Minutes PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR DOCKET TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2018– 5:30 P.M. CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS NDS Conference Room I. Commission Pre-Meeting (Agenda discussion(s)) Beginning: 4:30 p.m. Location: City Hall, 2nd Floor, NDS Conference Members Present: Chairman Lisa Green Vice-Chair; Corey Clayborne, Commissioners Genevieve Keller, Jody Lahendro, and Taneia Dowell Members Absent: John Santoski Chair Green called the meeting to order at 5pm and proceeded with review of the agenda. Carrie Rainey provided an overview of the 1011 East Jefferson Street site plan request. She provided the process as well as the standard of review. The SUP conditions were provided for the commission to review. Chair Green asked whose responsibility it is to determine if the plan is in accordance with the SUP and Lisa Robertson provided information on the law. Commissioner Keesecker asked about the requirements for affordable housing units and it was noted that the requirements would need to be addressed in accordance with the SUP conditions prior to final site plan approval – this request is for preliminary approval. Commissioner Dowell asked for clarification as to what would be contained in the plaza areas and it was noted that was to be open space. Commissioner Keller expressed concern since site plans are typically ministerial functions. Lisa Robertson noted that Planning Commission would be the body to make the zoning determination to note if the site plan meets the requirements from the SUP. Brian Hogg further summarized that the determination to be made would be does the addition on this proposal constitute a substantial change to the SUP and how can that be addressed. II. Commission Regular Meeting Beginning: 5:30 p.m. Location: City Hall, 2nd Floor, Council Chambers Members Present: Chairman Lisa Green Vice-Chair; Corey Clayborne, Commissioners Genevieve Keller, Jody Lahendro, and Taneia Dowell Members Absent: John Santoski A. COMMISSIONERS' REPORTS Commissioner Lahendro: reported he attended two meetings this month. The Housing Advisory Committee met on December 13th. The committee is pushing forward with recommendations regarding a land bank ordinance which City Council has instructed staff to investigate. They have tasked a sub-committee of the HAC to complete recommendations by the February City Council meeting. A housing choice voucher initiative has been held up by misunderstandings of terms of proposed contract between the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Commission and the City. The HAC has stepped in to facilitate a meeting with the participants to work through these details to push this program ahead. There is strong support in the HAC for the Planning Commission to incorporate findings of the housing needs assessment; a study that was recently contracted by NDS. They are recommending that the Planning Commission study this for our Comprehensive Plan recommendations. They have passed a motion to request City Council delay the Comp Plan completion date to allow the integration of the findings. The Tree Commission meeting was held January 2nd and we reviewed tree commission support for tree planting and maintenance request in the draft CIP which you will hear about later. We have finalized the annual calendar reports and goals for the upcoming year. At Parks and Recreation’s 1 request, we provided review comments of the RFP for redesign of the Emancipation and Justice parks. Finally, we reviewed sub-committee goals for the upcoming year. Notable goals include, if the CIP new tree funding is approved, we have identified several perspective locations for planting approximately 200 new trees in the city and the code committee will continue researching new opportunities to participate in the city’s site development review process to better preserve established trees and protect them during construction. Commissioner Keller: no report Commissioner Dowell: no report; she announced a CDBG meeting on January 16th from 3-5pm and at this meeting we will evaluate the applications that have been submitted and prepare to make a recommendation to City Council. Commissioner Clayborne: reported he attended the BAR meeting on December 19th where we discussed the street law requirements in downtown. The discussion centered around the focus on providing more flexibility when it comes to height and stories on downtown with the different slope changes and different site constraints. He expects some documents will be coming to the Planning Commission for further review and discussion. Commissioner Keesecker: no report B. UNIVERSITY REPORT, Brian Hogg: no report C. CHAIR'S REPORT, Lisa Green: announced the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee will be meeting on the 17th of January at the Water Street Center between 7 pm and 9 pm. This is another opportunity for citizens to engage in the upcoming 6 year improvement plan and the long range transportation plan. The agenda should be on the TJPDC website in a couple of days. We are waist deep into the Comprehensive Plan process. The process has involved the following phases and continues to have meetings. Our first phase involved two rounds of community engagement meetings where we gathered input from the public and now we are now holding work sessions. We will be discussing time frames and dates later on this evening. These work sessions constitute a part of a process where commissioners review and digest the information that we gathered from the first two rounds of community engagement. At each work session we continue to welcome comments either at the work session or via email or on the email link of the Comprehensive Plan webpage. Chair Green asked staff to possibly get the Comprehensive Plan draft chapters put on the City’s home page. She wanted to confirm that the public has the opportunity to provide comments on a link and feel free to remark on anything you see there. She also wanted the public to understand that in the work sessions there is not a point for dialogue at this time. She said once we have all the information together, than there will be a point where we will come back to the public and have collaborative conversations with the entire community to prepare for a formal presentation to present to Council. We look forward to hearing your feedback in the future outreach sessions coming up. Commissioner Keller asked do we still have a representative on the Master Planning Council. Commissioner Keesecker said he has not been notified of any meetings recently. He said they meet quarterly. Commissioner Keller said she has received several questions from members of the public about the Lambeth stadium and wondered if the Planning Commission would take this up. She was thinking we might have had some emails on this. Ms. Creasy noted it wouldn’t be something we could consider because jurisdictionally, it is in the County, and it’s University owned although there would be affects perhaps on city neighborhoods. It occurred to her that this would fall within the three party agreements. She asked should it or should it not be a part of a bigger planning process, because that is why she was asking - had it been discussed at a Master Planning Council meeting. She said there are a number of people who are very interested in this and wondering how they could weigh in on this. She said maybe Mr. Hogg could address this as well. 2 Mr. Hogg: said he is not actively involved in that project but the Board of Visitors at its last meeting asked that several sites be investigated in addition to Lambeth; and that is what the office is doing at the moment. Commissioner Keesecker: said typically the agendas and the meetings for the Master Planning Council are arranged by one of the three entities - he recalled last was the university. He said he would send a note over to the Office of the Architect and ask if they could to tell us if it’s going to be on a future agenda and if it is not, then we could ask that it is if that is one of the sites that they are going to consider. Mr. Hogg: said he is not sure that his office believed that was appropriate to present to the Master Planning Council. Commissioner Keller said if it is already at the Board of Visitors level maybe it bypassed the Master Planning Council. She was intrigued and seemed like something that major, would perhaps be covered by the three party agreement but she is not that familiar with when the three party agreement kicks in and that might be something we add to what we deal with in the Comprehensive Planning process. That is a long standing agreement in place since the 1980’s. Mr. Hogg said which we do abide by. Commissioner Keller said she didn’t have any particular stand on this but a number of people are concerned about it as a planning issue and she thinks it is something that the three jurisdictions should have an understanding about. Commissioner Keesecker: said he will email them to find out when the next meeting will be. Mr. Hogg said there are many projects that are done that don’t go to either of those groups. You probably have only gotten one half of the story on that. D. DEPARTMENT OF NDS Missy Creasy: said today we will talk through work session planning to get a few clarifications to work through and keep us on track, We did coordinate with the people doing the housing needs data, and found out that we will get the raw data in early February and they will work it into the report for the end of March. Ms. Pethia is prepared to work with them to help us through the analysis. It looks like we will get the analysis much sooner than we thought. E. MATTERS TO BE PRESENTED BY THE PUBLIC NOT ON THE FORMAL AGENDA Margarita Figueroa, 1214 Little High Street, spoke on switching of the stop sign at Little High and 11th Street. She said the stop signs are on 11th Street. This is an intersection at the side of the Charlottesville Day School. We have a lot of speeding on our street and we don’t have sidewalks so that makes it wider. We have requested a traffic study, it hasn’t happened. The proposal is to switch the two way intersection to put the stop sign on Little High Street. The school buses and city buses run on Little High Street. We want a 4 way stop not a two way stop because this is a dangerous intersection. Mark Kavit, 400 Altamont Street, said he’s been coming to these meeting for quite a few years, BAR, Council and Planning Commission. He said he is not against development but we need to be sure that we control development to not be overwhelming to a neighborhood and architecturally appropriate for the neighborhood. We have a Comprehensive Plan but he has seen over and over through the years the Comprehensive Plan is totally ignored. He has noticed in the past year, there seems to be more concerns about neighborhoods. We also have rules and regulations regarding transitional aspects of complexes and developments to a neighborhood, and he doesn’t think a 5 or 9 story complex next to two story homes is transitional. Time after 3 time he has seen developers basically run around this board, BAR, and City Council over the years. We have that issue tonight where City Council voted on a project 1011 E Jefferson and he understands the develop changed from what City Council voted on, that is different from what was told and City Council voted on. In cases like that, it needs to go back to City Council and the Planning Commission and have another Public hearing about the matter. He said Kate Bennis was supposed to have been here tonight but her mother unfortunately died a few days ago and somebody is here to read the letter. Robin Huffman: 524 Caroline Avenue spoke on a situation on Caroline Avenue where the end of the street is supposed to be a dead end. We have trucks cutting through by our homes from Meade, High and Fairway. What is supposed to be a dead end is actually the parking lot for Jack and Jill and Blue Ridge Printing. No one wants to repair the road, and someone keeps taking the signage down. No trucks should be going through that street. We have a neighborhood that has little kids, cats and chickens. We have come to many meetings, town halls and have asked people before to look at the street and fix it so that we don’t have traffic going through. At the end of the road where the driveway meets Jack and Jil has a huge hole in it. The problem with that hole is when it gathers up water then it freezes you can’t make an escape route out that way. Please help us and look at the road. Bill Wiley: 1111East Jefferson Street said he is here to speak on the 1011 site plan you will be looking at. The changes in it are beyond what City Council approved. He said after the City Council meeting, he was so offended that the panel of professionals had voted it down, and City Council went against your recommendations. It seems like you all are here to recommend based on your informed opinions and for Council to have voted that down, as a citizen he felt it very offensive and hopes the revised site plan gets some serious consideration. Greg Jackson: 1121 Little High Street; said listed below are some items to consider for 1011 E Jefferson Street. Images showing the substantial change of the proposed development after the Planning Commission meeting 10/11/16 and before the City Council meeting 7/5/17 (height, configuration, etc.) and a plan showing the substantial change of the proposed development with a ~12,000sf north addition/expansion over the entrance drive (mass, configuration, setback, etc.) at the Initial site plan meeting 9/6/17, after the narrow Council vote. Also attached is a letter of Kathy Galvin's supporting this information, publicly stated and posted on a city website, that presented compelling grounds to not approve the proposed project and the B-1 definition posted for background consideration and the foreground consideration is the substantial changes we/many believe have occurred, as opposed to ‘deviations. It may be challenging to take a strong position procedurally, however it's quite obvious, in a principled common sense way, that there is a position to take morally right or wrong. Shawnee West: 1204 East Jeff. Reading letter Kate Bennis. Little High Street Neighborhood Association. To the City Council, Planning Commission, Mr. Maurice Jones, and Alex Ikefuna of NDS: We would like to alert you to significant changes in the design of a proposed development at 1011 East Jefferson Street within the city review and approval process. 1) In October of 2016, the Planning Commission voted against granting the SUP for 1011 East Jefferson, which asked to quadruple the density from 21 units per acre to 87 units per acre. 2) In the months between the PC meeting and the City Council meeting, the developer significantly changed the design by adding a floor to the 10th Street façade/building resulting in a 5-story building. The 11st street facade/building was also changed during this time. 3) On July 5th 2017, City Council narrowly approved the SUP. 4) On September 6th, 2017, at the initial site plan meeting, the developers added a 12,000 square-foot expansion to the building, without any notification to the City Council or Planning Commission. 4 The Planning Commission saw a very different design in 2016. Since that time, the building has grown to a 5- story apartment building with a 12,000 square-foot addition over the entrance drive. Additionally, the project is no longer required to provide mixed-use or affordable housing on-site. The B-1 zoning is intended to be transitional and “service-type businesses and office uses of a limited size, which are open primarily during daytime hours,” with a 45’ maximum building height (3 stories, if referencing Sec 34-1100). Our neighborhood has fought this development on the grounds that quadrupling the density from 21 units per acre to 87 units per acre doubles the number of units in our entire neighborhood in just 1/3 of a city block. This is far from transitional, creates a building mass completely out of proportion to the surrounding neighborhood, a mere 4 affordable units (now gone) and no promise of mixed-use, which would have allowed citizens to engage with the building. We ask you to take note of these substantial changes, bring these plans back to the Planning Commission for design review and then, if necessary, back to City Council to vote on the new design. Thank you, Little High Neighborhood Association Kate Bennis, President Kristin Clarens, Vice-President Margarita Figueroa, Secretary Benjamin Randolph, Treasurer Sumner Brown, Greg Jackson, Shawnee West Valerie Long, Williams Mullen: said we are here to answer any questions you may have. The by-right uses permitted at this property would generate significantly more vehicular trips than what is proposed. We heard a lot from the community to change the street signs and background on 11th street. Curb bump outs are consistent with the Streets that Works plan. We have added crosswalks and curb bump-outs which will help calm the traffic and improve pedestrian safety. CONSENT AGENDA (Items removed from the consent agenda will be considered at the end of the regular agenda) 1. Minutes - November 14, 2017 – Pre- meeting and Regular meeting 2. Minutes - December 12, 2017 – Pre- meeting and Regular meeting 3. Site Plan – Carlton Views II Commissioner Clayborne motioned to approve the consent agenda, seconded by Commissioner Keesecker, motion passes 6-0. III. JOINT MEETING OF COMMISSION/ COUNCIL Beginning: 6:00 p.m. Continuing: until all public hearings are completed Format: (i) Staff Report, (ii) Applicant, (iii) Hearing 1. Charlottesville Capital Improvement Program FY 2019-2023: Consideration of the proposed 5-year Capital Improvement Program totaling $114,227,860 in the areas of Education, Economic Development, Public Safety & Justice, Facilities Management, Transportation & Access, Parks & Recreation, Technology Infrastructure, Stormwater Initiatives and General Government Infrastructure. A copy of the proposed CIP is available for review at http://www.charlottesville.org/departments-and-services/departments-a-g/budget-and-performance- management/fy-2019-budget-development Report prepared by Ryan Davidson, Office of Budget and Performance Management. 5 Projects in the proposed budget that would see increased funding include: $520,000 for the replacement of the Avon Street fueling station; $94,000 for new street lighting downtown; $1.3 million for underground utility relocation; and $600,000 funding for the Senior Center at Belvedere. Other projects include $2.9 million for the city school system; $1.1 million for facility renovations in Darden Towe Park, which is jointly owned by Albemarle County; $3.4 million for the city’s Affordable Housing Fund; and $500,000 for the redevelopment of public housing. Chair Green: asked what else have we done with the Economic Development funds besides Whole Foods Street (Hillsdale)? Ms. Creasy: said some funds went to the underground of utilities around the Market Plaza Project, work force initiatives and towards affordable housing. Mr. Davidson: said a loan to help with the Pavilion structure as well. The workforce initiatives are paid for from those funds which are a large chunk; and some are used for affordable housing. Commissioner Corey: asked were there any projects from the unfunded project list that required a lot of discussion or close calls for the public to see to get any further consideration next year. Mr. Davidson said there are several projects he wanted to bring up for the next year that would be good to bring up that are on the unfunded list and are also being consider as new requests on the operational side: tree maintenance funding request $75,000 over the five years is a more of an operational and constructional to be weighed along with the other requests. The other one is the historic preservation cultural landscape plan. There had been funds recommended every other year in the CIP and we had come back and potentially suggested putting that in instead of $50,000 every other year maybe $25,000 a year operationally would make sense. He said we funded 114 million and the unfunded was close to 100 million so with everything we funded there is that much more left on the unfunded side. There are some rather large unfunded projects with Parks and some other development within the city that are high dollar amount projects. When it comes down to it, it’s a dollar and cents thing that you can only afford to borrow and cash funds. Chair Green: said using the $3.25 million that’s proposed for West Main Street improvements next year and the additional $7 million that’s budget for the project in the two years after that as an example, the large, multi-year allocations are used to build up project funds and to help leverage grants from the state or elsewhere. Some of that is about putting more money in because you want to build it up to save money or complete projects over time. Commissioner Keesecker: asked Mr. Davidson to explain how the decisions are made related to the application of the housing funds and how those are decided? Ms. Creasy: said currently proposals come in and are evaluated by staff and then a recommendation is bought forward to Council concerning the funding. She said Ms. Pethia is looking to make it a more formal process so that they come in increments because currently as funding is available and projects come in as requested they get funded in that manner. Everyone brings it in and evaluates them all together as opposed to a rolling admission. Commissioner Lahendro: said he is trying to understand the process of operational funds, and when that decision is made. How do we track it to know what certain funds that we are making recommendations about actually get in the CIP? What is the process and when are those decisions made and when are the public and the planning commission aware as well? 6 Mr. Davidson: said the things that are going into the operational budget that are being considered as new request. Right now we are in the process of reviewing our department budget and our revenues as they come in. We have an all-day retreat on the budget next Friday with City Council. We also have some work sessions with Council and a joint session with the School Board in the next couple of months. In March we will present the proposed budget and have a list of new initiatives we are doing in the budget and we lay those out for Council, Planning Commission and the Public to see what we have added. He said within each department, if there are significant changes, and we will have an explanation of changes on that specific departmental page and that will list for example if we added the $75,000 for the tree maintenance, that would be noted there. As we move through the budget process, once the proposed budget process comes out and if something is or is not included that the public wants to add or remove, we would have two public hearings on the budget and the tax rates with City Council and a series of work sessions where we reserve 15 minutes at the end for public comment. There are opportunities for the public to email City Council or the budget office directly. Commissioner Keller: recommended two additional projects, including a $50,000 mall design landscape study that was on the list of previously proposed but unfunded projects. She said it goes hand in glove with the expenditures for the trees on the mall. You can’t separate the trees from the Halprin & Associates design for the mall, referencing the architectural firm that designed the mall more than 40 years ago. Doing those two things at the same time is something the PLACE Design Task Force has talked about. She also recommended allocating $50,000 to study how the city can use its public meetings spaces to better engage the public. She said it’s time the City thinks about updating its own meeting facilities. It’s been great to have City Space for special events, but I think Council Chambers has been quite stressed over the last few months. The need for updated meeting facilities that engage the public in more modern ways is something I think we should be addressing. Commissioner Lahendro: supports the tree recommendations for the mall trees and for planting new trees. Commissioner Keller move approval to recommend the CIP is presented to City Council for the FY 2019-2023 Proposed Capital Improvement Program: with additional $50,000 mall design landscape, $50,000 for updating the meeting space (Council Chambers); and 75,000 for tree maintenance; Seconded by Commissioner Dowell; Motion passes 6-0. Open the Public Hearing Roxanne White, Co-Chair Tree Commission: said Charlottesville’s overall tree canopy has decreased by 6.2 percent since 2005. Data from 2017 shows the city only replaced 60 percent of the trees taken down that year. We are not keeping up with planting what’s been taken down. Ms. White noted that the city’s Comprehensive Plan calls for the expansion of the urban tree canopy. She was upset that the city has not been living up to that goal and asked that an additional $75,000 that was requested be included in the recommended capital budget. Ms. White said $50,000 that was already recommended for next year’s capital budget will fund the planting of 200 trees. According to budget documents, that amount also will be bolstered by $100,000 for Downtown Mall tree preservation planning. Peggy VanYahres, said she was speaking for the Tree Commission, and Downtown Mall Planting Preservation, we appreciate that you have kept that in the CIP. Those lovely oak trees are over 40 years old under so much stress with the heat, sun and low moisture on the mall. We need a detailed plan of how to preserve their life and make them safe so everybody can enjoy them. Another part of that study will be the tree grates. The tree grates have never been a good design; they harm the trees and harbor rodents on the mall, so we need to come up with a new design. Part of the study also includes a robust of public education and engagement process as James Ervin has done a very short study on the mall trees has said the science of trees is not that difficult but the politics of trees can be very difficult. Some of these trees will have to come down and in fact over the next 25 7 years probably they all will so we have to very carefully prepare for their demise and not upset people in the public. The City is very concerned about the loss of revenue, not only just on the mall but in the city in general so these trees are one of the big assets on the mall and if it was a dry not shaded mall there would not be many people down there. To speak on a personal matter, her father in law Mitch Van Yahres, was on City Council at the time the mall was conceived and designed. He was also an arborist and worked very closely with Lawrence Halprin to choose the Willow Oaks which have survived these last 40 years. Every morning he would walk the mall, living close downtown underneath what he considered his beautiful trees. She felt like she needed to speak for him tonight and say let’s keep them going as long as possible. Michael Payne, an organizer with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialist of America: raised a few ideas about how to leverage funds that are currently being allocated to the city’s housing fund and toward affordable housing redevelopment. He said those funds could be used with the $150,000 that’s recommended for economic development strategic initiatives. He said there might be a great opportunity with the abandoned property where the Landmark Hotel currently is located. Perhaps that economic development fund can be used to incentivize that. Close the Public Hearing IV. PRESENTATION 1. Charlottesville Schools Enrollment http://charlottesvilleschools.org/facilities/ Ms. Kim Powell: Assistant Superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools introduced Mr. Hamilton Lombard: Weldon Cooper Center: Charlottesville City Schools is growing! Since our enrollment has been increasing about 3 percent annually, we need to consider the future of our school facilities. Together, let’s consider how we can best meet our students’ needs, particularly for our classes serving preschool through grade 8. Our school division’s growth also presents an opportunity to modernize our schools for 21st-century learning. The most significant increase in capacity is for Jackson Via and at Walker. A lot of parents would put kids at private school for middle school and back in public school for high school. We are not seeing that as much anymore. It is helpful for us to know about new developments to prepare for our budgets. Eight different projects were looked at to address capacity concerns. • Centralized Pre K to provide specialized services • Move grade 5 back to elementary schools to reduce middle-grade transitions These concepts are connected to work done in Charlottesville from 2009-2011 Considerations: • Single project helps capacity at all elementary schools, adding 340 seats of functional capacity to grades K-4: 111 additional Functional Capacity (due to K-4 class sizes being larger than PreK class sizes) + 230 PK students relocated. • New Pre K facility and grounds would be designed specifically for early childhood needs and development • Opportunity to provide wraparound services and after care ESTIMATED COST: $ 15M - $ 20M | 45,600 SF FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY: 258 | MAXIMUM CAPACITY: 304 Thoughts from seasoned CCS preschool educators who have experience in both CCS’s former centralized preschool & in the current school-based pre-K classrooms: 8 • Centralized pre-K creates a building-wide culture supporting early childhood development • Centralized pre-K allows for dedicated spaces and staff for speech and motor therapies, behavioral calming or sensory break rooms, and shared classroom resources such as a kitchen or washer/dryer. • Centralized pre-K minimizes itinerant staffs who presently serve preschoolers at six buildings. • Teachers in a preschool-only setting can work even more collegially to share materials, ideas, best practices, and support. • Neighborhood schools might be more convenient for some families, but the former central location (at Jefferson School) attracted good attendance at parent nights, too. • With centralized pre-K, agencies such as CHIP or ReadyKids would have a single point to reach a large number of families. • The transition to students’ kindergarten school would require attention, as it does for our current preschoolers who attend pre-K in a different building. Considerations: Eliminates a school transition for students, with 5th grade moved to the elementary schools Typical middle school grade configuration at Buford, then provides options for re-purposing Walker (possible Central Pre K, and/or consolidated CCS Admin)Project size and cost range shown are for example project at Buford, and include renovation of existing school Dr. Atkins: Superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools stated the city should be commended became you have built structures and residencies in the community that are attractive to a wide variety of people, be it single individuals or families; that is what we want. Our school system has built programs around the needs and desires of families so those two factors coming together to make our city a very attractive place to be and we are continuing to grow as a city. She said it is good that this is happening and the communication between this body and our school board will be important so that we can realize what the future growth is looking like and what impact that growth may have on our current facilities and the current development of our program and plans for that. We have been surprised by this because if you look back over the last 20 years our enrollment has been on a decline. She said she has been with the school board for 12 years and when she first came in one of the mandates of the board was to turn this trend around. We need to bring students and their families together and keep our families in our school division and now in the past 6 years we have seen that we put forth a lot of effort into it along with the city; and we now see the fruits of those efforts. So, let’s keep that going. Commissioner Dowell: questioned after hearing the data, and thinking of the increase in our enrollment, as far as capacity goes, does the study that was taken consider that if the city does what it is supposed to by creating more affordable housing, will that also directly affect the capacity of our school system. Was that data included? Ms. Kim Powell: Assistant Superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools said the short answer to your question is no. Anything else that happens that is exceptional as far as a large volume of family housing opening up would definitely take the growth trends that you see in the presentation it would greatly accelerate those numbers, so the short answer is no but what we are proposing is just to deal with what we consider to be a conservative and continuing of the current trend. We use a regression analysis cohort method which doesn’t take into account exceptional things like the housing development that opened up off 5th Street. Chair Green: said thanks for coming and we appreciate you all reaching out to us because we are in this Comprehensive Plan stage and she thinks it is really important. One of the things we always talk about is hot spots, places, building communities and those communities that draw people in and where do people congregate. We have had this conversation in the past and she remembers having this conversation in the last year Comprehensive Plan. Ms. Atkins, you said the word redistrict; and I have said it before but when I start down that path especially with the new Comprehensive Plan, the different housing, concentration points on the 9 maps, where neighborhoods are created that is a conversation we need to have together. She said redistricting is going to have to be looked at and if we do in conjunction with the PC that would be extremely helpful. So thanks for coming. V. COMMISSION’S ACTION ITEMS Continuing: until all action items are concluded 1. Site Plan – 1011 East Jefferson Street Site Plan Report by Carrie Rainey The applicant is requesting approval of a preliminary site plan to construct a mixed-use building with up to 127 residential units at 1011 E Jefferson. City Council approved a Special Use Permit with conditions for additional residential density on July 5, 2017. The preliminary site plan shows a deviation from the building footprint and driveway layout shown in the conceptual plan presented in conjunction with the Special Use Permit (Attachment 4). The preliminary site plan shows an expansion to the rear of the building (on the northern side of the property) for approximately 50% of the rear building façade (150 feet of façade), resulting in an approximately 10% increase in footprint area. The preliminary site plan also proposes a driveway that is set further back from the northern property line than the driveway proposed in the conceptual plan associated with the Special Use Permit. Public Comments Received Staff has received correspondence from members of the public concerned with the modification to the rear of the building (northern side of the property) and maintenance of the maximum three story height set for the eastern half of the building. Recommendation Staff recommends approval of the preliminary site plan. Commissioner Keesecker said it does not match a plan that was seen before in a way that affects some relatively immediate neighbors, that’s the part that troubles me. Ms. Rainey noted to the Planning Commission that this was put on the regular agenda because of the change from the conceptual plan to the preliminary site plan. We thought it was likely you all would want to discuss it. Chair Green recognized that the only action the group could take was to approve or deny the plan. She said the special use permit has been approved and we don’t unfortunately get to make any recommendations on that permit. What is before us is whether or not this particular site plan that has been submitted complies with the requirements of the city’s site plan ordinance. Commissioner Keller replied this troubles her that Council, the body that approved this, is not having another opportunity to look at it because they are directly accountable to the population. She would rather see it as an amended special use permit prior to a site plan, because it does look to me like a substantial change, but that option is not possible under city code. Commissioner Lahendro stated in my opinion, it would be better to go back to what was approved by City Council. Ms. Valerie Long Williams Mullen, proceeded quickly to ask for a deferral in order to revise the preliminary site plan to remove the additional space and would like to be ready for the Planning Commission’s next regular meeting on February 13th. 10 Commissioner Clayborne read the section 34-820D, preliminary site plan, special use permit reason for the denial, if you choose to deny a site plan, you have identified the deficiency. SUP compliance is certainly one of those zoning requirement. He said this type of motion would be acceptable. Ms. Lisa Robertson, Deputy City Attorney commented that Great Eastern Management Company has yet to specify where it will build the affordable housing units required under its permit. Under city regulations, if the units are not provided on site they can be provided nearby. Additional affordable units have to come into existence. She said you couldn’t count something that was already receiving credit through some other program for satisfying the affordable unit requirement. Chair Green accepted the applicants deferral until the Feb 13th, Planning Commission’s next regular meeting, seconded by Commissioner Clayborne, 6-0 motion passes to defer. Ms. Creasy said at the January 3rd meeting you all came up with a number of meeting opportunities to get us prepared for meeting with the boards and commissions in March. We put that on the schedule and started looking for available spaces and still need some confirmation on several of them. The next scheduled meeting will be our regular scheduled work session on January 23rd where we will be looking at the draft map further and looking at the transitions and how they work on the map. We had planned to talk about whether we were still on board with doing the Google tours. You all wanted to talk through the transition on the 8th to see if that was something you still wanted to do. We also set up tentative dates for the Google tours. You chose the 29th and 30th as dates where you had a majority available. We did not have the same locations available for those days but we did get another location for the 31st of January as a potential option for the Google tours. If we are going to do those then we need to start getting the word out to the neighborhoods so they know they are coming up. We need to identify which neighborhoods we were planning to talk about at each one and we might be able to figure out a way to do it. Lastly we need to select a date for the March boards and commissions open house. We probably need another title and you all noted the first two weeks of March and we found space on March 7th and March 12th. Ms. Keller noted that UVA spring break takes place that first week. That might be something that may or may not be a consideration for the timing of the planning. She said there is a potential to schedule the one day with the other as a weather date. We will still be in March with questionable weather potential. Commissioner Clayborne: announced he would be resigning from the group because he and his family have moved to a house in Albemarle County. Commissioner Clayborne’s: resignation could mean that as many as four new people will be appointed to the seven-member commission by the end of the year. Ms. Creasy: said we are working with the attorney’s office on the staggering of terms to make sure we end up with a more balanced rotation. Chair Green: asked are the Google tours through the neighborhoods still something we still want to do? Commissioner Lahendro said isn’t that dependent on which directions we go in, and how we present the future land use plan. Are we going to go to be very detailed in almost creating a zoning map that gets very definitive or are we going to step back and be more general in our designations and if we are more general he doesn’t see the need to do detailed Google drivebys? Chair Green said maybe making it more of a hot spot map decreases the need for some of that Google area look through in all areas. She said there are certain areas we might want to look at. We need to advertise, make decisions tonight and contact the neighborhoods. 11 Commission Lahendro said it might reduce the amount of block by block investigation. Chair Green said the problem is we need to advertise, since that is just at the end of the month and we need to make that decision tonight. We need to make that decision on how we are going to divide it so that Ms. Creasy can contact the neighborhoods and reserve the room. Commissioner Keesecker said he agrees with Jody because he is leaning toward the less detail land use map and the more generalized land use map. He said you are right as well Lisa because if we use Google its basically asking us what do we want Google to help us do. He said one of the things we are trying to figure out is this transition zone, and how useful it could be to help us move between some of our more intense areas, some of our either established or future less intense areas. He said as we are putting this land use map together are either going to have land use beside land use and they’re smacked up against each other, which is sort of what we have now, or we could use the Google tours to identify where the transition zones are. He said however it gets transitioned land use, or however it gets defined in zoning later on and could help alleviate some abrupt changes whether they are because of typo or the character or the example Lisa used for downtown Belmont. He said it is worth it for us to look where we got the intensity and try to understand. Do we go from high intensity and have a transition and go down to a low intensity. How many gradiances are there between one place and the next as we move back into the lower intensity areas. He doesn’t think we need to go block to block, we just need to look at each place where we want the intensity and generally understand if we are all in agreement, that that could be more or less abrupt on the land use map. Commissioner Dowell asked do we necessarily need to have the individual neighborhoods at our meetings. She said it seems to her, if she understands you correctly, we will be looking at the map and from our map that we have already generated saying this is where we see we could make some tweaks and then go to Google to help us make those tweaks. Commissioner Keesecker said he is not sure in a land use scenario that we need to get too specific but the transition land use is in different parts of the city; zoning in the future we will work that out with form based code or small area plans - we don’t know. All we are trying to say is definitely this is a sensitive transition. Lisa Robertson: said the whole purpose of what you are trying to do is to give yourself a base on which to come back to make the zoning ordinance better at a later date. The goal here is to do something a little more than just say that this is a transition area. It is to set some goals or a vision for what that transition area would accomplish, not being really specific but say whether transition means one thing city wide, or might mean a different thing in different places. It might mean to be able to describe in the Comp Plan what transitionary means because right now we have in our zoning ordinance in various places why the statement of a purpose of a district. They serve as a transition for something but there is no place in the Comp Plan you look though and figure out what was intended to mean so nobody understands how the regulations should accomplish that. Just keep in mind what you are trying to get to here to lay a good foundation later for a good zoning ordinance. Give yourself some information in the Comp Plan and in the land use map that you can then use later. Don’t kick the can down the road again because you don’t have enough information in the Comp Plan to guide you when you want to develop that zoning ordinance vision. Chair Green said part of the problem we have is inconsistency in our interpretations and staff not having the ability to look and analyze it and there being that inconsistency. Even between staff members, if one staff member is here for a while, then we have turnovers in staff and have a different interpretation. She said we are over thinking it and she is not so sure that we have not gone down the right path. She doesn’t see that as a zoning map. 12 Commissioner Lahendro said how did we get to the point of having Google map nights with the neighborhoods because he worries about when that happens they are going to focus on where is that line, is it behind my backyard or between the transition zone and the single family, where is that high density line. Chair Green said the Google maps and the Google tour was supposed to help us look at this heat map that spreads over the track. When you drive down that road you can definitely see that on the south side of that track you have a completely different elevation and a completely different context than the north side of that track. We even talked about Belmont to Water Street. Commissioner Lahendro asked why did we say that it would be good for the neighborhood to be there. Commissioner Dowell said she thought we were inviting the residents because we are still trying to make sure that we have community engagement. Commissioner Lahendro said to continue to have community engagement all through doing the scenario too, when do we stop? Chair Green said we got caught up because we did have a lot of people comment that night and we had thought about the Google tours, had people there and we got caught up and said lets invite the neighborhoods. Commissioner Lahendro said we need to settle on something and be comfortable with it and then go back out and get responses from the community. Commissioner Dowell: said look at where we need to work on our transitional areas Ms. Creasy said potentially you could have that discussion on the 23rd. You had the 30th and the 31st on the agendas and it was a majority and those could potentially be tour days. Chair Green asked Ms. Creasy can she schedule a van. Ms. Creasy said we have a 15 passenger van and people can follow us in cars like they did before. We have to be aware that we could have weather concerns. The commissioners decided a decision will be made on the 23rd regarding the date for the Google tours. Work Sessions will be held on January 29th, 30th, 31st. 9:06 Motion by Commissioner Clayborne, Seconded by Commissioner Keller to adjourn until the 2nd Tuesday in February 13