City Council Meeting   11/26/2024

I'll call our Tuesday, November 26, 2024.

Mayor Reed.

Present.

City Manager Banks.

Here.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Here.

Council Member Robinson.

Here.

Deputy Chief Miller.

Here.

And Chief Tobian.

If you would please stand for the invocation if you wish and remain standing for the pledge of allegiance.

Father God, thank you for this day, thank you for this council, our city staff, our first responders, and our community.

Please grant us wisdom and strength to do what is right and good for our city.

May we put an interest of others above our own, and may we act with love for the common good.

In your name I pray.

Amen.

before you get started, Michael, I wanted to say we have a birthday today.

Happy birthday to Brian.

Happy birthday, Brian.

All right, so we will now have our special recognition of our 2024 city

Thank you, Madam Mayor, City Council.

I am Mike Parks, the City's Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

I'm here tonight to talk to you about Harrisonburg Citizen Academy.

I know you all are well-versed in Citizen Academy.

I see a number of Academy graduates before me, but for those who are unaware,

Citizen Academy is a 13-week program that happens every fall, one night a week, two hours a night, in most cases.

I won't name any names to show you, but usually they're done in two hours, sometimes they go to three.

Anyone in our community can sign up to come and learn about our city departments.

Each week we visit a different city department, and we hear directly from staff members about the services that they provide to our community.

This is a great opportunity for people who are interested in their local government to find out how we do what we do, why we do what we do, to see the tools and the resources we use to make that happen, and to get a behind-the-scenes look at the new innovative programs that we are bringing to make this a community for all.

But most importantly, it's a place for great conversations.

We always have a lot of great conversations between our participants and our staff members about the services we provide and about how they impact our community members every day, and we learn a lot through those conversations.

I'm very thankful to our departments for making this happen.

Every department tries to make it better every year.

In fact, if you haven't been in Citizen Academy for a while, it's probably bigger and better than you could possibly imagine because so much is added every year.

And that's really because our departments care so much about this.

This year we had 15 graduates.

And I know many of them are here.

I'm going to ask if they could please stand as I wrap up my comments here in the next couple minutes.

So graduates, if you could please stand who are in this year's class.

If you attended every Citizen Academy class in our optional Saturday field trip, you would spend 30 to 35 hours in Citizen Academy.

It's a big commitment and one that I know that everyone can make.

So I really appreciate all these people who you saw here tonight and those that weren't able to make it who made that commitment.

to be part of this program to learn about our organization and show how much they care about our community.

These are people who I know are going to continue being involved in local government, be that maybe sitting employees in the future, members of boards and commissions, or maybe even sitting here in front of me one day as our next city council members.

So I would ask them once more if they could please stand if they aren't.

No, please get back up.

And everyone please join me in thanking them and congratulating them.

If you don't mind, I would like to ask if they could come up and take a photo with city council.

Alright, if you could please come up, stand on the other side of the podium.

We're gonna get your photo with city council members.

It's the last thing you have to do before you allow the graduates.

Michael, I'm not taking the picture without Roy.

Tell Roy he's gotta come up here.

Hell yeah!

Okay, y'all don't have to make a split, because you're gonna block us.

Or, are you want them behind us?

Actually, maybe if council members, if you just stood.

Does that work?

Thank you.

Classes dismissed.

Y'all get out of here.

Thank you, council.

So 16 years ago, I think maybe is when this started.

And when I did Citizen Academy I was already on council.

I was trying to be incognito, but that didn't work.

They saw me coming.

Like Gerald Gattobu said, Ms.

Dent wants the electric buses.

All right, we'll go to our consent agenda.

Any items placed on the consent agenda shall be removed and taken up as a separate matter if so requested by any member of council.

I'll second that.

Any discussion?

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Aye.

Mayor Reed.

Good evening, Adam Fletcher, Director of Community Development.

The request is to rezone the site from M1 General Industrial to R3 Conditional to C, representing that there are proffers that are submitted with the application.

The site shown before you outlined here in blue.

It's actually two tax map parcels.

So this map shows that it looks like it's one parcel.

It's actually two, more or less split down the middle, two tax map parcels here.

So we have properties to the north, the south, and the west all zoned M1, General Industrial District.

And then once you cross Jefferson Street, you have properties that are zoned R2.

The long-term comprehensive plan land use guide demonstrates that this parcel, along with much of this neighborhood that's on the eastern side of the railroad track, so that white area behind the parcel is railroad track property, and most of this neighborhood is designated for neighborhood residential.

along with a few parcels here to the north that are also zoned M1 and are presumed to be non-conforming.

So this site has had an interesting year.

Sadly, this parcel, this structure had suffered a fire.

And when the applicant was doing their due diligence to move forward to make improvements to the property after the fire had occurred,

It's one of these situations where you have a residential use in an M1 zoning district.

So immediately our staff is, you know, looking at the very complex situation of non-conforming uses and what can happen with non-conforming uses and what was first brought to our attention was that our records indicated this was just a single unit and at some point in time there was a second unit added to the building and it is the property owner's responsibility to deter to

confirmed that they have a non-conforming legal use.

And we've had situations in the past where property owners have acquired properties not knowing that there was actually potentially an illegal operation.

And that's what more or less proved to be the case here, being that the property owner was unable to prove non-conformance that it has always been just a two duplexes because a record had indicated one.

So we did our due diligence, went through some history of the property, which I'll share with you here just very briefly.

And some that you might find quite interesting is that the existing structure was believed to have been built prior to it was annexed into the city in 1870.

So this property was annexed in 1870, but the structure was had, we presume was built before then.

That was before there was a zoning ordinance in place because their zoning orders first one did not come into play until 1939.

and the property was zoned B2.

When the property was zoned B2 during that time period, residential uses were still permitted in the B2 district.

In fact, the B2 district at that time was titled differently known as something different than what it is today, but it was allowing for other types of uses, not just for residential.

It wasn't until 1963, we believed that it actually became a non-conforming use.

So when the city adopted a new zoning ordinance in 1963 and then gave this property an M1 zoning district,

that it became a nonconforming residential use.

And then, sadly, it suffered that structure damage through the fire here earlier this year.

They went through those proceedings to then get it back up to improvements.

And then we found out that there was really an illegal operation here.

So we worked with the applicant, worked with the property owner to try to help them get back into this space.

and went through different opportunities for them, different options to figure out what zoning district might be the best.

Recognizing that we had planned for this area to be residential anyway.

So what they ended up deciding to do, which is what's before this evening is request to reason to the R3 district.

And the R3 district allows them to do a couple of different things because of the size of the property.

So it allows them to have the single family home so that they can get back in there legally.

And that it creates this opportunity for the applicant, the property owner, to then convert it to a duplex.

and even in the future if they were to apply for special use permit to apply for a multi-family unit if they went out a third unit because the property is large enough to do so.

As I pointed out, what we determined that it was an illegal operation comes from the complexities of the non-conforming statute here in our code.

which just very briefly it's whenever a non-conforming use is enlarged or extended beyond its intensity or size or character then the non-conforming status shall terminate and that's what we had determined had happened and any quantifiable increase is what happens in those particular cases.

So it had an M1 property that had to refer to any M1 permitted use which is not residential so that's why they're looking for this R3.

They had offered up a single proffer here.

We had suggested four opportunities to allow for the city to come in at a later time to provide public sidewalk along this section of Jefferson Street.

This is not on this side of the street.

And the applicant voluntarily proffered.

This is just summarized here on the screen, but there's more specifics in your staff report.

They would provide a variable width public sidewalk easement and then also provide a temporary sidewalk easement for the construction of it.

That only comes into play if the property is subdivided in the future.

So it's not, it wouldn't happen immediately.

And remember there are two properties here, it's not just the one.

So if they subdivide in the future, then this proffer sort of meets that threshold and then they would dedicate those easements at that time.

Staff did not have any concerns with this request and neither did Planning Commission.

They, in fact, you voted to recommend approval of the unanimously seven to zero.

And I will try to answer any questions.

Do we have any questions for Adam?

Thank you.

I will open this item up for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

Seeing none in person.

Thank you.

Well, it's nice when a situation like this arises and there seems to be a workable solution around it for the homeowner.

And so that's not always the case with non-conforming properties.

I think that's good here.

They can maintain their house.

and they may be able to do something additional with that if they need to.

So I think that's a plus for all of us here.

Second.

Any more discussion?

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Aye.

The next item is another rezoning, this time at 1158 Rockingham Drive.

The parcel here is the applicants are requesting to rezone the site from R1 to R8 conditional.

Again, that C representing the proffers have been submitted by the applicant.

Parcel outlined in red is a portion of the corner parcel here at the intersection, really at that 90 degree turn of Rockingham Drive and Tully Farrow Drive in the northern section here of the city.

All properties around the site, including the site itself, is all zoned R1.

And then you pick up some different zoning classifications.

Once you sort of go down the hill and across Virginia Avenue there, those are the properties that have frontage along Virginia Avenue that are zoned industrially.

Long-term plans for this area of the city very much the same and very similar to what the zoning is already in place for out in this area.

So low density residential for the neighborhood and again continuing to plan for industrial operation there along Virginia Avenue showed in that gray color.

and then the aerial photograph.

As noted, this is a portion of the corner parcel and I'll explain why and it's an 8,505 square foot plus or minus size portion of this parcel that they're hoping to rezone, which essentially would allow them to subdivide the property.

So a few photographs here, just a couple showing the undeveloped section of this property.

This is taken from Rockium Drive and then the same area taken from a different angle here at the corner.

You can see the private driveway there on the left hand side, which is a private road.

It provides access to lots that don't have public street frontage in that back half here.

So the situation before us is you have two parcels that are zoned R1.

That blue line represents the dividing line among the two parcels.

You have the parcel to the bottom here, 11,815 square feet.

That is the parcel in which the applicant's residence is on.

They also own the corner parcel, which is just over 10,000 square feet.

10,000 square feet of lot area is the minimum that is necessary to create a new R1 lot.

So if you change that, it has to maintain its 10,000 square feet.

So if you want to somehow adjust that blue line, both parcels have to remain at least 10,000 square feet in lot area.

What the applicant wants to do is they want to vacate that line and establish a new line by moving that line just slightly to the north

It puts their driveway that's serving the residents all on the subject site and then leaves the corner parcel at a slightly smaller size.

And that's what's not permitted under the R1 zoning district.

So to be able to do this subdivision, what they're requesting is for that portion to be rezoned to R8 conditional.

And the R8 is extremely flexible.

You all have heard me here now a couple of times at meetings talking about the flexibility.

that is provided in the R8 district and it does provide a lot of flexibility for them to be able to number one create this lot.

But then if you had not offered up proffers, it does create opportunities for duplexes on smaller lots and reduce setbacks.

However, they have submitted some proffers that took over here in a minute.

But on the screen before you shows the difference between R1 and R8.

So R1 there on that first row showing all the requirements for a lot area, a lot width, a lot depth, and the setback requirements.

When you compare that with the R8, which is just underneath, you see 2,800 square feet is the minimum lot size for R8, which is significantly different from the R1.

And then you have reduced lot widths and also reduced setbacks.

The Prophers that they offered up and just summarize on the screen more details of course in your application or your staff report but they are proffering that they would only provide one unit if a unit is to be developed anytime in the near future but at any time in the future only one unit can be built there

an 8,000 square foot in size parcel would allow without proffers for that lot to be subdivided, but this proffer basically prohibits any more than just one unit on that parcel.

So whether or not it would be subdivided in the future gets a bit complicated, but essentially you're going to end up with just one unit in that space.

The setback along Rockham Drive is going to mimic that of R1, so although they would be typically permitted to have a 10-foot setback, they've preferred to maintain

what is equal with R1 today, so you would not see a difference in where the building could be constructed off of Rockium Drive, so to maintain a 30-foot setback.

And then the last is that they are similar to our previous rezoning requests.

They also are dedicating a variable with public sidewalk easement and temporary construction easement when the city has opportunity to be out there to construct sidewalk in this space, because this was built in an era when the public streets did not require sidewalk to be constructed.

We did not have any concerns with this request.

Neither did Planning Commission.

We believe that, you know, allowing a slightly smaller size in this area and in this neighborhood does not detract from the space and would be in compliance with the comprehensive plan.

Thank you.

It certainly leaves a small footprint for them to build on, you know, considering

This item is now open for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

Seeing none in person.

Pam, do we have any callers?

Thank you.

I went down Sumter and looked at it from the back as well as I drove it through Rockingham and

So I completely trust them too.

A lot of those lots through there are challenging on Rockingham Drive and

Many of them come through the Board of Zoning Appeals at times just because they're restricted in what they can do with the current zoning law.

Plus the natural landscape.

So all the trees are tall.

Any more discussion?

Vice Mayor Dent?

Aye.

Council Member Robinson?

Aye.

Council Member Jones?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye, are you ready?

Aye.

Let's go.

Good evening, I'm Taundang, Deputy Director of Community Development

And so the first request that I'm going to present to you this evening is a zoning ordinance amendment.

And while the applicant is the same as the one that you'll hear in my later presentation about the Corey Heights development, I want you to consider that the zoning ordinance amendment is not just about Corey Heights, but is applied, would open up an opportunity to be applied to any property in the city zone R8 in which they're seeking to do a town home development that they can reduce requests to reduce setbacks for town homes.

and then I'll present the Corey Heights development in the next presentation.

So just a little bit of background here about the R-8 district.

So it was in 2019 that City Council approved the creation of this new zoning district called R-8 Small Lot Residential District.

By right, the R-8 district allows single family homes and duplexes as residential uses and then also would allow town homes by a special use permit request.

This, in the RE district, it also included a special use permit ability to allow single family detached and duplex homes to request a special use permit to reduce their side yard setback.

So the standard setback is, you know, seven and a half feet for one or two story building, for example.

And if somebody wants to build to five feet or three feet from the property line,

They can request the special use permit to get approval to do so.

And built into the regulations with the special use permit is that if they reduce their setback to less than what is, you know, by standard required in the zoning ordinance, they would either have to sprinkle their sprinkler, their building or install fire rated walls.

And this has to do with fire protection and safety of the structures and for the people.

and so those were that ability was allowed for single family detached and duplexes and so what this applicant is requesting is to allow the same for town homes and in consultation with the fire department and other staff that is the amendment so I'm having trouble with this mouse that is what the amendment is being requested here.

So a simple change really here is to add the or townhomes on the second line there to some other minor edits that we wanted to do there by adding the word dwelling but effectively we're adding townhomes to this already existing special use permit ability.

And you can see that the special use permit talks about the fire sprinkler system or the fire rating for the walls.

Additionally, within the zoning ordinance, there's other additional provisions about setbacks related to town homes.

So in order to make this work within the R-8 district, additional amendments are required.

And so that is in our modifications and adjustments article T section here.

So it allows within the R-8 district, they can use that special use permit is essentially what these two subsections are changing.

And so with that, staff recommends in favor of this request, Planning Commission also recommended unanimously in favor of this.

And if you have any questions for me or even for Chief Tobia, he is also available here this evening to answer any questions you have.

Thank you.

Well, I'd like to hear from Chief Tobia about this.

If he's prepared, right?

About the fire.

Council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this issue.

One of the things that we're always mindful of is the life safety of our community and ensuring to the very best possible way, ensuring that safety.

In this particular case, the requirements that we work with, and we work very closely with, community development.

Anytime community development receives a request, it's a very multidisciplinary approach.

All of the various segments of city government are involved in reviewing and providing input, and we always welcome the opportunity for that partnership, so we appreciate that.

in this case the potential for fire to spread building to building is very real and so when we talk about exterior cladding on buildings we're looking at requiring what we know what we call cementious siding so that which is most common example that is hardy plank if you will it is resistant to rapid fire spread as opposed to

and Laura Dent.

a structure fire to extend building to building to building.

And we have seen the terrible outcome of entire communities wiped out in other communities as a result of allowing a reduced setback and no requirement for this fire-resistant material.

Our preference is always to sprinkler any occupancy because we know that that has the greatest impact on reducing the likelihood of a fire death.

The other thing that we require is that setback and no windows on that side of the structure.

If there's a window on that side of the structure, somebody will try to escape from that window.

And if we can't place a ladder at the proper angle to be able to get to that upper floor, we can't rescue someone.

We can't rescue a civilian if they are trapped.

We can't rescue a child if they are trapped.

We can't rescue a firefighter if they become cut off and trapped in an upper floor.

And so it is very important that we're very specific about how best to help ensure the safety

The lack of the window does several things.

One, obviously, on the side of a structure, the weakest point is generally the window, and if the window fails before the wall fails, it will spread vertically, and then it will extend up the outside of the structure, often under the soffit into the attic space, and then burn the roof off the structure.

That's exactly right.

So we need, we need there to be a 70 degree angle, a climbing angle of the ladder because the ladder cannot be perfectly vertical, right?

The ladder would fall away from the building when someone tried to descend or ascend in the, in the, in up the ladder or down the ladder.

The Hardy Plank is designed to stop fire spread.

I've always used them to stop water.

You will find it in wildfire prone areas.

You will find homes that are often completely exteriorly clad in cementia siding with metal roofs and even protected soffit areas.

A question.

So, if there's repair work that needs to happen on that side of the building, I guess, necessarily up your alley, but maybe you can answer that.

How will folks get in there to do repair?

Say, if there's a roofing repair on that side.

Actually, I know in the General Assembly, there's going to be some legislation that looks at adjacent properties, and if you have to stay on your property to get about a ladder up there,

and the adjacent property won't let you extend the ladder, you can't do that.

So the legislation is to require an adjacent property to allow you to get that proper angle, because otherwise you could have a building that can't get repaired.

One of the concerns that we have is what gets put up in between the residences as well because if they put up a fence, right, or they put anything on their property that they want, right, that becomes a potential impediment to us being able to access that space.

that we need to be cognizant of.

But there are other places in Virginia that have this small of a space between the buildings, certainly, I think, right?

In a number of cases.

I think Northern Virginia, in particular, some of the more communities have fairly tight buildings there.

If there's no other questions, I'll open this item up for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Todd Ray on behalf of the applicant.

In working with staff on our Quarry Heights project, we came across this ordinance quirk that treats townhomes differently than duplexes and single-family homes.

The fire safety is no different

with the same appropriate safety standards in place to prevent fire spread.

And these are only special use permit requests.

It's not a blanket approval to build things close.

It's still under city council purview on the SUP request on a case by case basis.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Seeing none in person.

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the request to amend the zoning ordinance to modify regulations associated with minimum principle building setbacks for townhomes within the R-8 district as presented by staff.

Roll call please Pam.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jenner.

Aye.

Aye.

We're going to present all those items, right?

We'll have one public hearing for the

for the group items.

Once we get into the public hearing, I'll let you know how we're going to run this public hearing so that we can get through this without going into it tomorrow.

All right.

There you go.

All right.

Good evening again.

I'm Taun Dang, Deputy Director of Community Development.

And as the mayor described, we have five requests before you here.

There's a comprehensive plan map amendment, a rezoning, and then three special use permits, and I'll get into more details to discuss each of them through this presentation.

And because of the complexities and the scale of this development and the number of requests, I ask you to bear with me as I get through this presentation here.

Okay, so

So we have the zoning map here and the area for this development called Quarry Heights is bounded in the red color here and you can see that the majority of the site is zoned this brown kind of color M1 which is our general industrial district.

There are portions of this property that are zoned R2 residential district, R1 single family

Single Family Residential District as well as B2, there's like a little tiny bit of B2 close to the West Market Street, which is our general business district.

Then in our future land use guide, which is in the comprehensive plan, you can see that the majority of the property is designated general industrial, and then where the freight or quarry operations

We're not really occurring, but there was some on the uphill near the county boundary here.

You can see a low density mix residential, and then there was some area in the peach kind of color here designated as medium density mix residential.

So as part of this request, in addition to the rezoning, there's also the comprehensive plan map amendment.

Except for that little bit that circled in red that is already designated medium density mixed residential, the request is to change the designation in the land use guide for the remainder of the Quarry Heights property or the Frazier Quarry to match and be medium density mixed residential.

This is an aerial photo where you can see the quarry and then some wooded and undeveloped lands that are within the quarry heights property.

And then in this image here, this is the concept plan that has been submitted with the applicant.

We'll advise you that this concept plan that is on the screen this evening is the one that was

presented to Planning Commission and also in the original agenda packet earlier this morning.

We received an updated concept plan from the applicant.

And then also a new set of proffers were also uploaded and included with the agenda this morning.

So I hope you all had an opportunity to review it.

Nonetheless, in this presentation, I will go through all the original, summarize the original proffers, but I'll stop to pause and highlight where the changes have been made so we don't miss those.

So the concept plan shows how the applicant proposes to develop the site to construct no more than 953 total dwelling units.

They've proposed a mixture of multi-family or apartment units, townhomes, and single-family detached dwellings.

And then this red line here on this map represents the boundary between the area that they're requesting to rezone R5C, High Density Residential District, where the apartments are

multifamily units will be going and then the remainder of the property including the quarry lake there would be R8C, small lot residential district where we will have the townhomes and the single family detached dwellings.

In the initial proposals that the applicant had submitted and shared with staff in our initial conversations they had proposed all either multifamily and townhomes and they had not yet considered

a single family detached dwellings and there's some encouragement of staff the applicant had considered you know what they can make it work and put some single family detached dwellings here so in their proffers they have proffered that there would be a minimum of 45 single family detached dwellings which makes up about 4.7% of the entire development and those are proposed to be not proffered but they're proposed to be

near the College Avenue and Hillside area that's shown in the concept plan here.

And then we have the proffers.

So the proffers are broken down into these six sections, and I will walk through each of those with you now.

In the R5 district, so the multifamily section, just in summary, they've proffered a maximum number of dwelling units.

No more than three bedrooms would be in each dwelling units.

They've proffered the occupancy to be limited to family or no more than three individuals.

They've proffered also that there would be solar panels on their clubhouse in this area, two electric vehicle charging stations, and then a variety of other proffers that describe clubhouse, dog park, central lawn, playground, and open space within this area.

Then in the R8 district, so the remainder of the property to the page right there, they've also proffered a maximum number of dwelling units.

In this case, it's 653 is the maximum and where no fewer than 45 would be single family detached dwellings.

Similarly, they've also included proffers about solar panels on the clubhouse and other amenities, including the clubhouse playgrounds, pocket parks, and other things like that.

The last bullet here is a change or has been changed.

So they had proffered a 20-foot vegetative buffer.

So the buffer is shown in the image there.

One is near Clara Court on the left side of the page and one is near College Avenue.

With the amended proffers, the one on Clara Court remains at 20 feet wide of a landscape buffer where they would be planting trees and things in that area.

However, in the revised proffers on the backside of College Avenue,

They have increased that vegetative buffer to be 40 feet wide, also to include vegetative landscaping and things in that area.

Additionally, in the revised proffers, they had added a new proffer where they would install and maintain a six foot tall fence between the new public street that connects to Granite Farms, so perpendicular to Waterman Drive and connecting to Granite Farms, so between that public street

and the two southernmost lots at the end of College Avenue, the developer would have this privacy fence installed and then if the two property owners requested, the developer would also install trees, evergreen trees as well if upon request.

So those are some changes with this section of the proffers.

And for the benefit of the public, if they have access to the agenda items and online,

There is a version of the proffers and track changes where they could see where these changes have been made.

All right, so regarding the transportation proffers, before I jump into these, know that a traffic impact analysis was required for this development.

So it did trigger that requirement.

And the proffers along with the street improvement agreement that's within the packet all address the needed transportation improvements.

So I'll briefly summarize some of those

Prophers, which include proffered public street network.

So the red lines here represent where the public streets would go.

So the applicant in the proffer statement, it says something of the effect of public and private street network network is generally depicted on the concept plan.

So staff, when we are reviewing the future, if this were to get approved and go through engineering comprehensive site plan, we will be reviewing

Excuse me, Tom.

Yes.

Yeah, but it looks like you're not supposed to do that.

for future street widening and drainage improvements.

And as you may be aware, the Department of Public Works is leading an effort to study both Waterman Drive and Chicago Avenue together for transportation and stormwater drainage improvements.

So this proffers an anticipation of what will come out of that study.

Alright, so the applicant has also proffered connections to the county property.

You all may know it as the granite farm property that's located to the west of the Corey Heights development.

Specifically on page left here, they've proffered that there would be a shared use path connection that would get from this development into the granite farm or that future property when it's developed.

And then also on page right here,

the public street connection to connect into the county property as well.

Additionally, so in the Waterman Village section of this development, the applicant has proffered to dedicate a 50 foot wide easement to the city if we request it in the future.

This would set us up potentially for a future road connection, just planning ahead for the future

We know nothing about anything to change over there on that property.

You know, there's nothing's been proposed, but we're just anticipating that if something were to change, this would be a good logical spot to make a future public street connection in there.

So they would reserve that area for us.

Additionally, the transportation proffer addresses needed transportation improvements or intersection improvements at the intersection of Waterman Drive and West Market Street.

primarily driven by the number of vehicles coming out of this development modeled in the transportation and traffic models to increase the stacking or queuing length so the number of vehicles that would be stopped at the stoplight on Waterman Drive would be greater because there's more vehicles traveling here so therefore we need

Traffing Impact Analysis identified that the turn lane and the taper leading into the turn lane needed to be extended, so the proffers address that as well.

Additionally, the applicant has also proffered, and this is like really a voluntary thing, is that they've proffered that they will have, that they will construct, I guess all proffers are voluntary, but in this case it wasn't driven necessarily by a

TIA need, but the applicant has proffered sidewalks on the west side of Waterman Drive, so I've highlighted that yellow on the screen here, recognizing that this will, you know, connecting this little bit of sidewalk from their development where their entrance is into where the Food Mac shopping center is will be beneficial for people walking, you know.

Excuse me, a quick question on that.

Whose property is that actually?

So it's within the city, the work should be able to occur in the city right of way, but within the proffers, it's quite complex, but there are some details talking about, you know, some, what am I trying to think, that if for some reason they were to find that they need to negotiate with the private property owner for right of way, that there is a way for them to work with public works on modifications to just make the design of both that sidewalk and the turn lane work, should they need

to work with them.

They'll first reach out to the adjacent property owners, requesting fair market value for the property, but if they were to not be able to come to some kind of agreement, there is a way for them to modify plans with public works.

Okay, this works.

All right, so other transportation proffers here,

Trees that they've proffered along the public streets, concrete, pads and easements for bus shelters, traffic calming measures, as well as 15 mile an hour speed limits on the private streets.

And then there's a matter of the street improvement agreement that also addresses improvements that are needed or some changes and modifications that are needed at the intersection of West Market Street and High Street

and which would have some impacts also to the water street intersection with High Street.

So the street improvement agreement recognizes that there's already just kind of like in the background in the community, there's already a need for changes with that intersection and that quarry heights is contributing to that, but they don't have 100% responsibility for those improvements at this intersection.

So therefore,

The Street Improvement Agreement details their contribution to with the city or to the city rather to make those improvements happen, a share of their contribution.

And then there's a section in the proffers about bicycle and pedestrian improvements that are proffered here.

So the applicant will design and construct a public shared use path system that will become part of the city's public

Path and Trail System.

So those are represented by the red lines there.

So those will become kind of like the way the friendly city trail is.

It would be owned and maintained by the city going through quarry heights.

The yellow lines represent a trail system, but those would be trails or paths that would be privately owned and maintained by the quarry heights development.

There are some grade challenges that are anticipated in that area.

that would make it difficult for the city to take maintenance and operation of the public, then as public shared use paths due to ADA requirements and things, but the intention is that both the yellow and the red lines would be open to the public for use.

We foresee that this public trail system, you can see that it's connecting into West Market Street.

The idea there would be that it would eventually, that it would

be a connection with the friendly city trail where it comes out at Thomas Harrison Middle School.

But know that the applicant developer is not responsible, so they have not proffered and staff did not expect that they would be responsible for making the crossing improvement that would be needed to make that a safe place to cross.

and that Public Works Department is aware of this need.

They've been part of this process working with community development staff and other staff through this whole process, but they'll be seeking grants or other funding opportunities to make that happen.

So that is something we are aware of.

Oh, for the crossing improvement, I don't know the answer to that, yeah.

Alright, let's check.

Alright, and then continuing on with bike ped proffers, the applicant has also proffered to work with the adjoining retail center, so where the food max is located to construct a pedestrian connection, and there is a provision within the proffers that, you know, if for some reason the food max

The owner of that property, not the business, but the owner of that property was to say, you know what, we don't want that connection.

Then the Corey Heights development would not be required to make that connection because it would be a connection to nowhere, but they are going to make their best effort to talk with those owners and I'm hopeful that they will be receptive of that.

All right, so here's some big, I guess, topics of concern that have been raised by a lot of the neighbors that you all, I'm sure, have heard from and that you'll hear about also during the public hearing.

And I guess I was going to say, I meant to say at the beginning, and let me say this now, is that these amended proffers, so these new proffer statements,

came to be after the neighbors and the applicant had worked together, had community meetings and conversation at which staff was not engaged or involved in but I commend them for working together on this and I'm sure you'll hear from both the applicant and neighbors about how that went and you know where they've come to agreements or maybe even things that they were not able to resolve but this was one of the

Big topics of concerns that staff had heard from the neighbors.

And so this image here focuses on the Hillside Avenue and College Avenue areas where there are existing street stubs that end at the quarry property.

And within the proffers, the applicant has proffered at Hillside Avenue to construct a shared use path connection and dedicate 20 feet of right of way

for that shared use path connection.

And then at College Avenue, there is a proffer that was made that the applicant would also construct a shared use path connection.

But the difference here would be that they would dedicate 50 feet of right of way in any additional temporary construction easements that would be needed for a future public street connection with College Avenue.

So Hillside Avenue would only have a shared use path connection, College Avenue,

a shared use path connection in the near future, but potential for future if the city were to desire or to need it, the city could build a street to connect College Avenue with the new public street.

And we recognize, staff recognize through this whole process that College Avenue and Hillside Avenue are both what we call substandard streets.

They're narrow.

They can't take a lot of more vehicular traffic on there.

So we're not suggesting, and nor do we have any plans at this time to bring vehicular traffic from Corey Heights into College Avenue.

We're just trying to plan for the future that if College Avenue, we needed a connection there, we would foresee also improvements to College Avenue, potentially widening in things, in provisions to make improvements on College Avenue would be needed.

And this is supported for staff.

This plan for these street connections are supported by the comprehensive plan, which talks about, you know, to the greatest extent possible, all developments throughout the city would include a traditional neighborhood design principles, which describes developments that serve many modes of transportation and a grid pattern.

So that's a summary of things that we're talking about.

So we're hoping, we're planning for, you know, gridded and interconnectivity.

between public streets as well as other ways that people can walk, bike, or use other modes of transportation through there.

The Comprehensive Plans Street Improvement Guide also shows conceptually, like very conceptually, just like the desire that the city has to make connections kind of this

East to West public street connection from Waterman Drive to Granite Farms, but also connecting College Avenue, Hillside Avenue, and Summit Avenue.

With that said, what I explained earlier is that staff had only worked with the applicant and asked that the applicant consider a College Avenue connection because the reality is that the Hillside Avenue connection would be difficult to build a street connection because of the grade challenges that are out there.

Let's see.

So the applicant neighbors are concerned about that connection.

It's not a connection that staff is planning to work on in the near future, but it's something that we're planning for the future on.

So the applicant has kept that in their proffers.

They didn't make any changes, but they did add a new proffer in which they will install and maintain a minimum of two benches

along the shared use path between the end of College Avenue.

So that was a new proffer that appeared in the revised proffer statement.

Excuse me, time?

Yes.

The public access easements, do those apply to those vertical private shared use paths?

That's correct.

That's correct.

Yeah.

All right.

That's the proffers associated with the rezoning.

As I mentioned earlier, there's three special use permits.

The first special use permit is to allow multifamily dwellings of no more than 12 units per building.

Staff did not recommend any conditions for that one.

The next special use permit is to allow attached townhomes of not more than eight units in the R-8 district.

The applicant had presented or offered a condition

that the maximum attached town home group shall be limited to six units.

So our R8 special use permit would allow eight.

They're saying, well, we only want six units in a row for each town home row.

And then the last special use permit is to allow reduced side yard setbacks for town homes in the R8 district, which is the zoning ordinance that was presented just before this.

The applicant is not asking for zero setback or anything close to zero.

They are asking, they have offered this self-imposed condition, I would say, that a minimum side yard setback for townhome groups would be no less than 10 feet.

So 10 feet from the property line, effectively 20 feet separation between two rows of townhome structures.

Excuse me a second time.

What would that have been under the previous ordinance before the amendment?

Oh, I'm sorry.

What's in the staff report about water and sewer is no longer accurate.

So there was a point in time where staff had advised the applicant that available downstream sanitary sewer capacity may be inadequate.

However, can you put up that blank slide?

I still have some slides to go after that.

So while public utilities department staff now do not expect capacity problems with either water or sanitary sewer systems, they did acknowledge that there would still need to be the preliminary engineering report or study that would be done to validate

what their, I guess their gut feeling is about the capacity for the water and sanitary sewer systems that if any deficiencies are identified, the developer would need to reduce demands or provide for increased capacity.

So the correction really is that staff doesn't expect that there to be any issues, but we'll validate that through future studies with the applicant.

I'm aware that the applicant has been working with public utilities,

on some modeling that will lead into the study.

Yes.

Sorry to interrupt again.

What I recall, I had the concern about the granite farms right next door.

Two huge developments right next to each other.

What's that going to do to the sewer capacity?

Which it turns out by capacity, they mean the pipes carrying it, not the downstream water treatment plant.

Correct.

It turns out that it's not as big a concern as I was afraid it might be because the

The capacity pipes go in two different directions.

Thank you for reminding me about that.

Yeah, so there was some questions at Planning Commission that I was not able to answer and I was able to follow up with Planning Commission afterwards to confirm with the Public Utilities Department that the capacity issues that had come up in discussions about the granite farms development is not the same

I guess the other issue would be the interceptors, but that seems not to be an issue as well.

So I think Mike Collins got as about scientific as it gets, I think.

All right.

And then the next item I just want to highlight is just with the housing, which is at the pros.

while the proposed development does not plan to provide affordable housing units, adding market rate housing could assist in addressing the housing mismatch that is described within the housing study.

It could help to address that within the city.

All right.

So let me help me out here, Pam.

Sorry.

Thank you.

All right.

So staff believes that repurposing of the Frazier Quarry property for housing is more compatible with the surrounding area than the industrial uses that are allowed by right in the current zoning of M1, which is the industrial district in which the industrial district is also supported right now by the comprehensive plan designation of general industrial.

We recognize that the proposal also makes significant efforts to provide vehicular, bicycle, and pedestrian connections

within the development and with existing neighborhoods and commercial uses, which are all good things.

And so with that, I'll get to the conclusion here that staff, as well as planning commission unanimously recommended approval of all five of the requests.

So the comprehensive plan map amendment, the rezoning, and then the three special use permits.

And then we are recommending to include the conditions with two of the special use permits that the applicant had requested.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I do.

If you could clarify one thing for me.

Okay, so we have the comprehensive plan map amendment.

I get that.

I understand the supplemental use permits, but I'm a little, I'll get a little lost on the rezoning.

Yeah, so, um, sorry.

So in the rezoning, so this map here shows a rezoning where portions of the property are designated M1 general industrial.

That doesn't allow any residential uses on there at all.

So they would definitely need to rezone.

With all two general industrial?

No, to rezone it to a portion of the, so this is, maybe what's confusing because it confuses me is that the north arrow in this picture is

Top of the page with the other, all the concept plans are the north arrow is pointing to the right.

So when I said to the page right what they're rezoning here, so that image that I had before is flipped sideways now.

So a portion of it would be rezoned to R8C for the single family homes and town homes.

And then the R5C would allow for the apartments in that area.

I was making it much harder than that.

Okay, now I get it.

I was thinking each individual, yeah, never mind, but I was thinking what's not what you just said.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

That's a lot, huh?

Thank you.

Thank you, Tom.

Alright.

I'm gonna open this item up for public hearing.

This is what we're going to do.

You're coming up first.

You have 15 minutes.

Okay.

Then I know the neighborhood is here as well.

And they have a spokes, three people that will speak.

If you three can come up here to these front seats, please.

And y'all will each have five minutes.

Liz, if you can come up front, just in case we need you for any reason, Tom's already up here.

This item is now open for public hearing.

Should we wait for Councilman Jones to get back before we start?

We don't need a diatrix.

Good evening Mayor Reed, members of council and city officials.

I'm Todd Ray with Clark and Bradshaw here in downtown Harrisonburg representing the applicant.

Here with me tonight is our project development team.

Davis Strauss with the developer, Valley Engineering,

and members of the Frazier family.

We greatly appreciate the opportunity to present Corey Heights project to you.

We're fortunate to bring the entitlement request before council with recommendations of approval from both city staff and unanimously from Planning Commission.

Due to the size of the project and the number of separate approvals, we appreciate the mayor's permission

to expand our presentation time to 15 minutes.

And after everyone talks, we'll be open to respond to questions and concerns, and we'll do the best to use our time efficiently.

Our presentation will consist of two speakers.

After my introductory remarks, David Frazier will provide counsel with a brief history and legacy of the Waterman Quarry site, their efforts in selecting a development team to repurpose the quarry, and the importance to them

of the BikePed Network planned for the site.

I'll then return to discuss the concept plan and land use topics raised during city discussions covered by Ms.

Dang and the community engagement process.

Getting the Quarry Heights project before council has been several years in the making.

The developer and Frazier family spoke for over a year, agreeing on a shared vision for repurposing the dormant Waterman Quarry site into housing.

The developer also carefully read the city housing study and identified the clear and pressing need for new construction market type A housing.

This is the left hand side of the city's housing shortage barbell with affordable housing being the right hand side of the barbell.

The lake in the middle of the property was another unique feature around which to design an active multi-generational community that would be interested

There would be an interest to retirees, empty nesters, young professionals, and new families.

The Waterman site is one of the very few larger undeveloped sites within the city that can accommodate new housing supply.

After initial concept design last summer, we engaged with city staff at a formal pre-application meeting

last Halloween 2023.

That was followed by a number of detailed studies, including a traffic impact analysis, design of the integrated public trail system, an economic impact study, preliminary site grading and stormwater considerations, and meeting with city schools.

We also engaged with a number of community stakeholders and advocacy groups from which we received valuable feedback.

We remained engaged with city staff over the last year

with numerous meetings to refine the extensive list of voluntary proffers as outlined by Ms.

Dang and the staff report.

Our team also hosted a well-attended community open house at VMRC in late September and held a meeting with the College Avenue neighborhood in early November after the Planning Commission hearing.

We valued the honest dialogue, and while we did not agree on all points,

We revised our plan and proffers in response to this community engagement and we had a really good time meeting the folks in the area.

All of our conversations were very cordial and productive and professional.

We are also gratified to have obtained letters of support from key stakeholders who are closely connected to the Parkview community and wider success of the city who recognize the pressing need for new housing to attract and retain valuable and skilled employees.

Here's our timeline on this slide.

You can see on the bottom two, we're a couple of our presentation stations at our VMRC Open House.

And at the top left, this was our meeting at Parkview Mennonite with the College Avenue community, which was one of the more informative and productive community meetings that I've been a part of.

And I'll thank Chris and her group for putting that together.

Here are some of those stakeholder letters, which are in the file, and again,

This was outreach conducted by our team over the past year.

Thank you, Todd.

Thank you, Council.

I appreciate your time and consideration tonight.

I'm David Frazier.

I'm part of the fourth generation of the Frazier quarry.

The Corian Consideration is one of four operations that we currently run in the Rockingham County, Harrisonburg area.

This particular plant was permitted in 1945 and has been a valuable asset for the Harrisonburg community for the last almost 80 years.

The hole that you see in the ground seems rather unsightly now.

It's a hole that

The Harrisonburg area has quite literally created by building houses, churches, neighborhoods, roads, schools, and we as the Fraser family wanted to feel a sense of pride in the same property.

and its post-mine land use.

And in doing that, it can be rather difficult.

We went through multiple suggestions.

We could have taken the traditional way out and reclaimed it and left it as it lied.

But we wanted to do something a little bit more exciting to continue to make this property shine and be a valuable asset for Harrisonburg.

In doing so, we were introduced to Waterman Investments

We had the luxury of visiting some of the sites that they had reclaimed in the communities.

A lot of it was housing, some of it was multi-use, and really enjoyed ourselves and came back with some energy and vision for what Waterman Drive could look like.

Living in the community, we knew that there needed to be an existing connection for folks who choose not to drive a car, the walk or bike.

from the Northwest side to 33 in the South side, connecting some of the existing networks as well as the schools and neighborhoods and businesses that already exist.

And this piece of property is kind of key in doing so.

So we started there and we were lucky enough to be working with the team that valued that.

They valued having the family involved.

They valued having our vision be a part of the discussion and growing this plan to what you see today.

I'm happy, I'm proud of what we've come up with.

I'm also proud of the discussion and opinions and suggestions that we've gotten from the city through this process.

And I look forward to seeing the potential in this property in the future.

I thank you for your time and your service to the city.

Thank you, David.

Thank you, David.

David was integral in

coming up with how this bike-ped network interconnects on the west side of the city.

This is showing pretty clearly both on a wider view and a zoom in to how the friendly city trail can now cross, go through this site, and bring people up pretty conveniently getting up to the EMU neighborhoods to the north.

You heard Ms.

Dang talk about our concept plan.

It shows locations for many of the individual proffords in number sequence.

We're not going to get into the weeds.

Everyone's had a chance to review those things, but you can see the effort, time, and work that was put into making sure this was a community that the city could be proud of.

There are six different neighborhoods throughout Quarry Heights, all with different price points and housing designs.

All 600 plus units other than the Quarry Flats apartment section will be for sale residences.

These are not built for rent.

They're built for for sale to individual owners.

It contains Market Type A housing as discussed.

No Market Type A new construction housing has been available for purchase in the city of Harrisonburg at any scale for a generation.

Since the completion of Bluestone Hills, re-hurt acres and harmony heights, there's been no project of this scale in the city.

The developer is also committed to install and turn over to the city almost two miles of additional public trails designed similarly to the award-winning friendly city trail.

These new trails will be open to the public and create unique, active recreational and gathering spaces around the lake and provide bike-ped transit through the site.

Here are some views of the property.

It looks like a hole in the ground now, but Valley created some three dimensions.

This is looking north over the apartment section with the central green to the lake.

You've got your villa town homes on the Westridge Summit to the left.

This is just slightly looking back across the lake.

You can see sort of our trail and path through the villas on the upper slopes there.

That's some of the highest points in Harrisonburg with great views both to the west and over downtown in JMU.

And here is our community green on the north side of the property, an integral feature, providing a greenway through the site in our Waterman Village section.

Density.

As we've discussed with the city and the neighborhoods,

Quarry Heights has an overall density of just under 6 units per acre, excluding the 35 acre lake.

This density is easily compatible with target densities in the city's current medium density zoning districts of 15 to 20 units per acre.

At 4.8 units per acre, the R5 section of Quarry Heights, the non-apartment areas, are equivalent to densities found in the Morrison Park neighborhoods of detached housing surrounding Waterman Elementary.

Corey Heights is not pushing any boundaries based on the target densities shown in the city's land use guide.

We fall primarily into the target densities found in the city's low density residential districts.

It looks like a lot of houses, I know.

It's a big site and it's a big plan, but here's how the numbers slot into the city's comprehensive plan land use guide.

Questions have been raised about how the development of Corey Heights will impact the stormwater situation along Waterman Drive.

Our engineering team prepared a diagram with pre and post development drainage areas within the site.

One feature of the site is large overburdened berms at the top west side and north sides of the lake.

By removing those berms, using that fill material to level the site, we will redirect almost all of the surface drainage area, the blue and the bottom, treat it and put it into quarry lake.

All that red area will no longer go down to Waterman Drive.

along Waterman Drive.

We're dedicating to the city 20 to 30 feet of valuable frontage, which corresponds with their Waterman Corridor study for the future installation of road widening and culverting along Waterman Drive for stormwater.

We are not a contributor to the problem.

We're helping solve the Waterman Drive flooding issues.

Economic impacts.

Corey Heights provides the city with significant economic and fiscal benefits.

We are confident that the project will be a net fiscal contributor to the city.

An economic impact assessment was completed and filed with the economic development team at the city and shows based on assessed values alone in $2024, the completed project would provide over $3.3 million in direct tax revenue to the city annually.

Not only will the community cover the cost to educate any net new students

Living there, Quarry Heights will provide additional fiscal funding to help pay for other city budgetary priorities.

The repurposing of the former Quarry site will also provide redevelopment impetus to the Waterman Drive Light Industrial and West Market Street commercial corridors, breathing new life and opportunity into those spaces and boosting secondary tax revenue effects.

Finally, our favorite topic, traffic.

Fortunately, the Waterman Quarry site is located within a section of the city that contains relatively under capacity roadway networks.

We're not building on reservoir, we're not building on port road.

This represents beneficial distribution of growth via locating the substantial new project outside of areas where road networks and related public infrastructure may be at or near current capacities.

As staff reported,

Corey Heights addresses what impacts it does create through voluntary proffers, funding, and completing those road network improvements that this project will impact in the area.

And importantly, Corey Heights has intentionally directed its transportation investment into bike-ped infrastructure and traffic calming measures, those traffic circles, raised intersections,

We want to be a safe, walkable community and we put our money where our mouth is.

A project like Corey Heights comes along once in a generation.

We have given our all to bring the city a new high quality housing community that citizens have been waiting and asking for.

One that allows folks who live in the city the chance to buy a new home here.

And a community that knits together the western side of the city

from Parkview EMU in the North to Westover and Hillendale Parks in the South.

We're proud of our proposal.

We're prepared to field any questions that Council has.

Good evening and thank you for having us.

My name is Katrina Ditto and I live at 845 College Avenue.

and afterwards we'll invite any members of the public that want to agree with us to stand up and let that be known to you.

I want to talk a little bit about the timeline of events and actions in the South College Avenue neighborhood over the last two months.

During the planning commission meeting on October 9th, it was apparent that many in the neighborhood felt that we hadn't been informed of the Corey Heights project early enough in the development process.

After that meeting, a few of us talked briefly with the Quarry Heights team and agreed to find a time for a neighborhood meeting with them.

Several of us then quickly formed a steering committee to discuss our concerns, and that steering committee group did the following.

We prioritized a list of four requests for the Quarry Heights project team.

We created a neighborhood online survey.

We created a flyer with the survey link, with information about the project, and an invitation to the neighborhood meeting that we were going to have with the Quarry Heights team, and we gave ways to contact City Council with concerns.

We also located a meeting space for the neighborhood meeting with the developers.

We found a professional facilitator, Lori Britt, to guide that meeting.

We held one of our neighborhood potluck block parties at the end of College Avenue to eat together, of course, to see maps of the proposed project, to distribute flyers to help inform people and to get the survey out.

You may have seen WHSV's coverage of that block party.

We, on Canvas, door to door with flyers, eventually reaching about 130 neighboring households.

And we posted the flyer and the survey on the Harrisonburg Northwest Neighborhood Facebook page to try to involve other people near the quarry.

So the survey that went out received nearly 80 responses, which we sent to you along with four requests by email.

We should have gotten those last week.

And tonight, I believe you received a nine page compilation of the survey responses, including respondents, additional questions and concerns that they had.

You also received the two-page survey summary written by facilitator Lori Britt, which she prepared for the neighborhood meeting and shared with the Quarry Heights team.

We wanted to note that the survey responses did show very strong agreement with all four of the requests and nearly unanimous agreement within the South College Avenue neighborhood.

Roughly 80% of the survey respondents live in the two to three block area in and around College Avenue, South College Avenue, and about 20% of those were from a bit further away, including neighborhoods to the east and southeast of Waterman Drive.

Our neighborhood meeting on November 4th at Parkview Mennonite Church Fellowship Hall was attended by eight folks from the Quarry Heights team, which we appreciated, and over 40 people from the neighborhoods around Phasier Quarry.

Laurie Britt facilitated and guided the conversation through each of the four requests that we were making and provided time for anyone present to speak their thoughts, concerns, and ideas.

The Quarry Heights team was able to answer a number of our questions from those present and said that they would discuss our requests and get back to us soon.

Several of us were able to meet with some of you all over the last few weeks as well, and we appreciate your time and thoughtful consideration to what we're asking.

Good evening.

My name is Rachel van Patter.

I live at 890 College Ave.

Thank you for your time this evening.

I will read the four neighborhood requests as they were listed in the survey and sent to the Quarry Heights team and all of you.

Number one, buffer between development and existing homes.

The Corey Heights concept plan shows a 20-foot vegetated buffer between existing College Avenue homes and Corey property line only on the east side of South College Avenue.

No buffer is shown between the property line at the south end of College Ave and the proposed new public road running along the line.

We asked for at least 50 feet of retained woodland, not cut down and replanted, along both property lines described above between

existing homes along College Ave and Hillside Ave and the proposed development.

We want at least 50 feet of retained woodland buffer for several reasons, including neighborhood privacy for the character of the neighborhood because trees provide cooling air purification, carbon capture, protection from noise and dust, and wildlife habitat.

And because College Avenue folks can't plant anything, at least some can't plant anything along the backs of their properties to create a buffer due to power lines.

New Public Road along the south ends of College Avenue and Hillside Avenue.

The City of Harrisonburg has asked for a public road which would connect to the proposed granite farm development just adjacent to the quarry heights to the west in Rockham County.

On the concept plan, this public road goes uphill along the property line with no buffer.

In addition, the City has asked for a 50-foot right-of-way road where College Avenue ends to hold open the option to connect College Ave to this new road sometime in the future.

Our concern about this

Public Road is in two parts.

Two A. Firstly, we ask that the new public road connecting Quarry Heights to Granite Farm be placed much further into the development, in addition to the 50-foot woodland buffer between the property line and the development as described in item one.

This reduces traffic noise in our quiet neighborhood and eliminates potential change to the adjacent property owner's setback requirements.

Two B. Secondly, we ask that City withdraw the request for the 50-foot right-of-way

and all future plans to connect College Avenue to Quarry Heights and thereby Granite Farm.

We strongly believe that if College Ave becomes a through street in the future, our neighborhood will be destroyed.

Even if traffic is only headed to Quarry Heights or Granite Farm and not beyond into the county, the character of our quiet, slow, safe neighborhood would never be the same.

Our third ask, construction noise for seven years.

We are very concerned with the amount of construction noise that this project will generate over the next seven to ten years, including drilling, blasting into bedrock, cutting down trees, large machinery, carrying equipment and all the noise of house construction.

The developers estimate two to three years of the site development and four years of building.

However, realistically, as we compare it to Preston Lake and other large developments, we can expect ten years of construction noise.

We ask for all construction noise to be limited to 7.30 to 5 p.m.

on weekdays with no construction noise on weekends.

This gives the neighborhood quieter evenings and weekends, but of course does not solve the problem for those of us working from home or staying at home for other reasons.

These are the responses we received from the Corey Heights team.

They will double the proffered vegetation, and you've seen some of this as they addressed it earlier.

They will double the proffered vegetated buffer along College Ave's lots rear boundary from 20 to 40.

They are not moving the public street but are proffering a six-foot privacy fence between the new street and the shared-use path and two end lots on College Ave.

They are adding a proffer to install a pocket park with stone benches at the connection point of the bike-ped shared-use path at the end of College Avenue.

They are not reducing or removing the 50-foot right-of-way request by the city for future potential street connection.

The 50-foot right-of-way is a city staff request and our understanding is a city council decision.

They are not proffering limited work hours beyond what is in compliance with city noise ordinances.

A note is that because of the noise ordinance exemption for construction, this allows construction noise of any decibel level during any daylight hours year round.

They are offering to talk again with us about construction noise if the project moves ahead.

And now I welcome Chris to come up with her part.

Good evening.

My name is Chris Shankzer and I live at 867 College Avenue.

Our four requests are effectively softening measures, ways to make the massive impact of quarry heights a little easier to bear over years of construction and changes brought about by development of this enormity.

We've tried to be pragmatic in this process, but now I'm going to be a little more forthright about our feelings and concerns.

The buffer.

We love the woods next to College Avenue.

It's birds and other wildlife, the colors and sounds of trees and all seasons, the peacefulness it brings to a neighborhood on the edge of a city.

With climate change faster and more intense than ever, it feels wrong to cut down so many existing urban trees with their proven benefits for air, soil, and water management.

A 40-foot vegetated buffer is better than 20 feet, so we feel a little better about that, but we really just want the whole woods to stay.

If the project moves ahead, we are worried about the unknowns during construction that the woods might be entirely removed early in the process and the land bear for years before anything is replanted.

The new public street and traffic.

The privacy fence and pocket park are nice softening measures and we're glad for them.

We're still concerned that the Corey Heights public street near the end of College Ave may get heavier traffic as a shortcut if the intersection of Waterman and 33 is not adequately addressed.

and the intersection of Waterman and Chicago is already problematic with the heavy pedestrian and bike traffic.

So with more than a thousand potential new quarry heights vehicles, it will only get worse as drivers avoid the congestion at Waterman and 33 and cut through Chicago Ave to downtown.

The College Avenue 50 foot right of way.

We are asking you to block the 50 foot right of way request so that College Avenue remains a dead end street.

While canvassing, I heard many horrified responses to this question.

We can't imagine our neighborhood's character, quality, and safety without the dead end.

It is essential to the ways we live and play and feel about our home and what makes our streets so welcoming to runners and walkers every day.

Construction noise.

It's hard to overstate how worried we feel at the prospect of years.

of Construction Noise and especially the rock splitting and drilling.

OSHA's webpage on the health effects of occupational noise exposure says, loud noise can create physical and psychological stress, reduce productivity, interfere with communication and concentration.

A CDC science blog post on workplace noise states, loud noise can cause other physical stress as well as mental stress.

These symptoms can range from feeling tired or irritable

to having temporarily high blood pressure or muffled hearing.

Some folks might move out of the neighborhood to get away from years of construction noise if this project happens at this scale, and it may be harder to sell or rent homes during these years.

Some have argued that we essentially should want construction to happen all day every day so the project doesn't take as long.

with a project of this size arguing that limits on noise make it take longer is like telling someone that they shouldn't take breaks to cope with or manage long-term stress.

City Council, it is on you to ensure that neighborhoods around major building sites in the city have healthy living environments throughout the construction process.

We would love to see the noise ordinance changed and we urge you to consider specifically

limiting the loudest machines like the rock splitters.

A couple other things.

Stormwater drainage.

We are getting heavier and more frequent rains, and South College Ave gets a lot of stormwater coming downhill from Summit and Hillside into our apartments, I mean into our basements, garages, and yards, and into the quarry woods.

The city needs to consider the problems of flooding on College Avenue as part of the stormwater issues of quarry heights.

And finally, night light pollution.

Because of the quarry woods, South College Ave is fairly dark at night for a city street.

And I mean that in a good way.

A six-foot privacy fence may block the view of the new public street, but it won't block the street lights at night.

Forty feet of wooded buffer does offer some filter of house lights, parking lot lights, and car headlights.

But what if the buffer is cut down, as apparently may be necessary during construction?

Anything replanted will take years to provide the same light filtering effects.

City Council needs to consider the harmful effects of night light pollution and protect residents and wildlife as best they can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's why the neighbors would.

Good evening.

My name is Isaac Whitmer.

I live on Rockingham Drive.

My house overlooks the quarry, and I expect once the construction starts, I will be able to see its progress from my house.

Quarry Heights includes two main things that are benefit to the community.

First, it includes missing middle housing, and second, it strongly improves walking and biking connectivity.

We know that housing costs are a serious problem below market rate housing like Bluestone.

It's important for those struggling to find a place to stay but market race housing.

can also help hold the costs down.

The walking and biking infrastructure that they put in this plant is also very impressive.

It's clear that they were forward thinking and trying to find a way to give back to the community living nearby.

The trails are extensive and I'll be using them when they're constructed.

I also want to highlight the modal filters on Hillside on College Avenue that protect car traffic from taking shortcuts through established neighborhoods.

They will protect the communities and still allow human traffic through.

I hope public works considers this kind of project other places in our city and this filter in particular is not removed and continues to block traffic through to college.

Overall, this is a good project.

I hope you vote for it and I hope the city can learn from the good aspects of it, i.e.

those modal filters moving forward.

Gil Coleman, 855 Summit Avenue, so I'm a neighbor to the quarry.

I stood with the neighbors because I agree with a lot of their requests.

At the same time, I think it's a great project.

It's a wonderful, it's very well planned in many ways, and it provides housing that we need.

So that's something we need to be sensitive to.

But I think at the same time, as I stood with the neighbors,

We ought to protect our neighborhoods and work on something to provide a balance between the existing and the new.

We ought to make sure that they're going to be neighbors to each other.

We are neighbors already and we're going to be neighbors to the new neighbors that will be there.

So I think it's important for us to think as a community and not simply as a project that's going to benefit us with more homes.

Well, we want also that project to tie into our existing neighbors in a way that is cohesive, in a way that is

R. Reed,

Yes, this is a great project for a city.

I appreciate also some of the kids, the buffer being graded.

I appreciate that working with the neighbors.

It's a wonderful thing to do that.

But I think it's still good to continue to listen to the neighbors and some of the requests.

I think they're valid.

One of the ones that I probably feel more

It's more personal to me because I live right next to it, it's going to be the noise, you know, and that's something to consider.

That's something that we have worked on that in the past, I mean through planning commission and other things, and other projects in the past in terms of limiting the hours of operation because of noise.

That's something that has happened in the past, has been done in the past.

And we've got to be reasonable, you know, I'm not saying, I think, you know,

They can start working at 6 o'clock in the morning, 5 o'clock in the morning or something and work through 5.30 or something, it's fine, you know, be reasonable.

And, you know, perhaps not on the weekends or limited hours on the weekend.

That's the only thing that concerns me the most for the neighborhood itself.

And the connection to College Avenue.

That's another one.

I'll leave it there.

Hello, I'm Micah Shanksair, 867 College Avenue.

I want to second what Gil said that was beautifully put, and I also want to express just how this is affecting residents already.

I am deeply saddened by this.

Angry at what it means?

When I first heard about this proposed development, I fell into a multi-week depressive episode.

Because I am 21 years old.

I have lived in this neighborhood my entire life.

It is my home.

And this means irreparably changing my home.

There are so many benefits to so many things, and I really appreciate how the Quarry team has made some adjustments.

I do believe that there are ways to make life as a resident of College Avenue more livable, basically, for the next potentially decade.

I personally am very noise sensitive and the idea of constant blasting, pounding, what have you is terrifying.

Yeah, for my own mental health, for my physical health, it is overwhelming to even consider and just thinking about it is difficult.

So please take that into account.

Please consider the residents who live here now because this is our home and we love it here and I want to be able to stay in my home and I don't know

If I can do that, if there is pounding happening literally every moment of daylight for the next 10 years.

So please, please take that into account.

Good evening.

Thank you to the council and also the quarry team for your presentation.

My name is Lori Hostetler and I live on College Avenue, but I would like to speak as a long-term teacher educator in this area at Eastern Mennonite University and James Madison University.

I've noticed that the study indicates approximately 900 new students to our school.

I have trained many of the teachers who are in the Harrisonburg City Schools and during the time of waiting for our new schools to be built, the stress on teachers,

and what happens in our classrooms for all students in the city, not just those who live where a place is being built will be impacted.

So as we think about that influx of perhaps up to 900 students, which honestly I think is a little underestimating for 900 units and only 900 children, somehow that doesn't fit with me.

But one thing that isn't mentioned in the school study is what's been mentioned here this evening

is when we have middle level housing, then many who are in our lower income housing will move to the middle level.

And when that happens, then we will often have more families who will cram into the vacated lower level housing.

So my estimate of the numbers is that we probably have a low estimate here and that we should think about the impact on our city schools.

because it takes quite a long time, as you well know, to get a city school from envisioning it to what it would be in the future.

And so the impact we're looking at probably in our school system is 20 to 25 years out.

And being in teacher education and studying schools and cities and how growth happens, as goes the housing, goes the city schools.

and so the quality of our schools we've maintained a teacher base, but we've also maintained a teacher base that's tenuous because of the impact of our increasing enrollment.

So I would simply ask that the whole scope of this project be taken into account and thinking about the future of our city schools.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Edwin Clamp, and I live at 873 College Avenue, and this is my daughter Sophia.

She feels strongly about something which I'll express for her, but I wanted her to come up here as well.

I think the concern that we have is the potential connection of College Avenue.

It seems to still be on the table, and though it's something that the group has asked for,

Our street is, it's a dead end.

The children play on the streets.

There are many children on the streets and it's a safe neighborhood and we value that deeply that we found a neighborhood.

You can tell by my accent I'm not from here but we found a nice neighborhood for our children to grow up in.

And if that connection is made, the traffic on our street would obviously be very substantial as has been articulated.

And one thing that hasn't been said, the street itself does not have sidewalks, it floods, I think that was mentioned.

So the street itself does not have the capacity, in my opinion, to handle more traffic.

In its current state, if that traffic is added, it will be very detrimental to the character of the neighborhood, but it also brings an element of concern for the safety of the children who are used to, you know, being able to ride their bikes along the street safely and things like that.

So my concern, and as I've talked about this with my daughter, her concern is what would happen to the street if so much traffic were to

coming through it might be a little bit more dangerous for the kids because we have a lot of elementary schoolers and they're really small and they don't understand like traffic and so it'd be a problem for them to maybe like the cars if they come a lot like through or at night we have a really quiet neighborhood and if we have a lot of traffic it will just create like kids won't sleep really well and things like that.

Good evening.

My name is Kirk Shankzair at 867 College Avenue.

I just wanted to, I'm wondering if this proposal is an all or nothing situation.

It seems to me that a lot of the concerns that have been raised have to do with the

Normandy of the project, or the density, the number of units, traffic, related issues, and also the... So, yeah, one of the main concerns that I have is the woodland.

As has been stated, I think there are

many many benefits to keeping as many of the trees as possible and I'm wondering if there would be a way to retain a significant chunk of the blocky area of woodland that is currently that is between Waterman and College Avenue

maintain that as woodland and just have fewer units developed in the development as a whole.

I think along with that, if there would be a chunk of woodland preserved, if there could be a corridor connecting that chunk up along

where the current proposal for that street would be, that would be a good thing for a movement of wildlife and connection of all the things that go with woods.

Mike Martin 35 Maplehurst Avenue and to be clear I am in favor of the project for a variety of reasons but I thought there was some numbers thrown around that I just wanted to clear up a little bit

Preston Heights or Preston Lake.

There was some issues with the developer, financial issues.

That thing is going on way longer, not because the scope of planning that these guys are doing, but poor planning and the 2008 housing market just crashed and that went sideways.

So that's not an apt comparison in terms of the timeline, just to be clear.

Brent Finnegan

just published an article.

He writes, you know, freelance.

And I want to read a quote from that just related to housing studies and new students and they're not always what they appear.

So he was looking at growth trends in the Rockingham County and Harrisonburg City as it relates to increased or decreased student enrollment.

So one of his quotes verbatim

although the population has been steadily increasing in the county from 2009 to 2022.

The student enrollment has not.

In fact, it's declined.

One explanation for the drop since 2020 is a shift to homeschooling during and after the pandemic.

But how do we explain that flat line in Rocknam County student enrollment prior to 2020 when the population growth is going up?

He also has another paragraph where he spoke to Councilman Fleming and he quotes Councilman Fleming.

This is Brent's words here.

I was recently discussing this with the city council member, Dany Fleming, and he pointed out that between 2014 and 2023, Rockingham County added 4,500 new units of housing and over that same period had a loss of 376 students.

There are likely a number of reasons for this.

However, increased building units does not necessarily mean increased populations.

So that's data, right?

That's real data that's not projected.

That's what has happened, not looking at the future.

And for what it's worth, I grew up in that side of town.

From 1977, I lived on Eversall Road.

There used to be a food line, Little Caesars, a drug store.

That was a growth area, and then it shifted.

Then I lived on Clare Court, until about two and a half years ago, and now I live on Maple Forest Avenue.

Well, during the pandemic, I finally could run on the golf course.

And I know Mr. Banks is a runner, appreciates that, because they weren't allowed to golf.

But as soon as the golf course opened back up, I got yelled at.

Now that was a great place for me to run.

I'm out in the open and I like that, versus running on the street.

I would be running, being able to be connected and run, and then my kids at that time, that Westfield subdivision was not a great neighborhood for riding around on bikes and being out in the middle of the road.

That use of walkways, running pathways, I can't overstate enough how that's going to be a benefit, not just to the Corey Heights community, but the surrounding communities.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, Pam, did we have any college?

You are now live with City Council.

Casey Kettler.

At 2-4-2.

Go ahead.

Good evening, my name is Casey.

I'm with the 2-4-2 treaty.

Can you hold it a little bit further away from your mouth?

Okay, I'm sorry.

Okay.

Good evening.

My name is Kate.

I support this project because I need housing, transportation, and structure.

Mr. Kettler?

Okay.

Can you call back again?

Alright, thank you.

You are now live with City Council.

Hello, this is Casey.

I was at a two-part street.

Casey, you're still cutting out on us.

I'm off.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

The public hearing is now closed.

Okay, we're going to go into discussion.

Come on back up your tag.

And can we put your presentation up?

is where we expanded the buffer from 20 feet to 40 feet.

We're going to try to retain as much existing vegetation there as possible.

If there are regulations requiring that that gets removed for grading or stormwater or utilities, we will plant back and when we've provided detail to that.

Along this public street, the new public street, again, this was a county and city staff request to put a public street connecting Deanna Farms through this part of the property.

There's nothing to the west of Granite Farms in the county.

It's out into the country.

There aren't any schools.

There's no shopping over there.

It's not a destination street.

It's going to be a street like Chestnut or Willow.

You'll have some traffic on it, but it's not a it's not a throughway of any sort.

So we are going to build a privacy fence.

And so we have the street.

Then we have the shared use path on the outside of the street, which is a green strip, a 10 foot path.

Then there's another 15 feet or so on the other side of that to the property line.

So the street isn't right up against the property line in that area.

We can build a six foot privacy offense along those boundaries and soften it with tree plantings on the other side.

We're already required to do street tree plantings along that as a public street in the city, which will provide some additional offer.

At our meeting, again, we thought it was a good idea.

We would like that to be just a bike path connection.

So just strictly a back pad, no vehicles.

We don't want that.

That is not a developer request.

If you don't want that, they don't want that either, right?

That's correct.

They want to shut down that road.

So we agree on that.

Developers and the community kind of agree.

the Frazier family and the neighborhood group that we meet with all concur that we don't see any benefit to either of our communities to see those public streets connected.

The two stubbed streets, as you mentioned, one hillside had grading challenges.

So that couldn't be a street that isn't a street that the city would look at.

But the city doesn't want to cut off the possibility of having in the future the need to do some stormwater

Yes, I just wanted to get up for the minutes and the record here that yes, that is correct.

Well, I just wonder if Mr. Ray might kind of respond to the previous public comments before Council ask questions as a way.

I would like to be responsive to council questions because you all know what is important.

You've heard a lot of public comments and a lot of public hearings.

One issue I do want to address, and maybe this is against my better judgment, but as the school student generation issue, we met upon request of the city with the city school hierarchy.

We asked them to share their student generation models and figures with us.

They declined to share that with us.

So we did our own investigation.

Presto Lake, which again is a good equivalent in terms of the type of housing and the quality housing in our locality, has 600 units today that are not the age restricted stuff, but they're townhouses, detached single family and some apartments.

Out of those 600, there are currently 100 students out of those 600 units.

If you extrapolate that out for Quarry Heights, that's 150 units.

Now that might be a low side estimate, but I think it's based upon what we've investigated in this locality as a student generation model.

We also went, the developers from the Baltimore area, we went to Baltimore County, not Baltimore City, but the county surrounding Baltimore.

They have a published student generation model that's very detailed.

We plugged our housing types, our square footages,

into that model, it showed a generation of about 240 students for quarry heights.

Our good faith estimate, again, it's a bell curve of how students get generated.

We don't know until people move in there exactly what families move in there, but I think the reasonable range is probably 150 to 300 students in quarry heights.

We gave you all the economic impact study of how much the assessed value of this

We generate for the city, we can pay for our students based on a study and an objective data.

I'm a little disappointed at what was reported by city schools in the staff report absent the sharing of their methodology that we requested.

So, I think it's an important issue for the city, schools.

And it needs to be based on real objective, transparent data.

So, Madam Mayor, if we get approved, it takes about a year to get through site planning, probably another year to install the base infrastructure, and then the build-out is probably going to be a four to five year build-out after that.

We don't want to assume that Council will approve the project.

We have done enough work to know that this layout generally works, but when you get into site planning, you know, that's a difference between spending $150,000 on superficial level engineering and getting into the nitty-gritty of what these elevations are, you know, that's five or $600,000 that people don't spend until the entitlement decision is made.

That will be the next year-long process between our team and the city engineering and community development departments

I think that Preston Lake Detail was a good example.

If we have another great recession, like we had in 2008 to 2011, ain't no projects getting built anywhere.

To that point, you can't predict things, obviously.

You know, in kind of the three L's of

Development, Labor, Land, Lumber.

Who knows what's going to happen with lumber prices moving forward in the administration?

Who knows what's going to happen with labor prices and what we can do?

So, you know, we can't predict that and project that moving forward.

But I think, you know, there's enough uncertainty that makes me worried about projects here moving forward.

Mr. Ray, our housing study indicated that we do have a lot of folks living in mismatched housing and so when we talk about student numbers I always think about that fact and so if this project opens up the door for folks to kind of move where they should be living or which is better suited for their income level then we're not really going to have an influx of students

from outside of Harrisonburg, we may just have some shifting occurring.

So I always take that into consideration when we talk about school numbers.

And so I'm really happy that with this project, these four concerns, very valid concerns, what I like about this is that you guys have really gone above and beyond

to try to at least meet some of these demands.

They're not even demands, requests.

And so not having a 50 foot buffer, but a 40 foot buffer, and then doing the pocket park, I think, is very reasonable.

If there's any way that we cannot cut vegetation down until we absolutely have to, because we know how long it takes for a tree to grow to maturity.

I mean, that would be wonderful.

There's really not much we can do in terms of the throughway for the street in the future, because we are a growing city, obviously.

And also, I love to think that we can live in the suburbia bliss forever with no lights, no sound, no this, no that.

It can't happen.

I live beside the bus hub, the bus station, the transportation department, and we're growing and we have to make amends.

And that's just the part of

Living in the neighborhood that you choose to live in, you have to be flexible.

And so the lights at night, you'll get used to.

The lack of trees behind my house because we now have a shelter.

There are some given takes in living in the neighborhood.

And so I like to think on the positive side about what this means for the city in terms of

the walkability and the bike ability.

I will speak to that and it was a thought if you look at this picture along the bottom of the page it's outside of our project along the east side of Waterman Drive there's a whole bunch of

of semi-opsily and underutilized light industrial spaces.

If you realize what happened in places like Scott's addition in Richmond, that's exactly the kind of structures that were repurposed into retail and breweries.

Sorry, Scott's addition is a former industrial area outside of downtown Richmond that has been transformed over the past 15 years into a hub where like a lot of millennials hang out.

It's very hipster.

but it's where the bars, the microbreweries and there's a lot of opportunity for those spaces along Waterman to be repurposed.

West Market, off the color there to the left where the food max is, there's two out parcels that have never been built right in front of the food max that can be built for retail purposes that will be connected by two or three walking paths to this whole community.

So we did consider it and

I mean, in Harrisonburg, I don't know if people realize it or not, but we're running out of spaces to develop.

So being very creative in how we repurpose and reimagine land spaces and what we can do to accommodate a growing city, I mean that's just where we're at.

I mean we can't just say let's not do that here and let's move to a different piece of land and kind of

Keep everything the way it is.

We have to be creative.

We have to be willing to repurpose and to do what's best so that we're not in the middle of a housing desert or crisis and where, you know, there's a lack of affordable housing for all different affordability levels.

So I think this just hits on the mark of a good planned out development where the developers have really worked with the residents to try to meet some of the goals.

We can't, we can't, you know,

I agree on everything, but I think you've done a wonderful job here of trying to plan a development that's going in the way that our city is going.

There's actually 50 feet of setback because our side yards to those 10 houses are 10 feet, so the houses themselves are 50 feet from that property line.

There's a HEC power line right on the other side of that property line which provides another 30 to 50 feet of buffer

If you look at the average structure on the east side of College Avenue to the end of our townhome buildings, and we purposely put them on ends so we didn't have a lot of backyards facing the College Avenue, lots.

It's about a football field's worth of distance.

So it's a pretty good separation.

I don't want to minimize their concerns.

I'm not talking down to their concerns, but we really did think about it.

How did we come up with this amount of units?

So it's based on project viability.

The city wants the property to be built.

There has to be, you know, we are in a rocky area.

You need a certain amount of density to fund the installation of

35, 40 million dollars in the ground infrastructure.

If we if we reduce this and put say 300 detached third acre lots throughout this site to pay for those lots with the land and the infrastructure, you're talking about over a million dollar houses.

That's just where the housing market is today.

So this Waterman Village area or townhome areas, we can put them at a price point that you're seeing in Preston Lake.

Liz, come up please.

Well, without having control of financial markets overall, the cost of housing is what it is.

And right now, just existing townhomes this year, the average sale price is between two and three hundred.

The average single-family detached homes are selling for closer to 400,000 and I don't see any level of supply bringing those back down What I see having impact is just more supply our homeownership rate remains one of the lowest in the state and so You know There's no long-term guarantee that these would not be rental units, but they're not intended as rental units and at the price points

So thank you Let's address the noise I noticed part of concern

Mr. Russ, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's 7 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

is, I guess I should have stated in reverse, 10 p.m.

to 7 a.m.

for the quiet hours.

I believe that was something that City Council addressed relatively recently.

At one point there was no limit any time of the day at one point in the last five or ten years on any construction noise.

So they can go up until 10 p.m.

I think that's a little late.

Well, so what would be ideas particularly related to the kind of the loudest of those kind of noisemakers, I guess, and

What are proposals or ideas that might work better within the community's concerns?

How they've raised that?

Are there other things?

I understand through these discussions that specific proffers aren't something that are either on the table or really achievable.

The property is now zoned industrial, which is typically a louder type of development than a residential community.

Maybe not during the construction phases.

We're open to having a dialogue.

We're not cutting off the dialogue.

We're not sticking our noses up at the citizens concerns.

We're willing to play by whatever rules the city adopts, uniformly across the city for construction activities.

We shouldn't be singled out in advance, and we don't even know who our site contractor is at this point.

That's who we're really going to be negotiating with in terms of any limits on hours, days of the week, and those kind of things.

We'll bring those concerns to our contractor when they're identified.

They won't be identified until after the site plan phases well underway.

But again, I think we've evidenced and the team has evidenced our real willingness to engage in a dialogue If we get approved that dialogue doesn't end We'll still continue to engage with them on the remaining issues that we aren't in a position to necessarily proffer tonight, but we've heard that

Waterman Investments is going to be a part of this community.

They need to see it succeed.

And one of the aspects of that is being cooperative with the neighbors to try to minimize those impacts.

I believe you.

I believe you.

One thing I wonder if it might help mitigate the noise is the phasing of the project.

As you've described it, you'll build that sort of upper left corner first that's closest to Market Street and then possibly the

Apartments or possibly the Ridgeline and all of those are fairly distant from the neighborhood itself.

I don't know if it makes any difference and those are only likely occurrences again until we get into the site plan, but that's where the utilities come into the site and so that is the most likely direction of development.

But again, I don't want to sit here and make representations that

I've sat here for 10 years and I've seen all types of projects.

Some of you have been doing this way longer than I've been sitting here, or been interested in it.

But I think if we're being honest with ourselves, the concessions and the conversations that have been around this project are unparalleled.

I mean, this doesn't happen.

People just don't have these conversations.

And so at some point,

are we just nitpicking our neighbor because it's our neighbor and we know they're going to respond like for example I think that the concerns are all very valid so please don't don't go down that road so I'm not insulting anyone's concerns in fact I really empathize and sympathize for those folks that experience different traumas because I wear a mask that most of you don't and I experience a trauma that you don't experience every day so I get it but

We're in a space where we're clamoring for housing.

We're asking for these things.

And we typically don't know the developers as well as we think we do.

They're not folks that are from here.

They're not folks that grew up here.

They're not folks that have any reason to honestly respond to the conversations that we've been having to this level of detail.

I mean, Todd, you know how long we've been doing this.

This does not happen.

So I do think that

They should be commended.

Our neighbors, right?

They've been here for four generations.

Also, I appreciate the neighbors that are there working together and having a civil discourse and having a passionate discourse and creating a space where they can feel welcomed and so welcome that they want to respond in a positive way.

So I think this is one of the healthiest things.

If I got to go out, this is the way I want to go out.

and quite honestly this is the one thing we've been missing since I've been here I can say we've done it all but we don't have this range and I know because if you've listened to me up here complain sometimes about how long it took me to find a house and I still had to buy the house of someone else who probably had that house built when they were my age when I bought that house in Wyndham Woods

I live on Wyndham Drive.

Well, your children or you will want and need said through street.

So let's just keep that in mind and just put a pin in that.

I don't want that to mix.

and destroy the idea of having 700 new homeowners in our city to help support our tax base when 60% of the people are asset limited, income constrained and employed.

We can't keep having it both ways.

We can't complain and say, man, we need more housing and we need affordable housing.

We should raise all this money in the community give and we should help all these people who have less.

And so then when someone comes up with an idea to bring in a place for people to live,

Don't have less and will bring us most likely a highly educated, high income, ready to work workforce that are going to move into those places.

That's going to create an economic development ripple that we haven't seen in Harrisonburg since I probably came here in college in 96.

And we got a sheets.

I mean, let's just keep it real.

At some point, we've got to decide and see what the shift's going to be.

And I was thinking about that today because I was like, OK,

58,000 people, so roughly 60,000 people, and I remember when we used to have conversations mainly about us getting to the 70, 75,000 level.

Well, this is going to be one of the ways we get there, but this is going to be one of the ways we can afford to get there.

Because right now what we're doing is insustainable.

And it doesn't make sense to keep having a conversation with the schools, because guess what?

They're just going to say, keep building more.

and I'm in favor, like usually with passing the school budget, but like I signed up to stop a jail and to build a school, not like a lot of schools.

So yeah, this isn't going to be the reason why you build schools.

You're going to build schools because people lean left in Harrisonburg and get real excited when people talk in that conversation of building.

That's what it is versus the idea of actual education and the product that comes out of this picket.

because if we start to

Don't look like the most of the folks in this room right now.

So the school conversation is kind of ironic because the young lady that spoke earlier that mentioned the fact that as folks move up the housing ladder, people are going to come in the bottom.

That's true.

That's going to happen.

However, I think that there's a there's a misnomer that folks are going to move in there with so many children.

I don't think that's most likely going to be the case.

But there is the possibility of what happens at the bottom rung because that's how Harrisonburg has grown.

And I think we should be realistic about that.

And I also think that we should be realistic about the points in which we meet.

And so if there are places where the city and the neighbors and the developers are all saying two different things, but if the developers and the neighbors are saying, hey, this isn't something that we see when it comes to the through street, we need to have that conversation.

All in all, this is a great project.

I'm excited about the project.

I got a couple questions.

I'm curious about what the variance is going to look like, Andy.

I would imagine that would be an undergoing to just ask people pass through.

When we pass the space getting from, if you could go to the map with the street,

The public and private streets.

I was just curious to, like, I imagine that fire and safety and everybody's side off on the fact that we can, because there was no street through there.

Yeah, so thank you.

So when this project goes, if it gets approved, it will have to go through a process to pliminarily plat all the, where the new lots will be and how the streets will be dedicated.

And so within the staff report, what it was described was that we anticipate and have staff and the developer have talked about variances for the public streets so that they can be reduced in width.

The street, you mean?

How do I say this?

Public Works Department

Eventually, they wish to amend the design and construction standards manual to make these variances that you keep receiving the new standard, allowing for that option for the reduced street.

We're also considering, is parking going to be on one or both sides?

Or not on either side of the street, they would be willing to reduce the street and still maintain the width necessary for

delivering services and getting fire apparatus and things through the streets as well.

So those are primarily the the variances that we anticipate that will be requested as well as

Well, you got that up.

Can I ask one more question?

Where is the 45?

Where do you predict?

I'm sorry, I'm looking at time, but I guess I should be talking to someone over here.

The lakeside there between College Avenue and Hillside Avenue in the quarry.

So they're in

This section right here and up the hill, there's a few up here on the ridge.

I did notice this when I took a look that since you've interjected the word ain't for the night, I appreciate it as a boy from Danville.

So there ain't trees either.

A lot of them are just real strong weeds.

Somebody gave me an amen, but I'll say it.

So this is a real Baptist moment.

I do appreciate and understand that we want to keep the vegetation there as long as possible I would agree with that I don't know how we miss the idea and I'm not asking for a profit from the diets but I do Our vice mayor here and we usually ask for trees At like six foot though and I noticed that if so that's a miss but I assume that they won't just put anything there but

They have evergreens that come at a certain size, but I know in the past and you know in working in other projects that we didn't just say a tree.

Now, thank you, Councilman Jones.

If you look at our proffers in the details of our proffers, we have proffered certain size trees of caliber at various heights at various points throughout the project.

So we we did have discussions with staff on that point.

We've tried to be sensitive to it.

There's a lot of area in this quarry too that today is just a scarred barren rock area, which will be covered in topsoil and have vegetation and trees on it that don't exist today.

I do have one question.

The one thing that it seems that the neighbors and developers have at least agreed on is the street staying closed.

I guess this is a question for you.

I would ask Mr. Russ because technically this is currently a proffer being offered the 50-foot right-of-way and staff wisely is requesting that so that future administrators and future city council members can make that decision more easily but I think we are talking about a fairly small segment

Thank you for that clarification, Councilman.

So right-of-way would allow obviously public street development.

Easements is what we would still need to ensure that utility water sewer, electric connections can be made across that if they are needed.

Okay, now I have a question.

A vote of yes tonight doesn't mean that the city can never open the street up.

Because I think there might be a misperception here.

If the neighborhood agrees that they don't want the street to, you know, be, oh, just keep it a stub.

And the developers have said, we're not interested in, you know, going through it with the street.

That doesn't mean, that just means y'all both agree that you don't want it to happen.

But the city may at a future time determine that it's a necessity.

So that is separate from what we're talking about here.

That is correct.

I just don't want people to leave thinking that that's what we voted for and kind of shadily let it pass and then it come up later and it be an issue.

I wrote this down so I'll actually say it then.

So one of the big things, at least I'll

One of our jobs, especially our staff's job, is to make sure we're using land at the highest use.

Is that close, Adam?

We're protecting it at the time she was in the legal fashion.

And I do want us to make sure that we are... I don't want us to ever come off as though we're insulting our own staff.

And I know we're having a discussion of peace and tranquility and neighborly

I guess communal efforts and how we'll get along throughout the day and if neither side wants it or needs it I can appreciate that but to counsel on Robinson's point and I'll pontificate a little bit these folks we're asking them to let us know that we're making the right decisions or the best decisions when we're looking at zoning rewrites and we're trying to predict what we need to do and how we should be mobile in our city and so I trust their recommendations

I also respect the idea of saying, yes, we can look at that in the future, but no, we don't have to do that right now.

And so I think we, I think you can have a both and in this case.

And I think, um, I think our city manager lives in that world.

So I think that that's a good place to be that we can still be prepared for the future without making a move because again,

It's eight years before this thing is even completed in and of itself.

I just think good governing, I'm sorry.

I just think good governing is about a trust.

It's a lot about trust.

Yeah, so the one thing I appreciate is that the neighbors and the developers talked about this.

Yes.

Right.

And I think they did it the correct way.

I mean, that's one thing that Councilman Jones said.

I mean, we get these developments all the time in the neighborhoods and at opposite ends.

And it's a tough environment and it's a tough conversation.

But I just want to

in discussions with our Public Works Director and our Public Works staff.

While ideally we would seek out the right-of-way reservation for future connection, we at this time staff does not see a vision in the immediate future where that connection is going to be made.

And I know that that is not an assurance to the neighborhood, but we do not have a plan to make that connection.

For all the examples that have already been stated this evening,

largely because of the quality of College Avenue as it is and bringing that up to the city standard.

That's the transparent statement that I was looking for.

So I think, you know, someone gets down to who pays, right?

So if, you know, at this point, if the street was closed down and we said, you know,

We moved that proper, proper then.

At some point in the future, that would be the city's responsibility likely to cover that.

A short space, 50 feet.

But I would say probably also reduces the chance that might happen, right?

The city would venture into that.

And I appreciate staff did the responsible thing by their planning standards to say this is what we are bringing forward.

And that's the way they should do that, to bring it to council.

And we can take a look at that and say, well, let's take a look at the context here a little bit and see how we make a decision around that.

We know that whole area of Parkview, which is annexed at a point, is filled with streets that are substandard to the city.

The reality is, we aren't able to address a number of needs throughout that entire area, around storm water, around the quality of streets.

and, you know, we have, you know, this is the case in other areas of the city as well, right?

We're looking to, you know, how do we address storm water in street quality in other areas?

I'm not understanding that at this point it's elevated there in our priority of streets to take on around the city.

So I think they got somewhere where the water will go.

Right, but it's likely that, you know, some point in the future for that.

So, you know, if we decide let's remove that part of the proffer

Let's keep that street closed.

We haven't really lost much there.

And we've kind of told the community over there that, you know what, we can't take care of your streets the way we'd like to.

We don't have the funds for that.

And so we're going to keep this closed down.

And it doesn't prevent a future council from saying we're going to buy that 50 feet of right away.

But it probably makes it much less likely that's going to happen.

And to get the type of funds and put the grants forward

to redo that street that would make it a safe and accessible drive-through.

We'll probably move on to other priorities in the city where we say these are other areas of the city where we need to put our money into.

Can I comment on that again?

I appreciate where staff is coming from that we have this principle to keep a grid system rather than multiple cul-de-sacs that dump out a lot of traffic onto one main area.

However, I could go along with closing in this particular area because I remember there have been some situations where staff wanted to connect a grid, but it just didn't work.

Logistically, financially, or for the Seutter Street I'm thinking of.

they turned it into a cul-de-sac now turning it into an official cul-de-sac would be a whole prohibitive project in itself because of the turn radius and all that so just leaving it as a stub street and if we forgo that proffer that could work now I have an additional question you you had a similar situation down there at Waterman Village or whatever where there's currently an industrial area to the now north and now Todd you want to talk about that

where you did want to keep a proffer of a potential street connection.

So that might be a better area if that opportunity comes up later in the future because it's more parallel to Waterman, could be more of a sidetrack of the traffic.

But what is it right now?

Yeah, I don't know about, I would say that it would be

Do you have a better, like an OR statement?

We want both.

I think so.

But I mean, if we close off College Street, we could potentially have another option for a connection later on.

R.

The one thing we haven't even talked about is the pond in the middle and when I first saw that it reminded me of fresh pond in Cambridge that I used to live nearby and it was a recreational site around it with similarly shared use path that people would bike and walk and walk their dogs around the pond and it was very clearly and substantially fenced off because it was the drinking water reservoir

That's the other sort of thing we haven't even mentioned.

No?

Okay, so that's not a factor here, but no matter what, even if it's just a recreational area, it can be a beautiful centerpiece for these spectacular homes.

Now, one question I raised with Todd No, but I mean the paths that are already around it Just when you say recreation, water, I just want to make sure I say that out loud That's all humans go near the water No, do not go near the water No, it's more like biking around it or walking around it Yes, all around

Now, one question I had was the ridgeline at the top that's town homes.

I asked Todd, why wouldn't that be single family homes?

And he said, for the spacing and the size, those would be million and a half dollar homes.

And so they're not likely to be affordable by people in Harrisonburg.

And that brings to mind this sort of distinction between affordable with a small a, meaning the people who live here, some of them can afford to live here and would move in.

versus affordable with a large A, which is more like subsidized housing for low income people.

So when we talk about that spectrum of housing that's affordable, even though this is high end, they've scaled it down somewhat to meet the market that they feel can afford this whole complex of houses with lots of options for home ownership as well as relatively high end rental, which we also need.

So, I'm overall in favor of this.

Madam Mayor, may I call the question?

Absolutely.

I'm going to just name them all.

Wesley, go for one by one.

Yes, please.

All right.

All hearts and minds are clear.

He's starting to de-write.

Okay.

Madam Mayor, I move to approve the request from Waterman Investments, LLC, to amend zoning ordinance to modify regulations associated with

Associated with minimum principal building setbacks for townhomes within the R-8 district as presented by staff Consider a request from Liberty Hall, LC, and ICAS, LLC

for Comprehensive Plan Map Amendment and Properties Addressed at 517585 Waterman Drive and West Market Street, a.k.a.

Second.

Any discussion?

Nope.

Okay.

We gotta do each one.

Council Member Robinson?

Aye.

Council Member Fleming?

Aye.

Council Member Jones?

Aye.

Madam Mayor, I move to approve the request from Liberty Hall LC Ordovician and ICAS LLC to rezone properties addressed as 517585 Waterman Drive, West Market Street, and Brickstone Court, AKA Court Heights.

Second.

I would ask Ms.

Unfortunately, I'm down a city attorney who's battling a sickness at home this evening.

So I know that he and I discussed that.

Are we talking just standard development easements?

Yeah, so I would recommend probably mirroring the language for the Hillside Avenue.

If it is in fact that council wants to reject the 50 foot right away for the future road construction, I believe

I would mirror it after the Hillside Avenue connection, which is the prior proffer that's on page 10, so item B where it's reserving a 20-foot public right-of-way that would cover the shared use path, but dedicating it as public right-of-way would give the city permit our own, you know, because it's our land.

That's right.

But it wouldn't be a simple rejection of item, I don't know what number it is, but item C, that's listed on page 10.

Because there's other, there's like the other bit about the benches.

So there would be some work that would be needed to the language to reject the component.

We certainly have no objection to the council rejecting, in part, that proffer in modifying it to 20 feet.

We would certainly be willing to comply with that.

So I think we both just not do anything and change it in the second reading.

You can't change a property.

That's their proffer.

That's what I'm saying, so we can just roll with it.

I believe that this proffer, the way it's written, is that it would be dedicated.

With that said, I think the street connection, if you're fair to say and correct me if I'm wrong, City Manager Banks, is that it would be contingent upon

City Council's budget approval of a project in the future to make this happen.

Absolutely.

We can't change the proffer.

Alright, so that the... everyone's clear.

State what we're...

or Chris Stateford as is.

We had to second.

That was the second, believe it or not.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Aye.

Aye.

Madam Mayor, I move to approve the request from Liberty Hall, L.C.

Ordovician, L.C.

Acayas, L.L.C.

Corey Heights Second Any more discussion?

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Fleming.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Aye.

Mayor Reed.

Six G. Madam Mayor, I'll move to approve the request from Liberty Hall, LC, Ordovician, LC, and Acayas, LLC for a special use permit to allow attached townhouses of no more than eight units at properties addressed as

517585 Waterman Drive and West Market Street, A.K.A.

Corey Heights.

Any discussion?

Hi, it's Mayor Dent.

Hi.

Council Member Robinson.

Hi.

Council Member Fleming.

Hi.

Mayor Reed.

Second.

Any discussion?

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Fleming.

Aye.

Aye.

Um, and what?

Just to clarify, on the special use permit conditions, they were part of those, those votes.

With conditions.

As presented.

All right, let's go.

Madam Mayor and City Council, you all may recall that when Build Our Park presented on this matter back in September, they had a proposed draft agreement.

Staff, primarily the city attorney and the

Director and Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation reviewed the agreement.

They've modified it fairly substantially, but in a manner that I understand everyone is comfortable with.

In short, the agreement now aligns more closely with the city's existing donation policy that City Council adopted in 2022.

Build Our Park will remain responsible for funding the construction costs in the park if built would still be limited to the same footprint.

But they will provide the funds to the city and the city will follow its typical

Precurement process for receiving bids for construction, like other city construction processes.

Okay.

Looks like we're getting a park.

Bill downtown, it's on someone else's dime.

We need to overseen control.