherent in the notion of zoning and I'm wondering whether that

No, my take on that, and Christy, maybe you know the answer to this as well, but I'd simply take that as we wrote that section to match the state code, and the state code doesn't have that reference in it, as I understand it, but again, if that's something we want to add back in, we're happy to do so.

Because as you know, it is inherently what zoning does.

Could I ask a related question then about lodging in RB and RC?

So if the, again, thinking about pain points and what we can do to move the ball down the field, is that a pain point for people that we're allowing lodging in RB and RC?

I get I personally had no philosophical problems with that.

I will say that if we're trying to create the goal of this is to create more housing for people to live in

I wonder if that cuts against it in some way, but maybe the market will sort that out for us.

I don't know.

To me, if someone wants to build something and they say, oh, I'm going to use this for lodging, I'd like, no, go let someone put some more lodging up near the airport.

We have a lot of hotels around here.

I'm not opposed to homestays.

I think that is a great thing, but what I'm seeing here seems like it's a step up from homestays, and I'm wondering,

and I have a concern around that and I recognize the reasons.

There's no easy answer.

I even had a concern around the home stage with Airbnb for that reason of taking up supply of housing.

I think we're in a market with UVA graduation and football games where the market would respond in some areas disproportionately, 10th and page in areas near the university of buying up a meaningful amount of lots and converting them into lodging and they would make

probably a greater profit than rentals just on football games and graduation.

I'm not sure it's a hypothetical concern either.

I think it's a very real concern in the current market.

Right.

I'm just wondering what that helps us, if the goal of this is to get more housing, one goal is to get more housing across a broad range

the very real, not just risk, actuality that people are going to take advantage of that in ways that don't help us achieve our goals.

Christie, feel free if you have anything on this, but I'll say from my perspective, I have no strong feelings about it, and I think it's purely a policy decision that you guys are welcome to pick either way.

Yeah, I'll just add that, you know, I know that the thinking has changed a bit on homestays from what the current craft is in front of you, but the idea is that was that, you know, homestays was going away and that essentially we would be defining the

short term rental as that lodging, that smallest scale general lodging.

And so it would be special use permit and it would be treated the same as a bed and breakfast.

So, you know, that this would require any bed and breakfast or homestay to go through a special use permit process.

But, you know, knowing that homestays is being reevaluated, you know, they're really unless there is some

concern or desire for there to be some bed and breakfast allowance in RB and RC.

Yeah, and I hope that we'll continue to streamline and modernize our rules around homestays.

I don't really know where we stand on that.

I have heard that we're getting better compliance.

We're actually finding people who break the rules.

and if we need to hire someone to make sure the rules are followed, I'm willing to support that in the next budget cycle.

I do support homestays for like a person who wants to have a few places scattered around.

I think they can help with housing and I think, you know, if we talk about entrepreneurial spirit, I think that gives people a way to make some money.

So I'm an advocate for homestays, but I'm not an advocate for

Letting someone come in and buy, you know, half a block of what would be medium intensity residential for UVA football games.

Yeah, yeah.

With the ladder, not the home stage, but what you started out with initially, it would detract from the overarching goal of increasing more homes for people to purchase?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Well, actually, we don't.

I mean, there's a lack of them.

Is that right?

My hat on from the tourism, you know, that's why it's so high, you know, we have one of the highest rent.

Yeah, per night.

Rates.

So, yeah, so we, you know, there's more, it is, we are getting more, but, you know, you just try to get, you know, room on some weekends, it's really tough.

We could definitely use more.

What's, you know, I agree we need to try to get a hand on, I just was reading, I'm sure you all been keeping up with what's going on in Richmond, that their city council just approved that their, you know,

Are we dealing with, we're going to kind of deal with this in a more holistically way next year?

Yeah, that's where we've landed at this point is homestays.

Yeah, that we're going to, and the Planning Commission confirmed this in their deliberations last night.

We're going to

So, yeah, just kind of big picture, I mean, the Airbnb and those type of, they do a lot of lobbying in Richmond and Capitol,

to try to prevent, you know, the information being presented, but it's out there.

I mean, we can get it.

I think that if we, you know, say, you know, I mean, we can even have some college students say, okay, just go to Airbnb and see if they line up with what

We are getting paid, and I know we're having more people to do it, but I think that if we enforce, this is, you know, we're going to get to this next year.

If we enforce it, we have more money to pay people to

to review it and things like that.

But it's hard.

I'm thinking, and I know I keep bringing this up, Hartman's Mill Road, if you haven't been on that road recently, you will see, you know, I'm thinking about houses just being built.

Hartmansville Road, it's a street where a lot of individuals that came to the city, they used to live in the Esmond area, and I'm thinking about this house and this, you know, that neighbor told me, well, you know, four teachers used to rent, and, you know, first, you know, beginning teachers used to, you know, rent that, it was many years ago, but not too long ago, if you look at it now, they've torn that down, and they've put in

a beautiful house, and that street has one of the best views of the mountains, clear views of the mountains.

There's three or four houses there, and all of them are pretty much Airbnb, and they are not local owners.

I mean, they just ran out all the time, and that's what we don't want.

They don't have any connection with the neighbors.

If you walk down that street, the people that live there, they can talk, porches and things.

So does that, based off what you're saying there, would you support removing lodging from RB and RC, knowing that in the spring we're going to talk about homestay separately, but this is a sort of a broad category.

That's fine.

Again, we're going to be visiting the broader issue.

I have, while I was looking at this, I had one question about something that strikes me as anomalous.

Residential uses, household living, this is the very beginning of the use table, we have manufactured home park by special use permit only in RB and by right only in RX3.

That primarily reflects the current allowances today.

So not necessarily a direct translation because your zoning districts aren't translating, but it's a close approximation to the allowances of where they're allowed today.

I mean, I'm just curious why RB and not RC?

It's not a big issue.

It's just anomalous.

If there isn't an answer for that, that's fine.

Another more substantive question.

You talked, Christy, about various scales, building scales, human scale buildings, and so on.

One of the early tests, I suppose, or promises that was made to us was that when we were going to be talking about residences, and particularly RA and RB, that they would be house-sized residences, house-sized buildings.

And one of the things that, as we start looking at what ends up being permitted

and RB in particular, RA also I suppose, is I don't see any way to assure neighbors that they're going to have house sized buildings nearby them.

It seems to me that

We could easily have six units of apartments and if each one is gonna be 1,500 square feet, we've got a 9,000 square foot building and as I look at the various other constraints and lot sizes and coverage areas and so on, that all seems to me to be entirely possible.

I'm just wondering, did we give up on the idea of house size buildings in RA?

So, yeah, I mean, house size, that can go in a lot of different directions, you know.

The phrase I remember is house sized.

And so based on that, I went to my friends and told them, don't worry about this future land use map.

the buildings that are going to be built in your neighborhood are going to be a basically the same house size or house scale I don't know for these purposes there's a distinction but the point is that they they would not be expecting I'll use the one example that comes most egregiously to mind is it is it on Charlton

where there's that one house that was built.

It's got to be at least a 5,000 square foot in terms of gross floor area.

Correct.

And so if you're looking at, I mean, it's, and I don't remember the details because I remember figuring this out, I don't know, some months ago, but you could easily end up with a 6,000 square foot floor area building in an RA zone.

And that would be typically double the size of anybody else on the block.

and it isn't going to feel like a house-sized building, a house-scale building.

And if that's no longer a thing in this code, I do think we ought to at least acknowledge that what we were told in the future land use map discussion has been specifically abandoned.

I mean for me I think one of the challenges is that idea of what is house in human scale does have subjectivity to it.

So when I look at these heights and widths, to me,

It completely matches a neighborhood human house scale in terms of the existing pattern within neighborhoods of some townhomes, smaller apartment complexes that are mixed in with homes.

And I can think of areas in my neighborhood where I live, I walk by every day, as well as throughout the city where that pattern of development is isolated but exists.

And I walk by it and it feels completely house scale.

So that's my perspective.

And I know others, I guess, just have a different perspective.

But to me, that's not even

out of line with neighborhood scale.

It's just a different type of housing product.

That's an interesting point.

Yeah.

This kind of came up in one of these joint meetings that I was sitting back and listening.

I think Carl mentioned this from the Planning Commission is that it's all about design.

Because I'm thinking about a few weeks ago, Claudia and I were walking on Altamont.

Yeah, and I do feel like it's something it's certainly a subjective thing and on paper you know a building that's less than three stories high I guess anyone can find faultless something but that does seem relatively small from a height perspective and you do have you know you can drive to these house farms that have enormous mansions with four people living in them

When we were talking about house size, actually the distinction was made during one of the discussions about house size maybe, and then mansion size was something different, but when I was thinking house size, I'm thinking 3,000, 4,000 square feet.

However you end up defining it, I think if you end up with a 6,000 square foot building in an RA zone, it is going to look much larger than anything else on the block, because it will be.

It will be twice the size of anything else on the block.

Now again, maybe that's okay.

It's not what we were told that we could sell to the public two years ago.

and I think we ought to at least be honest enough to say, nah, we're not doing that anymore.

Can I offer a third option?

Sure.

So my understanding of the house scale statement was kind of as it's being articulated here as house scale from the street as viewed from the public realm that new infill development fits in with the streetscape with the image of what we're seeing.

I think necessarily in order to accommodate a certain number of units, you're going to go back into the lot.

And that, and I mean, I think it's reasonable there could have just, because it's subjective, there's just different understandings.

I mean, my understanding was always in line with that and kind of that what would be allowed in terms of form and particularly in my mind height would be of a human scale.

And I think that

in terms of the height and width allowed as well as the other design controls, I think that was met in RB and RC, but I mean, I take your point, I guess it's something that people could just have subjective different interpretations of, but that's where I'm at.

I mean, I do think that the height, width, as well as the other design considerations make it something where that when you would walk it, it would feel residential neighborhood

to me like a house and you know the other recognition that those are specific it will be a different housing product I mean you're going to be talking about people who have an opportunity to live in a small apartment complex or a small condo unit or something like that that doesn't exist now and I guess the question is if we're going to do that I don't know it would seem the only option is to just say we're not going to allow that

different type of housing product to get built under the scenario you outlaid, if your interpretation of what is house scale can't include that type of housing product at all.

Correct.

The point that really got me thinking about this is you could still have four units or six units in an apartment building that was 4,500 square feet.

They would be smaller units, which automatically would make them more nearly affordable, by the way.

But I was looking at some stuff from, I don't know, I can't remember now what I was looking at, but the assumption was like a three bedroom apartment would be 1,200 to 1,500 square feet.

Well, you know,

To use an example, from my own family, my son lives in a condo that's 1,000 square feet in his three bedrooms, and it's a beautiful place and it's very expensive.

It's up in Massachusetts, but still, the point is that he lives a very nice life in a 1,000 square foot apartment.

and a three-bedroom apartment.

And so if you say a comparable two-bedroom apartment might be 750 square feet, if we limit the size of the apartment and we also then say you can have six of them there,

You can have six, 750 square foot apartments and 4,500 square feet.

The building doesn't look atrociously large by comparison to everything else in the neighborhood.

Can you look at page 29?

Just 29?

Yes.

so if we say let's say 2-7 so this is RA and I guess this is the one to the right upper right is kind of the max build out with the density bonuses I think yeah so

I don't know, for me, I look at that and I say, well, if you want to talk about house scale, that looks like house scale to me.

I mean, it's, you know, the notion of walking along a street and what sort of, you know, the sense you get of it is that it's a house.

The same if you go over to RB, which is on page 2-9.

and then I guess RC which is 2-11 at that point I can see perhaps what you're talking about Lloyd that it's not house sized or house scale but I think there's not going to be many of those that are built and I do think it's still a good point that Michael's made about that James made about

you're looking for infill development that as you walk down the street you'll have you know existing housing and then this is in you know in the middle so to speak and it's crafted and built in such a way with the design details that it doesn't look like a you know an apartment block out of East Berlin or something

Not that brutalism is bad.

Right.

Not that it's bad, but there's some places we don't want it.

So I guess I'm just trying to get a sense, you know, looking at these, and it sounds like what you're talking about, Lloyd, is a different model.

Well, RA looks doable, but RB and RC, these upper right-hand ones,

They look rather large to fit on a lot.

But I know that those are different neighborhoods.

And not to confuse the conversation too much, because this may really relate to the rate of change analysis and displacement work sessions more, but I do want to just call us back to the study mentioned at the beginning, not that it's the final word on it, but it showed

Allowing units, six to ten units on lots through a majority of the city was the mechanism they found actually made a difference in affordability.

It also found that buildings with steel or concrete construction, which in our market, as my understanding, that's above five,

are not more affordable.

It says explicitly that construction material is much more expensive per square foot.

That alone would eliminate most of the savings from lower land costs.

So I just want to call us back to the fact that the only mechanism by which we could get that is RB and RC.

So if you're talking about removing that because you think that it doesn't look enough like a house, you're removing a very specific type of housing product that is the only one meeting that missing middle demand.

I don't support that.

That is a policy decision we could make.

Yeah, and I totally get that.

And so that's part of what I'm, you know, at a loss.

I realize that they were difficult times when y'all were trying to work through the future land use map.

I just want to add one other thing.

Just on the market side, and I credit to Commissioner Stolzenberg, who I think wrote very well on this topic.

There's kind of a market differentiation that we're looking at, too, between the corridors and what happens in an RX or CX or an NX district, where I think we're going to see smaller unit apartments, products that are aimed at young professionals, singles, and so on.

So I think to Michael's point, either the house-sized

I wonder if it's kind of a stand-in for the question of do we want to have medium-intensity residential?

Because I don't think with medium, to get the sort of products that, and I agree, I think we are going to have to build products like what's in RC to get the result that we want.

But then backing, what that means is that we are going to have these large, significant sections of our community

People don't like that and it's not going to look house size to some people and it will certainly be

It's controversial.

I get it.

So I'm just trying to wonder if it's the question, and I'm not like assuming any like disingenuousness.

Please don't take that at all.

Well, I'll be honest with you.

I look at the pictures on 2-9 and 2-11 in the upper right-hand corner of both and think, as I'm trying to think, just to use one example, the area around Rugby Avenue and Rose Hill Drive.

and that contemplates, I think it was RC along both sides of Rugby Avenue within a couple of lots worth of the corner and then RB beyond that and I'm thinking,

If what we expect, if what we want is to have RC on each side of that corner and RB extended down beyond that, that strikes me as a very, very significantly different neighborhood from A, what we've got now and B, what we reasonably ought to be thinking about for there.

I look at RB at those diagrams and I think

And so I guess, right.

And one question I have is do you, Lloyd, do you agree with the notion that Rory has put forward and that at least Michael and I agree with that for us to get the end result that we need, we're going to need some sort of product like this.

Well, I'd really like to see the rate of change analysis, but the other piece to it is, and you've got to remember that what we're talking about is not only this degree of density, but at least

to some extent we're legitimizing commercial uses and so on in these places.

And I keep going back to just the example that I spent the most time on is the neighborhood around Oxford and Sherwood and Harrow and so on.

and those houses that are fairly small next to each other, lots fairly small, yes it happens to be next to Greenleaf Park and yes that's a good thing but we're talking about this kind of density and we're talking about the possibility of commercial uses and if we're serious about having more residential uses there then we shouldn't be having commercial uses and I think the neighborhood

there is legitimately concerned as they look at this kind of diagram and they see that that's what we're projecting for their street as something we presumably want them to have, which they clearly don't want to have.

I know we can't force them to have anything, but do we want to create the potential for a neighborhood that we can

Yeah, and I appreciate that.

Yeah, so I met with those folks as well.

I think that they have been able to make, like, very concrete, specific arguments about why the overlay there isn't appropriate.

And I think maybe even, James, that particular area

The streets that work typology maybe ran amok a little bit.

I think if you followed it to the exact logical consistency, their area would get what it's getting, but something seems amok there.

But I guess just backing up, obviously we're trying to take care and look out for the people that own homes here now, but we're also trying to

Yeah, yeah, so just let me chime in here because I had several thoughts.

So in my mind, you know, one of the main reasons that I think that we need to do this is, and that's in different discussions to address,

you know deep affordable housing and so but Leah and I can attest to this being on this school board for 16 years is that there's a lack of that middle income that missing middle that we talked about and teachers just could not afford it and that's what I see in RB and RC that we need that as well but we also need you know and so we need this

housing types and quantity in all parts of the city, because I think in the past it's only been in certain ones, and we want to kind of spread the love.

And I think that we're going to have to make some difficult choices, you know, as council, you know, where it takes place, but I think that now we're kind of, we, it's 10 square miles, we can look at, you know, certain streets like Plymouth and say, hmm, that doesn't seem right, or it may be others as well, but

But I think that when I look at this, RB is like, okay, it's kind of on the edge, but if it's designed right, design is really important in this.

I think that the example that she showed, Christy showed, and I know that that's not exactly like this, but the big building, but in the middle, it was like a break.

This is not the same type, but if it's designed correctly, I think that it's something that can be doable.

But we won't have the ability to say, yeah, that's really ugly.

You can't build that.

No, we can't do that with McMansion now.

But if the reason why it's okay is that it can be solved by good design, but we have no power

Yeah, but there are a lot of standards in here to sort of keep them in check.

And I would definitely agree with that in terms of I don't assume any, the market is the market.

I don't assume it's like the wind.

I don't assume good faith or whatever.

But I think part of it too is, I mean, if you're evaluating, like, let's say some of the roads you mentioned that are small older homes,

It's also completely feasible that under the current zoning, within 30 years, developers could buy up every single one of those homes, knock them down, build a McMansion that is a huge square footage, and the feel and physical design of the neighborhood would have been transformed.

You haven't opened up any new housing options in the city.

So I'm just saying that to say that even without these changes, like some substantial change is not only allowed, but is probably inevitable on a certain time horizon.

Could I ask one question?

It completely makes sense.

Could I ask a question?

So Lloyd was basically sort of trying to get at this, I think, from a square footage perspective.

What's a reasonable amount of square footage for a family to live in?

if you back into this whole conversation from a square footage perspective you would end up I think in a different place in terms of you know what you'd end up being able to build I guess this is more like a let's put some fences around it so to speak in terms of

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's definitely a certain amount of that.

We're creating an envelope, and I'll let Christy speak to that.

I think she has a number of good points that she can make in there.

There was a prior conversation where one of the things we added was footprint, which wasn't there previously.

and I do want to highlight the point that Councillor Payne is making because I do think it's an important one particularly when I think about where I've been in the past

It's important to consider not only comparing what's proposed to what's here now but what's proposed to what you can do today under the zoning ordinance.

The fact of the matter is under our zoning ordinance there's very few limits on what someone can build in terms of the scale and size of a single family house.

They can be very, very large.

And if you go to Arlington where I'm from, if you go up to where I previously worked in Massachusetts, that is what is happening today.

Barring that Arlington just passed an ordinance

doing what we're looking at.

But up until they pass that, they're seeing teardowns and seeing 8,000 square foot single family houses being built within the boundaries of their existing zoning ordinance, readily allowed within the context of our zoning ordinance.

And that was clearly what I was seeing in suburban Boston as well.

Interesting.

So it's just noting, making sure the comparison

to what we have today is important, but also important to acknowledge the comparison between what we're proposing here and what our current ordinance does allow.

I think it's also important on that note to distinguish between the ego project

Well, in those markets I was referring to, that's the standard build that developers are building.

I want to let Christy speak to some of these particular issues if we can give her a moment.

Yeah, I think a key to this discussion really is building width.

As I mentioned in one of those previous slides, height, width, this building footprint we've added and building coverage, those really do work together to

Result in what an allowable developable square footage would be.

But as far as what is perceptive from the street and what determines that house size feel, really that height and in particular that width, which is something you don't have in your ordinance today, it is absolutely critical to that house size perception.

And one thing I do want to point out, and I think it's a

A good example of how that courtyard, those courtyard examples I showed and building width, how those work together to get better design outcomes.

So when we require that building width, we provide in the rules.

So if you're looking at page 2-8, for example, and you see in massing, if you're looking at this digitally, by the way, you can just click on that section 2

that takes you to the rules for building with in those rules.

So if you click on that or if you analog flip the page to 2-129, what we build in there is an allowance for

an open space exception.

And so it restricts the building width, but it says if you build a courtyard that has very specific standards that those courtyard examples that I showed would meet, then you can basically have a continuous building, but it feels a lot smaller from the street and you get that open space.

So I think it's a good example of why building width is in particular very critical.

Thank you.

And 1200 square feet is not.

as small as you think.

Last week I had the opportunity to go to the two newly built habitat homes in the city on Coleman.

Well, first of all, there are places in the city, I don't even know where they are.

But my GPS got me there.

But the two townhouses are 1,200 square feet and there are families moving in them.

There are three bedrooms, two baths, and they have a lower level that's unfinished.

a basement lower level whatever you want to call it so that's unfinished but upstairs there's the living dining area and the kitchen it's all open space there is another room that could be classified as a bedroom because that's closet and a window but when they told me 1200 square feet and I'm like oh okay

and I went in and it was 1200 square feet, but it was enough space for a family.

And one of the families has three children, I believe they told me.

Both of the families, I think, have three children.

And so, but it's plenty of space.

And yes, they are townhouses, but they fit the lot and all of the, you know, they've met all of the whatever, whatever.

But I didn't realize

that it was a lot larger than I thought once I got in.

And so when you hear Lloyd talk about his son in the thousand square feet, you could see that.

And there are a lot of neighborhoods where you could see

those two units on a lot and they are not obtrusive and most of the houses that I saw going up because it is a cul-de-sac are single family except for one of them I think well maybe one or two of them

might be like a house, but it's like, you know, a rental unit here and a rental unit there, but they all, it all blends.

It occurred to me by the way that one of the things about the place where my son lives is it's a classic example I believe of the stacked townhouse notion.

He's got two townhouses

Ground Level, two townhouses above that.

That building, because a different district, actually has three, 222.

And at that point, it's a 6,000 square foot building.

And on that point, I definitely agree.

I don't know.

I think James helped me here, but again, I think that the path that this has taken for a long time is basically to let decisions, we do have the minimum, we have the lot coverage piece.

Right.

One example I'll use, I mentioned this last night, right now our current ordinance basically defines the size of building you can get by setbacks, right?

And that can be huge.

This one, setbacks just define where the placement of the building is.

But then these other rules, width, footprint, overall lot coverage, those come in and actually define the scale of the building itself.

Chris, can you talk a little bit about the footprint standard in particular and how we arrived at that?

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Turn my video back on.

So with the building footprint and, you know, it calibrates up a bit.

So by 500 square feet, if you flip between RA and

R, B, and R, C. And that really is to get at, you know, we are allowing a bit more width as we incrementally go up and a bit more height as we incrementally go up because we're assuming that there could be more units in those buildings.

But really, we looked at

what would be a reasonable square footage size if someone decided to build out to the maximum allowed number of base units.

So it is a bit flexible, I would say, but it is something that we looked at across a lot of different building typologies.

The reason we want to make it flexible is because footprint

changes based on if an RA, for example, you have a side-by-side duplex versus a stacked duplex.

It's still two units, but the footprint of it changes some.

And there are also implications for what type of product that tends to be.

So if you think of something that's side-by-side where all units touch the ground, you know, whether it's either side-by-side or sort of deep in a lot, those tend to be fee-simple or homeownership.

because you can have the land associated with it.

Anytime something becomes stacked and has a lower footprint associated with it, those tend to be rental or condos, which condos are just really expensive and challenging to finance.

So I'm just wondering, this seems like a really big sort of stone in the creek here in terms of philosophically how we feel about

about medium-intensity residential, and I'm for it.

I think, yeah, I'm for it.

And I'd be willing to countenance things like maybe we dial back the percentages of, you know, the geographic spread or

Maybe we come up with some way of rationing permits, which I don't think Mr. City Attorney is going to work.

Or maybe we go back to this notion of this being a five-year document, where we say this is what we're saying for now, but then we revisit it in a few years.

Not to sidetrack us too much, but I think it directly relates to this conversation.

Why was Arlington able to do what they did, but we couldn't in terms of the limit on the amount?

Arlington County was sued immediately after the adoption.

And so I guess the short answer is it kind of depends on the status of that litigation.

I would be happy to...

review the pleadings in that lawsuit and provide a response on what the extent to which the legal challenge encompasses the rationing piece.

But my recollection is that the rationing, the limits are a part of that litigation that are being contested right now.

But they could lose or prevail.

That's correct.

That's correct.

And the outcome of the Arlington litigation will in some ways be informative.

I think I need to be candid with you.

Litigation grinds on, and we're not going to have that answer.

Okay.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

And to answer your question, I mean, as I've said, I think the RB and RC are positive and the only way we're getting a very specific type of housing product that is going to be central to ensuring we have any kind of middle class and upward mobility within our city.

My big concern if we remove it or significantly limit it is with our affordable housing investments, we'll have

housing for very low income people and very rich people and we're going to have no middle class or economic mobility and I don't think that's the future we want.

That's why I think it's really important.

I do think it is still house and neighborhood scale.

Depending on what the specifics of it are, I could be open to thinking about

I was most interested in the Arlington model, which sounds like it has significant uncertainties, but if there's something similar, I'm potentially open to it.

The biggest thing with RB and RC that I see as a need is on a very specific lot level, some lots that I think there is either a displacement risk or perhaps it was just kind of arbitrarily included.

Well, it wasn't arbitrarily included, but if you look at

If you walked the neighborhood, it would feel somewhat arbitrary.

But to my mind, my concern is on a very specific lot level and not something that comes down to, say, only put it on a corner lot or just blanket cut it by 50%.

I think that would be a policy mistake.

I had said earlier, I wasn't quite sure about the source, I'm realizing now as I look at RARBRC, that looking at page 2-6 and 2-7, I see that there would be apparently no restriction that would keep from having a 9,000 square foot

building in an RA zone as long as you had more than two units.

That's a ridiculously large building.

It would be 10,500 square feet in an RB zone.

That's a ridiculously large building.

Times the number of floors.

Look at 2-6, 3,000 square feet, 2-7, more than two units, three floors.

That's 9,000 square feet.

That's triple the size of certainly my house.

So I just think there ought to be a way to deal with that problem.

And if we have created an ordinance that allows a 9,000 square foot building to be built there, we ought to figure out a way to make sure that doesn't happen.

The other piece I would say is I have suggested at one point that we

We try to acknowledge the fact that even by tripling our capacity, which is what we're proposing to do, we will create a whole lot more opportunities.

It should be noted, I think with RB and RC again, it's a very specific housing product.

Minneapolis allow triplexes across the entire city.

I think to date they've only seen 70 built.

I don't know their population, but it's obviously much, much larger than ours.

I understand.

And so if we look at it then, say we're going to have RB, but we're not, or

however you want to call it.

I personally would be in favor of some sort of RA, RB designation that expressly eliminates commercial uses and that would allow for some greater degree of

protection for the places like Plymouth and so on.

But supposing we said we're going to, as I suggested before, supposing we allow RB and or RC on corner lots or something like that where we have some greater degree of opportunity there.

I just look at the notion of, as I see on page 211,

It looks like they're proposing to have two RC lots side by side and what is being proposed for those two RC lots side by side I just don't think is compatible with an awful lot of what we're doing in the city.

The other broad thing I wanted to say, and Brian touched on this a minute ago,

We have an extraordinarily ambitious statement of an overall goal.

The overall goal that is stated of the walkable city, walkable neighborhood environment intended to accommodate a variety of housing options, including single unit homes, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, and small apartments in general residential and medium intensity residential areas.

designated in the comprehensive plan supporting and within walking distance of neighborhoods serving retail food and service uses.

This is essentially the same goal that was set out for Paris, the city of Paris, France, which has 15 times the density that we've got.

The least dense neighborhood in Paris is four times more dense than the most dense area in Charlottesville.

It may well be that in the year 2050 this is an attainable goal.

To say that we're going to make that our goal in 2023 and that this is the path that we're going to take because we believe it's going to get us there, I think number one assumes a clearer crystal ball than we possess.

and number two means that we are sort of putting ourselves or committing ourselves to a course that I think we're going to we're clearly going to revisit it every five or ten years anyway and so the question is do we need to create an ordinance right now that we think gets us to the year 2050 or do we want to create an ordinance that gets us on that path with the expectation that five years from now

will look at it again.

And maybe five years from now, we see that certain trends have occurred, certain things have happened.

In the meantime, we hopefully will have taken a step in the right direction.

And so my thought on it all has been that to create and to state that it is our goal in the present zoning ordinance in right now, in our terms right now, to create the walkable neighborhood environment is simply an unrealistic goal.

And I think that to say it that way and to say it that simply and clearly, I applaud the clarity of the vision.

I just don't think that it's a realistic vision to have right now and people are going to look at us and say, you're nuts.

That's not going to happen.

It's not going to happen certainly within the next five years.

And we all acknowledge, I think, it's not going to happen in the next five or ten years.

It sounds a little bit like you're saying we're not going to get there, but

One reason one might say we're not going to get there is if we don't do some of these things, let's get there.

Paris got to where it got through, I'm sure, lots of

Basically everybody, we do the tripling of the capacity.

That we create some places that allow for additional density.

If you want to look at RC as the model, that's fine.

That we do that in perhaps on corner lots and that's our way to sort of ration

Ration things in a way that is consistent with land use considerations, not just market considerations.

And then we see what happened.

Now, I have to say, I have not seen the detailed analysis of the rate of expected change.

I was hoping that that would be something we were thinking up earlier, but it may be that the circumstances didn't permit that.

That's fine.

I completely agree with the notion that, and I've heard both Councillor Puryear and actually I guess maybe all four of you say that there's no point in going through all this and not solving a problem.

But I'm also concerned about, quite frankly, that if there is enough of a sort of a political backlash that two years from now or four years from now

We may end up with a council that regrets the decision that this council has made and so that's one of the reasons I want to take things somewhat more slowly with the expectation that

Five years from now, 10 years from now, we'll say, you know, it hasn't been the end of the world.

So when you said a little bit slower, what about the UCLA study where they said that, you know, if you do it incremental, that's going to impact single, I mean, households.

Well, I haven't read the study, but I gather that just from the language of it that what they were talking about most specifically, again, to use my three-dimensional metaphor, was the two-dimensional piece of it.

And I really want to see what the rate of expected change analysis is going to tell us.

I have no idea.

It sounds as if, and maybe I'm misinterpreting it, is that if things that are in this book with the necessary tweaks happen, you feel, Lloyd, and if I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong,

that we're just on a path to nowhere and it's irrevocable and there's no way to ever change it and maybe I'm misinterpreting it because that's what I heard you say at first but then I heard you say that if we do RA and RB that will show

Well, what I'm saying is that I think we need to recognize that the one thing that I think everybody on council has agreed with

to allow three units per lot is already going to put us among the more liberal places in the country in this respect.

Acknowledge that.

See what happens with that.

My guess is that there will be some significant amount of use of that option.

But again, I haven't seen the economic analysis in detail to know.

I also think, by the way, that, you know, and I say this to some of my friends who yell at me the most on the Greenbrier listserv, that they're not likely, that the Greenbrier neighborhood isn't likely to get this kind of use pattern in any event.

So none of this, whether it's RARBRC, is likely to affect the neighborhoods that are now most

exclusionary if you want to use that term.

To me the issue and the reason for doing this has really been much more the missing middle conversation and having places for the teachers and firefighters and police officers to live and that kind of thing.

Whether that's going to happen in Greenbrier or Rugby or wherever, I couldn't tell you.

I don't know where it actually

Well, I just don't know where it will happen.

I shouldn't try to predict because I can't.

My overall concern is that what we're arguing about most is stuff that isn't likely to happen anyway and that we are creating political hot buttons that we shouldn't be creating.

And so one of the advantages of sort of going one step at a time, you're going to think about it in terms of a five year plan.

We do the comp plan every five years.

We look at it after five years and say,

hasn't been working, okay?

Now we get back to the metaphor of turning up the radio dials.

We tweak that a little bit.

We say, okay, what can we do more that's going to help with that?

And that's why

The two metaphors that stuck with me through this entire process were the house-sized buildings and the tweaking of the radio dials and that we can turn the radio dials up to greater intensity more readily than we can scale them back because of the likelihood that somebody would fight about their rights having been denied or whatever.

and I just think that that tends to argue for taking steps that first of all in theory should work, should be significantly more liberalizing and second in practical terms may well have that result but that in any event they will not do any violence to the long run and if we do that

So let me ask a question.

Our little document right here, before the tweets, right as it is right here.

How many new residences do you perceive that we will get?

Just a guess.

I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to answer that one right off the top of my head.

That is what we did the rate of change analysis for.

Okay, and that will tell us.

Looking purely at the R, A, B, and C. And that will tell us.

It gives you a sense.

It gives you a sense of scale.

I'm going to say straight up, there are a lot of variables that come into play.

Yes.

with any development, right?

Right.

I mean, we've already talked about the competitive, the market base, the competition between lots.

We've got all the physical characteristics.

You've got just the degree of which any lot comes up for sale.

So there's a lot of variables, and I'm going to defer to that presentation.

Can I ask you one question about rate of change, what you just said?

Because that seems to be what's going to get us to wherever we need to be.

Will the rate of change give us an indices as to

of dollar amounts, purchase prices between three and five hundred thousand, between two and four hundred and fifty thousand, I mean do we have something, is there something out there that will say, and it doesn't have to be exact, and let me tell you why I'm thinking that.

I hear Lloyd

talking about the teachers and the fire personnel and the police personnel living in our city.

And there is a major metropolitan area that is not far from us that I have

worked with, and we'll go into that another day, but the city purchased a building, which I don't think we have here, a building that size, but nonetheless, they purchased this building, and in the building is a school, an elementary, pre-K to whatever elementary stops, but on this side, and on the other side are

apartments for city personnel that are affordable, they're apartments, they're not condos or townhouses or anything, so that the fire personnel can live, the police personnel and the teachers, if they so desire to be there, they can afford it, and we keep saying

that we're talking about middle class families being able to afford to live.

So I'm saying we're talking about purchasing, but is there something in your rate of change that's gonna say this is affordable?

Because that's what I hear us talking about, and then there's a difference when we talk about affordable.

I understand that, America.

but what I'm talking about is affordability for middle class people because you're saying that in Charlottesville there are none and Juan and I can count the numbers of them that look like us on our two hands, can't we Juan?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Exactly.

So I, just a couple of things with, with

Do respect, and I mean that with all sincerity, Lloyd.

A couple of things.

I think the rate of change analysis is a worthwhile endeavor for us to go through.

My sense of whether that's going to give us some sort of, like,

True clarity is no, it won't.

I think the point that Michael made in his email is basically if we can do anything to like 1% increase, I mean, to me, the way I look at it is the real estate market.

I mean, you cannot buy a house.

Yeah, and so

The one way to look at this is the rate of change.

And I get that.

But the other way to look at it is we are stuck, and we are going to remain stuck.

Yeah, and we'll continue to do that.

In fact, yeah.

But if we, you talked about the political piece and I appreciate that.

A couple of things that I will say about that.

When I ran, I was very clear on my website

you know of course there weren't that many people to choose from at this time just me and Juan and one other person in the primary but I was very clear you know get the complaint done and do the zoning ordinance and maybe I wasn't following things as closely as I should have but

It was very clear in all the feedback that I heard from former Councilor Hill and everyone else that medium intensity residential was this huge flashpoint.

People were upset about it from both sides, but that that was sort of a linchpin.

And so I, you know,

I have already made it clear politically how I stand on that topic.

I will say too we have a new counselor likely to take office in January.

This individual ran even more than I would in terms of density.

The other thing that I just really

and I get it our homes for those of us who own homes they are our primary source of investment you know to be able to fund our kids college or whatever but most of the people that live in the city are renters and I think we have one person on council who's a renter and so in terms of the political backlash yeah I think there will be people that are going to be mad they're already stomping mad

but I think there will be for just looking in terms of political backlash this whole thing got started I think by a planning commission meeting three or four years ago and someone came in with a banner and shut the whole thing down because there wasn't enough

housing and so I think that political piece cuts both ways and I also think that homeowners understandably are going to be more vocal and have more time to tell us how mad they are and

I do fundamentally believe this.

I do not think that even though we're tripling the possibility of density in RA zones that that's going to turn into a product that anyone's going to want to build.

to the scale that we need.

And I also think that the kind of product that you're going to get with the RB and RC is going to help families, middle class families, much more than anything else.

And so I'm not sure where we go.

I appreciate the fact that the people on Rugby Avenue are unhappy.

Maybe there are some things we can do about the lot size division.

Maybe there are things we can tweak about that.

And the other thing, you know, even setting a five-year plan, I think that five-year plan would need to be very clear that we are planning to build units like this before I could get behind it.

No, you're not.

We got you.

And I, again, I agree with that, and for the subject of tonight's conversation, I continue to think RB, RC are at neighborhood residential scale, and, you know, I fear as well, you know, there's a fear brought up about, you know, you could have, let's see, RB, RC, every lot is converted to that maximum build out.

I mean I fear if you didn't change anything 30 years from now or 10, 15 years from now they'd all be torn down large McMansions or maybe not even McMansions but just tear down something expensive and we've just restricted our ability to have more people have the opportunity to live near a park or live in a neighborhood where they can kind of settle down there and get to know neighbors and I just I think it's never going to be easy I just think at some point we have to decide whether Missing Middle is in it or not and it's never going to be easy

The Arlington model I thought was the best way to kind of square the circle.

I think if you're talking about limiting it to corner lots, to me it just seems, in terms of just pure policy decision, arbitrary and limiting it by too much.

I thought the Arlington model was a way to kind of the rate of change seems that it's likely the turnover is not going to be that much but that would be a way to kind of guarantee it for people who have a concern that every single lot on a block will completely switch over so that's where I'm at and I think I've said this before in my mind the irony I think the biggest changes that I think we're going to regret potentially the most are in these mixed-use corridors where you are talking about going to 8, 10, 12 stories next to single-family neighborhoods that

and my mind is actually a dramatic change, not only in the built form and human scale, but also the type of construction material cost and business that may change there.

That to me is my real concern when it comes to human scale, you know, built design form.

I see RB and RC as being human scale and not too big.

Oh, CX and X. Okay.

I heard C and didn't hear the X. Well, you know, corner lots could be discriminatory.

So I guess, does anybody else share my concern that we should not be allowing a 9,000 square foot building in an RA zone or a 10,500 square foot building in an RB zone?

I'd be interested in thinking about it more.

But don't you already have some in RA that are 3,000 square feet?

Well, I mean, but they're not one-story buildings, typically.

Okay, I'm with you now.

I got it.

I think the difficult thing about all of this is

You know, and that's what the rate of change analysis is about, is trying to predict what the market's going to do in the future with these different types of housing products.

If you could, if someone could tell me, yeah, you build all these and they'll be filled with folks who have, you know, good jobs, middle class jobs, you know, I wouldn't care about the size.

If what's going to happen is people are going to come in and just, you know, build

You know, huge houses like Locust Avenue or whatever, I would say that's a waste.

But I'm hoping that what will happen with this is that developers in the market will find this sweet spot where you will have, you know, stacked on top of it.

And again, it's a max.

No, my point is that we need to recognize the potential problem that they might.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

So what's you saying to make it seven?

I personally would say for RA, supposing we said 4,500 square feet, gross floor area.

and for RB, say, 6,000 square feet or whatever.

I guess the question, and I don't really know what the concept is about the affordable dwelling unit bonus.

I'd have to think a little bit more about what the current manifestation of that is.

I gather, I think I am correct, that we were eliminating the notion that all of them, that you could build six units and lose money on all six of them.

The current bonus in there is the additional units, the increment of new units have to be affordable at 60% of AMI.

So if you go to the item number two on the left hand page,

So, and this is actually a question I should have asked six months ago.

When we're giving an RA a one-unit bonus for preserving the existing structure,

Okay, so you'd have, at that point, you would have potentially four in market rate and two affordable.

And I take it the same thing applies in RB.

So you could have potentially in RB and RC, potentially 12 units.

I mean, I just think in RA, the notion of having six affordable units, or having six units, two of which or three of which may be designated as affordable,

If you want that many, put them in 4,500 square feet.

Those are six pretty decent sized units by most people's standards.

Yeah, I mean, I'm I guess I'm potentially open to a conversation like that.

I mean, I just I don't feel able to commit to anything at this point because I don't know how to genuinely don't know how to think through what, if any, implications there are in terms of how the market would respond.

And maybe there's none.

I don't know.

So your notion, Lloyd, is if

And your question is, you know, is that either 10% higher or 25% higher than we think is reasonable or?

And what we were told earlier is one of the rationales for that greater flexibility in the building footprint was because it would allow for more home ownership types versus rentals.

It was because the ownership is going to come into play where the units touch the ground, right?

So a side-by-side duplex, for example.

So if you're going to allow that degree of flexibility on the footprint, there needs to be, I think, there needs to be something that limits the size of the building, and multiplying 3,000

Square Feet by three floors, that gets us to a building that I think everybody would agree would be out of place.

And would also get you, if you're doing six units, you'd have six units at 1,500 square feet each, which is, you know, you're not going to be able to build, I mean, to think that those would be affordable in any meaningful way, I think, is illusory.

We also get to the question on affordable dwelling units of are we saying that the city is going to subsidize them?

I thought so.

Let me put it this way.

All of it is IZ.

I think typically an IZ proposal is internally subsidized.

I'm not sure that this scale of affordability with this number of units is financially feasible.

So I think these would be subject to some form of, I think in order to build a project that has the number of affordable units proposed in here would probably require some form of subsidy.

No, sorry, sorry.

I mean, our original conversation, I think, was to basically provide flexibility for affordable housing providers.

I think you could see some habitat could potentially build in terms of with their own sweat equity subsidy without a direct city subsidy.

But whether it be city or otherwise, most would.

But that was kind of the...

That was known in the conversation.

Quite frankly, I would be fine with saying you don't even have this affordable housing bonus, but you have some sort of special use or exception process for an affordable housing provider.

Maybe a rezoning is sufficient for that, I don't know.

Because I think the real concern was, as a concrete example, you get a

Like Park Street, you get a non-profit that's able to acquire one or two lots.

Even under the rezoning, in order to make it work in terms of their LIHTC application, they'll need more than what exists by right.

Do they have some flexibility to get a project done?

And I don't think we want to remove that flexibility.

Yeah.

It just means it's theoretically... So as a practical matter, the bonuses only come into play if a PHA or a CRHA or a Habitat or somebody can figure out a way to...

And if they're seeking a subsidy from the city, they would have to go through the normal city process and compete as is normally set up.

So Lloyd, is then your suggestion that essentially we should move these numbers back from

Well, no, my sense of things is that what we ought to do is to have a provision someplace, and if we have to create a new Category 7 on the last page of each section, we do so, that basically puts a limit on the gross floor area.

Allowing the flexibility for the building footprint, however you want to redo it, whatever height you want within the

Yeah, and I'm conscious of the fact we've been here for three hours already.

Hardly feels like that.

And perhaps we just delay this conversation to a future work session, but I think a really important one is that built form and human scale of those mixed-use corridors.

I agree.

I agree.

Okay, it's 7.54.

No.

Well, I just, I wanted to brief check in.

I mentioned the two upcoming topics for the 3rd and the 11th.

Other folks agree?

MR. That is correct.

We have, for the displacement conversation, there have been recommendations from the HAC, the Housing Advisory Committee, on that.

This is the piece about whether to... It's the displacement conversation, displacement and gentrification.

I don't have a problem with it.

So, yeah, I think like today a lot of things has kind of spurred off other people's comments or questions.

If we do have someone, it can be like today or tonight where they kind of speak at the beginning and, you know, they don't have to be

Speak at the beginning and then available for questions as necessary.

Yeah.

So those are the three meetings that we've defined.