Board of Architectural Review Meeting   5/19/2026

Mr. Zehmer.

No, that's okay.

I would call her Mrs. Lewis.

I just had a very good question.

Can I suggest, may I suggest, you take a five-minute recess before you start, and can I talk to you and Mr. Miss Lewis out in the hall?

Because I can do that.

No, I just want to have a conversation on a sidebar with two of you, not the entire PAR.

Are you okay with that?

That was in our recess with MD2 VARMS.

So I'm recessing.

You knew you were in trouble.

One's right there.

Is Kate out there?

Okay.

Since we haven't started yet, I'd rather just wait to get everybody here.

Just maybe just do that

There we go.

Welcome to this regular monthly meeting of the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review.

Staff will introduce each item, followed by the applicant's presentation, which should not exceed 10 minutes.

The Chair will then ask for questions from the public, followed by questions from the BAR.

After questions are closed, the Chair will ask for comments from the public.

For each application, members of the public are each allowed three minutes to ask questions and three minutes to offer comments.

Speakers shall identify themselves, and comments should be limited to the BAR's purview, that is, regarding only the exterior aspects of a project.

Following the BAR's discussion and prior to taking action, the applicant will have up to three minutes to respond.

All righty.

Mr.

Chair, I have a motion.

We'd like to, I don't know if it's suspend the rules, but to amend the rules in our agenda just to state that on item E, the pre-application conferences, there are two, one for preliminary discussion of the three West Main Street parcels and one for a preliminary discussion of the valid road parcels.

That on those, the applicant and our

conversation with the applicant will be limited to 30 minutes, and outside of that 30 minutes, we will take public comments.

That's right.

I'm sorry, can you clarify that again?

Just say that again.

Okay.

And I'm sorry you missed that.

With the applicant.

Just for tonight.

That was a question.

But then our discussion and questions would constitute the rest.

Their presentation's 10 minutes.

Yeah, 20 more minutes interacting with them, our questions from us, questions from them, comments.

And then after that, public comments, or wherever in the agenda we usually do public comments.

I don't think there's going to be any of that.

Does that make sense?

No, but Valley Road is the last item on the agenda.

So it seems, since that would be less problematic, possibly, they would have to stay here a long time to make their presentation.

So that we could deal with that more expeditiously.

Well, to add 30 minutes on how long people in this room would have to wait during our meeting.

I would also add, just because we're in the discussion on a motion, that anybody can make any public comments.

at the beginning of our meeting, as the chair just outlined.

We typically don't take comments that are relative to our agenda, but we're being relaxed in the rules.

So the risk there is items not on the agenda.

For example, the consent agenda, if somebody wants to remove it, they, at the beginning of the meeting, can comment.

But you all,

The opportunity here is for 10 people to speak in matters from the public and those same 10 people to speak later.

And let's be candid.

This is a pre-application discussion.

This is not a hearing about a CLA.

And I think let's also be open and honest to the situation.

We have an applicant coming to you with a project.

within an AEC district.

It's subject to BAR review.

We have the design guidelines.

And Mr.

Chair, your statement at the beginning about we ask people to refer to things that are germane to the BAR's business.

And I think in the sense of this being a work session to sort of talk about some of the architectural details,

I can hold people to that, but I don't know, I think it'd just be...

Let's be open about what we want to accomplish here.

But if you wish to make the matters from the public include items on the agenda, then anticipate that.

But I would say, otherwise, you can have matters from the public.

And in a prior motion, you had limited that to just like counsel does to the number of speakers and emphasized that it's matters that are not on the agenda for discussion.

The West Main project is on the agenda.

That's right.

And currently would allow discussion.

Just regard what I said.

We did it last August and that was my precedent, that was my thinking, but we haven't had enough time to use the same motion that we used where you addressed speakers during matters in the public and you also addressed

She does.

I'd withdraw.

I do think so.

And I think you're also asking people for a single comment.

You're not taking three minutes for questions, three minutes for comments.

And limit comments to two minutes.

And that they're germane to the BAR's consideration of this.

So I'll withdraw my motion.

I'll make a new one.

On the pre-application discussions for West Main and Valley Road, we're going to limit the discussion with the applicant on the application to 30 minutes total.

Matters from the public will be heard.

They will be limited to each speaker, two minutes each, has to be germane to what the BAR can do.

If you aren't familiar with what we can do, I think our chair can familiarize you with that.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Opposed.

Okay.

All right.

That's fine.

The consent agenda this evening, sorry, excuse me.

Matters from the public not on the agenda or the consent agenda.

In the public.

Yes.

OK. Come up to the podium, please.

Hi there.

My name is Frank Bector.

I live in Fifeville.

And I just want to thank the Board of Architectural Review for doing its darndest over the course of a few months ago to try to adhere to its guidelines.

and I don't know if there has been any kind of formal change to those guidelines but I suggest and hope that if the guidelines are still as they were or if they have changed that you would also just try now in any discussion here to adhere to your guidelines the best that you can as you see them and because

Well, that's just what I hope because if a matter needs to come before council again, then it will come before council again in terms of what their guidelines are.

So that's what I think should happen in any kind of consideration of how the council stands versus what their guidelines are.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it, Frank.

Any other matters from the public not on the agenda?

All right, our consent agenda contains two items, meeting minutes from February 18th, 2026 BAR meeting, as well as COA application for 203 Ridge Street.

I believe there's... Yeah, I'd like to pull 203 Ridge Street for discussion.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Schwartz.

We'll move that to, I guess, the first new item.

Hear a second?

Second.

I'll give it to Mr. Bailey.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Oh, and also something that came in from our proper schools meeting today.

You do not have to have been present during a meeting to approve the minutes.

So, no, it just was something to remember.

So if ever you're voting on minutes and you say I wasn't there, you can.

All right, so our first new item is a certificate of appropriateness application for 203 Ridge Street.

The owner is the city of Charlottesville.

It's an accessibility project with site alterations.

Yes, so there are planned accessibility improvements to the fire station, Ridge Street,

The building itself was constructed in 1959.

The facade was altered sometime after 1985, but it is our little fire station.

So here's a picture of the original façade, kind of matched those bathed viders nicely.

And then a kind of point of local history is that a replica of the Liberty Bell is at the Ridge Street Fire Station, and it's still around every 4th of July, from my understanding.

So here's the site plan.

The improvements will include two brand new accessible parking areas, a new sidewalk, site alterations including landscaping and accessible seating, and then just essentially a new ramp that will make overall the site more accessible.

That's it.

So demolition of existing concrete sidewalk, minor regrading, recaving, restriping obviously, that ramp into the new sidewalk, and then that new kind of area.

I take it the applicant's not here to make a presentation?

Oh, you are, that's right.

Would you like to present this to us, please?

Thank you, Board.

I'm Scott Hendricks, Project Manager for the City of Charlottesville.

It's very much a 90% ADA project.

A lot of sloping that needs to be rectified and things like that.

It's the main route into the building, so it needs to be improved.

We have added a little bit of landscaping to the plan as well, but really it is truly an ADA project.

Does anybody have questions for staff?

All right.

Do we have any questions from the public, either here or online?

Yes.

All right.

My name is Uriah Walton.

To answer a quick question, yes, I'm Uriah from the Bible.

And I want to ask, how does this project, how is it going to help our community?

Are you going to use people to employ from the community?

Or are you going to call people from outside the community, like y'all been doing?

Because a lot of our community is not working.

And I see a lot of people coming from out of town working.

And so we're not fluctuating.

We're not surviving.

So we need to be more community-attentive.

We are bound by the Virginia code for procurement and it's a pretty complicated thing.

We can't hire who we want.

We have to hire the low bidder in every job and we don't know who the low bidder is until bid day.

Mr. Larson, I appreciate your sentiment and your comment and your question.

However, that doesn't really pertain to the Board of Architectural Review's purview, which is really just the exterior elements of the design project.

It's part of the community, but it is, but it doesn't fall within our purview.

Appreciate your attendance tonight and thank you.

Any other questions from the public either here or online pertaining to the BAR's preview?

All right, questions from the board.

Comments from the public?

I had a question about the vending machine.

I had to Google this.

It's the first time I've seen this.

It seems like it's a harm reduction vending machine in Dropbox.

Just out of curiosity, I looked at it and I thought, maybe a vending machine doesn't belong in the front facade of a building here, but I think

It probably serves its purpose better being visible to the public on the front of the building, so I'm not going to argue with that at all.

I'm just curious how it's sort of operated from a safety.

Yeah, I can't give you the details on how that's operated.

That is a product that is being provided by UVA to the fire stations and this goal of the fire station to get it in with this project.

Yeah, there are about four or five parking spaces there now.

And they have a non-compliant highway that's about three or four feet wide.

So the wider highway that you see there between the two parking spaces is code.

and what it has to be, so we really can't go down.

Yeah, we might lose the parking space, but there are still probably four or five up there in front of that building that aren't ADA.

And some additional ones off to the right-hand side as you face the front of the building.

Any other questions?

I have to, sorry.

Hey, y'all, I have one.

I'm going to the car.

I heard something you said, and minors walk that street, doctors walk that street, elderly walk that street, homeless walk that street, everybody walks that street.

OK, so like, vending machines are all over the place.

So when you said there are minors that walk the street, it kind of hit me like, oh, dang, hold on.

Everyone walks that street.

I walk that street almost every day.

So would it be, you said, wait, what did you say, like protection-wise, or like your concern is like that it would get robbed or something?

No, no, no.

Well, there are things like, this is my Google search, OK, that I did this afternoon, Narcan.

is in here, which I don't know how it's used personally.

I'm curious if there's, it's actually safety for the children.

You know, like kids walking by, going to the Music Resource Center, things like that.

Is there a need for safety or some sort of control on that?

I get what you're saying.

But see, that Narcan could save one of those miners' lives as well.

I totally agree.

Yeah, I was just curious about it.

Like, were you trying to pinpoint miners?

Right, exactly.

That's great information.

Any other comments?

Yep.

So I wanted to speak to the harm reduction vending machine and how it usually works.

There are certain supplies that folks can get from harm reduction vending machines no matter who they are.

Narcan, first aid kits, things like that.

But if you're someone who has gone to UVA, has gone to the ED, the emergency department, has used recreational drugs in any way, you can get a number to put into any regular, it looks kind of like any regular vending machine.

and you put in your number but it's like your specific number and then you can get sharps, you can get pipes, you can get, I don't know what's going to be in this vending machine and I see that there's a drop-off point and I was to your question of like safety I was like people don't want sharps out so usually the great part of having a harm reduction vending machine next to a sharps container is folks can come and they can

get rid of their used sharps and then they can get new sharps.

And so it's making it safer for the community because then there's not sharps where someone, yeah, all over the place.

And so usually it means that folks bring their sharps there.

And with it being the fire department, there are not enough sharps boxes around town generally, just putting a bug in someone's ear.

So having it there so that people can get rid of their old sharps and then get new sharps from the vending machine is usually how it works.

But things like first aid kits and other stuff, everyone can get from the vending machine.

So that's how they work.

Thank you.

This is kind of random, but I'm glad that

These ADA upgrades are being made.

It's long overdue.

I'll date myself, but I was on the Charlottesville electoral board in the mid to late 90s.

And we had to move this precinct to a good location, to another location, Tonsler, which is a great rec center.

It's a great location.

But we were almost forced to move out of this firehouse, which a lot of the community there wanted.

to keep that precinct at the firehouse because historically it was a precinct that had been used for a long time, but we had to move it because of ADA issues because people in wheelchairs couldn't get into the precinct and people would drop them off and then have to go over the curb.

So I'm actually amazed that the city has gone this long without making these sort of

improvements for access.

Because it's not just firemen that access this, and now that we've heard what this vending machine will be used for, we hope that more people would actually be accessing this building, you know, at least the exterior of it.

So, yeah.

All right.

So the reason I pulled this is it's

I don't think we can actually force you to do this, but I just want you guys to consider it.

You're tearing up an awful lot of pavement to do this, correct?

So looking at the site plan, there's a lot of distance between the back of those parking spaces and the curb cut on Ridge Street.

and it's a long curb cut.

It extends the full length of the property along Ridge Street and I'm wondering if that needs to be there.

If there would be a way to, it looks like if I scale the PDF you could have a 25 foot drive aisle behind those ADA parking spaces and still have about a 10 foot planting strip along Ridge Street that wouldn't interfere with the fire trucks but would just cut that curb cut which is so obscenely long and increase safety on the sidewalk there.

from the federal government and from the city to do this kind of work.

I don't know that I can add on a traffic portion to this project.

I really don't think we can.

It would probably be better that, you know, the distance between where we're working and the road is still a pretty good margin, probably 30 or 40 feet away from

There you're talking about where the curb is.

I think it would be better perhaps to bring this up with public works and see if it can't be a project with a city engineering team who know much more about talking about roads and curbs than I do anyway.

It is a long stretch without any shade for anybody who's walked from basically West Main.

What is it?

West?

Whatever that direction is.

There is one magnificent tree on that.

Yeah.

But it's, you know, we've talked about that tree before.

But it's not in front of the fire department.

There's no landscaping.

Okay, I didn't see, oh, sorry, here it is.

I missed the page when I looked at this before.

With that said, I'm happy to make a motion.

Go for it.

All right.

Having considered the standards set forth in the city code, including the ADC district design guidelines, I move to find the proposed site alterations at 203 Ridge Street satisfies the BAR's criteria and is compatible with this property and other properties in this ADC district and the BAR approves the application as submitted.

All righty.

We'll call a vote.

Discussion.

Sorry.

Any discussion?

All right.

Hearing none, we'll call a vote.

Ms. Tabony?

Yes.

Mr. Timmerman?

Yes.

Ms. Lewis?

Aye.

Mr. Bailey?

Yes.

Mr. Schwartz?

Yes.

I vote yes.

Thank you.

Thank you guys for humoring me on that.

All right.

Next item is Certificate of Appropriateness Application for 110 3rd Street Northeast.

It's a window replacement project.

Go ahead, I was gonna say.

All right, this is 110 to 114, 3rd Street, and this building, well, sorry, this site we believe was mostly vacant for the later part of the 19th century into the early 20th.

Construction date on this building, not entirely sure from what I gathered sometime before 1950, so between 1950

Loosely in the international style, the steel framed windows that you see are quite different on every facade of this building, but as the applicant will discuss, there's varying levels of degradation existing.

I have some pictures.

The patterning are different from the upper and the lower.

So essentially for operability, they are proposing replacements of all second floor windows.

The Pella Reserve Series is what they've selected with Square Millions.

And while we

Okay, thank you.

Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Hi, I'm Steve Barber, partner owner of that building.

Can I share a proposed rendering?

Sure.

I didn't make it into the application.

So the proposed, if you look at the proposed and the existing of our proposals to match the window light layout exactly to what's existing and basically just replace the units with a modern efficient window system respecting the original basin reopening, no structural changes to the building whatsoever.

The existing windows are basically failing, have no thermal efficiency.

They leak air.

Half of them don't operate.

The cranks in the operators have broken and failed.

There's literally no seals.

And we've had three different contractors come out to look at trying to remediate them.

But these wouldn't be casement windows anymore.

OK. We can't tell from this.

They would be operable.

So on the front facade, they would all be casements with the same white layout as the existing.

Those are just examples.

It's a pallet reserve series.

Very good.

All right.

Any questions from the public on this project, either here or online?

I have a question.

It looks like the window units on the front facade are double operating.

Each unit is double operating.

Yes, that's right.

I think that's correct.

I think you're right.

So it'll be a single swinging unit.

Any other questions?

I guess I have a question.

So looking at the historic window, it seems like the top two lights are fixed, and then the bottom four would be the operable leaf.

That's correct.

Can you go to that diagram you had a second ago, Keith?

Please.

Okay.

There you go.

Gotcha.

Actually, that looks like, the middle one looks like they do split in the middle.

Though the tops aren't fixed, but they do split in the middle.

Alright.

Any comments from the public, or excuse me, any more questions from the AR?

Actually, I have a question for staff.

Sorry.

OK. Where are we with aluminum clad windows on facades on historic structures?

Like, what do our guidelines say?

Aluminum is OK. Yeah.

I think aluminum cut is encouraged.

It's a new construction.

OK, but not vinyl or plastic.

Sorry.

I think the easy part, at least for me, is definitely the three other sides I'm perfectly OK with.

Yeah.

Can we get that out of the way?

Yeah.

OK.

I will say I've lived in a house with windows just like this and we had storm windows with them and there's no way, they never stop the wind from coming through.

For what that is worth.

I think these steel windows kind of have a lifespan.

At some point, the water gets into them, they start to rust, they start to malfunction.

I think the applicants done a nice job at finding a replacement window that mimics the original pattern, light pattern, and doesn't alter the historic opening, the administration of the building.

I'm sorry, I have another question for you, not a comment.

The detail you provided, the jam is at the, it looks like you're adding two by material, so you're probably going to be increasing the depth of that jam dimension for the window,

That's on just the edge of the brick.

Yeah, that's right.

And is that the condition of the head and the sill also?

I think slightly, yes.

Any other comments?

I'll make a motion.

Having considered the standards set forth within the city code, including the city's ADC district design guidelines, I move to find that the proposed window replacements at 110 3rd Street Northeast satisfy the BAR's criteria and are compatible with this property and other properties in the district and that the BAR approves the application as submitted.

I'll second with the qualification that we want to make sure that

The movable casement windows that the applicant provided at this meeting are what we're for the front facade or what we're approving because he said that it was left out of our package.

Yeah, the only thing that was left out was the color rendering.

Great.

I'll accept that friendly amendment.

I guess I'll second to that if I can.

Okay, good.

Alright, I'll call the vote.

Mr. Rosenthal?

Yes.

Mr. Timmerman?

Yes.

Ms. Lewis?

Aye.

Mr. Bailey?

Yes.

Mr. Schwartz?

Yes.

And I vote yes.

Thank you, Mr. Barbara.

Can I please have that document, please?

That's the first time I've ever seen it.

Thank you.

Next item is 1615 Keith Valley Road for new addition exterior alterations and repairs.

This is an interesting property.

It's probably one of the oldest houses in the city of Charlottesville.

Yeah, it actually is.

This is one of those who knew.

I know about it.

A friend of mine grew up next door to this house, but it's something that a lot of folks don't realize is in town.

But yeah, 1615, Keith Valley Road.

You see it here on the right-hand side of the image.

That's a log cabin from possibly as early as the 1760s, possibly the 1790s, so somewhere.

various arguments in the historic surveys and notes in the margin so some uncertainty there but we know that it was there at least before 1800 and initially it was those were two structures in the 1930s they were merged into one long building and then

Pavilion structures are added on the back, forming sort of a U-shaped structure with a, what we think, and I showed it in the staff report, we think was a, well here you can see that, where those doors are on the back, I think it was an outdoor patio that was enclosed sometime after the 1930s additions.

And then,

It's a very uncertain date, but probably in the 50s or 60s, you can see here on the left side of the screen, this garage was added.

It was not built with a foundation or footing.

The rest of the house is single story and doesn't lend itself to an addition.

So to have room for a family, you need a bedroom that's connected to the house.

So the plan is to remove the 1950s, 1960s garage, reconstruct it in its current footprint, but make it taller.

You can have that bedroom upstairs and then connect it to the house physically with an enclosed hallway and not an open breezeway so that it is part of the house.

The other things that are being done on the house are all on the back.

There's a lot of water infiltration

and other things.

This house is in some rough shape.

So they're doing a lot of repairs, a lot of moisture mitigation.

They have to also have their living space in the cellar that, to be a bedroom, needs an egress window.

So they're removing that bay window, which is on the left-hand side, and installing

Michael Kochis,

window out of the bedroom and an egress and then that it's a I believe a triple sash window in the middle of the wing being replaced with a triple double hung and then it on the French doors I'm always intrigued when I see a building that looks like my house

I was in place with big sticks.

But the rear enclosure of that we think was the patio.

And they're going to be replacing the doors on these.

They had some close-up photos, and we share those.

It's in pretty bad shape.

Replacing the roof, replacing the Pizza Hut skylight with something a little more appropriate.

Ultimately, because of the low pitch on this section of the roof and over on the photo you see to the left-hand side, there's a low-pitched section there going back with a membrane roof, but currently it's a roof's asphalt shingles everywhere.

And so going back, most of these are

You see on the rear kind of non-issues.

They're not necessarily affecting the truly historic part of the house.

I mean, we do acknowledge the architecture of the 1930s edition.

But the garage is where we've got some glitches.

Because of our new code, by enclosing this breezeway, they are creating a single structure and the length of that structure exceeds what our code allows.

There's a couple of options.

One of them is for the applicant to request a special exception.

I'm not sure which they're going to do, but so we're including this in, and I do recommend approval of the garage, that while it might have some difficulty with the zoning, approval of COA would certainly assist in that, the request for the special exception.

If for any reason you weren't comfortable with the garage or questions about the garage, I wanted to make sure we still moved forward with some of the weather improvements on the back of the building.

And Kate noted, when she drafted the staff report, there's a lot of

It's a repair being done on this house.

Some of it that it very much needs, but those things are not what we would bring to you for review.

So this is a request again for the COA to add the garage to enclose the breezeway, essentially construct a hallway connecting the new garage and to do these window alterations on the back.

We're, um, the staff, I see no problem with them and recommend approval.

Quick question for staff.

If we just approve the COA as submitted, does that in essence say that we're approving the

A violation?

Not a violation.

So this is somewhat similar to, well not similar, identical to the fence across the street here.

You're approving it if it meets your guidelines.

You just talked and said the opposite.

Sorry to say that.

You said it would assist in the approval.

It would be nonconforming rights.

So I think that if you were to

But for BAR reasons, say you don't agree with this garage and wanted to exclude it or remove it, then I would say omit that, not deny.

And I wouldn't deny anything because this is just the first look at it.

But it would be to omit something, the garage.

Or, and Kelly can address this, the option might be to omit the enclosed hallway.

and so that would at least avoid the zoning question for a while, but kick it down the road.

So there's some permutations here, but I wanted to make sure just that because this is the first time you all at BAR can defer something, an applicant can request a deferral, so I wouldn't, anything that, if there's anything part of this that you're not comfortable with voting on, and then some of the improvements on the back that are necessary you'd like to approve,

I have another question for staff.

Did I understand you saying that they are going to demolish the existing garage all the way down and they'll put a new one in with footings?

Pretty much the same spot.

In the same spot?

Well, the most identical spot and just a little bit deeper into the yard.

And we are not required to give a COA for the demolition?

I think that that's not the historic part of this building, the historic character.

I thought you said the garage was 1930.

It was Marshall Wells.

OK. Just been a mistake.

Just the two additions towards that.

Okay.

My other question was on the Marshall Wells 1930s, or I thought we said 40s, but anyway, additions kind of around the old, old structure.

We're changing the windows on the back.

What else are we doing?

That's it.

I mean, they're repairing some roofs.

If you look, actually, James, you probably have some interesting insight.

The picture there on the bottom right of the page is how they've kind of ran the soffit in there.

You've got these huge.

Stone Fireplaces.

So there's some repairs that need to be done to keep water away from the historic building.

But those are, we're not reviewing those, no.

And so yeah, the only alterations to the 1937 editions

And actually, I think that the kitchen even, that breakfast nook area is a later addition.

But if you felt like the garage was a problem and you wanted to remove it and talk about it, you certainly could.

It's the part that says later expansion.

I suspected this.

And that's based on when there's a floor plan in a 1980s sales brochure.

And if you look at the floor below, it just suggests to me that that kitchen was added on.

Now, granted, yeah, a long time ago.

I don't believe it was part of the 1937.

And this survey refers to

The 1937 alterations and some later, as if almost like recent to 1937 changes.

And maybe the applicant can answer my question, but thank you.

I appreciate it.

I'm sorry, say that again.

Oh.

Yeah, go one more, and you'll see where it shows the basement space downstairs.

There's, yeah, where it says storage and utility, so there's some alignment that's a little bit off.

That storage room doesn't align with the breakfast room, so I think that

Some things radically.

I could be wrong, but that's my best guess.

I'm Kelly Trout.

I'm an architect with Robertson Renovations and New Construction.

We're working with an engineer out of Pennsylvania who's helping us with this project.

I don't have a ton to add to the presentation apart from the fact that we're just trying to preserve what is there.

We have no interest in fundamentally changing what's there.

At the same time, we'd like to be able to bring it to modern usability.

The spaces are small.

The living spaces are very generous for the bedrooms, which there are two bedrooms and two bathrooms currently, which is part of the effort to add the window well in the basement to try to bring a third and really connecting the garage.

The garage is in terrible condition.

It will eventually

demolished itself and it had no foundation, no footing.

The existing HVAC and plumbing all runs exposed inside the garage to the upstairs area so it's very poorly constructed and needs to be replaced.

So our only ask really is to replace that existing garage in largely the same footprint with the exception of a little bit of extension towards the back which does raise the ridgeline just a touch in order to maintain the existing pitch of the roof

I think it's a total of four feet that it rises.

And then to connect the two buildings with a mudroom that allows the rooms over the garage to become part of the living space.

We are fully aware of the zoning issues and the fact that we're pretty stuck in this project.

There's really no practical way to build a second story on any of

what exists, structurally not viable even if we were to somehow convince BAR that putting two stories on the back of that cabin made any kind of sense in respecting the cabin.

There's just nowhere else to expand in this property.

It's a very large parcel and so that the house that exists there sort of isn't well utilizing this giant parcel in our

The client would just like to have a couple extra bedrooms and buy that connection.

One change from what is in your drawings is on the front facade, what is currently shown, correct right there, to the right of the second chimney, the furthest right chimney.

Instead of being brick facade there, we're proposing to go back with siding so that it really does feel like an enclosure of that existing breezeway, keep all those lines the same, keep the overhang so that it really delineates the new from the old, which I know is important to the BAR.

We know that we have some zoning hurdles ahead of us, but

All right, thank you.

I do have a hand raised.

Unmute, sorry.

Hello.

Okay, yeah, we're the next-door neighbors.

We look to the south of the Murphys, and I had a question about the length of the fact that the property is exceeding the maximum length, if you add that breezeway.

Does the maximum length, or does that length, right,

limitation take into account the fact that the property is two and a half acres and it's a very wide property.

If you look at the existing structure, which is really the new structure's proposal, sounds like it's going to be about the same width as the current one from the street.

It does not overwhelm the site.

It sits comfortably within the very large site that it's on.

That's a good question.

The zoning doesn't differentiate between lot size.

Kelly knows what she's been.

She could probably tell us the options better than I could explain them, but yes, sorry.

It's been a lot of conversation.

I think to answer the question that Mr. Heller raised is that it is a result of the zoning

You all can't overcome that, but your recommendation, as he said, this fits.

I mean, it's essentially just enclosing a small section of breezeway, so the masking scale is not significantly changed, and particularly in the context of this site, so I think that you all would be, you're not

Any other questions from the public?

No.

I have a question.

Where is the low-pitched roof?

It's on the very back, the enclosure of what we believe was at once a patio.

It's actually got a really lovely slate floor inside of it and it seems like that

Exterior courtyard was enclosed.

That roof up there is failing.

The skylight's failing.

Just a lot of rotten water.

So that would be the only section where I foresee membrane roofing.

And what membrane are you proposing?

The length limit according to zoning is 60 feet.

I believe the entire structure end-to-end if you include the garage now is 114 feet.

The main house alone exceeds 60 feet, so there's really no way to add to either side of the existing home.

In fact, the existing home is about 2,700 square feet, so we're also approaching the problem of the 3,000 square foot maximum per building on a site.

So there are several places where we get pinched by the zoning code and then being here.

So 114 feet is the answer to the question, and it is exactly what exists now.

We do not propose any additional length.

The only change would be to infill that small piece between the existing garage and the existing home.

and it would remain behind, that infill is also behind the existing breezeway which you can't even see the breezeway now because in that photograph that you just had on page three up on the right, they've got such a giant holly there that you almost can't, the massing of the addition would be pretty similar to what the hollies

How far back is the facade of the garage from the front facade of the house approximately?

I just am curious, would that little, the bay on the front of the original house, anybody know where that came from?

Is that original?

Yeah, it was two log cabins that were extended.

Even in our city assessor's file, we can't quite piece it together.

Some of the best information is in this old sales brochure.

So you think that was like a dog track almost, sort of like an opening?

Sometimes that was the case.

You might look at UVA Special Collections.

I started.

Yeah, that's not your main to what we're.

The applicant could do that.

They're not proposing any change to that.

So it's a moot point.

It's a curious question.

Any other?

Questions from the public.

Thank you.

Well, wait, I have one more question.

It appears that the height that you're putting on the new garage is identical than all the way across.

I'll ask a leading question.

It does not.

They did.

That's right.

Judge Heller.

One other question.

Sorry.

I don't believe any of them are currently functional.

Where is that happening?

The front.

It's the one beyond it.

Right, it's right by the kitchen window.

It's a flashy detail and where they're directing the water.

Do you have a question or a comment?

Question.

Well, just hold on.

Let's do comments from the public.

Go ahead.

Come up.

I thought he said he did have a question.

He did, but we're past questions from the public.

Jariah again.

So I've been doing this work for 35-plus years.

I'm 55 years old.

From what I'm hearing, the place is not structurally sound.

It's on unsolid ground.

And if it's not perped, then you're going to continue to have the same situation, or even worse.

So how are you going to deal with the foundation before you deal with the structure is what we really need to know.

The foundation of the existing home?

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

We're fully supportive of all of the work that's being proposed here.

The House needs work, I mean they're very nice people, but the House has not had a lot of TLC in the 15 years we've lived here.

This sounds great.

And the garage is a dump right now.

Lark lives there, but oh my goodness.

I mean, it's great that they're going to replace it and put something in that's not sagging and whatever.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments from the public?

All right.

Comments from the BAR?

I just want to say I'm glad that the 1937 additions by Marshall Wells are significant.

I mean, you can't say they're the most important part of the House because the log cabin certainly is, but they're important.

significant properties in Albemarle County where people have fought to maintain Marshall Wells's structures, like tooth and nail.

I won't go into it.

So I don't agree with staff saying that those are not important additions.

They're just as important as the original structure.

And thank you for preserving what you can in those additions, because it has perpetuated the use of the house.

This house wouldn't have been used for the last century as a log cabin.

I'm supportive of it.

Staff didn't say, I just want to be clear, we did not discount the importance of the wings.

I'm just trying to get the chronology of when things occurred.

We'll listen to video.

My only comment is that, and it's deceiving a little bit because this elevation view doesn't have the depth in it, and so I do feel like the ridge line of the garage being higher than the roof is regrettable, but I think the fact that it's pushed back from the house helps mitigate that.

And I'll just add that I have no problem with the zoning issue.

I think that you're doing what you need to do.

You're maintaining the same footprint.

You're not increasing the size in any way.

Okay.

Having considered the standards set forth within the city code, including the ADC district design guidelines, I move to find the proposed rehabilitations, alterations, and new garage at 1615 Keith Valley Road, satisfy the BAER's criteria and are compatible with this individually protected property, and that the BAER approves the application as submitted with the following conditions.

Per the design guidelines, doors and windows with insulated glass and simulated divided lights will have internal spacer bars.

New gutters will be half rounded and the downspouts will be full round.

In addition, the VAR notes that the approval of the COA for the new garage is for the design review only and does not authorize any work requiring a building permit, nor does it supersede the city's code of development, which the proposed work must comply with.

Before you all vote, Carl, are you comfortable?

All right, Carl, any discussions?

Well, I guess we just had a little bit.

Any further discussion?

All right, I'll call the vote.

Mr. Timmerman?

Yes.

Mr. Bailey?

Yes.

Mr. Schwartz?

Yes.

I vote yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you all very much for your efforts in preserving this very old house.

Who's seconded that?

All right.

That concludes our new items.

We are now into the pre-application conferences.

Per the motion that was made, if anyone wasn't here at the beginning of the meeting, we made a motion to limit the discussion with the applicants for both of the preliminary discussion topics to 30 minutes.

We are going to allow public comment.

We're not going to do a separate comment and question, just all in one.

We're going to limit public comments to two minutes per speaker, and that's just out of respect for everyone's time.

We've got a lot of folks that want to speak.

Discussion is 835-843-847 West Main Street multi-story housing development project.

So we'll start with a staff report and then have a presentation from the applicant.

So this came before you all in August of 2025, August 19th for a pre-application conference, which is required by code.

And the proposed lot is here in the West Main Street ADC district.

It's currently mainly a parking area right after you cross the bridge on this section of West Main, which is sub area B of our district.

So you here see two elevations of what was proposed in August and a new design, which is the point of this discussion today.

A continued discussion to address the response of the applicant to your previous comments from those modifications.

And again, just to remind everyone that no action is to be taken tonight.

This is just a continued discussion.

Any questions for staff?

Okay.

And I would just advise counsel to sort of use the notes under the discussion.

So it's the boilerplate stuff, but you'll see on the middle of chapter three, or page three, I've also inserted some specific comments, questions that you all may want to.

I can't see what this is.

In the discussion, if you guys can work through, use it as a framework for your questions.

And then, as I said, there's a section on page three about the additional comments that I've added that I think are more specific than the generic.

And that's just my suggestion.

You go through those, use that as a checklist.

So here I can share my copy if it would help.

So that's the usual stuff from the type of information you're looking for.

Elevations you want to see, are there any details you want to see, are there any sections you want to see?

But then I have, like I said, some specific things that I've noted that I had advised the applicant might be likely additional information that you all would request, but there's no need for them to provide that if you all don't think it needs to be provided.

So I just wanted to point that out and then

We did do a little bit of an analysis about height and massing and spacing but this is on West Main so there's not a, everything's up on the street and we have an interesting sub area that has very few old buildings.

Thank you.

I think everybody needs to speak into microphones.

Let's do five minutes.

you know why they change

It's seven o'clock, I'll call us back to order, please.

All right, so we've got the presentation on screen and we're going to hear from LB Collective.

Hi, my name is Brittany Sanders.

Sorry I am losing my voice so I won't speak long.

I just thought it was really important for me to come up here and speak as the lead developer on this project and just kind of set the tone for the presentation.

I was at the last PAR meeting.

I was not in a project lead role at the time, but I was here for feedback firsthand.

I heard the community's feedback firsthand, and I think what you're going to see today is a thoughtful

and direct response to both levels of those feedback, specifically around the height with it coming down from 11 stories to eight and six.

We didn't just step it.

We ripped the band-aid off to try to be very respectful of the feedback.

And then also the walkway was something else that was really important.

We now have direct access to West Haven's walkway that's there.

and then we're also proposing to carry that across Main Street in the form of a pedestrian and in large celebrated pedestrian connection.

There are still ongoing conversations with the community.

Thank you.

Thank you everyone.

Good evening.

My name is Mohamed Mohsen.

I'm an architect here to represent LV Collective.

I appreciate your time.

I was here last August when we presented this project and got a lot of feedback from the community and feedback from the board and I'm excited to kind of run through some of the updates that took place over the last few months.

When we met August, there was really kind of three main things that a lot of the conversations centered around.

One was the overall height, number of stories, the scale of the building in general.

Two was the connection, the pedestrian connection from West Haven to West Main.

And then three was some input and feedback on the overall architectural direction that we've received.

These building sections here at the top, I think they tell the story better than any other type of drawing.

The left side there is what we've presented back in August.

The right side is what we've done after the reduction of three stories.

So we're now a total of eight stories.

It's no longer a high rise building.

In terms of code compliance, we are under 75 feet to the top residential level.

We're type three construction, so we are wood on the top five levels, concrete on the bottom three.

And the overall building height from average grade to top of move will need to remain below 85 feet in total.

Section below kind of cuts north-south, proposed development on the left, west main on the left, and it cuts all the way through future development for West Haven to show the stepping and how the scale has kind of become a lot more natural in terms of the height progression.

I'm going to scroll through a few slides that show the before and after.

Left is before, right is after.

West Haven's latest proposed development is highlighted in green.

You can kind of see the scale difference here between what we presented back in August versus what we are presenting today.

This is part A and 8.

And then the view from 10th and Page.

And these are a couple of high-level views looking along West Main from the east and west.

Bottom is proposed.

The next thing we talked about is the connection.

And you can see in the current developing here, this is zoomed out, obviously, with the overall context.

You can see that what we presented back in August had the connection running right to the middle of our block, coming around the building on the east side, coming all the way down against the parking edge, and then back along the sidewalk due to some great challenges, and then to West Main about mid-block.

And what we're showing now is kind of a sweet connection.

We've worked with the community.

We've worked with West Haven.

It was a lot of discussions.

And we've now kind of aligned the pedestrian connection of pedestrian promenade from West Haven all the way to West Haven.

And it kind of aligns along the west end of the building.

That secondary line there is still a pedestrian connection that exists and it also takes you to West Main right by the bridge intersection on the southeast corner of our development.

I'm going to scroll through a couple of slides, just very high level.

These are kind of some landscape and hardscape studies, starts to talk about the precedent imagery that we're looking at in terms of the screening along the west edge, the type of material used at the walkway.

The planters, the furniture, a lot of the pavement as we kind of work through the portion of the pedestrian connection that we'll need to connect vehicular access into the parking deck versus what is there only for service and maintenance.

and you know for the cell tower and potentially the transformers if there's ever service required.

The connection here is a 22 feet wide pedestrian, a vehicular connection, eight feet wide pedestrian connection and then three feet of landscape buffer and a screen.

Once we get past the entrance to the parking you can see kind of through the pavement pattern here it really gets, it starts to celebrate the pedestrian connection.

Furniture along the plaza, we've got a plaza proposed along West Main here, and you can see the type of furniture, the type of lighting that's proposed, and then just overall the character and imagery.

I understand that Water Street will be brought in to continue the discussion, the ongoing discussion, and continue the collaboration with the makers.

Quickly looking at the building plans, this is kind of the ground level, frontage along West Main, entirely active use.

We've got this cafe area in green and amenities and leasing on the right.

Parking behind it, this is the mezzanine level, some additional amenities on the first level above ground and then we start to pick up residential.

This is the perspective view kind of at the middle of West Main where the signage is kind of our front door and the left side of this image is

We're seating associated with the cafe, and you can see just a lot of attention to that public realm and the detailing at the street level, whether it be the materiality, the brick material, the coursing, the stepping with a corbelling kind of at that band above the building base, the amount of transparency and glazing, and then just the use of landscape and pavement patterns to really activate the streets.

There you go.

This is the typical residential level.

And we, above level six, we have a step back to level seven and eight on the right side there.

You see there's a big step back there.

And that's what we've seen in the section in the beginning.

So we've got double, it's a double loaded quarter, doing levels three to six, and then level seven and eight, we have a step back.

Level eight, we also pick up an amenity and a terrace at the bottom right corner of the plan.

This is the front elevation along West Main.

We've heard encouragement to use more masonry along the frontage and along the edges as we turn the corner.

And so we've got a mix of masonry, fiber cement with different colors, and then obviously at the base glazing and some accent metals.

This is a zoom in.

It shows the detail and it shows the articulation.

It shows the focus on the public realm elements that is really key and important to this development.

A couple of quick renderings before I wrap it up.

This is a view looking over the bridge, looking at the overall development.

So we know that this development is right by the rail.

There's going to be a lot of open views on West Main headed towards our building.

And so we've rearranged and reconfigured the overall massing simplified.

It's more masonry to that site here.

And of course, with the scale reduction, just overall the proportions improved considerably.

I know when we met last time there was the feedback related to like how tall and how heavy and bland that corner felt when we intended to really celebrate it and so you kind of see the progress from last meeting to now.

Here's a little bit of a close-up again kind of at that bridge intersection and then here's what we have before.

And then this is the west-facing facade.

This is facing the standard.

Basically, that's the pedestrian promenade elevation.

And this is the perspective view, kind of looking at where that pedestrian connection ties to West Main.

That crossing here is kind of showing a little bit pushed a little bit more west.

We would like to work with the city and the community to be able to get that to line up with the pedestrian access.

And then that's what we've shown on the last round.

This is the north elevation.

This is the east elevation facing the rail.

And then just a couple of the enlarged views should we need to reference those in terms of the overall context.

Materials, as I mentioned, brick veneer, that color, that beige color, and then three colors of fiber cement panel.

Thank you very much for the time.

Thank you.

Nice job keeping it in 10 minutes.

I really appreciate that.

I think we all do.

That's a pat on the back, man.

Good job.

Great.

So I'm going to try to figure out if we want to allow for a public comment and then come back to our discussion with the applicant.

Maybe go for it.

So I think that makes sense, because that way we can hear what the public has to say, and then perhaps we can form some of those into our own questions, and it'll inform our questions and comments.

So I'm going to invite the public up.

Just a reminder, please state your name.

Keep your comments succinct.

Please keep your comments to the BAR purview.

That is the exterior of the building.

And I think that's better.

Two minutes.

Two minutes.

Thank you.

I had a third thought, but it'll come back to me.

All right.

So who would like to come speak about the project?

Hey, everybody.

My name's Brandon Collins.

I always wanted to talk.

So I'll try to be brief.

I've lived in Charlottesville my whole life.

My children have lived here their whole lives.

And I've had the serious honor and privilege to work with residents of West Haven on the planning for their future redevelopment.

And it's been, from our end, I think meaningful, not without challenges, and not without a whole lot of hard work.

Some of those residents are here today.

I do work for CRHA, but these are kind of my own observations in dealing with our resident planners.

So the first thing I think to point out is that at least our resident planners, and I think most of the community in general, this is really a first look at a new revision to their plan.

The ones we've kind of been going off of are the ones in August.

I know there's been some conversations about what LV may or may not be willing to do and tweak, but

Our planners, at least our resident planners at West Haven, which there are about 30 steady participants and probably an overall about 70 with over 90% of the community participating in our process, they haven't had a chance to evaluate this at all.

We've got tons of work to do and our assumption all along has been that when LV is ready to maybe make some commitments that they would sit down

with the community and with our residents and evaluate any proposed changes.

That said, I can see that they've tried to work with some of what they've heard.

I think it's really important for the BAR to understand that at eight stories,

The height and scale and mass of this building is still an adverse impact on the neighborhood.

Part of that is because they're set down on a hill and it was done on purpose to separate the community.

So that's something we have to work with.

So no matter what happens, no matter

The proposed changes at eight stories, even just on West Main, there's going to be opposition to this, right?

And so one of the things is that to mitigate that is to work with LV on a community benefits agreement.

That's not your concern.

You're concerned about design.

So what are the things that might

Sorry, we're going to limit it to two minutes.

All right, I'm going to give you this.

It's a very crude drawing.

Basically cutting these corners to allow visibility.

Deeper step backs on the south, east, and west sides of the buildings.

Not yet, I'm sure some people at some point, but if I were you, and yes we want to work with Water Street Studio, residents core demand is being able to design that memory walk out to West Main Street and it's awesome that we can work with Water Street Studio to do that.

We haven't sat down and done that work.

And if I were to BAR, I would want to see that design before even considering any kind of approval.

And certainly, the residents need to be able to present that to you all and have you take a look.

Appreciate that.

My name is Earl Hicks.

I'm also a West Haven planner, also West Haven resident.

I still don't like the building.

We haven't seen proposals change before the agreement was posted.

Design changes needed to be made, but without a significant reduction in height, there would still be a negative impact on our neighborhood.

So other steps needed to be taken.

Work with residents for our approval of design changes.

Residence to have full control over the planning of the memory wall to West Haven, to West Main Street.

And what I wanted to say is that as I stay in here as a resident, as a resident planner, I still propose the building still to be even eight.

I've seen the addition, but still,

When you come and survive the neighborhood, you need to sit at the table with them and let them know and be a partner with them, not come through the back door and figure, OK, here we are.

This is what we're going to do.

And we should go along with it.

Hey, I'm Angela Carr.

I'm a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia.

I used to be a resident of West Haven.

That was the very first core neighborhood that I had lived in when I first moved to Charlottesville, Virginia.

But I just feel like it is, I just have kind of a comment, you know, but I feel like it is kind of inconsiderate, like you said, Mr. Earl, to come in to a neighborhood and take full control.

and not have any consideration for the people that lives in the neighborhood or how they would feel or how that would affect their lives, the daily day lives or how the building would affect how they normally get to Main Street to get to the stores or how everything's so just in arm's reach and now like you're proposing a big huge building, it's just kinda like what are you gonna do for the neighborhood that you're proposing the building to be in front of?

Also,

I kind of feel like, I mean, I feel like, but this is my very first time seeing you guys.

And it was like a really, you know, like, I've never had any communication with you guys.

I've never seen you guys at any meeting.

I've never seen you guys at any table, ever.

I've never seen them.

And so this was like a surprise when they stood up today.

And I was like, oh, this is LB Collective.

It was really a surprise.

So when you say you worked with the community,

My mom told me not to call anyone a liar, but that is a fib.

Because you have not worked with the community.

If you've worked with the community, we would have seen you walking through West Haven.

You're not on the cameras.

So I know for sure that they're not working with the community.

So again, I would urge the BAR to dismiss the application until they come back with more information from the community themselves that this is going to actually affect.

And also with the memorial wall, it's kind of like, how can you make a choice with a wall that you

Do you know the history behind it?

So it's kind of like, how can you just take full control of something?

It's not fair.

It's not right.

That's like someone coming into your home and walking right past you and your wife and not speaking, but taking their shoes off and getting comfortable.

You address the people that live there.

That's how you do it, respectfully.

And that's how you gain respect.

And that's how you gain the community's trust.

And you also gain the community's trust by having a listening ear when someone's talking.

But that's just my opinion.

Thank you, Ms. Carr.

Appreciate it.

Uriah, 35 years, like I said, 17 years building here in Charlottesville.

Restoring the Jefferson Building, working with the YMCA, working with Faulkner, working with pretty much every company out here, All Patrol Rainbow Restoration, Fishersville, and here in Charlottesville for UVA.

Highly experienced in every part of a house from the ground up.

And the thing that I want to bring to the table is this.

I see a lot of bars around here.

What I don't see is that many shelters.

I don't see a place where these people can go to get off our corners so that these people can enjoy their walks, walk their dogs and the children.

We need to

Apply ourselves to something other than bars.

I think we got enough bars and cafes going on around here.

Most of the poorer people can't even afford to go in half of them.

So, I mean, we're not communicating with each other.

We're not, I mean, other than me coming in and pulling a shift and serving you guys, I mean, I don't get to even talk to you guys unless I'm outside giving snowballs to the kids for free or something like that.

I do a lot of my work myself.

I do try to collect donations.

I do have three projects that I'm working on.

One for the senior citizens to get them to and from their buildings instead of them having to walk to the bus lines.

One for the children, the poor children to get to the outcomes and set places where they can't experience their experiences of the other kids.

And I got a store bus, low economy bus that I'm gonna have with care packages for the low economy areas.

I hear y'all talking a lot about the places that's already established and making money and doing things, but I don't really hear y'all talking a whole lot about the places that are not established and that still need help.

I'm out here every day.

I work with the public.

I work and I use my own money.

I buy chips and stuff and flip them for an extra quarter so that I can do my projects.

It don't take much for me to pray to my Lord and put a quarter together to make another quarter.

When I try to ask for donations a lot of the time, my family is not all my family because all of them don't apply to me the same.

But I still have to work my way through it.

I still have to take the rejections.

I still have to forgive them and love them at the end of the day and wake up the next morning and serve them again.

And I have no problem with doing that.

God, good night.

Appreciate it, you're right.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

How are you all doing?

One of the things I do want to point out is that when we first came and heard about the project, the height was always an issue.

The height is still an issue.

They went from 11 to 8, but if you're looking at the remnants back there,

It is still equal, maybe a little bit higher than the standard, and the standard is still a negative effect for us in West Haven in the 10th and Page neighborhood.

But, however, we have, Ms. Brittany has been reaching out, has reached out before, and we've had a couple of meetings.

in some meetings, some questions weren't asked, and then there has been some conversation lately about what a community benefit could look like.

And we talked about a lot of things, about the preserving the community, preserving the neighborhood, services to the neighborhood, but the one thing that they could not commit to is lowering the height to 6'5".

and because it's, and what they're basically saying is that 6-5 wouldn't make a million money.

And so basically what we are asking and what we are saying, and today the presentation, Ms. Brittany, the presentation that he showed today, I wish we had that also to be able to talk about.

So Brandon is correct, we haven't seen this.

What you all saw tonight is the first time we've seen it.

However, the height is still too much for us.

Brittany said the other day in a conversation, she said, well, if we walk away, whoever owned that lot is going to go and find somebody else.

The difference is that if they walk away, the person who owned that land now knows you have to do this better.

Stay with the community.

You have to get with the community.

And so we can build something that each, all the community, 10th and Page, plus the developer, is satisfied with.

And then you won't have us pushing back.

We're coming here with a collective voice.

So, no to the eight stories.

Six, five.

And please make sure we get a copy of what you presented here today, for we did not have that.

All right.

I'd like to know how many people will be employed by this building.

Mariah, I'm sorry, that's outside our purview.

That's outside our purview.

This board is really focused on the architectural impacts on building.

I did want to clarify really quick, our last speaker.

So they're presenting eight stories.

They're presenting eight, seven, or eight, six.

Thank you.

Just wanted to clarify.

The compromise is most of our residents.

Thank you for reminding me, residents.

It's 5-4.

Hi, yes, my name is Frank Becker.

I live in Fifeville.

There's a point that is raised at these meetings that pertains to what's already been discussed in this presentation about that your purview concerns the external appearance

and I know there are guidelines that often reference the cultural and historical and architectural character of the building.

I've always wondered how those two statements, only the appearance on the external side and cultural character, et cetera, how the board views the linkage or non-linkage of those.

I would think they're linked.

The applicant here,

did present and is emphasizing

The public area, and that presumably involves the people who would use that public area.

So I would want you to be able, under your guidelines, under your considerations, to consider who's there.

The people using the public walkway, the memory walk, as part of the external appearance so that you don't have any

Hi, my name is Wendy Gao.

I'm a community member here to support the residents of West Haven and 10th and Page.

As people have already said, this building is currently sitting at eight stories right now, and that's the reduction.

We can't have historical amnesia.

Eight stories is the size of the standard, I'm pretty sure, and the standard was already a giant stain on Charlottesville's continued inability to grapple with its history of violence, white supremacy, and dispossession of black people.

If we cannot even remember the mistake that was the standard, how can we even attempt to begin grappling with more violence?

With Vinegar Hill, with enslavement.

LV Collective is up here talking about a memory walk for Vinegar Hill and urban renewal when they are enacting the same violence that Vinegar Hill and Gospel Hill enacted.

Residents have said over and over that they want their memory walk to be celebrated and in the open and to be remembered.

They want the public to actively be grappling and sitting with this history.

They don't want it in an alley.

LV Collective's current proposal puts the West Haven memory walk between two eight-story buildings and a road for maintenance in trash and service vehicles.

I can tell you that remembrance of Vinegar Hill will not be found in any meaningful way amid the rumble of maintenance service vehicles, students buying $11 lattes from a cafe that no resident can afford, or between two buildings that cement Charlottesville's legacy of white supremacy.

Last thing, I think that this discussion about community engagement, the thing about community engagement is the community gets to dictate what counts as that.

So LV Collective doesn't get to come up here and say that they are sitting at the table or that they are talking to residents when people here have said that this is the first time that the residents have seen this plan.

That shouldn't be the case.

The residents need to get the plan before you all.

And the fact that that's not the case means that these people don't understand what community engagement looks like.

Thank you all for your comments.

Appreciate that.

It's 7.30.

Are you done?

You know that gives all of us less than two minutes, right?

You voted against the motion.

If you want to speak.

Sure.

Hello, Ziona Bryant speaking as an individual, not as an elected.

So I do have concerns about the, I share the concerns that the residents have about the hype, but I do want to say that just because we're talking about community engagement, Brittany has been, she has been trying to engage with the 10th and Page Neighborhood Association, and so

A conversation that we had yesterday that lasted about two hours had a lot of things discussed during that conversation.

And I think one of the main things that the neighborhood, just to be transparent, is having to sit with and think through is if the height does not decrease, what are the actual benefits to the neighborhood as far as that density goes?

And so I think though this is technically beyond your purview, it is important to think about how

If City Council, for example, is pursuing this agenda of wanting higher density and wanting taller buildings with the idea of creating more affordable housing, which they believe in trickle-down economics, people have differing opinions about that, but in this context, we have to think about what will those benefits be to the community, and I think it's kind of

It is a hard job to be able to have this conversation in the way that you are expected to without thinking about all of those things.

If it is taller, how much added affordability will be included in that building?

And again, though that's outside of your scope, I do think that that should be a question that is presented in this space and maybe discussed a little bit when you talk with the applicant.

Because I can say confidently that

Though everyone does not agree on the height, Brittany has been trying to bring some sort of benefits to the 10th and Page neighborhood.

And it does expand just beyond West Haven.

I mean, there's Rose Hill Neighborhood Association that was at the table.

There's 10th and Page Neighborhood Association.

There's a lot of homeowners in that space too who

will have their taxes increased and things of that nature because of this building.

So I just hope that we can have a more comprehensive conversation and give LV more time to actually work out some of those benefits that they can provide along with this project.

Thank you.

Before you speak, do we have anybody online?

Anybody else from the public here that would like to speak?

Sorry, Miss Bryant.

I apologize.

Miss Bryant didn't mean to cut you off ahead of time.

It's going to be hard to follow that, especially with my voice.

I don't want to get into the specifics of the community benefits agreement because I respect the community and I want to have those conversations offline.

So I only want to talk through the one thing that does relate to your purview and that's the Memorial Walk.

I've really struggled with that and not the concept.

When Jeff reached out and said, hey, you need to have materials on this, I said,

Do you understand what that does to my ability to communicate to the community that they should design this?

So I'm kind of caught between two processes.

But just to go on the record, my goal is to have the community design that.

The reason I set the building back is to create a public plaza

so that it isn't just between two buildings.

The reason that I gave up more density than I could afford to give and allow that connection to go around both sides of the building is to give the history what it deserves, which is visibility.

And do I know what that history is?

I know what I've read.

I haven't lived it.

And I need the people that have lived it to design it.

Can I, yeah I want to clarify too, when I spoke with Brittany and I'll tip my hat to the works.

I'll tip my hat to the work that Brittany's put into reaching out to me and asking me questions about this.

And one of the things that I advised was this memorial walk appears to be a design intent that will be developed in time over time with the folks in West Haven.

And I asked the question of is this

Is this part of, should they want to come forward in this summer for a design review of this building, the architecture of the building and of course this space to the side?

Are they bringing a finished design for that public space?

Or, and my suggestion was, then whatever it is that you've set it aside, you have to finish it.

I mean, it is a paved access point.

I think they have some permeable paving.

They might have some furniture in there.

But as far as putting memorialization there, and to whatever extent the community recommends,

The timing of a review of that seems to be, if they're going to go through a process, you all can't review a design until it's completed later.

So trying to separate those two.

But it also falls where I think when a community's had input on the design of a public space or a park,

You know, does that, should that come to the BAR for, you know, you don't want to have a space that's been created with community input and then, you know, it's like Belmont Bridge, you know, as a community came up with design, does BAR say we don't like that design?

So I'm trying to separate the memorial walk out of this a little bit because it allows the neighborhood the freedom to work with the applicant, the applicant the freedom to sort of

to treat that space as a blank canvas at this point to the extent that you have something that you can review and allow the project to go forward.

Because if we're suspending everything until the Memorial Walk design is done, I don't know how we get there from here.

And then also with the community benefits agreement, that's something that they've been working with through the city manager's office and enforcement.

And I admire the work they're putting into that, but I'm trying to keep that again.

somewhat separate from, it's outside of your purview as the BAR.

All admirable things, we want to see it happen, but I'm trying to contain what comes to you as an application later this summer into something that you can act on and to take anything that might be aspirational and separate that out.

So I wasn't saying just ignore that space or don't talk about the materials there.

I was saying if there's things that are gonna go in there later,

then that later will be addressed later.

And I completely agree with that.

I hope it didn't signify anything different.

The goal of today and the reason that I was supportive of not having a vote is because just as much as the community's feedback is important, your feedback is also important.

It's not one or the other.

I kind of have to have feedback from everybody so that I can figure out where to go from here.

So that's what today hopefully is, is to get feedback from everyone

and I recognize the feedback is going to continue from the community.

I know their position on the height and I encourage them to continue to speak on it.

Let's have a healthy dialogue in this.

Thank you.

Sorry, my name is Carmelita Wood and I'm a Fifeville resident.

I wanted to speak on the Bennicott Hill monument or walk or whatever it is because I did that history.

Most of those people are dead and gone.

Their children don't have them, don't live in Charlottesville.

And they don't know what Finnacle Hill was like.

They don't know the history of Finnacle Hill.

You're going to put a walk there for people that don't know the history.

And I think you need to put a room space inside that building so that people can come and sit and talk about the history or learn the history.

Put a classroom there.

Put books there that have that history of Finnacle Hill and what you've heard.

Go out and talk to the people.

and find out what it is that they would like to see in that building.

I mean, nobody's going to walk up and down a memory walk and you're just walking through.

I mean, stop and look around.

That's all I want to say.

Thank you.

All right.

Good afternoon, I mean evening.

Um, Rosia, um, my thing is I can't understand if they've been studying this from the numbers I've seen since the early part of the, early, early, late part of twenties, but before now.

So it's been some years that they have been studying this.

And when you look at the height that we've already been put down, what would make you a,

want to have a building that high.

You know, over top of the people, even though I understand it, they might not know the true history, but when you're coming to a place and you're willing to build, you're always supposed to know these things in place before you get to where you're at.

And the disrespectfulness

of how the presentations and the communications and whatever LV has brought to us as residents at West Haven has been very disrespectful.

They're going to tell us, we basically had the audacity to basically say, y'all are lucky we're even giving y'all the plans.

And then you waited till we had the master plan in.

So for you to wait till the master plan come in, then all of a sudden you're opposing this big building.

So it feels like we're down in the bottom, but we have this high extremity over top, you know, overshadowing.

And it makes it dark.

And the shadowing, you know, the standards is already shadowing West Haven.

So we really don't have too much sunlight.

You know, so that plays a big part.

Then we're already down, like I said, we're deep down.

So, imagine all that water, you know, even though they're fixing it, but it's a lot of water drain.

You know, it's a lot of stuff that is down in that bottom that people really haven't saw.

You know, that we're just now, we're just now as a community after being built in 1950, we're just now getting into redevelopment, but I felt it harmful for them to just bring this plan after our master plan goes in.

So I just hope y'all have a good thought on, you know, when y'all make y'all's decisions.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

We good?

All right, thank you.

I think there's a lot of feelings around this project.

I know that a lot of y'all were in the room with me a few weeks ago at the city council meeting.

We were discussing another large project.

I think the tenor of the city council from that meeting is supportive of growth and adding more buildings in the city.

And so I think that ultimately something's going to get built here.

I think the goal is to try and all work together to try and find something that the city can be proud of.

and the various communities within the city can be proud of.

So just prefacing that and I think that if we can try and stick to our guidelines and review this based on what we see in front of us as best we can, it's the best we can do.

So I think we just rattled down the list.

I'll start really quickly by just saying that I appreciate the reduction in height that y'all have done.

I think some of the brick details y'all have done on the core building at the top of the base of the building is handsome.

I would like to see something similar at the top of the building, like a cornice feature.

I think maybe not on every single portion of the building,

The corner that's closest to the bridge and the train tracks seems like it could have a cornice there that would give that some prominence.

So that's just my thoughts on some brick details, but I'll open it up to the BAR to jump in.

Sure.

All right.

I guess since we've got to be quick and because there's going to be more discussion between you guys in the neighborhood, hopefully, and this is a preliminary discussion, I'm going to focus on some of the things I think are working on this.

I think the West Main Street facade is much more successful than you had before.

The massing of it, the way you've broken it down into three or three and a half large chunks versus some of the other projects have been a repetitive

Thank you for the question.

You know the brick base is great, the material palette, I'm a fiber cement I still always am leery of.

I worry about, it doesn't age well in mildews.

I don't know if you guys are using the James Hardy stuff or if you're going to find some other type of fiber cement with a better finish on it.

Something that might last a little longer and age a little bit better, it would be much preferable.

Especially since it seems like everything facing West Haven is going to be this fiber cement material.

In terms of other massing, I do appreciate the fact that on the back, it's not a flat wall.

There's insets.

It's broken down quite a bit, and then it steps back.

So moves like that are helping.

trees back there on the site plan that appear to just be small shrubs and little tiny trees according to the label.

I don't know what type of utilities you have back there, but if there's a way to get some larger trees, I think that will help with any sort of, provide some additional buffer between your building and the neighborhood.

Your renderings show a lot of depth in the, well, you mentioned it, you call it a faux brick veneer.

So I'm assuming it's thin brick.

There's a lot of depth going on.

Are we actually going to get that depth, or is this just kind of pretty pictures that we're looking at?

So it would be great if you guys could provide that.

If what you end up with looks like the renderings, I think that would be very successful.

Obviously, you just screen the parking lot lights.

I think you're aware of that.

I really appreciate the alignment.

It looks like West Haven's plan changed their alignment of their walkway.

However that coordination was happening, I do appreciate how that works out.

It seems like it could potentially become a very good link between West Haven, West Main, and 10th and Page, tying all three together.

I'm not sure how West Haven feels about having 10th and Page using that walkway to get to West Main Street, but it does feel like it integrates it more.

It seems to be working very well in plan.

No vinyl windows or convince us that they're good, but I think it's going to be a really steep road.

And rooftop screening is required by zoning.

So I saw your note on your roof plan.

You do need to provide something, so come up with something.

Thank you, Carl.

I tried to be quick.

You were great.

Largely I think it's a much improved design as well.

What Carl said I would agree with.

I appreciate the fact they reduced the height and that they're trying to respond to the community concerns about that.

To the extent that we're supposed to consider whether it fits in its context the fact of the matter is it's on West Main Street and West Main Street already is designated for buildings of this size or larger and I think that it fits the context and that we should take that definitely into consideration.

They're not

any particular concerns with regard to I believe at one point we were supposed to maintain Charlottesville's automotive heritage because there used to be a lot of garages along that street.

I think that this will actually fit in that context and in agreement with the city council's ruling I actually think that ultimately more housing leads to

Lower prices for other people's housing.

If you restrict the amount of housing, then there's nothing to do but go up or move to Greene County.

That's not what we want people to do.

We want people to stay here in town.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the building.

Great.

Thank you, Ron.

David?

Come up to the mic.

Oh, yeah, thanks.

So I want to just second what everybody's said so far.

I think the design's been improved significantly, just from a massing standpoint, from the different perspectives that you showed.

I think much more attention has been paid to how to activate the street.

And so I'm certainly encouraged that just after our one meeting that those comments have been heard and responded to in some way, shape, or form.

I'm really interested in the memory walk and I think it's a big opportunity.

Obviously, there's been a lot of communication about it tonight.

If we had the opportunity to ask questions, I'd be interested in hearing what the process of community engagement is.

moving forward because from what you've communicated and what you've expressed, that's a serious interest which everybody I think should be encouraged by and I'm just

You know, I think that there was an improvement from the previous plans, the sort of straight connection out to the main street.

I know I probably share some of the concerns, however, with a number of the people's comments and that

You know, is this going to feel too much like a canyon?

You know, where is the memory in this walk?

And I think that could come with a very substantial conversation that your group is suggesting.

And I think that's a very positive place to be here in the beginning.

You know, a lot of us

I haven't seen any of these plans, but this is a preliminary meeting, so I hope that the fact that we're having a preliminary meeting and everybody can hear what's going on will be a good springboard for future conversations and ability to make this better.