Planning Commission Meeting   3/12/2024

Alrighty, good evening.

I believe we're ready to begin our deliberations for the evening.

We, uh, looks like we have a pretty light agenda, but we're going to dive right in.

And we'll begin with reports from the Dias.

But before we do that, I'd like to toss the ball to Ms.

Wonderful.

Should I start?

Yeah, who are you?

Hello.

Hi, I'm Betsy Roettger and I've lived here for about 20 years now, went to school here and then came back to try out teaching at UVA and kind of stuck with that for a while.

But I've always been interested in what's going on in town and as someone, I went to school for architecture, which I love.

Much more interested in the public spaces that it's creating, and then the policies that go behind creating really great public spaces.

Well, good.

Welcome.

Thank you.

There were a lot of good people that wanted your seat, but I am very happy with what Council has landed, so we are grateful that you're here.

Thanks, Chairman.

Two items I wanted to share, so we had our Board Buildings and Grounds Committee at the end of February, and so I know I had previously mentioned the Darden Graduate Housing, so that is now formally approved, so that will be 350 beds, literally right out the door of Saunders Hall, so that will be a nice addition for the graduate experience there.

There was another sort of key project I think that would be helpful for this committee to know about, and that is the parking garage in Northground.

So there's a thousand car parking garage that is slated to be at the northwest corner of Massey and Copely.

So if you imagine you walk out the west side of John Paul Jones Arena, it's straight out across the street.

There's currently

Some 1960s-era garden apartments that are there, very suburban, very car-dependent And so, where as we know, losing housing is not ideal right now The idea is that this consolidated parking will help enable future infill on sites that are currently surface parking And so, it's a strategic addition to Northgrounds I think it will help with some of the commuter load at the hospital and all our events, which I know everyone's keenly aware

the parking issues associated with that.

And it'll, yeah, that's sort of underway and hopefully it takes shape in two years.

Okay.

Ms.

Delphop.

The tree commission met last week on the 5th.

And from that meeting, just quick updates.

The Inflation Reduction Act grant was awarded and approved.

I know I've made an announcement about it before but it had some hiccups and they finally worked it through and that will go to funding a canopy study training volunteers and the urban forest plan

And other news, RX Fire, which is a contractor that does some of the invasive control, is mulching at Freebridge.

It's a property that's about 1.8 acres.

I think they might have completed that last week.

There wasn't anything to save there, and they're going to be replanting trees in that area.

And they want to do most invasive control items before April Part of that would be John Warner Parkway, Oak Street, which is the Oakwood Cemetery and Quarry Park The downtown mall tree management plan is later to be completed this summer and

They'll include what should go and let me read my notes.

What to do with all the trees?

How to remove them?

What trees need removal?

And how do you replace those trees?

It's a little bit complicated on the mall because those trees are fairly large at the root systems.

If you actually want to remove the tree and get into the root system, it goes like under the bricks and it's going to be a tough job.

So we'll look forward to what they have to share in the summer.

So let's see, let me start with hack updates.

In February, we are working on a land bank.

We came up with a basic work plan to how to get there and schedule a series of subcommittee meetings to get that underway.

Of course, the first

Battle casualty is always the plan.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, but we're getting back on track on how to move that forward.

Mr. Chair, you asked about the

Social Democratic Socialist Society of America's meeting on green social housing, which was a meeting that was actually sort of a panel discussion which included our own Michael Payne to discuss how a land bank in the city would fit in with a green social housing.

Not so much the green, which would be ubiquitous, but the social and the housing and the affordability.

That was very well attended.

I'd say there were about 80 members of the public there.

There was a high degree of interest.

There were also a couple of brand new members of the hack there.

Counselor Oschin was also there.

And I gave a sort of an update to the group.

Some of what they are advocating for has already happened.

And I let them sort of focus that advocacy.

and there seems to be a great deal of interest there.

Schultzville Affordable Housing Fund Committee report is out.

I am not sure of what I received this morning is the final report for the draft, but it is up for the 18th meeting of the Council.

So you can check the packet for that.

March 14th on Thursday, CDBG Task Forces meeting.

We have five or six meeting scheduled to get that sorted out.

and then last Thursday, Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission met.

One item that was at least of some interest to me was this study that was the Regional Transit Governance Study presentation.

which is, for the public, there is a lot of work afoot on the coordinating of transportation policy and the governance of that and how to establish something on a more regional level.

This was a fairly exhausted, by which I mean a hundred and some odd page study on how to do this and it is frustrating.

There is a large couple of highlights.

There is a dichotomy of the needs, of course, between the rural areas and their need for transit and what is needed and how to engineer that versus the inner ring in the city of Charlottesville.

That sort of work in the rural counties really needs sort of a centralized, coordinated body like a transit authority.

Fortunately, some years ago, the legislature did indeed authorize, and in statute, we can fund, by bound, and stand up the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority.

There are several of those in the state.

This one that we are version, which I mean is just dormant.

We haven't done anything Is a little bit of a redheaded stepchild and that it has less power to acquire money than the others Unfortunately, so part of this had to do with what the possible funding options might be and the short answer that is all of them stank and then

Also, sort of ironically, although it is really the outlining counties that need the organizational structure first, CARTA, the Charlottesville Regional Transit Authority

Statute requires that the sole members of this organization be Charlottesville and Albemarle and they must establish it and then they can invite in the surrounding members of the commission.

So we're in a position where the city and the county has to get together to stand this thing up so that we can then invite the others in and then once we've done that, figure out how we're going to govern this thing and then go back to the legislature.

It seems like a pretty complicated process.

We've had the unions that this is going to have to deal with.

Right, so I mean that gets even hairier.

Part of the study was to look at similar communities like ours, for example, State College Pennsylvania and Bloomington, Indiana and Blacksburg, and to see how they manage these

manage, fund, coordinate these processes.

They all have a somewhat different model.

There was sort of universal appreciation for the Blacksburg model, which is that the town of Blacksburg runs it.

Christiansburg pays in a little bit for their service, and Virginia Tech pays for it all.

We like that one.

But there's a lot of work to be done on that in terms of getting the interim groups stood up and moving so that was sort of the major piece there Can the various bodies just give them money do they have to raise funds themselves?

so the issue is is that you'd have sort of a

where the scrape off would be.

There are grantors.

You can use the grantors tax.

You can use the real estate tax assessments.

All of these, we have various, you know, sort of ballpark figures of how much that would raise and what you would have to do.

The most regressive is a sales tax change.

And then most galling is the transient and hotel fees.

But of course,

Louisa County, Greene County, Favanna County, compared to the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle, they're not collecting, it's not even the same ballpark.

And we can't use the fuel tax.

That has to be specifically authorized by the legislature.

We can't fool with that unless the legislature says we can.

Yeah, I've had two meetings since our last meeting.

First up was Lupec last month, and we have another one coming up on Friday.

We talked about the Fontaine Research Park, the new biotech building there, the new parking garage there, and kind of all the space in between.

They're aiming to make it a bit more pedestrian friendly, less like a suburban research park with tons of parking.

There will be more streets currently, all of the streets, even though there are like six of them in different directions.

All the same name, so they'll be adding some new names for the streets.

Actually, already underway is there the new roundabout at the entrance, which will have a bus stop with transit service there.

We had a presentation from the RWSA about the raising of the water level in Ragon Mountain, so that had been long planned.

In fact, when they made the dune dam, it was big enough to accommodate this increase.

They had

Plan to raise it sometime in the future for resiliency just to have more water in our supply.

They're going to raise it right now and then we'll have more water in the dam.

And then we had a conversation about the Fontaine Interchange Smart Scale Project.

I'll get to that in a second actually.

So, at NPO Tech, which, again, there's another one of those next Tuesday, we had a discussion about smart scale.

And so in the end, Hillsdale South is not going to be able to be submitted.

There was some talk about intersections on pantops in the county, and those likely won't be submitted again, but because they scored poorly last time.

But the things that will be submitted,

are the what is coming out of the Barracks Road Pipeline project.

I hope you all saw the survey that VDOT sent around and have actually already closed because they're in a tight timeline and running late.

But essentially what they're talking about is a shared use path running

along the south side of Barracks from Emmett Street out to Georgetown Road and that would require roundabouts at both of the exits off of 250 in order to have enough room under the underpass to have room for that shared use path.

And then they're talking about a roundabout at Georgetown as well.

And there are other alternatives in there of more conventional intersections, but those would have to have just sidewalks rather than shared use paths.

And then the Long Range Transportation Plan is still underway.

We had a lengthy discussion about that.

And then the Fontaine Project.

So I've kind of been remiss in not talking about this to you guys before, but the basically

This was a smart-scale project from several years ago.

And one of the big drivers for VDOT wanting to do this was that right now, as you're driving north on 29 at the 64 intersection, you have to make a left turn across 29 to get onto 64 westbound.

And Schrocks have to do that as well.

And there's quite a bit of traffic doing that.

And it's fairly dangerous.

And so VDOT wants

to divert, to close out that left turn and divert those trucks to keep going up 29, go to the Fontaine interchange and then kind of make a U-turn sort of thing there and then come back down and then make a right.

And so the project they got approved was actually got most of its points off the shared east path that was in there because of its land use score.

but also included a displaced left turn in which there would essentially be free flow for northbound traffic to make a left which would kind of be still on the south side of that Fontaine Bridge and then have free flow back down onto 29 going southbound.

There were concerns raised by UVA that that plan would not accommodate future traffic from the expansion at Fontaine Research Park well enough.

And so there were concerns that EVA didn't want that would have required a loon or sort of a turnaround point where trucks could, because if you wanted to go left but not go back on 29, like to the reservoir or to the school out there, you would have had to make a right onto Fonte Eastbound and then make a U-turn.

And that would have incursion EVA property had built that whole big turnaround.

Anyway, there was lots and lots of discussion about this over the last six months or so and VDOT hired these consultants to look at different plans for this.

In the end, the plan that it seems all the parties have agreed on is essentially a conventional signalized intersection with lights and

There will be two turn lanes that go into Fontaine, similar to how there are now.

Overall, it will operate very similarly now.

There was concern that this wouldn't help with that 29 left turn issue, but Fedot has determined that actually they can still close that left turn onto 64.

And so that is what they believe MQ policy has made the decision to go with.

And as long as it stays within the bounds and the budget of the original smart scale project, VDOT will allow it.

I think during design will be a lot of concerns to pay attention to, particularly with how pedestrians and bikes on that shared use path will get through safely.

Given that there's an almost free-flow right turn lane, almost a slip lane into Fontaine And those sorts of things will all be determined in the future as the design progresses But the big change now is that they are going with the conventional intersection idea concept for the Fontaine

area.

All right.

The only meeting I went to was the last month's BAR meeting.

The only item of interest was a preliminary discussion for a three-storey apartment building in a venable neighborhood.

There was a little mix-up where the applicant had thought that the property was owned RX3 because that was the last thing that was on the latest map before the final maps were issued, shortly before the deadline for their applications.

So it actually was an RX-5 property.

The applicant decided to continue with their preliminary discussion with a three-story apartment building.

And I don't know if perhaps they'll come back with a five-story one, but they did say that the three-story one is a walk-up.

And there's just one stair.

It's a much simpler building.

So they may end up keeping it just for that case.

And we continued to discuss our guidelines.

You guys are very busy.

The good news is we have help, so if there's something you guys are doing that you'd like to offload,

and negotiations with Ms.

Creasy and Ms.

Roettger regarding that.

We're probably going to ask you to take one, two, maybe three additional committees.

You guys are covering the ones that Ms.

If you're happy doing what you do, that's great, but I think we ought to let Betsy get in the game as well.

Something you'd like to move on.

My report, I left my report, my dog ate my report.

Let's see if I can remember.

There were a couple of meetings.

One meeting that I do remember well is the Parks and Rec.

The dogs and dog waste and dog on-off leashes remains a big topic of discussion.

We are just beginning that.

As we get further along, I will update you on that.

But just know that people are talking about it and we're working on it.

The other thing is the Parks and Rec master plan that is underway.

I believe we're beginning our show.

Please look out for that.

And if you're able to get to any of those, please, please make those.

We also had a chat about the garden plots.

And I think I accompanied you guys on that presentation.

And it's just, you know, the garden parts are now available and they're the

and at the top of my head, that's all I can remember so sorry that my dog ate my report.

Ms.

Creasy, Mr. Freeze.

I'll go ahead and start.

I'll just remind you guys that we do not have a March work session specific to the Planning Commission.

The City Council will be having a work session on the decarbonization study and everyone is invited to attend that.

You could go virtual or in person.

It's been advertised as such.

So if three of you end up in the room, it's okay.

for that to occur.

Thank you.

So as you all may have seen, the press for reporting on an RFP were released this week for on-call support for design review services.

And the purpose is exactly that, is to be able to have

on an as-needed basis additional support for design review under the new zoning ordinance.

That's the primary purpose that also, as you guys are well aware, as we go forward through this bringing on board the new zoning ordinance, I think of it as an ongoing kind of learning and experimentation process.

And as we learn from our experience with the ordinance, we are aware of the value of being able to put out information on how the new ordinance works.

And so the other role that this on-call consultant be able to provide to us is to help us develop those educational pieces on an as-needed basis.

So that is one thing we have going on, but we have lots going on.

The other thing that, I guess I'll try and beat the press to this one, we'll be, we are advertising one or two intern spots coming up this week and one of the projects at least that we've identified thus far for an intern to work on will be a street tree strategy working with the urban forester, Stephen Gaines and Parks and Rec generally to

to look at strategies for promoting more street trees within the city and protecting the ones we have.

We anticipate the conclusion of that project will include a presentation to the Planning Commission on their work.

And one of their work products will be an ordinance related to street trees.

Do we have a sense of what kind of firms would respond to that sort of RFP?

Is it like co-writing firms or like local?

I have a question.

Yeah, it's, it's, so it's city paid?

It is city paid for, that's the notion, yeah.

So it's set up right now as a, as a really more of an extension of staff time and expertise, if you will, from the design side, yeah.

And we'll see how it evolves over time.

Like if it becomes something useful, we may offer it in the future as more of a traditional peer review where it's actually paid for by an applicant.

It's set up for both, because it's as we need.

We're in new territory.

And so this is, this certain extent is understanding what are we going to need as we go forward.

And we've already seen a, what feels like an uptick, not in applications yet, but in interest under the new ordinance.

And so we're anticipating being ready.

Cool.

Thanks.

Absolutely.

Where are we?

We are now ready for matters to be presented by the public that are not on the formal agenda.

Alright, so Ms.

Sure.

I do not see any in-person public this evening, but we'll turn to our virtual audience, which I don't have in front of me.

Mr. Corey, do you have that in front of you?

Can you tell?

Okay, so if any of our virtual members of the public are interested in speaking, if you raise your hand in the application, we will be able to call on you.

You would have three minutes to speak.

Is there any interest?

All right, with that, we will close the public hearing on this thing.

We are now ready for the consent

Mr. Chair, I have a motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda with the change on page 143 where I say lead LEAD lower case.

Any other changes?

Right.

Mr. Creasy.

All righty.

OK.

Aye.

Although, can I ask a quick question?

OK.

And yes.

Mr. Chair, I have something from the public that I'd like to raise.

I've had a few questions about public safety, especially around Fifth Street.

It's been sometimes since we've had an update from our transportation planning team.

I certainly think we can either do it in a meeting like this where things are short and easy, or we can have a work session.

But Mr. Freese has a comment.

Thank you.

I would never.

But it reminded me that I had a third item that I wanted to mention in my comments, which is that I will be speaking on the 18th to the City Council on our work program for the upcoming year.

Nothing that would be unfamiliar to you guys, we talked about it at one of our previous meetings about kind of the projects coming out of adoption of the zoning ordinance and kind of next step type projects.

But in addition to that,

Our transportation planning program will be presenting to Council on April 15th and be doing a detailed review of everything that's going on in that space, in which there is a lot, including a grant we received from VDOT, where VDOT will be leading a study of the Fifth Street corridor from Cherry all the way now to the entrance to the Fifth Street station.

Cool stuff.

So that's the direct response to your query.

March 12 is actually a fairly August day in the world of the built environment.

To start with, it was the day that Pope Urban II was elected in 1088.

Nothing but the name.

There's no other connection there.

For some of you, it is also the birthday of André Le Norte, who is the 800-pound gorilla of landscape architects.

He was Louis XIV's landscape architect and designer.

But more, I guess, on point to the built environment.

Today is also the day that Canberra in Australia was founded.

It was a compromise to where to put the capital.

There was a lot of dispute and debate, and Canberra was selected because it was a site that was at least 100 miles from Sydney, which is what Melbourne insisted on.

The one point here is that they put out a competition for the design of the city, two American architects won it, and it is a planned city from the word go.

So it's a completely planned community.

And then finally, today is the ninth anniversary of the death of Michael Graves, who was a heavy hitter in the world of both modernist and postmodernist in the late 20th century, but also very strong at the design field of ADA and accessibility issues.