PLACE Design Task Force Minutes June 13, 2019 - 12:00- 2:00 p.m. Neighborhood Development Services Conference Room, 2nd Floor City Hall Members Present: Mike Stoneking, Lena Seville, Mark Rylander, Chris Henry, Rachel Lloyd, Fred Wolf, Rory Stolzenberg, Susan Perkins, Andrea Trimble, and Emily Wright Staff Present: Carrie Rainey, Kari Spitler, Alex Ikefuna, Tim Lasley, Jeff Werner, Amanda Poncy, and Brennen Duncan CALL TO ORDER Chairman Stoneking called the PLACE Design Task Force Meeting to order at 12:05 p.m. 1. MATTERS BY THE PUBLIC (5 minutes) None. 2. PRESTON AVENUE/GRADY AVENUE INTERSECTION DISCUSSION (45 minutes) Mike Stoneking: We have three new members joining the PLACE Design Task Force: Susan Perkins, Andrea Trimble, and Emily Wright. The Preston/Grady intersection is a Smart Scale project that the City applied for and it is a few years away. The drawings they published are diagrams that help scope that project. No one is married to them and I created three of my own that are not meant to be designs but they are meant to add to the conversation. The reason this intersection is being considered is that the City voted that it is one of the more important intersections to address because of confusion. Brennen Duncan: Recently it has been one of the number one intersections for the Streets That Work priority list. There were several factors that went into the rankings including traffic volumes, citizen input, crash history, etc. The study that we had RK&K do for this was strictly so that we could get preliminary cost estimates so when we put in the Smart Scale grant we knew how much to ask for. Rachel Lloyd: When the City prepares feasibility studies or costing studies like this, how wedded are you to that as a design when it comes up later as a real project? Brennen Duncan: It’s much more about the funding. Once it goes through Smart Scale the funding is set. Design wise, we aren’t married to it. If something else works and is feasible within the budget we can go for it. People have brought up roundabouts and oblong roundabouts. It isn’t that they don’t fit, but it’s about the logistics about making a roundabout work there. Mike Stoneking: To pull off the roundabout, it would require a removal of a building. If it is a roundabout, we can’t occupy the space with people or parks. Lena Seville: The problem with roundabouts is that it creates greenspace that people can never access as pedestrians. Mike Stoneking: If it is a traffic circle where you control moving around the circle that’s a different story because you could put crosswalks in. We may not want to do that, but it is an option. 1 Brennen Duncan: You lose the efficiency of the roundabout when you add stop lights to it. Mike Stoneking: I created three options to talk about a different set of criteria. The frontages we have now are important to the properties that are there and maybe there is a way to keep them instead of putting land in front of buildings. In the first one, I moved the roundabout over and got rid of the median on Preston. It creates more space for bike lanes, sidewalk, trees, etc. and less for travel lanes. The second option keeps the median and suggests a question of whether or not an intersection should be there or if it should be people’s space. It would also require traffic signals. The last one shows that Preston is the way through town and Grady is not. It goes all the way down to Barracks Road. It comes into a normal intersection with a traffic light, no roundabouts, slip lanes, or one way roads. It creates two building opportunities that are odd. Rachel Lloyd: Regarding the existing conditions, the dangerous accident prone location is where 10th and Grady come together and the one-way to two-way at Preston wasn’t the dangerous part. Is that true? Brennen Duncan: There are several locations that are accident prone in this location, like where the slip lane comes back out onto Preston in front of the Diary building. If there is no one in the opposing lane in the short sections, people get in the wrong lane. Typically you want signals to be at least 600’ apart and a ¼ mile is best. Having two signals that are close together poses problems with coordination and getting cars and people through there. That was one of the main reasons for settling on this for what the concept was going to be because it simplifies this intersection to one signal. It makes it simpler. Rachel Lloyd: This is basically taking the natural movement pattern, which is from Downtown all the way out Barracks Road, and truncating it and pushing it towards Grady, which should be a quieter residential street. Brennen Duncan: The people that still want to go that way will just get in the right turn lane. It just won’t be a smooth movement because you’ll have to make a turn. There are several other intersections in town where the right-hand movement is the predominant movement. Rachel Lloyd: It’s an issue with this one because it is physically funneling people towards a more residential area. Mike Stoneking: It feels like it abandons those frontages on the north side. Chris Henry: It islands the land in the middle and it would be extremely awkward public space. Rachel Lloyd: The possibility of schemes won’t totally throw the cost estimate to the wind. The range of reasonable possible options is probably similar to that in cost. Mike Stoneking: The cost estimates were more varied than you’d expect. There was a $1.2 million and $3.5 million for the 4 schemes. Brennen Duncan: The biggest cost estimate was the roundabout and a lot of it was driven by the property acquisitions. Chris Henry: Without a better design on the table, will the design that was drawn and funded go forward? Brennen Duncan: Smart Scale works so that a steering committee and technical committee are put together, along with public meetings. The first public meeting presents the existing conditions, determines the issues and finds solutions to them. Then it goes to the steering committee and back to the public. There are at least 4 or 5 different touch points between now and when we would get a preferred design to put plans together. 2 Chris Henry: Any design that is more than this can’t be built thought, right? Brennen Duncan: It’s not that it can’t be built, but the difference in funding would have to be local funds. Mark Rylander: Smart Scale is about the roads and the multimodal infrastructure. Whatever residual parcels emerge from the plan ends up being in another bucket that the City or the private sector funds. Brennen Duncan: The way the current plan is shown, the residual parcels would remain City. Chris Henry: Is there any way to value those other outcomes? There’s clearly very different public spaces that would be created from the alternatives that add a different value to the public. It could be parks, affordable housing, etc. How does that play into Smart Scale? Brennen Duncan: As far as Smart Scale scoring, they aren’t looking at that. The City, however, could look at it. Mike Stoneking: If one scheme yields a certain amount of building potential with lots of frontage and attributes that are important, that might lead us to a conclusion that Smart Scale wouldn’t even measure. If we chose an option that got rid of the median, Smart Scale wouldn’t go all the way down Preston to McIntire so we would have to put up our own money to take it the rest of the way. If we spend $3.6 million not doing that, there will be another generation of time before we ever even consider it because it’s a waste of money. Rachel Lloyd: When the design work for this was done, was there a certain scheme that privileged pedestrian or cycling movements through this intersection to make those modes safer? Brennen Duncan: As far as bikes go, a roundabout is preferred because they are designed for no more than 15 mph. A bike could ride within the circle without too many problems. The one that we proposed is a traditional intersection so we would probably do bike boxes there. For pedestrians, roundabouts have posed issues depending on the levels of traffic going through it. A traditional intersection probably works best for pedestrians. Mike Stoneking: Some options allow us to reconnect streets that don’t even exist and get them back on the grid. There are chances to push into the neighborhoods and allow access from the neighborhoods to whatever amenities result there. Although it is outside the project, reconnecting streets and reestablishing alleys as part of a bigger way of thinking to knit the future to the project. Chris Henry: Some community feedback we’ve heard from working in this neighborhood was to put a park or public amenity on our property. Washington Park is across the street and they just renovated it but families are afraid to walk across that street and they don’t think it is part of our community. Reconnecting those communities is a really important outcome that this type of project could have. Rachel Lloyd: Option 1 substantially improves the pedestrian and bike experience to make it safer. It also keeps the frontage for the businesses along those few blocks and gives us a development opportunity. It seems like a good direction that solves all the Smart Scale problems, even though we still need to check all those boxes. Chris Henry: There is also a major Century Link backbone running through Preston that was previously not on the map. Anything realigning there will be very expensive for undergrounding utilities. These are all big ideas, but it probably requires a small area plan or a corridor plan that would tie them together. 3 Lena Seville: Do any of these new options take into account the possible changes to Preston Avenue and how it would work? What if we got rid of the median and widened one lane in each direction? Brennen Duncan: Volume wise, Preston is right on the line of needing two lanes two lanes in both directions and needing one lane in both directions. They have 17,000 vehicles per day. 14,000 is about the most you can get on a single lane in each direction so if it were to be choked down there will be significant backups at rush hour. Rory Stolzenberg: Could you shrink the lanes so there’s excess capacity and take a foot or two off each to make a buffer? Amanda Poncy: They are already pretty narrow. They are at 10 or 11 feet, which is the Streets the Work minimum. Chris Henry: This wouldn’t be good for the property we represent because traffic is always better but those 3,000 cars could probably just find a different way to go. Mike Stoneking: Preston is an asset in its current form and if we curtail it, all we have left is the bypass. Lena Seville: You don’t design a road for what happens at rush hour traffic. Instead of designing the roads to handle that mass number, perhaps we should look at encouraging other alternatives to have people using the road at different times. Rachel Lloyd: The whole point of the Smart Scale is to encourage biking and walking so people who would use their cars would now use other modes. Mike Stoneking: I’m not pro-car but there should be a couple of ways to get from the center to the edge. If you make all the streets in the City the small quaint street it might have a negative effect on commerce and vibrancy. It might have a backfire effect that we don’t always think about. Rory Stolzenberg: As a pedestrian, it doesn’t feel that far to walk from the Downtown Mall to UVA. However, walking up to the Rent-A-Center feels like its miles further. It isn’t but it’s a hostile place to be as a pedestrian. One thing about taking away space from the median is that those are all mature canopy trees and may need that space for the root structure. Mark Rylander: Given the topography here, one of the advantages of taking over the median would be to take the area in front of Reid’s and Random Row and then you’d have a buffer. Being on the sidewalk next to fast moving traffic makes you feel like you could die at any moment. Mike Stoneking: That is why moving the cars to each other and putting in space for the people gives you all sorts of design opportunities if we can afford it. Rachel Lloyd: One of the main takeaways is that when we get into the weeds of the design the project can satisfy the Smart Scale requirements, but we can also address these building opportunities for good urban design. Brennen Duncan: CTB will officially act and vote at the end of the month. Next year we will start the submission process again and two years from now the next ones will be awarded. We have a year from now to change the submission. What we submitted this past time doesn’t have to be what is submitted next time. The $3 million - $10 million projects is where the Smart Scale funding is falling. If it is higher than that, it’s too big for these smaller districts. Keep in mind it costs $400,000 for a signal, so it adds up quick. 4 Mike Stoneking: We should start assembling an advisory committee. Too often, we are asked to comment on something that has already been designed and vetted. This project is so far out that we might be able to make real contributions that don’t hurt the process like sometimes it seems like they might. Amanda Poncy: We also have a few hundred thousand dollars to make smaller pedestrian improvements as part of a grant we got a few years ago. That funding won’t become available until 2022-2023 as part of an accessibility effort. Rory Stolzenberg: Regarding comments during design, let’s talk about 2nd Street/Monticello. There were public design plans and a public meeting to solicit feedback. There were no concerns raised about parking removal but then the Parking Advisory Panel heard about it and demanded the bike lane between Monticello and Dice got removed. They are going to do more utility work at Monticello/2nd to free up more parking spots. Was there a new design released to people or an additional time to comment? Amanda Poncy: There was a public meeting where there was an opportunity to request a public hearing. When the Parking Committee heard about the meeting, they requested a public hearing. We don’t have to as part federal requirements, we can meet with them to address their concerns, which is what we did. Their concerns were a larger question about parking in the Downtown area. The Monticello/2nd/Ridge project was removing 15 spaces. There is proposal to reroute the transit bus down South Street and 2nd that would remove spaces and the Belmont Bridge project that would remove spaces while under construction. Our response was that as a temporary measure we can’t install a bike lane until we have a larger conversation about parking Downtown. It doesn’t affect the design because the bike lane was a buffered bike lane that would take up the same amount of space as parking. That particular bike lane doesn’t connect to anything so it seemed like a reasonable approach to keep the parking spaces for now since the bike lane isn’t serving a 100% useful function. Brennen Duncan: Leaving the parking now doesn’t preclude us from installing the bike lane in the future. Rory Stolzenberg: It’s easy to change but there needs to be a conscious effort and action to make the change. When does that happen? Brennen Duncan: The 5th/Ridge McIntire plan called for comprehensive corridor bike/ped infrastructure and without the infrastructure between Cherry and this project, the bikes are in an island. Lena Seville: Why is it an island? Rory Stolzenberg: While it’s much better to have continuous bike lanes, anytime you can get a refuge in a bike lane it’s better for the bicyclist. Brennen Duncan: It’s an island because there are no bicycle facilities that connect to is one either end. The problem is you get the bikes out only to merge them back in and if you’re not ending that bike lane at a spot where they are naturally getting off, it’s a problem because the cars think they have gotten rid of them. Because it is a short stretch, it’s better to keep them together and have it consistent. It is something that we struggle with often and we are trying to retrofit a City that wasn’t designed for bikes. Amanda Poncy: We are trying to prioritize the bike lane on the northbound side because there is a bike lane that continues up to that point. Mike Stoneking: Perhaps this should be part of a larger discussion in a future meeting. 5 3. R-1 RESIDENTIAL REZONING DISCUSSION (35 minutes) Rachel Lloyd: In the Venable neighborhood people started raising questions and concerns about considering R-1 zoning. The hope is to discuss the different approaches to R-1 zoning. What are the tools that we can deploy to reinforce, remove, or revise it? What are the benefits and potential problems with getting rid of or changing R-1 zoning? Part of the argument is that with the huge amount of R-1 zoning within City limits, it has restricted housing development over time. Because we are experiencing an affordable housing crisis, there was an idea to eliminate or modify R-1 zoning, which other Cities have done. Rory Stolzenberg: In Charlottesville, R-1 means single-family housing. It’s important to specify that here we are talking about single family detached only zoning or the concept of an R-1 low density residential. Mike Stoneking: Every neighborhood except for R-1U can have an accessory dwelling unit as a separate building or in your house. There are a list of things to comply with in the provisional use permit and not every lot complies with them. Rory Stolzenberg: There isn’t an argument for getting rid of R-1 as low density residential. It make sense to have them, but the limitation recently introduced was to limit it to one detached dwelling and it inherently makes the homes you can build on those lots more expensive. Evidence shows that it isn’t the new build premium that makes homes more expensive, but it’s that new homes are significantly larger. The price per livable square foot is about the same but there are so many more square feet because builders are building up to the building envelope because they get the same price per square foot. They aren’t able to subdivide the unit into multiple units even though it would provide as much space per unit as the older ranch homes all over the City. Rachel Lloyd: Are those issues where there is a new building on an empty lot or tearing down old buildings and putting new ones on? Rory Stolzenberg: Not necessarily. You could have an existing home that could be subdivided into multiple units as long as you don’t go under the per person space minimum, which the code stops you from doing. Lena Seville: There are many other things that feed into this besides the number of units, including a certain amount of frontage that limits how many lots you can have. We also wouldn’t want to just go to R-3 because that isn’t written very well either. Rachel Lloyd: Some of the fears are that there will be a big incentive to tear down older houses and build duplexes. It could end up being a gentrification or urban renewal by another name. The fear is that it will push low income people out. There should be some protection for traditional neighborhoods that are built into this so they don’t become more vulnerable to teardowns. Rory Stolzenberg: The incentive to tear down now is that you could tear it down and build a mansion. The theory then is that if you allow a duplex or a four-plex, 4 people with a ¼ of the income of that person could ban together through a developer that could rent it to them. In that scenario, the homes that are produced are about ¼ of the price. Rachel Lloyd: There is also a concern that the student ghetto will continue to expand and long term homeowners will get pushed out for duplexes that are filled with students. We’ve been trying to protect the neighborhood context and the neighborhoods are threatened by the change. 6 Rory Stolzenberg: Homeowners aren’t told that they have to tear down their single family house and leave. They have vested rights in keeping it how it is and single family homes are totally legal in all residential zones. Additionally, we have an exogenous number of students because UVA sets that based on things that have nothing to do with the decisions we make. We’ve seen it grow by about 5,000 people over the last 10 years. The only way to stop that student territory from spreading outward is to pack them in more tightly. Rachel Lloyd: Venable had selective upzoning and there are some big buildings that most everyone is okay with. Selective upzoning to absorb the extra housing need makes a ton of sense. Rory Stolzenberg: There are two complimentary solutions to the problem that we’ve restricted our supply of homes. We can build them densely in specific areas that will be the most urban, or we can spread the pain of having new neighbors so that everywhere will get a little bit more dense. Emily Wright: With the R-1 zoning, do you stipulate a certain percentage of homes that are single family? Mike Stoneking: It’s by area. Emily Wright: If you’re want to go to something that allows these duplexes and triplexes, is there a way to say that a percentage of homes in this area can have this to moderate it? Fred Wolf: The challenge is that someone might get there first and they’ve used up the percentage. Are you making unequal rights of what people can do to their properties just because they weren’t first to the table? Rachel Lloyd: The land use map has a blanket of colors. I want to see the map look like the measles where we identify key intersections and put higher density. Rory Stolzenberg: The big issue with that is that when you talk about the very gentle density, the majority of lot owners who now get the rights to build that if they want won’t do that. They live in their single family home and they don’t want to tear it down and let renters move in. By allowing it everywhere, it will likely look more like the measles. Andrea Trimble: Integrating the idea of public transportation and tree protection is also really important, especially when you look at Greenbrier and build up density there. Mike Stoneking: Has the benefit of needing 3,600 affordable units been discussed at the Planning Commission? How would this change make that more realizable? Rory Stolzenberg: One thing we have learned from the Housing Needs Assessment is that the threshold of cost burden is rising up the income spectrum. By solving our overall supply issues, cost should start to go down to where it should be if there was actual competition in supply and not this cartelized limited supply we have now. Rachel Lloyd: The City would pull down more tax dollars and be wealthier if it was denser, so it isn’t doing it for financial reasons. Mike Stoneking: In the supply and demand sense, more would provide lower prices. 7 Rory Stolzenberg: Yes. If you build above 3 or 5 stories, the cost per square foot gets more expensive because you have to have things like a concrete podium. The marginal cost of adding a new units is lower for a four-plex than for an apartment of the same size. Mike Stoneking: 3 stories or under wood framed is a huge demarcation line because of things like fire stairs and elevators that cost a lot of money. Rory Stolzenberg: None of this changes any of the dimensional requirements. They get a little big larger in size for duplex and four-plex but for the most part you’re still in the same envelope of what you’re getting now, which is the problem here in Fry’s Springs. There are a lot of single family houses and other things mixed in, but the things that have been built recently are 4x as large and cost 3x as much. These giant buildings could be entire apartment buildings but they are single family houses because that’s what we require. Rachel Lloyd: In listening to this, a direction for Planning Commission to explore is to incentivize the ADUs and other kinds of ways to increase the density without increasing the incentive for teardowns. Mike Stoneking: You would have to apply this universally. You couldn’t single out a new neighborhoods that gets this zoning without making it vulnerable. Rory Stolzenberg: The idea is to make it a global change so you aren’t exempting places. The other approach is to identify vulnerable communities who will be exempted from these new overriding regulations and they get a certain amount of years to make their own plan for themselves. If the idea is to exempt 10th & Page, that’s one thing, but exempting entire neighborhoods like Greenbrier because they don’t like it isn’t fair. Lena Seville: It would be best to see transects of higher density in places where there is public transit and it is bike and pedestrian friendly, but also some of the neighborhoods. Maybe if we put a little more on transects we can temper what we do in the middle of the neighborhoods. While this is a necessary step in increasing housing, it isn’t going to solve the affordable housing problem on its own. Rory Stolzenberg: The goal of this is to stop the upward ascent up the ladder where more and more people need help so that we can actually focus our resources on people who really need help at 30% AMI and below get more tax revenue to fund that. There’s also the idea of where you live affecting future life outcomes and having a four- plex in North Downtown is innately a lot cheaper than the single family detached house next door. Rachel Lloyd: We have heard from a lot of neighbors that they value the character of the neighborhood; they’ve had ancestor’s who’ve lived there and they want to preserve something about Charlottesville. A lot of that is the physical fabric, but part of it is also communities of people who have been living together for a long time. There is also some value in phasing or prioritizing how the density will be achieved. We should prioritize keeping the historic fabric of the City because it helps neighborhoods stick together. If most of R-1 allows you do have ADUs, it doubles how many people can live there. This is just one strategy that helps to protect the things we want to protect and buys us additional density. The duplex, triplex, and four-plex changes in the lots will change the feel of the neighborhood that may have been there a long time. Navarre Bartz: With respect to gentrification, there was a talk at CitySpace recently where they discussed Charlotte and Atlanta’s problems with density. Both of those cities have been working hard on programs in their cities for anti-displacement for existing residents. They have an anti-displacement tax fund and property tax relief in place, so they might be good places to look at how they’ve rolled it out and how well it’s worked. 8 Rachel Lloyd: UVA has started identifying some goals for housing more students on grounds will start to take some of the pressure off. Rory Stolzenberg: That is terrible for us. If they are going to build 5 new dorms, they are the same buildings with the same density that we could have had that pay taxes and now they won’t. You can either build very densely in dense places that are connected to transit, like the Downtown Mall or West Main, or you can have a little bit of density spread broadly, and it’s probably a combination of the two. Mark Rylander: It would be great to see a map of Downtown and its perimeter to see what happens at that transition zone area and to see the figure ground with lot lines. This conversation is difficult to have in a global way because neighborhoods are all different and it depends on so many different things. A key value of this group is urban design of the physical fabric and there is a worry of getting lost in the colored map land of former planning. We are zoomed out too far on the City as a whole and the demands affordable housing as a whole to make recommendations that are PLACE-based and local enough. We have to start acting on specific places which require different approaches based on lot size, different buildings, and history. Rachel Lloyd: It would be interesting to see what it would look like if every R-1 lot in town that was able to absorb an ADU. How many units would get? What if the City could incentivize it rather than blanket rezoning? Mike Stoneking: The problem is those laws are on the books now and we don’t have that many. The ADU approach would take some weird lending practices too. Homeowners might not be able to afford it and although developers could, they wouldn’t built an ADU on your land because it would be a strange contractual setup. It would only work for people who have more access to loans than the average person. Rory Stolzenberg: We have 983 ADUs and it is 5% of the housing stock. Lena Seville: If the ADU goes into the low income neighborhood, it is more likely to be affordable housing. If it goes into a high income neighborhood it is less likely to be affordable housing. The people who can afford to build them aren’t necessarily creating affordable housing. Rachel Lloyd: It isn’t that they would necessarily be officially affordable units, it’s that it would be increasing the supply. Rory Stolzenberg: It would be a step in the right direction but if we have 20,000 units overall and we get 500 more out of it, it would only be 2.5% more homes. Rachel Lloyd: The housing study identified that we have 4,000 deficit and if you can squeeze 500 more ADUs out of our current zoning and if UVA builds more housing so that there are 2,000 more available units, it’s inching a lot closer to what we need. Rory Stolzenberg: It isn’t because UVA is about to grow a lot more. Mark Rylander: It would be interesting to know any changes to the ADU zoning code, which is probably restrictive, would be something that we would recommend, specifically in neighborhoods like Little High where there is a small house to begin with that would be limited by zoning. 4. SADM BLOCK LENGTH DISCUSSION (20 minutes) 9 Mike Stoneking: The current Standards and Designs Manual calls for a minimum block length of 250’, which is probably about keeping intersections far enough apart for safety for cars and pedestrians. There was another talk about having a maximum of 500’, which isn’t in the manual but you can see that having a minimum of 250’ and a maximum of 400’ would create problems because the maximum would have to be a multiple of the minimum, which doesn’t work. What is block length for and how do we get the numbers right to apply it as an engineering and a design principle? Lena Seville: From a higher level standpoint, it can be broken down into a few decision points. We need to determine what a good block length is and then how we divide that up. Right now it’s broken into tiers based on how many cars travel through it per day and that boundary puts a lot of neighborhood streets into what is considered high volume. If we are going to divide it up between neighborhoods or road type we need to figure out how to create that barrier. Right now there is no maximum, but the minimum for a neighborhood street is 250’ and the minimum for a busier street is 500’. There many neighborhood streets that fall into that higher category. Mike Stoneking: Blending trips per day and looking at the form can help us make decisions. The study showed that in Downtown, the blocks are as little as 200’. In Belmont, there are in the 300’-500’ range because it is more a grid of elongated rectangles. West Main’s prevailing rhythm is between 200’-300’ if all those streets were really there, but they aren’t so there are giant lengths. This tells us that there is no one size fits all or max/min. The Standards and Design Manual might be a good place to address things like car count, but it is a terrible place to address things like character of space. Perhaps that whole section needs to come out of the manual. Rachel Lloyd: It does need to be holistic, but part of the goal of the code and those types of documents is to limit the damage and determine the worst that you can do. Mike Stoneking: The worst thing you can do is give 2nd Street away and let someone build a building that’s two blocks long because they comport with the standard. Rachel Lloyd: This raises questions about not just Barracks Road on Emmet, but the whole Staples block only Ridge McIntire because it could be subdivided into 4-5 different blocks there. Those are faster road corridors and there may be some value in protecting it because it sets a precedent for how the whole transportation system functions. Mike Stoneking: Imagine if we started blending some of those ideas. If the City gave up the land on the yard to be part of a public/private partnership that developed a neighborhood, the infrastructure could be put in in a streets and blocks way and a private development could come in to provide affordable housing, good urban design, walkability, and everything else we are after all together. Rachel Lloyd: Ridge McIntire and Emmet rely on a lot of vehicular throughput because they move people in and out of the City. Is there a value in holding onto that or do you make it more like Downtown where there are blocks and things are moving slowly? Lena Seville: There is a middle ground. There are other streets like Avon and High Street that have lots of cross streets but people aren’t coming in and out and turning on those. You can move a lot of cars if the primary purpose is pedestrians and cyclists. Just because there are a lot of intersections doesn’t mean there will be a lot of car movement. We are talking about making sure we have pedestrian and cycling movement. The lights slow things down more than the intersections. 10 Rory Stolzenberg: It isn’t clear that slowing down Ridge McIntire would significantly reduce throughput, as long as it’s moving steadily. Rachel Lloyd: It is simply an issue we need to address because it has traffic implications. There are some roads like Ridge McIntire and Emmet that has a lot of movement and some of it will be pushed off onto other streets. That might be fine, but it needs to be looked at. Mike Stoneking: It wouldn’t create a traffic hazard in Belmont because there are so many choices to take. Lena Seville: It also gets people off the road quicker if they are going to another destination. Rachel Lloyd: Some neighborhoods do not like what they consider to be cut through traffic. I have no problem with it because roads are public and people should be able to go on them, but there is pushback on that. Ultimately, the way we conceptualize those arterials would need to adjust. Mike Stoneking: Agreed. Lena Seville: We should also make sure there is an opportunity to have a bike/pedestrian walkway in place of a road. We may want certain blocks, but they don’t have to be car blocks. Mike Stoneking: If you have enough blocks you can give up a road. Our problem is we’ve given up our roads over the years and now it would be nice to grow them back before we decide which ones to convert. Mark Rylander: Charlottesville is very challenged between the railroad and the topography and there are reasons why these grids end where they do. There is incredible potential for innovation and connecting some neighborhoods and grids by breaking through the barriers like the yard. Jeff Werner: Our urban form is not a function of some grand plan that stretches from here to the University. We are often trying to find a cohesive grid through Charlottesville that never existed, so we don’t have a grid to go back to. There are connections that can be made, but having the railroad go through it is a challenge. Mike Stoneking: We have a lot of little grids to go back to and we could use that form making principle to guide other developments. 5. NEW BUSINESS (10 minutes) None. 6. MATTERS BY THE PUBLIC (5 minutes) Genevieve Keller: Regarding the R-1 discussion, I encourage you to approach this as the designers that many you are because this is the only body who has the capacity and responsibility to contribute in that way. There is a jurisdiction in the west where they are encouraging the 3-4 units, but only in existing buildings with minor modifications and smaller additions. It might be interesting for you to look at the 1870, 1960, or 1938 maps that are key periods where you can document what the boundaries were. As a preservationist, I would hate to see significant loss of historic fabric in those areas. It doesn’t mean we can’t have infill or expansion within them. There is tremendous opportunity for you to inform that discussion pre-zoning study and pre-comprehensive plan because you could provide a lot of background information for that. The quadruplexes aren’t necessarily going to be substantially less expensive, especially if you look at the four townhouses on 2nd Street. However, it is 11 providing more units so it needs to be unpacked and you need to be realistic about what it means. I encourage you to look at the traditional boundaries of the City and how it grew, and to look at some things that work in the west and in larger urban areas by preferencing where transit is available and deciding if that is what we really want because it might be where we have our most important landmarks. Additionally, the switch from R-3 to R- 1S is why we have so many naturally occurring ADUs because they were already dwelling units that were accommodating 2-6 units within them and many of them are now legally nonconforming. Through all of this we can realize why it all happened and if you look back to when we went from R-3 to R1-S and created the ADU, it was compensating property owners so they wouldn’t lose their ability to have a rental unit on the property. When all of the R3s when to R-1S it downgraded it to one unit and put a size limitation on it. 12