Planning Commission

Tue, June 23, 2026

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Meeting summaryAI-generated

Planning Commission — June 23, 2026

This was a work session — a public listening session specifically designed to gather feedback from local builders, developers, and residents on Charlottesville's Development Code (Chapter 34) as part of the 2026 annual code cleanup cycle. No binding votes were taken. The session drew a mix of real estate professionals, attorneys, and neighborhood residents, with particularly pointed commentary about impacts on historically Black and low-income communities.

Overview of the 2026 Code Cleanup Process

Development Planning Manager Matt Offley opened with context: last year's inaugural cleanup cycle produced 83 amendments — small technical corrections and refinements — which were adopted in March 2026. The city is establishing a consistent March-to-March adoption calendar going forward. This year's cycle is dropping the previous "tiered" approach (which caused confusion) and focusing purely on clarifications, technical fixes, and refinements. Larger policy issues will still be logged and routed to the NDS director's broader work plan. A subcommittee is active, with its next meeting scheduled for July 9th, focused on build-to setback and active depth requirements. Staff noted a public-facing tracking page is available through the city's Connect Charlottesville platform.

Technical Feedback from Builders and Developers

Eric Sartin (Evergreen Home Builders) described problems encountered on the Alderman Road project, one of the first developed under the new code. He identified two conflicting requirements in the Residential B zone: a minimum build-to width of 65% of road frontage, and a maximum building width of 60 feet. On a 95-foot-wide lot, it is mathematically impossible to satisfy both simultaneously. He also flagged ambiguous language about what constitutes a "building" — staff told him three townhomes must be treated as one building, yet a massing provision appears to allow two abutting structurally independent buildings. He also raised the need for clear code language on whether the zoning ordinance supersedes existing neighborhood covenants, and called for raising the threshold that triggers "major development" review, which he said effectively requires the same process as developing an entire neighborhood just to develop a single parcel.

Nicole Sgro (real estate developer and land use attorney) said she mostly works with small-scale infill and found much of the code to be working. Her specific requests: allow sublots in X (non-residential) zones, not just R zones; address the tension between the 20-foot fire access requirement and the 30-foot utility extension requirement on small lots; and consider relaxing front-yard parking restrictions for small properties.

Valerie Long (Williams Mullen) praised staff responsiveness but raised a significant procedural concern: recent amendments moved design review approvals to the front end of the development plan process. She argued design review is qualitatively different from dimensional zoning requirements (height, transparency, active depth, lot coverage), and that requiring a six-figure design package before an applicant even knows if a project is feasible effectively negates the efficiency gains from last year's cleanup amendments. She also echoed the broader theme that multiple code requirements frequently conflict — fixing one violation creates another.

Staff clarified that applicants can choose between a development plan route (vesting zoning only, valid five years) or going straight to a final site plan. The design-upfront approach was motivated by a concern that applicants could invest heavily in a development plan only to lose two stories in BAR review — but staff acknowledged the cost burden this creates early in the process.

Resident and Community Concerns

Rebecca Quinn (downtown resident) asked which chapters of the code are in scope and whether staff is systematically documenting the interpretations they give to applicants, so that recurring questions can inform future code changes.

Jenny (historic preservation advocate and Board of Zoning Appeals member) stressed that historic preservation must be integrated into development planning, not treated as separate. She noted the code remains very difficult for non-professionals to understand — she and a colleague spent an entire afternoon working through provisions for their own property. She also described residents at First Baptist Church the previous evening who had no understanding of what the new zoning allows in their neighborhood, and criticized the Residential B zoning boundaries as seemingly arbitrary. She called the student housing designation confusing and harmful to historic neighborhoods.

Neil Williamson (Free Enterprise Forum) pressed the commission to address larger policy questions that were deferred from last year's tier three. He specifically raised concerns about inclusionary zoning calculations (arguing the underlying data points are now five years old), the 99-year affordability covenant term (preferring the federal 30-year standard), and the stormwater disturbance threshold (Charlottesville requires review at 6,000 sq. ft. of disturbance vs. 10,000 sq. ft. statewide), which he said disadvantages small infill projects. He was reassured by staff that the stormwater policy review is ongoing within the long-range planning division.

Lakshmi Fjord (Fifeville resident) echoed confusion about the student housing designation, using "The Mark" project as an example — marketed as UVA student housing but potentially open to anyone as a boarding house. She also raised stormwater and flooding concerns specific to that site.

Bobby Williams (JPA resident) described frustration with nearby student housing developments where neighborhood objections about traffic, setbacks, and affordability were largely disregarded. He questioned whether $1,500/month units would actually replace $600/month shared housing for students and expressed doubt that the new development improves affordability for existing residents.

Rosia Parker described the experience of residents in historically Black neighborhoods feeling overwhelmed by luxury development surrounding them, with no developers engaging the community beforehand. She drew a direct connection to the displacement caused by Vinegar Hill and called on the commission to center residents who are struggling to remain in the city.

Frank Becker (Fifeville) raised the absence of any neighborhood-level protection in the code. He noted that the Board of Architectural Review can only protect individual buildings' exteriors, not a neighborhood as a whole — and that the logic used to justify the Mark project (that only a large developer could save two historic cottages) effectively weaponized preservation against the community those cottages came from.

Sharon Deal echoed concerns about displacement of Black residents and the echoes of Vinegar Hill.

Jeanne Hyatt (Preservation Piedmont) suggested considering elimination of the student housing designation, revisiting maximum heights by district, and reinstating special use permits for large developments to restore some council oversight.

Anson Parker (McGuffey Art Center) suggested the city explore standardized business process models to make the code more navigable and interoperable.

Planning Commission Discussion

Commissioners expressed broad sympathy with both sets of concerns — the technical conflicts flagged by professionals and the equity and displacement concerns raised by residents.

Commissioner Mitchell urged holding neighborhood-level listening sessions similar to this one, particularly for Fifeville and 10th & Page. He also called for re-engaging UVA Health's community outreach office (referencing Dr. Tracy Downs) to build relationships with surrounding neighborhoods proactively, referencing a model from Greenville, SC where Bon Secours Hospital was actively involved in neighborhood redevelopment.

Commissioner Denny flagged several items for follow-up: the build-to width vs. maximum building width conflict; clarifying what legal authority neighborhood covenants actually retain; sublots in X zones; sequencing of design review in the development plan process; and the student housing designation.

Commissioner Josh seconded the desire to track these issues through to resolution and called for more information on the development approval sequencing concern.

Commissioner Carl and others noted the code seems conceived for greenfield development and creates friction when applied to Charlottesville's established urban fabric. He called for simplifying the code over time and noted that several recent contentious projects sit precisely at the boundary between high-intensity West Main zoning and historic neighborhoods — suggesting that threshold and transition provisions deserve attention.

Additional items raised by commissioners included: revisiting active depth (transparency) requirements or giving staff clearer discretionary guidance; ensuring LIHTC affordable housing projects aren't hampered by code rules requiring units to be dispersed; proactive corridor studies for Preston Avenue and West Main (the last ones are roughly 25 years old); reducing the burden of the special exception process; and exploring neighborhood-level historic or cultural preservation tools within Dillon Rule constraints.

Staff confirmed that larger policy issues remain with the NDS director's office and the long-range planning division (now led by Tori Kanelopoulos). Kelly Brown's departure was acknowledged; James Freese is serving as acting NDS director.

No votes were taken. This was an advisory work session.

Key Takeaways

Conflicting code requirements are a real problem for developers: The build-to width minimum and building width maximum are mathematically incompatible on many existing city lots — staff confirmed this tension is intentional (to encourage subdivision) but acknowledged it creates genuine hardship in established neighborhoods.

The student housing designation is widely seen as broken: Residents, preservation advocates, BZA members, and commissioners all agreed the category creates confusion, fuels community anger, and may be driving displacement in historically Black neighborhoods. Whether to eliminate or tighten it is flagged as an urgent policy question.

Historically Black neighborhoods feel unheard and at risk of displacement: Multiple speakers drew explicit comparisons to Vinegar Hill, described being boxed in by luxury development, and called for meaningful community engagement *before* projects are proposed — not after.

Design review sequencing may be undermining the code cleanup gains: Moving design approvals to the development plan front-end may impose six-figure costs on applicants before basic feasibility is established, potentially negating the efficiency improvements from last year's amendments.

Larger policy questions — IZ formulas, stormwater thresholds, student housing, in-lieu fees — remain unresolved and are awaiting a permanent NDS director to drive community engagement; commissioners asked that these be addressed together given their interconnections.

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

Development Code Listening Session with Local Builders and Developers

# Development Code Listening Session Summary

Matt Offley, Development Planning Manager, presented the 2026 Development Code Listening Session focused on technical refinements and code clarifications rather than major policy changes, building on the 2025 cycle that completed 83 amendments. Developers including Eric Sartin from Evergreen Home Builders and Nicole Sgro raised specific technical concerns about conflicting zoning requirements, stormwater thresholds, and design review timelines that impact project feasibility, while Valerie Long noted that front-end design review requirements create significant financial barriers before feasibility can be determined. Community members including Rosia Parker and Sharon Deal expressed concerns about affordable housing provisions, displacement of historic Black neighborhoods, and the need for more inclusive community engagement, with suggestions for neighborhood-level preservation strategies and partnership with institutions like UVA Health. Staff acknowledged feedback would be logged on the Connect Charlottesville page and confirmed the development code is an iterative document, with the team prioritizing technical fixes and seeking clarification on issues like student housing definitions, sublot requirements in non-residential zones, and stormwater regulation thresholds that currently create compliance conflicts in established neighborhoods.

Agenda items (1)

Procedural (1)

1ProceduralDevelopment Code Listening Session with Local Builders and Developers

City staff will hold a discussion session with local builders and developers to gather feedback on proposed changes to Charlottesville's development code, which governs how buildings are designed and constructed in the city.

What happened

Verbatim transcript available

228 transcript segments indexed

I see you. I'm going to be in law school. Lights are on. So yeah, welcome everyone, tonight to our- Zoning code ... zoning code listening session. We're going to give everybody three minutes to make their comments about the zoning code.

Matt's going to do an introduction for the process of what we're expecting to hear. But if you can't get your comments in in three minutes, please do email us. It's planningcommission@charlotte.gov. And we're going to save...

So after everybody has their comments, I'm going to let staff respond, if they want to. And then the planning commission, if anybody has anything they want to add at the end, you're welcome to. You don't have to.

So, let's go. All right. Thank you, Chair. I'm Matt Offley, I'm the development planning manager, and this is the planning commission work session, our listening session for our local builders and developers.

And next slide. So as you are aware, this is the 2026 code cleanup cycle. And just to recap, our inaugural year was the 2025 cycle where we completed 83 amendments to the development code. They were small technical corrections and just- ...

small refinements to the code. It was in a three-tiered system where we were focusing on tier one and tier two, and tier three were policy issues that we as a group were gathering. And those issues are worked into the larger NDS work plan to be focused on for community engagement with our long-range planning team.

So we are approaching this as the development planning team, so we are focused just on the development code. And our long-range planning team is focused more on policy than community engagement. These amendments that were approved, they were adopted in March of this year.

And to keep consistency, we are aiming for a year-to-year March to March code adoption. So we are looking to do this each year and have a public hearing with planning commission toward the end of the year.

Early the following year, have a public hearing with city council, and then have an effective date of March. And we're really doing this just to be consistent. The way our code is formatted, it is not as user-friendly, and we are worried about just version control.

So having a March to March version control is one way we're addressing this. We are looking into other options of making the codes better, more accessible for current versions. But that is one of the paths we're on.

We have a subcommittee that is working with this. We had our kickoff meeting with that, it'll be a month and a half ago. The next subcommittee meeting is going to be July. And pull up. Is going to be July 9th, and that subcommittee is going to be focusing on-- That meeting will be focused on the build to setback and active depth issues.

And I'm sure that'll continue into a future planning commission work session, what comes out of that meeting. Next slide. For this year's cycle, we are not doing the tiered approach. That did cause, I think, a lot of confusion within the community, especially because there are a lot of policy issues I think a lot of people wanted to talk about.

And because we are in very close communication with our developers and the community, we felt we were in a good position to hear those larger policy issues and to gather them so that the NDS director can work those into a larger work plan.

But the tier, I think, created a little more confusion. So we're going away from the tier this year and really focusing on this being a code cleanup, and really focusing on the terms of clarification, technical fixes, and refinements.

That's really what this is about. Again, we still can collect these larger policy issues. They will still be tracked on our tracking log, and they will hopefully be worked into future NDS larger work plans.

Next slide. So tonight's purpose is we want to hear directly from our local builders, developers, and the public, in how they interact with the code. Want to help identify any unclear inconsistencies in the code.

Gather technical feedback that we can use in this 2026 code cycle. And again, we'll hear from larger issues, but it's more about documentation on the larger issues. Next slide. These are the three questions we're looking for to be addressed this evening.

One, by sharing how you use the development code. What relationship do you have to it? What parts of the code are creating confusion? And then also as last year, I think it's very important to hear what parts of the code are working, so we make sure we don't inadvertently mess up those parts of the code that we actually think are doing well.

Because a lot of times the things that are doing well, we don't hear about, and we want to make sure that those things don't get changed. The other thing I want to add, go to the next slide. We're going to go back.

We'll leave this up when we go to the public's turn to speak. So and then can you click on the link, Patrick? So one of the other things I wanted to share is we do have a public-facing page for this. We have on the city's website under NDS, under development review, there is a code cleanup website that lays out what this process is, the general timeframe.

And if you scroll down, you'll kind of... It's there to the left. Yeah, you're on it. That's it. And then the other important thing is we have a Connect Charlottesville page that you can reach from this.

If you click on that, Patrick. And this is where the public can follow the process. This is where documents will be stored, where there can be feedback. So we encourage the public to use this, along with any planning commissioners or city council, if they would like.

But this is going to be our home page for this process. And with that, you can go back to the slide and pull up those three questions. All right, and with that, Chair, I'll turn it over to you to hear from the public, but I'm here to answer any questions or provide any feedback.

Thank you. And just as a reminder to anybody who trickled in after we started, everyone's going to get three minutes to talk. I'm going to try and prevent-- I'd like to not have any back and forth, so you guys won't get to talk.

If somebody has stated something that's blatantly misunderstood about the code, I'm going to let staff respond to that. But, generally, we'll just try to let everyone get their comments in in three minutes and, after that, I'm going to give staff a chance to respond.

And then the planning commission gets a chance to weigh in if they would like. And Chair, we do have a sign-in sheet, but we definitely have an audience, I think small enough, if- Yeah ... you're welcome just to call and Dannon will control the online version.

Well, Dannon, do you have the sign-in sheet? No, everybody came in late. Okay. Are there any names on it? We publicize it whenever we've had to start, and they have come in late. Just go around the room.

All right. There are no names on it, so- In our head, but- Otherwise, we'll be able to see ... we just sign up either. We know who they are. Yeah. It's like two minutes. Because- Well, yeah. Do we have anyone online, just out of curiosity?

We have two attendees. I'll just say that if anyone would like to speak and they are viewing online, they can just click the raise hand icon at any time and keep it raised. And I'll introduce them, and then they can be unmuted and speak.

Okay. Anybody in the room would like to go first? This could be a really good meeting. I will. All right. Do we- Yeah. Can the speakers pick her up there, or she need to go to the podium? Microphones work in all of the entire room, so- Okay ...

she's good. It'd be helpful if they would stand, though. If they're able to stand. Sure. We might not hear. Right. Yeah. And yeah. Well, maybe I'll do it this way. We can hear you. Rebecca Quinn, downtown on-the-wall resident.

So, I did come in late. When you say the development code, are there particular chapters that we can pull up like on MuniCode to know which ones you're talking about? Or is it... When I pull up chapter 34, I don't get much.

Which chapters, which sections? I was not part of the previous engagement. That's my question. I'll take that, Chair. Yeah. So, on the city's website, it's Chapter 34, which is our development code, and this process is the code cleanup, so it is about changing any sort of technical or small refinements to that.

It's not about major policy changes. The best example I'll give as a policy change would be if we felt that there needed to be another engagement with the community about the allowable max height in, say, the RA district.

That would not fall under this. That would be something that would need to be a larger community led, community engagement. I got that. Now I see that MuniCode links to the city webpage. Yes. So you're not touching subdivision, streets or sidewalks, just Chapter 34.

Chapter 34. I will say there probably will be some spillover because there are some parts of the other code sections that reference things like the NDS director when engineering used to be in that department.

And so we're going to try to get those cleaned up too so it's more consistent. Yes, sir. And Dan or Patrick, do you guys have control of the clock? Yes. Remy does. Oh, Remy does. Okay. Hi, I'm Eric Sartin.

I work for Evergreen Home Builders and I was very involved with the ill-fated Alderman Road project. That was one of the first ones to try to get implemented under the new building codes. And I will say before my comments that I have not gone through the new revised, rewritten, edited code.

So some of what I'm about to say may have already been covered. The first two issues, which are actually interrelated, have to do with building width. There are two, what are in my opinion, conflicting requirements.

The build to width minimum of 65%, and this is in reference to Residential B specifically, and it may cover into some of the other zonings as well, but that was what we were working under. So, the build to width minimum requirement of 65% of road frontage, and then the building width maximum of 60 feet.

Our property was 95 feet wide, and it must fail one of those two requirements. That seems like an oversight. Seems like maybe just a or max width type of language could be added to clear that up. And then the second issue related to what qualifies as a building.

We were proposing three townhouses to front on Alderman. We were told that they must be considered a single building, which is what led to the max width issue, because it wasn't three townhomes, it was one building.

However, if you read the massing section, Massing 2.10.10.A.3.B reads, "Two buildings may abut one another, provided that they have no shared components and are structurally independent from one another." It's our belief that townhomes qualify under that.

We were told that they don't. So just some clarification on that would be helpful. And I will say as a side-- Oh, actually, I'm almost out of time. The last thing I will say is, we were also threatened lawsuit by the neighbors.

So something in the code to say this supersedes all existing neighborhood covenants or to say it explicitly does not supersede existing covenants, because, otherwise we're just in for a string of lawsuits out into the future.

Last thing I'll mention is that threshold for major development needs to be raised if at all possible because basically you have to go through all the steps to create an entire neighborhood just to develop one parcel.

That's what we found out. Thank you. Are there any hands raised online? Not at this time. Okay. Anybody else in the room? Okay. This won't take three minutes. Anson Parker. I live in Fyffeville, and I'm the house manager of the McGuffey Art Center.

I have a relatively unbridled passion for standardized business process models. So if you're-- Yeah, they're wonderful, right? They're a great thing. So if you were looking for small technical innovations, that might be a feature that could be useful, because if you standardize them, then they can be interoperable with other models and can be a visual point for people who like that sort of thing.

Done. Oh, and spiff workflow, actually. This is worth noting that we do have global experts in the region, in Stanton Which is kind of a wild thing to have. Globally recognized business process model notation experts live in Staunton.

So just something to consider. And yeah, lastly, I guess, I think there is some citizen input that would be interesting in that. We're working over at the Code for C-Ville and Center for Civic Innovation on this stuff.

So in case anybody else is interested there. Yeah. Thank you. Jenny. Hello, everyone. It seems unusual, but the Planning Commission is still my happy spot. So it's really good to see all of you, and thank you for what you do.

I'm really here to remind you that historic preservation is part of development. Some people don't think so, but when you are adapting a historic building or an older building, and when you're adding onto it, and when you're infilling on a historic property or an historic district, that's part of historic preservation.

We don't want to be left out of the development process. We're part of it. Preservation is as much a part of planning as transportation, and housing, and economic development. We're just part of the whole ball of wax.

So please remember that when you review things. Some of the things that Matt talked about, I very much agree with the setback and appurtenant deed that the bill too. Tim and I came in and had a session to talk about what some of these things meant for our property, and it was very positive, thanks to Carrie and the whole myriad of staff that were there.

It's a kind of daunting process. But it went very well, and I was very pleased with that. But still, Tim and I are professionals in this stuff, and this code is really hard for people to understand. We had to spend a whole afternoon, and we had to have our own work sessions like, "Well, what does this mean, and what do you think?" So I think that as well as having this listening session, you need to have some things that explain this to neighborhoods.

I happened to be at the First Baptist Church last night, and people really had no understanding or preparation for this code. And so it might not be new to you anymore, but it's still very new. And Jose and I are colleagues on the Board of Zoning Appeals, and we've had people come, neighbors, who are very concerned about RB.

They did not understand that this was possible in their neighborhoods, and they did not see it as an opportunity. And I would say personally, those RB sites are kind of scattered around. They don't really make a lot of sense.

And a lot of those were just because of the width of the lot on a primary street. No concern for the depth if you might be at an intersection, just that width. And I sort of feel victimized by that myself because my neighbors across the street are RB and the rest of my block is RA.

So a lot of that didn't make sense, and I never thought that the consultant spent enough time on the ground proving our city and understanding what makes Charlottesville Charlottesville. There was a concern about low-wealth neighborhoods, calling them core neighborhoods or sensitive or R&A.

But other than that, there was no concern for natural environmental resources, cultural resources, historic resources. So I think that's still really a deficit in this ordinance. Let's see, I had a couple of other things.

And then beyond that, this whole thing of student housing, it's confusing, and it's to the detriment of traditional and historic neighborhoods, which by definition are within a half mile of central grounds.

So my preference would be, and I know there's been some discussion, I think, at the council level of doing away with that category. And that would be my first choice. And my second one would be to define that in city terms, not University of Virginia terms, so that it is key to a map, just like everything else is on a map, so that there's no confusion and people have predictability.

Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Good evening. Neil Williamson with Free Enterprise Forum. I'm here to talk about what we're not supposed to talk about. Back when the code was approved and we were adamantly in favor of it with reservations, we were told point blank by the current NDS director at that time, "This is not the last zoning code Charlottesville's going to have." So then we went through the cleanup phases of tier one and tier two, which somehow got people upset because we didn't deal with tier three last year.

And so now we're going to get rid of the tier program, but we're not going to deal with tier three. We're just going to ignore it. It's going to be something we're going to talk about in the work plan, which will come out when the NDS director is hired, when they get their feet wet, when things get going.

I think it's incumbent upon the Planning Commission to talk about the things that are big policy issues that should be talked about. I talked to many people with regard to the affordable housing provisions and the inclusionary zoning requirements, and adjusting those numbers based upon the very same data that was used, data points that was used in original numbers, but we're five years later than the original numbers.

We believe those numbers have changed. In addition, we continue to have concerns with 99 years being the term. We prefer the federal term of 30 years. The other issue that I think needs to be talked about, and I'm not sure where it is, with the impending departure of your NDS director, I understood that Ms.

Brown was working on examining the stormwater regulations that in Charlottesville require 6,000 square feet of disturbance and the entire state of Virginia likes 10,000. That makes a big difference for small projects, small infill projects that could be providing housing, which is really the goal, I thought, of the zoning ordinance.

And I'm hopeful that that exercise, that I'm certain Ms. Brown was efforting, and she briefed you on it about three months ago, will continue to move forward. I'm just asking you to have some urgency with these policy issues, because they do matter.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Still no one online? Oh, go ahead. Did I? Like to echo and say thanks to- Make sure it change. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I think let's start at the beginning.

Lakshmi, L-A-K-S-H-M-I. Fjord, F-J-O-R-D. I'm a resident of Fifel, and I would like to echo and add to what Jenny said about the confusions about UVA Housing. So I think the whole city is completely confused about UVA Housing, because then we find out, actually, let's say the Mark is not UVA Housing.

It's possible UVA Housing for third and fourth years, but it's also a boarding house that anyone could have a bed and pay for a bed in. So how can that be marketed? How can we be told this is UVA Housing?

I don't know what it says in the code about UVA Housing, so forgive me. I will try to read up. But I don't think it serves anyone to be saying that this is about UVA Housing. It creates a lot of anger and upset.

Is UVA taking over every single piece of ground when UVA, for the Mark, is not involved? But UVA Housing is being termed what that project is. I also am very concerned that that project has not once or anyone mentioned the storm water and flooding that already occurs from that site, that exact site, because of its elevation.

There is massive flooding already from runoff because it's a hill, and it's got forest on it now, but there is a river basically, not, but a flood going on behind the 7th Street houses on the east side.

And then it is going down into Dice, and then is going down into the stream and the wetlands that's behind Dice Street. It gets faith on the south side, and then 7 1/2 Street on their east side. I like cardinal directions.

I hope that that's helpful. But why could you possibly expect to build something there that takes away all the forest and never once have any reason or the city even looking at this issue, which will be all hardscape.

So it will be a huge increase of runoff. So those are just two of the issues that I think are very important. I don't know if that is strictly the code, please correct me. But I think that they're just so important, and they're actually really causing a lot of harm.

So thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wants to go? Hey, my name is Nicole Sgro. I'm a real estate developer and a land use attorney. I interact with the code in two hats. I do consulting for sometimes random homeowners who want to know what the value of their property is with the new ordinance, and then also as an applicant.

Yeah, one approved, one in the process, and I've five that I'm analyzing that we own. Okay. So, I think there's a lot that's working, actually. I will say, I mostly deal with small scale infill. The larger buildings is a little bit I defer to the architects.

I think they've mentioned octave depth as something that matters. But for my role, it's more small scale. The most important thing is just processes moving along. I have to be able to tell people this can get done in X amount of time with some amount of confidence, and that's been hard recently.

People need to plan and financially plan and-- but that's changing and getting better, so that's really cool to see. Okay, the three detail-oriented ones are sublots in X zones. Please, please, please do that.

There are projects in X zones or properties in X zones that are small parcels that are not going to be big, larger projects, and it would be beneficial to utilize sublots. So sublots in X zones, please, please, please.

Utilities. We've been able to have a 20-foot access way for fire, but it's 30 feet for an extension of a sewer main. That's a lot. I know there are reasons for it, but the tension between utilities and building on these small lots is something to explore.

Front yards and parking in front yards. You guys abandoned. I get why, but maybe revisiting some relaxation of that would help. That's about it for the details. I want to say, please keep working. This is hard.

But you guys are doing a good job as best you can and, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you Nicole, if you've got a specific example of where the parking is for the small properties, if you want to email us- Okay ...

that might be useful just to see where technically it's not working out. Okay. Thank you. I'm Bobby Williams. I live on Paul JPA. As everybody probably knows, we do have some developments that have been initiated and are being quote completed.

Everything that we objected to was sort of pushed aside. There was no traffic assessment before it was started. They did say they did one, but it was in August, when students don't exist. So the pedestrian traffic and the regular traffic, we questioned those findings.

We heard that there was a setback said in the code. So far, that setback has not been breached with one of the properties. One of the other ones is. We were told that this was to be initially affordable housing within the set of the codes.

Both of these are student housing properties now. So there is no affordable housing within it. We asked to have some maybe student affordable housing units put in them. I don't believe that's happened.

We have asked about whether there is anything for impaired students for ADA parts of it. I haven't seen that any of those have any ADA set ups. We feel like we are a small community of occupied, as far as owner-occupied housing in the area.

We admit that, but we don't see how this is solving the student leaving the other properties and coming into this. How will a $600 a month bedroom in a three-bedroom house, why would they move to a 1,500 a month unit in a new building?

We don't feel like that is going to help our local community. So just to let you know, we aren't happy. And I don't know if there's going to be anything we can do about it, but I did get to say my thing.

I raised my voice. Right. Thank you. Speakers. We have a few more things. Good afternoon. My name is Rosia Parker. I am one of those people that was at FBC last night with no understanding as to what the zoning code is.

I've watched the zoning code change over the years, where before it was things couldn't be put into core neighborhoods, as to where the core neighborhoods aren't really important anymore. The historic places aren't important anymore.

Like the markets coming right up behind First Baptist. None of these developers have come into our community and have spoken to us, like the LV Collective, West Haven. We've watched the standards come in.

We've watched all of those luxury apartments for the students come around us, and we're underneath, we're 20 feet under. So it's like, where do the Black neighborhoods or the people of color or low-income neighborhoods, what is there, an ordinance or where is it a place for us to be able to live and not be displaced?

It's like every year it's something different. And these people have already come in and have studied these places. They have studied us for years. And then the developers just come in, and it's like we that have been living here as residents for years, trying to make a living, just trying to make somewhere to live, and we don't really have nowhere to live.

So it's like, with that ordinance, could you all please take the accountability of looking at the people that are really struggling, that are really living here? Because there's nothing really here for Charlottesville.

It's like basically we're being pushed out. We're being pushed out into the county or other places. I know everybody say affordable housing. I mean, I understand that the people that work here, but look at some of the Black and brown people that has been working here for years and still don't have nowhere to live.

Right. But we're definitely looking at constantly luxury. Right. We got that hotel just getting ready to come down on Preston Ave. We got Chris getting ready to put in another housing development. That core neighborhood of 10th and Page in West Haven, we're being blocked in.

We're boxed in. Yeah. But don't nobody really understand us as common people. Mm-hmm. We're right at the bottom of UVA. We've been at the bottom of UVA, and we have never been a community with UVA. So please, just listen to the people and understand where we're coming from.

Thank you. Yeah. Anybody else like to speak? Nope? Thanks for the opportunity to be here. I'm Valerie Long. I'm a real estate and land use attorney with Williams Mullen. We help applicants through the process.

Mm-hmm. I first want to say that one of the best things since working with this new code is how responsive your staff is to questions, how willing they have been to sit down and have meetings on pretty short notice, and help answer questions and provide guidance.

Even though I've been working with the code for two and a half years, I learn something new every day. Usually, I learn it from them. It's a lot to get used to, and they've just made a lot of time for applicants with questions and helping really work through solutions as much as possible.

And I appreciate all the technical changes that were made with phase one and phase two, with one exception that's created quite a challenge for a lot of projects, and I'm not sure that many people are aware of it.

And that change is now, under the sort of rearrangements that were approved in March, a requirement for development plan approval, the first step before final site plan. All design approvals were moved up to the front end.

They are now a requirement of development plan. And the explanation for that is, well, it's a zoning requirement, and everything in the development plan is supposed to be zoning ordinance requirements as opposed to...

Or basically everything but utilities and engineering. And I agree with that concept of structuring it, but I would say I don't think design review is part of zoning, unlike the dimensional requirements in the development code.

Height, transparency, active depth, building lengths, lot coverage, all those dimensional objective criteria, very different from design review. Regardless, you all may disagree with me on that, but regardless, as I'm sure in particular designers will appreciate, moving that requirement to the front end of development plan, the changes that were put in place with tier one and tier two, were intended as described to help make it easier and faster for applicants to obtain development plan approval, ideally within one or two submissions, which would be amazing.

But all the good things that were in those tier one and tier two amendments, in my opinion, were kind of for nothing by moving the design approvals to the front end, for projects that are subject to those approvals.

Six-figure plus investment for applicants, that before they even can determine whether, work through all of the many challenges of otherwise getting development approval, trying to match all the different regulations.

So I would ask for your consideration and thought about that. And then finally, just in general, the challenges of all the regulations kind of in often overlap with each other. In order to comply with this requirement, I end up violating this one.

So if I try to fix that, well then I might violate this other one, and it's pretty much impossible, we've found so far, to comply with every single regulation without requiring a special exception. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, may I reclaim a minute of my time? Sure. Go over here this time. Rebecca Quinn, downtown resident. I've heard several people, including professional developers and attorneys, talk about how much they learn from staff.

They get something done, they come in, they have questions, they get answers. I've worked with regulations at the state and local level, floodplain and building code for 35 years. I always advise local officials, when you come up with an interpretation, document it, because maybe it leads to a code change or a regulation change or a manual or something to share.

My question is, are you all doing that with all these informative meetings, and will examination of those answers that you end up resolving with people, will those be examined as part of this process?

Thanks. You're welcome. No speakers? Anybody online? Nope. Yes, ma'am. Good evening. My name is Sharon Deal. I worked at City of Promise a couple of years back when they started their Dream Builders program, and what I was most concerned about in reading all the information available I could find is one time we wiped out the Black middle class here with Vinegar Hill.

Mm-hmm. And what it feels like is redux. Yes. And so if everyone in the room agrees, we just want to knock it out, okay. But don't kid yourself- And many people here probably know people that live and work in the city of Promise.

And that's a great place. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Frank Becker, I live in Fifeville. Let me see if I can formulate this. I've thought about it many times. In terms of having a code that is simple, not confusing, not difficult.

I understand it can be that way, but that's what my comment has to do with. And I'll point out kind of an absurdity to start with. We, of course, have individually protected properties, protected districts.

So in the case of Fifeville and the Mark proposal, it went to the Board of Architectural Review because two individually protected properties there were protected. And what was new to me as an outsider who doesn't know about these kinds of things, is that it was those buildings' exterior form and that kind of thing that we were taking care to preserve.

And of course, many community members show up and say, "What about our neighborhood?" And the board said that we can't do that, we can't do-- So what I want to talk about here is there is no status, or not a very easy one, for protecting a neighborhood or protecting a community.

Although that makes a lot of sense to people. You say, well, do you value this core neighborhood? How are you going to protect it? I understand zoning dealt with that kind of question. But the absurdity I want to point out is what ended up happening to perhaps influence a decision to overturn the Board of Architectural Review, was that, well, we need to save these two old brick cottages.

Mm-hmm. That I want to save, too. I would love them to be affordable housing and things like that. But we need to save those cottages. And the logic put forward by the developer, which I thought was quite shrewd- ...

is, look, only we, a multi-billion dollar company that can build an enormous building, we have enormous amounts of capital. Only we can save those two multi-decade boarded up cottages. I'd love to see them un-boarded up.

They're a lot like my house. They could be remade. I don't believe for a second that they would cost $2 million to rehab, which was stated to council members and even quoted in the press. But in any case, the complaint that neighborhood members have, and others, is, "Hey, what about us?

What about this neighborhood?" And the logic that is being pursued by council, say in this case is, we have to impact your neighborhood. We have to do things that the neighborhood doesn't want in order to save these two cottages, which are, and were, workers' cottages, by the way, in a working class neighborhood and a Black neighborhood.

So it's quite strange the way that has played out. And if we had a status that could openly say, I don't know how Dillon Rule impacts this kind of thing. If there were a status that could say, we want to protect this neighborhood.

We don't want to protect its shingles, its tiles, its windows. We want to protect the whole place against being destroyed. Thank you. You are welcome. Thank you. Any other speakers? All right. Staff, do you guys have anything you want to add or respond to or?

Give us one. Oh, I do? Oh, yeah. I'm Jeanne Hyatt, and I'm a active civic-minded resident, not a developer. And I did follow all along the zoning ordinance. In fact, our group, Preservation Piedmont, read through the whole thing and provided a lot of recommendations for modification, some of which were listened to and some not.

And at the end, our zoning ordinance at the time it was passed, which was rushed at the end of 2023, it was considered by many to be the most extreme zoning ordinance in the country for a small city. But I think, I'm not sure, it may still be the case.

Anyway, so I have some suggestions to consider because now I know some planning commissioners and city councilors and other members of the community say that there's changes need to be made. There's a lot of unintended consequences because of some of the decisions that were made in the ordinance.

I think we should get rid of the student housing designation Which really impacts the historically African American neighborhoods, which are all probably within a half mile of... I don't know if it's the central grounds of UVA.

And I think we should consider, at some point, looking at the whole district and the maximum heights. I know you can't change one building, but you can look at a whole district and reconsider the heights.

And I think we should look back again at instituting a special use permit for large developments. I think that would really help. City council have some control of what's going on. And, there's one other thing and I'm not sure what it was.

I'll think of it and write to you about it. Thanks. Yes. Yeah, and if anyone has any other I don't have ... please leave it in the message. Yeah, I will If something else comes up. Thanks. All right. Mayor Dana, did you guys want to add anything or respond to anything?

No, Chair. I think you've heard a lot of good feedback. Mm-hmm. You have an opportunity to... This is a work session, if you want to discuss any of the points brought up or- ... anything else that we can do.

We are capturing this, and this information, I will point back to the Connect Charlottesville page on the code cleanup. We have a working log. Now, the problem with the working log is it's not 100% up to date when you see it online, but we are freezing it periodically and putting it on the Connect Charlottesville page, so everyone has the ability to see the issues that are brought up, and that they're at least logged.

And it shows us the process for these technical changes as we're going forward. Transitions. So there's the code cleanup page, and you'll see the documents there on the left-hand side. So that's where these documents will be.

So again, encourage people to sign up to this page. You can follow it. You can interact with it. This is fairly new. Different divisions within the city are using this for different things. The E-bike voucher has been utilizing the Connect Charlottesville page, so hopefully more departments and divisions will be using what we have for the code cleanup.

Yeah. Back over to you, Chair. And I don't mean to put you guys on the spot, but can you remind us where things stand with the council was looking at the fee in lieu stuff, the housing definition and all that at some point.

Are they still looking at that? I would need to ask our dir- I don't have an update to give from our director or our housing coordinator. Okay. Planning Commissioners. So this has really been helpful.

My only disappointment is that there weren't more developers here to give us more feedback because I'm certainly missing a lot of stuff. There's nothing that we talked about, that was talked about, that I disagree with.

And I appreciate a lot of the minor tweaking that you guys suggested that we need to bring to bear. But I am very sympathetic to Ms. Jin, Ms. Locklear, Ms. Parker, and Jean as it relates to our need to figure out what student housing we get in the area looks like.

And we need to clean that up and either figure either there's not going to be student housing or we need to tighten it up a little bit. Jean and I sit on the BZA, and we wrestle mightily with the Market and the location of the Market, and was it student housing or not?

So we do need to do a lot of work there to clean that up. I think that would help a lot. The only other suggestion I've got is, again, I'll go back to Jean, Ms. Locklear, Ms. Parker, Jean. We really ought to do something like this for the neighborhoods.

This is complicated. I helped write this thing, and I understand about this much of it. It would be helpful if we could, one, sit down with the neighborhoods again and walk them through what it is. And then get this kind of feedback from Fifeville and all the other, Tilden Page, and all the other neighborhoods.

I think a session like this or a couple of sessions like this would be good as we iterate through this. Because this is an iterative document, it will continue to be revised. Thank you. Any other... And you guys don't have to talk, but any other comments from the Planning Commission or thoughts?

I'll just say that I appreciate everybody, both the developers and the residents, come out and speak to us. Sometimes this, especially on our regular meetings when one or two people show up, it's nice to have an audience like this, and nice to hear exactly what's going on and what people have thoughts about on the community.

So I appreciate you taking the time out of your evening to come and speak with us. And like Jose, I tend to agree with a lot of the comments that are being made. I think it's going to be a tough needle to thread on how to sort of find a common ground or something that works for many of the residents that are seeing some of these complaints that you all have, and specifically to the developers and attorneys in the room.

Thank you for continuing to work with us and provide comments on things that are and aren't working. But I expected a lot more to show up, honestly, tonight, and I think that means to me that from the professional perspective, we seem to be doing things or the code seems to be working quite well.

Obviously, there's always going to be things that we can tweak and improve or change based on what we're trying to accomplish with the code. But I'm glad- ... that we are moving in the right direction.

I think that as we iterate through this, it is pretty complicated. And as we iterate through it, it'd be really helpful if we could, at least for me, and I use the word that I use, for me, if we could dumb it down a little bit so I can understand it a little better.

And again, I wrote it but I'm afraid I have problems with it. So as we iterate through this, if we just simplify it a bit, that'd be great. I mean, whoever goes first. You can if that makes sense. Okay.

I guess I'll go. So I'm just going to summarize a couple of things I heard that I hope that we... This is a work session, so I think it's the idea that we can discuss some key things, but I think we've all noticed places where there are conflicts in the code where, and the build to width and building width max is a great example of this, where you have certain properties, and it's like you can't adhere to both.

And I just wonder if there is a, I don't know, faster fix to that, that wouldn't require a long policy development exercise. Are there precedents from other cities where they have something like when these two things conflict, you go with this?

Because we don't want people to have to go through the special exception process when it's like the code is clearly not designed for their property. Like that should be on the city, like the codes to address.

So that's one thought. Second one was covenants. I don't know enough about real estate law to actually know what covenants, what powers they actually still have in 2026. There are many covenants in the city that are racist covenants, and there are many other kinds of covenants, and I believe that they are not enforceable, but it sounds like it's an issue with the development process.

So maybe getting some more clarity on what exactly they can still do today. Sublots in the X zones. I guess I'd be curious if there's a reason why when the code was written, we only did them in the R zones.

And if there's not a reason, it seems like if we think they're a good option to provide, I guess I would know why we shouldn't offer them in the X zone. And then I thought Valerie's comments were interesting about the development plan is first in the process, then site plan approval, and the design approvals and the first step in the development plan.

So I guess I'd be curious to learn more about that. And again, I'm not a real estate professional, so I don't design and build buildings. I don't know exactly how that process works, but I am sympathetic to the argument that- Yeah ...

does something comply with zoning is a different question than the kind of design review. And then, yeah, I know we heard a presentation from MBS about the kind of looking at student housing. Is it helpful to have that designation?

Because we do have it in the code, for something that's a finest student housing, or should we not have it? And, I know, Matt, that you don't have an update for us, but that's something that I hope- Correct ...

MBS will continue to work through and work with council to hopefully address. So go ahead. So thanks everybody for coming and for your comments. And Commissioner, I can, since this is a work session, man, I can- Yeah ...

touch on a few things. Mm-hmm. A few things I don't have the answer to the covenants. Yeah. The answer, whether the student housing update. The development code, I'll touch on. So when we redid the process, you have to have a final site plan to build them.

And so a final site plan has all your zoning components, your development plan components, and your building components, your storm water, all those elements. The development plan, what is the changes that went into effect is you can go development plan route, or you can go final site plan route.

It's up to the applicant to choose. A development plan was intended to be, again, quick. That would vest your zoning. You can't build with it. You can't do anything with it because you've not done your, hopefully the developer's done engineering, but that's not what we're checking.

We're checking that it meets the zoning. And then if you get that approved, it's valid for five years. Within that five years, you would come back and submit a final site plan. So it's up to the applicant to decide.

They can go straight to final site plan, which a development plan is part of that, so it's just in there. So it's up really to the applicant to decide which path they want to take. But there are, as Valerie mentioned, there are concerns with when things are in an overlay district that can impact the zoning, and one of it being height.

So if you did a development-only plan, you went through all that, and then you go to site plan and you go to BAR to speak, and that is going to be two stories less than what you thought due to those provisions in the code that allows reduction by two stories.

That was our concern on staff side, trying to be as helpful that you're not taking something forward that could be an issue because it couldn't build. But there are some very valid concerns that, yes, it's very expensive if you have to start thinking about the development plan when you're thinking boxes and you're needing Fenestration and finishing is going to be an issue.

The first one is talking about the percentage and the width. That is an issue, but it's not an oversight. The code is actually trying to get you to subdivide your property. Yeah. So whether we-- That's a discussion to have.

It's definitely worth having, but it's not viewed as a conflict. It's actually intentional to create smaller lots to break up a large building. But we are running into issues with this, especially in our very established neighborhoods that have very large lots.

But that's what it's trying to do. Thanks. And I think some of that comes from, when I read this, it feels like a code that envisions a greenfield site and not a city that has established lots and established areas of the city.

Because you take a several-acre plot and you try to break it up, it makes sense to have the build to width and the building max and the setback to the front to try to bring them to the street, to the public.

That all makes sense. But when you put it on a city like Charlottesville that started to develop in the 1700s or maybe even earlier, there's a lot of conflict that comes from that. I think this is where I think it would be helpful if the solution is to split the lot in half, if that presents another technical problem, it would be useful to get an email to us that says, "This is what's happening, and this is why we can't split the lot in half," because maybe the lot size becomes too small at that point or something like that.

So we can see these technicalities where we've got the intention of the code, but then where it's not working. Seeing the actual examples I think is helpful. And to comment on the sublots in the ex-zones, my understanding of the reason is because we don't have a minimum lot size.

And we're saying ex-zone, anything but R doesn't have a minimum lot size. If that still presents a technical problem, it would be useful to know why that's a problem. But I think the thought is because you don't have a minimum lot size, what's the point of having a sublot?

So you would just subdivide it instead of do sublots. I think so. Okay. So if there's some reason that that doesn't work, I think it would be useful to understand. Did I misspeak on that, Matt? We'd have to look into it more.

I know it could be creating landlocked parcels could be an issue. Okay. But it's definitely worth discussion. Yeah, I'd be curious to know the downstream effects that are being stopped, because that was my understanding as well, is because you'd have no minimum lot zones.

No, nobody can hear you. It's not just lot size. There's also the rules regarding perimeter and- Mm-hmm ... plan that. Well, again, I think if you guys have specific examples where it's not working out and it creates a really stupid condition, it'll be useful to see that.

Other thoughts from Planning Commission? Josh, you looked like you wanted to talk. Well, I always want to talk. It's an idea. I think a general comment. I think Denny's list of things to go over is basically my list and more, but I want to make sure process-wise that we do design all these properties in some form.

Like Carl said, some of these we could really use follow-ups from you all who spoke here so that we can make sure that we run these things down. So the issue on lots within ex-zones, if we can see some of the zones that are problematic and why, talk about it more.

I don't want to hide that. I think similarly on, I think I'm hearing somewhat different things from commenters tonight and from staff about the impact of the sequencing or different forking paths of how you get your approvals.

It's over my head, but I want to make sure that we run it down to everyone's satisfaction. So again, email about that, that we can call it satisfactory at the end would be great. There are things here that I want to make sure don't get dropped, and those and more.

Question for staff to respond to a question from the audience. The stormwater reg study is being done by the long-range planner. Is that right? Who's doing it? Correct. That's part of the environmental study- Yes ...

to look at all of the environmental policies, not just things like critical slopes and stormwater, but all the policies as a whole. And out of that is looking at how would we handle if we went from our current 6,000 back up to 10,000.

What would that do? So there was a question, I think, about whether that work's ongoing, and I think it is ongoing. My understanding is yes, it is continued and it's ongoing. Okay. Is that-- Okay, great.

Let's see. Oh, and then final point about both the in-lieu fees student housing, and it wasn't mentioned, but I'll mention it, the consideration about IC and tax abatements. These topics are not tweaks.

These are big and important policy conversations that we need to have, and they are interrelated. Planning Commission and/or staff got mail about this a few months ago about maybe some oversights or gaps in the calculations, formulas feeding both of those topics.

I would love to, I guess once we have a new NDS director, resume talking about that collection of topics. Not one, but all of them together because they are interrelated. I think there's a lot of interest in changing or no longer having this student housing category.

It's fairly confusing. But that might need to happen- ... alongside changes to how we do IZ, and in particular, how we subsidize IZ, or IZ-required units. So, I know you all are short-staffed, but once that resolves, I would love to hear more about those topics together.

That's all I got. Mm-hmm. Thank you all for coming and speaking. It was interesting to hear. To me, I thought we would get more builders and developers talking about nit, not nitpicky, but really difficult Like, really difficult like, "Oh, we have an existing house and it's not the build to with, and we want to preserve it." And there are more people coming in, I think, about the recent zoning, the new student housing projects going up that aren't necessarily little tweaks to the code, but a much larger kind of three-dimensional model that was kind of put onto the city.

Anyway, so maybe there's something to be said about, I know in the new zoning code, these developers don't have to have a public hearing because they can do whatever the code allows. Maybe there is something there to be discussed in some of these threshold.

All of these projects are exactly on the line between the West Main much taller buildings and the historic neighborhood. So maybe there's something that can be discussed there. Because I know I've been in a lot of meetings where a lot of people are very upset, and maybe it's just talking about having them adjust some of their building to step back or some of the things, I think, that LV has ended up doing could have been through the neighborhood discussion.

I don't really know the answer, but I know it's a big problem. Oh, I had a couple other things, just on my own, things that I've heard. I would reiterate the transparency requirement and maybe looking at that, or at least maybe there's some way so it doesn't have to be a special exemption just to either reduce it or say there's a discussion with staff about what...

I don't know, give staff some better direction so that you don't have to individually talk to each- Yeah ... person about it, but be like, "Hey, this is the range we're looking for." Right. Something to open it up a bit in terms of what's allowed to be the program that's allowed to be back there.

You're talking about the act of dev. Sorry, yes, the act of dev. That's what I meant. The other thing I had heard in terms of funding affordable housing, and I don't think we've had many of these from private developers yet, so that the LIHTC funding would like all those units to be together instead of spread out, and there's discrepancy about that apparently.

And so looking at specific rules that are for affordable housing and making sure that those can move through because all of this density is supposed to lead to affordable housing, so making sure there's not any kind of conflict there.

And then I think lastly, this is beyond necessarily all the code cleanup where I do think-- I have heard little things from builders and developers who would be great if we could get more of those, just easy fixes, not we have all these big policy changes.

But I love the neighborhood by neighborhood suggestion. And maybe there are other things that aren't necessarily written in code. For example, between going down to West Haven and the LV, the discussion of that walkway that's going to connect West Main, and maybe there are things in Fife.

Wherever there are more bridges, more connections, other things that neighborhoods are looking for that could be built in when a developer comes, rather than waiting for everyone to get angry and then trying to figure something out.

But proactive meetings with neighborhoods, not necessarily full-on plans, but going to each neighborhood and trying to hear what they want so that when developers come, there's some kind of written document or list of things that people care about that they can see before they start making their plans.

I think that's all for right now. Thanks. So, I think it was Ms. Parker that suggested that the communications between UVA and the surrounding neighborhoods is not what we want it to be. Several years ago, when we were just beginning to think about redevelopment of our public housing properties, George Johnson and I went down to Greenville.

Greenville was just beginning to do redevelopment, and there was a hospital right smack dab in the middle of an area like Fifeville, an area like Tipton Page. It was a Bon Secours-owned hospital. And they were very, very involved in the redevelopment.

In fact, they actually dedicated an office to support the redevelopment in Greenville. There's a doctor at UVA now, is Dr. Tracy Downs. He's a urologist, but he's also their community outreach person.

I think Lloyd and I had lunch or a dinner with him and Wendy Horton. Remember that? Yeah. I remember. Anyway, we had a conversation with them, and I think we really need to re-engage them, and we need, Ms.

Parker, the folks at Little Pipe Hill, to reach out to Dr. Downs as well. And I'll be happy to put you in touch with Dr. Downs to begin a conversation. He's interested in doing something like Bolson-Borita down in Greenville, and engaging UVA in the medical center in the work that at least the housing authority is doing.

But why not extend that to the rest of the neighborhoods like, again, Tith and Page, and Fyffeville? So I just want to throw that out there. But I'm sure Lloyd remembers it because it was a long evening, and interesting evening.

Yeah. Interesting. A few years ago, though. Yeah. I think you were the mayor still. One of the problems in all the leadership changes at UVA, we need to reestablish some relationships. Oh, yeah. Right away.

Final comments from any other planning commissioners? I'll just add to that. And I think this goes back to the neighborhoods, the housing authority, also the sort of preservation of Piedmont. Having those neighborhoods speak up, I know, I feel like all this, it's too late on the last two projects.

So it feels very-- I am just talking now. But, in terms of UVA, I know they're working on a, they're going to have a nursing clinic built into the new West Haven. There was some discussion of them helping to fund Healthy Groceries in Fyffeville, if and when that PHA grocery store might, sounds like it may not happen, but if it did.

So if neighbor-- Like making that list and trying to really get those partnerships set up before a developer comes, because then feel like it's too late. These things move through and it's very hard to stop that.

So to really come at the beginning with these partnerships and find these people and have them ready to work with the neighborhoods. I think somehow we could, I don't know if it's us, but staff, starting to go out and have more of these neighborhood meetings would be helpful.

I'm just going to add to Commissioner Mitchell's comments about the UVA Health ones in particular. So people are aware, or not, but there is sort of an update to their integrated space plan for UVA Health that kicked off earlier this spring.

So I believe it's roughly a year-long process. They do have public members on some of that effort. But as that develops, I don't have specific updates on it, but it's something I can look into to get more specific feedback to get out to the public.

But I know they're in the process of trying to figure out exactly what the roadmap is, and it's directly tied to the fact they've had a change in leadership. So I think they're now going back and revisiting to see what the priorities are, and particularly how it impacts that immediate environment around the health system.

But I'm happy to communicate those comments back, some of my colleagues, to make sure that-- I know that public outreach is a big component of it, so just again, I'll reiterate these ones. All right. Well, thank you every-- Oh, yep.

One thing briefly. Mm-hmm. I mentioned before, but I'd like to reiterate value in reducing the need for special exceptions. We imagine this as being something fairly painless and affordable and fast, and boy, is it not.

Mm-hmm. So any tweaks to make that less painful would be good for everyone, I think. The value in a positive vision for our main corridors. I'm thinking about Preston, I'm thinking about West Main. It's been a long time since we did a corridor study.

I think it's been like 25 years. These corridors seem important. These corridors seem to be something that brings us together, we have a lot of feelings about, and we have a lot of needs for. And there seems to be some money interested in investing in them.

So I'm beginning to see a value in corridor studies again. Corridor study. The idea of preserving the neighborhood, the Dillon Rule was mentioned, which is always a scary thing to say. We have very limited options to offer preservation.

We can preserve individual buildings, yes. We can think bigger. And neighborhoods. We could do neighborhoods if we choose to. Historically, in our more diverse areas and more affordable areas, we've chosen not to.

It's hard, it's scary. There aren't a lot of good examples to draw from. We would be building the good example. Expensive, difficult, take a long time, but not impossible. A question of resources, but not a bad idea.

This is what I have. Thank you. All right. I guess I'll just say, Matt, I imagine you don't have an answer. This has turned into a policy question discussion here. Former tier three, and with Osei having moved to a different department, who or what is being done with those larger tier three items?

So they're still with the NDS director. We are still going to have a director. James Freese is the acting director when Kelly leaves us this week. And we have a long-range planning division, which is right now, it's Tori Kanelopoulos is running that division.

So it is these kind of policy things within that division, with housing and-- And again, as I stated kind of in the beginning, we're definitely here to collect. We're interacting with a lot of these different aspects, but our team is really on the technical side.