Planning Commission Regular Meeting   2/10/2026

All right.

Welcome to tonight's funding commission meeting.

I have one.

Yeah, I can kick us off.

So I have replaced Rory on the MPO tech committee, and I had my first meeting last week, and a few things to report from that.

So since I'm new to that committee, and I know I feel like we use a lot of acronyms, I'll just give a little bit of background of that committee.

So

The Metropolitan Planning Organization or MPO is the federally designated body that coordinates primarily transportation planning for the region.

And it has a staff obviously, then there is a policy committee which is made up of elected representatives of kind of Albemarle County, City of Charlottesville,

et cetera.

And then there is a tech committee, the technical committee, which is what a member from the planning commission serves on, which the technical committee kind of votes on things to recommend to the policy committee, which then actually adopts them.

So it's a lot like the planning commission.

The real power is one level above, but we recommend stuff to

and the people with the power.

So we heard a couple of updates from the MPO and VDOT.

The transportation bodies attend, so Department of Rail and Public Transportation, VDOT, FHWA, FTA, et cetera, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration.

And a lot of the conversation was on smart scale, which is the state's performance-based process for allocating funding to transportation projects.

So most of these projects start out as a study which then results in a smart scale application and the city, the county and the MPO are allowed to submit a certain number of smart scale applications

And then there's a formula that the state uses to basically rank these applications and decide what gets funded.

The current formula weighs congestion mitigation and roadway capacity fairly heavily, so it's difficult to win funding for smart-scale projects if you're building a bike trail, unless you can show that you're increasing roadway capacity somehow.

So the current strategy since I think the city's goals and in many ways the county and the MPO's goals are to manage highway capacity while shifting trips to other modes like transit, biking and walking.

A lot of what they're focused on in these SmartScale applications is finding a project that scores well with SmartScale so it will get funded so it means it has roadway capacity but also has multimodal elements like a path

or something like that, or a transit improvement.

So for example, the Ridge and McIntyre West Main intersection is currently a study that VDOT is leading kind of on behalf of the city, which will likely result in a smart scale application and then make its way through this process.

So

The tech committee and the policy board are going to basically vote on advancing certain projects to the smart scale application phase.

So the city is probably going to recommend Ridge, McIntyre, West Main, which we had a public meeting for that a couple weeks ago.

Albemarle County has four and then there are five under consideration for the MPO which is Route 29 and Barracks Road that has some kind of sidewalk trail improvements there off the off-ramps.

The I-64 and Fifth Street diversion

The diverging diamond interchange, which may or may not have multimodal improvements.

The current status is that VDOT doesn't think that they can basically have a path crossing over the existing bridge there.

US 29 and I-64 is really more of a highway safety and capacity project and then there are two on the bypass US 29, 250 off-ramp extension and on-ramp extension at Old Ivy Road which really is just a

A sheer capacity project has no multimodal benefits whatsoever.

So I think the plan is next month for the tech committee and policy board to kind of vote on what should be recommended.

Three quick updates.

The MPO is going to resubmit a BUILD grant application for the Rivanna River Bike Ped Bridge, which BUILD is a federal grant program.

They've submitted it multiple times in the past.

It hasn't been approved, but apparently the feds come back and say, we think you should resubmit this.

This is a great project.

So they're going to do it again.

The MPO is updating its travel demand model.

And it's where I think the future year it's planning for is 2050.

And their modeling consultant presented the demographic estimates for 2050 for approval.

and just as an FYI, they're projecting that the city's population will grow by 13% to 57,000 by 2050 and this is based on Weldon Cooper projections.

However, this is the lowest population growth of any of the jurisdictions in the region so Albemarle County, all the other counties are experiencing, at least according to these future projections, much higher rates of growth.

which I think is interesting for us to think about.

And then the final thing from that meeting, they presented the Unified Planning Work Program, UPWP, which is essentially the MPO's budget.

And so just as an FYI, it's 80% funded by the federal government, so Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, 20% from local.

And that was that meeting.

I'm so sorry.

I have two updates.

One from the school's capital improvement planning meeting today.

It is fresh on my mind.

And also a legislative update.

I will try to be brief.

We talked about the zoning update on field lighting, which is on our agenda today.

That is not time sensitive, although it is good to fix.

Oak Lawn, Pre-K, currently in legal limbo.

We may see a year or more of unplanned delay.

Our legal team is working hard on this with the university.

We will see.

Solar on school roofs, which we've talked about for many years, appears to be on track, especially for the high school and the middle school.

We have power purchasing agreements lined up for both, and then the smaller schools are still figuring out a way forward.

The facilities plan is on track for about June, which is related to HB334, Sales Tax for Schools, which passed the House and moves to the Senate Finance Committee.

It would need to pass a local referendum here, and it would generate $15 million a year in needed schools revenue.

That could be used for meaningful improvements, especially at Charlottesville High School.

I see that Ms. Kim Powell, the City Schools Chief Operations Officer, is attending this meeting, and will be attending future meetings to better coordinate between our two bodies.

which I personally appreciate.

Legislative subcommittee, we already gave you a taste.

HB 1279, Faith in Housing, has passed the House with a one-year delay with LIHTC processes, well that's an additional year, so we're talking about a two-year total delay.

That goes to the Senate Local Government Committee.

HB 282 Real Property Texts for Charlottesville, Falls Church, Fredericksburg and Newport News from Delegate Kallsen has passed the House and moves to the Senate Finance Committee.

That does not include the county if we want to fund regional transit.

That would have to go another year.

HB 888 Zoning Minimum Off-Street Parking Requirements has passed the House.

That goes to the Senate Local Government Committee, very similar to what we've done here.

SB 454 Housing Near Jobs has passed the House and Senate, also similar to what we've done here.

I would just report today that I attended the CAR Foundation, which is the local Association of Realtors Foundation.

They held a

They held a lunch and learn for realtors where they hosted former commissioner Rory Stolzenberg and developer and land use attorney Nicole Skrode to talk about the city's zoning code.

There was a good discussion about how all this sort of impacts realtors and how they can think about it when working with landowners and property owners in the city and there was a good discussion between the

I'll get this wrong, but I think BPAC either is advisory to PC or believes they're advisory to PC.

I'll describe the meeting and some highlights for us, highlights to me at least.

There is now a publicly available city portal on the paving schedule.

So if you want to know when we'll have a road resurfaced and repaved, that information is

We don't think it's complete or fully correct, but it's there.

Follow-up questions are going into public works.

There are some omissions there like Rose Hill and Main Street that we'll look into, but it's a place to start.

There is, as P.C.

discussed I think last year, hope and also uncertainty about bike pad improvements to follow along with utility work on Main Street and Charlie and Elliot, a topic that needs to be I think followed up here and elsewhere.

Similarly, hope but also uncertainty and questions about the future of the city's quick build program, which I think for the two of us joined last year, PC discussed more money for quick builds in the CIP.

I think there is, at least within BPAC, not much clarity on how that program will continue in the medium and long term.

So things for us to think about as well.

Commissioner Joy is out here so there's no UVA report.

I went to the VAR meeting last month.

We didn't have any agenda items so we reviewed our bylaws and reviewed what constitutes a major minor historic review and kind of various levels of minor reviews.

Stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we don't see on the BAR.

We do have a landscape architect vacancy.

Just wanted to put that out there for the public.

We also briefly discussed

When the zoning code was redone, certain things got moved out of the ordinance into a procedures manual and vice versa and one of those items is

The BAR only has 30 days to review a Historic Conservation District application.

I had thought that was in our ordinance.

It's actually in the procedures manual.

This was something that was done by council when they created the Woolen Mills Historic District.

The idea was that it would make

make things move along faster for homeowners.

The unintended consequence is that if the BAR for some reason can't form a quorum, items that are part of a Historic Conservation District's review are automatically approved.

So we did have that happen last year where an item just got automatically approved.

This seems like something that would be good to fix.

So I'm just bringing that up.

But anyways.

I have two items from the NDS director.

One is that the ADU manual and student housing study that you were given, you were presented with last meeting in January, that's been published and the city is seeking feedback on it.

It's published on Connect Charlottesville, which is the city's new public engagement website that is connect.charlinsville.gov.

And that's available for feedback through February 28th.

Second item is that City Council will hold a work session on tax abatement study, which was also presented to you in January.

All right.

All right, so now we move on to matters that are presented by the public and not on the formal agenda.

Because we have no public hearings tonight, you guys can speak to anything Planning Commission related.

Does anybody like to speak?

I see nobody in the audience.

Chair, I see no raising of hands.

All right.

We have no consent agenda.

Do you guys want to introduce or?

Certainly, Chair.

I want to try to take a bunch of notes.

That's why I'm sitting over here.

I'm not going to come down as long as y'all can hear me.

So tonight you're going to start first with reviewing the dates as part of your packet.

There was included just the Planning Commission regular dates and work sessions.

As noted, this is very draft and because it's draft, there's actually been some changes that I would like to read into so you can take notes on your sheet.

but just so you have the most up-to-date information but that information I didn't want to provide it after the packet had been posted.

So under work sessions for March 24th you'll have the homestay short-term rental work session.

In quarter two at your regular April 14th meeting will be the housing student housing in lieu of fee and ADU manual.

Work Session, that will be a combined regular meeting and work session.

No work session, no item listed for April 28th.

For your regular meeting on May 12th, there will be a presentation on the downtown mall action plan.

At the May 26th work session will be your citywide mobility plan scope.

At your June, currently there's no items at the June regular meeting.

June 23rd is a tentative bar guidelines or sometime in the third quarter.

So that's very general.

And then also in for quarter number two, but no date has been set, is a work session for the NDS 2026 slash 2027 department work plan that the director puts together each year.

No firm date, but she would like to bring that forward sometime in quarter two.

No item so far in your quarter three work sessions.

And for quarter four, your October 27th meeting is open, but you'll have in November 24th your CIP.

And typically the December 22nd work session is canceled.

So those are the general layouts.

This is an opportunity.

for you to just kind of digest that if there's any specific things you're looking at, a specific date or just in general quarters.

I don't know the ask yet.

The guidelines do need to be combed through for some updates.

It has not been fully defined yet.

What is our role?

I don't know exactly what our role would be for this work session, so I will confirm with Jeff what he's thinking and make sure that this is a productive work session.

Didn't the CIP this year include money for a BAR guidelines update?

I think step one in what we've been working on is making sure the scope is defined and hire a consultant to do that.

We did do some discussion on that.

Yeah, it's an item that definitely needs to be pushed forward.

And it is dragging, so that may be part of why this is on our work session list.

All right.

And I guess, as I mentioned, the pre-meeting, if we could, we'll try and coordinate with the county and hopefully use one of these work sessions for a city-county collaborative meeting.

And I guess,

Well, any other questions from you guys on this?

Okay.

The May 26th meeting says the citywide mobility plan scope.

Commissioner, I'm not sure I don't have much information on this, but we can get you that information definitely prior to this meeting.

When we sent the request out, it was more just, are there certain meetings you're wanting to come forward to Planning Commission for a work session?

So we can get you that information.

Sure.

If it's part of the mobility plan, I don't know that it needs to be a separate plan, but I would like to see a discussion on transit and CAT on what the status of those are.

There's some vision planning that has been done in the past and looking for updates on that front.

and then I would like to see, and I'm new to these work sessions, I'm not sure exactly what defines a work session, but I would like to have a discussion on the neighborhood commercial ideas.

I believe that's a big part of the comprehensive plan that for one reason or another

isn't totally defined within the development code, so I would like to see a discussion there.

And that definitely, the last one could definitely be maybe an update that NDS could provide as far as with the environmental study where that is in the process.

Sure.

I think I have a similar question.

I think it's not yet known, it sounds like, what the scope of the mobility plan scope work session will be.

But unless this is explicitly going to be covered there, and it's going to be combined with transit possibly, there was a joint PC council work session, I think, in 2022 about ongoing transportation projects.

It's been a while, and I'd like to have another one of those, if possible.

My experience trying to track a given project or a network of projects is you have to ask utilities about this and engineering about that, and then I guess about a third thing.

And I find it really challenging, even putting a lot of time into it, to figure out what

What's on track?

What's not?

What's being built in a given year?

I have four.

If I can be a little bit picky, tell me if this is too much, I would specifically like to have representation from multiple departments at such a work session.

Because in my experience, I've been finding that the different departments aren't always well coordinated.

And one thing I want to try to accomplish is to,

make sure that the plans from NDS, Public Works, Utilities, and anybody else that I'm forgetting about are lining up.

So I think, for example, the experience of BPAC is that we can ask NDS staff about a project.

And often the answer is, that's a question for Utilities or Public Works.

And if you ask them, they might say a different thing.

Commissioner, I think that's fair.

I would say it would maybe be a good opportunity to have Ben Chambers speak.

That position is fairly new, which is integrated in both NDS and public works just for that to make sure there's coordination and understanding across departments.

So I think a work session is a good idea, but I maybe would want to frame it more through Ben.

Yeah, great.

I think I'm singing the same song a lot of us are.

My first one is Transit with CAT.

It's a huge priority to get a lot of our housing and parking stuff done.

We need functional transit and we're just not there.

I'm not clear on why that is or how we get there, but that's crucial.

So this is something that we had in the legislative packet and I've talked with

public work staff about it.

And they're supportive of the idea.

And I've talked to school folks, school streets.

The idea is that some schools really matter to the function of our school system.

And some streets aren't as essential.

It very much comes to mind with the ice.

Like some areas, when it's icy, the kids can't get to school.

We could map those, manage those, fund those, and get that done.

Paris is working on this.

Canada started a program.

This is one of those things where if Charlottesville doesn't do it, nobody's going to do it.

It could be speed limits.

It could be plantings.

It could be filters.

There's a million things.

Or just intentionally managing things such that we can shovel it, that there's a way to make it work.

Play equipment.

There's a million things you could do.

The World Heritage Trail.

So this is actually a class I taught last semester.

And I'm going to try and teach it again.

And the idea is a safe educational trail between the University of Virginia and Monticello.

We could bring in Piedmont Virginia Community College in there.

We could bring in the middle school.

There's a lot of, or downtown mall, Jefferson School.

There's a lot of potential ways to make it work so that it is safe, educational, multimodal, and of global interest, and could potentially draw national or state funding.

A lot of people excited about it, but we should talk about it.

Corner safety and accessibility improvements.

This was another one that popped in the class.

The corner is of tremendous pedestrian use, limited bicycle use because of safety issues, and not functional as a transportation corridor for transit or private vehicles just because it is so congested during rush hour.

It just doesn't work.

The 14th Street Bridge is very funny.

We could talk about that.

Last one, I sat down with the head archaeologist of Alexandria.

The entire city of Alexandria is an archaeology zone as defined by state code, which creates some problems.

But man, is it good for archaeology.

Just great.

We do have some areas of archaeological interest in the city.

I'm thinking of Swan's Tavern.

I'm thinking of Stone Tavern cemeteries.

bringing that muscle maybe of value.

I know city staff have been interested in this topic.

I hope we can talk about it.

I will say Jeff Warner has been very good about any time there's a demolition downtown or in any sensitive area, making sure there's an archeology component to that.

I just have one question on the dates.

So if we are approaching one of these work sessions and our regular session, there's like nothing on the agenda.

Do you think there might be opportunity to pull some of those work sessions up and use our main meeting date for the work session so we have fewer meetings in the year?

I think because just how the state has kind of changed some of its authority, we anticipate actually Planning Commission having less regular meetings to handle the things it used to handle in the past, special use permits, rezonings.

It would need to be thought out just because of the preparation and just the timing.

I think we can use, just as we are tonight, we can use regular dates for work sessions.

You just run the risk of if suddenly there's

Influx of applications.

All right.

Last call for comments on our schedule.

The development code.

All right, I'm going to kind of combine these two and so they give you all more time to have discussion tonight and we can take notes.

But what I just wanted to give an update on the 2025 development code amendments, the Tier 1 and Tier 2.

You held your public hearing last month.

That will be going to City Council next Tuesday.

Monday's a holiday, so it'll be at City Council on Tuesday.

Staff has prepared the material to actually go into effect at the end of March.

That allows time for other actions that are going on related to the anticipated code amendments that are connected to development review.

We need time to make sure that that's coordinating with our workflows and changes we're making to the development manual.

but hopefully this will be the conclusion of the 2025 cycle and we are starting the 2026 cycle and your packet is a very draft 2026 sheet but this will be an opportunity not only to as in the next item in the list go over

and prioritize the tier three items so that the director of NDS has a better idea of what's a priority to planning commission as she puts together the 2026-2027 department work plan.

But this is also an opportunity to give some feedback on the 2025.

What we went through, maybe what you would like to see, as you notice in the memo, it talks about maybe having a subcommittee of one or two commissioners that is championing

and the 2026 amendments.

So we'd love to get feedback on that as we scope out the 2026 amendments.

The idea being very similar, we're going to have tier one, tier two, tier three.

We're always collecting data, collecting this information, but we would be moving through another batch of tier one and tier twos, hopefully not as many tier ones.

and keeping the tier two more focused, but this will give an opportunity for y'all to help us shape that.

And then like I said, going into your tier three and providing some prioritization.

All right.

So I think as we discussed during our pre-meeting, we're going to try and go quickly item by item.

I do have a quick question.

about the 2025 code amendments.

So there'll be an email going out tomorrow just keeping stakeholders involved that it's going to another public hearing.

And then we'll be using that time between the public hearing and when it's impacting to do some education.

But then we're really going to be ratcheting up

the Education portion of this.

We've been doing that at our pre-application meetings, letting the developers we do deal with a lot know that there are changes.

Here are the general changes that are going on based on the development code amendments and our process.

All right, let's get started.

So we've got tier one, I don't know, A1.

Yes, it wasn't something that was super pressing, but it's something we hopefully can fix.

All right, so B1.

Talk about site distance triangles on the 2026 list.

Are we going item by item, page by page?

Oh, we're starting on page 23.

So in the 26, I did this myself last night.

Make sure you're looking at the 2026 table, which is in the second half of our packet.

OK.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there any discussion?

That's my perspective.

B2 was B10 on the list, and it's graphics.

Sounds like that's just going to get fixed.

I want to note that I don't believe B15 from 2025 was resolved, so that's not

not listed in this list anymore and that had to do with how height bonuses are achieved for the RC district.

I think we had a B-15 item but that wasn't part of it and that was supposed to be part of it and I think we ended up resolving

something else in the process.

So in the RC district there is a height bonus allowed but it's based on I think the rules that go with all the other districts and not based on like RB and RA if you have more than one unit you're allowed a height bonus.

So I don't know if that got forgotten or if we did resolve it someplace.

We added in... And maybe I misread.

So we added in a under,

Under proposed language for section 34.2.2.C.3, we added a new 3.D, which says projects in the residential district.

So it didn't call out each district, just R. So it covered the RC.

Sorry, you did.

Thank you.

OK.

Yes.

What was I looking?

Oh.

There's two pages.

OK, I'm sorry.

No worries.

Thank you.

OK, that clarified that.

Sorry about that.

All right.

B3 was B20 on the list, linking requirements.

OK, so 2026 list.

Any comments?

Keep moving.

B21, I think, was another one that maybe I missed it, but I don't think we fully resolved it.

A sentence there that says, calls for a fence, type X.

And I think that was just a typo.

I don't know if we picked that up or not.

So B21 is, let me scroll out of that.

B17.

Actually, it's not in our packet from last month.

So we had a whole bunch of changes that we did to the fences and how we define fences.

But they're still under the accessory uses for outdoor storage.

There's a requirement for a fence type X.

Well, let that go to the minutes for, I think that's an easy fix.

B4, was B22 finished grade?

Do you guys think that you're going to be able to include that in 2026?

Sorry.

I'm making it do something.

It was B22 on the 2025 list, and it's B4 on 2026.

Yes, there's a graphic that doesn't line up with actual language.

So we're not sure.

OK.

So can I just ask a clarifying question?

So this means item B4.

It's not moving to Tier 3 or anything.

No, we'll use B4 as an example.

So on the 2025 list, it appeared as B22.

All right.

And I think we got some comments via email after that one session where builders and developers gave feedback on finished grade.

I don't know if this is just like a graphics fix, but I remember hearing from a couple of architects, I think, just about some difficulty around where do you define the grade or finished grade.

Is this just a graphics fix or is this a bigger question about how do we define the grade?

Well, and I think that's why it was basically labeled as it is, like we need to do more study.

It's brought up as an issue, but we have not fleshed out the exact issue.

We know there is a graphics issue where the graphic talks about finished floor elevation.

The actual code language says finished grade.

So there's a disconnect.

I believe there were comments at maybe that meeting or a different one also as well about just the code doesn't really match with the topography of the city.

We have a very rolling and like think about Belmont or other areas of the town that have some rolling topography and how the code doesn't really match with that.

I think that's more of a

Broder discussion as far as, because that's tied into the way that, if you have a steep site, it forces you to break a project down into multiple pieces.

And I feel like that's leading more into more of a philosophical, is that what we want type question, which is fair game for this.

I don't think it's on the list of development questions, but I don't think it's in the Tier 3 list that we've currently got.

And yeah, if we want to add that, that would be something to do.

Let's make note to make sure that if we can talk about whether we want that in the Tier 3 or not.

Topography, and height definition and whatnot.

OK. Yeah, I guess my thought on the finished grade is just I don't know how much of a problem that is for you guys.

But I guess you guys, as you're reviewing these projects, would know if it's holding things up or not.

B-5 was B-23, and it has to do with, I guess it's language for the special exception process.

I have some things on B-5.

OK.

So broadly, the old

I'm going to begin with what it's called.

This thing that is covered by B5.

Critical slopes, here we are.

It is older than current state code.

It was terribly innovative.

It's just old.

So quite a bit of it is duplicative with state code now, which does exist, which is great.

The rest of it, we have sort of standard language that we apply to every project, which is good that we've developed that.

But in terms of process, since we always say the same thing,

We aren't really adding any value.

We're just copy paste every time.

Could we move this standard process to a non-discretionary administrative process where the same thing we say every time is applied without a public hearing?

It just happens.

I would agree if there's more things that we could make administrative

I think that would be better.

And I'd be, I mean if staff has time I'd love to see what they think would be appropriate items to move to full administrative review versus special exception.

Isn't there not even Tier 3 about making some special exceptions less exceptional?

Is that related or are they distinct?

You said that isn't Tier 3?

Yeah.

All right, so let's get to that.

I think that makes sense to look at.

I was trying to think.

No, that is covered there.

I was going to say B33, I thought we left off.

It looks like it moved to tier three.

B6 was B37.

Yeah, allowing more things to go straight to the building permit review.

Lyle, is that what you were just talking about, or is this a little different?

Do we have thoughts on that, or do we just let staff do what they think is best?

OK. B7 was B13.

Yeah.

In the comments here, staff says they're looking at two options, keeping the current policy, or basically the current policy, which is allowing one and two units to go straight there, versus allowing anything in the R district to go there.

I think because it has to do with how staff reviews things.

So a little background on this.

So staff wanted to be as ambitious as possible.

When you look at zoning compliance, zoning compliance can happen under the code changes that we hope go infected into March would be codifying the one in two family

which is our current policy, going straight to building code.

But there is a zoning compliance that happens at building code.

So on the zoning compliance side, we could do that at different levels.

It doesn't have to be its own process.

And so that there are communities around the country that do, they allow more things to go straight to building permit.

And they do their zoning compliance as part of the building permit review.

We would love to get there.

We don't think we're quite there as an organization yet to make that work, but it's something we're going to keep trying to work at to break down barriers.

Some of the problems just we're running into, just as we explored this, was just some of the going, anything more than two units is commercial.

from a building code standpoint.

So that creates some challenges just on staffing side and doing it at the building permit side.

So that would be the goal is to how could we get more things through the process faster that are creating more housing units in the city.

But we just don't think we're really maybe at the place yet where we could say all our districts.

So that's why we kind of scaled back.

And at the end of the day, whichever thing happens, the same stuff will be reviewed, correct?

Correct.

So it's not like we're having a lighter review for the R districts.

Correct.

So the code amendments that are going for next week, one of them is to actually go to a strict development plan, which is just a zoning compliance, which you'll get more, more people will get value out at larger developments where you're trying to get a plan vested

for a large development so you can go to a bank and say, the city can't change the zoning on me while I'm exploring, making sure this is constructible.

And then doing major and minor site plans.

And minor site plans would be additions or anything that does not require a VS&P plan.

It would be able to go through the process quicker, it would be cheaper.

The review times have not changed yet.

That's going to be one of our next steps in our process as we evaluate this.

Yeah.

And doesn't necessarily need our feedback, I don't think.

B7 was B39 and it's just how individually protected properties are represented.

This sounds like housekeeping.

Any concerns?

Nope?

Okay.

B8 was B41.

Required bicycle parking, so whether we are requiring too many bike spots for hotels or not.

Do we have opinions on this?

I mean, this is also a tier three discussion, I believe.

I think they're distinct, right?

This is about hotels, and the other is about sort of the opposite, about exceptions for small residential developments.

Separate.

So there is how you calculate what you need is very much just residential commercial.

and hotels are considered commercial.

There's no nuance.

The other question on the tier three is just we exempt requiring bike parking for any residential development less than four units.

And is that something we want to continue doing?

So it is two kind of distinct questions.

I mean, it makes sense to me how many people are riding bicycles to hotels.

So basically, yes, staff, we're saying move ahead with figuring this out?

Yeah.

OK. And B9 is the new one on food trucks.

And I mean, do we have concerns or thoughts on?

I was a little confused about, somebody said that only one food, well, yeah.

Does our code really say that only one food truck is permitted per lot?

Yes, because it's a temporary use.

And so this is more about food courts where food, like, so how the ordinance is written right now, it's about I'm going to go park on a street or for a, you know, and sell out of a truck, not what we have basically like at

High, and the bypass, where there continues parking there.

And so it's just a, do we as a city, do we need to explore that?

Do we need to explore a different model than currently what's in our code?

Our code is just, it's a temporary use.

You're supposed to be leaving in the evening.

It's per one food truck per lot.

So it's more of just, it's a use we're not capturing.

Is it something, are we fine with our current code?

So just to be clear, if somebody, if my neighborhood had a block party on private property, we could only have one food truck on that property?

That is what our current code says.

Lot.

Could you not permit the entire food truck lot and then have the various number of food trucks in that one lot that's permitted?

It has to be permit per truck?

It's permit per truck because it's the temporary use.

And it's just how the temporary use section is set up.

It's not necessarily calling out per truck.

It's when you go to the temporary uses, it's talking about temporary uses are per lot for the one use.

It gets a little complicated.

Breaking it down is just yes.

Our temporary use for when we talk about food trucks is supposed to be one permit per one truck per one lot.

Currently right now, no.

That's a problem.

The comment here.

has the idea of breaking it into an alternative form.

This feels like an alternative form specific to a specific use.

I think I would prefer to avoid that designation.

I will say this is very new.

Staff has not done a lot.

They were just trying to capture it and trying to capture at least how it could maybe be resolved.

Again, feedback from Planning Commission can be not an issue.

We like how our code is.

So an example, a practical example would be the court at the base of High Street and Long Street.

Correct.

Correct.

Two truck courts, sir.

To me, amazing temporary uses of vacant lands to try to revitalize or bring some community into areas that have a little bit of vacant land.

Is there anybody here who agrees with the current restriction?

No.

OK.

I'm most familiar with the example at the university where there's an area where you can go and there's a lot of food trucks there and it's lovely, very popular.

Could this be an option on public property?

I mean, I think it could be an option.

What we're really getting at is

staff resources to dig into it, to solve it, you know, is this high enough priority or not.

Yeah, we can come to a solution.

Wow.

Has economic development waited on this?

They'd like to see them.

Economic development's part of our pre-application meetings.

Ooh, Mr.

Chair, I think this is worthy of a deep dive.

Two or three things that need a deep dive.

Deep dive and do we consider it a priority?

I think it's worth it.

I think it's worth it.

All right, so B9.

Make sure it.

OK.

Outdoor mini space, it's currently just a flat percentage and doesn't take into account the quality of the space.

This sounds like important, but not a priority to me.

Yeah.

OK.

Yeah, what we're getting a lot of is this grass area right here.

Yeah, I kind of, to be honest, think the whole outdoor amenity space is a weird requirement.

Yeah.

What we're getting under the code right now is you're required to have a percentage.

And it really, I won't say it's an afterthought,

I think it's a nice idea to, I just think we have other things that, well unless anybody else agreed, just, okay.

I know I'm, I don't mean to be, you know, I feel like I'm pushing all my opinions.

because you'll see it at future things.

It'll just be on the list because we're capturing all this stuff.

But one thing that's come up is so under our current code, you can be on a private street or a public street.

And under our old code, all our private streets were connected to town home developments.

So we didn't get a lot of private streets.

But under this new code, now that you can have private streets, nothing in the code, though, speaks to

a private street being a dedicated parcel so it could be technically a dedicated easement over a private parcel which creates a whole bunch of issues.

We haven't run into, this is one we're trying to get in front of, we haven't seen it yet but we can see issues because our code speaks to not only in some areas it speaks to property lines but other areas it speaks to edge of a road, a street, which if that road is a private street only within an easement on a

This is more of an issue of, imagine you have one lot, and you run a private easement right down the middle.

and our code speaks to things about the property line but edge of streets and now if somebody wanted to put a building, how are you trying to measure your build too which speaks to property line if that's bisected and it'd be better if we didn't allow access easements to be streets, not preventing you to do an access easement but we just wouldn't count that as a private street, it needs to be a standalone parcel.

And this kind of came out too in speaking to the attorney's office so I think we

We have language.

OK.

I think that makes sense.

All right, tier three.

All right, so we've got C1.

What was this?

Oh, height based on unit count.

So am I right C1 and C2 are kind of connected?

Yeah.

All right, so we'll see one.

Do we have thoughts or concerns, Lyle?

My recollection was our intention was for the height bonus to apply regardless of how they're sliced up in terms of lot.

So this is basically saying if you have a current

Yeah, or let's say, even if ignoring whether there's an existing building or not, you've got something in the RA or RB zone that you've got two houses on a piece of property.

Is it one or more that we get the bonus, or is it, well, whatever triggers the bonus.

You've got three houses on a piece of property.

and they're all separate, there's space between them.

Do they all qualify for extra height or is it only if they're combined together into a single building does that get extra height?

My recollection is that council, when they were deliberating over this, this was almost like, how do we not have the mansions, McMansions?

It's like, if you build one unit, you can't build a massive tall building, but if it's multi-unit housing, you can get the height.

And I agree with what others were saying about like,

The idea here is to not allow you to build one big mansion, but you can build multi-family housing that has a bigger size.

Because they're probably going to have smaller footprints.

Right, yeah.

So I don't know if that's a

Super big priority, but it seems like it would be nice to get fixed.

We actually were talking about this the other day.

I was trying to pull it up before I spoke.

I think this actually got fixed accidentally through B5, too, because we added, when you look at B5, we added the definition of

So if you have a string of townhouses that are part of a single site but span multiple parcels, are they one building?

So adding the end site, so now we would consider the site for the multiple buildings.

for that primary use.

So let me gather this weird thing, because you can either have one or the other.

We've had some developers try to argue one and then back to the other.

So if you had a townhouse development, which is the site, and you're going across multiple

Lots, because that townhouse development, a row of six.

You'd get the height bonus now, because that's the site where that was where the problem was, where you were looking at that.

That was an apartment.

We would have given you the height, because it was one building on one lot.

But if it's townhomes, you weren't getting the height, because you were one building per each lot.

But you could have been that 60-foot width.

I think with the update, it would allow now, that's a site instead of just a lot, so that's multiple buildings on a site, so they get the extra height for townhomes, but the width is still measured by lot.

So, under, let me pull up an action.

I don't know the

I don't know that I like the idea that just because you spread projects out on a single site over multiple lots that they would get the bonus height.

Did I say that correct?

Well, I think, but again, I think the council discussion on this was like,

pretty focused on preventing mansions.

I'm just going to say it that way.

No, you're not.

But they don't necessarily have to be townhouses for it to be a single site, right?

Oh, I see what you're saying.

It's a hard thing to kind of fix.

But like, is someone really going to use this as a loophole to build a mansion?

Well, yeah, the example you look at is you have a single, you have a lot, one lot.

And you have a single family home on it, and you want to build a single family home in the back.

So where we're struggling is, yeah, you're probably going to get that larger house, because now they could build it higher, because it's

It's multiple buildings on a site and not just one building.

But the trade-off is the whole kind of conversation with

with the townhomes versus an apartment where physically it doesn't look any different.

If you looked at a row of townhomes, that wouldn't look any different if there's property lines running between them to break it up or it's, you know, to be townhomes or not.

So it is difficult.

And I remember from the work session we had at City Works, you know, this was a hard thing to answer, but one of the things I think I was hearing from the commission was

The trade-off is units are units.

But it's also they're sharing a single lot.

Where I'm getting a little worried is now it sounds like they don't have to share a lot to get the high bonus.

And we have a minimum lot width in the RA and RB districts, correct?

So in the RB, it's a percentage.

Not the build to width, but the minimum, the lot width.

Okay, so theoretically what we're saying is we could have a string of six townhouses that are each one is 40 feet wide and that gets the height bonus as well.

So we are saying that you're limited to the maximum building width.

OK, so all right, then yes.

So you've got your lot is 40 feet wide.

You have a string of 40-foot wide lots.

Each townhouse, someone decides they want to build these massive townhouses that are 40 feet wide.

And they can go on indefinitely.

And they get the height bonus.

That is what we'd be doing, because it would be

It seems like if someone were to actually do this and build a bunch of 40-foot townhouses that are extra tall like it seems like that seems okay to me because if you're not building you're not building

I don't know.

I think it's a strange thing to try to do with a zoning code to make it impossible to build mansions, but possible to build big apartment buildings, like a building is a building.

So I think erring on the side of allowing you to build stuff seems like the priority here.

And I see a difference between a string of 40 foot wide townhouses than like

But I mean, you could also just, your site is a single development that's built all at once, correct?

And I will say if someone, staff would not, if someone said I'm going to do a subdivision, we wouldn't consider that a site with single-family homes on that.

We would say no, that is per lot.

We wouldn't say you get that bonus height because you just came in and built six single-family homes on individual lots.

Well then we may have just actually killed all these items.

I will say that item C13 has to do with the definition of a site being only the land and not what's on it.

Well it's because a lot and what staff had added to that language for 2025, primary building being a lot or site.

It does.

on 7-8, which is about the different type of activities, site modification, any modification

Yes, I mean the 10th status recommendation is change the definition of site to a single lot or group of connected lots or improvements.

So hopefully C1 and C2 have now been knocked off the list.

We'll see if the site thing changes that.

Looks like C3 has already been taken care of.

C4, you guys say it could be a tier one change, then let's make it a tier one change.

Seems simple enough so that a deck is not considered part of a primary building.

C5.

Lots having vehicular access from each street other than primary street or not having vehicular access at all must meet the minimum width required for lots of other vehicular access specified by the zoning district.

I'm confused by this one.

Is this an issue?

This seems like a, if it does need clarification,

I mean, because it's based on, we arrived at this based on Errone's assumption.

Again, devil's in detail, so maybe listen to something, but not a whole lot to study.

I mean, I agree, unless there's something in the code that it's tangled up in some other language.

I can't think of any.

I mean, we can move it to tier two.

Great.

Seems simple enough.

C8 already resolved.

C9.

That seems super easy without any discussion required.

Can we move that one up?

I mean, that looks like just housekeeping again.

Okay, so here we go with the projects with C-10, projects with one to four dwelling units are not required to provide short term or long term bicycle parking.

My opinion is that things with one to four dwelling units are going to be primarily in the residential districts and building anything is already difficult without layering on more requirements.

And one of the other questions is whether it's, is this applied per lot or per project?

And

I'm leaning towards per lot, which means less bicycle parking, but it does mean more flexibility for.

I imagine if someone is building a project that has one to four units on it, there's going to be default bicycle parking as part of that.

I'm just thinking if some of this reform that Lyle's going into about single point access ends up being a reality.

The vestibule in other parts of the country were used as bicycle storage.

So I don't know that forcing people to have a designated area

I'm all for a designated area.

I'm not saying I don't want that, but forcing that is a different discussion.

I just have a question about how bicycle parking works in the code because a pattern I've seen

I think most residences can fit a bicycle somewhere.

I think sometimes the bigger problem is getting the bicycle inside.

We've been talking about the topography of the city.

It's hilly.

Sometimes the sidewalk is a few steps up or down from the home, and you have to get, especially if we're talking about

A cargo bike for carrying children or other stuff.

I'm not carrying my 85 pound cargo bike upstairs regularly or wherever.

But I'm guessing that's orthogonal to bike parking requirements.

You can have a required bike room in a structure that's also up some stairs, and it's not useful.

So if that's a must bicycle parking means bike parking that you can easily get in and out of, then I think it's fine to

I don't think we can solve that problem here.

I mean, if we require that they have bicycle parking, I don't know what the

I don't know what the requirements are for the bicycle park.

I don't remember.

Do we require that it's good?

Because if we just say there must be a place to stash a bike that happens to be able to fly upstairs, I don't care about that.

It's not very useful.

I don't know.

Just to help shape it, we have bicycle regulations.

They're pretty prescriptive.

They very much speak to when you provide short term and long term, where it's provided, how it's provided.

It's very prescriptive, but right now up to four units are exempt and there was just conversation coming from different places.

Do we want to keep that exemption or should it be

I kind of feel like if someone's doing a smaller development like one to four units chances are they probably are not providing sufficient vehicular parking so they would

The developer would be, they would probably want to provide some sort of bike parking anyways.

I live in a duplex when I first moved to Charlottesville and there was no bike parking and it was really frustrating to me but I also don't want to like map on my experience to the zoning code so but like I think tonight the purpose of tonight is to discuss what tier it should be in and whether it should be prioritized right and this this strikes me as a tier two item like something to do more research and more thinking about this year but maybe not like

I was hoping there would be a quick, easy consensus from the playing commission.

And if there's not, then it doesn't sound like it's a priority to figure out or what.

I would suggest this is not a priority at this time.

OK, so we'll move on.

C11.

Let's see.

Oh, allowing

both physical dimensional and numerical changes by special exception.

And also, I think attached to this is the allowing parking locations to be modified under a special exception process.

I believe so.

I know that this is actually not on purpose, but this is tied to the bikes, because again, how the special acceptance is written, you could change the dimensions and all those requirements, but you can't change the actual numbers you need.

So if the code says you need 20 spaces,

There's no relief from that required to do 20 spaces.

You could maybe shrink the stalls to being almost ridiculous.

So that's where this comes from.

The parking chair, I would need to look in more.

I think somewhere there was, and it might have been on another list, was whether the location of parking could be modified by a special exception.

Maybe it's another number down.

That was somewhere, might have been from 2025.

Yeah, it was the bike parking at a hotel because of how hotels are

Consider just commercial and again how you calculate it is just residential commercial, there's not nuanced.

It came up with like 80 spaces needed for a hotel.

So instead of carving out a hotel, can we instead do the special exception?

That's what this is kind of to say is what we ended up having to tell the applicant is we don't have an avenue of relief unless you wanted to go to city council and say I want to change the, I'm still going to provide 80 spaces but the spaces are going to be

OK.

So yes, do you push forward on the, sorry, OK. Let's push forward on this one.

I want to figure out where I got my note from the, somewhere there had been a question about whether parking location could be allowed under a special exception process.

Probably, I'm guessing.

Or it may have had to do with it was a workaround for active depth, possibly.

We'll come back to it if it shows up someplace.

C12.

Not an issue.

Not an issue, OK. Yeah, I thought it got updated.

All right, C-13.

Yeah, we sort of, I think we did talk about it.

This seems kind of important for your ability to review projects.

14, you guys have determined that's not an issue.

15.

I'm not sure why this one needs to be a tier 3 as well for sublot access.

Oh, it is.

All right.

So yeah, active depth.

We have issues, one, with parking, but we also, there's other issues with how we wanted to find active depth and active spaces.

and I need to keep reminding myself that active depth is measured from only the required active width of a building and you've got a 20% allowance for inactive spaces.

Okay.

So it's not as super severe as I have made it out to be but it still seems

I was a little troubled that I think we have some buildings or some lots in town that you have to get a special exception to actually build anything.

And we're going back to our special exception question.

I assume you can ask for a exception to the depth.

Can you ask for an exception to the depth

The percentage?

I would like to propose that dwelling units should be exempt.

I think what I'm going to suggest is, let's see if we can maybe get some general philosophical consensus on this one.

And maybe this is one of the ones that we could have a subcommittee do.

But I'd really like to have this one taken care of sooner than later, because it

It just bothers me that you have to get a special exception.

Is that fair for?

Yeah, so are you suggesting it kind of moves into tier two and then?

Thoughts?

Yeah.

I'm open to it.

I think, thinking back to when I had this discussion back when we were working on this years ago, I had brought that up and James had said something about he didn't.

You could have a house that they put on their bathrooms and their everything on the street side.

And so that would be one of the drawbacks.

My thought was, I don't personally care, but that I think it is counter to what we were originally trying to do with the code.

I think that's included, yeah.

If you only apply the active depth requirements to the ground floor, then the question about exempting dwelling units would kind of be moot, right?

Oh, I thought it didn't apply to like under a certain unit count.

Like if you build a single family home, am I misremembering that then?

In this section, I believe there is an exception.

Yeah, I don't know if it's ground floor or if there's two floors or if there's three floors, but for it being every floor of the building, it seems a little, yeah.

Because reading the intent, I'm not gonna quote it exactly, but it's like bringing the activities that are happening in the building to the street, basically.

Yeah.

OK. OK.

Look at depth.

Yeah.

I mean, some of that you would hope would be taken care of by just the developer wouldn't want to waste exterior wall space in most cases.

I mean, I know they sometimes are forced to.

But I feel like in that case, they literally are forced to.

OK, well.

So ideas that we're looking at, excluding dwelling units, looking at how deep the active depth is, looking at whether it applies to all the different stories.

I think we should look at the definition.

I don't think a hallway should be defined as an inactive space.

Kelly had brought up the idea of a single loaded corridor fronting on a building, and I guess we have a couple examples of that.

There's one on McIntyre, one of those older apartment buildings.

I think we've had, what was it, the Cavalier Court, the hotel that was at Ivy and Emmett used to be like that.

Am I right in thinking that?

Is that a concern?

Parking in active depth.

I think that was one of the main reasons that we had active depth.

We talked about some parking variations, like a dingbat seemed to be a concern where it's just parking, the first story.

We also talked about the Japanese model where there is parking, but it's recessed down, so it's less of an impact on pedestrians.

Or just, yeah, put it in the back or stick it up top.

I mean, I don't love it, but I also think it's,

I think I could be okay with it just because, is it the Draftsman?

And I will just throw out here just to consider Planning Commission because it is a nice, juicy topic.

Is this something you feel comfortable with as the Commission?

It seems like such a technical issue that, for me, I'm not totally sure this is something that requires an extensive public engagement process.

Are we changing the philosophy behind the code?

I don't know that it is.

I think it's almost just like saying, do we really intend to make it this strict?

And the public might tell you at a meeting.

I could be very wrong, but I have a hard time imagining that if there were a public event for feedback on this topic that people would

show up.

It depends how well advertised it gets.

The development community might show up.

Yeah.

OK.

I think we decided, and all right, maybe I decided.

So you guys tell me that this one we'd like to push ahead if we can, and we're going to try and form that subcommittee and dissect it further.

But we've got some general ideas, which are excluding dwelling units, looking at how deep the active depth is in each of the zones, looking at whether it's just the first story or every story on primary facades, and looking at the actual definition of active space.

Okay.

Chair, I believe this was, there was a lot of discussion on entry, entry feature and we, staff had made kind of some determinations when we reviewed plans and it just was, does this need to be re-explored?

Is this related to, is this like a special exception request we got for was like kindlewood, I forget which phase of kindlewood it is, but that was one of the special exceptions was they didn't have enough entrances.

I think it is more, it's more general high level.

It wasn't necessarily getting into like the specific details, but yes, just entrances and entry features are a requirement of the code and a newer kind of very

design-centric requirement of this code.

And I think it's more, do we want that?

I did a little bit of quick checking using the GIS site.

And based on current built environment,

Average doors are over 50 feet apart, just like looking at what's built out there today.

And I think the intent from this is to provide flexibility for future space.

You kind of have a door already there so that if somebody comes in and wants to have the space of two doors as one restaurant, that's possible.

But if they want a smaller restaurant, they can have just one of the doors.

But I struggle with this one because doors aren't that hard to retrofit into a building.

Isn't it primarily about eyes on the street activating the pedestrian realm?

We want people going in and out of doors on the street so that there is activity there.

But I don't think that the entrance requirement really works because like, you know, I just always think of 10th and Derry, the building on 10th Street, they've got all those doors I've never seen one person go in and out of and is it doing anything for us?

I mean, I know that wasn't built under this code, but I just, and because we've got that special exception permit as it's like, you know, I don't feel like it's like a proxy for

I feel like this code is going to make us end up with a bunch of doors that aren't used.

Well, they have to, yeah.

Like, if they're not tent and dairy, they go into someone's apartment, I assume.

And commissioners, as you had your discussion too, and I will just point out, because I do like this about our code versus our old code,

These sections do have an intent section.

So when you're kind of having these conversations and you're wanting to see where we're coming from and if it's meeting what we're trying to do, like entrance has an intent section.

It sounds like this one is we're leaving it on tier three and we need to think more about it.

I agree.

All right, so we sort of talked about the garage and active depth, so I'm going to lump that in with the C-16.

A C-19, we've got the athletic field lighting.

OK.

I think it can stay as a special exception, probably.

And the city can go through its own process.

maximum or minimum width is two feet for the tire to go across yeah but if you also want to use that ribbon as pedestrian access it has to be three feet but then another part of the code says you can't mix pedestrian access and vehicular travel interesting

And the part of the code about not mixing pedestrian and particular travel is, from what I can see, more focused on parking lots.

Well like if the graphic in the code shows a home with a ribbon driveway and right here it's three feet but after you get past the front porch of the house it's then two feet because the garage is actually behind the house so it's like using one of the ribbons as the connector from the sidewalk to the front porch.

Past where the car goes or the whole?

The car goes further than the pedestrian walkway.

What if another car goes there also?

Sure.

That's absolutely plausible.

Or at least for small scale residential projects?

That's right.

It doesn't seem that bad.

That was just the example in there.

I'm sure there's other examples where this could be applied to.

For small-scale residential development, does anybody on this commission have a concern with mixing vehicular and pedestrian access?

No.

My only concern would be a situation where there is no possible way to have safe access because there's just not enough parking.

So one would assume that that will be used for parking.

That would be my only concern.

I think this one's going to sit here for a while on C3.

OK.

Yes, I get the concerns, and I do mean it's, it hasn't really come up as a big issue, but it is a contradiction in the code.

OK. C21 is critical slope regulations.

It sounds like you guys have a solution already.

OK. All right.

This is one that we're redundant with the state.

Not exactly.

I was the one who put this into the spreadsheet a while ago based on the research James Ries did a couple of years ago where he showed that the original purpose of our critical slope regulations was to protect against erosion and stormwater.

In the old days, we didn't have strong rules for that.

And so it was just my thought to try.

And since we have a 6,000 square foot limit and we have requirements for erosion and stormwater management planning,

that anything that doesn't go through those plans should come to you guys, but it doesn't necessarily need to.

We did actually talk about this this afternoon, environmental people, and there was a little bit of pushback, so this kind of language may change in the near future when we do more research.

But you guys are on top of it.

OK. All right.

Now for my favorite, setbacks and build two zones.

So I guess one idea that has been floated is whether there's exemptions, further exemptions to this.

I think we currently have an exemption for the, if you're using the, or if you're able to take advantage of the existing building and the R zones.

Is that correct?

Hopefully that will pass next week, but we carved out an exemption.

Just to clarify, so if you're eligible for the existing structure bonus, so that means even if you're not taking advantage of that bonus, just if you're eligible, you don't have to meet the Bill 2.

So that does resolve a lot of issues in the R zones.

One of my concerns is that we have historic structures, even not historic structures, that are worth preserving outside of the R zones.

And so question one is, is that of concern to anybody else?

I think currently you're allowed to build onto the back of an existing building without bringing it up to the build two zone.

And that's because the non-R zones do not have the existing structure bonus like system, right?

So there's no way we can say if you qualify for this bonus,

I would suggest that's a possible option and define existing building the way that we're defining it for the R zones.

I mean the intent with this build to requirement is to bring buildings closer to the public realm.

Yes.

But I can see how in a brownfield environment or a built environment like we are here in the city for existing lots and structures that that's quite difficult.

So I can understand the exemption for the residential areas even though I think that

That's one of the areas that buildings are most far away from the street.

So I really struggle with this one.

I fully understand the current code in a greenfield environment, but in a city that's built like ours is here today, I really struggle with this.

I think that in the sort of X zone, so the non-residential zones,

Those are really the spots that I believe that moving buildings closer to the street makes sense with the intent of that purpose.

Where I got interested in this was our, we had a special exception last year for element construction as a house on High Street that's in a commercial zone, but it's an old house, and they wanted to put a workshop building in their backyard.

And I forget if that was determined as an accessory use or not, but had that been a primary use, it would have had to go in front of this house.

Now that would have started the process of

I guess eventually we would like to see High Street have commercial construction up fronting on it.

But as it exists now, it's a mix of small commercial projects and houses that are set further back.

Do we want a code that encourages those buildings to be demolished or to have something built in front of them if there's enough room in order to achieve that?

Sorry.

Something I've been thinking about is uses.

For residential uses, I'm less concerned about this as the public realm.

Residential use is not really the public realm in the same way.

For commercial uses, it kind of is.

OK.

So you're saying if it's a commercial use, you would be in favor of maintaining the current code?

So even in the case of elements building?

With a special exception process.

OK.

So I always thought of this build T requirement and this goal of moving things closer to the street as a like, if you're going to build a new building, put it there.

So I would tend to come down commercial or residential.

I don't think it makes sense to say, oh, you want to build onto the back.

Sorry, you can't.

You have to build onto the front.

To me, I don't think what we're going to do is induce people tearing down buildings.

I think we're just going to induce the property being of less use to them because they are just not going to do the thing that they want to do, which seems like

My concern is for one for

preservation and architectural design control districts.

And one of the suggestions is we could tie this to whether a building is a contributing structure design district, whether it can have an exemption.

I find it a little funny that you can add on to the back of a building, but you can't build behind a building.

So with some of our older buildings, if you attach a building to the back of it, you're going to end up having to do sprinklers and other things that change the cost of the project.

So to me, those two things don't change how things feel on the street.

So I'm not sure that distinction that we have currently in the code makes no sense to me.

I figure if you're building behind,

Whatever, just keep building behind.

Once you build something in front, then yes, it's got to start meeting our code.

But that's kind of where I'm landing on this.

And I would like to have a general exception that just says, if you have an existing use, existing primary use that meets the definition of an existing building, you're allowed to build behind it.

You know, once you build in front of it, you have to start meeting our build to requirements.

But I don't know if that doesn't distinguish between commercial and residential.

Maybe from a different perspective, how does this requirement to build to the street

inhibit the point of the new zoning code of getting more housing built?

I think if somebody's not in one of the R zones, but they have a house that they've got their residential units in a C zone or whatever, they can't build a backyard ADU.

That would be an example of what that would be limiting.

Is that in the R zones or?

What about this simple idea of saying we do the same exemption for existing structures for all zones?

That was raised earlier, right?

Exempting building, exempting persons that have an existing structure.

I don't think it would miss any.

everything.

Right, but if the shed is the primary structure.

But doesn't it have to have like a primary, didn't we make some distinction already between sheds and primary uses?

You have to establish first a primary structure, and then you could have accessory structures.

So if there's an existing lot that has just an existing shed on it, that doesn't count as a primary structure?

It gets a little tricky.

It would get into whether that's a nonconforming lot, when the shed was built on the lot.

It could happen, but it'd be very rare to be a handful.

For an exemption?

Mm-hmm.

It would be very, I think staff would have a hard time with it.

I think we could do it.

What I would just caution with is this is a foundation, one of the foundation principles of the code.

And so it would take, if this is the direction we want to go as a community, it could be done, but it would take a lot to update the code, to reflect it, because this was one of the pillars of how I think the code was built.

OK.

If we were to form a subcommittee and to work on this, is there any concerns with anything we've been saying?

Would there be any concerns with the idea of any addition behind an existing building being exempted from build twos?

That's all we're talking about is build two zones.

OK. All right.

So I think we'll try and prioritize this and hash it out on a subcommittee.

I don't know if we need to go through all the D's.

Are there any that people have issues with or want to discuss?

I do.

OK. What do you have?

The G's that I looked up, G9, and that goes to the Stormwater area, 6,000 to 10,000.

The G6, max coverage regs, max heights.

Yeah, just so I can track.

We have skipped the Ds.

We're cool with that and everything because those are all our comments, right?

So we're good with that.

We're moving on to the Gs that allow them.

I pulled G14, build to width, which we've talked about quite a bit here.

Mercy on that.

G6.

G6 is max coverage regulations.

Let's see if I can pull it.

And max heights are an issue.

I think this was coming from October 14.

Then they talk about, oh, this was Habitat.

Basically, just physically, they couldn't get a Habitat house on a standard Charlottesville lot, just because the restrictions are too tight.

And we did.

So this is the one where we got rid of stories and just went with a larger overall height, I believe, for the car zones.

They can do alley and corner, but it's not great.

But that doesn't really work with all the other intents of what we're doing with code.

So just the max coverage, not necessarily the other points?

G9, this is up the amount of disturbed area for stormwater for 6,000 to 10,000.

That's just matching state code.

Which I think makes sense.

Yep, thanks.

G14, build to width.

Creating a lot of issues, it's true.

Utility requirements just physically can't be done.

All right, so these are two different issues.

Yeah, for weird sites.

And we mostly get weird sites.

Rory talked about this a lot.

I mean, I agree.

I think that what the intention would have been is that if you can't build a building wide enough, you split the lot up or you re-subdivide.

But that's, I guess, not always possible.

Is that where we're getting at?

Right.

These are all things like being done by special exception.

Is that correct?

OK.

But you're still saying minimum percentage is too high.

What do we want to do with them?

OK.

So we're thinking of shifting these up to like a tier three.

OK.

G18 ground story definition.

And this is another super in the weeds one, but it's an important one.

How we're defining the ground story.

Yeah, this is the one that I understand that

And our code is not allowing them to have one gigantic ground floor where a lot of it is below grade.

We're saying you must break it up because you can't have all that below grade and I think what this comment is saying is like that just makes it more expensive for us to break it up like that.

The current code is about six feet.

And six feet in some areas of town happens very quickly.

So then you end up with a building with very small sections.

It could be because you can ask for additional height, not stories, a special exception, but if you needed additional height because now you didn't want to modular the build.

The point was to modular the build.

And so if you didn't want to do that, for whatever reason your plates wouldn't match, you could ask for a special exception for more height on there.

Now I think

You probably have to ask for a lot of series of special exceptions because now that exposure, you have a lot of things that apply to first story, transparency, blah, blah, blah.

And that's kind of where I was getting at because I feel like where I've seen this on the BAR is, for example, the hotel that's going to go on the Artful Launcher site just over next to the Omni.

Because Marcus Street slopes so much, they ran into some issues with where their ground floor is.

So they've got one high ground floor and then there's a lower level that ended up having to be treated like a ground floor.

Their floor-to-floor heights weren't appropriate for that because it was a garage level.

Because it was a garage level, it wasn't going to have windows or anything.

But at the same time, it was

Well there are requirements for a facade like that to have

Yes.

Yeah.

But I guess it just ended up being something that was helpful to look at from a discretionary point of view, rather than like a formulaic, put this stuff here.

It wasn't going to meet the code, whatever they did.

That's just a counterpoint.

I don't know.

I tend to agree.

Yeah, so I appreciate the special exemption process and what can and can't be done through those.

But because of the topology of Charlottesville, I feel like there could be a lot of special exemptions for this.

So not only that, but also finding

The issue, and I'm thinking of West Main specifically, was that you get like one giant building that's sort of like teetering above the rest of the street.

So you get sort of odd, like there's a sidewalk and it just looks odd.

But it's really an aesthetic issue.

The standard was just a really big engineering screw up.

They built the building a foot too high.

Um, sorry.

Any others, Lyle?

I have two that I couldn't find a G for, but I'd like to note them.

Grocery stores near schools.

It's a big one.

We talk in the comp plan.

We just haven't done it in the zoning code, allowing grocery stores near schools.

The big pushback was that there would be tobacco products sold in those grocery stores near schools, and we don't want tobacco products sold near schools, which I'm very sensitive of.

It is now legal in Virginia for counsel, if they're concerned about this issue, to say, ah,

No tobacco products near schools or whatever.

So what are we going to do about that?

Because how far is Johnson from that?

It's right next to us, next to a park.

So Council could say, well, we're concerned about tobacco products being sold next to a park.