Planning Commission Meeting   9/9/2020

Welcome to the Planning Commission.

My name is Missy Creasy and I am staff for the Planning Commission this evening.

and every evening for the Planning Commission.

But we are beginning with our annual meeting, which is a little bit different order than our agenda notes.

And so for our first order of business for the annual meeting this evening, we will have the election of officers.

This is the time of year where that occurs.

And Mr. Mitchell, who was the chair,

provided a nominating committee and we have a report from the nominating committee who will provide a slate of officers and following that we will call for additional nominations and then proceed to a vote.

Ms.

Good evening everyone and

All right, thank you for that report.

So we have one round of nominations.

Do we have any additional nominations for either position?

Okay, seeing none, we can take the opportunity to vote for the slate of officers that we have in front of us.

Just as a reminder, that will be Mr. Hosea Mitchell for chair and Mr. Lyle Solla-Yates for vice chair.

All right, I will go ahead and call that because that's what we need to do.

Oh, an enthusiastic aye.

All right.

Ms.

Dow.

Aye.

Ms.

Green.

Aye.

Aye.

Yes, aye.

All right, and Mr. Heaton, are you still here?

Yes, you are.

All right, and Mr. Mitchell.

And aye.

All right, well, thank you for letting me moderate for another year.

I do keep kind of hanging out with you guys and attempting to hurt you cats, so thanks.

So we'll begin with... Chair Mitchell, can I ask you a quick question?

Do we have to read the state law about how we're doing a virtual meeting?

I defer to Ms.

Creasy on that.

I don't have that direction.

Perhaps Miss Robertson can send me a quick note on that.

And if we need to do that, we'll take care of that.

There was an emergency order that we had to read at it at the beginning for a virtual meeting.

Okay.

Well, I think you all know what's happening.

The students are coming back, or at least most of them, not all of them.

I've heard on the order of 85% of the student body is back in some form or another.

Beyond that, and there's plenty of information on the website about the testing that's going on and real time information on that.

Of planning note, I'll just mention there's a BOV meeting over the course of Thursday and Friday with the Buildings and Grounds Committee meeting at 8 o'clock on Friday, so bright and early.

And they're going to have on their action items the School of Data Sciences and the Hotel and Conference Center, both at the Ivy Corridor.

as well as renovation of a building at the Darden School, Smith Hall.

And so if you're interested in following that, there is a live stream that you can get to from the BOV website.

And Ms.

Green.

I know this maybe officially was my last meeting, but I did attend a TJPDC meeting at the end of August where there was a vote required for the

of funding for rent relief.

And so I would ask folks for rent and mortgage relief.

So I would tell folks that there is money there from the CARES Act and things like that.

But if you're in need of rent relief or mortgage relief, please go to the TGA PDC website.

And there's a pop-up that comes up

for more information.

And so there is money there.

And it's my understanding that there's still money left at the state and that

I think the more money we need, the more money we get, supposedly.

That's the best way I know to put that.

So that if we need it and we use it, there's more money there for us to possibly get.

So, again, just to inform the public, if you need this rent relief or mortgage relief, please don't hesitate to reach out and go to that website.

I also attended with Mr. Mitchell the Rivanna Steering Committee about the next plans for potentially a bike pad crossing and after being on that committee for so many years and watching this and being on the bike pad committee for so many years and watching these potential improvements

And with that, I am through.

All right, so I had one committee meeting this month.

It was the police design task force.

So we discussed the 10th and greedy smart scale application plans.

And I mean, essentially, there's a lot of concerns that by doing it as a smart scale application, rather than a small area plan,

It's going to be automobile focused or road centered on that intersection.

But the alternative, I guess, is to do a bunch of community engagement in advance, which isn't actually funded until we get funding from the state for smart scale.

So we considered a motion to recommend that a small area plan be pursued for the corridor instead, but I think we ended up actually instead recommending that as the consultants for the comp plan do their outreach to people specifically in that area,

They threw in a few questions about what their vision for that intersection and that corridor are, so that instead of a small area plan where we're looking at results 60 years down the line for half a million or so in expenditure, we can kind of combine our two efforts, keep the smart scale ball rolling, and start to get some good preliminary input

before the full-scale, smart-scale engagement comes through in a few years because construction wouldn't start until something like 2026 or 28.

So that was last meeting.

Since then, the chair and the vice chair of place have resigned.

So we have a meeting tomorrow to discuss

The future of the Place Design Task Force, I guess, that was my phone, in particular, whether it's useful in its current form, whether Council and the Planning Commission are listening to its recommendations, whether it's actively making recommendations and increasing output,

and how it should look going forward.

And then once that's discussed and decided on, electing new officers to replace the old ones.

So that is coming up tomorrow.

And if any of you all have any thoughts on the place task force, I'd be eager to hear them because they're looking for

the council liaison and me to tell them what our expectations for the committee are.

So that's the place situation.

And then next Tuesday, there will be an MPO tech meeting as well.

That and since the last meeting, I have turned 29.

As you might recall, when the comp plan started, I was 25.

So I hope I won't hear any wondering from you all about why we struggle to get any engagement in any younger demographics.

So that's my report.

Reverend Heaton, welcome back.

So Tuesday, I returned to Charlottesville after two months driving out west.

I saw a lot of the country.

There's a lot more land out west than there is in Virginia, I'll tell you that.

So I have been out of town in incommunicado and unplugged from emails and social media for not quite two months, but seven weeks anyway.

And it's been renewing.

So but I'm happy to be back and interested to see where we're picking up on this comp plan.

and really curious to see how our community engagement and citizen input is going to work.

Well, welcome back.

Glad to have you back.

Ms.

Hi, so I attended the CIP meeting last Thursday, so I don't know if I reported the month before or not, but we are now meeting quarterly instead of annually to try to stay ahead of some of the projects that we have been discussing.

So a couple of the big hot topics that were on our agenda was the Walker Buford reconfiguration.

We are still deliberating about the configuration and actually moving forward on it.

We voted at this time as a body to table it and I just want to be clear that we are not tabling it completely and forever.

I know this has been a project that has been talked about for the last 10 years, but at this time we came up to

We came to a consensus that we did not feel comfortable spending $350,000 on a plan that may not work, especially during the times that we are currently in.

We do feel like it would be important to get public input again.

because people may not feel the same pre-corona as they do post-corona.

So keep your eyes out for that.

But like I said, we don't want people to think that we don't want to move forward and it's just going to be tabled forever.

It's just tabled for maybe the next three or six months.

Something else that was really

A hot topic was also our facilities maintenance update for our school.

So they've been using Survey 123 to streamline their work orders and the flow of the process.

And then we also went over different definitions of

What CCS wants, I had to clarify that.

So we have three new categories.

They section them in facilities maintenance, capital improvement projects, and then also facility services.

And so facility services is something that we voted on as more of a smaller, for smaller projects where they don't necessarily need to go through facilities maintenance to get those things done and can also be done quicker.

and that was pretty much most of what our meeting entailed.

Very good.

It's coming.

Mr. Solla-Yates.

No report.

Everything got rescheduled and shuffled around.

Strange time.

Well, I've been attending some meetings.

The Board of Architectural Review, they did meet on August 18th.

There were four certificate of appropriateness issued.

One was deferred.

Most exciting to me was we approved a letter of support for placing the Jackson P. Burley High School on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

And so that will be going to the state

here in two weeks.

The tree commission met on August 26th.

This was the first time we have met since last March, so we spent a lot of time sort of remembering what it is that we do, welcoming four new members to the commission,

and reviewing our mission and the committee structure.

Paul Josie did run through a draft of a presentation that will be made to the City Council, the annual State of the City Forest presentation, and some of the highlights from that include

The correlation between low income neighborhoods and city areas with the fewest trees and the fact that the lack of trees increases the heat sink effect of those areas and also creates more health issues as a result of the greater heat.

Recent new developments are not providing the opportunities to provide large street trees in planting beds along the street.

There has been a lack of city regulatory oversight of new development construction that's resulted in the destruction of large mature street trees.

And all of these things and others have resulted in a loss of 5% of the tree canopy.

in a recent 10-year period.

And that 5% doesn't sound like much, but that's 400 acres of trees.

That's it.

All right.

Did I get everybody?

Yeah.

Oh, Lisa mentioned the Rivanna meeting.

That was the first meeting that I got a chance to go to, a very interesting meeting.

Lisa kind of walked through the high points of that.

But at the end of the day, there's likely to be some development, some additional development along the Rivanna.

But I think the group is very focused on making certain that no matter what we do, we protect that environment and make certain that that environment remains a serene place to go and to enjoy the outdoors.

So the bike path and the bike maybe bridges across, a lot of neat ideas.

and maybe some development along the river.

But the group seems very focused on protecting that waterway and making it a nice and serene place to be.

The UVA master plan committee did not meet.

And it looks like that meeting was canceled.

And I'm not certain when we're going to meet again.

And the reasons we're not meeting are obvious.

One, the virus.

The other is just to cut back on costs, where UVA can cut back on costs.

And frankly, most of the new planning studies that they've been working on, we've already reviewed.

So not certain when we'll meet again, but I'll keep you guys in the loop on that.

Alex and I went to the loopback meeting.

That's the UVA Albemarle, Charlottesville land use proof.

And we are working on getting our first bi-annual report out to you guys.

And that document is more of a visioning document.

The document talks about what we want to be engaged in, what we want to focus on.

And there's a laundry list of things that we're thinking about focusing on, but we haven't really landed the boat yet on what exactly they're going to be.

We're talking about stuff like the environment of climate.

We're talking about night skies.

We're talking about capital plans.

We're actually talking about landfill diversion.

What we do with the construction below debris.

So things like that.

The document that we're working on will iterate and hopefully we'll be able to get you something that is a good vision of what we want to do and focus on by the end of the year.

The capital budget looks like we're having a kickoff meeting on Friday, so more report on that in the next couple of meetings.

Alrighty, so since we now have a settled chair and vice chair, our chair will be looking at the committee appointments and taking a look and seeing if those need to be shifted.

So I will send out the last version of that so folks can take a

If you have interest in something, you can share that interest with Mr. Mitchell.

In addition, we have a new member who will be coming on board.

Liz Russell was appointed by council last evening.

to the Planning Commission for Ms.

Green's chair.

She had a prior engagement, but she may join us later in the evening.

And she brings to us a preservation background.

So that'll be a wonderful skill set to have with us, as well as just very involved in our current community.

So we'll look forward to getting to know her and bringing her on board.

In addition, I have worked to update the roster and I realized I hadn't sent that to you all in a while.

So I'm going to have you send you a draft and have you provide any updates to me.

That way we can get a up to date roster so that you all have everyone's contact information.

And in addition, you all you received tons of emails, I know, but there was a message that we received from the Clerk of Council concerning the boards and commission meeting that Council is holding on October 6.

So all boards and commission members have been invited to listen to that discussion.

I believe there'll be some

We haven't seen a complete agenda yet but they wanted to schedule the time to really focus on something they've been talking about for a while which was addressing the

boards and commissions in general and just having a focused discussion on that.

So that is something if you've lost that link, let me know and we can get that to you.

But if you're able to attend that on March 6, that would be great.

Otherwise, staff continues to mostly work remotely.

We have had our first remote site plan conference this week, and we have a number that are scheduled to occur.

We had pretty good success with the first one, but it was a small one.

So good to start with a small one.

We've had virtual community meeting, at least one, maybe two, for applications that are working through the process.

So as I like to communicate, we have a path to get every application through the department at this point in time.

And so that is a very good

thing to have.

It's a little bit slower on some aspects, but it does provide the best opportunity that we can for public input.

And we have found with the applications we've been working with that we have received a good amount of input from folks.

So, you know, in our changed world, we're continuing to move forward.

Very good report.

Thanks.

I think we are now ready to go on to matters to be presented by the public.

So this is the only opportunity that we're going to have tonight to get input from the public.

So if you've got anything you want to talk about that relates to the work that this board does, this would be your opportunity to do that.

We would like, if you'd like to make a comment about scribbling or the

This would be an opportunity to do that as well.

So any comments about scribbling or the family day home would be, this would be where you'd want to do that.

Thanks chair.

We welcome all of our attendees to the planning commission regular meeting webinar for September 9th.

If you'd like to address the commission during this time, please, please click your raise hand icon or press star nine on your phone if you're calling in.

We will call on attendees in the order of hands raised.

And once we enable your audio, we ask that you please state your name and place of residence, and you will then have three minutes for comment.

We currently have 37 attendees and four of them with their hand up, Chair.

Our first is Julie Conviser and Ms.

Julie, welcome.

Is it possible to turn on video as well?

Hello, everyone.

Hello?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, ma'am.

OK.

No.

For attendees, it is audio only.

OK.

All right, well, I was going to try and show you by video the segment of road that has concerned our entire community.

I am a member of the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association.

I live in Huntley neighborhood.

and have been a part of meetings with my neighbors along Streebling and there are a tremendous number of households that are very concerned about the public hazard posed by the current 240 Streebling design.

We are for density and the in-building is something that most people in this community do support.

What we are very concerned about is the public hazards presented by the cut-through onto Morgan Court, which I was going to show you by video what that would look like here.

It's a road that can't even tolerate two-way traffic as it is.

And also the turn from Morgan Court onto Strebling Avenue,

and the dangers on stribbling that already exist.

We are aware that the city has been aware for a long time that stribbling is a dangerous place for pedestrians, bikes and car traffic currently under current conditions.

And we understand that the new development will multiply those hazards.

And we would like the

developers and the city to make a commitment to improvements for public safety along Stribling.

That is key.

And this entire community from all the way from JPA, Stribling, Huntley, Sunset Avenue, Sunset Drive are organizing

to protect our safety on these streets.

So we suggest respectfully that the city take seriously our concerns.

There was a traffic study done during the time of COVID on Strebling, which was a very strange time to do it.

It did not have its normal traffic and certainly is not representative of the kind of traffic that will be present

with the building going on with tractors, contractors, et cetera, driving, and then the residents themselves.

So we support the neighborhood development.

What we want to see is that every person, including the new neighbors, as well as existing neighbors, can feel safe driving, walking, and biking along Stribling Avenue and Morgan Court and Huntley.

So please consider what can be done to protect our safety.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Chair, next we have Mr. Tom Cogill.

And Mr. Cogill, you are on with the commission.

And Tom, welcome.

Okay, am I on board here?

Yes.

Good, good.

I agree with a lot of what Julie said.

Thank you very much, Julie.

I know that Morgan Court is not equipped to handle

any kind of traffic at all.

And Stribling Avenue is certainly not able to handle a whole lot of traffic.

It has a huge number of joggers and walkers and bikers and I've run into some close calls myself.

I've lived on Stribling Avenue for 20 years.

and I enjoy it.

It's a very diverse community.

It's got a little bit of everything and I'm all for affordable housing.

If the development would like to make it entirely affordable housing instead of 15%, that would be just fine with me.

but it would be reckless to over-develop the site.

Talking about 181 units is, on one hand, it's reckless in that it would endanger people on the street.

We're not equipped to handle that amount of traffic.

And it would be

Disrespectful, really, to the neighbors and the neighborhood in general to do it in the way they're talking about building out right to the street.

I think developing to a lesser degree with fewer units and allowing a green space between the street and the development, maybe sort of a neighborhood park would be much more respectful to the environment and to the social environment.

But for me, the biggest issue is safety on the street.

It's paramount.

And if injuries happen, I just hope you all take this into account in your planning.

OK, next we have Mr. Paul Josie.

Welcome, and you've got three minutes.

And I think you're on mute, Paul.

All right.

All right, thank you.

My name is Paul Josie, and I'm a representative from the Charlottesville Tree Commission.

And I'm not actually going to talk a lot about trees.

I will note that this site has 11 acres of mature canopy and is one of the few sites that is directly on the Moore's Creek.

And there's a site with a lot of steep slopes.

and the Huntley development is the development next door to this that actually precipitated the steep slopes, sort of concerns in the city about pollution into our waterways.

So there's a significant concern that this development, which by right would be 46 units, but this is actually proposed at 170 units.

So we're actually giving away development rights for 124 additional units.

to this developer for this site, for a highly dense site, which would be a dense site on a level property.

But this is a highly sloped, the actual roads are graded at 14.5%.

So this is a steep development that's being proposed here in a very sensitive wooded area right on the watershed.

And what is being proposed, even though their description of it describes it as preserving the site's existing Sylvan character in their narrative,

It does nothing of the sort.

It is removing a significant amount of canopy and impacting steep slopes in this area.

So there's concern about the density being proposed.

That's the first point.

The second point regarding the density being proposed, the current street of Stribling Avenue has about 180 to 200 household units.

This development would almost double the number of units and it's located at the very end of Stribling.

This is an island location.

This is from a walking standpoint.

It's a 40 minute walk to the nearest grocery store.

It's a 25 minute walk to the nearest park or playground.

It's 25 minutes from UVA buildings at Alderman and McCormick for the classroom buildings.

It's a 12-minute walk to JPA Fastmark, the nearest convenience store, and a 13-minute walk to the nearest bus stop at the private station.

This is not a close walk location to sort of justify this density.

And finally, the scribbling avenue itself is a street that has no sidewalks.

The city has looked in the past at what it would cost to add sidewalks and to move utilities, add stormwater drains,

And it is in the millions.

And so the developer is proposing a $500,000 cost into the project, which would really buy very little actual infrastructure for this very dense development on a very, very unsupportive street.

So we just support you.

If you're going to move ahead with this, we support a lower density, but also importantly, protecting the safety of our waterways as well as our pedestrian infrastructure.

Thank you.

OK, next up we have Mr. Jason Halbert.

Mr. Halbert, you are on with commission.

Jason, welcome.

Thanks, Hosea.

Thanks, commission, for having this and letting the public speak during your work session.

And speaking as the co-president of the Neighborhood Association in Fry Spring, I obviously live in Fry Spring.

The Neighborhood Association is drafting a letter.

I mentioned this on the developer call last week.

It's a six-page letter.

As you can imagine, we've got many cooks in the kitchen.

And so we're almost done.

We'd hoped to have it to you today, but it's not quite ready.

There's some minor disagreement over some points.

But I want to highlight what we voted on already.

and really encourage you to look at the letter once we send it.

And then also come out to Stribling Ave and in the letter, we invite you to come for a walk and we're gonna try to arrange these for you and city councilors.

Cause I think if you haven't been there, I know many of you have, but if you haven't, you'll immediately see what everyone has been saying about the city we did a neighbor

The neighborhood survey for capital improvements.

And this was our number one priority.

And so since then, the neighborhood board and leaders and me, we've been advocating to you and the city council for inclusion of striveling improvements in the CIP.

It's been left on the editing room floor each year, so it's never made the cut.

We don't quite understand why.

Obviously, limited funds and things like that.

As I've said to Dr. Richardson, it's fine if we need to get in line and stand behind a number of other projects that are higher priority.

We would just like to know where we are and where things stand.

As we see it, this development, we want density, we want more affordable housing, we recognize the history of exclusionary, racist zoning policies, and we want to correct these problems.

In order to do that, Council and the Planning Commission need to marry their commitment to these, you know,

Allaudable goals with a proper safe street.

And you can't have it the other way.

You can't just plop a giant dense development down in the back of the woods at the end of the street and not improve the street.

I think you all get this.

You're smarter than I am.

So the letter will come this week.

We hope you'll take a look at it and we hope to see you out on Stripling Avenue very soon.

And we encourage you to deliberate long and hard on this one.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we have Mr. Derek Stone.

Thank you very much.

Well, it's actually Derek and Sharon Stone and we are down at the end of Stribling on Nob Hill Circle.

We're down with the island.

And there have been some great points made, so I won't repeat a lot of them, but I'll make a couple of points I haven't heard yet.

One is that the Stribbling Road is at capacity.

Actually, I think the walk would be a great idea, but really nice if we could send you some pictures or something.

It's kind of got a problem that should already be taken care of for safety reasons, as Mr. Kogel mentioned, but isn't for some reason, and you're going to make the problem worse.

Additionally, I also support personally the adding low-cost housing.

That is a critical problem in this town, but it's kind of at odds with the fact that it's an unsafe setup.

There's a conflict between adding low cost housing and putting it here.

The other thing which we'll point out, which we haven't mentioned, we haven't heard mentioned at all is

At the end of Stribbling is Stribbling Extended, which is a little dirt road that was partially paved.

And that is an aggressively single lane and it was paved just a few years ago and there's substantial erosion that's produced on either side.

I don't personally know the story of who decided to pave part of that, but you definitely can't fit two cars on it and you can't

have 180 additional houses driving on it.

You can't pass somebody on it.

So we see that as a potential substantial problem in addition to the just general safety.

I just wanted to mention that Stribling Extended that Derek is talking about will be used as a shortcut from Fontaine for anybody getting off 64 and coming home to this proposed development.

It always has tailgaters during football games and stuff, so old-timers know about it.

We've been here since 2006, and the traffic is steadily picked up, and adding

Somebody earlier said doubling, but I think 180, give or take, units would be triple the number of cars, probably.

Anyways, thanks for giving us a moment to give us our two cents.

Thank you.

OK, next up we have Mr. Martin Quarles.

Mr. Quarles, you're on with the commission.

You have three minutes.

And Martin, you'll need to unmute.

Ah, there we go.

Now?

Now you're good.

Hey thanks.

Well I raised my hand early when you said there was four people in line.

I just went ahead and did it.

I don't have prepared notes.

I was part of the community meeting last week where a number of us spoke.

I've been also part of a on-site community meeting that we held Saturday a week and a half ago in the neighborhood

talk about this in person with Frye Springs residents and other interested parties.

And I think there's fairly unanimous agreement.

And I will not reiterate everything that's been said prior

to me joining the conversation because you've heard it already, the unsafeness, et cetera, et cetera.

I just started reading the tree commission report on this and regrettably, I haven't gotten very far into the tree commission, but I know that at least one member of the tree commission is I believe on the planning commission, Mr. Leandro and another member of the commission has spoken tonight, Paul Josie and

Just in the first paragraph, it says approval of the rezoning application for this site would grant excessive development rights for an isolated, unconnected location that does not justify such density.

And it talks about the 2018 comprehensive plan mentioning this as low density development.

And they said this would be a dense project even if, even were this a level site without a mature forest.

But in fact, the site is very steep,

and completely forested, thereby magnifying the negative impacts.

So I think there's a really strong sentiment in this part of the city to say this is too much and it's in the wrong location.

And I won't say anything else.

Okay.

And next up we have, it looks like Derek Stone had his hand up from before.

I will lower that.

Ms.

Catherine Brews.

Ms.

Brews, you're on with the commission.

And I think we just lost Catherine.

So, well there, she just raised her hand again.

So I will enable your audio.

Catherine, you're on with council.

You have our commission.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Can everybody hear me okay?

Yes.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for meeting with us this evening and hearing our concerns.

I would say I don't want to beat the drum, but at the same time, I've worked in higher education for 15 years with Student Success and Access.

And I think beating the drum is the only way to make sure that the point is proven when it comes to safety and access on Stribling.

This community certainly supports the affordable housing.

I think 15% of 180 is actually kind of low from a commitment standpoint, but just my humble opinion.

I recently read an article here and what would be I think the daily progress.

with another community property in the county of Charlottesville but also with the same county of Albemarle but with the same builder and it seems like five hundred thousand dollars just seems to be their lip service to making money off of building housing and that's what they proposed for this breezy hill development in eastern Albemarle and that was recently I believe either stalled and or

I'm a dog mom of three fur babies and we're expecting our first little one in January.

Walking on Stribling now is scary.

We bought in the city of Charlottesville for access.

We have two cars, right?

And we have the ability to move around as we need, but there will be people at the end of that road who don't have that ability.

I think 17 minutes is, you know, probably a good estimation of how long it takes to get to a bus stop.

And that was prior to me, you know, waddling down, struggling with three dogs.

So I really just, I would hope that if we're going to

have this commitment in Charlottesville to better our city and to better our access, that we really put the resources behind it, right?

Just like in higher education, you want to bring in diverse students?

Let's give them scholarships.

Let's do X, Y, and Z. This is the same thing.

It's just a different topic, right?

Thank you.

Okay, next up, we have John Marshall.

Mr. Marshall, you're on with the commission.

You'll have three minutes.

You'll need to unmute.

Yes.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for having this meeting.

My name is John Marshall, and I'm a property owner on Stripling Avenue.

You heard from the Neighborhood Association Board that the community supports this development as long as that Charlottesville or the developer widens the road.

I want to say that this is absolutely not true.

The entire community resoundingly disapproves of this proposed development.

My neighbors and I are flabbergasted and frankly appalled that the association is saying that we are for this development.

Last week, the developer had a community meeting which had a lot of attendees and absolutely everybody was firmly against this development.

I don't understand why the association is saying the community is okay with the development.

We are not.

The meeting last week was recorded and I highly encourage you all to watch it.

You will see person after person speak out against this development.

Also, the proposed development is not by right.

The area is currently zoned as low density.

Charlottesville's own land use map has this slated for low density.

And again, the community resoundably disapproves of turning their neighborhood from low density to high density, especially given that Charlottesville's own future land map has it slated that way.

Also during the meeting, the developer claimed that they proposed to the commission a by-right development, a neighborhood, if you will, and that the commission responded to them that they should do high density development instead.

I'm wondering, first of all, if this is true, and if it is true, I would really like to understand why the Planning Commission would encourage high density when the city's own plan has it slated for low density.

So if anybody from the commission could add some color to that, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, John.

At this point, we won't get into any back and forth with you,

Mr. Rice.

OK, next we have Mr. Kevin Flynn.

Mr. Flynn, you're on with the commission, and you'll have three minutes.

Hello, thank you.

I just wanted to reiterate the points that others have brought up, just concerns I have with this project.

The existing condition of Stribling Road has no sidewalks, no bicycle facilities, and there is a very high volume of pedestrians and cyclists for any road, but especially one without proper facilities for them.

And an additional about 180 additional units at the end of the road would obviously add to that.

And so if this is going to move forward, we really do need to have the proper facilities to accommodate that.

Additionally, the road has hazards for motorists.

The site distances are very low in certain places.

The width varies as you go along.

These things are obviously made worse by having to share the road with cyclists and pedestrians who are dodging cars and cars are dodging them.

It's a sort of a little ballet that we have that works for now, but it's really not ultimately

say if it doesn't really fit VDOT's guidelines for pedestrian facilities or bicycle facilities or even roadways for that matter.

Additionally, I'm concerned about the capacity of the intersection at Stribling and JPA.

This is functionally a dead-end roadway.

There's no other outlet from the far end of Stribling because Stribling extended just isn't functional for 99% of users.

And the existing intersection is over capacity right now.

It backs up a lot during the peak period in the morning.

And if this project moves forward, that needs to be addressed as part of it.

And just as a conclusion, I'm just kind of concerned about the level of density for what is ultimately the dead end of a road for a dense network to function healthily.

Like, you know, the downtown wall is a great example.

You can approach that from a hundred different directions and get to it and that's what makes the density work.

But in this case, there's really only going to be one primary access point.

And I just question whether or not that is the wisest use of this land.

Okay.

Next we have Ms.

Margo Smith.

Ms.

Smith, you are on with the commission.

You will have three minutes.

Hi, thank you.

My name's Margot Smith.

I live at 237 Stribling Avenue, and I've been here for 12 years.

I will also reiterate what others have said about this location at 240 not being suitable for high density.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the distance of services and the need for people to walk the whole length of the road.

But what I wanted to weigh in about right now, which other people haven't spoken so much about, is the impact of the steep slopes and the runoff on Moore's Creek.

And if you do come visit the property, which I hope you will do, I would ask that you walk all the way around the property down to Moore's Creek and you see what's happening down there.

And in particular, you could look at the back end of the Huntley subdivision.

And what I'd like to say is that when we moved here in the first few years that we lived here, there was a beautiful beaver meadow down there.

And since then, it has become a swamp.

And that is because of the runoff of water.

And it's just, you know, I fear that the same thing is going to happen.

And what we've seen is with the heavy rains that we've had a number of times, that small creek, Moore's Creek, just can't really handle

the water that's coming in from two different sources.

And it just gets swamped, you know, to the detriment of the little bridge, the pedestrian bridge that connects sunset and sunset extended, which was like chock full of trees and limbs after a major storm a couple of years ago.

So, you know, this is an ecological area that I think is at risk.

and I also think that having swamp lands behind these developments also puts people at risk.

They're mosquito breeding grounds and they're really not pleasant recreational areas like paths through the woods as have been talked about or planned.

And I don't think that's what Huntley had in mind when they planned that, but look what's happened because of those slopes and the runoff

kind of the improper direction of water.

So I hope you look at that as part of this plan because we really appreciate the green space in the neighborhood right now.

And the way that the neighborhood has really been suitable for people of all incomes, students, as well as people who live here and are homeowners.

And we worry

a lot about what this overdevelopment of this property will do for our neighborhood.

And next we have Mr. William Abrahamson.

Mr. Abrahamson, you are on with commission and you have three minutes.

Thank you very much to everyone.

Yes, William Abrahamson.

I live at 123 Stribling Avenue.

I'm also with Jason Halbert, a co-president of the Frights Springs Neighborhood Association.

I'll be speaking to both those hats tonight.

First of all, I'd like to thank you because, you know,

This commission is one of the places where policy meets common sense, sometimes to frustrating effect.

But this is where policy really gets haggled out.

And I thank you for working through that with us.

And with that in mind, as a board, I've been trying to keep in mind the metrics information that you have at hand.

By law, how can you read this POD?

Obviously on the traffic note, Mr. Duncan conveyed one of the traffic reports that just today, the traffic reports provided by the applicant.

It makes the assertion that the traffic pass will, that traffic will not be impacted excessively, that it documents things like stops and wait time will increase by 25 seconds.

No one here is concerned about that.

We are concerned that

At that stop sign, there's also a baby carriage, a stroller, a bicyclist, a teenage driver.

The UVA cross-country team are all in that same spot at the same time.

The traffic study makes no accounting for bike and pedestrian infrastructure at all.

And I would posit that that should be a prerequisite for any further progress of this application.

We know the BikePad Committee can make comments, but those comments are not necessarily binding.

Also, the Planning Commission has a comprehensive plan that was developed and was done for a reason.

It took into account existing infrastructure and planned outlays.

Density has been projected in certain areas and not other areas for a reason.

It's not that it couldn't go there, but it's not there yet.

If that's the case, how can the infrastructure be funded?

Planning Commission cannot create the budget, it cannot write checks.

How do we as residents have trust that the city council and operations would follow through with any assertions that this infrastructure will be funded?

I would support the Planning Commission in their previous statements that they don't want to approve density haphazardly within the absence of an approved updated comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance.

You have said that in Public on the Path.

I would hope that you guys keep with that tonight.

Stick with the plan.

And to that end, at the end of stribbling in JPA, there's three total parcels for just over two acres.

One of the highest and best uses of that parcel at this time is parking cars on football games.

Sure, sure.

You know, that's naturally affordable housing.

That's great.

However, if the developer wanted density where the city says it wants density, they could buy up two acres with four purchases

and put density.

So the market has a mechanism.

The playing commission does not have to break apart its plan.

Thank you, William.

Okay.

Next we have Ms.

Sarah Ratcliffe.

Ms.

Ratcliffe, you are all at the commission.

Thank you for taking comments.

I'm Sarah Ratcliffe and my family lives here on Morgan Court.

I think a lot of people have raised some really good comments.

There's just two things I wanted to highlight.

One is I feel a little like this density is putting the cart before the horse.

There is a lot of evidence of how poorly areas have been developed when there's no infrastructure to support the density that is being planned.

and the long-term consequences of that on public health and safety outcomes.

And this development would fit into a lot of those parameters of increased density without any of the infrastructure to support that level of density already in place.

And as people have expressed, this has been a long-term problem such that I don't necessarily have the confidence

that the city would actually put that infrastructure into place after the development is already here.

The second point I just wanted to make is to encourage you all to come out and have a look that maps don't give the whole picture.

We are recent transplants to Charlottesville and we've actually been living in the area for about a year now in this particular part of Charlottesville and one of the attractions for us was on a map

It looked like it was really easily walkable to my work at UVA and to some other places we would want to go to.

And then the reality having lived here is that we went down to one car prior to moving here and I am fortunate that my husband can actually drop me at my office in unusual hours to dodge the traffic build up and because there were multiple times in the first month when I almost got hit by cars.

even on the JPA pedestrian crossing.

So the safety is not reflected in what you may think on a map.

And so I would just like to reiterate the comments to come out and actually view what it's like.

Okay, next we have Miss Marilyn Swinford.

Miss Swinford, you're on with commission.

You have three minutes.

OK, again, I'm Marilyn Swinford.

I've lived at 122 Morgan Court for 12 years.

And I concur wholeheartedly about the statements that have been made about Stribling Avenue.

You can't pass two cars and even one pedestrian on the street at the same time.

And so that has its own set of issues.

And I think you're coming to understand them.

I'd like to talk about Morgan Court.

because this is a street that is inordinately narrow.

It's 30 feet wide.

It snakes up and it curves up a hill.

Excuse me, don't know what that was up a hill.

And we have 36 homes planned for this street.

It's not a little stub of the street with six houses.

As many of you know, we have a substandard intersection where cars on the high side back down their driveways on a hill through parked cars on a curve pulling out.

Our street is not suitable to put more traffic on it.

Now I understand that at one point the fire marshal, I know he came down, made us stop parking on both sides of the street, but I also understand that Morgan Court was not, this is under designed for its current usage per the fire,

And so, especially if that is the case, we don't have any business trying to take more traffic on our street.

And I do believe that looking at fire access and capacity of parking and moving vehicles within sites is something that I was hoping that

It was lessons learned from Huntling.

When I look at 240 Stripling, I think how are those moving vans going to get in?

How are some of those little stub streets hitting to the townhouse with the access for delivery and service vehicles in and out?

It's too tight.

And it needs absolutely not to come through Morgan Court because we already have our own issues and we have no capacity to take on

additional traffic through our neighborhood.

Totally inappropriate to do so.

And by speaking to the comp plan, I think there should be an update to the comprehensive plan before this rather urban zoning is put in.

And also the city needs to step up.

Tripling hasn't had any improvements for 40 or more years.

and of the money that you get out of the residents who live here is probably up to half a million dollars a year.

Have you taken any of that money to set aside for road improvements or to support road improvement bonds to help with the flow of the street and the pedestrian safety?

Okay, and next up is Mr. Ryan Yaugher.

Mr. Yaugher, you're on with the commission.

You have three minutes.

Good evening.

Thank you.

And on behalf of the applicant, I would like to speak on the proposed Chick-fil-A at Barrick's Road Shopping Center that's currently slated for the consent agenda.

in order to bring clarity for something that was discussed in the pre-commission meeting.

In regard to the final condition as part of the approval here, I would like to just ask for flexibility.

I believe staff has the best intention in mind.

However, I ask for the opportunity to install our currently proposed fixtures that meet the approved zoning ordinance standards.

We have provided a photometric plan that meets all city codes, and as such we've demonstrated that we hold the safety of the workers, patrons, and general public at utmost importance.

However, myself and the applicant have concerns of agreeing to, as a formal condition, adhering to changes from future reasonable public complaint without a definition or standard as to what that reasonable complaint is.

To be clear, that's not to say that we're trying to not be reasonable in the future.

We definitely consider ourselves to be reasonable.

However, the standard currently in place for the city to decipher if a complaint is reasonable is the zoning ordinance, which we currently meet all of the standards.

We also have community standards with the landlord we are trying to meet to ensure a cohesive lighting approach with the overall barracks or shopping center, while also continuing to ensure that all city standards are met.

So therefore, in summary, I would just like to ask again to allow us the right to address future concerns on an as-needed basis with city staff and not mandate all fixtures to be dimmable from the start, nor condition us to revise any fixtures at the subjective nature of public comment.

So lastly here, just

My preference is to stay on the consent agenda, however, to remove the last condition.

However, at a minimum, if you do not agree, I would prefer to pull from the consent agenda to allow time to discuss during the regular agenda, if possible.

And that's all I have.

Chair Mitchell, currently there are no more hands raised, but I will ask if there are any attendees with us that would like to address commission, please raise your hand, click the raise hand icon, or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine.

And we do have a phone caller with their hand raised.

And please state your name and address.

And you're muted.

Right, I'm going to give the muted person one last chance to state their name and address.

I have the ability to ask to unmute.

And I have done that.

We do have one other person with their hand up.

This is Erica.

Erica, you are

on with the commission.

And for that phone caller, if you would still like to, we'll come back to you to see if you can unmute yourself at a later time.

Yes, thank you for taking this question that I have.

So earlier- What is your full name, Erica?

I'm sorry, Erica Williams.

Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you.

Um, you know, earlier, one of my neighbors mentioned that Southern Development informed us that they were interested in low density for 240 stribbling.

But again, the

the commission encouraged them to do high density.

And I know you deferred that question.

I'm just curious, when will that question be addressed?

Because I think that's a very imperative question and I didn't want it to just sort of be bypassed.

Ms.

Creasy, could you give me a little guidance on the best answer to that?

My thinking is that we will have a greater dialogue

So there will be if this is an opportunity for a work session for the commission and the applicant at this point.

And so if it were to move to a next stage, it would be scheduled for a public hearing.

And if it's scheduled for a public hearing, then there's the opportunity for dialogue along the way.

This item has come forward before, it was in a different format.

And so it might be helpful.

It sounds like folks have viewed that as well.

And

You know, it may be that some of the dialogue that occurs through this work session assist in answering questions that the community may have.

Okay.

Sorry, Chair.

Yeah, we have our phone caller back in line.

And I'm going to remind the phone caller that star six is to unmute.

Hello, thank you so much for your patience.

This is Cabel Marshall.

And we own 239 Stripling.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to hear the whole meeting.

But

I would agree with the folks I have heard recently that the street is not able to handle that additional traffic.

One other matter that I haven't heard discussed is some confusion, some conflict, actually, between what was presented by the developer on the materials sent out.

And there was not a full picture of the streetscape of the main entrance on Stribling included in the packet.

Subsequently, we have gotten one, but it shows a setback from stribbling of roughly, it's hard to judge, but somewhere between 10 to 15 feet, maybe.

I noticed that on the plat, it requests zero setback from stribbling.

And I would imagine that they would at least give us a sidewalk, but if that's approved, they could build their building

right next to the sidewalk, which would be totally out of keeping with the architectural character of our neighborhood.

The surrounding houses have a setback of at least 50 feet, some of them 70 feet, these are the four on either side and across the street from the development, the PUD.

So with the conversation about in an emergency that we may need to get fire trucks,

in and out.

I would highly recommend both for architectural reasons, but also for safety, that they need to have, go along with the existing setback for structures so that a fire truck would have space to maneuver.

There's no way a big fire truck could make the turn if there's no setback.

But also in the guidelines that were buried, actually you had to go online to get them.

I think it's number six and number eight, talk about the appropriateness and the harmonious nature that the PUD is supposed to fit in with the existing neighborhood.

So I do hope that this is noticed and stopped so that the developer will start his building back in keeping with the existing houses.

Mr. Rice, what's up?

Okay, and we have Mr. Michael McCann with his hand raised and Mr. McCann, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You will have three minutes.

Yeah, I'll keep this brief because I know everyone else has said the same things I would say.

I don't have much of a dog in this fight because I will be moving in the next year when my wife finishes school, so I don't have the longevity of some of these other people, but as someone who lives in the community and runs in the community and walks my dog in the community, I just want to, you know, kind of confirm we're all saying that that street is dribbling there.

You can't really go up and down that safely at the current volume of traffic.

I can't imagine adding additional cars, especially with the blind hill as it gets on towards nighttime.

that just is inherently unsafe as it is currently.

Adding any more volume without any improvements would be possibly catastrophic.

So that's all I wanted to add.

Okay, there are currently no more hands raised.

I just want to confirm, Chair, that this is the only matters of the public portion of the meeting, correct?

And if you'd like to address commission at this time, please raise your hand by clicking the raise hand icon or star nine if you're calling in.

All right, with that, we will close the public comment section and move on to the consent agenda.

Mr. Ziliates.

I have a motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda with one change to the minutes on pages 16 and 19.

The motion should read in all zones instead of and all zones.

Small but important.

We have a motion.

Okay, thank you.

It's been moved and probably seconded.

Hold on.

Where have you been?

I asked for that minutes ago.

Yeah, well, so during the pre-meeting, we thought there was no objection to the conditions.

Now that we're hearing there are objections to the conditions, I'd just like to propose that we change.

I'm sorry, Rory, can you repeat that just one time?

I apologize.

Yeah, just replacing any reasonable public complaints with any reasonable public complaints with the concurrence of staff.

I'm comfortable with that.

Yes, I can make that change.

Ms.

I would certainly hope that this applicant would be responsive.

But there's a reason why some of these things are put into the conditions.

And so we've obviously heard

that there have been some problems.

We have lighting issues, stronger lighting so that you light up the night sky does not sell more chicken sandwiches.

So I would just like to, you know, as you guys go along, you need to think about the overall picture, not just as one business owner, there's an entire community around this neighborhood.

What I'm going to recommend is that we take this out and we have a discussion about this at the end of the meeting.

Second.

So we have a motion to amend the minutes.

It's been seconded.

Do we approve the

Do we approve the amendment to the amendments?

I mean, the minutes.

Any objections?

Oh, just to the minutes.

OK.

Any objections?

There are three other items on the consent agenda.

Let's take them one by one.

Kappa, kappa, gamma.

The site plan for Chick-fil-A.

Yes.

No, no.

ERB.

Okay, okay.

Second.

Any opposition?

Any abstentions?

All right, and we've agreed to move the ERB.

Actually, I think we don't need a vote on that.

One person can do that, so cool.

All right, it's been moved.

All right, so at the end of the meeting, we will review the ERB and the lighting issue.

Ms.

Yes, we do.

Mr. Sheffield from Jaunt is going to be presenting this evening.

And Mr. Rice has already promoted him.

So we'll be turning the time over to him for an approximately 10 minute presentation.

And Mr. Winter will be handling the slides for him.

Thank you.

Good evening, y'all.

Some of you, I know some of you I don't.

So it's nice to see some familiar faces.

So tonight, I wanted to present and update you on a new initiative that Jaunt is moving forward with that will affect both the city and the county, especially in the urban urban fringe area.

It's a pretty exciting initiative.

and anybody who pays attention to public transportation is somewhat familiar with how this is evolving in the U.S.

But we see it as an evolution of what Jaunt already provides.

So we can dive right into the presentation.

We kept it fairly short, just because we wanted to kind of be really succinct in what we're trying to communicate.

Do, yep.

So,

On the next slide, we jump right into the information that we wanted to convey.

The very first thing is that we are making our rounds about presenting this to the various different entities, whether it's with Albemarle County or the City of Charlottesville, the Regional Transit Partnership, and so on.

The goal is to really start the conversation going on this concept because as we're starting to form it,

We want to make sure that we're gathering the type of input and direction that's needed to make it work all across the spectrum that we can see it being applied.

And so the Planning Commission actually has a pretty important role that I'll get to at the end of the meeting.

But we are trying to make sure people are aware so you may hear from other sources.

Our number one goal is to try to get ahead of any misinformation or incorrect information that could

kind of present the wrong idea of what we're looking to do.

On the next slide, we wanted to kind of get you to understand this concept of on demand.

I joke a lot of times about how the US really struggles with coming up with the right types of labels compared to counterparts in Europe.

And in the US, we have something that's already called demand response.

And Jaunt is very

pretty much recognized as that type of entity that provides demand response services.

So on demand is very similar, but it takes on a whole new approach to serve in the community.

The number one thing is, is that it remains customer focused, rather than something like fixed route is more generalized.

It looks at volume versus specialization.

And so with On Demand, we've kind of focused on three different areas that BISC is kind of distinguished from typical transit services.

One is around connecting people to places and that really means about not limiting ourselves to certain areas or certain times of day, but actually being able to adapt and change the type of services that are offered based on the feedback we're getting in more real time from the type of requests that would come through some sort of software platform.

Another aspect is what it would cost.

Right now, both Jaunt and CAT services are running fare free.

And so this is kind of one of those question marks going forward, because something like On Demand would really take on a cost scaled approach that is really dependent on where people are going, what purpose, time of day, distance, congestion, a lot of different factors, even the source of funds that might help pay or subsidize those trips.

So it

Initially, this was a fairly easy thing to discuss.

But as we move through this fair free approach to services during COVID, I'd say that I'm getting some questions I don't quite have some answers to.

But just know that it's a dynamic structure that allows us to be responsive to where and how things get paid for.

One of the other things and it's kind of just implied with the name is on demand is the immediate availability.

This really changes the approach in that with our typical demand response services, people are asked to call at least a day ahead of time.

With fixed route, you're kind of dependent on the schedule that's published.

With on demand, there is that immediate exchange of a request, whether it's just through an app or even a phone call for those who might not have a smartphone.

So it's important because that immediate availability and that immediate request

will feed into some of the other information that helps us continue to shape and kind of repurpose what we're offering to the public.

So we're doing all this related or kind of in context of some guiding principles that we've created.

And we did that because as we move forward with implementing this, sometimes you can lose sight of why you're implementing something.

And so we put this little acronym together.

And of course in transportation, we love our acronyms.

But it wasn't just by coincidence that it kind of came together.

They are pretty sincere approaches.

And one is being responsive and not just responsive in the terms of an immediate request, but being responsive to the dynamic needs of the community.

And one of the more,

Impactful examples of that is during the pandemic we're facing I think an unprecedented issue with food security.

A lot of the food banks and food sources have the resources to provide, but lo and behold transportation connectivity to those sources don't exist as complete as they may need to to provide that access to food security.

This type of platform would allow for us to immediately respond to creating something that those individuals could use to access food security.

That type of responsiveness doesn't exist in transit.

And that's where this platform really does make some difference.

The other is, of course, with John, where we've always looked at things being inclusive, whether it's through race or disability, we understand the importance of making sure whatever we're offering, whether the service, the platform, whatever approach, we're taking into account the different factors that make it accessible and inclusive.

From the dynamic standpoint, you're going to see a slide in a second that really looks at how different applications of this platform can be used to achieve outcomes for the community that really haven't been able to be achieved before.

And so it really does offer us a whole new approach to offering transit.

The one I love the most is the empowering approach.

One of the reasons why Uber has been successful and disruptive in the transit industry has been its way of offering that immediate empowerment to the users.

They are able to make a request and they know Uber has responded.

That's what we're looking to do.

We're looking to put that power in the hands of the users to let them feel like they have now communicated with transit about their needs.

And of course, the last piece is being safe.

Transit is held to a fairly high standard of safety.

It's how it goes with the US Department of Transportation.

And I think that we'll continue to convey that to passengers even during this time of the pandemic when safety and people's wellbeing is paramount.

So on the next slide, I want to get into just this what I call convergence of opportunities.

So I'll start off with saying that

In the transit world, we tend to come across issues or concerns or challenges, and then we go off and look for either a service or a platform or software to help solve our issue.

And so, as I started exploring into this on-demand concept, I started to realize that the platforms that are out there that are offered

actually open up opportunities that we may not even considered.

So instead of saying we have this one particular issue we wanna solve and what software might help us, we're looking at it from the fact that we have a very versatile piece of software that allows us to address a range of opportunities that really haven't been able to be addressed in a more complete way.

And so as you look on the screen, there's a variety of things that we've already come up with

But there's those undiscovered opportunities that I know will start to crop up as we continue to have these public conversations.

The very first time I presented this was actually to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

A good while back, I think it was the fall of 2019.

And the next night I was at a Chamber event and three different people came up to me asking if this platform could help them solve a challenge they had.

For example, Rich Schuyler with Network to Work approached me and said, hey, could this help me connect people who are looking for jobs to those jobs that transit doesn't currently serve?

And my answer was absolutely, let's talk later.

That's what we want.

We want people to start understanding what we could do and then start kind of connecting the dots to how we get it done.

We're pretty excited about it.

So on the next slide, it pretty much just introduced the question of what are we looking for with the Planning Commission and how to, you know, pun intended, plan ahead.

And that is when we go to look at implementing this service in certain parts of the city or even going after grant funding, it is important that it's reflected in the planning documents of the city.

However, that might be still important.

Not necessarily needs to be that the city supports and wants on demand, but we need to find a way that we can make sure that those that we seek funding from understand that the city does embrace the concept.

So we don't quite have any exact recommendation right now to change any of the plans for the city, but as the Planning Commission,

you're in place to help an entity like Jaunt figure out where this concept might best fit in those land use and transportation planning documents.

So hopefully some future discussions we can better kind of lay that out.

Excellent, thank you very much.

I've got a question.

So this is my second or third time watching this presentation.

And I gotta say, I'm still kind of confused about what jaunt on demand is.

So the reason why we continue to refine the presentation is because of the desire to best communicate it in the most clear way.

That is a challenge for us, because it's a new concept in general for transit.

But what Jaunt already performs is very similar to it.

So in in the Charlottesville community, we provide a service that

We have yet to find a peer in other communities that they provide.

And so the leap to on demand is really just a skip for John.

It's like really just, you know, such a slight evolution.

For a place like Richmond, it would be a big change in what they offer already.

And so I think the difference would be more profound in that kind of setting than here in Charlottesville.

So to answer your question, yes, it's just a evolution in how people can access the services.

The new aspect of it is it would be opening up this type of service to anybody in any type of partnership that we can form.

Because right now in the city, the services Jaunt offers is limited to either somebody who is certified as ADA eligible because of their disability,

or because of a partnership with a human service agency for, let's say, a Medicaid trip or such.

Those are the only two types of trips that we would perform in the city.

With this platform, we would expand that to more types of partnerships and opportunities for any type of resident, which is, in my opinion, fairly significant when it comes to any gaps that exist

and any other services or, again, needs that have been discussed in the past.

I want it now.

I have a tendency to like to jump into the pool and then fill it up with water on the way down.

And my staff tend to have to balance me with the more deliberate and kind of your strategic approach and say, we're kind of working through that right dynamic.

Well, both see the opportunity to create a bridge or connection for those gaps that exist.

With both, I'll stick with UTS, they see it as feeding in from the ancillary areas of their services and maybe be able to meet some needs that don't really get addressed on the off-peak times.

With CAT, I think we're fortunate in that early on there's been conversations, even before I talked about On Demand, about how CAT really expends a lot of resources dipping into neighborhoods and parts of the city that make the services become less efficient than what maybe they could be.

And so something like On Demand could help feed into hubs of CAT services that then help

create that better connectivity.

And so I think that's the general response that we got is that they can see how it complements the services and not competes.

And that's our approach is that we have no desire to create another competing option.

We have a desire of creating these complementing options to the degree that the concept of on demand actually goes hand in hand with this concept of unifying all the different modes under one platform.

to where you as a resident could go from A to B and you would use an app that gives you five different solutions that may be chain linked together, riding a bike share to a bus stop and then riding cat to another stop and then walk in the rest of the way or riding on demand to a cat hub and then riding and connecting to UTS.

Those platforms pretty much go hand in hand.

In Europe,

They're referred to as mobility as a service.

In the States, we seem to be going through different variations of the terms.

Right now, the feds are calling it complete trip.

And the devil is in the details.

Ms.

Green, you're a transit expert.

Is Lisa, are you stuck?

All right, Gary, we'll go to you.

I hear you.

Lisa, are you there?

You're on mute.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what was going on.

I was trying to hook up some earphones to this and I don't think it is yet.

All right, any other thoughts?

Any thoughts from the university?

Thanks.

That was an interesting presentation.

And thanks for mentioning UTS and how it can feed into into that transit.

So I think that's, that's a good thing.

Ms.

Yes, so thank you for the presentation.

I too, like Rory, initially wanted to know how it differed, how the presentation tonight differed than the services that are already offered by John.

And then I also would like to know if you have this information available.

I know right now you're kind of partnering through people who work with the transportation through Medicaid services or typically those who are ADA, who have an ADA necessity to use you.

Absolutely.

We went after a federal grant with Loaves and Fishes to seek that very specific food security concept to seek funding to help us demonstrate what, for the feds, they're kind of figuring out, they're trying to figure out how to measure the performance of this type of concept

For us, we went after the grant to help get that type of initiative up and going.

So once you're able to request a ride via an app or phone call, what do you expect that the turnaround time will be to get that ride?

And will there be immediate feedback of how soon it will get there, like Uber will give you?

Yeah, one of the mistakes I made probably about a year ago, if not before, is kept

I would say this is Uber-like.

And that got interpreted as we were partnering with Uber.

We are not partnering with Uber except to maybe include them in some sort of complete trip concept.

We are looking to do it ourselves.

But under the thought of Uber-like is that we would offer the same type of user kind of interface or engagement that they do with like what type of platform

real-time information, even predictive congestion information.

And even to the point that there are platforms out there that we have been talking to that have gone beyond just the concept of transit and looked at the actual human side of this.

There's one vendor out there that actually has what they call a dignity rating built into the platform.

So when the trip is done,

they're able to actually provide feedback on how the trip met those expectations of providing them that mobility, not just connecting them to A to B, but actually how well did it do meeting more of that human side of the equation.

To me, that's fascinating to know how well one of my drivers or some other driver treated a passenger in the process of providing the service.

So it's very similar to those types of platforms.

And the difference is gonna be more behind the scenes and how some of these opportunities can be layered on top of each other.

And the users don't quite know until they go to access a certain destination that that type of service is presented.

So for example, Loaves and Fishes,

Somebody using this to go to work may have to pay out of pocket.

Somebody using the platform to go to Loaves & Fishes may have it paid for by Loaves & Fishes.

That's not a typical Uber or any other ride sharing type platform approach, but that's the power behind this type of platform that we're able to build those partnerships.

And then when people go to use it,

They then come across the opportunities for how to access the service or destination that they're looking for.

Cool, and then my last question is in terms of a resource allocation on your end.

In times where, you know, maybe a lot of people are requesting a ride for the very near future, you know, how do you deal with that situation?

I'm assuming that kind of the core jaunt services of like ADA eligible and partnerships come first and then, you know, you'll just give people a longer time horizon or?

Two ways to answer that question.

One is we're going to have a few resources, vehicles that are going to be dedicated for this purpose.

That's just to help manage the expectations that would come from the request.

The other is we actually expect that some of the ADA passengers will abandon using Jaunt for paratransit ADA services and gravitate to using this platform because they don't have to call a day ahead of time.

We have a lot of people who call up to two weeks ahead to schedule a trip to go to the grocery store, but then that morning of they may cancel it because they weren't feeling well.

That's fine.

We accept that we build it into our scheduling models, but I'd rather go back to that word empower.

I'd rather empower that individual to have that choice and not be bound by this paratransit ADA structure.

and be able to have the same opportunity anybody else would to call up at that time that they want to go to the grocery store and make that request.

We'll be able to see that those clients are typical ADA clients.

We necessarily can't give preferential treatment, but we can see how it may relax the need for the resources on the ADA side so we're able to shift them to meet more of that on-demand need.

So it'll be an effort on my staff side to continuously monitor how this evolves

over the short period of time to make sure we're not overextending ourselves with not enough resources, but also helping maybe change the way some of the public is utilizing transit.

Great, very good.

Thank you very much.

And more than happy to talk one-on-one if anybody has further interest.

I talk transit all night long, but I won't do that, and I'll leave you at that.

Thanks.

And on to family day home.

Ms.

Yes, I am.

I'll give a basic overview and then we may have Reed Broadhead, who's our Zoning Administrator, provide some more detail on some of the aspects of the code itself.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, the commission at your July meeting provided a request for a zoning text amendment related to family gig homes.

and so we have taken this in a couple of different directions.

One is that there is the opportunity to provide information from a legislative standpoint and so Ms.

Robertson provided some information to the legislative committee for the city

and then provided some information that went on to our delegates for the state because some of the potential changes that might need to occur would be things that would have to have state support.

There aren't things that we'd be able to do now.

So Ms.

Robertson put together some informational background and submitted that to you all back in July but we also included those materials here and she may have some feedback on this as we go through the discussion.

I'm not sure that we've heard anything from that but we have at least provided the information.

for that opportunity.

So in the other direction, locally, our current ordinance that's on the books needs updating.

It is a bit antiquated and many changes had occurred from the state

level.

And so we took the opportunity to update, provide recommendations for updates to the code that would adhere to those state regulations.

And so just as a side note,

that if someone were to need to come forward, we would work with them through the current state regulations.

So what is allowable by the state would be what we would be enforcing from a city standpoint.

What this would do is provide the opportunity for an update to our code language and that would provide additional clarity to the community from that perspective.

So what we have brought forward is a clarification to the occupancy residential definition within the code.

We've also

put forth some proposals for how to update the use matrices in order to reflect this.

So as we were talking about a bit last, in July when we were working on this, that one to four children is considered to be single family and so that is something that we put

We want to move forward and clear up in the matrix that any area that allows single-family residential would allow for that use.

And then five to 12 children requires a state license and noting categories for that that would allow for it to be

continue to be buy right in the areas that it currently is, which are the B districts, the business districts, and then allow for it by provisional use in the all other districts that allow for residential use.

and then our zoning staff spent a good amount of time working through potential provisions for a provisional use permit and so a provisional use permit an applicant would apply for this and then if they can adhere to each of the regulations that are put forth in the permit which they will have in advance

then we would be able to move forward with that.

I would say that probably the most significant item with that is the state licensure requirements and so on our end it would be a very straightforward process

for the applicant to move forward through because they once they get through the state process that's a lot more rigorous and you know we we found that you know ours is just checking a box basically at that point in time

So I'm going to hand it over to Reid in a second to address anything I may have missed, but we're hoping this evening that you all will be able to provide us some guidance on whether this is the direction that you all would like this to go.

And we have a few questions for feedback as well.

And those are page three and are there variations needed to areas where family day home for five to 12 children is allowable by right or by provisional use is one of the questions we propose.

and is there any update to the provisional use permit regulations as we have proposed them?

So depending on the, we'll see how the outcome of this discussion goes and if it's moving in a positive direction, then we will work towards a public hearing, scheduling it for a hearing.

If we need to work on it some more based on the discussion, then we'll take that opportunity to do so.

Sure.

Yeah, I just wanted to touch on what I put together.

And my understanding is that the Planning Commission wanted to find a way to kind of ease what we had, the restrictions that we had in place.

And so I was looking at

Some of the provisional use permits that we already have in place, such as the home occupation form and the homestay, and try to mirror this closely to that.

And I also looked at sort of the special use permits that were granted in the past for family day homes in excess of five children.

and that's why we, for instance, are proposing to require that a traffic safety plan be required.

That's something that the Planning Commission has asked for in the past.

Also, that's where we came up with the hours of operation, 7 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

That would be consistent to one of the approvals in the past.

We're proposing that this be an annual permit

That kind of gives us the ability to reset and make sure that this family day home isn't causing issues for the neighborhood.

That's consistent, for instance, with the homestay permit.

It kind of gives us a chance to re-evaluate it.

Also, the signage clause, the revocation clause,

are similar to what we have in the homestay ordinance.

It's important for us to have a strong revocation clause to make sure that we weed out any problems that might exist.

And it's pretty harsh too that

You know, if you lose your permit, then you can't apply for the subsequent year.

So it basically is pretty strict but important for preserving neighborhoods and preventing problems from occurring.

The one problem that I ran into is number eight, is this 30-day window

where I would be required to notify all adjacent property owners of the proposed use.

The reason I say it's a problem is this slows expediting this process.

I know that we wanted to create this permit to not require them to go to planning commission and allow people to really get through the process really quickly.

And this is, number eight is in reaction to a state code.

that states that I should notify all adjacent property owners.

So it's a win, I would say, for the adjacent property owners so they know that this is actually coming and it's an opportunity for them to voice their concerns, but it does slow the process.

You know, that I think that was the intent of looking at this ordinance is to really kind of speed up the process.

So it's a little, it's going to be faster than going and getting a special use permit, which takes some time, but it's still going to take

30 days after they receive their licensure and can submit all the information so it's going to kind of slow down the process as well.

Reid, is the 30 days a state requirement?

Yeah, I don't see why that would be an issue.

You know, noting, so if this person came and got an application and said, this is what I want to do, and I explained to them all the things that they need to

get done, including getting the state licensure.

And they pay for the application fee.

And then I can send out a notice to all the adjacent property owners.

But for instance, if their state licensure isn't approved, then maybe I would have to notify the neighbors and say, sorry, this is actually not happening.

But yeah, that would be a really good idea to have it run concurrently so that if the state process takes 30 days, then they're all done after one month.

I have a question about the traffic safety plan.

I do not know what document was actually submitted

with that SUP, but I have a feeling that the homeowner essentially submitted a sketch showing how they proposed drop-off to happen, how they proposed pickup to happen, and make sure that the kids can get safely to the residence where they're going.

I wouldn't want them to have to

get a traffic engineer and go to that expense to provide me some safety measures.

I certainly would, on my side, have our traffic engineer review the plan and propose

And I recall that's what happened with at least one of our SUP requests is that the applicant put a proposal together and then we ran it by whoever our traffic engineer was at that point in time for feedback.

That's right.

That's right.

And so that was reviewed by the, sorry, I had some technical difficulties.

I just totally, my computer died, but so that, that was done.

Yeah, I really, I mean,

The places that are going to be a problem are places maybe where there isn't a driveway, or there's no sidewalk, or it's a very busy intersection.

If it's happening in the middle of Fry Springs somewhere, there's going to be less concerns.

But we certainly need to look at that and look at the impact on traffic patterns and what have you.

So I mean, it's certainly important to have that

And since we mentioned drop-offs, is there some mechanism so that, you know, if needed for traffic safety, that an on-tree parking space could be reserved during hours of operations for drop-off and pickup, that sort of thing?

You know, I'm thinking about how

We have the valet parking ordinance where you can reserve a spot for valet.

I guess the traffic engineer can just decide to make something a loading zone.

Is that how we would do it?

That would probably have to be something special.

As far as I know, currently, if you want to reserve a parking space in front of your property, like for instance in residential areas, if someone gets a pod,

like a moving storage container, they have to pay $20 per day to have a space reserved for themselves.

And certainly that's cost prohibitive for a family day home to have to pay $100 a week to have a drop off space.

So I think we'd have to come up with something else, some other mechanism to reserve a space.

But that would probably, you know, really only come into the really dense areas.

of the city.

And we can brainstorm and I certainly can reach out to Brennan and speak to that nature, but he might want to weigh in.

So I'm here.

I think what we would probably do in that instance, you know, there is a petition to change any public parking to something else.

So, you know, it could be a loading zone between certain hours or something like that.

And that just needs a 14-day comment period of the public to kind of weigh in on that.

So as long as there were like massive opposition to all of the neighbors on a street or anything like that,

Well, again, where there was a problem with this one SCP, this was a road that barely had a shoulder.

I mean, it didn't have curb and gutter or things like that, if I remember correctly, Missy.

And a sidewalk was maybe non-existent as well.

Yeah.

And so that was where that problem was.

But Brennan, there is a place over on East Jefferson.

They have a drop off during certain time, you know, morning and afternoon for school drop off.

Yes.

Sorry, thought I was unmuted.

I just have one quick question.

I noticed that you said the hours were from seven to six for operation.

And I was just wondering, is that the only limit to being able to function as a day home?

This is just the proposed hours of operation.

And that typically is one of the main items in the special use permit discussions that occurs is hours of operation.

and considerations pertaining to that.

Yeah, because in my mind, I'm just thinking if you're a healthcare worker, or even if you work in other industries, especially that are very prominent right now, where you cannot work from home during COVID,

Those shifts are not only 7 to 3, you have 3 to 11 and also overnight.

Yeah, I'm just looking right now to see if I can see if there's hours of operation on the home occupation permit.

And if I come up with that, I will

but this is just kind of thinking about business hours and I've got several colleagues that drop their kids off at daycare and that kind of 6 p.m.

tends to be like the limit even 5.30 like if you're not there by 5.30 you're paying by the minute to pick up your child so but certainly if you feel that it should

It could be changed.

I just wanted to see if it was an option to leave it open.

So just in case, you know, if someone wanted to serve the market of the 7 to 11 work group that they could.

I didn't know if they fell under this day home provision or definition or if it was under a different term or definition.

Well, we would look at the discretion would be the regulations in the provisional use permit.

So they would have whatever the provisions are in that permit or what we would be able to enforce.

So it has to have some parameters.

Now, you know, there are different ways that folks could work through that.

If it's a situation where it's a, you know, 5 to 12 during daytime hours, but they have individuals that they care for in the 1 to 4 range,

I just looked at home occupation is it talks about customers coming premises between 8 a.m.

and 9 p.m.

and certainly this is a different animal because like you said and as I know people need to get their kids dropped off early so they can get to work and so but this is just like I said a proposal and I think it's important to keep some sort of hours there

But if you want to open it up a little more, then that certainly is.

I think that eliminates some of the neighborhood concerns when this goes out to those folks for that 30-day.

Because if you start to get a lot of neighborhood concerns based off of this application, that's going to slow things down as well.

I just, I don't think necessarily that we need to change the hours.

I think the only way that we would be able to do that for the 5 to 12 range of children would be to have some sort of

additional zoning function.

You know, if a care facility that was going to, and this is a family day home, so it's different than a daycare center.

So, you know, family day home, five to 12 children within X time range, wherever we land with that.

After those hours, if they were to convert to a one to four children,

range, then we wouldn't have any regulation over the time frame for that smaller grouping.

So it sounds like from this discussion really the trying to see if there's any way to accommodate a family day home that would allow for five to 12 children

after standard working hour range is what we would be trying to figure out if we need to do that.

You know, if there's a demand and I'm

You know, just off the top of my head, I'm thinking it would have to be an allowance through special permit to do something like that.

So, yeah, that's, that's, I thought it's a very, it's a very good point, though.

Right.

So we're at least narrowing.

But broadly, I think what's here makes sense and is good work.

I think this will create more opportunities.

Great.

Yeah, I would note that Reid and Craig did the heavy lifting on this.

They spend a lot of time in this world and they really vetted the provisional use permit.

section, the, you know, by right provisional use area that that was a little more simplified.

Very good.

So does anyone want a five minute break before we go to scribbling?

We do.

All right.

Please, please five minutes, guys, please.

Let's see.

Hosea, can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay, fantastic.

Hello.

I met your puppy a number of times.

I just lost my old guy about 12 years, about three weeks ago, so.

That's tough.

Now she's missing him, so she's lazy on me all the time.

I've not figured out a good way to mix this with dinner.

Welcome back, Gary.

We'll wait on Rory and Jody.

And I think Matt is leading this.

Yes, I'll be giving the introduction and then there'll be a presentation from the applicant.

All right.

Matt, take over.

Thank you, Chair.

So I'm Matt Alffley.

I'm the city planner assigned to this project.

So tonight you are holding a work session on 240 Stripling.

And this project has been kind of in the workshop, seen it at different stages.

You held a work session last time back in February.

I know that feels a lot longer ago than February in the NDS conference room.

And that's where you saw the initial design from

Southern Development, who is the contract purchaser for 240 Stripling, which is currently owned by Cargraves Properties LLC.

At that meeting, the commission had a positive reaction to the design, the mix of housing types, central greens, street layouts, kind of a positive reaction to the density, which stayed in the existing density of 15 DUA, but it was different housing types.

The Planning Commission was looking to see greater affordability, especially below the 80% AMI, more protection from Moore's Creek.

And the main focus and what you heard tonight too from the community is the effect on Stribling Avenue and on Morgan Court.

So the applicant took that information from the work session that was on February 26.

And they did some updates to it.

and they submitted an actual application in August.

As part of their application, they also held a community meeting on September 3rd.

This was held through Zoom and this was done as outlined in the new community meeting procedure.

So this meeting, it was attended pretty well.

There was about 40 or so participants.

The meeting was taped, and it's available to anyone to watch.

And the meeting is technically open for 45 days.

So when they held the meeting, it went out.

The notice, the invitation, and then self-addressed envelopes, return addresses, and portions of the plan were mailed out.

And the meeting's open.

for 45 days from September 3rd for people to send back comments that could not attend the meeting in person.

And I use in person by on Zoom.

So that meeting technically is still open till the end of that 45 day window.

The plan before you tonight has changed very slightly from what you saw at your work session in February.

The applicant will be given a presentation and can kind of go into that a little bit more.

But some of the changes you're seeing

is the original look like it had about 170 units.

They're now maybe under 81 units.

The design has pretty much stayed the same, but they have proffered a contribution for offsite improvements to Stribling.

And they proffered 15% of the units as designated for affordable

with the AMI between 25 and 60%.

After the applicant gives his presentation, we can open it up to discussion.

The city engineer and the city traffic engineer are also in this meeting and can speak to some of the higher level stuff.

I can tell you that they have not reviewed the plan in detail you would at a site plan.

We can talk about some of the conceptual

things and some of the positives and negatives, but there's not been the level of review you would get at a site plan review.

Hi, everybody.

Make sure you can hear me.

I've just been promoted to panel, so I had to jump on.

Thank you very much for

conduct an additional work session with us this evening.

Really appreciate the feedback.

I'm Charlie Armstrong.

Also on our team here, who I don't think have yet been promoted, but could if we have questions that come up for them, are Kevin Riddle with Mitchell Matthews and Clint Shifflett of the Timmins Group.

And that's the leaders of our design team.

I wanna start, Lisa, I wanna just say thanks.

for a decade, or is it a decade of service on the Planning Commission?

Well, I've got a lot of respect for what you brought in and even more for the number of hours you've given to the city.

So thanks, Amina.

I'll miss seeing you here.

Y'all have seen this before, as Matt mentioned.

So we're here with some more detail for this work session.

What we had before was really kind of a skeleton outline of an idea, and this is a full application.

We've been in the listening mode for about a year now on this project.

This is our third work session with Planning Commission, and we've had three meetings with Fry Spring neighborhood and wider community.

In short, I want to address what I heard and some of the earlier comments from neighbors.

We absolutely agree that Stribling needs bike ped improvements and it has for a long time.

And as part of that, as part of this proposal, we want to help with that.

I'm not sure we can do everything that everybody wants, but we want help to the greatest extent we can.

So, Joey, do you want to start the presentation slides, please?

Thank you.

So this first slide is really just to give an idea of what we're going for here, the way that this place will feel.

The architecture that we're showing here is just a concept.

It's not exactly what something would look like.

We certainly have not designed all the buildings at this early stage of a project in the zoning stage.

But

gives you an idea of the pedestrian feeling place that we're going for.

This is a view of the central linear green that runs from the upper middle of the site all the way down to Moores Creek at the bottom.

The next slide, please.

And this slide is zooming way out to give you the larger context.

We showed you a general massing illustration last work session with some kind of yellow and blue building masses shown on it.

And it was in the same design as this generally.

That's outdated now because this is a more refined design, and it was included in your packet for that reference.

So you can see kind of where we came from and where we're going.

So this shows its context related to what's nearby.

Huntley is on the bottom right.

Eagles Landing Apartments on the other side of Moores Creek is at the bottom left and the UVA Fontaine Research Park is there at the top.

It also shows context in relation to other green spaces, many of which are preserved open space in the Huntley PUD or open spaces that will be permanently preserved with this PUD.

And next slide if you don't mind, Joey.

So this is the overall lot and building layout.

I won't spend a lot of time on it since it's in your packet, but Sterling Avenue is to the left, and that's the primary entrance onto the site.

Morgan Court in Huntley is at the top.

This is a secondary entrance, which I'd like to discuss a lot more with you as we go.

Moore's Creek is to the right, and Albemarle County line and the Knob Hill subdivision is at the bottom of the image here.

Next slide.

This and the next slide are just a little bit more detail with conceptual landscape screening and street trees shown.

We will be engaging a professional landscape architect at some point in the process to design the final landscape plan before a final site plan would be submitted.

But this shows you just the concept of what we're going for.

And you can go to the next one, Joey, and then pause a few seconds and go on to the next one.

The large green area shown here is proposed to be permanent tree preservation along the creek and along the western edge of the property.

And the teal colored areas are proposed stormwater management facilities.

Being this close to Morse Creek, that's very important, as you've already heard from neighbors and as we feel as well.

We can go to the next slide, please.

These next two are really hard to read, I'm sure, unless you have giant screens, but they are the proposed use matrices showing what uses would be allowed in this proposed PUD and what are currently allowed in the R1 and R2 zones.

That's the current zoning of the property, just for comparison.

And next slide.

And these are our proffers, also probably hard to see, but also in your packet.

I'd like to discuss these with you as we go through the meeting tonight too.

But in short, they are $500,000 toward bike pad improvements on Stirling Avenue.

I want to note what we're talking about that the bike ped master sidewalk improvement list in the bike ped master plan shows the assumed cost of sidewalk on striveling at $598,000 for the sidewalk.

That's worth looking into more detail.

I think the city has not done extensive study on that yet.

And we already know that that does not include drainage improvements, which the street also needs all the way down to JPA, especially if curb is added.

But that is the cost that's been estimated for sidewalks alone.

$598 is the city estimate.

and the other proffer there is affordable housing.

We're proffering 15% of the units dedicated as affordable for households earning less than 60% AMI.

We're trying really hard to hit a lower affordability threshold than is kind of city standard and in city ordinances and has been traditionally met with some projects of 80%.

And so we are proffering everything at below 60% here.

And that is the presentation.

I'm looking forward to a robust discussion.

Staff in the intro to the staff report proposed five discussion points, all of which I really appreciate, I think are great.

I would ask to add a sixth to discuss, and that is some feedback on the use matrix that we were proposing, whether the uses that we're proposing to allow and disallow give any concern to commissioners.

Are they too restrictive or are they not restrictive enough?

So that's the presentation.

Great.

I have a question.

So in some of the public comment, it was mentioned that the community or the neighborhood

Organization was in support or voice their support of the project.

And yet we, I heard from a lot of residents that said that that was not the case.

I only know what I've heard at the neighborhood meeting we recently had.

And that was that support that the neighborhood association voted on is conditioned on a number of things.

So maybe that's

I haven't seen the letter as it's not ready yet, but I'm sure that that's what it is.

I also know that not everybody in the neighborhood goes to the Neighborhood Association meetings.

So, you know, it's like a miniature government there.

Just a quick for clarification, we met on this the first time at the TJPDC building on Water Street with a work session.

Was it November?

August, I think.

August was a year ago?

I don't know.

So have you been in talks, back in that time, let's talk August, November, doesn't matter.

It was last year, it wasn't 2020.

And there was some robust discussion about, yes, improvements need to happen there.

We have.

We've had a number of different conversations and walked the entire length of Stribling socially distanced, of course, with the city engineer, city traffic engineer and city bike ped coordinator as well.

And we have

looked at a number of issues.

Drainage is the hardest to solve.

Right-of-way seems to be there in most places to be able to add a sidewalk, not necessarily for any grading that would need to be done to get grade to match that sidewalk when the sidewalk adjoins the playing properties.

So if it's a little bit steeper on one side or the other, additional grading might be a problem and might be outside of the right-of-way.

And there's very little information on any existing drainage easements that may or may not exist.

And we're pretty certain, city engineers pretty certain that they're, even if there are easements, that they are sufficient for adding things like storm sewer pipes to get water from the road to where it would eventually need to go or adding any water

integrated into it.

So when we met back in August, November, and I think Lisa and I were actually agreed with it, were agreed on this, you had a concept that was not a PUD.

And I think we thought that what you were attempting to do

would work well if in fact you morphed this into a PUD.

And we did encourage you to give some thought to putting together a proposal that embraced the idea of a PUD.

But I think Lisa and I both also pointed out that we would have to significantly improve the road and drainage infrastructure to make that happen.

So I wanna get that out there for the people that asked about, you know,

interested in morphing this into a PUD.

I want to make sure people knew once too that we also suggested that much better infrastructure would be needed to support that.

I do remember that.

And I think the discussion at that time was also, this was right on the heels of some of the comprehensive plan when Rory was 20, 25.

But

that comprehensive plan that we were originally doing at that point.

And I'm not sure, you know, this will need to be something that the public will want to, especially the, the Fry Springs neighborhood.

You're going to want to weigh in on this.

So if you're not weighing in on the comprehensive plan that you may be missing the boat, but at that point, this area, well, we, we had looked at to increase the density.

Again, you can't increase density without increasing the infrastructure for sure.

And so that is when we had a conversation that, you know, that, that you all in the, in the, in the cities, you're going to have to get together, increase this, the infrastructure in this area for water, you know, drainage, transportation.

And I say transportation, meaning not only vehicle traffic, but bike pit.

But that was, that was that discussion back in August of last year.

and so yeah we did talk about a PUD at that point but you know you'll want to pay attention to that comprehensive plan.

The original where we were going with the comprehensive plan and Jody you may want to pop in on this is a very dense area in that in right in that neighborhood not just the neighborhood but in that area right on that on that Albemarle County border based off of

Yeah, and I want to point out too that the PUD was something that appealed to me and I think to others in that this is a really special site and it has a real

some challenging topography and a lot of assets to it from Moore's Creek to the woods.

So it seemed appropriate to us to look at a PUD and that that would allow then the clustering of buildings together and thus then preserve some of the special features of the site.

And if I could comment on Ms.

Green's comment about the comprehensive plan.

As I recall from August, I guess a year ago, it was already past the time where we had finished finishing the new draft of the comp plan off.

And as I recall, we were specifically talking about the current adopted comprehensive plan, the 2013 comprehensive plan.

which calls for low density in this area and defines low density as up to 15 units per acre.

And so this plan does fall within that amount and I think it does make sense given what Mr. Lehendre just said to put additional density beyond the by right amount in this area and keep that open space and the mature forest around the perimeter.

And yeah, I just want to really stress that this is in compliance with the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and at the same time is contributing towards our larger goals as a city to build more densely and to stop pushing out into sprawl where, you know, we might of these 12 acres of forest be losing eight or nine within the city here.

But they don't do city residents that much good for enjoyment of nature as private, you know, no trespassing, like wooded areas where you're not allowed to go and are not adjacent to things like streets and sidewalks.

So when the alternative to building townhomes here is building townhomes in Crozet and

clear cutting some old growth forest and then having all the residents drive in for 25 minutes.

I'll kind of recall back to that meeting and Ms.

Dowell you may want to help me out.

Remember we discussed a much more robust affordable housing plan if I'm not mistaken

that our wishes and desires would be there.

And we did.

And one thing I see that they did take into account is they did

increase the options of the AMI affordability.

I also would like to point out and agree with one of our residents that spoke during the public comment that 15%

It's still a little bit small for me.

15% out of 181 units is roughly about 27, maybe 28, because you can't do a 0.15 of a unit.

And when you do numbers, 28 out of 181 seems like a very small drop in the bucket.

I also, while I have the floor,

concerned about still some connectivity issues that go along with this plan as we looked earlier to get to the closest cat bus stop.

You might as well call it the cab.

This would be a great instance where that new jaunt plan would probably be great and effective.

And building upon that, Mr. Armstrong, where in the development were you all planning to have the affordable housing occur?

We have not decided.

What we have done in the proffer is say that at least 30% of it shall be for rent units and at least 30%.

of it, make sure I get this right, shall be for sale with a guaranteed affordability on those for 30 years.

So we have proposed some multifamily units in here as well as townhomes which are technically single-family attached and so because of the way that proffer is structured it would

almost require that the units be spread in those two types of buildings that are on the site.

We don't like to cluster the affordable units.

We've got a track record of the stuff we've done so far of having them really integrated, and in a lot of cases, really central to the communities that we've built.

You all hear me trot out Burnett Commons all the time, but I'll keep doing it because I really

I really believe in what was done there.

The affordable units are kind of the centerpiece of phase three, right in the middle.

No, we have a proffer.

2B is that the ADUs shall be provided incrementally, such that at least five affordable units would be under construction prior to the issuance of every 30th certificate of occupancy for market rate units.

So it stipulates that that can't happen.

Great.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

It's going to be predictable.

and ask questions about Moore's Creek.

I think the PUD idea will help you protect the Creek a bit because it allows you a little more creativity.

Sure, I'm glad to hear.

Your thinking is you're not going to do any developmental slopes.

We are requesting a critical slope waiver for some of the fringes of the slopes because they are

They kind of creep into the middle of the site in a lot of places that make them really hard to avoid except in kind of a cul-de-sac arrangement of access ways.

I don't know if you all can remember back to pre-COVID days when we showed you that either Bi-Rite or R2 development plan had two cul-de-sacs.

off of each other, and they rode the ridges and stayed completely out of the critical slopes.

The only way to do something that's more creative like this, we would have some slope disturbance.

But what you're looking at here, the green areas are proposed for permanent tree preservation.

There are essentially two drainage ways on this site.

One is Morse Creek, that's the obvious very large drainage way, and the other one is along the Albemarle County line.

That one is a smaller drainage, but still very important and has some of the biggest mature trees on the site and in that area of boarding Albemarle County.

Those would be permanently preserved in open space, which provides a buffer against Moores Creek.

there to the right of this image.

We've got a couple hundred feet from Morse Creek to the nearest building, and it completely stays out of the stream buffer that's on Morse Creek in the, I guess that's the zoning designation, and any wetlands and floodplain that are also down there.

So that protects that.

Unfortunately, there's a sewer

a main sewer line that runs along Moores Creek there.

So occasionally they come and cut it, like they mow it, I guess.

Even though it's along the creek, we've got another agency that does keep that somewhat clear.

So what we're proposing to do there is put in a multi-use trail, which is part of the trails master plan for the city shown there.

And it's actually a well-traveled path already, even though it's not an official trail.

So that would be a permanent trail.

Eventually it would hopefully come directly to Stribling.

In the meantime, we would connect it to our internal road system via a paved path so that it's accessible to bikes, pedestrians, and strollers on a hard surface all the way from Stribling down to that

They are engaged.

They've already... What feedback are you getting?

I don't know that we've gotten any engineering feedback from the city yet.

We have submitted a

critical slope detail there that would come to you with a rezoning simultaneously with a public hearing.

I want to talk about my heart, if I may.

My heart, parking.

I looked at your parking calculations and I was expecting a story of every single truck on site not affecting the neighboring areas.

You are double parked.

There is so much parking.

Yeah, people still like cars.

Except you, maybe.

I'm sure that there are exceptions.

The way we've kind of attacked that issue is the only surface parking is parallel on-street parking, which I think really limits to the streetscape and the pedestrian feel and kind of more traditional neighborhood feel as you walk up and down those streets.

There are no parking lots or designated parking surface areas.

If it's not parallel parking on the street, it is under the buildings.

So there is parking proposed under the multifamily buildings and parking proposed under the townhouse buildings as well.

Whether people use those for cars or their gym equipment, I don't know, but that's where it is.

We found it's pretty hard to sell or rent a unit without parking.

No, I haven't thought about the timing of that just yet.

I would think that the sewer, if there are any sewer improvements that need to be made there would have to be done first.

And there's no other reason to do anything down in those protected areas.

So it could potentially be very early on.

The only spot that would be tricky, maybe where it connects to our existing roads, because there's a building that would be very close to that trail.

So

So one of the basic questions that we were supposed to ask is about the roads.

We're proposing something a little different if you look at that overall plan that's in your packet.

The main roads coming in off of Stribling and then going down past the multi-family areas

are shown as full city standard streets, sidewalks both sides, parking on the street.

But then the smaller roads that look like alleyways that kind of stub off of those main roads to serve the townhomes

We want to propose something that would be, it was just adopted in the new standards and design manual that everybody worked so hard on, is an innovative street design concept.

Something that's not currently in the city standards but would be thoroughly vetted by all the traffic and engineering staff to make sure that it does meet safety, community access, fire, everything that's important for a street.

Those are shown

as being 22 foot wide pavement width with buildings really close on that, a couple feet away from the pavement.

So it functions and looks like an alley and the homes that back to those, I call them alleys, but technically they would have to be streets by city nomenclature.

There you go, thank you.

That's a good slide.

The homes that back to those alleyways and load by vehicle and for service like trash on that alleyway would actually front on the green spaces and maybe if you go back to, let me see which slide it would be, go back one more and see if that gets

Yeah, so these are the fronts of the houses here on these pedestrian greens.

This is where we want the building orientations to be.

This is where we want people coming and going.

This is where we want guests coming and going, because the parking for guests, if you're having somebody over, is parallel on street.

So no guest would ever really need to use those service streets that are between the buildings.

They would come to the front door on the pedestrian green space.

So it's a little bit of an engineering guinea pig challenge for us that nobody's looked at this part of the standards and design manual before because it's brand new.

We want to try it.

We want to do something a little bit unique that would really serve to create the place rather than being focused on streets first, place later.

So that's more how the standards and design manuals is set up is it really puts the onus on the developer to convince public works, to convince the city engineer and traffic that the innovative streets, you know, they meet that section.

That section really talks a lot about the meeting ADA compliance.

So there was a meeting.

Public Works and some other staff met with the applicant and provided this information.

I believe FIRE was also in that meeting because the Public Works, FIRE, they're going to be really important aspects of how the streets work.

And so Public Works gave Charlie kind of some direction to look into on what they would want to see before they would ever consider taking ownership of these roads for the city.

And what part of the new Standard and Design Manual is this using?

Like, I think it's a good thing that you guys are using these new rules.

That's why we made them.

But I see, you know, alleys.

We've got yield streets.

We've got lanes.

We've got shared streets.

Shared, yeah.

Shared streets, I believe, was one.

I don't know, and I don't know if Brennan or Jack can say the exact

section numbers.

Yeah, there's two sections.

There's one, I forget, I don't have it open in front of me, but there's one that speaks to kind of a generic innovative design, and I think it's somewhere in chapter three or something. 4.7.

maybe that's it yeah because there's one there's one that's for kind of any engineering innovative design then there's some specific sections that speak to street innovative designs and it does give you know three or four suggestions there's alleyways there's shared street there's you know

I forget how many there are, but there's four or five of them there.

And there are specific criteria that has to be met for those.

That doesn't mean that those are the only ones that the city would look at.

But, you know, if they wanted to do something different than

Yeah, so 2.8 and 4.7.

So yeah, if they wanted to do something different than this is in 4.7, they'd have to give us a lot of information, those, the ones that are in 4.7 have kind of already been vetted, and have certain criteria, you know, met within those.

So, you know,

That's kind of where we're at.

Okay, great.

And regardless of what we decide, all this, every street design is going to have to be cleared by staff and the fire department, right?

Yeah, I mean, we have the normal city standard that, you know, that's going to kind of get the rubber stamp if it meets that, if it's under those, that 4.7 section, we still have to look at it to make sure that, you know, it's going to work where they want to put it.

This is Jack Dawson, city engineer, by the way.

To that point, maybe Matt can speak on some of the complications of when we'd have to approve that, whether it would be with the PD, because I would have concerns about them moving forward with that right-of-way width without having all the technical detail, because the issues are, in section 4.4, alleys are supposed to be private streets.

and don't necessarily, you know, the width.

There is not very much engineering information provided in this packet, so we haven't fully reviewed it, but there are concerns about how storm drains, water services, sewer services are all going to fit in essentially what's a vehicular way, which is the only asphalt in there, as well as

As Brendan said, the 4.1 through 4.7 section discusses alternative roads and the like, and most of those rely heavily on ADA compliance.

So it really needs to be PUD because one of the standards when you're doing a PUD you have to meet road standards so that's not a standard you can adjust through a PUD process city council doesn't have that authority so to take advantage of the standard and design section that's what I mean by

So stepping way back, it sounds like the neighborhood is really, in thinking about this, is comparing it to Huntley next door.

Pretty reasonable actually, which there's a lot of similarities, PUD, similar stream issues, similar steep slopes issues.

I researched that a little bit, it's a little bit before my time.

And it looks like the neighborhood was against it.

The city had real problems with it.

There were some compliance issues and the result had some problems.

What are the differences between that and this?

No.

Huntley was done, and we didn't develop it, so I don't know all of the ins and outs, but I'll tell you my understanding, and some of these are just my recollections from following it over the years.

But it was done in the mid-2000s, and the PUD ordinance was not very well refined at that point.

We did another PUD around the same time, so I know how the process worked at the time.

It was really a wild, wild west to create your own whatever you want, as long as city council approved it.

And that was just how it was then, it's not a judgment on anything.

It was also developed under different stormwater standards.

Those changed dramatically in 04 and 09 and again in 14.

And so the requirements for water quality and water quantity control were really different with Huntley.

I know drainage and

and outflow of storm drainage from Huntley was a major issue all during construction and probably even now still.

And when you look at Huntley, it's kind of a suburban design.

The lots are small, but it's a winding road through topography to get from the top to the bottom of a hill.

It makes sense, but it's not comparable to a

a design like this where we're really focused on not the individual lots, but the place as a whole.

So for stormwater, the differences here are that we have to do way, way more quantity and quality control just by state and city laws that are now more stringent on that than the developers at Huntley were asked to do.

And the PUD process as a

Entitlement process has really gotten a lot more structure over the years and I think that's thanks to the city staff and the city attorney's office in particular because they were finding a lot of enforceability issues with the previous PUD process from the early 2000s and wanted to make it a little bit more predictable.

You all, I know Lisa, you were there, but

So now the process is a lot more robust, including things like looking at street.

I was referring to the other way, Ms.

Robertson, but yes, you were there too, probably.

including things like analyzing streets here at this stage of the game to make sure that the streets that we're proposing will actually meet city code.

That's not something that happened in the past.

You really, in the Huntly days of PUD approval could have drawn it in pencil and submitted it for approval.

And also, the critical slopes ordinance wasn't in place at that point.

And EPA standards for TMDLs were not in place.