Planning Commission

Tue, October 13, 2026

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Meeting summaryAI-generated

Planning Commission — October 13, 2026

A regular session of the Charlottesville Planning Commission covering one action item (a special exception permit), one preliminary rezoning discussion, and a substantive presentation on the city's draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan. The meeting ran late into the evening. No UVA report was given due to Commissioner Joy's absence.

Commissioner and Staff Reports

Commissioners shared updates from a range of board and committee meetings:

Commissioner Rooker reported on the Tree Commission's urban forestry plan, which is nearing completion and will shift focus toward neighborhoods with lower tree canopy coverage and toward private lands through nonprofit partnerships. She also described ongoing work with the GARE (Government Alliance on Race and Equity) cohort, focusing on anti-gentrification strategies in the 10th & Page and Rose Hill neighborhoods, with a conference in Raleigh in November.

Commissioner Harness reported from the MPO Technical Committee. The MPO was denied a federal BUILD grant — for the fourth consecutive year — to fund preliminary engineering for a Rivanna River bike and pedestrian bridge. He noted the U.S. Department of Transportation funded zero bike/pedestrian projects in this round, directing 96% of BUILD funds to roadway projects. On Smart Scale cost escalations: the Barracks Road ramp project jumped from $21 million to $46 million (up 116%), with $11 million attributed to right-of-way costs on land adjacent to UVA. The I-64/Fifth Street diverging diamond project came in lower, dropping from $44 million to $39 million. Two new STAR studies are planned for the city: the Ridge-McIntyre-Market Street intersection and East High Street up to the Route 250 bypass.

Commissioner (Kyle) reported from the Neighborly Leaders meeting, noting resident concerns about transportation options for elderly residents. He flagged that the city's answer — essentially "Jaunt" — was inadequate and called for better communication about CAT, car share, walking, and biking options. He also reported from the Missing Middle Work Group, where stormwater engineering was the focus. Key update: stormwater work is proceeding in parallel with (and expected to finish before) the broader environmental review, with completion targeted by end of 2026. Issues discussed included how "common plans of development" apply to sublots, conflicts between private and city engineers, and paper alleys as a potential asset for Missing Middle housing. He also described a Development Code Cleanup Subcommittee discussion on food truck regulations — currently, food trucks on private lots exist in a legal gray area, and a work session on this topic is scheduled for October 27.

Commissioner (Josh) noted that a planned traffic-calming project at Avon and Belmont may be revived using an old plan developed under former bike/ped coordinator Amanda Ponce. He raised concern about the city's stalled speed limit reduction project, which lost its staff lead when the traffic engineer departed and has not advanced since a planned March code change didn't happen. He has contacted staff and council to determine next steps. He also highlighted a new Chief Strategy Officer, Jen Hendrick, who is taking on project tracking, dashboards, and public communications — potentially addressing many recurring questions about project status.

Chair Schwartz reported that the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) reviewed 835 West Main Street (the project on tonight's agenda) and gave it a positive recommendation. The BAR also reviewed 211 Ridge Street (Salvation Army site), which is approaching the end of its capital campaign and re-applied for an expired demolition permit.

NDS Director Mike Goddard was introduced as the new interim NDS director, coming from 11 years in Public Works capital project delivery, with a background in architecture. Staff also previewed the October 27 work session, which will cover food trucks and give commissioners a final opportunity to review approximately 25–26 proposed development code amendments before a December public hearing.

Consent Agenda

Minutes from the June 9 regular session and June 23 work session were approved without discussion.

Vote: Unanimous, all in favor.

Special Exception Request — 843 W Main Street (PL-26-0126)

Staff planner Carrie Rainey presented a special exception permit request for three adjacent parcels at 835, 843, and 847 West Main Street, in the CX-8 corridor mixed-use district. The applicant, LB Collective (represented by development manager Andre Sahakian and architect Mohammed Mohsin), proposes approximately 182 residential units, a café, a public plaza fronting West Main Street, and a pedestrian connection to the adjacent West Haven public housing community owned by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

The five requested modifications all stem primarily from challenging site topography caused by the grade rising sharply toward the railroad bridge abutment:

1. Ground story minimum height — reduced in one section (Section D) where exterior grade rises above interior floor level

2. Active depth — modified in one section where a mezzanine slab extends to the building face at the grade-constrained corner

3. Finished floor elevations — modified in Sections B and C for accessibility and grade reasons

4. Street-facing entry spacing — reduced from code requirements due to grade and accessibility constraints

5. Bicycle parking dimensions — reduced to accommodate a space-saving staggered rack system, allowing 182 bike spaces in a room sized for far fewer under standard code dimensions

Discussion was substantive. Commissioners asked detailed questions about how Section D's height is measured (answer: from sidewalk grade to the floor above, not from interior finished floor to floor above), whether the active depth exception was actually required given the 20% exemption in code (staff and applicant acknowledged it may not be needed; the commission was satisfied that the approved plan drawings would remain binding regardless), and whether door spacing could be tightened on the west half of the building without adding a door (the applicant said the current door placement serves the café and lobby functions, and adding a locked door wasn't desirable).

On bike parking, commissioners noted that the staggered rack system actually places bikes further apart than code minimums despite being code non-compliant on paper, and suggested this rack type be considered for a code cleanup amendment. The applicant confirmed the project carries only 49 car parking stalls against 182 bike spaces, and that the bike room is directly off the elevator path. One commissioner relayed that the upper rack level supports bikes up to 30 pounds, and noted that the vendor also makes racks with e-bike charging.

The public plaza and pedestrian promenade to West Haven are governed by a public access easement recorded in the final site plan. No use limitations are currently contemplated. Community engagement with West Haven residents is planned to begin November 5, with monthly meetings thereafter.

Staff recommended approval. The BAR found no adverse impact to the West Main Street Architectural Design Control District on September 15, 2026.

Vote: Commissioner Soliesz moved; seconded. Roll call: Soliesz – Aye, Harness – Yes, Karp – Yes, Yoder – Yes, Rooker – Yes, Mitchell – Yes, Chair Schwartz – Yes. Unanimous 7-0 recommendation to City Council for approval.

Preliminary Discussion — 209 12th Street NE Rezoning

Development Planning Manager Matt Alfley introduced a pre-application discussion (no formal application filed yet) for a rezoning of 209 12th Street NE, the parcel adjacent to the long-established T&M Printing at 205 12th Street NE. The two parcels are under common ownership; the printing facility is zoned CX-5 and the adjacent parcel is zoned RA (residential). Applicant representative Polina Andreeva of Shump Engineering presented on behalf of NAPA Properties, proposing to rezone 209 12th Street NE to CX-3 to allow T&M Printing to replace the existing house with a building for expanded office or printing operations.

This would be the first rezoning application under the city's new development code. Andreeva noted the applicant is prepared to proffer a maximum building height consistent with the RA district (approximately 40 feet) and to comply with Type A transition requirements along the shared residential property lines.

Commission discussion focused on several questions:

Why CX-3 rather than CX-5? The applicant explained they don't need CX-5 intensity and want to minimize neighbor concerns; staff noted that CX-5 would require a 20-foot setback (vs. 15 feet for CX-3) and larger upper-story stepbacks, which would constrain the site plan. Chair Schwartz expressed a preference for CX-5, noting that split-lot zoning is poor practice and that nearby parcels along East Market Street already extend further into the residential fabric at CX-5. A majority of commissioners said they were not opposed to CX-5, though concerns about 100-foot maximum bonus height (CX-5 base is 5 stories/72 feet) were raised. Most commissioners said they were comfortable relying on the code's built-in transition requirements rather than additional height proffers.

Residential use: The city raised at the pre-application meeting that the rezoning would eliminate one residential unit. Commissioners generally did not feel the need to mandate residential uses, though the idea of office plus residential (feasible within a 40-foot height limit) was noted as an option. The applicant confirmed the primary intent is commercial, but the printing operation cannot coexist with residential use in the same building.

Noise: Commissioners asked about noise regulation. Staff confirmed the city's noise ordinance is weak, located in the police code (not the development code), and still references old zoning districts. The applicant noted T&M Printing operates only during normal business hours and that the required 10% tree canopy will serve as a buffer.

Neighbor sentiment: The applicant has not yet conducted door-knocking; they are at the pre-application stage. Commissioners noted that 10 years ago, four neighbors spoke against a similar proposal.

No vote was taken; this was a non-binding preliminary discussion. The applicant will incorporate commission feedback into a formal application.

Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan

Climate Program Manager Emily Irvin presented the city's draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan, which has been in development since 2022 as part of the joint "Resilient Together" project with Albemarle County and UVA. The plan is intended to be adopted as an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan — the same path taken by the 2023 Climate Action Plan. Director of the Office of Sustainability Crystal Ritterbold also participated.

Background: The plan addresses climate adaptation (responding to climate-driven hazards) as distinct from mitigation (reducing emissions, which is covered in the Climate Action Plan). The six hazards addressed are extreme heat, flooding, drought, wildfire, winter storms, and extended grid outages. The plan contains 16 broad strategies, each supported by implementation projects prioritized by estimated start time (already initiated, 1–3 years, 3–5 years, 5–10 years). Each strategy includes lead departments, partners, estimated staff effort, potential funding sources, and community action suggestions.

Key process note: The project was awarded a $460,000 EPA Environmental Justice Government-to-Government grant, which was canceled in March 2025, slowing the timeline. Nine community-based organizations had been selected as partners; the city and county redirected internal funds to keep the planning work alive.

Public comment period is open through mid-to-late November on Connect Charlottesville. A work session with City Council is scheduled for November 16. The plan will return to the Planning Commission in January for a public hearing and recommendation, then to Council in mid-February.

Commission discussion was lengthy and substantive:

Commissioner Mitchell praised the implementation roadmaps but asked when the commission gets to weigh in on tactical trade-offs. Staff responded that now is the right time to flag concerns, and that many implementation projects — especially code amendments and regulatory changes — will come to the commission anyway.

Commissioner (Josh) raised several detailed points: the value of denser, newer, multifamily housing as an inherently efficient and resilient form (arguing this should be more explicitly connected to the plan); skepticism about the food systems strategy as a climate tool (community gardens don't produce meaningful food volumes); a preference for low-staff-effort, scalable interventions over programs requiring extensive per-household engagement; and a call to make outcome metrics more measurable. Staff acknowledged the food strategy debate was extensive internally, and that the plan's approach is to recommend a future food resilience plan rather than to operationalize food production.

Commissioner Harness asked about acute versus chronic climate events and evacuation planning, using the 2018 Camp Fire as an example of how single-exit neighborhoods become death traps. Staff confirmed emergency management is closely involved in the plan; the distinction between emergency shelters and resilience hubs was discussed. Staff noted that the city's context (small, walkable, no single large wildfire risk) differs from California but that the issue was discussed during development.

Commissioner (Josh) and Chair Schwartz both raised the CIP as a lever: tagging resilience-relevant capital projects, and using this plan to feed future CIP requests. Staff agreed and noted that some departments (Parks) already do this better than others.

Chair Schwartz highlighted a desire to understand what is genuinely new in this plan versus what is covered in other plans, to better understand the true fiscal need. He also encouraged daydreaming about stream daylighting and called for land/easement acquisition for flood and fire safety to be more prominent. He noted that abundant housing is itself a climate adaptation strategy, anticipating potential climate in-migration from sea-level-rise-affected regions (referencing Cincinnati's climate in-migration plan as a model).

Several commissioners noted that some implementation projects list "TBD" as the lead department due to staff capacity gaps, and asked whether the plan is fiscally feasible. Staff suggested one additional staff position would materially advance implementation.

Commissioner Rooker suggested tabletop scenario exercises — walking through climate events from the perspective of specific community members — as a community engagement and gap-identification tool. Staff agreed this type of exercise is already being contemplated for preparedness outreach.

A minor but noted point: the draft plan contains 22 instances of "additional photo placeholder." Commissioners asked that these be filled or removed before final adoption.

No vote was taken. This was an informational presentation. The plan returns in January 2027 for a public hearing and commission recommendation.

Key Takeaways

843 W Main Street approved 7-0 for a special exception permit, clearing the way for a 182-unit mixed-use development with a public plaza and pedestrian connection to West Haven; the project now goes to City Council for final approval.

T&M Printing rezoning discussion was generally well-received; most commissioners were open to CX-5 (not just the requested CX-3), but the applicant will need to weigh the larger setback requirements before filing a formal application — which would be the city's first rezoning under the new development code.

The Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan enters its public comment period (through mid-to-late November); the commission will hold a formal public hearing in January 2027, with Council action expected in February. Key commission feedback: connect the plan more explicitly to land use and housing policy, sharpen measurable outcomes, scrutinize the food systems strategy, and ensure the plan feeds into the CIP process.

Federal transportation funding hostility to bike/pedestrian projects was flagged as a significant regional concern; the MPO lost its fourth consecutive BUILD grant for a Rivanna River bike/ped bridge and is reconsidering whether to keep applying.

Development code work session on October 27 will cover food truck regulations and give commissioners a final pre-hearing review of approximately 25–26 pending code amendments.

AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.

What happened at this meeting

Special Exception Request - 843 W Main Street [PL-26-0126]

# Commissioner's Reports Summary

Commissioner Recker reported on three meetings addressing urban development and equity: the Tree Commission's urban forestry plan focusing on increasing tree canopy in underserved neighborhoods through private partnerships; Parks and Rec's CIP aligned with maintenance and long-term planning; and GARE's anti-gentrification work in the 10th and Page and Rose Hill neighborhoods, with policy ideas being prepared for a November Raleigh conference. Another commissioner reported on MPO technical committee meetings, noting the Rivanna River bike and pedestrian bridge project was denied federal BUILD grant funding for the fourth consecutive year due to federal hostility toward bike projects, and presented VDOT cost escalation data showing the Barracks Road ramp project increased 116% from $21 million to $46 million, with $11 million attributed to right-of-way costs and utility relocations adjacent to UVA property. The Planning Commission reviewed multiple special exception requests for 843 West Main Street, a mixed-use residential and commercial project featuring approximately 182 units, a café, public plaza, and pedestrian access to West Haven, with the applicant team (Andre Sahakian and Mohammed Mohsin) and staff recommending approval after addressing concerns about ground-floor heights, door spacing, bike parking design, and site plan modifications for grade changes. Emily Irvin presented the Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan, a collaborative effort between city and county staff with UVA's Office of Sustainability developed through over 125 community meetings, which distinguishes between climate mitigation (addressed in the 2023 climate action plan) and climate adaptation (planning for climate-driven hazards), structured with strategy statements, implementation projects prioritized by timeline, and community action sections inviting personal participation. The plan, available for public comment through mid-November with Council and Planning Commission hearings scheduled for November and February respectively, prompted commissioner discussion about implementation costs, fiscal feasibility, evacuation planning coordination with emergency management, land use and zoning integration, and the importance of sustaining climate action over decades while leveraging Charlottesville's advantage as a potential destination for climate migrants.

Preliminary Discussion - 209 12th Street NE Rezoning

# Summary: University of Virginia Report - 209 12th Street NE Rezoning Discussion

The Planning Commission held a preliminary discussion on a proposed rezoning of 209 12th Street NE (T&N/T&M Printing) from RA to either CX-3 or CX-5 zoning to support the expansion of an established printing business operating at the adjacent CX-5 property since 1982. Polina Andreeva from Shump Engineering presented on behalf of NAPA Properties and T&M Printing, offering to proffer a maximum building height consistent with RA zoning (35-40 feet) and comply with Type A transition requirements, while explaining the applicant's preference for CX-3 over CX-5 to minimize high-intensity uses. Commissioners debated whether CX-5 zoning would be more appropriate, noting that split-lot zoning is poor practice and that other parcels on East Market Street already extend into residential areas at CX-5 zoning, though concerns were raised about setback requirements potentially creating economic hardship for the property owner. Key discussion topics included transition and setback requirements between commercial and residential zones, noise impacts on neighboring properties, and the potential for mixed-use development with residential apartments, with staff clarifying that mandatory residential use depends on whether rezoning is tied to a specific development plan. While commissioners acknowledged that housing preservation is beneficial, several noted that economic development should also be considered, and Commissioner Mitchell raised specific concerns about CX-5's 100-foot bonus height limit.

Department of NDS Report

The Department of NDS announced two upcoming items: a work session on the 27th to continue discussion on food trucks and review approximately 25-26 code amendments before the December public hearing, with commissioners asked to provide feedback on which amendments are ready to move forward. Additionally, Mike Goddard was introduced as the new interim director of NDS, coming from Public Works where he spent 11 years in capital project delivery with a background in architecture.

Matters to be Presented by the Public not on the Formal Agenda

The Chair opened the floor for matters to be presented by the public not on the formal agenda, noting that there were no public hearings scheduled for the night. The Chair invited members of the public, both in-person and online, to speak on any agenda items or other matters. No raised hands or public comments were received.

Consent Agenda a Minutes - June 9, 2026 Regular Session b Minutes - June 23, 2026 Work Session III. Planning Commission Public Hearing Items

The consent agenda consisting of minutes from the June 9, 2026 regular session and June 23, 2026 work session was presented for approval. A motion was made to approve the consent agenda, and a second was requested.

Agenda items (6)

Procedural (6)

1ProceduralSpecial Exception Request - 843 W Main Street [PL-26-0126]

A property owner at 843 W Main Street is requesting special exception approval to use or develop their property in a way that requires Planning Commission authorization.

What happened

2ProceduralPreliminary Discussion - 209 12th Street NE Rezoning

The Planning Commission will discuss a potential rezoning request for the property at 209 12th Street NE to change its allowed land uses.

What happened

3ProceduralChair's Report

The chair will deliver a report on meeting proceedings, upcoming business, and other administrative matters.

4ProceduralDepartment of NDS Report

The Department of Neighborhood Development Services will present a report on development projects, permitting, and related activities.

What happened

5ProceduralMatters to be Presented by the Public not on the Formal Agenda

Residents will have an opportunity to speak publicly on topics not included on the formal agenda.

What happened

6ProceduralConsent Agenda a Minutes - June 9, 2026 Regular Session b Minutes - June 23, 2026 Work Session III. Planning Commission Public Hearing Items

The Planning Commission will approve meeting minutes from the June 9, 2026 regular session and June 23, 2026 work session.

What happened

Additional votes recorded in minutes

Approve consent agenda (minutes from June 9th and June 23rd)

aye 1

voice voteaye

Recommend approval of special exception permit for 835/843/847 West Main Street

aye 7

Harnessaye

Karpaye

Mitchellaye

Rookeraye

Schwartzaye

Solieszaye

Yoderaye

Adjourn meeting

aye 1

voice voteaye

Verbatim transcript available

513 transcript segments indexed

You guys all set? Mm-hmm. Awesome. All right. All right. Welcome to tonight's planning commission meeting. We're going to start with... Well, Commissioner Joy's not here, so there's no UVA report. So we'll start with commissioner's reports.

Mrs. Recker, would you like to start for us? Or I can start with the other end. Okay. I thought I'd start with you. Oh, that's okay. Well, this time, I wrote down what I did last month so I would remember.

So, let's see. I had three different meetings that I'd like to mention. First of all, the tree commission, they've been working hard on the urban forestry plan and the state of the forest. Parks and Rec also, just yesterday, had a presentation about the urban forestry plan.

So that will be coming to us. And I think the big change-- Well, there's a lot of good stuff in there. But one of the changes is to really focus on neighborhoods that don't have as much tree canopy, and focus on private lands that we don't control, through multiple partnerships with all sorts of nonprofits that are already doing this work.

So we'll get a look at that. In the Parks and Rec meeting, we also looked at their CIP ask, but I think it's supposed to be due Friday, so it wasn't in a spreadsheet format yet. But they were kind of showing where it aligned with the master plan in terms of maintenance versus new versus more long-term kind of stuff.

The other group I've been working with, the initial for it is G-A-R-E, the GARE group. It's Government Alliance... I wrote this down, so I forget. Race and Equity. I've been working with Osei, who is now-- What is her official title?

The- Assistant director of communications. Assistant director of communication. Assistant director. Okay. Who was the long-range planner and moved over into the communications and engagement. We've been in classes since January, and now we're going to go to this conference in Raleigh in November.

So we're whipping up our policy ideas to bring to workshop with seven other cities at this conference. So we're sort of in the final stages of what we want to get feedback on. But mainly, we've been working with the 10th and Page and Rose Hill neighborhoods.

Their small area plans kind of got just sort of paused, and there's a whole host of ideas looking more at kind of keeping people in neighborhoods, how to sort of bolster anti-gentrification measures related to 10th and Page and Rose Hill.

So it's not a small area plan, but just looking at what people have done all over the country. So I'll report back when I learn more about that. I think that is all. Easy. All right. Should I go next?

Yes, please. All right. So I attended the MPO technical committee meeting last week, and so I have a series of transportation updates from that meeting. The MPO applied for a federal build grant for the fourth time in a row, fourth year in a row this year, to fund preliminary engineering for a new Rivanna River bike and pedestrian bridge, and they were not awarded the grant.

In previous years, it was kind of assigned a high score, and they were encouraged to reapply. And then this year, it was kind of summarily discarded as not recommended. But it is important to point out that the current- US Department of Transportation is actively hostile to bike projects.

They funded zero bike and pedestrian projects with this year's build program, and 96% of the funds are going to roadway projects. So, indicative of where federal policy is at the moment. So the MPO is trying to decide what to do next.

I think the feeling is it would not be wise to keep applying to this program, but maybe find other, maybe state funding to make something happen. We had a report from VDOT on smart scale applications that the MPO has in, and they kind of did a mini study on some cost escalations that are happening with transportation projects.

We've seen some pretty significant cost increases with the odd decrease here and there. And it was an interesting study, but basically found that costs are going up for all projects, basically everywhere.

So a few notable things with our MPO's projects. So they have some at the pre-application for smart scale stage, they do a cost estimate. And then when the full application goes in, they do a more thorough cost estimate.

The Barracks Road ramp project, which would also put in some kind of sidewalks under the bypass there, went from 21 million estimated cost to 46 estimated cost, which is an increase of 116%. This is the most notable one, and 11 million of that is right-of-way costs, which includes utility relocations, legal fees, and property acquisition.

And so it's not totally clear how all this came to 11 million, but I will note that the adjacent property owner is UVA of this project. In some good news, the I-64 and Fifth Street diverging diamond intersection application, the price estimate went down 11% from 44 million to 39 million.

Those are the main notable things. Moving on to the STAR studies. Right now there's a couple STAR studies going on. There's two for the Route 29 corridor, and there are currently two public surveys out, and VDOT is collecting feedback on that.

And finally, I think they're approved fully that they're happening, but the next round of STAR studies in the city will be the Ridge-McIntyre-Market Street intersection and then East High Street and the intersection with 250 or the bypass.

So it's going from where the previous study ended all the way up to the bypass and including that intersection. So I think city staff is pretty excited about what could come out of that. And Albemarle County has a few of their own as well.

And that's it for the MPO tech meeting. Kyle? No point. All right. I have a few updates for the group. First of all was the third quarter, maybe fourth quarter, Neighborly Leaders meeting made up of various neighborhood leaders.

Generally, there were several updates from emergency services and other departments, including the introduction of the new chief prosperity officer, Joshua Barr. Residents also raised a wide range of issues.

Basically, just trying to get updates both on specific projects that are occurring on private property as well as several projects that the city is sponsoring, notably transportation of projects on the Derry Road bridge or the Barracks Emmett intersection, and then the Main Street intersection that's downtown.

So there was also several points raised about pedestrian safety concern around the cities, and then some discussion about the control of invasive vines, because we've just been through sort of the growing season, and the vines were taking over in several areas.

Several concerns about what to do with vines on private properties that that property owner has to deal with. There was a specific question that I thought was worth calling out from the public related to transportation options available for the elderly to get around town for appointments and other needs.

And I was a little disappointed with the answer from the city, which was essentially Jaunt. Yep. While I agree that Jaunt is a good option for people trying to get around town, I think the city could do a better job.

There's an opportunity here to better communicate exactly what the city is working on and what we have today about transportation options in the city. In addition to Jaunt, we've got CAT, we've got walking, we've got biking, there's carpool, car share.

There's a whole bunch of items we already have today and more along the way. So I just wanted to call out that I think there's a real opportunity here for us to work on our communications about transportation-related options.

Then I had a meeting as part of the Missing Middle Work Group. This month's discussion was on engineering concerns. The theme of this meeting was really about stormwater. I think we went on several tangential conversations and issues, and they all sort of pointed back to the stormwater requirements.

And there was a bit of an update on where the city was at that I thought I would share at a high level. Basically When we had the environmental review in front of this body previously, I kind of got the picture that the stormwater work was going to sort of end concurrently with the larger environmental review.

And I got a clarification from the city engineer that the stormwater and environmental are working in parallel, and it's expected the stormwater stuff will be completed first, by the end of next year so that we can really start to move on that front while the larger environmental review is ongoing.

There was a discussion about how sublots fall into what's called a common plan of development, which was a new term for me, but it's basically if you have several lots, even though they're separate lots, if they're part of the same development, their stormwater impact is considered as one project.

And so if you have a property with three sublots, even if you do them multiple years and are apart from each other, they still sort of have the same stormwater impact. There was an issue about projects sort of getting stuck between the opinions of the privately hired engineers and the city engineers, and how to sort of create an escape hatch or ways around when you have two equally valid but competing opinions.

And then the conversation that keeps coming up in various different venues, which is paper alleys and how they could be additive to Missing Middle and the current status quo of those paper alleys is creating an impediment.

Interesting. Then, with Chairman Schwartz, I was part of the Development Code Cleanup Subcommittee, and this month we talked about food trucks and about how we can create a regulatory environment supportive of food trucks.

Right now, a food truck, as long as they have a business license and they've got their health records and their fire records and they're all checked out, they can operate anywhere in the city on the street, as long as they're parked on the street.

As soon as that truck moves into a private lot, who really knows? Is where we're at right now. So the discussion was about how do we create that regulatory environment to be supportive of food trucks on private lots.

This is going to come in front of us at a work session- Okay ... by the end of the year, and I'm expecting a lively discussion about what we want to do with food trucks. That food truck court on Long Street, right across from CVS, is that legal?

No. I'm trying to make a way that it is. Yes. But we've got two issues. It's not just there's the food truck courts, and then there's also just food trucks, single food trucks on private property. And this may be an easier fix, but currently you're only allowed to have one...

Are they temporary uses? Provisional? Temporary uses. Temporary use permit. One temporary use permit per property. So if you want to have an outdoor event, you can't have a food truck because it's also a temporary use.

So there's some- Yeah ... some language we need to change in the code. Okay. I am curious about from the neighborhood leaders meeting, I keep seeing the email chatter about the block parties, and I don't know if that is going to play into the food truck discussion at all.

Was there any response to that in that meeting? Not that I'm recalling off the top of my head. Okay. How difficult it is to do a private event, because you have to get insurance and I guess the... Anyways, never mind.

I wasn't sure if that would also play into the food truck conversation at all because setting up private events and whatnot. As long as the food truck stays on the street, it should be fine. All right.

That's the end of my report. Thank you. I have a couple things, but actually a question for Ross. You mentioned city engineer talking about stormwater management. Is that work undertaken by the city manager's department, Public Works, or by somebody else?

Because we are about to not have a city engineer or a deputy, so is that going to be an issue? The city engineer was there. Partly we had this meeting on this timeline so that he would be there, and it was my understanding that his transition out of the city has no impact on the work of the project.

Okay, great. Okay. Couple notes. I actually missed a lot of the BPAC meeting October 1st, but many interesting things happened there. One small but interesting thing is that a Summit parent had reported on the BPAC list that crossing Avon at Belmont was feeling unsafe for her and her young children.

Kyle Roth and Diane Diaz had a site visit out there, and actually found that when Amanda Ponce was bike ped coordinator many years ago now, the city had developed a plan for traffic calming at that intersection.

That can be dug up and revisited. I believe Kyle also mentioned something about a quick build at East High and Hazel, which I've asked for follow-ups on because I'm very keen to see it happen. I appreciate that Mike Goddard was able to attend and talk about joining NDS.

Happy to have you at BPAC and NDS of course. And then relevant to probably everyone's reports and every item forever, is that we had Jen Hendrick at BPAC. Jen is the, I'm going to get this wrong, chief strategy officer.

Thank you. And it sounds like in practice, a lot of her work will involve dashboards for internal staff use, public communication, and to various points raised just at this meeting about the community and staff and planning commission knowing about the status of various projects in transportation and elsewhere.

Jen's taking on a lot of that work. So if you have time, watch her presentation. I haven't yet, but I will. But I think many questions that all of us have about many topics, one answer may be, and I apologize for saying this, maybe talk to Jen or await Jen's work.

So I'm excited to have her here. And again, never at BPAC. So yeah, check out the notes from that meeting. It should be interesting. Second point, speaking of tracking projects, there's been, for about two years now, an ongoing effort by a few different departments in the city to consider, and mostly to lower, speed limits citywide.

There have been presentations at Planning Commission and the City Council, BPAC at least, about that project since 2024. We were supposed to have a change in city code about that March of this year. That hasn't happened.

And when our traffic engineer put in his notice, we also lost staffing for that project, so it's currently unstaffed. And I actually reached out to Planning Commission, council, and others recently to figure out where the work is at and when we can resume it, because it's been described by, I think, NDS staff and Public Works staff as not a huge lift for parts of it and not a large change to the code.

The Falls Church change to their code to do the same thing is a one-line difference, so I think we can do it. But I'm going to report back when I hear more from staff about that project. That's all I got for now.

Okay. Nothing to report? Nothing. Okay. From the VAR in September, well, we looked at the 835 West Main Street that we're going to look at tonight and gave it our recommendation for approval. We also looked at the 211 Ridge Street, which is a Salvation Army site, and they seem to be getting close to finishing their capital campaign and getting ready to construct.

So they reapplied for their demo permit that had expired and then had a preliminary discussion on the building, and it was generally well-received. We're just looking at details at this point, or made comments about detail items more than the building itself.

So hopefully that could proceed sometime soon. And I think that is everything of any interest to you all. So, does the Department of NDS have anything for us? Chair, I just have two quick announcements.

Okay. The work session at the end of this month, the 27th, will be that opportunity to continue the conversation on food trucks, but that will also be Planning Commission's opportunity, their last opportunity before the public hearing in December, to review the code amendments moving forward and to give feedback.

So you'll have an opportunity to go through the one-pagers for the, it's roughly about 25, 26 amendments. Some of these have multiple amendments in them. But to go through those to see which ones are in good shape to move forward, which maybe you want to pull back on.

Hopefully none, but we'll see. So that'll be a packed work session in city space. And then also, by way of introduction, I have Mike Goddard, our NDS director here, and just wanted to introduce him. Welcome.

Hi there, everybody. Mike Goddard, the new interim director of NDS. I come from Public Works, where I've been for about 11 years, mostly working in capital project delivery. My training is in architecture, and I'm happy to be here and look forward to working with all of you.

Thank you. All right. So now we have matters to be presented by the public that are not on the formal agenda. We have no public hearings tonight, so anything that's on our agenda can be talked about right now, or anything else.

Do we have any public that would like to speak? Or do we have anyone online? Yes. If you are online and you would like to speak, you can click the raise hand icon. If you're on a phone, you can press star nine, and I will call out your name and unmute you.

Mr. Chair, I see no raised hands. Okay. All right, so we move on to the consent agenda. That is minutes from June 9th and June 23rd. Do I have a motion for the consent agenda? Mr. Chair, I so move. Second?

Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstained? Nope. Okay, so the consent agenda passes. All right, so now we move on to our action items. The first one is a special exception request for 843 West Main Street.

Good evening, Chair, Commissioners. Carrie Rainey with Neighborhood Development Services here today to speak to you about a special exception permit request for 835, 843, and 847 West Main Street. I think, perfect.

Our presentation going. Okay. The applicant proposes to redevelop the subject properties with approximately 182 residential units and a cafe space. Public plaza is proposed between the building and West Main Street, and public pedestrian access is also proposed to the adjacent West Haven property owned by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Next slide. The subject properties, which are circled there in black on your left-hand side of the screen, are zoned CX-8 corridor mixed-use and designated as urban mixed-use corridor in the future land use map of the comprehensive plan.

Both of which call for higher intensity development with a variety of uses along vibrant corridors. Next slide. In considering an application for a special exception permit, city council must consider the factors listed on the screen, including harmonious interaction with nearby patterns of development, support of the comprehensive plan goals and strategies, and whether any conditions are appropriate to ensure consistency with public necessity, convenience, general welfare, and good zoning practice.

Next slide. The applicant requests to modify the ground story minimum height in the Section D that is shown, hopefully visible to folks on the screen on the top right. Applicant also requests to modify the active depth space within that Section D in order to provide access to an interior mezzanine level.

Next slide. The applicant also requests to modify the finished floor elevations in sections B and C, shown on the screen, due to site grading and creating accessible spaces and entrances. The applicant requests to modify the street-facing entry spacing, again, to deal with those grades and those accessibility components.

And then finally, the applicant has requested to reduce the dimensional space requirements for bicycle parking in order to use a space-saving rack design that nestles the bikes together. Next slide. So staff has recommended approval of this special exception permit, as the project is harmonious with nearby patterns of development, supports the goals of the comprehensive plan focused on higher intensity use areas, and the development code's emphasis on active space and visual interest along the public realm.

In addition, the Board of Architectural Review found no adverse impacts to the West Main Street Architectural Design Control District on September 15th, 2026. I'm happy to answer any questions, and the applicant team is here in person and online and has prepared a presentation for you as well.

Yep. I have one question. Should we want to grant this change about vertical bicycle parking, could that be something we consider for code cleanup just to streamline this kind of approach in the future?

Mm-hmm. We could definitely add that to cycle three. Thank you. Should we-- So, there's going to be a presentation. Should we ask questions now or hold them till after the presentation? I think if you have questions for Carrie, you could ask them now- Okay ...

if they're administrative questions, and then- Okay ... ask about the project once they're done with the presentation. Okay. All right. No. I think we have a couple of applicants that we need to unmute or promote to panelist.

Could we promote Andre Sahakian to panelist? Andre, can you hear us? Hey, everybody. There we go. All right, we can hear and see you. Great. Is the presentation shared? Yep. This one, so- No. It will be.

Yep. Great. Well, thank you very much. Well, I'll keep it very short. I just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody, to thank staff, and you all for your time this evening. We're very excited about moving forward with the project here, and wanted to, if you can go to the next slide, just capture some very high-level items.

Just two big concepts that come out of the project here are focusing on the public realm, is this public plaza space that fronts Main Street, as well as the pedestrian connection that's diagrammed on the right-hand side of your screen that provides a connection to Main Street from the West Haven community.

Next slide, please. You can see that in site plan here. On the bottom of the page is Main Street with the public plaza, and then on the left-hand side, you can see that pedestrian connection promenade, but also with connections all around the building.

And then two red areas at the top of the screen that will connect to the future development and accessible routes. We're working on an engagement process right now with the West Haven community. Next slide, please.

Just taking a summary of kind of the milestones this year and going back to last fall. We're here tonight, noted on the bottom of the screen. After tonight, we would assume the next step is that the city council vote on this SEP application.

And then we are planning to start the engagement process with West Haven on November 5th, and plan those to be monthly meetings. I know that's not technically a part of this approval, but just wanted to give that update.

Next slide, please. With that, I just wanted to thank staff again and clearly agree with their findings. Next slide, please. And support their motion. Next slide, please. That's all. Thank you very much.

Happy to answer any questions that you have. Mohammed Mohsin, our architect, is here. Again, my name is Audrey Sahakian. I'm the development manager with LB Collective. Happy to address any questions you may have.

And then in person today is Valerie, our land use . Thanks again, everybody. Thank you. Do you guys have any questions? Hello. I've gotten some feedback on this item. Public, what a difficult word. What does public access mean in this case?

How are we thinking about that? Are we thinking about limitations, or are we thinking about just people can use the space without limitations? There's a public access easement that's part of the site plan.

Sorry, it's a little jarring seeing myself a couple times here. So no limitations are contemplated at this time? No, anything that would come with the public access easement would apply here. So I would refer you to our final site plan and how that's indicated on that plan.

I've got a question. On the renderings where you show the project as you come over the bridge over the train tracks, that all matches with the current drawings, right? The ground floor level? Yeah. So part of the challenge with the site is the slope increase as you go up to the bridge abutment.

What we've done is split the elevation, which is the reason for a lot of these dimensional modification requests. Yeah. So we've split the level so that you have an accessible point both on the east end and the west end, and then in between there's some steps that tie the two together.

Okay. I just wondered if the rendering was up to date. Because to me, I'm just following what the staff thinks. It looks okay because it was already a pretty high ground level space at that corner. So just wanted to make sure it was still what it looks like.

Oh. Does that make sense? Yeah. So the one that we're seeing on page 26 of our packet, I'm not sure if that is completely up to date. The rendering says it's from June 10th of 2026. But you're showing some steps going up to that corner where the fitness is.

Is that correct? There would be some steps, yeah. Going up- There'd be- ... from the sidewalk to the fitness area? From, no, from the sidewalk- This way ... it's accessible to the fitness area. Mm-hmm.

The elevation is the same. And then from the cafe entrance side, that's also aligned with sidewalk grade. And then in between the two, there's a staircase to go from the lower level up to the higher level.

Mm-hmm. You know, guys, I don't know if there was a link in here to the BAR application, but it probably would've been useful to all of us. Because I reviewed this already for the BAR. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to graphics.

But yeah, I realize our packet is pretty limited on graphics, and just showing two-dimensional plans. Let's see if there's a way to... I don't know if there's a way to do this. The presentation that you guys just showed us, Dan, is there a way to email us that presentation?

Did that have renderings in it? Yeah, I can pull it up on the screen again if you want. Why don't we just start there? It had the same rendering as the staff report. So what's happening at that corner, it is a two-story space, but the ground level is meeting about, was it six feet above the floor level?

Was that what it was? So the internal floor elevation- Mm-hmm ... is set at the southwest corner of the building. And then the interior of the building has a flat floor. And then there's obviously a grade increase as you go eastward towards the bridge.

It vaults and it gets higher. And so in order to accommodate that, we've split the plaza in two, and both meet the sidewalk at the elevation. And between the two plaza elevations, there are steps that connect the two.

Mm-hmm. But basically, the sidewalk in front of the southeast corner is going to be about six feet, five and a half feet above the floor level. So- In your floor level. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. To mitigate that, well, it's a double height space.

Mm-hmm. So you get a transparent, there's a bunch of activation going on, and then there's a landscape buffer in our site plan right in front of the storefront. But if that's a fitness area, and you're five and a half feet, if I'm understanding this correctly, five and a half feet below ground, your average person's top of their head is going to be at ground level.

Am I thinking about that correctly? Well, there's some floor assembly that goes on. There's a landscape. There's shrubs planted in front of the storefront. Yeah. And there's fitness equipment that kind of elevates people.

So there may be, depending on the equipment inside, maybe like stair steppers, things like that, that elevate the overall height of where people are- Yeah ... actually at where their head level is at.

Because my reading of all of these requests is basically trying to accommodate for that grade on the southwest corner that's driven from having the bridge over the railroad track. Is that an accurate sort of genesis for these requests other than the bike parking one, obviously?

That's absolutely correct. Okay. I just emailed you guys the BAR packet. It's probably going to take a bit if you actually want to look through it. But there are more renderings in there. Okay. I can- I mean, my question was more just I thought it looked fine to lower that floor because the glass and the space already, to me, looks like it's aligning.

I just thought that this was a good rendering of it. It doesn't look like it's pushed that far down. So I just wondered if this was the current height because I think it looks fine for a person to walk by.

It still looks like a two-story space to me from this view. And that's why I was just looking for more information. Like is the mezzanine pushed back from the window? The rendering looks good to me. Yeah.

This is accurate. Okay. Cool. I think the one thing, the reality is that we try to pull away some of those existing trees. The railroad owns the little corner lot right next to us, and there's a lot of existing trees that kind of fall across the railroad.

Yeah. So maybe the site is a little more naked than it would actually be, but architecturally, elevationally, this is accurate. Yeah. It'll be like when you used to walk by the ice rink. My what? When you used to walk by the ice rink.

Oh, yeah. When you look down and you see the ice rink was a little bit below the sidewalk. I have some questions. With the ground story height exception, so if I understand it correctly, the kind of linear spaces along the building front are broken into these sections, A, B through E, and all the sections except for section D do meet the requirement, which is a 14-foot minimum.

And so section D is six foot three. And so my question here is I can't visualize what this is going to be. So the applicant narrative says the floor-to-floor height is six foot three from grade to level two due to the grade stepping up, but the zoning code says that the height is measured from the top of the finished floor of the ground story to the top of the finished floor of the story above.

So is it really only six foot three inches from the top of the ground floor to the top of the second floor? Or are they measuring from a different point? It's six foot somewhat inches from the grade outside to the floor level of the second floor.

So that just for that little section D, which is where everywhere else you've got a two-story space, and then they've got section D kind of pops out towards the exterior. And that's- But is that the correct way to measure it?

Because the text in the zoning code says that it's measured from the top of the finished floor of the ground story to the top of the finished floor of the story above, not from the grade at the sidewalk.

Oh, well. Staff question. That might be a staff question too, actually. Yeah. That probably is a staff question. Yeah. Could we unmute Mohammed Monson with the applicant team so he can possibly answer some of these questions?

I think Danny's question was more about code language than- Well, and maybe also clarification on how they're measuring it as well. Yes, we can hear you. Okay, great. So yeah, the measurement that's being referenced is from the finished grade along the sidewalk to the finished floor above it.

And because of the grades and what we were talking about related to the plaza, and how it climbs coming up to that southeast corner of the building, the six foot dimension, the six to seven foot dimension is really kind of sidewalk to the next level above.

This is our interpretation of how it's measured. It's not from the finished elevation internal to the building. It's from the sidewalk up to the next level above. Okay. That clarifies it. But does the mezzanine Is the mezzanine considered the second floor?

No, I don't think so. I could be wrong. Okay. That's where I was... Yeah. Okay. I think there's language in the code about mezzanines that they are not- It is a second floor. The mezzanine here is not a mezzanine in the sense of complying with the code definition of a mezzanine.

The mezzanine is our second floor- Okay ... in the building, and it's got this kind of open atrium-like space that connects the first and second level along the frontage as you're seeing in some of the diagrams.

Okay. So what we're seeing in the rendering is a space that is half of the first floor and then the second floor tall. That's correct. Yeah. So that top- I was saying we should make a sec-- I think this is fine, but a section cut would've been really nice to see, just to understand it.

So the mezzanine is pushed back in the building and the window wall is taller along the sidewalk. The mezzanine is pushed back, and if you're looking at the height diagram, it's pushed back along sections A, B, C, and E.

Okay. And the only part that the slab connects is kind of that section D, so it's a fairly limited width. And what you're seeing on that rendering, that dark band that you're seeing in the rendering is kind of about where the floor line is.

So we have active use kind of below and above that dark line that kind of designates where the slab is. But the only portion of the frontage where that slab actually does extend all the way to the face of the building is that very limited section E area.

Okay. I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no. It's fine. I was just trying to figure out. Yeah. Yeah. So back to the rendering. I think that corner looks fine to me. I have a question about the door spacing request.

If we look at... I don't know what page it's on, but you show the distance between the doors. If we look at the two doors you've got, there's 60 feet between the western wall and the first door, and then 24 feet between the two doors with the code request at 40 feet between doors.

And if you add those two dimensions up, you get to 84. Have you all considered at least getting the 40-foot requirement on the eastern half of the building where you don't have these grade issues that are- It'd be the western half.

Yes, you're right, the western half. Getting the 40 feet between the doors on the western half of the building. Oh, yeah. And I understand that you probably can't fit a door in the eastern half because of the grade requirements.

Yeah. That's right. We looked at it. The eastern half is difficult with the grade requirements, confirming that. We looked at on the west half, in terms of our program, adding another door doesn't really accommodate the program there.

There's a door associated with the cafe function that faces the public, and there's a door that faces the lobby. And so, really those two functions have their own door. And so adding an additional door is, in all likeliness, it would just be a locked door.

It would just sit there and be locked and kind of take away from what we think is an elegant public realm that we work with, the design architect, to put together. Sure. I can appreciate that. I guess my question was more about if you shift the westernmost door over 20 feet and you shift the second door over four feet, you'll meet the 40-foot requirement for the western half of the building without adding a new door.

Mohamed, do you wanna speak to that? Yeah, I would agree. First, I want to apologize. I cannot turn on my camera for some reason. The button is not there for me, so I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I do agree that for the left half of the plan...

There we go. Okay. Hopefully you all can still hear me, Anthony. Yes. Yeah. So, I would agree with that. Up until the point where we get to the steps that take us up that five and a half feet to get to the elevated sidewalks, we do have frontage that is more or less leveled with the sidewalks outside the building.

So that would be essentially from the stairs all the way to the left corner of the building, the west corner of the building. And we've looked at it a couple of different ways and, just with the cafe layout and the layout of the plaza and the opportunities to provide seating along that edge of the building, we ended up preferring to kind of provide that solid wall or solid glass, really.

It was just a glass wall there to kind of just allow opportunities for seating as opposed to breaking it with doors. But I do agree that we do have that ability from a layout standpoint. It is more or less level with the sidewalks along that section.

Yeah. Because my thought is if we do grant an exception at 136 feet, you could actually get away with having one door across this whole wall. Bri, are you thinking that if we granted it, that they would go ahead and get rid of one of the doors?

Is that what you're getting at? It leaves the door o- Yeah. Pardon the pun. It leaves the door open for having one door Well, it's a question for staff is that when we approve something like this- We were center ...

I assume that the plan would stay relatively similar to what it is. So generally, when a special exception permit or similar is before council, the approving resolution is written so that it's referencing the application materials, so there's some consistency there.

I think also, in terms of other approvals this project have had, that there would probably need to be some stepping back to go back through those and determine if there was a change. If that answers the question.

Yeah, thanks for the clarification. Sure. I've got another question. This one is on the active depth exception. So the code requires a 15-foot minimum active depth, but then does allow, I think, 20% of the area of the active depth zone to be non-active.

You can have a stairwell for up to 20% of that active depth area. And so the application material says that the active depth varies from 18 and 26 feet, but there's an exception, the section of the building between the leasing lobby and the fitness.

So I understand where that is, but I guess, does that mean that there's an area that is not active, but is it greater than 20% of the area of the overall active depth zone? Because if it's not greater than 20%, I don't think they need a special exception permit for this.

But the material doesn't state what the percent is. And so I found it a little unusual that we're being asked to just grant a broad exception to active depth, when I would be a little more comfortable just saying, "No, you can go to a percent greater than 20," but rather than a blanket exception.

So does anyone know what the proposed percent of area that is not active in the active depth area? And I hope I'm making any sense. It's really hard to talk about these things. Yeah, no, I fully understand you because we are meeting the active depth in majority of the front for the diagram that we propose, and really the only section that we were not meeting it, is the area where we have the slab extending.

That section D from the height diagram where the slab extends all the way out. There's a stair there that connects the lower level to the next level of fitness, which we're calling mezzanine here in these diagrams.

And the only reason we were requesting that active depth is because the slab is only six feet above sidewalks. We were assuming that that would not be interpreted as- Mm ... active depth, even though the program on the sunken level and the level above it is actually an active use program.

Now to the point about if that section is only 20% of the entire frontage, then that would qualify us to meet that requirement without an exception. That would be great. We would take advantage of that.

Just looking at it, I don't have the percentages exactly to back into what that percentage of that little section is. But just looking at it, it appears to be less than 20%. I guess, I'm okay with what's proposed.

It seems like we might be granting a special exception when there isn't one needed. Can we get Steph to comment on that, please? Is this needed? I think without knowing the exact percentage offhand, that we wouldn't be able to confirm without that number.

Yeah. We can measure that and tell you exactly. The one thing I want to note, if you're looking at the exhibit that's in the package, the active depth exhibit, you're seeing where we have 18 foot and 26 foot.

I believe the area on the far right, the southeast corner of the building where that dashed line is, that is just below 15 feet. I believe it's measuring right at 14 feet as it stands currently. So that may be a driver there.

Mm. But we are going to go ahead and measure to tell you exactly what the section that has the slab extending all the way to the face is relative to the overall frontage. Okay. But the question's not just frontage and the code, right?

It's area. It's a two-dimensional area. Yeah. It's not just linear feet, it's the area. So you would have to take 15 feet deep multiplied by the length of the frontage. This is more for the planning commission to think about, but our active depth requirements apply to the entire front of the building, all stories.

And so that's another reason why I just think it's a very broad exception to grant when what they're really asking for is a small exception, but we might end up granting them a very large exception. Well, I think what we're granting them is that we're granting them what's shown on this diagram, which is we're allowing that section that's between the lobby leasing and the fitness area, it's okay to come all the way out, and we're okay with the mezzanine starting less than 15 feet back from the face of the fitness wall.

Okay. Now, if that ends up being that staff determines they don't need a special exception for that, then great. But they are still bound to this diagram- Okay ... that they presented to us. Yeah. Okay.

So that's the same answer on the previous question, right? Yeah. That even if we could ask them to go back and ask for narrower exceptions If we grant them too much, they can't exploit that. Right. That's what we heard from staff.

So I'd be curious personally to know if the exception is required or not, but I think it doesn't concern me for tonight. Mm-hmm. Also, I have questions. Go for it. I apologize. One of my questions Lyle asked, it was answered.

I don't understand the answer yet, so I'm going to ask it again. Mm-hmm. And it's about what is public. So I may have this wrong, but there's the walkway to West Haven. That's an easement. That's public use, I believe.

Tell me if that's wrong. But I see the phrase public plaza all through the documents, and in one of the renderings that Carl forwarded just now, there's an entry plaza and a seating plaza. So are both of those considered public as well, or-- I think I get the walkway, but I don't get the plaza part.

What does public mean for that part, and which part is public? There's an access easement, and there's a diagram within our final site plan that perhaps Gary can talk about. That is all over the entire frontage of Main, both the entry plaza and the seating plaza.

I think we just gave them different names there, because one is the entry to the front door, and then the other one has seating on it. They both have seating on it, but distinguishing names so that we know which side of, which elevational courtyard we're talking about.

And then that same diagram shows the same access easement from the front of the property line back to West Haven. So that diagram exists in our final site plan but is not part of the special exception permit, which is why- Okay, sorry.

It's page 54 of our packet. It's a color diagram. Okay. And is the seating also public? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks for clarifying again. Even though it was already addressed, I just didn't understand.

My other question is about the bike parking. And, has anybody from the applicant team physically used one of these racks before? Because I watched the video from the vendor. It looks great. My question is, how heavy a bike one can practically put on that top rack?

And I mean both the weight capacity of the top level of the rack, and I mean if someone's five foot three, are they getting a 70-pound bike onto that second level? And if no one's actually- We- Go ahead.

Usually have-- Yeah, this is a rack that we'll implement in all of our buildings. And so maybe like the heavier bikes you're talking about, a cyclist myself, I don't have an e-bike, but I know e-bikes are heavy.

They would go on the lower racks. And then there's a, I don't know the exact reach ranges, but I can pull the specifications and, it basically can kind of fold down. The wheel gets hooked in, and then you can push it up.

And so, it should be fairly accessible to any bike rider. Right. I'm sure there's some product data on how much weight capacity that these bike racks can take on both top and bottom. But I would say the common phenomenon is that the e-bikes go on the lower rack.

Okay. Yeah, I think my question, and I'll look into this myself, is less about how much weight the rack can hold and more about how much weight a person can lift under their own strength to that top level.

But I think your point's taken that heavy bikes go on the bottom. I would ask, and this is probably out of scope, I'm sorry, the vendor also makes e-bike racks that hold wider tires and offer charging.

This is just a comment. I would encourage you to look into including at least some of those in the bike room if space and budget allow. But, it's a cool vendor. I would take advantage of their products.

That's all. So- And we've used that, yeah, we've used that product in quite a few projects all over the country. And, I know they're very durable. We haven't got any feedback that there was issues with usage or just the durability of the rack in general.

I received earlier today a photo of a bike rack in a different student building not far from this site, and it is poorly utilized and I think relatably poorly designed. So, hopefully when you all actually build this bike room, you'll consider building it in ways that the residents actually want to make use of it, because that's not always the case.

But that's up to you all. Not to, well, probably not my place to make an argument for the applicant, but if you look at their-- Actually, you don't have that plan. I believe they only have one level of parking, and it's fairly limited.

So you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't have one parking space per unit. You've got much less than that. Is that correct? So you're relying on this bike room- Yeah ... fairly heavily. 49 car parks- Stalls ...

stalls and 182 bike spots. So yeah. I assume that because you're relying so much on this bike room, you've got to have a lot of faith in this bike rack. Is that a safe assumption? Yeah, it is. We have direct access basically right off the elevator path, and so that's easy for folks to get in and out.

You can kind of easily take it out and then kind of get on Main Street. And there's a bike lane right there for everybody. So We try to be thoughtful with where we locate the spaces. It's not back in the far corner of the garage.

We actually lost some vehicular parking. I fight for this on all my projects. I ride my bike to work, so I'm very sensitive to it. On the same subject, are you guys building that room to the manufacturer's recommended spacing or to their minimums?

Sort of a parlay off of Josh's question about usability. I'm just curious to know what you're planning to build the dimensions to. Well, generally, we provide a layout. We work on a layout that incorporates the manufacturer's recommendations in terms of space per bike, and the depth, and the access aisle in between.

And so early on, when we were laying out the bike room, we made modifications and tweaks so that we can adapt it so that we won't end up with a lot of wasted space. So at some point, if the room gets too wide, you're not really getting much advantage.

You're getting all the extra space in the aisle and the circulation internally. And so a lot of times, what we're doing here, knowing that providing as many bike spaces as we can was important to the project, we laid it out with the dimensions of this rack in mind.

And so that helps utilize as much space avoids ending up with a lot of wasted open space that cannot fit any racks. And so that's how we backed into the shape and the layout. The bike room itself is kind of sandwiched between the parking area, and then the back of the fitness and the amenities.

And so we sized the depth of it. We're very compressed depth-wise in this building, just with the access around the perimeter, around the building. And so we sized it to take advantage of the specific requirements for this supplier, obviously, with some tolerance in mind.

Yep. Yeah. Thank you for that. I'm interested from a public benefit of this long-term bike parking, and especially with the ratio to cars, how this is going to function on that lot from a more general city planning perspective.

But I want to comment to the board here that even though their technical dimensions are much smaller than what we have in the code for between racks and stuff, when you look at them practically, the bikes are actually further apart than what our code has as a minimum because of the way the system staggers the bikes and their handlebars.

So I think there's quite a bit of room in there, at the same time are able to fit four times as many bikes in the same amount of area. That's all I got. I did, by the way, somebody listening to the meeting sent me the specs for the upper level of the racks.

They can hold 30-pound bikes each, which that won't hold me bike, but it'll hold, I think, my regular bike. So that's encouraging. Other questions? Or comments? Anybody have any concerns with approving any part of this?

Or should we move on to a motion? Mr. Chair, I have a motion. All right. I move to recommend approval of this application for a special exception permit in the CX-8 corridor mixed use district for tax pap and parcels 310183000, 310175000, and as requested, with no reservations or conditions to grant all five requests as detailed in the packet.

Second. All right. Dylan, can you please call the vote? Okay. Commissioner Soliesz. Aye. Commissioner Harness. Yes. Commissioner Karp. Yes. Commissioner Yoder. Yes. Commissioner Rooker. Yes. Commissioner Mitchell.

Yes. Chairman Schwartz. Yes. All right. Your special exception's been approved or recommended to counsel by us. Thank you all very much. All right. Our next item tonight is a preliminary discussion for 209 12th Street Northeast.

Chair, Commission, Matt Alfley. I'm the development planning manager. I am standing in for Ben Kobe, the planner for this project tonight. You'll be having a preliminary discussion on a proposed rezoning, at 209 12th Street Northeast, which is T&N Printing.

They are proposing to rezone a lot they own next to their shop from RA. I will say, we had a discussion in the pre-app meeting, and I'll leave it up to the applicant to discuss whether they're really looking at CX-3 or CX-5.

But the point of this now is we don't have an application. We had a pre-application meeting. This is an opportunity for the applicant to hear feedback, concerns, or anything that the commission might have to add.

There's a series of questions in your packet that you might want to consider, but this is just intended to give you a starting point. We have the applicant here, Felina, who can give a presentation. We don't have any visuals, but we can put anything up on from the packet on the slide that you need.

So with that, I'll answer any technical questions, but really turn it over to this preliminary discussion after the applicant gives their presentation. Really, my only technical question is, we did this 10 years ago.

Has anything technical changed? Was it really 10 years ago? 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, it hurts. Yeah. I remember the last one that came forward. They withdrew their application at a certain point, and that was under the old zoning code.

And so, I'll leave it to the presentation of why they're maybe pursuing it at this time. Thank you. My only question for you, Matt, is it's my understanding currently that our development code already has transition requirements between the CX zone and the residential zones.

Correct. Okay. Yeah, to follow up on that. I know there's a landscape requirement. Is there a stepping requirement from CX-5 to residential? I would need to look to see if there's steps. I checked that.

It's a Type A. Type A. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Does the applicant want to have anything to add? Hello. Can you hear me? Mm-hmm. Okay. Good evening, members of the Planning Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce this project and have an informal discussion with you this evening.

My name is Polina Andreeva, and I'm with Shump Engineering. I'm here on behalf of NAPA Properties and T&M Printing. Many of you already know and are familiar with T&M Printing. It is a locally established business that served Charlottesville and the surrounding area for more than 40 years.

Founded in 1982, it operated continuously from its current location at 205 12th Street Northeast, just down the road from here. The purpose of this request is to rezone the adjoining property at 209 12th Street Northeast to support the continued growth and operation of the established business.

The two properties are under common ownership, but they have different zoning designation. The existing printing facility is zoned CX-5, and the adjoining residential property is zoned RA. We are requesting that the property at 209 12th Street Northeast be rezoned to CX-3, bring the property into consistent zoning framework with the adjacent printing facility.

This rezoning will provide T&M Printing with the opportunity to replace the existing house with a new building designed to accommodate its expanding operational needs. More broadly, it will allow this longstanding local business to continue investing in its existing location rather than having to seek opportunities elsewhere.

We recognize that the property is located at an established residential neighborhood, and we understand the importance of ensuring that any future development is appropriately scaled and compatible with its surroundings.

These considerations have been central to our approach this request, as you can see in the concept plan. To that, the owner is willing to proffer a maximum building height to be consistent with height permitted under existing RA zoning district, so to match the neighbors.

Additionally, along the property line shared with RA zoned properties, the future development will comply with applicable Type A transition requirements as established in the development code. I'd also like to acknowledge that this is the first rezoning application under the city's recently amended development code.

This has not been done before, and we're working with city staff to navigate the process. We appreciate the Planning Commission's time and consideration this evening. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback, and look forward to working with the city as this proposal moves forward.

Thank you. Thanks. I guess we can start with questions. No questions. All right, we can move right into... Well? I have questions. Mm-hmm. 10 years have passed. I actually was reading in the coverage of 10 years ago, they were saying that they might need it 10 years from now, looking ahead.

How wonderful. I take it there is a need now. Yes. So there's still discussion about the exact purpose of the building. It can be office entirely, or it can, in part, be for printing services as well.

So those would be the two uses considered in mixed use? Yes. If this becomes a critical issue, the applicant is willing to proffer some of the uses allowed in CX-3, like restaurants or gas stations, just to ensure peace of mind for the neighbors and the city.

They're not considering opening a gas station, I take it. No. Thank you. You guys want to start with thoughts? Sorry, one more question. Oh, of course. I think we had discussed earlier, this was Danny's question from before, but there was the point about the adjacent parcel being CX-5 and asking for rezoning to CX-3.

Doesn't matter to me either way, but I think we were wondering why you weren't asking for CX-5 for both. Well, Danny, let me ask you to ask your question because I want to make sure I get it right. Sure.

I think I noticed, and this may have just been a typo in the report, that it was saying that the adjacent property is CX-3, and so let's bring both properties the same designation, but actually, it's CX-5.

And so, I guess- I don't know if we're asking a question really, but I- I guess the question is, is it intentional? Yeah. Is that intentional or to have two different zoning designations or not? The reasoning behind that, we don't need to go as high as CX-5 just because we're not going to utilize the uses there.

And also, we're very cautious that this is the very first rezoning under new development code, and we're afraid of any pressure and people thinking that we're going to put some very high intensity use there.

Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Previously, when this came up 10 years ago, four neighbors spoke against. There was some concern that this would not be a good neighbor. I don't know. I haven't served with the neighbors in the last 10 years.

Do you have a sense of the current sentiment? Have you knocked doors? Do you have a sense of how people feel? At the moment, no. We're just at the pre-application stage. But also, I would like to note that this business has been there since 1982, probably longer than the neighbors.

Would you-- This is kind of an off-topic question. With the CX-3, I was thinking you could always put apartments on top or something to make it- Yes, that is an option ... more residential, if that's a worry of the neighbors.

Yes. Something that was brought up at the pre-application meeting, that the city is a little bit worried about losing residential potential for this property, and we acknowledge that, and if it becomes a critical point, we're open to having one or a few apartments.

It brings up an interesting question about the owner still not being sure whether they want to have offices or printing facilities. Because if it's printing facilities, it's not possible to have residential there.

Mm-hmm. It wouldn't be safe. But if it's just an office building, that would be an option. Okay. I just wondered if you'd thought about that. So for me, Ms. Redker, what would the impact on the height be if they did add residential?

I was just thinking more of the neighbors concerned about having a business rather than- Yeah ... a resident. Yeah. And that in that height, you probably could do an office and one story- Okay ... apartments on top.

Because I do like the fact that they're considering keeping the height consistent with RA, so- Yeah ... would like not to see that go above that. Yeah. I-- Can I, may I comment? Yeah. I just want to add one quick thing, though, about the CX-5 versus CX-3.

If they were to rezone it as CX-5, it requires a different transition. So it would require a 20 foot setback, not stepback, but setback, whereas a CX-3 only requires 15 feet, and their little site plan they've already created is based on a 15 foot setback.

Yeah. So just something that they would want to consider if we start talking about CX-5 versus 3. Also, the upper story stepbacks are much greater for the CX-5 transition. Mm-hmm. But yeah, just want to throw that out there.

My thought is that, and just for a general comment, that to me, it makes sense. I don't know the immediate neighbors, so I don't want to ... It'd be great to hear from some of them, but the size of the building won't be all that different than what you could build as residential.

If you were to tear the current building down- Mm-hmm ... you could build- Yeah ... a pretty big house there. It makes sense, and it makes sense along the strip of existing residential, commercial lots.

And I appreciate the CX-3 because it does seem less jarring to the neighbors that mostly have the kind of one story ranch- Yeah ... height right around there. But I feel like it's, to me, it makes sense.

Mm-hmm. I'm okay with that. I'll just add, I think it is consistent with the comp plan because I think that's one of our standards for considering a rezoning. We've got a commercial corridor, and this isn't like plopping in a totally new use near it.

It's just expanding an existing use one parcel over. So I think it's an appropriate thing to consider. I now live near a light industrial manufacturing facility, and it's fine. But the noise, I think, if I were a neighbor, is what I would be concerned by.

And so I guess maybe this is a question for staff, but how do we regulate noise? Do we have thresholds- Mm-hmm ... that if you build a factory in a light industrial zone, and I know you may not know the decibel numbers off the top of your head, but what I'm getting at is I assume that we have other protections in place to mitigate noise issues that are not the zoning code.

Sort of. So we don't have a very strong noise ordinance. It actually speaks more to noise created in residential zones, and there are decibels and time frames, and then a list of things that are exempt from day and nighttime noises.

Yeah. Interesting fact, that section is not in our development code. That section is in the police code, and it actually still references our old zoning districts. Nice. I don't know if that really put you at ease.

That's not a thing for us to look at, but maybe someone at the city could update that. If I can, I'll also add a note to that. So there is a 10% canopy requirement, and we intend to use that to buffer from the residential uses, and I think it will help with the noise pollution, which I think will be minimal, especially given TNN only operates during normal business hours.

Mm-hmm. I'll just add my comment that as this, even if it is CX-5, it's an expansion one parcel over. I think it says it's 62 feet of expansion of the zoning code, or the zoning district, even at CX-5.

And I would like to see how the already written buffers and transitions between those zones and the residential play out in this. And it sounds like we have an applicant that's very aware and cognizant of their neighbors, and they've been there a long time.

I shouldn't necessarily tie this directly to an applicant, but if we're going to go for a first rezoning, I think we have a good applicant to do that with, if we wanted to. So I'm cautious about doing more than what our development code already prescribes.

Just a small comment, I guess. There might be a tension between the idea of an office with apartments on top and proffering lower height. Could you fit an office space with apartments on top while proffering lower height?

I think the maximum height at RA District right now is 40 feet. 35 for the purposes of fire access. I think it's very doable to have four stories with that. Okay. But also, if the planning commission recommends that we do not proffer the height, because we haven't formally submitted an application yet, we could also just not add it to our proffers.

My personal opinion is that I would not foreclose on options that you might want to offer in the future. So if you're considering offering office plus residential, but the proffer fits with that idea, great.

If it would cause problems for you, then maybe reconsider it. But if there's a thought that that would help with neighborhood harmony in whatever way, I would keep the option open, but I think you already are.

And the reason why we're even talking about residential uses, it's because the city brought it up during the pre-app. I think the main intention of the applicant is to keep it commercial. Okay. And once again, I do like the idea of keeping the height around the RA requirements.

I'm just looking at the use matrix in the development code, right around page 174 in that neighborhood. Alcohol sales, drive-through. Private club, I don't know that can be removed, but I could see that being an issue late at night.

The passenger terminal. There's a few that I could see being an issue, especially at night. But a lot of this I see as an amenity. Maybe the more vehicular uses, and the more disruptive uses I'd be more concerned about.

But things like a small bakery or that kind of thing sounds pretty good, actually. Anyone else, or can I comment? All right. Personally, I'd like to see you just combine the two lots and do one consistent zone.

I think if you look at the zoning map, there are other parcels on East Market Street that would extend back further into the residential neighborhood, that are CX-5, than your two combined lots would.

So I don't see any concern with... It doesn't make sense to me to micromanage that and force you into something lower than what would, I think, be required if this was just one lot. So personally, I would be fine with CX-5, and I would be fine not putting any limits on it, letting our transitions do their job.

Now again, you guys and your civil engineer are probably going to want to play a little game with the setback. So if that 15 feet versus 20 feet is important to you, then obviously you'd need to stick with CX-3.

But again, I think the transitions that we have do the job that any height concerns that we might have, it would help solve those issues. So I wouldn't limit yourself unnecessarily, unless I think we need to probably do a straw poll on the planning commission to see how many people are concerned with the height, versus not, just so you don't come back with something that doesn't have a chance of passing.

Yeah, so that's where I stand. Thank you. That's very helpful. Out of curiosity, so how many people on our commission are concerned about the height? Would want to limit the height? RA is 40 feet. Is that right?

What was it? I think they said 40 for residential. Yeah. 40's a lot. And enough. Okay. So you would like to keep it around 40. Yes. Any others? Well, can we just say what CX-5 allows? I think it's 72 feet.

Is that right? Or am I misreading the code? So CX-3 is 44 feet, and this might be the max with bonuses. I'm not actually sure. Maybe staff can help us. Let me grab my laptop while you all discuss other things.

I'm looking it up too. The only thing that I will add to the height discussion is that they can already get full height 62 feet away. So limiting this one lot of 67 feet to a different height seems restrictive.

Yeah. I don't know. What is that big giant lot that's just to the east? Who owns that? Yeah. That's like it's got like a surface parking lot and- Is it? ... stuff there too, right? Mm-hmm. Do I have...

Oh. It's a warehouse. It's a warehouse. So yeah, that could be a-- That's CX-5. So technically, if they put affordable housing in there, that could be, I think, a seven-story building. Mm-hmm. May I just- Mm-hmm ...

reinstate one question I had? Mm-hmm. Because this is informal discussion, I thought I would just pitch it. Would it matter to you if we don't propose residential? Would it matter that the city would lose one or two units in this particular location?

I think if we rezoned it, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't put any conditions on you guys for it has to be residential, it has to be something else. But again, that's other people. Because my understanding, and Matt can correct me, the path we're going to go- Mm-hmm ...

under the new code is we're going to have a development plan that we submit to the city where we specify all of the uses, the footprint of the building, the setbacks, et cetera. Mm-hmm. So it will be included in the application.

So I think if there were conditions put on the rezoning, I think one of the issues is they would extend to future owners. Is that correct? Yes. Correct. Any proffers would run with the land. What Polina is talking about is there's two types of rezonings you can do.

There is the rezoning where it's tied to a specific development. You're rezoning to do a specific development. Mm-hmm. And then there is the type of rezoning, you said, "My land was zoned wrong, and I want it to be X." Mm-hmm.

And so that's what Polina's getting to, is there'll be more detail as they're coming along. There'll be a development plan with the rezoning application. So if you do the rezoning to a development, what happens when it changes hands?

It still stops there. It still goes with the land. It's set up, a lot of times, that development is specifically proffered. Mm-hmm. And so you rarely have someone going through that whole process, getting the rezoning and then not pursuing the development.

It's all on how the application's written, how the proffer's written- Mm-hmm ... how the ordinance granting the rezoning is written. But in general, those are the two types of rezonings. Mm-hmm. You rarely see, mainly for this main fact, someone can come forward and say, "I just think my land's zoned wrong." That doesn't get a lot of traction because a lot of people are wondering, "Well, why are you rezoning it?

What do you do?" So it's a legitimate path, just not a lot of people take it. Back to your question on the CX-5, your base height is five stories, up to 72 feet, with a max of all your bonuses to seven stories, 100 feet.

With the residential uses, right now, the owner of the print shop owns the house. Mm-hmm. Doesn't sound like they're looking to turn that into a bunch of apartments. Yeah. We do have economic development to think about in the comprehensive plan.

We do have other things outside of residential. We've known as a large part of our plan and our development code. I agree with that. But I don't see that this project is counter to those ideas. We've not heard from the public.

So if I get yelled at, I might say something different tomorrow. But from what I know right now, housing is a good thing. Housing is a need, but it's not an overwhelming need at this site. We're talking about one unit.

If you wanted to do housing and had a positive way to do that that made sense, I certainly see how that would be good. But I don't, at this time, see a need to force it. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. And the rezoning would say, not to wish this on TNN, but say in 10 years we don't use paper anymore or something, and they want to sell it and redevelop it as an apartment building, then they'd have the opportunity under whatever height we allow them to have.

So you would not be opposed to this being CX-5 rather than CX-3? Going all the way. I would not be opposed to CX-5 versus CX-3, but I don't know where anyone else stands on that. I'm not opposed. 100 feet's a lot.

You think? Excuse me. 100 feet is a lot. It is. But that's- But that's with bonus height, yes. Yeah. But still. But yeah. But it's also worth acknowledging that right across the street, exact same zoning, they can do exact same thing.

I would just say, and it's beyond our scope obviously, I have no concerns with CX-5. I wouldn't want you to get to council and have things blow up there. So, there are things to consider besides what any of us thinks about it.

But personally, I'm fine with it. In general, split lot zoning is bad practice. It's confusing. It's hard to administer. It's hard for property owners to understand and to communicate when properties change hands.

It's a complication. So in general, simplicity is a very good thing. And I do believe the transitions make sense, for all the classifications. I think we did a good job on that one. I do hear Commissioner Mitchell's concerns, and I do not dismiss them, but at this time, I think CX-5 makes sense for this area.

Also, I saw data centers on there. We know more about data centers now. That one might be a good one. Oh, yeah. Matt, I had an email for you about that. I meant to bring it up at our last zoning discussion.

We need to work on that section. Mm-hmm. We do not plan to put a- ... I want to be very vague. But it is something that I would need to run by the owner, because as Commissioner Schwartz brought it up, the setback is larger in CX-5, and it could be an economic deal breaker for them to lose five feet.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, a nuclear reactor right there. Other thoughts? Other last comments before they prepare their application? Other questions for us? No, thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you. Great.

I guess we have a presentation on- Climate ... our Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan. Strategies. We have an extended grid outage. You'll be glad I printed that for you. Thank you. There was no way I was going to see this on the screen.

Oh. Anyway, hi. Good evening, members of the Planning Commission. My name's Emily Irvin, and I'm the city's climate program manager. And I've been managing the development of our Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan.

So I'm pleased to be here this evening to share an update about it. You all may remember that almost two years ago, I first brought this forward to you all at a joint meeting with the county's planning commission.

So I know there's been a little bit of turnover. There's new members on the commission now. So I'll start with a little history and background to get us all on the same page. Then I'll talk about the plan itself, its development, and then we'll dip in a little bit to what's in the plan.

I'll provide a time or two to answer some questions if needed. We'll have time for questions at the end, but if you have a real clarifying question, you can stop me if needed. Let's see. Next slide, please.

I'm usually used to being able to change the slides myself. Are you doing it? Mm-hmm. Okay. So I already talked about that a little bit. Next slide please, Dan. So we'll get started with a little bit of background about why we're doing this type of work.

All right, next slide, please. So as you can see from this timeline, it's been a long journey getting to a draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan. Those first two milestones are there mostly for context.

Charlottesville's been acting on climate for 20 years now, which is really wonderful. But the direct line to our draft resilience plan really started in 2017 with the city's commitment to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.

So that commitment included both reducing our greenhouse gases and preparing for the impacts of climate change. We'll talk about that distinction a little bit more on the next slide. But after that commitment was made, city staff really started working towards a climate action plan, so reducing our emissions.

First by proposing the new updated emissions reduction targets, which were adopted in 2019, and then by bringing forward our climate action plan which was adopted in early 2023. So before the climate action plan was finished, there was this awareness that we also needed to be getting to work on our resilience planning.

So in 2022, work was initiated on a climate risk and vulnerability assessment. And so that study helped us to understand what the impacts of climate change would be here locally. Around that same time, Albemarle County was also beginning their climate resilience planning work, and so city and county staff proposed working on the planning and the engagement pieces of the project together.

And so in September of 2023, we kicked off the Resilient Together project. Next slide, please. So talking about the sibling plans. So when we talk about climate action, we're talking about two major categories or buckets of work.

Really, there is some overlap, so it's more like a Venn diagram, but for the purpose of these two plans, I think it's useful to think about them in these two categories. So like I said, our 2017 commitment guided us that we need to engage in both of these.

So mitigation is addressing the causes, reducing our emission. That is addressed in our climate action plan. Adaptation is reacting to the symptoms, planning for the climate-driven hazards that we're experiencing.

That is the focus of the resilience plan. Next slide, please. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time talking about the data and the details of our local climate impacts this evening. That was a big part of the focus of when I last spoke with you all.

There's also lots more detailed information in chapter four of the plan that's linked in your packet. But for the purposes of tonight's presentation, I think it's important to acknowledge what these...

And after the summer we've just had, everyone can probably feel them viscerally because we have all experienced many of them firsthand. All right, next slide please. So what do we really mean by climate resilience?

So this means strengthening our systems, changing the way that we do things to better withstand the new conditions that we're living in. So take extreme heat, for example. We may be experiencing an acute heat wave event where it's maybe over 100 degrees for a few days in a row, and then we also experience that as a more chronic stressor.

It's almost mid-October, it's supposed to be 88 degrees tomorrow. It was 90 degrees one day last week. So our ecosystems don't really know what to do with that. That's having an impact on our local systems as well.

So the things that we need to do to prepare are quite varied. So we need to help people access cooling. We need to increase access to shade and water in public spaces. We need to support our ecosystems.

So we'll talk specifically about these types of strategies later, but these are just all examples of how we might strengthen our community systems to increase our resilience to adapt to climate change.

Next slide, please. So I'd like to also share this slide. I think for more visual learners, this can also be a useful way to represent what I just said. So that chart on the left shows a community or a system that is less resilient.

An acute hazard is experienced, there's a period of response and recovery, and because you reached that tipping point, there is a permanent loss, and the system or the community is not able to return to its pre-disaster status.

But if you invest in building resilience, it won't stop that hazard from coming necessarily. You will still have a period of response and recovery after an impact. But because that tipping point isn't reached, you are able to recover.

So that's really what we're talking about trying to do in our community here. Next slide, please. All right. So, I mentioned a few moments ago that the city's risk and vulnerability assessment was conducted in a similar timeframe to the county's.

And so of course, nobody was surprised that we faced the same impacts of climate change. So around that time, city and county climate program staff, along with staff from UVA's Office of Sustainability, were working closely together on community education and outreach around climate.

So staff were working together a lot, and the conversation started to bubble up about potentially doing the resilience planning work together. So did a little more planning, put a little more structure around the idea, pitched it to leadership, and it was decided that working together on the planning and the community engagement work would be beneficial and a good use of staff time and resources, and that is the sort of genesis of the Resilient Together project.

So we've worked really closely over the last several years to engage with staff and partners and community-based organizations, the public, always with this intention to bring separate but complementary plans forward to our respective bodies for adoption when the time has come.

And so here we are with Charlottesville's plan is just about ready for primetime. Next slide, please. All right. So this is a high-level timeline of the project. We publicly kicked it off in September of 2023 with a big interagency staff gathering.

We spent the next few months of that, we called it the discover phase, doing a lot of community engagement and listening and sharing information with the community about the impacts. After that, we sort of turned inward during the define phase, and we shared the goals and guiding principles of the project, which we talked about last time I was in front of this group.

And then so shortly after that, we moved really into the design phase, which is where the real sort of meaty work of the project took place, refining the strategies that would eventually wind up in the plan, and then also developing the implementation projects that are in the draft plan.

So that work took a long time, and now here we are with a draft plan, bringing it forward for feedback and eventual adoption. I do want to point out, I think this slide is slightly misleading. I'm limited by PowerPoint.

But suggesting that no real resilience work is happening until after the plan is adopted, that's certainly not the case. This plan points to a lot of work that's already in progress. You may have noticed, if you had time to flip through the document, that there's a lot of project implementation steps there that are classified as already initiated.

All right. Next slide, please. So, I did mention that the development of the strategies and the implementation steps took a long time. Part of that was just, it was quite a lot of work. But part of it was also winning and then also losing a big federal grant that was intended to support the project.

So, the Resilient Together project team applied for and was awarded a $460,000 EPA Environmental Justice Government to Government grant that was meant to really support engagement and seed community-led resilience projects through the climate resilience cohort that was- Can I interrupt you?

I probably ought to know the answer. What does CBO, what is that? Community-based organization. Okay. My bad. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, no problem. So anyway, we went through that application process.

We were going to pass through the majority of the funds to our community-based organization partners. We had a competitive application process. We selected nine groups to partner with us, negotiating the federal grant with the government, and then getting all that underway took some time.

So, the work was really just getting underway when then, in March of 2025, the grant was canceled. So, that has presented a challenge and a setback, and it has slowed down the timeline of the project.

And I'm really grateful to the organizations that were able to stick with us. City and county took a little time, but we dedicated some funds to keep the planning aspect of that work going. It was still difficult, and you probably remember last time I was before this body, we were really excited about that.

But anyway, we adapted. So, next slide, please. Resilient. So, does anybody have any questions about deep project history before I move on to the next-- Okay, great. So, next slide, please. So, when we first set off on the development of this plan, we knew it would only be successful if we involved a lot of other people.

So, we thought about the engagement work we did throughout the planning process along these different tracks that are up here on this slide. So, Office of Sustainability staff, we're experts in our area, but we know we're not experts in the work of our colleagues.

And so, we really viewed ourselves as the conveners and really relied on them to be the experts and help to bring their expertise to the development of this plan. And also, as with any planning effort, it's really important to have input from the community.

I've said many times, you've probably heard me say this, durable resilience isn't something the local government can do to or for the community. It's really something that has to be co-created, and it has to really take place at every level of the community, from individual households to neighborhoods, networks, and organizations, and then the local government.

And so, I know there's a lot more work left to be done to build that muscle, and to empower and encourage our community members. But we worked hard throughout the project to try to lay the foundation for that and build relationships, and learn from the community, and understand specific place-based needs and knowledge.

Next slide, please. So, this slide gives a little bit more detail about the staff and partner engagement that took place through the development of this plan. So, we had over 125, either community or cross-organizational, meetings during the development of this plan, and that did not include our just project team meetings.

So, we brought folks together in a lot of different configurations from our partner organizations, sometimes across sectors, sometimes across all the organizations. And we got the feedback that staff from across our partnership mostly really enjoyed that.

They enjoyed working with people that they didn't get to work with very often, and there was sort of a good cross-pollination of ideas and staff between our three organizations. So- Sorry, quick question.

Sorry to interrupt. Are these example partners and groups, or is this- So, these are departments from each- Yeah ... UVA, Charlottesville, and Albemarle. And then partners, you'll see that's ECC up there, Rivanna.

These are just examples of- Examples. So, there's- ... organizations that were part of the planning process. There's even more than this? Or is this- Oh, I'm trying to create a pretty exhaustive list.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So anyway, and then as we got closer to the end, we did meet in smaller strategy-specific teams to really hone and refine the final product that's presented in the draft. Next slide, please.

So, I'm going to move pretty quickly through the next couple of slides. You all saw these last time, but I wanted to just remind us, since there are new planning commissioners. But these were the themes that we heard during our earliest engagement about what is important to community members, what they identified as important to them when thinking about building climate resilience.

Next slide, please. So then, we took those themes and we developed our project principles, which guided us as we worked to develop and distill the strategies and projects that ultimately ended up in the plan.

And I think they'll continue to serve as important guideposts as we move into implementation. Next slide, please. And then, from the themes, we also developed these eight long-term goals, which I think manifest through the strategies as we think about what successful will look like in the future or could look like in the future.

Next slide, please. So of course, the foundational reason that I am here before you all this evening is that we propose to eventually bring the resilience plan forward for adoption as an amendment to the comprehensive plan.

That was the process that we took with the climate action plan, and since this is that sibling document that I talked about, we think that that would be very beneficial here as well. Climate really has a way of touching so many of our community systems, and so there's many projects and strategies that are proposed here that touch areas of the comp plan beyond even just chapter seven, the climate and environment and food chapter.

So from the outset of doing this work, we have said that the point is not to reinvent the wheel, but to really overlay this lens of climate resilience over existing work to strengthen connections between existing plans and projects, and then also to identify gaps.

So throughout the implementation projects that are listed in the plan, you'll find reference to a lot of work that's already ongoing. You may remember a few months ago, my colleague Tori was here giving you all an update about the environmental regulatory review projects.

And from my perspective, the timing of that work is really excellent with respect to the adaptation resilience plan, because a lot of that work and those projects that are being done are actually implementation steps of this proposed plan.

So there's a strong relationship between this and work that's ongoing. I think another important relationship I just wanted to call out while we're talking about other plans and projects is the relationship to our regional hazard mitigation planning.

So that work happens at the regional level through the Planning District Commission. When it's updated in two years, I think, the new rules say that it has to consider the impacts of climate change when it's considering our hazards.

And so I think because of this work, Charlottesville will be pretty well positioned for that update. All right, next slide, please. Okay, this is another potential question-asking gap, if you have anything before I move on to the final section of the presentation.

Doing well. Okay, great. Next slide, please. Okay, so the final draft of the plan contains 16 broad strategies. Those are what are the strategy statements, are what is on the handout that I gave to you all.

So each strategy is supported by one or more, and some strategies actually have quite a few projects or steps that will support the implementation of the strategy. So you will see that the topics cover a really broad range of systems that support our community, infrastructure, ecological systems, human systems of care.

Like we said a moment ago, climate change really touches a lot of aspects of our daily lives. And I think this is a time to mention, so the word resilience, it's a little bit of a buzzword these days, and it means different things to different people working in different spaces.

And it was sometimes difficult throughout this process to parse the difference between what is climate resilience and what is other important community resilience. And so in order to make this plan manageable at all, and this is our first time doing this, we really intentionally ended up trying to draw a pretty tight circle around what is climate resilience and focus on that.

So that may be why some folks look at this plan and they don't see things that may be important to them that certainly are important to other types of community resilience, but maybe don't belong in the climate resilience plan.

So that's how we whittled it down to these 16 strategies that we feel are really central to helping Charlottesville prepare for the climate-driven hazards that we are facing. Next slide, please. So I know this chart is a little difficult to see, and the details are less important than what the overall picture is trying to show.

So those are the strategy topic areas listed there on the left, and then across the top is the little symbol that indicates each of our six hazards. And so I just think it's interesting to present the data in this way or the plan in this way, because you can see that a lot of the strategies, even most of them, address more than one hazard, and even most or all of the hazards.

And then you can also see that there isn't a hazard that's orphaned and isn't getting very much attention. And so we hope that by picking these strategies, many of which are broad, all-hazard concepts, we're really helping to cover our bases here.

That's what I wanted to show with this slide. Next slide, please. So this one shares more information about how we developed and refined the strategies that ultimately ended up in the plan. So we didn't start from scratch.

We actually started with this federal database that NOAA compiled called the Climate Resilience Toolkit. It is still there. I checked today. And that database is basically a compilation of strategies from resilience plans from all across the country.

So great place to start learning, but a lot of things that are just not relevant in our area. So our first thing to do was to really sift through and sort and filter out what could potentially be useful to us.

We also did a lot of learning from other communities at this time, and so I like to call out our friends from Fairfax County, Virginia. They had recently released their Resilient Fairfax plan around the time that we were really getting started, and we really liked the way their plan was organized, and their staff were really generous with us in sharing their lessons learned.

And so We definitely were trying to learn from our peer communities. So once we had narrowed down this list of potential strategies, we turned our attention to what would be needed to implement them. And we kind of learned a lesson from the development of our climate action plan.

Our climate action plan is really at the strategic level. It's got a lot of great information in it, but it doesn't go very deep in implementation. And so we wanted this plan to sort of take one step further to sort of help guide implementation and make the strategies more real.

So at this stage of the project, we were also getting a lot of input from our colleagues across departments. This is where we really leaned on them to be the experts and help us understand what they saw would need to be done to turn the strategies into reality.

So that last tile on the right is also about understanding impact of each strategy. What would success look like? How would we know we were moving towards success? Are we supporting reaching those goals that we set?

So each strategy roadmap contains indications of success and ways we could observe or measure moving towards success. All right. Next slide, please. So I know this is really hard to see on this slide, but I shared the document with you all.

But this was something we really borrowed from our friends in Fairfax. We call these our implementation roadmaps. We felt like organizing each strategy in this way was a simple and clear way to present a lot of information.

So you can see there's a strategy statement at the top. There's a visual representation of which hazards the strategy addresses. There's a background section that provides some context and information about why we think this is important, why it's included in the plan.

And then we prioritize the implementation projects by when we estimate they can be started. So the already initiated projects are there at the top, and then one to three years, three to five, five to 10 years implementation start time.

That's how they're sort of ordered in the plan. And then each of the projects contains more detailed information about who will lead it, partners, et cetera. So there's also a corresponding community action section.

We'll talk in more detail about that in a moment. And like I mentioned, each strategy also has this indication of success. What does success look like? How do we know we're moving in that direction? Next slide, please.

So we don't have time this evening to go over all 16 strategies in detail, but I thought it might be useful to just pick one and kind of walk through it with you all. So I picked urban heat because I felt like it's one we can all relate to after the summer we just experienced.

So these increasing number of extremely hot days, our longer heat waves, general warming overall, these are all aspects of climate change that are impacting our community, both as these acute events and chronic stressors.

So the strategy you can see there on top in that sort of Piedmont parchment, the city's design standards call it. Anyway, it's up there at the top, and then they're supported by these seven associated implementation projects with this particular strategy.

They're simplified here for the sake of the slide, but you can see they're very variable across. Some are related to our urban forest, some are policy related, some are related to cooling centers. Just a lot of variation in what the projects proposed are.

So it's just an example. We're going to have to undertake a lot of different types of work to ensure that our community is better prepared to withstand increasing heat. So I also know that this map in this context is really difficult to see, but this is a map of Charlottesville that shows where areas of disproportionate heat are.

So having this type of information in the plan helps us to more equitably plan implementation and helps us direct where to put our resources. All right. Next step. Next slide, please. So this slide drills down a bit further.

It's a close-up of an individual implementation project. I'm not going to read it. This one is related to an urban heat project about increasing green infrastructure and shade in public spaces. It calls for prioritization of areas most impacted, and it also calls out alignment with other plans.

We work to identify lead and partner departments. And for this particular example, we didn't identify any external partners, but that is a section that's part of some of the projects. We tried to do an estimate of staff effort required.

I realize that's a very imprecise metric, but it's kind of a proxy for a couple of different things together. Project complexity, like additional planning needed, staff capacity, project cost. It's this proxy for this amalgamation of factors that we felt was important to helping folks understand what would go into implementing any given project.

So we also identified potential sources of funding. We didn't attempt to evaluate individual project costs. That just felt infeasible for this level of this project, but that would be future work. We did try to kind of roll that into that effort metric.

So another thing that I want to note here just before I move on. So this particular example has a lead department identified, but you may have noticed if you've spent much time perusing the plan that some of the lead designations are TBD or to be decided.

So that's because there is work proposed in this plan ... for which a lead has not been identified due to capacity constraints. So, we don't currently have staff capacity to implement the plan to its fullest.

That is something that we have discussed with city leadership, they have an awareness of, and we made a decision together to keep those projects in the plan because they are important work that will need future resources.

All right. Next slide, please. So I said earlier that resilience building takes all of us. It has to happen at every level of the community. The implementation projects that are proposed in the plan are largely intended to be carried out by the local government or possibly partner organizations.

But community members need to know how to take part in this work as well. And so each of the strategies contains this community action section with suggestions for ways that the work can be taken up either at the personal or neighborhood scale.

And I'll just say out loud, since this is a public meeting, this is an area during our public comment period where we really would love to have more community engagement and input. We really welcome input from the community.

As staff, we have a lot of awareness about what's going on, but we don't know everything. And so we would love to have people share their knowledge with us to support building out these sections. Next slide, please.

So from the beginning of this project, it has always been the intention to bring forward these separate but complementary resilience plans. So, this is a list that's in the plan of projects that will benefit the most from regional coordination, and where UVA and Albemarle County are listed as external partners.

So the ones in bold have been identified by Charlottesville and UVA staff as sort of the most impactful opportunities for collaboration, meaning they could have a potentially outsized impact on our regional preparedness.

And so those projects that have been flagged as impactful have also been put into the one-to-three-year start timeframe as a prioritization method. All right. Next slide, please. So that brings me to the end.

I do have these Planning Commission specific questions that I have for you all this evening, which is, do you think there's anything major that we missed? And also, do you feel that we are adequately bringing this lens of climate resilience to the planning efforts that we're working on?

We do have some next steps on the calendar. The plan is available on Connect Charlottesville site as of today. And it will be open for public comment through the middle of November. Maybe we might even extend that into later November at this point.

We have a work session with Council on the calendar for November 16th, and then the plan is to come back to you all in January for a public hearing and a recommendation. And should things go well, we will plan to go to Council for a public hearing in the middle of February.

That's all I got. So I really do like your articulation of these strategies that we're going to be embracing to deal with these issues. Lots of really good strategies, but my favorite three slides are this one.

This is number 108, where you acknowledge that implementation is going to be important, because the devil is in the details. Yes, it is. The second favorite slide is this one, where you actually walk us through what an implementation looks like.

But once again, at what point do we get to dive into the details? Because implementation will drive all kinds of trade-offs, and we need to understand what the trade-offs are going to be. So I know this is strategic, but at what point do we get to the tactical?

And at what point do we get to weigh in on the tactical, and weigh in on the trade-offs that would be involved? That is a great question. So I guess it will depend on the project. I can't imagine that every single project in this plan would come to the Planning Commission, but certainly you all are a stop- Right ...

where appropriate. There are quite a few projects, I would say, that are in the plan as proposed projects that are already sort of in you all's purview. Everything that's happening related to the regulatory review, and code updates, and things like that would all come to you all.

Am I missing the mark? Yeah. No, you're not missing the mark. Or did I not, Baby? Good evening. I'm Crystal Ritterbold. I'm the director of the Office of Sustainability. The one thing I would add is that this is a really good time to start weighing in.

Right? Rather than waiting for things to come to you incrementally, this would be a good time to identify which projects raise concerns, which ones do you think have trade-offs that we need to be aware of, so that as we move towards implementation, we're not starting that conversation over each time.

So I think it's a good question, but we know that doing nothing is going to put us in a really precarious place, probably more expensive. Doing something means that something's got to give. We probably can't do everything all at the same time.

Some of it, as Emily was describing, there's a particular lead that's very logical. Office of Sustainability can do some things. Public Works can do some things. There are ones that nobody is currently on point to do, but we decided not to hide that under a bushel, and rather say, "If this is a resilience strategy, it may not happen in the first one to three years, but we're going to have to figure out how to get it working." Mm-hmm.

So, I think I would just add that, is that now's a great time to Provide some feedback Mm-hmm. And Josh actually just pointed out that there are a couple of spots where we do see a lot more detail, a lot more blocking and tackling online.

Okay, good. There is. Yeah. And we welcome... I know we don't have time to talk through the details of this plan in this meeting this evening. But we welcome your input during this period of the next few weeks.

Please flag major things that you see for us. Now is the time for you all to help us make this as good as it can be. Yeah. Yeah. I think I, and maybe others, will want to actually read more of the implementation plan and send you feedback outside this meeting.

But I have notes now also. And I haven't read the whole plan, so if I say things that are based on a misunderstanding, let me know. I pre-apologize. Things that could be included that I don't see included or don't see much about is this planning commission land use.

So one improvement that we can get in effect for free is getting people to live in denser and newer housing. Right? So years ago, I lived in an apartment building downtown. It was made of concrete. It was very cheap to heat and cool, and if power went out, it stayed.

The temperature was stable for a long time. I live in a house now. I have more space. And when the power goes out, it's very uncomfortable, and it costs a lot to heat and cool. So newer housing and denser housing, meaning multifamily, are both just inherently more efficient and more resilient to outages, heat waves, and so on.

It's not your department's job, but it's an area to coordinate with NDS more on about to say, for example, at the start of the meeting, Ross was talking about the missing middle subcommittee, right? Working group.

Sorry. Thank you. That's actually extremely relevant for climate adaptation in that people need to live in newer, more efficient homes and have homes stacked side by side and on top of each other to not lose heat out of terrible 100-year-old windows and whatever else.

And the nice thing about land use work is that once the rules are written, the codes are updated, they are self-executing. You don't staff them every year or fund them every year. You say, "How can we change rules to allow good things to happen?" So I think the payoff is really high and the ongoing effort is really low, and anything that you can include in the plan about continuing to encourage the usual things we talk about here, infill development, multifamily development, more efficient and newer housing, are all going to pay off a lot.

Controversially, I am skeptical of including this food topic in here. It is not obvious to me that growing more food in the city, on public land, or in Virginia is particularly helpful for climate adaptation.

And I don't understand the case for trying to grow a significant amount of food in Charlottesville city limits. It's a small city. I have kids in the schools here, and we love our cultivate gardens in the schools.

They are an educational tool. They do not produce a meaningful amount of food. That's not a knock against the program. It's a great program. I struggle to see that program producing an amount of food that makes a dent in our climate needs.

And generally, my goal with food is to have a more efficient and resilient supply chain that does not necessarily care about what state the food was grown in. So I would like to hear more about the motivation for that, and I'm frankly skeptical of it as a climate tool.

I like it for other reasons, but I don't know why it's in this plan. On implementation, sorry for talking too much, but I'll stop in a minute. A thing that I have observed with other work related to yours and other departments is that programs that require a lot of staff time are really challenging.

You mentioned your time being limited. It's never going to be not limited. I appreciate very much that you have notes in your plan about level of staff effort for different topics because on the ROI front, I would strongly recommend working on things that do not take up a lot of your time.

So grants that you can apply for that do not require extensive review. If you say, "You want a heat pump, here's a subsidy," there's no site visit, there's no extensive engagement or visiting City Hall or whatever else.

Things that are self-executing and don't involve a lot of your time will be much more efficient going forward. And the same thing applies to the NGO partners. I appreciate our local NGOs, but systems that require extensive time per engagement per served household are just going to be hard to scale, and we need scale.

Sorry for a grab bag of notes. I might email your department more questions, but that's a high-level stuff. Thank you. Do you want to talk about any of that right now, or just sharing that with me? I think if you have reactions, I'm happy to hear them, but I'm sensitive of everyone's time and the hour.

So would you like to have it? Well, I can just share. We went back and forth a lot about the food system strategy, and we ultimately ended up including it because we heard from so many people how important it is to them.

But is it important to them because of climate or for other reasons? Because I like community gardens, and I don't see them as- Well, I'm not in a position to answer. I can share with you that we heard from a lot of people that it was really important to them I understand that.

I don't think that makes it correct. Can I ask a clarifying question? Because I was sort of trying to be like, "Wait, what does food mean?" But does this mean right now it would be great to have small grocery stores in neighborhoods you could walk to in a winter?

Or does it mean garden? I feel like there's more nuance maybe to what you're getting at. So this food resilience plan that is sort of hinted at in, I think it's the third implementation project in that strategy, that was sort of where we landed in terms of to acknowledge this is something that's really important to the community.

We are hearing a lot from community partners that thinking holistically about food resilience is something that matters to this community. It was not something that we could take on as part of this plan.

Right? And so that was sort of the compromise, was that we put it in there as consider taking this food resilience piece specifically to the next step to consider things like co-op grocery stores and things like that, food insecurity, all things related to food in a more holistic way.

That was our compromise as a way to acknowledge how important it was to the community without having to undertake it as part of this planning effort. I would just expect- And I'll read more deeply. I didn't mean to- Yeah, it's okay.

No, I appreciate that. But I think- I think the garden, yeah, there's some broader- Yeah ... ideas there. All I would say is that I think plenty of the work is important. Some of it, I think, is the metrics are actually wrong.

I don't think that we should have a goal of increasing the amount of food in the schools grown in Charlottesville city limits. I think that's frankly, silly. But the things that are valuable on the food topic, I think mostly don't belong under this plan.

I think they belong elsewhere, like in different departments, different budget line items, and so on. I like the projects, but I don't see them as plan projects, but I know why people are asking about them.

But it's because they'll ask you about everything they want, whether it's about this plan or not. That's how I would describe it. On the land use side, mostly, I would just say I'd like you to consider it.

If you want to talk about it, we love talking about land use, but I don't need to take everyone's time with that. But- Maybe at another-- Let's talk about it- Yeah ... another time. I can be done. I'm sorry.

I have many comments. Before I get to mine, Commissioner Mitchell, did you get to your third favorite slide? I thought you said there was three, and you only got to two. Oh, yeah. There were three, but it's not important.

Not important, but it drags through it. Well, I want to know after the meeting what your third favorite slide is. I'm going to do a better job of looking more deeply into the plan. I think it was 144 pages.

Yeah. Looking over from a high level, there's, I'm going to call chronic climate issues, and then there's acute climate issues. Chronic being like the climate's changing, and acute being like a wildfire that's happening right now.

Right. And an example of a very severe acute example that keeps coming to my mind is the Campfire fires in California. Yep. And I just have these images burned in my brain of YouTube of people all trying to get into their individual cars to leave the area, and they're just engulfed in flames so badly that nobody's actually moving, and just probably makes the problem worse.

So my mind thinks about transportation a lot. Mm-hmm. How do we think about evacuating an entire community that we're trying to fill with trees, and our homes are built mostly from sticks, and we have so much leaf litter that the city comes and picks it up off the street for you?

How do you get all these people out? I don't need you to answer that specific question. It's less about the specific question and about Campfire, but more about how do we think about the acute problems that climate change and resiliency can bring?

Yeah. So I think sort of what you're alluding to is the intersection or the overlap of emergency management and climate resilience planning. Sure. So I can share with you that we have a great relationship with our emergency management team.

Our emergency manager, he reviewed this plan. He was part of the development of this plan. We are brainstorming about whether maybe the next step is to propose a joint position to take on some of the TBD items in this plan.

So there's absolutely a lot of overlap there. I am not really involved in emergency evacuation planning, right? That is the realm of our emergency manager, and that is something that's really important to the city.

We have an emergency management team now, and they're really working on plans for specific sort of acute emergencies. Got you. But I can tell you that my job is to bring the lens of climate change to that work, and we are working together.

Yeah. So. Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm thinking of, I don't know, a blizzard. Right. I was just- If we have a blizzard, you should stay home ... or like just a major flood that is- ... just like We can think about things from a long-term, how do we build better buildings that are less energy efficient?

Like, that's chronic. Right. Versus like, this is coming down the hatch now. Yeah. So- So I'm glad to hear that emergency management is very ingrained in the plan, and like you can't ever plan for evacuating a whole community.

I understand that- Right ... that's not really practical. But I was just wanting to make sure that that is things that are being looked at from across all of these partners that we've got. Yeah. I wanted to just add a couple thoughts.

One is, to your point, when we talk about climate adaptation and resilience, we're talking about climate-driven changes, and they come in the shape of shocks and stressors. Mm. Right? And emergency management traditionally is built around shocks, right?

Emergency shelter, emergency evacuations. And resilience and adaptation, some of that is about building this, we've talked about this culture of preparedness. Like, let's not wait for the blizzard to figure out that everybody needs to get to know their neighbor.

Let's not wait to have this extensive power outage to start talking about the value of energy battery storage, right? Over time, if we start, this is that graphic about investing in some of the preparedness, the event happens, the response doesn't go below the tipping point, and hopefully the community's able to bounce back.

So, that's a little bit of a different approach to thinking about shocks and stressors than traditional emergency management. So, in some of these conversations, there was a lot of time spent trying to separate the difference between an emergency shelter and a resilience hub.

So an emergency shelter is going to have cots, it has rules. There's protocols on how to stand it up, stand it down. A resilience hub might equip a community with some skills building, and that's where, not to belabor the food thing, but people don't know how to cook at home anymore.

How to do tool sharing, right? Like, some of it is less dramatic and exciting as like a fire engine, but it's really important in the dealing with the stressors, checking on neighbors, finding out who the elderly people are.

That's the kind of stuff that this plan and planning brings into the discussion that doesn't exist in the other plans that we have to date. Sure. And it's version 1.0. That's the other thing I have to say is, some of the comments that we're hearing are great.

We may not be able to modify the plan dramatically now, but this is version 1.0, and we need to understand what is it that we're missing. Sure. I appreciate that, thank you. Yep. On the implementation point, I know that trying to figure out the individual cost of each individual project, it wasn't feasible.

Did we think about the potential, like today's cost over 10 years of the entire plan? No, we did not. So if you look through the plan, we did try to indicate where funding might come from. And this is a really good question.

I wish I had some homework in front of me to guess how many require capital funding versus can be worked on and progress made with just our operations budgets, because that's a huge difference, right?

So, I will say, we are really lucky that we don't need a sea wall in this community, right? Sure. Like, this plan does not-- Yes, there are projects in this plan that will be expensive, right? It will be really expensive to put solar and battery backup at some resilience hub locations that we identify, right?

That will be an expensive project that will need capital investment or grants or whatever. But, a lot of this plan can be implemented by just sort of strengthening our systems, improving our processes, and bringing this lens to work that we're already doing.

Sure. Right. So, compared to many communities, I think the cost of implementing this plan, we can make a lot of progress and really work to strengthen our systems, I think for a really good return on investment.

Sure. Yeah, I don't discount the return on investment at all. I just think the number of projects and this community asks for a lot, which I'm very proud of. Very proud to be a part of a community that asks and wants so much.

But we also have fiscal constraints. I'm just trying to wrap my head around, is that even feasible from a plan? Right. And if it's not feasible from a 10-year plan or since it's going to maybe a part of the larger comprehensive plan, which is a 20-year document.

Right. Are those things even feasible in that timeline? And should we potentially think about removing maybe some of the ones that don't necessarily fit that timeline or potentially are just so capital intensive that we're not going to get to it?

Yeah, I think it could potentially be worth thinking about. From my point of view, being familiar with the ins and outs of this plan, and as a city staff person, with one additional human being, we could make a lot of progress.

Can you write that into the plan? It's in there, maybe not quite in that direct of a way- ... but it is in there. I like that. I like that a lot. You alluded to this a little bit about how, I think the language you used was, it's sort of an overlay over things that are happening also in other plans.

Mm-hmm. I think it would be cool to see what pieces are specific and only in- Hmm ... this resilient and adaptation plan versus the things that are covered in the other plans. Because my question about the fiscal needs of this plan may actually be only a subset of the full plan because they're covered elsewhere.

So I'm just curious about What's actually new in this plan versus what we cover elsewhere? Because I read a lot of it and I'm like, "I'm pretty sure that's X, Y, and Z," and then you did mention that a lot of it is elsewhere.

I appreciate that. That's a good suggestion. And then my last item here is we're talking a lot recently about dashboards and metrics, and how do we track things. We have some cool new tools in the world in AI that can create us a lot of dashboards, but I know that we have to have good data to back up that system to be able to get to the dashboard in place.

A lot of the metrics about how are we doing are measurable outcomes. Some of them aren't necessarily measurable outcomes. I would recommend trying to find ways to turn the non-measurable outcomes into more measurable, so that they are trackable.

Yeah. Yeah, that piece can be hard. Yes. And we're lucky to have Jen's support. I know. We got a whole person dedicated to it. Yeah. So let's start leaning into that. Yeah. Thank you. That's all. Yeah.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I have my own mess. Here, have a mess. The campfire example was mentioned, which, yeah, was horrifying. Single exit neighborhoods were very, very fashionable for decades in this country.

And yeah, single exit means single point of failure- Mm-hmm ... and nobody can get out. We have a bunch of those in the city, just like every other place in this country. To my knowledge, we have no strategy to address that.

We're just letting it ride, and fingers crossed. Having something would be good. It will probably be expensive, it'll probably be unpopular, but it could be really good to have a backup. That is something we heard during engagement, and I think we ultimately decided to not include it in the city's plan because in the city, people could get away, not in their car, but on foot.

It's a huge problem in the county also. Yep. So anyway, I appreciate you bringing it up. Maybe it's something we should consider throwing back in, but it is definitely something that we talked about and heard about, so.

Land and easement acquisition for fire and flood safety. A little while ago, we spent millions buying a big chunk of the floodplain. It's sort of like a reflexive action. It wasn't really a planned action.

Could we be a little more thoughtful about how we do things like that? I think that would be great. Is it in the plan? I didn't see it in the plan. There is an implementation project in the plan that considers how to disallow or move buildings out of the floodplain, so.

Relevant. Yes. Okay. That's exciting. Something I've also been pushing is the idea of we're 10 square miles, Charlottesville's small, floodplain big. Yeah. We could think regionally about flood risk. We're all in the same bathtub together.

We sure are. I don't know how much time you were able to spend with the plan. 20 minutes. Okay. 20 minutes. Well, when you have a little more time, towards the end, we did some flood mapping, and we also put together a social vulnerability index, and we layered our flood risk over our social vulnerability index to kind of help us with some planning and implementation work.

And so you might find that part interesting when you have more time. The CIP was mentioned, and CIP does appear once in the plan, which I love. The CIP is one of our big things. It's very powerful. It's very expensive, but especially when we can use bondable funds- Mm-hmm ...

things that the city actually controls, very, very powerful. I would love, love, love this to feed the CIP. We kind of do that with-- Parks is pretty good about that. Some departments are better than others, which is really about staffing and capacity.

But for places where we don't have that capacity, where we don't have that staffing but the need is high, it would be helpful to have some function, some way to feed- Mm-hmm ... the CIP and get these needed projects through and funded.

Just daylighting pipe streams, I just love it. I know it's crazy expensive. I know it's not terribly practical, but I just love it. We have so many pipes, and to the extent that we can bring these back and could really-- The University of Virginia did it with the Dell and it's so lovely.

We could do more, but I know it's crazy expensive. We'll look for opportunities. Thank you. Staffing. The staffing decisions, as I understand it, are very much sort of an in-house, year-by-year decision, driven by the city manager, and the city manager knows things we don't know.

Is there a way for this to be considered in that process? Do you mean the specific request for staff? Yeah. So, I don't know, Crystal. My understanding is that we will need to put it in our budget request to request an additional human in the future.

But not just for you, but for citywide. Right. Yes. For related staffing needs. Yes, and I think there's not a pressing need for added staff capacity in the first year. Right now, we need to get the plan over the finish line.

As our emergency management program matures and starts to see what staffing capacity resources are needed to deliver on that commitment, and how that can dovetail with some of the TBDs or the sort of un-led projects, we might have a more compelling staffing request, I think.

I got razzed by some students that we haven't done anything. It's been years and we haven't done a single thing. That doesn't feel true, but I didn't have a good way to defend myself. We've done some things, right?

Yes. We have done some things. Well, so are we talking climate action generally? Resilience specifically. Resilience specific. So in June, I was in front of council, I gave our annual climate program update.

The climate program holds resilience at the moment, and there's a whole section in there on things that we have done related to climate resilience. I release that plan every single year. Things like the purchase of Zero East High a few years ago were included in that report.

So we do report out annually on our climate program activities. Let's see. I'm trying to think. My brain has been so deep in this plan. It's been a few months since I've thought deeply about that report, but that is a specific place I can just point you to find the answers for which you seek.

Thank you. I'll defend myself in the future. Yeah. We're going to be- I mean, we have- We're going to be back in front of the planning commission with the urban forest management plan- Yeah ... which is resilience work, and Commissioner Rodker has sat through two of these already.

So you'll get a new and improved version soon. We've released an RFP to do a- Yeah, a flood program review ... a review of the flood program. So many of those things find themselves mentioned in the resilience plan, but they're already happening.

And parks has put some shade structures on some playgrounds. There's more in the planning. We are deploying solar. So I think that it's hard to say with a straight face that we're not doing any resilience work.

Thank you. We co-funded Biscuit Run Restoration with the county. Like a lot of stuff is happening. Future plans. Yeah, so this is the problem. Plans create plans. Plans do create plans. That's going to happen here.

Yeah. What plans do you see coming from this plan? Well, so when we set out on this plan, that was a mantra that we had. We did not want this plan to just beget more plans, but it is pretty unavoidable.

I think the first plan that I see when I think about moving forward on this work, and this is work we've already started at the staff level and talking to some community partners about, but I think that our most immediate need is a heat action plan, which is just a specific protocol about how we're going to respond to extreme heat events.

Like, how do we open up that cooling center? Who's on deck? How are we going to make sure people get there? We need some more detail around that, and of course, emergency management has an outline, but we need to make it a little more holistic.

And to me, that's the most immediate need that we have. And somebody on my team has been participating in a learning cohort about that. That's work we're moving forward already. Do we have adequate capacity to do that now, or would that need to be farmed out?

Oh, no. That's something we can do in-house. Yeah. Yeah, it would be amazing to have like a little grant or something, but we can do that in-house. What else? Crystal mentioned we put out this RFP to do an evaluation of our flood program to study what needs to be updated.

That work is funded with community flood preparedness funds. That's state Reggie funds, basically. So that's kind of a next step. I think a lot of the plans we already have are really relevant to this, like our public works director was presenting to council at a work session last week about the snow removal plan.

So, there are plans in progress and in place that support this work for sure. I'm trying to think what else. That's enough plans for now. Great. If you need more plans, let me know. Okay. Thank you. Additional photo placeholder.

It is listed 22 times. Hmm. Either put the photos in or remove it. Either one is fine. Oh, thanks. We just wanted to have authentic photos, and we couldn't find enough for the spots we had, so we're still working on that.

Yeah. Understood. Thank you. Yeah. We didn't want to bore everyone with those stock photos. You can take a free picture of us. If you have- If you have any photos of downed power lines, trees on vehicles- ...

roads blocked by fallen trees, please send them my way. Sidewalks blocked by snow? Yes. Well, that's actually- There's already a few of those in there ... that's okay. There's a few of those. That would make sense.

Do you have access to the My Seaville photo archive? No. That would be full of stuff like that. I mean, I do have access to some staff photo archive, but I'll ask around. Okay. Thank you. Hot tip. All right.

I'll keep my comments quick. And these, you don't need to respond, they're just comments. But I think this is really important work, and it feels very disorienting that the federal government is basically walking in the opposite direction.

It's like, aren't we supposed to be preparing for this? And it just feels like we're not. And so, I know you're doing a lot of engagement, but I think people should know that the city is preparing for climate adaptation, and it's a weird problem because it's like as the decades go by, the issues become greater and the needs become greater, and so the comp plan is 20 years, but climate adaptation is forever, I guess.

But it's like- Yeah. It's like how do you sustain action over decades? I don't know, but that's just something that I'm thinking like we should think as a city how we're going to do this. Back to the CIP, I think anything we're funding that has a resilience benefit, we should be tagging that as this is money spent towards resilience.

Even if it's a project that's totally unrelated in theory, we should claim those things, again, so we can know what we're doing on resilience. I think absolutely adopting the plan as an amendment, but we need to be incorporating the principles of the plan into our other plans.

So not just the comp plan, but I think about the MPO because it's the city and the county are the main stakeholders, and then VDOT is in there. And frankly, our transportation planning engineering infrastructure pipeline cares very little for resilience and for climate adaptation.

And so maybe we can push them a little bit to include that in there. And then the last thing, maybe this is for the planning commission. It's illegal to build a store in a neighborhood right now, and maybe we could do something about that, or maybe council could do something about that with the zoning code.

And then, the last thing I'll say is that my perception is that Charlottesville is we have climate risks. We have all the heat and wildfire and all that stuff, but we at least don't have sea level rise.

But I do anticipate that the lower lying regions of Virginia, at some point in the future, people are going to be looking for other places to live. And having a city that has more housing available, dare I say abundant, is a good climate adaptation strategy as well.

And so, I think a way that we can weave in these strategies into our work, is just kind of staying focused on a future with more housing, more newer housing available for people. So anyway, that's my comments.

So thanks. Thank you for that. So the city of Cincinnati is the first city in the country to have done a climate in-migration plan, planning for climate refugees to come- Yeah ... to their community. Mm-hmm.

But you should check that out if you're interested. Yeah. It's something we're certainly trying to learn from. Yeah, we'll check that out. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you very much. I need to dig more deeply into it.

And I echo much of what everyone's saying. It's such a hard topic because it's always just a layer or weaving through all of these other things. And I guess the only thought I had to maybe test some ideas, and I know you guys have done years of work on this, but maybe there could be a day, an afternoon sometime, or a neighborhood gathering where we just each take a character, like a person, an event, and try to figure out...

I even saw you had strategies for interpreting things and languages. Okay, so I'm this person, and I'm not used to living in Virginia, and what happens if this... Or just like a scenario, and just kind of see where that weaves through some of this to see if there's holes in any thinking about any of this.

Because that's the only way I can-- There's so much, it's sort of like, what happens if this happens? Pretend I'm this person. Pretend I'm living in this house and I don't know. Like a community tabletop exercise for- Exactly ...

planning. Yeah. But that doesn't necessarily need to happen now. I think it could be adopted, but at some point in figuring out who's opening the cooling center or whatever, maybe that's when some of these activities could occur when things are actually getting implemented.

Be like, "Wait, are we missing-- Is there a hole somewhere?" Just things that not all of us might think of, but someone in the community might be vulnerable to. Anyway. Yeah. Those are definitely useful, and we have talked about that as when we start trying to help people understand their own preparedness, how can we sort of gamify it a little, make it fun for people, make it accessible for people to think through what they need in their home or their neighborhood.

So, thank you. Anything else from anybody? Amanda, did you have-- I don't think I have anything to add. Okay. Great. Well, thank you all. I appreciate your time, your attention. It's probably like, I don't know, 11 o'clock.

I have no idea. I have no idea what time it is. Thank you. Thanks. I think that's our meeting. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Yes. All right. Yay. Second. Great. We are adjourned. Thank you all.