PLACE Design Task Force Minutes
                               February 8, 2018 12:00 – 2:00
                            Neighborhood Development Services
                            Conference Room, 2nd Floor City Hall

Members Present: Mike Stoneking, Fred Wolfe, Mark Rylander, Clarence Green, Andrew
Mondschein, Andres Pacheco

Staff Present: Carrie Rainey, Missy Creasy, Carolyn McCray, Lisa Robertson, Alex Ikefuna

Call to Order – Chairman Stoneking

Agenda

Arrival (5 minutes)

Public Comments (5 minutes)

Charlottesville Parking Policy Presentation, Rick Siebert (40 minutes)

Currently, the City does not have a formal parking function (i.e. parking department or
authority) to manage its parking activities. Those responsibilities have been dispersed
throughout the organization and this approach has served the City adequately for many
years. However, as the City grows it has become clear that a new approach will be
beneficial. Our parking consultants have recommended that we create a parking function
and organize all parking activities under that structure. In the coming months, the City will
take steps in this regard to better and more holistically manage the City’s parking assets.
The Office of Economic Development has been tasked with leading this effort with support
from the affected departments and our parking consultant. This action plan provides
targeted action items to be accomplished over the next three years by staff in collaboration
with various internal and external partners. The stated action items focus on three key
areas, as recommended by the 2015 Parking Study conducted by Nelson Nygaard,
including: optimizing existing resources, enhancing access alternatives, and
maintaining and growing supply. For each objective, the year of the plan during which the
objective will begin is stated, as well as the estimated time investment, monetary
investment, and overall impact the objective will have once completed.




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Andrew Mondschein, a University of Virginia School of Architecture professor and member
of the PLACE Design Task Force, said there is an existing plan that has certain
recommendations in place that included the on-street meters but are much more than that.

Mondschein invited Rick Siebert the city’s parking manager, to brief the task force Thursday
on the status of the program following the council’s decision to end the program after many
downtown merchants argued that meters were bad for business.

Mr. Siebert said nobody decides to take their car and go somewhere because they really
want it there, and parking is not an objective. Parking is, unfortunately, what you have to do
if you choose to use an automobile. There are costs associated with providing parking in
desirable areas. There are lost opportunity costs when you use land for parking when you
could be using it for something else, he said. Simply adding more parking is generally not
the best solution. The best solution would be to use as little as parking as necessary to
generate economic development.

Siebert said multiple studies since 1986 have recommended that the city charge for on-
street parking. A 2015 report from Nelson Nygaard suggested lowering rates in garages
while charging for on-street spaces. The idea was to free up the number of unoccupied
spaces on the street to attract customers and other people to downtown businesses and
restaurants. Another aspect of the plan includes a park-and-ride lot on Avon Street that’s
on Charlottesville Area Transit’s Route 2.

He said the more we get people not to use single-occupancy vehicle trips to go somewhere,
the less parking we need, and we need to do things to encourage the use of the bus system
here in Charlottesville. Another is a special daily rate in the Market Street Parking Garage
of $6.50 for downtown employees. Siebert said one reason for the pilot was to see if the
meters did in fact free up spaces. One of the problems that had been noted in the parking
study was that there was a lot of circling going on where people were driving around looking
for that free parking space. Another item to be studied was whether the meters had an
effect on business.

Siebert said we were going to compare sales tax for the six months during the pilot to the
six months of the prior year and the year before, unfortunately, we didn’t get very far with
that.

He said proceeds from the meters were to have gone into a special enterprise fund within
the city’s budget. Siebert said the idea was to use this money to increase the parking supply
as well as pay for infrastructure improvements downtown. This program lasted just 72 days,
resulting in an incomplete data set. I can tell you anecdotally just from walking down the

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street that there seemed to be a lot more turnover and there seemed to be a lot more empty
spaces, and I think the idea that the meter was there and you had to pay it, it was a
disincentive for the car shuffling.

Siebert said many downtown businesses want at least two hours of free parking so they can
compete with Barracks Road Shopping Center, 5th Street Station, Stonefield and other
destinations.

As part of the plan, the hourly rate at the Market Street Parking Garage was lowered from
$2.50 to $1.50, a tariff that is still in place. The first hour also remains free.
The rate at the Water Street Parking Garage, which is managed by the Charlottesville
Parking Center, is $2 an hour. The city and CPC still are locked in legal disputes over rates
and other issues.

Siebert said the city is, however, still negotiating with CPC to try to come to an agreement
where we can operate the Water Street garage more in tandem with the Market Street
garage. He acknowledged the city could have rolled out the program differently. For
instance, the city of Roanoke began a metering pilot program in July that took one-hour
spaces and converted them to three-hour spaces. You can park for the first hour for free in
the city of Roanoke and don’t have to buy the second hour and all you have to do is put you
license plate in and ask for an hour and it says no charge. The fund also was to have been
used in part to help the city pay for a new parking garage at the corner of Ninth and Market
streets. The City Council in November 2016 opted to purchase the property where the
Lucky 7 convenience store and a Guadalajara restaurant currently operate for $2.85 million.
However, if that lot was to be combined with an existing 63-space surface lot on Market
Street, a deal would need to be negotiated with Albemarle County, as that jurisdiction is a
joint owner.

Siebert said a decision would need to be made whether the potential future garage would
be devoted exclusively to parking or whether additional uses would be involved. However,
he added there will need to be a resolution between the city and county regarding the future
of courts facilities downtown before the vision for that project’s future can become clearer.

Comprehensive Plan Discussion

Commissioner Jody Lahendro spoke on the Planning Commission meeting next Tuesday.
He said nothing is finished, but we will have it ready to go out for comments with what we
have captured for broads and commissions inputs on March 7th, and then out to the public.
We will take to City Council in the fall. We are all hearing the same public input and


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interpreting it differently. He gave a synopsis on the agenda and what is to take place on
March 7th.

Lena Seville asked about whether there is going to be a chapter in the comprehensive plan
on community engagement.

Lahendro said they still plan to have a public engagement chapter, but they have not drafted
it yet since they have been focused on the land use map.

Ms. Creasy explained that a chapter on community engagement will be discussed by the
planning commission but at this time the Planning Commission time had been stretched a
bit but community engagement will not be discussed at the March 7th meeting.

Lahendro stressed that nothing is finished yet. They are going to go out to the public with
what they have so far, first meeting with boards and commissions and then later with the
general public. He said since they are all coming from different backgrounds, the
commissioners have been interpreting the public input differently. He explained all of the
community engagement that has been done for the comprehensive plan so far.

Andrew Mondschein gave an update on the lighting study for downtown.

Mixed Use Discussion Update: Lisa Robertson, City Attorney,

PLACE was asked by Lisa Robertson to help the discussion of defining “mixed use.” They
found that there were two soft spots in the ordinance: the Downtown Extended and the
Corner. Both of these have no real definition of what mixed use means, yet both came with
a potential bonus if you provided a mixed use building.

Lisa Robertson said they want to put some additional language at the beginning of the
mixed use zoning district section that basically says if there is not a specific mixture
otherwise provided, the minimum percentage of a use has to be 12.5% (Proposal 1). She
said that also some of these districts don’t do a very good job dealing with some things that
can have a big visual impact on the development of the city in general, such as parking, so
a language has been proposed to address this too (Proposal 2).

PLACE decided to only discuss Proposal 1.

Proposal 1 for Consideration:

Where a provision of any mixed use zoning district included in this article.

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Mixed use zoning district included in this article allows additional height
Where a provision of any for a mixed-use building, or allows additional residential density for
a mixed use building, development, or project, the following requirements must be met for
the building, development, or project to be entitled to the additional height or density:

• Where the provision allows for additional height for a mixed-use building, residential and
non- residential uses shall each occupy at least 12.5% of the Gross Floor Area of the
proposed building.
• Where the provision allows for additional residential density for a mixed-use building,
residential and non-residential uses shall each occupy at least 12.5% of the Gross Floor
Area within the proposed building unless different percentages are specified within the
division containing the regulations for the applicable mixed-use zoning district.
• Where the provision allows for additional residential density for a mixed-use development
or project, residential and non-residential uses shall each occupy at least 12.5% of total
Gross Floor Area of the buildings comprising the proposed development or project unless
different percentages are specified within the division containing the regulations for the
applicable mixed-use zoning district.

Proposal 2 for Consideration (“Companion” Amendments)

Within mixed-use buildings, developments, and projects, off-street parking facilities must
meet the following requirements along streets designated as “framework streets” in the
Streets That Work element of the Comprehensive Plan:

• Within structures containing parking: (i) any floor at street-level [of a framework street]
shall be devoted to a permitted use other than parking; or (ii) any parking use at the street
level [of a framework street] shall be concealed from view from the [framework] street using
liner retail, residential, commercial, or office space.
 • Entrances to surface parking lots and structured parking shall not be located along the
framework street, but shall be located along non-framework streets or alleys.
• Surface parking lots must be located behind buildings and screened from the framework
street with landscape elements.

PLACE Design Task Force endorsed Proposal 1 by a vote of 4 yes and 1 abstain.

Adjourn 2:00 pm




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