Planning Commission Work Session February 23, 2021 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM Virtual Meeting Members Present: Chairman Mitchell, Commissioner Russell, Commissioner Stolzenberg, Commissioner Lahendro, Commissioner Palmer, Commissioner Heaton, Commissioner Solla-Yates, Commissioner Dowell Staff Present: Patrick Cory, Missy Creasy, Alex Ikefuna, Joe Rice, Matt Alfele, Carrie Rainey, Lisa Robertson The Chairman called the work session to order at 5:30 PM. Land Use Rezoning Presentation and Discussion/Questions Jennifer Koch, Cville Plans Together – Our goal for today is to really have a robust discussion of this future land use framework that we've sent along in this presentation, starting with some initial discussion about the history of development in the city, existing conditions, previous planning processes, and other aspects that really fed into our development of this future land use framework. This is our first discussion of this initial framework. The framework we're going to present to you is a draft concept. It's meant to be a framework. It's not a full plan. It'll be fleshed out and further defined next time you see it. That'll be defined based on our conversations today, other input we may get from staff, as well as the steering committee. I'll note before we move forward - this is a work session. We do want to hear from you and have this be a really interactive session. We've already gotten several comments. Thank you for that. We'd be happy to discuss those further as we go along. Noting that we have quite a bit to get through and we only have two hours, we don't want to go too far over that. I want to be able to leave some time for community comments at the end and a lot of robust discussion for us all when we get to that future land use framework. I will be playing the timekeeper and trying to keep us going on that. This is our updated schedule reflecting what we hope will be our next steps. That includes having not only a discussion tonight and likely another discussion with you, but having a community discussion about the future land use map as we get into April. That community input point will really be focused on the land use map. It will also be a chance for people to review other revisions to the plan not only to the land use piece but to the other topic specific chapters. As we work toward that we’re meeting with you tonight. We have a meeting with the steering committee on March 8th. We haven't talked about timing of this with NDS yet. If possible, we'd like to have another check in with you before we progress to the full public engagement. Our intent is to have a really thorough process here to talk about this land use map as we move forward. This is on the website if you want to take a closer look. I want to just give some brief thinking points as we go into this discussion tonight as the Cville Plans Together process is really three things that are all related. It's the affordable housing plan piece, which we've talked about a lot and which we're talking with Council about on March 1. We hope that we will have endorsement of that concept. That affordable housing plan piece will then be pulled into the comprehensive plan piece. Once the comprehensive plan is fully adopted, we'll be rewriting the zoning ordinance. The comprehensive plan/future land use map might often look to some like a zoning map but it's not. The future land use map is really meant to be a tool to describe the plans long term vision for the location and character of development in the city. We say “here are 20 to 30 years.” It really depends on the jurisdiction and what 1 folks decide to say is the vision here. That might be something that we talk about tonight. It's also a guide for development. It's not a requirement unless the city chooses to treat it as such. It can be used when evaluating development proposals but it's not legally mandatory. With the comprehensive plan, we said what it is. It's not a rewrite of the zoning ordinance. That will be a next step in this process. We know that the zoning ordinance is really how these things get implemented. It's really of great interest to a lot of people. We want to make sure we have the more holistic concept in this comprehensive plan piece before we talk too much about the specifics of zoning. Ron Sessoms – As you look to the future, it's important to take a look at the past and how the city has evolved over time. Charlottesville has had a very storied past. Charlottesville was founded in 1762 and incorporated shortly after the Civil War. Two major elements that led to the development of the city in its early days was the establishment of UVA and the extension of the Virginia Central Railroad to the city. From that incorporation, there was a series of ordinances enacted that really began to create restrictive covenants within the city that segregated races within the city. This is something that was not uncommon amongst many American cities. It's important to note that none of these ordinances are active today. However, they do begin to tell the story about the demographic distribution throughout the city as it exists today. In the early 1920s, the city enacted its first zoning code, which allowed for up to two units per acre instead of one or two units per property. In the 1950s, the city saw the development of several plans, one being the city's first comprehensive plan in 1958, which led to the city's first urban renewal project, which proposed the extension of the downtown mall and the elimination of Vinegar Hill. The elimination of Vinegar Hill was quite significant. It was an African American community. With that community being razed in 1964, there are residents that are still alive, that remember the urban renewal project that took away their neighborhood. It's important to recognize the history. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad as in the case of Vinegar Hill to understand what some of the major planning projects were that have led to the development of the city over time. By 1991, a new zoning map for the city was introduced which brought in single family zoning within the city. By 2008, the current zoning code was adopted and by 2013, the current comprehensive plan was adopted. This planning process led to the update of the 2013 comprehensive plan. Ms. Koch – We know that it is not an exhaustive list of every zoning amendment. We want to give some major highlights there. Mr. Sessoms – The City of Charlottesville is a compact urban city. It encompasses over 10 square miles with 50,000 residents. It's important to know that Charlottesville does not lie within isolation. The city lays within the county. The urban ring is a joint master plan to area around the city of Charlottesville, which you see on the map to the right with those proposed land uses that was developed as part of the one community project, which served to unify the borders of the city with the county. The plan is calling for many different types of land uses: residential, UVA expansion area, office mixed use areas, the US 29 corridor, the Pantops area, and the south and Western edges of the city that are proposed to become more intensively developed over time. The city is one that is rich with amenities. Charlottesville is the county seat for the county. It is also a primary destination for shopping and other community amenities that bring people to the city. This map begins to show the distribution of community amenities. Downtown is the city's core and serves as the city hub. It is home to retail and places for people to live. There are many civic institutions located downtown. Balancing that is the US 29 corridor to the north, which serves as a major shopping destination for the city and the surrounding county. The Pantops area to the east is an emerging cluster. The new Martha Jefferson Hospital is located in the Pantops area. It's creating a new employment and destination node on the city's eastern edge. Charlottesville is a place of 2 employment. We can see from the census data here that employment is concentrated around downtown. You can see that some of those civic uses are large providers of employment for the city, UVA to the west, and along the US 29 corridor to the north. With the smaller context map to the left of the main image, you can see what happens around the city. If you look to the city and want to understand where there are employment centers that are located within proximity to the city, to the north there is the US 29 corridor and the employment hub continues to the north. You can see on that map around the Martha Jefferson hospital, there's another major employment hub on the east side of the city. Charlottesville is a place where people live. This map here shows the planning districts identified by the city. These are not neighborhoods. These are the city's planning districts that provides opportunity for coordinated planning efforts throughout the city. It's important to understand that where we do have neighborhoods that they're all different. They vary in size, community context, history, and certainly demographics throughout the city. The city is a place to live and it is served by diverse neighborhoods. With this map, which is still under development, you may see some residential properties which were omitted on this map. We are going to make those corrections moving forward. We wanted to just show the diversity of housing types within Charlottesville. You can see there's no complete area that's one singular land use. Low density single family land use is a dominant residential type. However, there are medium density land uses and higher density land uses as well, which make up those neighborhoods. Here, you can begin to see what I mean about single family spectrum of lower density residential development to the spectrum on the other end of the spectrum, which be the higher density residential, which will include apartment buildings, and other more substantive development types. In the middle, we have townhomes duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, which are a medium density land use type that provides affordable housing types to community residents. Charlottesville is a place of transportation. On this map we have identified corridors based on average daily traffic. We know that we are a city that not only depends upon cars to get around, but we're also a transit oriented city. Many of these major corridors have transit facilities. As we begin to look to future land uses, we want to look at where people are and how people move throughout the city. You can see the darker the shade of blue, the more intensive the traffic or intensive the corridor is down to the lighter shades which are less intensive. You can begin to see how the downtown is a major hub. You have major corridors leaving from the hub out to places like US 29, 5th Street, High Street, McIntire Road, and the 250 bypass. The city is a place of open space and nature. Here you can begin to see the distributions of parks and open spaces, which because of the city's compact size, parks and open spaces are relatively walkable within the city. We have larger neighborhood parks primarily located throughout the city center area and to the south. The city's larger, more citywide parts are located to the north. The Rivanna River is a major natural resource on the city's eastern edge. There are a number of tributaries that extend from the river, which provide natural corridors that connect parks and open spaces throughout the city. An important natural resource of the city is topography. The topography within the city of Charlottesville varies. It has a very rolling type landscape that has influenced how the city has developed over time. The city is fairly developed, Most of the city is developed leaving only 3% approximately of the existing acreage of the city undeveloped. As we begin to look at the future land use we have to take into consideration that there's not a lot of opportunities for development in the city. If we can't grow out, we have to grow up. There are a number of projects in the pipeline within the city, including residential, commercial retail, and office. As you can see here, about 1600 residential units are either approved, under review, or under construction within the city, which is a big deal, especially considering that the city has such a shortage of housing. Housing demand is so high in the city. Supportive land uses, including commercial development to support those new residents and existing residents, as well as places for employment. We're seeing an increase in office development as well. 3 Ms. Koch – When we were on the vacant sites slide there was one thing that occurred to me as we were going through those big sites. There's also the consideration of underutilized sites, which obviously can mean many different things. These sites that we're showing on here are including parcels that are completely non-developed, not easily underutilized sites. Is that correct? Ron? Mr. Sessoms – Underutilized sites would make up some of your commercial properties along US 29, which could be prime for redevelopment intensification, which could support the city’s growth goals into the future. Commissioner Palmer – One thing we may want to put on there would be high density UVA housing that is actually in the city. When you look at that map, it does show that density that exists around UVA might not necessarily be private. It is high density housing for students. Mr. Sessoms – That would be a very good addition to our analysis. That would be very useful information to plug in. Chairman Mitchell – A lot of those sites that have not been built on yet have very steep slopes. It would be very expensive and very difficult to get the Planning Commission to approve those sites being developed for residential use. They have critical slopes that lead into critical waterways in the city. Commissioner Russell – What about city owned properties? Would that be an interesting exercise? Ms. Koch – That would be an interesting exercise to look at what that looks like in the context of the rest of the city. Commissioner Dowell – Is there any way we can get some kind of analysis of the breakdown of the price points of the units? I would be interested to know where we are. Ms. Creasy – The information that they have used for this is a development review sheet that we have been maintaining that notes what is under review, what is approved, what is built, and what is under construction. It gives basics. It would give a basic description of what is proposed for that site. It probably wouldn’t get into the details of the price point of units at that point in time. We wouldn’t necessarily have that information until construction is underway. There are few that we would know x number of units would have to meet affordable requirements. Commissioner Dowell – If that was something that we could work on getting that data, that would be greatly appreciated. Mr. Sessoms –There are a number of neighborhood studies and small area studies that have been completed throughout the city. We've noted five key plans or studies that have been implemented throughout the city, which are either approved or underway. They all have underlying themes that provide some similarity. Many of them talk about increasing affordable housing opportunities, attracting and retaining employment in businesses, including or making sure that we preserve the community character within many of these, particularly the neighborhood areas, and the theme of environmental stewardship. Making sure that we are being sustainably proactive as we begin to develop the city over time. Looking at all these five plans, they begin to create some implications of what the future land use might look like within the city. Many of them have a land use component to them. We'll be using that as an important starting point as we begin to look at future land uses within the study areas throughout the city. The affordable housing plan is due for approval soon. It has some key recommendations as far as increasing the affordable housing stock within the city. This is something that we've been taking quite seriously as we begin to look to the future land use. There are four key elements of those 4 recommendations related to land use. They include increasing the production of multifamily within the city, allowing soft density, and single family neighborhoods. That soft density will include things like accessory dwelling units or allowing more than one unit per lot within residential areas. The third point is that the ADUs provided a flexibility in the permitting process to allow the production of more of those affordable units. Inclusionary zoning can increase the production of affordable housing as part of particularly larger new developments. That leads us into a conversation about what the current residential zoning patterns look like within the city today. Ms. Koch – Are there any other plans that you think we missed? Are there any recent efforts that weren’t included in the discussion we just went through? Mr. Ikefuna – Did you add the Rivanna River Corridor Planning? Mr. Sessoms – We have that included as an ongoing effort. Commissioner Solla-Yates – The Regional Transit Plan is crucial. If we can move people from parking to buses, that’s the ‘game.’ Commissioner Stolzenberg – There’s also the Broadway Blueprint Plan that the county is currently working on at the edge of our border. It does require getting through the city to get to that area. It is at the end of Woolen Mills near the redevelopment of Woolen Mills. There is also the UVA/Brandon Avenue Master Plan that will be changing Brandon Avenue Chairman Mitchell – The bullet (on the Affordable Housing Plan Recommendations slide) that talks to multi-family by right. It ends with a comment about speaking to “reverse entrenched patterns of racial segregation.” We just need to be very careful of the way we talk about this. I served for a number of years on the Housing Authority. There were many people that were worried about our community neighborhoods becoming multi-cultural. They were worried about a repeat of Vinegar Hill. We attempted mixed use, mixed income, and very diverse. As a result, we broke up ethnic communities. That made a lot of people nervous when we talked about it that way. It brought Vinegar Hill to people’s minds. Keep that in mind as we think about the way we present that and when we think about our real intent when we think about the need to preserve the character of very important neighborhoods in Charlottesville. Commissioner Solla-Yates – I think that gets to equity. Who gets changed? Who gets the higher density? Is it more equitably shared? Commissioner Palmer – I know that this has come up before with how we talk about this. If this slide were to be presented to stand on its own, there is the layman term for soft density and inclusionary zoning. If I was a member of the public, I don’t if I could define soft density. Ms. Koch – This is a page directly from the Affordable Housing Plan. We just pulled it in to give some of that context. In that plan, there is a glossary with definitions. That’s good for us to remember in the future. We need to make sure that the context is fully in there. This is the version of the recommendations prior to the version we sent in for the Council meeting next week. There has been some wording changes to this slide. Commissioner Lahendro – The University also has a plan for the Ivy Corridor that is talking about hotels, academic buildings, and additional development. That is bound to have an impact on the surrounding communities. 5 Commissioner Palmer – I did have another thought. I don’t know how we want to treat that. It may be a case of updating the UVA boundary that is shown there so that some of those areas that aren’t currently covered in those previous slides by the UVA boundary could have that blue hatch on them. Those are things like the Ivy Corridor, Brandon Avenue, and the health system. They are all UVA owned and being developed as such. I don’t how you think about that. It is basically more accurately showing the UVA footprint. Max Pastore, RHI – I'm just going to speak about the kind of the zoning portion of the residential part of this presentation. Unlike the rest of the material that's been presented up to this point, we really have been talking about just the land uses, right. That's things that are general. What kind of housing do you want to see? What kind of development you want to see at a very high level? It doesn't always have legal power behind it. For this portion that I'll be talking about, we're talking about zoning, which does have legal power to it and does say what can and cannot be built on property. We wanted to just bring this up, because this is really where there's a lot of interest and ideas related to soft density that gets involved here. The idea of soft density is anything that is the stuff that's between your single family house on the one end of the spectrum and your apartment building on the other. That's like quadplexes, triplexes, duplexes, townhomes, and anything that's in that missing middle. The map that you see on the screen speaks to all of the areas that you could theoretically have a residential unit in by the zoning code. Anything in that light yellow cream color is basically anything that's exclusively residential. That's your single family detached all the way to your multifamily. You can't have any sort of mixed use. You can't have apartments on the ground. You can't have commercial on the ground floor. That purple color is where the mixed use comes in. You can still technically have your residential above. It also allows for different uses too. The green stuff that you see on this map is your open spaces and your parks. Blue are your school properties. That does include public and private schools. Digging into the bigger, taking a step deeper into the residential stuff, particularly about your single family, detached housing. The stuff that you think of as not your townhomes, not your duplexes, a house that does not share with anybody else or any other property. That is a good chunk of the city. Looking at just the total area of total properties within the city, it accounts for just over 52% of property in the city. That's a good chunk of property. Anything that's shown in gray within that is anything that is not that zoning class. That's anything that could be from commercial to other types of residential zoning, but it's not single family detached. What we tried to do is overlay on top of that in red. You can see these red kind of squares and dots everywhere. Anything that's red is a property or property parcel that has something other than a single family detached house on it even though the area is technically zoned for that. The red would be things like duplexes, apartments, condos, and others types of small scale multifamily housing. Things that you might not even notice on the ground. Maybe there's a door in the back before a basement apartment or something like that. You just can't tell. Sometimes it is a bit more visible. A lot of what we call missing middle are the types of housing that we don't typically build anymore today or post World War II. There's duplexes, and triplexes, and things like that probably do exist for a variety of reasons within the city within these districts. A good chunk of them are probably pre-World War II. A lot of the stuff that we did traditionally before zoning had a lot of teeth and did a lot of regulation. It's just something to think about when we would talk about the idea of the missing middle housing going forward, whether that's the affordability or housing affordability plan and things like that. This is not a new concept. This is a really old tradition that in fact exists within these residential districts already. This slide has a lot of information on it. I want to just go through quickly some of the methods ‘behind the madness here.’ Basically this map tries to explain analysis of where you could theoretically build an ADU based on the provisional use system that exists today. By provisional meaning, you can't just put in an application and it's approved. You do have to go through a separate little process. It's not like 6 building a single family house necessarily. It's still not terribly cumbersome. The idea here is that basically anything in brown you couldn't build an ADU theoretically. Either the zoning is just not lined up for it. In most cases, what that means in this map is that it's a residential University zone.. You can see that brown solid portion that is showing Venable and JPA and Lewis Mountain. Those are just a specific type of residential zoning that explicitly does not allow for use on it. Everything else that shows that speckly stuff is mostly to do with ownership. Something that we did, as a very blunt instrument to understand whether or not you can build an ADU is whether or not it's owned by an individual. With ADUs, there's an owner occupant requirement. If someone wants to build an ADU on their property, there's a requirement that that person lives either in the main house, the principal dwelling in it, or in the backyard, in that ADU or wherever it is in the property. Anything that's Brown, that's not Venable or Jefferson Park Avenue or Louis Mountain. That would be because it's either owned by an LLC. It's owned by a church. It's owned by some organization that's not an individual? Based on that kind of that high level of analysis, we found that roughly one out of every three residential properties could actually permit an ADU in these zones. Ms. Koch – The future land use map is not zoning. The goal here is to put out a land use map that will lead to potential looking at the zoning. We want to make sure that we know what is in zoning right now as context. Mr. Sessoms – We started with the work that has been done in the past as an important starting point to understand how the city is being thought of as far as future land use planning. This was an analysis completed by the previous Planning Commission that looked at the links between employment and housing and how we can begin to correlate where major points of employment are located within the city, where people live, and connections in between, and how there may be opportunities for new growth nodes within the city. In this diagram, you can see downtown is a major hub. If you remember back, when we show the diagrams that have employment nodes, you can really begin to see downtown as a major employment center for the city. This diagram really begins to illustrate that as a central hub, with a series of smaller community hubs around that center extending all the way out to the US 29 corridor and those periphery areas. We had mentioned that there are emerging employment clusters particularly around the southeast area of the city. As the diagram begins to make correlations of that, the center downtown hub and how connections can be made between the hub and the surrounding secondary hubs throughout the city. Ms. Koch – We know there was a lot of analysis that went on. We have looked at all of the analysis that was done previously. Mr. Sessoms – In 2018, there was some thinking around what the future land use map could be. That thinking is illustrated here. This is the map from 2018. You can see that the areas in purple are higher intensity areas. Areas in yellow are lower intensity. This diagram begins to illustrate some early thinking about where intensity of development can occur throughout the city. The downtown core is more of a high intensity place, stretching along West Main Street towards the University, and then up McIntire Road to the north towards US 250, and along the US 29 corridor, where it is a major destination corridor today. There are underutilized properties along that corridor. These last properties could be low density commercial uses, such as shopping centers that may be ripe for development. This plan really began to look at the area as a potential growth zone. The same along River Road to the east. Then south along Monticello Road at the southern gateway of the city, and then along Fifth Street to the south, and then along JPA to the west of the city. 7 Ms. Koch – Just like the previous map, there was a lot of work that happened during this time. We have been using this map as an example. It was the last map that was last discussed in a larger public process. We know that there has been other work done, not only with the key but also the different levels of intensity. Maps that showed different areas have been discussed in some Planning Commission meetings. Mr. Sessoms – We have completed community engagement as part of the overall comprehensive plan update process. There are key things that have been derived from those community engagement activities. The ones you see in pink specifically relate to land use planning, introducing affordable housing throughout the entirety of the city, recognizing the need for racial equality related to where people live, and avoiding gentrification displacement and recognizing historic land uses, creating and identifying safe, strong, sustainable neighborhoods for everyone. We want Charlottesville to be a very inclusive place. That's something that we need to build into our land use planning and thinking. Utilizing tools for land use and urban design elements, including increasing density where appropriate to allow for flexibility and housing types, promoting walkability and bikeability, and proximity to transit. We know that Charlottesville is a very compact city. There are a lot of opportunities to create a very walkable, transit oriented place. That's something that we recognized as part of this engagement and park connectivity. Charlottesville has a lot of neighborhood parks and trails and other natural resource amenities. We'll make sure that we're building on opportunities for connectivity to those special places. Then as part of the comp plan exercise, we are developing vision statements which serve to guide the different elements of the comprehensive plan. Here are a few vision statements related to land use planning, which are under development. These were the last iterations based on the November 2020 draft. As we begin to hear from you all and progress, the land use planning exercise will update the vision statement as appropriate to make sure that we capture all of the viewpoints that we hear from the community. Ms. Koch – We are currently updating this vision statement as well as the other chapter vision statements based on the input from November/December. This is that previous version that was reviewed with the community. Mr. Sessom – From there, we have begun to distill planning objectives. This is something that will evolve. I think we're going to learn a lot from our discussion tonight that we can begin to refine these objectives and add to them. We have identified six. We want to build upon the land use recommendations included in the city’s previous planning efforts. Many of these small area plans that have been developed as part of the city planning processes have included extensive community engagement. The community has spoken to how they want their neighborhoods to be shaped for the future. We want to use that as a starting point for our land use planning and incorporate as much of that knowledge into the land use planning process as possible. We want to create equitable opportunities for density increases throughout the city and make sure that we're distributing density city wide as much as possible such that it becomes an equitable place. We want to consider increasing density around community amenities such as shopping, employment centers, and transit. We want to promote a walkable, inclusive place. Those are very important elements to make sure that we have connectivity. We want to develop opportunities to infill at vacant properties or redevelop underutilized land within the city. We know that we're very limited on vacant properties. As we mentioned earlier, many of the vacant lands within the city are not really prime for development. Focusing on where there are areas of underutilized properties is going to be important. We want to maximize access to public open spaces, as well as continue the synergy between what's happening in the city and what's happening in the surrounding county areas. 8 Commissioner Solla-Yates – Our bike-pedestrian plan should be considered. Commissioner Stolzenberg – I feel that an explicit objective needs to be in the land use vision statements. Creating opportunities for people to get out of their cars in order to achieve our climate goals. I want to be very clear that the draft land use map is the 2017 draft. Chairman Mitchell – Commissioner Stolzenberg, you think we should be using the 2018 map? Commissioner Stolzenberg – We should be clear about what we’re starting. Our goal here is to make a new map, regardless. We have discussed a lot over the last two years. Our plan was to start where we left off. As I understand it, the last map that we presented in public was at the early December 2018 Council meeting. That was the more intense map. There was a work session after that. We had agreed to roll the map part of it back but keep the legend of the other map. This map with this legend has the right colors in the right places but means different things. Ms. Koch – We have seen the legend with notes on it. Commissioner Solla-Yates – We developed the legend. The thought was that we would develop the map to the legend. We never did that. Commissioner Lahendro – That was the 2017 map from very early on. We were still doing public engagement. That was a draft before we even started meeting aggressively and talking about how we can increase the development densities. We went through a lot of iterations. In November 2018, a draft map shows far denser mapping suggestions for the different neighborhoods. I was bothered by “there was increase in density being proposed.” We had gotten to the point of knowing that we needed to increase density. We were working very hard on that. We had draft maps the direction that we were going in. We were stopped before we finished that direction. Mr. Sessoms – Taking in all the information that we learned, we developed this draft land use framework. This is not a solidified plan. It is just a representation of some early ideas and thinking, combining some of the analysis that we've done, information contained in existing neighborhood plans and small area plans, and the analysis completed by the previous Planning Commission and the maps from 2017. On this map, you can see the corridors that stick out on the map, which we're calling these urban mixed use place making corridors. We're trying to think about ways that we can concentrate development along key areas of the city that could be ripe for development and also begin to support higher density land use, which in the end would support the city's objective to increase affordable housing throughout the city. We identified a series of linear corridors throughout the city, one being the US 29 Corridor, JPA, Preston Avenue, McIntire Road, West Main Street, High Street, Fifth Street, and 250 towards Pantops as major corridors that we believe could be the beginnings of areas that could support higher intensity development. The width of those corridors for that more intensive development could be one block from the centerline of the road or it could be a five minute walk. I think the details of how density develops along those corridors are to be determined. We want your feedback on that. We have identified corridors that could support higher development intensity. Connecting those corridors or anchoring those corridors, such as downtown, the Strategic Investment Area (SIA), US 29, the River Road corridor, Fifth Street, the Fontaine area, and Belmont; we've identified these areas as potential major nodes. Thinking about the analysis that the previous Planning Commission created, where you were beginning to create linkages between housing and places of employment, you begin to see how that is starting to flesh itself out. The US 29 and downtown areas being those major employment hubs of the city. We have these mixed use corridors that begin to connect all of these different high intensity nodes 9 together. We also included smaller, more neighborhood scale nodes. You can see the smaller circles, distributed throughout the map are creating those secondary neighborhood scale nodes so that we can get some sense of place or places of orientation within some of these neighborhoods that could create places where you can get a gallon of milk or you can have other employment, small employment type opportunities. We wanted to create opportunities outside of the major nodes for those community amenities. Those corridors that connect the major nodes are places of transit. All of these corridors have or currently recommend having transit access. We are proposing more intensive uses along corridors with transit. We're also taking advantage of those underutilized commercial properties, particularly along US 29. We have some of that type of land use along River Road where it's less developed and along McIntire Road, in the industrial area, just to the west of McIntire Road, where some of those properties are already beginning to turn over use. This was a preliminary idea, thought dump that we developed. It was just to begin to steer the conversation and give us something to talk about moving forward. I think it would be great if we could get your initial feedback on some of these initial ideas. Ms. Koch – I wanted to see if you (Ron) wouldn’t mind speaking briefly about the rationale for where the smaller nodes are located just to make sure everyone is aware. There may be other ones you all would identify. You might suggest adjusting these locations. Can you give some background on the placement of those? Ms. Sessoms – Along the Cherry Avenue Corridor, we have identified a neighborhood node at that location. It is a result of the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan, which called for a small neighborhood node with mixed uses. We have identified the Monticello Avenue Gateway. On the south end of the city, there are some underutilized properties. There is an exit ramp from I 64 at that location. That could be a prime gateway. Cherry Avenue, Monticello Avenue gateway, Cherry Avenue south along the Cherry Avenue corridor, there may be an opportunity to create another node, a small neighborhood oriented place that could begin to anchor the Southwest area outside of the Cherry Avenue neighborhood. We have Woolen Mills, which has already been identified as a place that could become a community place. Downtown Belmont is an area that already has some commercial development. We think there's an opportunity to build upon that by creating a neighborhood scale place there. You can see in the mapping that the Preston Avenue/High Street area south has a lot of potential for infill development. Looking north from High Street and Preston Avenue, particularly along the US 250 corridor. Because of the urban form, these are a lot of low density residential communities with more suburban land use configurations. We did want to identify some places that could support more of a small neighborhood node condition. With Dairy Road, there's a ramp from US 250 that could be an opportunity. With Locust Avenue, we've identified that as a potential node. Where the nodes may be and the intensity of development, these nodes are to be determined. We did want to identify places on the plan that could support these more neighborhood oriented places within these existing neighborhoods. Ms. Koch – There was a question from Commissioner Heaton about the UVA node. What might that be called? Mr. Sessoms – The bubble for UVA is a product of the employment center node. We just diagrammatically located a circle because it's a major node on the western periphery of the city. I think some of our discussion about including those areas around UVA that has the higher intensity residential uses today. We want to pull that in. UVA and the area around UVA could certainly be a node that could support more intensive uses. We did identify UVA and the area around UVA is an area that could be supportive of that employment node. 10 Commissioner Palmer – That makes sense. It is a question for this map of whether you want to have it be that lavender color. Commissioner Heaton – We talked a couple months ago that it is a unique feature of the city. Other university towns do have zoning and/or nomenclature that talk about the interface between the city and the university and some things that might be different in that area. I am glad to see that it is a different color. I don’t think it should be just because of employment. I do think that you have to treat it as a possibility for what is permissible and what is not permissible. Ms. Koch – Commissioner Russell noted that the Woolen Mills node appears to be over the cemetery. We should reconsider that location on the map. Commissioner Russell – It does bring up a bigger question about the rationale behind creating nodes. I didn’t know if the intent was to have it closer to Woolen Mills new development or Meade Park. There is sometimes a farmers market at Meade Park. I don’t know what the rationale is there. With the Locust Avenue gateway, that seems to be in a location of a very tight ramp at 250. I am a little confused. Mr. Sessoms – With Woolen Mills, I think diagrammatically we should shift that circle over. It's semi industrial. With parts of that area, there are some large parcels in that location. We thought that there would be an opportunity to consider some mix of employment and perhaps residential uses as part of that area as an overall concept. With the Locust Avenue gateway, we're being visionary. This is a forward thinking plan. We have not set a horizon year for what the comprehensive plan would be. Perhaps in the future, if we have a plan that says, we want to create a place here at this location, maybe we can begin to take steps to make that happen. It may be a tight interchange now. If the conditions are ripe enough and it's something that we want to make happen, perhaps we can identify opportunities to make improvements that can make that implementation possible. We figured that some of these nodes may want to take out, we can certainly do that and we can move them around. We're certainly open to those possibilities. Commissioner Lahendro – I want to point out that in the Planning Commission's work from a couple years ago, we were proposing or in the process of adding a category called neighborhood amenity. What you're proposing here is something similar or inspired by that discussion? We were actually identifying areas of the city where it would go within without specifying exactly where it would go but recognizing neighborhoods that needed to have a low density, commercial use within pedestrian scale walking distance commercial center to serve the neighborhoods and not the city at large. Mr. Sessoms – That's exactly why I want to include these smaller circles which are juxtaposed to the larger downtown core in the strategic investment area. We did envision these to be smaller scale, neighborhood oriented, contextual places that could support small employment on perhaps some neighborhood retail, a place to buy a gallon of milk, etc., that could support these neighborhoods, especially if we begin to think about increasing soft density. One color that I did not discuss much on this plan is the yellow. We're showing equal distribution of soft density as one approach throughout the city. If we begin to think about soft density, more units per lot, etc. the smaller neighborhood scale places become ever important. We've now created these walkable places that support the increase of density within these neighborhoods or increases of populations within these neighborhoods. Ms. Koch – With the soft density, it could work out. For example, on the future land use map, there is broad, soft density throughout the city similar to this. In the zoning rewrite, the next step, there can be 11 discussions about how that looks, Soft density, which is a term we want to make sure we define that every time we talk about it. Soft density is basically missing middle housing. It's everywhere from those 80s duplex, triplex, and quadplex. That's why we say soft density because it's shorter than saying that. When we say soft density in the yellow here, that encompasses all of those. We're not saying that all these areas should all have a quadplex, for example. It might be that in the zoning. There's a broader discussion about where those specific areas might be. Did we respond to what you had mentioned about the previous process? Were you concerned about us showing specific locations as opposed to allowing more flexibility? Were you just wanting to see where we were coming from? Commissioner Lahendro – I was just pointing out the difference. We had a similar idea and saw a similar need to what you’re recognizing. I am re-assured with that. Commissioner Stolzenberg – I'd like to better understand what the placement and the size of each of these nodes means. It used to be on downtown proper. As we saw from our jobs map a couple slides ago, downtown is the very largest node everyone is super attracted to. To me, it doesn't really make sense to include this area, just above or to not include. Whereas, it's basically the same dimensions for downtown as it is for McIntire Road, one of them is the job core of the whole city. I think we also need to pay attention to some of those corridors, especially McIntire Road and the northern part of Fifth Street to the topography. I think that makes it pretty difficult to do significant development along there. It seems to me you guys base this off of where the purple areas are in the previous map. That's forming the basis. I just want to be really clear that the purple that was near McIntire Road there, that was the Harris Street kind of industrial corridor. The very northern part of that is McIntire Plaza. There are apartments and retail and stuff. Downtown Belmont is actually more over here. We have this purple area over here, there's retail. There's that big scrap yard. I think that's maybe what you're going for, with the Woolen Mills dot there. I just want to be clear that there is more in this area. I also feel like Avon Street is a little bit omitted here. There's a lot going on in the county on their side of Avon. I think that probably makes sense as something of a corridor. I also feel that Cherry Avenue is seen more as a corridor. There's more than that small node there. I just want to be clear that we have a hierarchy of what those things mean, and that they do mean different things in different places. Mr. Sessoms – I think you're absolutely right. On this first iteration of the framework, we're being specific and unspecific at the same time. We generically drew some of these ovals and areas as very general, without getting too precise. Moving forward, we will begin to scale to fit these areas where appropriately needed. You pointed out downtown Belmont. I think that's a really good observation. That circle was getting at encompassing the existing downtown Belmont area, as well as some of those underutilized properties near the railroad tracks. We drew a generic circle to encompass the whole thing. I think you're right. When we get into the next iteration, we really need to shape these places more according to the land existing conditions, taking into account typography, and other constraints that will begin to refine these preliminary recommendations. Commissioner Stolzenberg – I guess the other things I'd add is the Ivy Corridor. UVA is going to develop a lot of that. With the parts that are still private, it's going to make sense to put some more density there and at the Greenbrier intersection with the county. With the corridors, I almost wonder if it always makes sense to have a full link all the way along the corridor. I can imagine JPA coming down JPA Extended, eventually getting to the really big retail area at the end of Fifth Street. With the 12 beginning parts of JPA, I can see it being part of a denser corridor. I don't know about the whole extent of it. Maybe somewhere down the line, the Beach Club could make sense as a node in the more distant future. I guess I'd like to understand what the rationale is for a corridor rather than just nodes. I hesitate a little bit at saying we want to put all new density and apartments and stuff on high traffic corridors. There are good reasons that you like really high traffic. Car corridors are not created to live on. Putting all the houses there means that a lot more people are subjected to those negative externalities. Mr. Sessoms – Those are really good observations. The rationale behind the corridors is we're creating these placemaking corridors that connect these major nodes or places points of destination. You have along the US 29 corridor where you are coming from the north out of the county. If you want to get downtown, you would likely take either Preston Avenue to get downtown or US 250. McIntire and US 250 is a limited access roadway. We didn't include it as a corridor. Your major gateway could include McIntire, which is a direct point of access from 250 to downtown. They begin to create the front door image of the city of Charlottesville right now. You pointed out that some of these major corridors aren't as attractive as they could be today. As we begin to implement projects along these corridors, there's opportunities for streetscape enhancements and other placemaking opportunities to create. They really define what those placemaking corridors are and how we can create more transit oriented corridors. Perhaps in the future Preston Avenue could have a BRT or some other transit oriented use. We just started to identify the makings of what some of these transit oriented places could be. I think you made another good point about corridors versus nodes. Perhaps Preston Avenue is not just one linear, high intensity place. Maybe there are places along Preston Avenue that are defined as an opportunity. I think that's something that we will explore. Ms. Koch – On Preston, we know there's been a lot of discussion about Preston and Grady. If you all have opinions on that, whether that should be a node, I know it was in previous plans. It was shown in some plans as a node. That's building on what Ron said about Preston. I'm glad you mentioned the transit. It's not only the corridors are where transit exists now. It can also then help focus investment in transit as well as bicycle and pedestrian amenities. We hear where you're coming from Rory with why you always want to focus where people are already driving. That can also lead to further improvements and non-motorized. Commissioner Palmer – I would like to get some more people’s opinion on the Cherry Avenue stuff that Rory was talking about. That corridor might warrant urban mixed use placemaking corridor status based on the small area plan that has been developed. Along that line, the Cherry Avenue node might rise to concentrated mixed use node. It feels a little bit bigger some of these other ones. Ms. Koch – We can also consider having different scales of corridors, especially if it is identified in the small area plan. We will be looking at incorporating that assuming that all moves forward. We will want to make sure it is identified in some way. That might be one way to consider it. Does anyone else have thoughts on Cherry Avenue? Commissioner Solla-Yates – I agree with Bill. I have my own point to make. Chairman Mitchell – With Woolen Mills, what are you suggesting as it relates to Cherry Avenue? Are you wondering why Cherry Avenue is getting a little more attention? 13 Commissioner Palmer – Based on the small area plan that has been developed for Cherry Avenue, it feels that it might rise to a higher level than something like Woolen Mills. Chairman Mitchell – If you have been over in that area, you’ve seen how much commercial development is going on over there. You have seen how much space is there that could be developed. I would hate to demote Woolen Mills. I know that we are focused on Cherry Avenue because we have lots of people that live there. Commissioner Palmer – I wasn’t trying to demote Woolen Mills at all. I think there is a lot of opportunity over there as well. Maybe it’s more of a downtown Belmont/Woolen Mills type zone in there. I feel that Cherry Avenue isn’t getting enough attention. Chairman Mitchell – I agree. I just don’t want to promote Cherry Avenue at the detriment of Woolen Mills. There is so much that can be done over there. So much is already happening there. Commissioner Solla-Yates – I'm thinking about of major nodes, major land uses, big places on the map places people go for work or for other reasons. The two that jumped out to me that I don't see here are UVA Medical Center. It’s just gigantic. It's the most intensive land use in the region. I think in many ways it should be distinct from UVA. Charlottesville High School has a huge footprint. It's all government owned land, gigantic parking lot. I think single family zoning around it. It’s just a massive opportunity. Mr. Sessoms – We’ll take a look at that. I think those are good observations for additions. Commissioner Stolzenberg – I would definitely recommend taking a look at some of those later maps that we made. We were specifically thinking about where to put new nodes. Particularly where to put smaller little mixed use things, neighborhood amenity type things. I think we had used like hatch marks or something. There could be some good ideas in there that we came up with two years ago. Ms. Koch – I know we're having some general discussion. I just want to note that we did have three discussion questions in the agenda. I'm just going to say them and then we can continue the discussion. You can respond to those if you'd like. The questions we were thinking about was: Do you think this general framework aligns with the discussions that have taken place over the last year? Chairman Mitchell – If you want us to “land the plane” on each question, maybe we can take the questions individually. Ms. Koch – Does anyone have thoughts on whether this will align generally with the discussions that have taken place in this process? Commissioner Heaton – I was remembering the discussion about having a different type of designation for the UVA area. I like it. Commissioner Stolzenberg – I'd like to piggyback on that. That fits into the next question too. I do think we should really think about the UVA area in a special way. I think one of the biggest concerns that people have all over the city and particularly in neighborhoods adjacent to UVA that are not UVA neighborhoods is this idea of UVA students just trickling out and expanding and putting pressure on surrounding neighborhoods. As UVA grows, as it did a lot over the last decade by over 2000 people on 14 grounds, it's going to continue to grow. We have areas that are student areas like JPA and the Rugby Road area. There's some little tucked in historic areas that are like professor oriented in there as well. If we can take those existing student areas and fit a lot more students and stuff in there, that's going to relieve a lot of that student pressure on the outside. In a lot of ways, I think we've seen that with the West Main developments. We've heard from the school district that there are a lot more families in 10th and Page and in Fifeville where students were spilling out. I think what people dislike a little bit about the West Main development is that we let the students spill out of their existing areas. We took some new areas and we said these are students now. I think people even maybe dislike that more than maybe the built form of that area if it were not students. I think we really overlooked those areas, such as 14th to Rugby, and JPA and Fontaine. As UVA continues to grow, I'd like to see us put a lot more effort into allowing more growth there so that they stop spilling out. Commissioner Palmer – I think that’s probably a good point that Rory just made. Those areas that he mentioned were upzoned. It did result in larger apartment buildings along JPA, Rugby/14th Street area. It sounds like you are saying to re-examine that. Commissioner Stolzenberg – Something that came up last March but ended up getting derailed by COVID was with a student housing developer. Even in those up zoned areas, like along 14th Street and the University high density zones, it doesn't even allow the highest densities in our use matrix or even the two highest densities in our use matrix. A lot of those are olderish, large parking lot, what we think of as our R3 zone now. There are also areas in there that that didn't really get up zoned so much. There's even some that are R1u and R2u. They're full of students. Those zones ban any house with more than three unrelated people. Every single one of them has six or more unrelated students living in them, which just ends up bad all around. They have no leverage to the landlord to report violations to the city. The landlord can say, oh, you're living here illegally anyway. We can just evict you or the city will kick you out. I've heard some horror stories there. It's bad. It makes you wonder why we are preserving single family homes that are just packed full of students anyway. Commissioner Russell – We should also take into consideration the legacy of the UVA hospital property encroaching on historically African American neighborhoods. That leads to bigger picture questions that we don’t have to get into right now. When the entire area is shown as soft density everywhere, how do we specify what area’s density may be threatening to those communities versus where it may be appropriated and targeted? Ms. Koch – That gets to the third question that we had. I would say we can talk about that now. On your UVA point, point well taken. We know there's a legacy not only with Vinegar Hill but Gospel Hill as well. Keeping that in mind, I think it is a good point. As far as the soft density conversation goes, we touched on that briefly earlier. We've got this showing all over now as an underlay to this whole map. It could be that the comprehensive plan explores outlining specific areas that could be threatened by the higher end of soft density. It could also be that there's an underlay of soft density in the comprehensive plan. The zoning can then take on that and look at how we might target certain types of density on that scale of soft density to certain areas or make sure that some areas are more protected, if need be. That's my vague answer to your question. The other piece of this that I want to make sure we remember is that the affordable housing plan exists in tandem with this. Land use is one piece of this. We know that the comprehensive planning land use map changes and zoning changes that can lead to potential 15 displacement and other impacts. There are subsidy tools, tenant’s rights tools, and other tools that are being proposed that can both help. I think that can help to strengthen some communities against those on unintended or other impacts of those zoning changes. It can help people benefit from those changes as well. I think we're keeping those in mind with the land use changes. I think we need to consider that continuing it as we go forward here how we can make sure that we're considering those kinds of potential consequences of soft density. Commissioner Russell – That’s exactly the conversation I am interested in continuing to have. Commissioner Solla-Yates – I just pasted into the chat a new study from Portland from their upzoning to fourplexes. It actually prevented displacement. I was pleasantly surprised by it. Ms. Koch – I thought that was an interesting study. I saw you posted on Twitter. I took a look. Portland, as many of you may know, did look at changes to their single family zoning. They then looked at what are the potential impacts of that? They noted that it was less than they might have anticipated. There were certain neighborhoods that were more potentially impacted. They talked about potential mechanisms to mitigate those circumstances. I think that is a conversation we just had. We need to keep that in mind as we move forward. I would suggest folks take a look at that. I found it interesting. Commissioner Lahendro – How does this conceptual draft that you have dovetail or not dovetail with the urban ring/one community plan or study that has been done? Mr. Sessoms – I can speak to that. That's something that we definitely consider as part of the development of the framework. With the US 29 corridor, you can see that this development bubble extends out past the city. US 29 is shown in the urban ring area as a mixed use corridor supporting higher intensity use; certainly higher intensity than what's shown today. We did extend that mixed use opportunity into the city taking into consideration that urban ring recommendation and again near Fontaine. There are recommendations for more office and industrial uses on the west side of the city. Continuing that JPA corridor out towards those potential future uses is something that we consider the same as Fifth Street. The community college is located on the south side of the city. Providing opportunities for people to live close to the community college, as well as more office and institutional uses planned on the south side of the city. With the Pantops area on our amenities maps, we call that out as a potential major growth area or another area of more intensive development similar to the US 29 and downtown area anchored by the hospital. We did extend that 250 corridor. You can see here it extending from River Road out to the edge of the city that leads back to downtown via High Street. We did try to make connections, where possible to where the urban ring is showing more intensive development along the city's edge. Ms. Koch – I also want to add that with the affordable housing plan, we coordinated with the county. Our intention, with this, is that we will have a discussion with the county Planning Commission as we move forward here. It is certainly a recommendation with the affordable housing plan to coordinate with the county as that moves forward. That will be our recommendation with this as well. Commissioner Lahendro – I am glad to hear that. It would be short sighted to be thinking of only the 10.4 square miles that we have. 16 Commissioner Solla-Yates – Looking again at Preston there. Preston's got a weird history. I hesitate to even bring it up. During urban renewal, it was supposed to be a six lane highway. The neighborhood freaked out. They said ‘no we don't want to be a six lane highway.’ We want to be a neighborhood. We scrapped the plan. We killed the project. We stopped that wide highway right there at Washington Park. This weird triangle thing that's there with it at 10th Street. From then on, it wasn't a major corridor for the city. It was a neighborhood corridor. It's been designated a neighborhood corridor in streets that work. It's an uncomfortable history. It's definitely a story of privilege and race. The lower income and African American community on Preston did not get that luxury. They got knocked out. Don’t know how to handle that. I am highlighting it as an issue. Mr. Sessoms – We also want to keep in mind intensity can occur in different forms. It may not be wholesale wiping out a block to make way for a larger development. It could be infill for a larger lot, residential uses along Preston Avenue. Thinking about opportunities to infill will densify existing lots. Density can take place in different forms. That’s something we want to consider along all of these corridors. Commissioner Lahendro – What are the next steps? Have you thought about what the final goal is? Are we going to have a land use future map that has hard boundaries to the different zones/districts within it or a fading boundary? Where is this going? Ms. Koch – That’s a good question. Our intention is not to have a land use map that looks like this. This is just a framework for discussion. The version that you all used in 2017/2018 was more of a gradual scale of intensity. This is something we have talked about and whether we should show more solid lines. Mr. Sessoms – You're bringing up a really good point. I started to allude to it and point to thinking about for instance the corridors. How wide? How far back do we go from these corridors? How defined are we? Is it one parcel width along these corridors? Is it one block? Are we tearing development back based on a five minute walk more intensive along the corridor? Is there more medium and moderate intensity moving away from the corridor based on the five minute walk? I think that's something that we think should talk about now. Whether or not we want to show something that's more definitive keeping in mind that this land use map will be used as the basis for the zoning map, which will be more detailed, and begin to break these areas down in a more fuller context. For us it would be interesting to hear from you all how you envision the future land map to look. The maps that we've seen from 2017 to 2018 have been more of a faded spectrum of intensity of uses. We know from the 2013 comp plan, we had more parcels aligned future land use recommendations. We think that's probably the way that we want to lean towards. I think that's a good point of confirmation from the group. Commissioner Lahendro – I was going to turn it around. I was looking to you all, the professionals, to make recommendations to us based upon your experience in other areas and other cities. I was hoping that we were going to get some guidance, recommendations from you all. Chairman Mitchell – I am wondering if Ron or Jenny thinks that a faded map gives us more flexibility. Don’t we want more flexibility? Commissioner Stolzenberg – My recollection was that the reason we moved to the faded map in the very beginning of this process was because the rigidity of that 2013 map was causing some problems. 17 You'd be right across the street or right next to a different designation in the comp plan. Even though it made basically as much sense for your parcel to be the same as the next door parcel is just because that happened to be where they drew the line. When we come to review zoning decisions, we have to say, “Oh, this parcel is x designation. The faded or the transition reflects the fact that when we're thinking about this, we're really are thinking about the broader. What is it near? What amenities can be accessed from this place? It's not such a parcel by parcel thing. Of course, the zoning ultimately will be. Commissioner Solla-Yates – It’s a big issue. Generally, I am not a fan of the parcel by parcel land use map that we have and that we are still working off of from 2013. I am not clear on the best way away from that. Chairman Mitchell – Can I get Ron’s and Jenny’s professional opinion? Mr. Sessonm – I think you made a really good point on flexibility. When we show the faded gradient from the corridors, those areas touch so many residential areas. The neighborhoods outside of the corridors are so dynamic. When we do have more of the faded technique, it allows more flexibility in the zoning planning process to define how the more intensive development along the corridors step down to the existing neighborhoods. It does provide for that. Getting down to a more parcel based of a recommendation, we can be much more specific. Thinking about this map, if we were to say that we want soft density at some scale throughout the entirety of the city. This is specifically where we want more intensive uses based on those parcel boundaries taking into account underutilized properties, property size, and where more concentrated development is taking place today. We can begin to define the corridors. Maybe there's a maximum of three or four colors that we use. A yellow for existing residential, a purple for intensive/more high intensity uses along the corridors and the nodes, and maybe a more moderate and a lighter purple to show the gradation from the center line of the streets. I think it's something that we're going to have to investigate moving now that we have a general consensus of this being a general idea. With the comments that we received today, we'll go back and refine this framework. We will look at how the map is structured. I think that's something that we need to continue to develop in house as to how we want to show those boundaries, whether it's faded or defined. Chairman Mitchell – I would like to go back to Commissioner Lahendro. He has been the leader of this effort for a number of years. Commissioner Lahendro – With the lay people who were on the Commission years ago, that was our thinking. We were concerned with hard boundaries having one property on one side of the boundary saying “Why am I not in it?” and one on the other side complaining about being in it. When we were wanting to get across general locations and not wanting to get down to going parcel by parcel. That was our thinking. I am glad to hear that professionals are thinking similarly. Lee Einsweiler – I perhaps would be pushing back the other direction. Jody. If zoning is plan implementation, then make a plan and have the zoning implemented. That's not to say there shouldn't be a one to one zoning district to land use map, direct translation. There should always be two or three categories available that are options for that area. There might be height options within those general categories. There should always be a palette of things that you can do. I think the majority of the community, especially when you're talking about the difference between pure residential areas, corridors, or nodes of commercial activity, they want to know where the boundaries for those are today. 18 Not to say that they shouldn't change. Not to say that they don't have options to be different in the future. They'd rather have you amend the plan map and then move forward with the zoning. Have the more general conversation at the plan map level. If you're going to do something radical enough, because otherwise, what we typically see is very clever. Typically attorneys wield the plan, against the surrounding neighborhoods, wishes, etc. You really get a very problematic conversation. I would rather have a one-time problematic conversation at the time of this adoption. The big difference in this process we're going through right now is we do intend to follow along with a change to the zoning map right behind this. That is a blessing and a curse, as you all know. It is an opportunity for us to very clearly say, ‘here's where we're starting to implement the future land use map.’ We can continue to implement the future land use map as we go on. A softer boundary that reaches into a single family neighborhood from a corridor, for example, is really hard for neighborhoods to understand. If you take the block face along the road, if you take the full block, if you take a block and a half and change as the zoning typically would on a backlot line, all those things make some sense to people. Not drawing those kinds of boundaries, in many ways, seems to leave their neighborhood edges without protection. That is worrisome. That has been our personal experience in implementing plan maps through zoning. Ms. Koch – Given that we're close to the end of the meeting. I don't know if we want to have an extended discussion about this, I think we can take the input that you all gave, recognizing that you would maybe prefer that more fluid boundary. Taking these notes from Lee into account. I wonder if we can give some thoughts before we move forward to all of you on how we think that might work. Our proposed approach would be that there is some sort of combination of approaches that we can use here. I don't want us to get too much in the weeds tonight and not have time for comments. Commissioner Lahendro – I appreciate what Lee is saying. What I worry, though, is that it's going to be difficult to make significant changes in our future land use map, if we're going to be stuck with hard boundaries that will be falling back to what they are now. Because to do anything more aggressive is just going to create a lot of controversy and a lot of questions. We're just going to have to go parcel by parcel. I worry that it's going to create tremendous issues for us if we try to do something more expansive and then put hard boundaries on it. Commissioner Heaton – I would also say Jody that it's going to come down to that in the end anyway. Where we are anticipating changes, growth, height variances, and extended things like that. I think we do need to say where that's going to happen. In some way, you can just say to a property owner adjacent to this space that is changing will have options that people who are not adjacent to it will not have. Because we need to identify those places where we think we need to go up because we can't go out anymore. Commissioner Lahendro – I am seeing the future land use plan as a step in that direction, not the final direction in itself. Commissioner Stolzenberg – I think what we found last time is that we wrestled with this idea of transition zones where we go from the dense center and the mid rises down to your smaller apartment buildings, your smallplexes, the oneplexes, the fourplexes of most residential areas. I think we did realize that we do need to differentiate that transition and that softer gradient from the use and the potential for mixed use and commercial use. In one of our last meetings, we ended up going back to 19 specifically designating mixed use or commercial use areas with those hatch marks as a category separate from the intensity of the built form. To me, it sounds like maybe that is the thing that residential neighborhoods worry about most. Commissioner Dowell – I also agree with what was said. We do need to have some designation of the zoning change from where the intense density to the lower intensity. Make sure that our key is very definitive on describing to the lay person in just a quick glance what each zone represents in intensity. I definitely agree with Ron. I also think that we need things to be delineated. We can’t say this is the delineation. If you're across from it, adjacent to it, then we can do special circumstances. I think we need to draw our lines, figure out what we want to define as what, and then stick to that. We do need to have the delineation so that people will know. If we are planning then let's plan and then implement and not plan, withdraw, or go back on the plan. I do feel like we're on a good path to that. Commissioner Solla-Yates – Just a couple of principles we talked about in 2018 that I recall. There shouldn’t be radically differences directly facing each other. Lower lying areas can handle more height. Very high areas on ridges makes it look much bigger visual impression. Commissioner Dowell – We were referring to the Habitat site on Harris Street. That site sits down below street level. To have a higher building there would be appropriate versus right across the street where the GoCo is at street level. Chairman Mitchell – There is one thing that would be of value to me and Ms. Thomas. It’s going to be important we handle this differently when we talk about the equity issue. Maybe at some point, there’s value in your coming to the Commission to talk about the equity issues and how you are planning to articulate the equity issues as it relates to Charlottesville. We would benefit mightily from that. Latoya Thomas – We have started some preliminary conversations around what the conversation publicly around use and particularly bringing in the idea of equity and what that means in the land use context. Chairman Mitchell – With the gentrification that would happen in Vinegar Hill, desegregation and how you manage that without haunting people with what happened. That’s going to be pretty important. Commissioner Dowell – I notice that you said the community engagement process is over. I would be interested to know your outcomes from that community engagement. I just want to compare it to the information and the demographics of the people that responded from the first round of Planning Commission questions and community outreach and how it compares to the information and demographics that was gathered this time. That’s important. The next time we have this comp plan update, we’re not back at square one. I would like to know what you did differently and how they responded differently. That way we can know that we are not reinventing the wheel. Ms. Koch – I would say that the community engagement process is not over. The second phase is over. We do have summaries of community engagement from the first phase in May and June. We have a summary of the second phase. We do have documents that summarize the activities that were completed as well as what we heard and who we heard from and the demographic information. I would be happy to make sure that you have those. I would be happy to pull together a brief summary and how they compare. 20 Commissioner Dowell – I definitely wasn't expecting you to have that. That one thing is going to be a learning tool for everyone moving forward. If we had to hire a consultant because we couldn't hit the benchmark, I want to make sure that if the consultants hit the benchmark, what did they do to hit the benchmark? Did we really reached the demographics that we were looking for? That was the initial halt in the comp plan update anyway. When we're back in this situation with any of our community engagements moving forward, your information will be our golden rod. Ms. Koch – The best time to talk about that is when we come to you with the next phase of the engagement. Chairman Mitchell – One last thing, I won't go into too much detail on this because I think the information is embargoed for a while. UVA whose footprint is probably 1/3 of what is in the city is beginning to think about affordable housing. They're beginning to think about that beyond just what goes on with the students at UVA. I can't go into lots of detail, but it's embargoed. I would ask you to reach out to Bill and Alex to connect you with the consultants that we brought on board at UVA to begin thinking about affordable housing so that you are able to factor the work that you guys are doing into the work UVA is doing as well. Ms. Koch – We are certainly aware of the more general goals that they have. It would be great to get more specifics if we can. Commissioner Palmer – As you guys know, this was announced about a little under a year ago, about a week before all the lockdowns from COVID happened as a UVA initiative to support affordable housing in the region. It got put on the back burner until we got our act together. At this point there's been a consultant hired to start. They've been referred to as like a Sherpa in a way to help us through this process, help UVA understand what would make the most sense. Having made a statement of intent to have this, to do this, and how do we implement it? I know that project process is just starting. It goes hand in hand with everything that we have been talking about. Mr. Ikefuna – I think Mr. Palmer noted the status of the UVA process. We had a LUPEC meeting last week. I think we were provided an update in terms of the hiring of the consultant by UVA. Having said that, as we move forward, I think RHI and staff will have to touch base with the University architect regarding some of the projects and initiatives they have on the Ivy Corridor. There's a lot going on at UVA right now in terms of planning and development. We have to catch up with that and make sure we are speaking the same language. Chairman Mitchell – We can’t talk much about it yet. I think by the middle of March the information will no longer be embargoed. I think there’s value in you chatting with their consultants. I suspect that you know who they are and will enjoy working with them. Mr. Ikefuna – I think we already had some consultations with UVA and the UVA Foundation regarding development and housing. We will continue that discussion as we go forward. 1. Public Comments Bill Emory – I'm a huge fan of planning. I hope that you guys can give the members of the public some tips on how this plan will be modified as we go along. With Woolen Mills, we first asked for a small 21 area plan in 1988 and still haven't gotten it. It's very disturbing to see the node in the middle of the graveyard. We're ready to talk. We have a lot of information. We have 50 years of institutional memory. Jenny and all the planners are our favorite people. We look forward to working with them. It's just really unnerving so far. Kimber Hawkey – I was really glad to hear Lee talk about the impact on neighborhoods because it often seems like a lot of these decisions are being made from the outside and being imposed on neighborhoods. I live in the Belmont neighborhood with my husband. We're questioning the amount of extensive community engagement that has been done. I know that we filled out a survey online. We didn't see anything about mentioning historic preservation, tree preservation, and green space preservation in the materials. I know other people are concerned about that. We're concerned not to see those issues being raised as well. It would be helpful for the community to see the information. What percentage of the population actually gave input here? How does that break down per neighborhood? As I look at the map, I see the designation of quote unquote, downtown Belmont. That's something that was imposed on this neighborhood probably starting maybe 18 years ago. When we moved into Belmont, there was no quote unquote, downtown Belmont. It really comes off as the city looking to coop our historic residential neighborhood as an extension of the downtown mall, which it is not. It is a neighborhood in and of itself, and always has been. I would suggest maybe something like Belmont center instead, because we are not downtown. Listening to Belmont center being designated as a major node is concerning. How do the residents who have lived in Belmont for generations feel about that? We have not seen the getting a gallon of milk thing happen here in Belmont. We've seen a lot of restaurants that have negatively impacted us with the destruction of trees, noise, the smell, stopped up pipes, and issues of parking. Maybe one or two small restaurants would have done this area well. There's just been a lot of push for that restaurant type of business that brings in all people from outside the neighborhood. We've never seen a small area plan for Belmont, as Mr. Emery pointed out. Where is that? If it doesn't exist, why hasn't that been done? How do we involve the neighborhood in that? We're concerned to see the purple as high intensity areas. It seems to be that floodplain is still in that purple area. We have questions about that. We would love to see the emails of the Planning Commission back on the website so that people can send emails and have more of a real conversation with the planners. Josh Carp – I've been reading and thinking a lot about displacement and zoning and gentrification. I want to commend you all for talking about it and taking it seriously. One way I believe the best way to prevent displacement is to have policies that explicitly prevent it. If evictions are a problem, we should make evictions hard to perform. I don't think that not allowing people to build smaller homes on less land will prevent displacement. I would love to hear more about your plans for tenants’ rights. We don't do well with them. We should do better. I was looking at the intensity map. I think there's some good stuff there. Some of the areas that are marked for high intensity are crummy for reasons that are not likely to change anytime soon. If you walk around Harris Street, you will pass a concrete manufacturing plant. You will pass a gas station and landscaping store. I don't so much want to live with my small child next to a concrete facility with heavy loading trucks driving in and out all the time. I wouldn't want to walk there. There aren't any sidewalks there. I wouldn't want to bike there. Similarly, high intensity on Barracks makes sense. Barracks is a busy loud, high traffic road, with lots of cars on it. I would not want to cross it with a child or on a bike or be around there on foot in any way. Allow housing there. I would not want to put all the smaller, cheaper housing in parts of town where frankly, people don't want to live. 22 When you're looking to build and add more density, the best places to put it are places that are desirable. That is going to include lots of downtown I think more than you have on the map right now. We're at Belmont. To me, I'm a parent of a young child. I think about this a lot near schools, I really want to be able to walk my kid to school without getting in a car and crossing a major road or spending half a million dollars in a house. Right now that is not really possible in town. I would just think broadly about allowing people to live where people want to live and not in industrial, car focused parts of town. Don't take anything out intensity wise, but you might want to add more homes, more density close to places where people actually choose to live. Neil Williamson – With the Free Enterprise Forum. I believe I've spent at least 50 months on this project and with all of you. I appreciate tonight's conversation. Number one, change is hard. Number two change is needed. I'm a little concerned by some of the comments regarding the zoning may modify what the comp plan says. I think we need to make big changes and think big. We're very concerned with tonight's quote, nonspecific nature. I know we've got to start somewhere. I know that's the case. We're just really looking forward to more specificity in the future. The community needs objective metrics regarding the impact of these changes. I know that's hard at the comp plan level. The community needs to understand what you're proposing. Specifically, how or what objective metrics would be impacting the dovetailed affordable housing plans. You've got an affordable needs assessment. How does this fit with that? Will there be enough units? Could it work? These are knowable answers. I hope that we can get to them. Finally, I really hope that this will result in the mantra, more housing everywhere for everyone. Lisa Stoessel – The first question is what changes are you envisioning for the River Road Corridor? I was part of a webinars zoom call that was specifically about the River Corridor. I guess my specific question about that, is there a possibility to move the industrial uses away from the river and develop it as the natural and recreational resource that it is? I see that there's apartment buildings going up there. I think that it would be great to change that whole area into mixed use residential affordable housing, a nice place to live with a public school nearby. Why do we have to have these heavy industrial businesses there that could easily do their work and their business elsewhere in the city? We have a responsibility to really celebrate the fact that we've got this beautiful river and not have it hiding behind these industrial businesses. I don't know how much capability you all have in changing that. That's just my input. What changes would you envision for the Woolen Mills node? I know that there's this new refurbishment of the Woolen Mill. I don't really know what you have in mind in terms of anything beyond that. Would it be possible to move the large metal recycling industry out of Woolen Mills to the Avon Street Extended industrial area? Does it need to be adjacent to the railroad tracks? That part of Woolen Mills could be much better utilized as residential or mixed use? That could be a great place for the Woolen Mills node. On your map, you've got something designated as the Locust Road node, I think you mean Locust Avenue. Kurt Keesecker – I was just going to add a couple quick comments maybe in the form of questions. The thrill of the process is taking big ideas and translating them into some kind of action that can carry forward. That mix of big concepts which everybody when we talk to each other, we seem to all be on generally the same page with the big concepts. We move into the details of how to take action or implement, it gets harder. I'm jealous, because that's the fun part. I think one of the tools that you can 23 continue to use if you want is that there's something between that land use plan and the zoning map. It's those big idea diagrams. As you guys continue to have these meetings and speak with the public, don't forget to use the framework plan and the concept diagram to help instill some similar thinking because we all agree, I think generally on the big ideas. That brings me to my next point, which Jody touched on with the faded edges to the lands versus the hard edges in the land use map. I think what we were finding back in the day was that the hard edged, property, land use map was that the hard edges were debated too. They weren't solid, they were just as faded. We had so many processes that allowed those land use edges to move around. I think we were thinking we would facilitate more clear conversations about something intent wise with less concentration on the property lines, and more on the ideas. What is evident is that sometimes the property lines were arbitrary. They didn't conform to topography which goes to what Lyle was speaking of and they didn't conform necessarily to cultural, historic or other boundaries that we're all aware of as residents of Charlottesville. Some of those soft edges would push debate later in the process for proposals from applicants in the future, I think the softer edges in terms of the planning with these big ideas would allow more flexibility to get to be kind of responsive to the boots on the ground. We know it is there when we're walking around in and not just kind of dictated by the depth or the size of certain parcels. Emily Dreyfus – I wanted to just raise a couple of things. So many of the comments have brought up some really important issues. If I recall correctly, COVID really stood in the way of the community involvement work that was originally planned for the consultants. I think the response rate for black people was only 16%. I think most of those folks were related to some focus groups that were organized around black homeownership, which is certainly an important issue but only one of a few. I want to just draw attention to the fact that we have a really limited number of city neighborhoods that continue to have a high percentage of black people living there. We need to preserve our cultural diversity. We need to really slow down and stop if at all possible the displacement happening for black families. I think that the zoning was referenced a couple of different ways in the affordable housing plan. I know that's not what we're here to talk about tonight. One of the ways said that the planning process that you all are engaging in with zoning needs to consider which neighborhoods will be most important for up zoning. Where do you want to build the sort of duplex up to quad or small apartment buildings? I would just like to comment that the Low Income Housing Coalition really hopes that you will not do that within the predominantly black neighborhoods that still exist. Areas like 10th and Page and parts of Fifeville and Prospect and Rose Hill and other neighborhoods need to be protected from increased density. I hope that you will take that into account. 2. Commissioner Comments Commissioner Palmer – I did throw a link in the chat to a news item about the affordable housing plan. In terms of who the consultant is on that is in there. That's public knowledge. I would just encourage you, if you have questions about any of that, or the university's planning or how we want to portray some of the university aspects in this land use section, just please reach out to me and I can either help you with that or get the office of architect and other personnel there involved as needed. Commissioner Russell – What we have done here is set a good framework for our next dive in what we mean by soft density. Where does it go? 24 Commissioner Stolzenberg – I think one thing I would add is that one of those goals in the affordable housing plan was to create multi-family by right beyond soft density in those historically exclusionary, segregated, white, and high amenity areas. I really don’t see that quite yet in this framework. I will be interested to see how that is reflected in the future. Commissioner Heaton – I would concur with what Rory said. If you want to call it an equity zone or how we are going to introduce the emphasis on affordability and equity in the city. If there's no way to put that in the zoning I don't know that I have an answer to that. I do think the plan should reflect some aspect of the city's movement towards affordability and equity. That's the only thing I would add. I think everything else tonight was is really good. I like the UVA different color and I like the idea that we're going to have to move toward a lot designation. Soft edges don't work in the end. Commissioner Dowell – For the most part, I've already stated the few little questions or issues that I've had. I think we are definitely moving in the right direction. I just want to make sure that the demographics that we were looking for to respond to this plan have been captured. I do know COVID has played a big factor in this. That was, to me the whole purpose of having the second go around. The other thing that I do want to just reiterate is that I also noticed we had talked about originally. I think that out in the Greenbrier neighborhood, it doesn't look like much has been changed as far as the intensity goes. That's where that equity and inclusion is going to have to be reflected in the map. I say you're doing a good job. I appreciate the hard work. I look forward to the next time we meet with an update. Commissioner Solla-Yates – I think the public comment really nailed it. Adequacy, equity, and access to schools and parks. If we can hit that, I think we have got it. What I see makes sense. I think we can do more. Commissioner Lahendro – At this first, broad brush, concept level, looking at the first draft plan by the consultants and looking at the guidelines or the concepts that are listed, increased dense, mixed use at key nodes, a hub and spokes framework transition from more dense development to softer density, and maximize access to transit. These are all things that we were working on three years ago. It's heartening to see that we're following in this same direction. As I know, and as you all know, the devils in the details from here on out. Chairman Mitchell – The idea of increasing density with equity in mind is important. I was not artful earlier, and I probably wouldn't be even more artful now. I worry about the fact that we get desegregation. That's important. We have to keep them on the culture here. What happened with Vinegar Hill when they desegregated for the sake of doing all kinds of wonderful things for the city. Let's just keep that in mind as we present this to the public. We do want to increase density because increasing density brings more equity housing. We just need to make sure that we market this correctly. The other thing is, infill development is going to be challenging because infill development may not beaccepted. We have to do all the work that we need to do to mitigate the negative impacts to our environment, our streams, our creeks, and waterways, when we build on these properties. I would have no idea how many of those properties are on critical slopes that feed into our creeks and streams. We need to protect those. 25 Something we need to think about when we begin crafting the comprehensive plan and we begin thinking about how we increase the affordable housing stock and how we increase the density and then protect the critical slopes. Ms. Koch – We can keep that in mind for the next iteration of the plan. I think we've got a lot of good feedback. I'll have to go back and read through my notes. We've been taking feverish notes here. I think we've got a lot to work both in terms of how we can refine the plan at this stage and then come back and have a check-in point with you before we have a larger public engagement phase, which will involve a variety of activities as far as our other engagement phases have. When we come back, we'll try to address the issues we've talked about tonight and progress it along. Mr. Sessoms – We have received a lot of good feedback tonight that will give us a good path forward to refine the concepts that you all have seen today and to the next iteration. 3. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 8:14 PM. 26