Planning Commission Regular Meeting   11/12/2024

All right, good evening.

I believe we're ready to begin our deliberations.

The commission will be in order.

Thanks Chairman Mitchell.

I have a number of items I'd just like to update the Council on.

So I'll go through this list as primarily sort of a construction and planning updates across grounds.

So I'll start off with Fontaine.

Some of this I've reported on previously, but I wanted to give an update.

So construction

For the Fontaine Central Energy Plant is well underway.

The underground utilities, which includes geothermal wells, the foundation walls and the slab on grade are now complete.

Steel erection begins this week, and the plant is expected to be completed in early 2026.

The Fontaine parking garage, so the precast erection is underway, and that project is on track for completion in the fall of 25.

The Manning Institute of Biotechnology.

They're currently pouring the first of the two crane pads and they have an estimated December arrival for the first crane and foundations are expected to be completed in early 2025.

So now moving over to Northgrounds, the Center for Politics, which is at the Montesano House, there's two projects there going on just

for the Center of Politics.

The first is a renovation of the house, which includes a 5,000 square foot addition for sort of programming and event space.

The site's been cleared.

Utility and infrastructure work is underway.

And the second project that's associated with that area is a new access drive from Leonard Sandridge Road to the Center for Politics.

That construction is largely complete, just completed this past week with the initial code of asphalt on that road.

Lights will be installed shortly, and this will become the primary access point for not just construction, but ongoing.

That'll be the only access point to go to the Center for Politics.

The existing one, which is accessed from Crestwood Drive, which is off of Old Ivy Road, will be closed.

So that's good news in the sense it'll move more of the public traffic over to Leonard Sandridge as opposed to having to go underneath that tight railroad trestle.

Jumping over to UVA Health Projects, there's a couple updates here.

The hospital south tower, so the design of the fit out of the remaining floors is underway.

There's a CM selection process which is happening as we speak, and this is to really sort of build out the floors that were in the new hospital wing that were not fit out during the last phase.

So it's only interior construction work.

This past Saturday, the University and UVA Health sponsored a community workshop in Western Fifeville that invited the public to visit university-owned sites on Grove Street and Oak Lawn and to see the historic Fife Family property.

So the point of this was to let people see the properties in person and have them offer ideas for the future use and activity and to discuss how these projects on these university sites can complement and support both the neighborhood and the community.

Jumping over to the M&IV corridor, construction is ongoing for the Carson Institute of Democracy, and so that's still in the sort of foundation phase, but it's on track for a summer 2026 opening.

The Virginia Guest House Hotel and Conference Center is nearing completion of the exterior envelope, and it is on track for a fall 2025 opening.

In December 5th and 6th, the Board of Visitors is meeting, so I just want to give some of the buildings and grounds, subcommittees, some of the agenda items that they'll be reviewing.

So the first is schematic design review for the Center for the Arts.

This exciting project will house UVA's museums, the School of Music, and the Tessa and Richard Aider Performing Arts Center.

Student Housing at the Emmett-Ivy Corridor.

We brought for design review as well.

I'm excited to share more details of this at the next Planning Commission session.

And just to give a reminder, this proposed site is located at the westernmost parcels of the 14-acre development that sit near Copely Road and span between the railway and Ivy Road.

Northgrounds parking garage with its 6th level, 1,030 space structure parking deck, a structured parking deck will be presented for design approval with the goal of starting construction this fall.

Now moving to close out, I was just going to give a housing update.

So in my last, in the last sort of council meeting I forgot to, another commission meeting I forgot to mention that

At the start of this academic year, 338 students moved into Gaston and Ramazani houses, which are our latest dormitories on Brandon Avenue.

The Darden Student Housing recently broke ground on their 218 apartment unit building, and that offers their grad students a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom configurations.

And then an update from the projects at Piedmont in Workland.

So, both of these affordable housing developments, just to remind everyone, Piedmont is in Albemarle County, and the Workland and 10th Street site is in Charlottesville City.

They're moving steadily ahead.

The developers, Piedmont Housing Alliance, and preservation of affordable housing are working on pre-construction activities such as site assessments, community engagement, and early design concepts.

Universities negotiating

Partnership agreements with the developers, which will hold them accountable for creating high-quality communities that will be affordable and well-maintained for many decades.

Each site is unique and it continues to progress on its own timeline.

The timing for construction depends on financing and entitlements.

Based on conversations with the developers, construction likely will not commence before 2026 for Wirtland and 2027 at Piedmont at the earliest.

So all I have to report is that the tree commission, that works very hard, they're working on the state of the forest report or the urban canopy report and have been doing, there's been some positive movement on hiring someone for an urban forestry management plan.

And this is under Parks and Rec department.

The tree commission sits under that.

So Steve Gaines is our staff who works really hard.

They've done some more invasive plant removal.

You might see along the Ravana.

And I think the last thing was

There's always some questions and thoughts about research in terms of how to maintain as many trees and have more trees.

So, I don't know if it would be worth doing a work session sometime.

People are always kind of looking back at the code saying, you know, should this be tweaked or stormwater these or, you know, there's a lot of discussion and

I'm not needing to do this immediately, but I thought it might be interesting to hear or just to talk back and forth about some of these strategies, especially given our last work session on the climate.

And also I'll add

I believe our new director was on one of these things.

I've been to some reviews at UVA where there's a studio looking at building some small houses on lots testing out the voting code.

They're calling them ADUs, but anyway, and there's a landscape architect working with them who is doing an amazing job looking at kind of looking at strategies for how homeowners might

Well, I don't have anything to report this month, but I will be joining the MPO Citizens Advisory Committee.

Ms.

Chrissy, is there anyone that we need to notify?

Ms.

Yeah, I can also notice.

I told them that might happen.

They sent out the agenda for the next one.

So I can also.

Ms.

The citizen transportation group.

Hello.

The Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development got together the single staircase advisory group for one last meeting to discuss the finalized report on updating our building code to allow safer and more affordable missing middle housing.

It's, what, 17 pages?

We've made some tweaks.

I, of course, added a bunch of historical and urban design stuff.

I'm excited about it.

It's looking like, based on the national changes, we will be getting a fourth story of single staircase design.

The five and six remain a question mark, how we're going to do that.

The Pew Charitable Trusts shared some initial data from a report they've been working on, on safety, looking at New York City

and Seattle.

And they also took a similar analysis to Virginia.

We don't have a lot of single staircase, new construction to study, but just looking at multifamily, old multifamily, new and single family detached.

And found that new multifamily remarkably safe.

Huge, huge safety improvement.

So the more multifamily we can build in Virginia that is new, up to code,

I attended a

panel discussion and tutorial on the hops and calf application process as a panelist back at the end of September.

The hops, that's housing operations

in support, as opposed to bricks and sticks, both administered by the CAF committee.

The hops application period closed on the 18th, and I think CAF opened on the 18th, or it opened a couple of days later, and it's open and about to close.

We've revamped some of the materials surrounding that.

Most of them sort of have been administrative, and nobody understands that.

You know, that sentence, let's just take it out and give up sort of stuff.

So the hack has had two meetings since our last meeting.

They were both fairly free form.

We did have a discussion in September regarding lived experience people, folks on

We also had discussions sort of in the

In September on the final run up to the land bank presentation on October 7th to City Council that went quite well Sunshine myself and Nicole Scrow presented that and fielded questions And we thought that went as well as it could have so

The October hack meeting we discussed ongoing plans regarding tax abatement programs.

I do not want to get out of the weeds on that with this panel at this time.

TJPC met twice.

The September meeting was almost entirely of housekeeping.

and others.

which the region has to keep rolling in order for FEMA to be willing to give us money when it hits the fan.

Then we also had a discussion of the upcoming Regional Housing Summit in March.

They are just to let the public know that it's happening March 13th, 14th, 15th in and around the Omnium Common House.

It was a resounding success last year.

This year they're not quite

cobbled together the rest of the budget so there are sponsorship opportunities still out there and they have a fairly packed agenda for that.

Yeah, I've had a couple meetings since our last meeting in September.

First, we had a Lupec meeting in September.

We got updates on the Rive Anastation Futures project.

That's the county bought a bunch of land around Rive Anastation for future expansion.

An update on the North Fork Discovery Park and an update on the IV Pipeline study that Meetout was doing.

Unfortunately, I wasn't at that meeting, so I can't give you any

details about those updates.

Later, we had a Lupec meeting in October about the AC44, Elmoral County's new comprehensive plan has this concept of activity centers.

And we sort of learned about staff's thinking on how those would work in AC44.

We also had an update on the regional water supply and the various improvements that our WSA is planning on that, as well as

You may have heard there's an ongoing sort of discussion and negotiation with DEQ about how much they're allowed to take out of the Beaver Creek reservoir for Crozet and a possibility of needing to expand it in the future or find another water supply for Crozet's growth.

Let's see, we also had an MPO tech meeting in October.

This one was pretty bleak.

As you might recall, we submitted a smart scale application for the fifth street diverging diamond to get a center running shared use path over the bridge.

The main reason for selecting a DDI was that it

was thought to not require a bridge replacement, which would make its cost something that was possible.

Sort of at the very end, in fact, after the application was submitted, the VDOT bridge team determined that a full superstructure replacement would be necessary.

And so the cost for that came in at about 80 million.

So we'll see in January if that one gets funded, but it's not looking good.

We also got an update from the Ivy Corridor from that meeting.

They're going to package it into kind of different sets of projects that can be submitted just sort of separately.

Because new rules say that if you do a corridor study, if it says a bunch of projects, you have to submit them all together as one package for smart scale.

Unless you say, well, this is bundle one, this is bundle two.

And then there will be, if you know it is about to launch,

News, STARS studies.

Can't remember that stands for something about transportation solutions or whatever.

One of them is Emmett and 29, the interchange and sort of the immediately surrounding area.

Another is US 29 from hydraulic to woodbrook.

That'll be focused on safety, as I understand it, at intersections from hydraulic up to lows.

And then there's one in the city, which will be the first time Vida has done a study like this in the city.

And that will be the West Main, Ridge, McIntyre, Water Street, South Street intersection.

So developing a plan for future smart scale submissions for that.

And separately, there will be new pipeline studies as well, one on Fifth Street, because presumably the DDI will not get funded, so they will be taking another look at what to do there, and looking at the fishery station intersection.

There's also a pipeline study for the 29 at exit 118, like at 64 interchange, which was sort of redone a few years ago, and has had some safety issues since then, as well as some, you know, traffic backups.

So, sort of an exciting time of starting new studies for VDOT.

I kind of repeat what I said.

A couple times ago, I think, that it's not looking good for us to get much of anything funded through SmartScale in the future.

So we should take the projects that we have funded and execute well on them.

But there have been some negative developments on that front as well.

All right, with the BAR, I think two things of note.

At our last meeting, we looked at a nine unit apartment building on Gordon Avenue.

This was supposed to be a final review.

We had seen it some time ago, but it's just a reminder that

The developers chose to cap it at three stories and nine units for construction type and I think also not to get into the obviously ten units, one of them not to be affordable.

We did have to defer it because it actually had some issues with the zoning code that needed to be addressed.

I'm not sure if those were figured out or not.

We were unsure if there were some parts of it that actually met the zoning code or not.

I think staff was going to take another look at it.

Then we looked at the CAFE guidelines.

We actually completed reviewing a section, so yay, finally.

The philosophy that was adopted was to try and

Limit the privatization of them all.

So the guidelines were tailored towards more transparency through the cafe spaces.

And nothing really, no big changes, nothing earth-shattering, just limiting heights of things, things like that.

OK, great.

Carl, were the fountains part of the conversation?

I think it's a more detailed issue that we did not discuss.

But I do know that hopefully that comes back to us at some point.

Because the solution, I know we don't like the solution that's currently there.

Alright, so as you guys can imagine, because of what we've recently gone through, Parks & Rec has been really focused on the master plan, lots of work going into that.

We are hoping to land the plane in February.

But I have sent you guys a copy of the most recent update to one of what's happening with that.

So you know that one thing to note there, it looks like there's going to be a new part added.

And it's an outlander master plan that's in Kendallwood.

And that's going to be just nestled inside the Kendallwood complex.

Now, the old friendship court.

And so we're kind of geeked about adding that to our parks and rec portfolio.

Ms.

Sure, so we will start getting geared up for the work session that you guys will have on November 26th.

That will be on the CIP and that will be in preparation for a hearing on the CIP capital improvement program in December.

I will note that the

Yeah, that's a different round.

Sorry.

Yeah, that's really the big item that I have.

I don't know if, no, I don't have any other items at this point in time.

We do have a meaty agenda for December.

We have a few items.

So please get geared up for that.

And we will not be holding a work session on Christmas Eve.

So enjoy other activities instead of being here on that day.

for the work session.

I do not know.

Typically, we do it the week before.

Once we get through this one, I'll be checking in.

That's the path we're on.

Cool.

Thanks.

All righty.

Thank you, Ms.

Brown.

Anything you could?

Alright, we are now ready for matters to be presented by the public regarding things that are not on the formal agenda.

This will actually be the one opportunity for us to get input from the public tonight.

Because I do not believe we have a public hearing beyond this.

So is there anyone who would like to?

Ms.

Creasy, why don't you go ahead and moderate?

Sure.

So this is managed from the public.

As the chair noted, this will be the opportunity for speaking on any issue that's on the agenda, as well as any item that is not on the agenda that you would want to share with the commission.

They'll be a three-minute opportunity to do so.

We will alternate between our in-person audience and our virtual audience.

We do have a few folks in our virtual audience.

If you are virtual and you're interested in speaking this evening, please raise your hand in the app.

We don't have anyone on a phone right now, so that option should be

present for you if you choose to do so.

So we will begin with our in-person audience.

Does anyone want to address the commission?

All right.

I don't see anyone in-person.

How about our virtual audience?

Okay.

Virtual or in-person, last call.

All right, then that session is closed.

We will now move to the consent agenda.

So, given that we will, as we review these, we'll be reviewing items one through four, and these are the minutes.

All right.

All right.

Consent agenda items one through four unanimously approved.

Chair, I'd like to make a motion.

Another motion.

Oh, OK, cool.

To approve items five and six.

OK, OK, good.

The consent agenda regarding the MACA project.

Let's do a voice count.

Ms.

Sure.

Mr. D'Oronzio?

Aye.

Mr. Solle-Yates?

Aye.

Mr. Yoder?

Aye.

And Ms.

Aye.

Yes, sir.

Okay, where are we?

Come to an agenda, Mecca.

There will be no public hearing tonight, so we're now down to commission action items.

And the one item is the electronic meeting participation policy.

Is a member of your team, Ms.

I will be the member of the team that will be speaking.

So you all in August, that was quite a while ago, had mentioned moving forward with an electronic policy.

We actually had a draft in September, but there were some items that our Attorney's Office were still reviewing at that point in time and so we took that back and we worked through any of those concerns in the draft that you all have before you has been signed off by the Attorney's Office.

It meets the state code requirements.

It meets the

guidance that we've been given by council pertaining to meetings.

In fact, their electronic policy will need to be updated based on some changes that the state made.

And so I'm sure they'll be going through that process in the near future.

You all have the opportunity to review this, of course, and then either adopt, adopt with changes.

which we'll probably have to go through legal first so keep that in mind.

We're open to whatever or to decline the policy and then if the commission decides to move forward with the policy then we'll put it on a cycle so that it's reviewed annually that'll give us the opportunity for you all to provide comment as well as us to stay in tune with whatever state or local

Regulations come forward.

Right.

Any questions for Ms.

Chrissy?

Actually, I do have a question.

So personal reasons, you only get two per year.

It's two or 25 percent.

Yeah, 25 percent.

There's limitations on personal, but family or self-medical have more flexibility.

I would move to adopt this electronic meeting policy.

Ms.

Mr. D'Oronzio.

Hi.

Mr. Solla-Yates.

Hi.

Mr. Yoder.

Hi.

Mr. Roker.

Hi.

Yes.

Oh, remotely in two weeks.

Which is unfortunate because I do take note at the time that October 29th is both National Cat Day and National Hermit Day.

And I have done no research on this, but I am metaphysically certain that that is not a coincidence.

Today, however, we're stuck with National Fancy Rat and Mouse Day, which is pretty small beer.

So thank you for leaving me with those dregs, Mr. Chair, and I would like to adjourn.

We are adjourned.