Planning Commission
Planning Commission
Tue, October 27, 2026
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Meeting summaryAI-generated
Planning Commission — October 27, 2026
This was a working session (no binding votes) in which commissioners reviewed a slate of proposed zoning code amendments scheduled for a December 8 public hearing, then had an extended discussion on food truck regulations. No formal votes were taken; all direction given was advisory to staff.
Zoning Code Amendment Review
Commissioners worked through roughly two dozen proposed technical amendments to the development code, covering utility easements and fees, tree removal permits, private streets, administrative review authority, bicycle parking, non-conforming buildings, outdoor lighting, floodplain variance authority, sign permits, and several other housekeeping items. The general pace was brisk, with most amendments receiving no objections.
A few items generated brief but substantive discussion:
Tree removal permits: Commissioners asked how the city enforces the requirement that residents obtain a permit before removing trees of eight inches caliper or larger. Staff explained that a dedicated zoning staffer handles non-development-related permits, the online process is quick (one commissioner confirmed getting approval the next day), and the penalty for cutting without a permit is simply a $50 fee instead of $25 — the primary goal being canopy tracking, not punishment. Commissioners noted that MyCville should have a reporting mechanism for zoning violations and were told that residents already find ways to report.
Streetscape standards language ("developer" vs. "project developer"): A commissioner flagged an inconsistency — the word "developer" appears roughly 80 times in the document, sometimes as "project developer," with no clear distinction. Staff acknowledged the issue and agreed to take a second look.
Split-zone lots: Staff confirmed at least one split-zone parcel now exists in the city (created a few months ago by merging two lots with different zoning designations). Commissioners discussed whether the city should proactively flag such parcels and consider rezoning them as part of annual cleanup, though staff noted that forcing a rezone would require city council action and property owner cooperation.
Non-conforming buildings — front/side additions: Commissioners discussed a tension in the code: the city's form-based philosophy pushes buildings toward the street, yet the amendment allows unlimited rear and side additions to non-conforming structures while requiring front additions to comply with current zoning standards. Commissioners expressed general comfort with the resolution after clarifying the intent.
Review and approval authority table: A commissioner noted a likely typo in the zoning map amendment row and flagged that floodplain variance authority (listed as a final BZA decision) should be clarified. Staff confirmed the Board of Zoning Appeals holds final decision-making authority; a floodplain administrator makes a recommendation. Courts remain available for further appeal.
Household living / active depth: A commissioner noted "household living" appeared with an "-ing" suffix not used elsewhere in the use matrix — likely a minor typo for staff to correct.
Staff confirmed that all amendments on the master list are still active items; once adopted, they are removed from the list entirely.
Food Trucks — Temporary Use Amendment and Broader Framework Discussion
This was the most substantive discussion of the evening, covering both a near-term code fix and a longer-term policy framework.
Temporary use fix (near-term): The existing code allows only one temporary use permit at a time on a parcel, which means a food truck cannot operate simultaneously with another event, and multiple food trucks cannot hold concurrent permits. The proposed amendment fixes this. Commissioners were generally supportive.
The main sticking point was a provision about tables. The old code prohibited operators from setting up more than one covered 10×10 tent for a condiment table; a crossed-out line in the draft was ambiguously written to suggest operators could have unlimited tables. After discussion, commissioners reached consensus: one covered 10×10 table is allowed; it (and all accessories) must leave with the truck when not in operation. Staff will also add language clarifying that "temporary" means all equipment must be removed when the truck is not in use. The group agreed that what people do at the table (condiments vs. seating) is effectively unenforceable and not worth specifying.
Commissioners also discussed the requirement that operators disclose where the truck will be stored when not in use — the intent being to verify the truck is genuinely mobile and not becoming a permanent fixture.
Longer-term food truck court framework: Commissioners acknowledged that a broader regulatory framework for more permanent food truck courts does not yet exist and cannot be completed in time for the December 8 hearing. They discussed a tiered approach:
Tier 1 (on-street): Continues to operate as today under Chapter 28 rules (no parking on private property, must clear by 10 p.m. in residential areas, etc.).
Tier 2 (temporary private property): Covered by the amendment above — trucks can operate on private property with a temporary use permit, must leave nightly.
Tier 3 (small permanent court): A limited number of vendors staying overnight, light zoning requirements, no permanent infrastructure required but some allowed (e.g., a Dominion power pole to eliminate diesel generators). This tier would likely require a special use permit.
Tier 4 (large permanent court): Above some undefined threshold of vendors or intensity; would require bathrooms, permanent power, and more robust review.
Key unresolved questions commissioners identified for future homework: How many trucks constitute a "court"? Should power poles be required for any permanent installation? Where in the city should courts be allowed (consensus leaning toward commercial/mixed-use zones for larger courts, possibly RC for smaller ones)? Should courts be limited to food, or expanded to include retail goods (closer to a neighborhood market or farmers market)? Should the commission consult Beacon Kitchen operators and Long Street food truck owners about what infrastructure is feasible and what they need?
Commissioners agreed that the Long Street lot and other existing multi-truck sites would be brought into compliance using the temporary use amendment rather than enforcement action — staff noted it would be unethical to shut down small businesses due to a technical gap caused by the provisional-to-temporary-use permit transition.
Direction to staff: Continue research into best practices (Austin, TX and other cities cited); schedule a follow-up subcommittee meeting; bring a more complete food truck court framework into the 2027 amendment cycle. The temporary use amendment proceeds to the December 8 public hearing.
Other Items Raised for Future Consideration
Commissioners flagged several additional topics for future cycles:
Home stay / home occupation conflict: The current code prohibits home occupation at night, which effectively bars home stays (short-term rentals). Commissioners called this a clear technical fix but noted a broader home stay rewrite is already in progress (paused when staff leadership changed).
Noise ordinance: The ordinance still references old zoning districts and arguably only regulates noise generated *within* a residential district, not noise entering one from a neighboring commercial zone. Not a planning commission chapter but commissioners may recommend changes.
Data centers: Commissioners noted data centers are not well-defined in the development code and that existing provisions don't address concerns like noise and water consumption. Suggested a first step of defining tiers of data center intensity.
Redundant design regulations in residential zones: A commissioner noted that transparency, active depth, and other design standards were written with a form-based code vision in mind but now apply in R zones in ways that feel burdensome and redundant given existing BAR oversight. Staff acknowledged this and said they are slowly working through it.
Key Takeaways
Most technical code amendments are on track for the December 8 public hearing with only minor edits needed (typos, language consistency on "developer," clarification of BZA floodplain authority).
Food truck temporary use rules are largely settled: one covered 10×10 table allowed, all equipment must leave with the truck when not operating; this fix will allow existing multi-truck sites like Long Street to come into compliance rather than face enforcement.
A full food truck court regulatory framework will not be ready for December and moves to the 2027 amendment cycle; staff will research best practices and consult operators before the next subcommittee meeting.
Several emerging issues — data centers, noise ordinance, home stay rules, and redundant residential design standards — were flagged for future planning cycles.
This was an advisory working session; no binding votes were taken.
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
Code Amendments and Food Trucks
# Code Amendments and Food Trucks – Summary
The Planning Commission reviewed zoning code amendments across multiple topics before a December 8th public hearing. For general code amendments, staff presented changes to utilities easements and fees, tree removal permits, and private streets, with commissioners raising enforcement concerns about tree removal permits and requesting clarification on inconsistent "developer" versus "project developer" terminology. For food truck regulations, staff and commissioners discussed a tiered approach allowing different intensity levels—from single temporary trucks on private property to permanent food truck courts—with key debates centering on permit structure (tied to operator or property owner), infrastructure requirements (tables, generators, restrooms, grease disposal), zoning locations (residential versus commercial zones), and whether to grandfather existing operations like those on East High Street and at the farmer's market. The Commission reached consensus that food truck courts could be approved through simplified permits or special use permits with mitigation measures for noise, hours, lighting, and power sources, and decided to continue research with smaller meetings rather than rush amendments into the current schedule, with assurance that existing operations would not be shut down in the interim.
The Planning Commission reviewed zoning code amendments across multiple topics before a December 8th public hearing. For general code amendments, staff presented changes to utilities easements and fees, tree removal permits, and private streets, with commissioners raising enforcement concerns about tree removal permits and requesting clarification on inconsistent "developer" versus "project developer" terminology. For food truck regulations, staff and commissioners discussed a tiered approach allowing different intensity levels—from single temporary trucks on private property to permanent food truck courts—with key debates centering on permit structure (tied to operator or property owner), infrastructure requirements (tables, generators, restrooms, grease disposal), zoning locations (residential versus commercial zones), and whether to grandfather existing operations like those on East High Street and at the farmer's market. The Commission reached consensus that food truck courts could be approved through simplified permits or special use permits with mitigation measures for noise, hours, lighting, and power sources, and decided to continue research with smaller meetings rather than rush amendments into the current schedule, with assurance that existing operations would not be shut down in the interim.
Agenda items (1)
Procedural (1)
1ProceduralCode Amendments and Food Trucks
The city is considering changes to its regulations for food trucks operating in Charlottesville, including where they can park and operate. This procedural item involves updating city code to clarify or modify rules that affect food truck vendors and residents who use their services.
What happened
# Code Amendments and Food Trucks – SummaryThe Planning Commission reviewed zoning code amendments across multiple topics before a December 8th public hearing. For general code amendments, staff presented changes to utilities easements and fees, tree removal permits, and private streets, with commissioners raising enforcement concerns about tree removal permits and requesting clarification on inconsistent "developer" versus "project developer" terminology. For food truck regulations, staff and commissioners discussed a tiered approach allowing different intensity levels—from single temporary trucks on private property to permanent food truck courts—with key debates centering on permit structure (tied to operator or property owner), infrastructure requirements (tables, generators, restrooms, grease disposal), zoning locations (residential versus commercial zones), and whether to grandfather existing operations like those on East High Street and at the farmer's market. The Commission reached consensus that food truck courts could be approved through simplified permits or special use permits with mitigation measures for noise, hours, lighting, and power sources, and decided to continue research with smaller meetings rather than rush amendments into the current schedule, with assurance that existing operations would not be shut down in the interim.
Verbatim transcript available
313 transcript segments indexed
Yeah, let's get started. Matt, you're welcome to introduce this, or we can just start flying through some of the zoning updates. Up to you. Chair, it sounds like we can expedite this. This presentation, you would see at the public hearing, and this is the same presentation that will be shown to city council just to keep them abreast.
So, I don't feel a need to go through it if you just want to-- In your packet, you have the presentation, you have the list of amendments. So if you wanted to go through to see if there are any amendments that you felt needed to be adjusted.
Mm-hmm. As stated in the report, we can make small changes. Big changes we probably could not do, and keep on our December 8th public hearing time schedule. For the working document you have in here- Mm-hmm ...
is there a way to put a big red highlight through the ones that we've dealt with them, they're done? Or some way to know what's been taken off the list? Or, how have you been removing them from the list?
So, when we go into 2027 cycle- Mm-hmm ... you'll notice there's some from the 2025, and you'll notice we keep track of what happened, why they got moved. Mm-hmm. If they're taken care of, they leave the list.
Okay. So. So these are still all things then? Okay. All right. We were all confused. It's like, we thought we did some of this. I was like, "Something else is going on." But all right. No, yeah. Once they're addressed and they're hopefully adopted, we just remove them from the master list and go from there.
There he is. All right. Oh. Sorry. I will let you take a seat. We'll be starting on, um- Which page? That doesn't look like it's enough for everybody. If you want a little slide. We'll be on 24 of our packet.
Page 24. I'm sorry. Do you have a- Mm-hmm. Page 24 of our packet. Proposed amendment? Yeah. So we're starting with the proposed amendment. It's Section 346.22. Josh, just let me know when you're pulled up.
Whenever you're pulled up. Oh, I'll catch up. Are there any concerns with this one? Remind me of the type. Utilities 10 and 11 easements. We're good. Okay. No concerns. Great. I like the way this is going.
Yeah. So, going down to page 26 of our packet. This is Section 3466, utilities 12, 13, 15, 19, fees and dedications. No concerns? Josh, if you want me to slow down at some point, just tell me. You gotcha.
All right, the next one is... Where are we? Page 30. No. It keeps going. Mm-hmm. Page 34. Right? What did I miss? No. Fees, dedications, easements. Yeah, you're right. My bad. Yeah. It's just that was a long one.
So page 34 is utilities one through seven language, Section 34, all applicable sections. Any concerns? Those are all good. Still good there. Oh, right. Yeah. It's good. Okay. Big thank you to utilities for participating.
Yeah. This is pretty great to- Some of that's good stuff getting cleaned up. Yeah. I can imagine that created a headache. Still creating a headache. This process is open to anyone who touches the development code.
It's always nice when other departments participate. Page 38. Tree removal permit, Section 34-5.2 in A1. Any concerns? How is the city planning on enforcing this? Yeah. It sounds difficult to enforce.
Well, it's already difficult to enforce if you're not related to a development plan. But we have a dedicated, in zoning, we have a person who's dedicated to look at this stuff, and to deal with permits that come in for projects not related to a development plan.
And then the planners are handling when projects have a development plan, the planners are handling the tree aspect. So, am I understanding this, that any time a resident wants to cut down a tree in the city, they need to come to the city and- If it's big enough, yeah.
It's online. I tried it. Did it work? We cut down a tree, yeah. Yeah, I took a picture. I described why. We were getting a free tree from the ReLeaf- Yeah ... and this tree that was dying needed to go.
So, I think it's eight-inch caliper. Yeah, eight inch. Yeah. So it's not everything, it's of a certain size. And then they just had you submit a picture, and the next day I got something saying, "Okay." And if the city discovers a tree was cut down that didn't come to the city?
It's a $50 permit instead of $25 permit. Okay. And we still are just trying to capture information. That's what we're trying to do. We're not trying to ding people. Yeah, you're trying to track the tree canopy, right?
Yeah. Okay. What about enforcement on that? Not that I feel like we should have a city full of tattletales, but if there is a zoning thing, I realized at one point there doesn't seem to be something on MyCville to report that.
So that's not good. People don't have a problem reporting. Okay. Never mind. Never mind. All right. So going to page 40, private streets, section 3472. Any concerns? None here. Oh, did I skip? Oh, I did skip it.
Okay, so page 41, administrative review authority. Any concerns? Page 42, RNA reference and streetscape standards. I got a comment. Okay. Curious to know why developer was chosen as the added language.
Similar to the standards and design manual sort of, developer is named 57 times in the document. 80% of the time it's project developer, the other 20% is developer. Mm. So I'm just curious to know if there's a rhyme or a reason for not calling this one a project developer.
And should all the other developers be called project developers in the documents? Like that one, that's where we are. Yeah. I'm making a note. I can't offhand remember. I know it was development was kind of the project.
We can look back into that one. I feel like there was a reason, I can't come up with it short right now. The developer is defined in- Yeah ... the definition section. That section. Yeah. Yeah, but project developer doesn't specifically appear to be called out.
But project is defined and developer is defined. Right. Just something to put a second set of eyes on, if you will. Yeah. We'll take a look. All right, so page 43, state changes to planning commission authority.
Any issues? Page 44, state regulations and RNA zoning. Any questions? No questions. Okay. Page 46, existing structure preservation bonus clarification. Page 47, alignment of approval processes. I'm good.
Page 49, split zone lots and development standards. We're all good? I have a comment. You have a comment? Yeah. The added language is split zone parcels. Can you have a split zone parcel? Yes. Yeah. You can have one tax map parcel that has multiple zones?
It's terrible. Okay. Now that we have the new zoning map, do we currently have those or is that something that would be created when someone combines two lots? More likely if somebody was-- Yeah, if they were combining.
I don't know if we have any right now. Okay. We have at least one. One? Mm-hmm. Was it created or one that carried over? It was created a couple months ago. Okay. So this is, you have a big parcel that you subdivide and where you have- You'd have multiple parcels, each one has its own zoning, and then you remove the- Remove the barrier ...
the barrier, the property's line, so now it becomes one parcel with multiple zoning designations. Is the only reason that we preserve those multiple zoning designations so that if they split the lot back up again?
It takes an ordinance from city council to change zoning, not moving property lines. Gotcha. Since we're on this, could we make it just a standard practice when we get these kinds of complicated problems to move them into some sort of resolution?
Well, we can suggest, but we can't make-- There's nothing against having a split zone. But just like part of the annual cleanup. Could we just flag those and consider them? Like forcing them to rezone?
Yeah. We would do it, yeah. That's interesting. If there was an appetite, that would be-- Because if you had city council saying, "I want you to rezone your parcel," and the property owner didn't, that would be interesting.
We can flag them. But for now, this seems like this is a good solution. Page 51, revisions to approved development plan or final site plan. All good? Page 53, sign permits and certificate of appropriateness applications.
Page 55, review and approval authority table. Does this create confusion when there's multiple review keys for the zoning text amendment? When I first read this, I thought that everybody would have to go through.
I understand in the language that's provided with the table, it talks about the Board of Architectural Review only does things that require a COA for a part of a district. But does the table confuse you when you read it?
I didn't think so. It didn't confuse me, but I'm- It doesn't sound like anybody else is confused. No. All right. Let it go. I think just my only tiny little comment, I'm not sure if it's a typo or not, but on the- The upper table, you got zoning map amendment rezoning, and you have the R there.
I'm sure that R will be down on the one to 25, and then the more than 25 parcels. Similar to how the administrators is done. Stupid point, because it seems like either way sort of makes sense, but- Title ...
be consistent for how the table's formed. Yeah. It's a typo? It-- Yeah, we have it in the title line. Yeah, I think that's Instead of down here. Well, I like to take this. So the typo that we need to look at.
Still. So- All right. Page 58, established- Can I, real quick, ask, read a question about page 55, the floodplain variance? Is the decision-making power with the BZA or is it with you? Because the BZA is the final decision-maker.
Yeah, Sir Dan is the floodplain administrator. Mm. So he would make the determination, and then- But he's got final- If they want to appeal, they would come to the board of- Right. What's the D? The D means the decision's final.
Page 55, under relief. Oh, I see what you're saying. I think there's a way you can appeal. You can appeal anything, any determination made to the development code. There's a way to appeal. So why do we even have a D in parentheses and final decision there?
I'm not sure. Right here. Yeah. Let's see. Variance. In the- The final- Decision ... final decision. That sounds like a perhaps exception as well. No, I don't think it's- Unless the code says that he does have the final call on the case, too.
Unlike the whole packet. Don't mean to slow things down, guys. That's fine. Yeah, it's the final determination. I think we're down. So who's supposed to have the final- I think it says, in the column there, it says- It says the board of zoning appeals ...
the board of zoning appeals is the final determiner. The administrator makes a recommendation, and then the BZA- Yeah, I was going to... Yeah, so we- Yes ... this is not appealable. I mean, they make the final decision.
You make the- Yeah, the BZA- Yes. Yeah ... has the final decision. Yeah. It doesn't have in there the courts, right? Right. So- Yeah. The courts should-- Certainly, someone could appeal to the courts, right?
Because the BZA gets appealed to the court, yeah. Thank you. All right. Page 58, established individually protected properties. Can't imagine you guys have any questions on that. Page 61, bicycle parking and lodging.
Any concerns? I'd just like to say thanks for the effort on this. This is great. Yeah. How do we get to one space per 40 rooms? That was through, I think, NACDA. Yeah. It wasn't necessarily a NACDA standard, but in some peer review, that was the standard.
Like in Raleigh, I think was one place we looked at. Yeah. A couple other cities, so. And then if you have 41 rooms, does that bump you to three spaces? Oh, no. I'd have to look at our rounding. Typically, our code does have a rounding section.
Where that rounding is, I'm not sure, but- So you have to get to 81 rooms before you get above the minimum. If our rounding is down, like I think it probably should be, it would be, yeah. Probably once you got to...
But we wouldn't even be rounding, it would just be a one for 40, and you wouldn't hit the other until you hit 80. Yeah. I'm fine with it as it is. I struggle with the logic of not having vehicular parking minimums and having bicycle minimums, but it's probably a tier three item, and we're kind of up to here we are for this as a patch for the specific use.
So you'd rather also have parking minimums? No, I'd actually have no minimums. Okay. Gotcha. We're going to skip over food trucks and come back to it. So we're moving on to page 67, non-residential height in the RA and RB districts.
Concerns? No. Page 68, special exception permits. You're all good. Page 69, sub block access clarification. Yes. Page 70, active depth. Yep. I do have a question, just to confirm. So does the proposed language mean that a bathroom in a residential dwelling unit still satisfies active depth?
Yes. Okay. It's household units, everything you do in-house. All right. But then calling out those other type of uses for non-residential. Okay. Householding living is capitalized in what you added, but it is not a defined term.
Actually, the ING on the end probably doesn't want to be there. Yeah, it's a use in the use matrix. Oh, okay. That makes sense. With the ING on the end? No, that might be a typo. It might be household living.
Oh, yeah. No, it's just household All right. Page 72, non-conforming buildings and structures. So I know we talked about this a lot. I just wanted to take a moment to talk about unintended consequences of allowing unlimited side addition.
Can we imagine a scenario where somebody joins a bunch of lots and makes a really long house? We have those. We still have the lot each. You still have a building footprint threshold. And as you add parcels to your parcel, doesn't that threshold get larger?
So if you were going to do it like townhomes, like side townhomes kind of thing? I'm thinking about one big house. You have a maximum width. So we do have- You can't go- Yeah, but we have- If you go over the property, if there's property lines, that's separate buildings.
Sure. Get rid of the property line. Then you have a building footprint max, and a building width max. Doesn't that building footprint, even though it stays at 65%, the number of square footage goes up if you have a bigger parcel?
The square footage would, but the width wouldn't. Even for non-conforming properties? It's a maximum of this 3,000 square foot footprint. Okay. Just a question. Just trying to worry about somebody coming and doing something crazy.
If someone will. If we've learned anything, someone will. We spend most of our days answering questions we did not think people would ask. Then, Carl, when we were talking about front additions- Mm-hmm ...
you were worried about encapsulating the original property. You said that it made you feel funny, but you couldn't really define why. Well, I think this is saying that if... So it's allowing you to build something behind, you can build to the side.
But if you build to the front, then you have to be for zoning code. I think that's what this is saying. That is what it's saying. Yeah. In our discussion, there was an, I had an unanswered question from you- Mm-hmm ...
about-- My thought is, if the ideal of this zoning code is to move things to the street- Mm-hmm ... we're allowing people to do whatever they have to do behind their structure as they have it today. Mm-hmm.
But then we don't really allow them to bring it to the street. But a big part of the code is trying to bring things to the street, so there's a tension going on there. Mm-hmm. So then, I was asking about, well, are we going to allow people to build additions on the front of their house?
And you had brought up the concern that if somebody builds side additions and back additions and a front addition, then you've basically encapsulated the entire house. Yeah, but I think at that point, I'm not sure we can stop them from that.
Sure. My concern was that I think what we were doing was forcing additions in the front that would encapsulate the house or hide it from the street. Yes. Where they didn't have as much of an option of going behind or to the side.
True. Does that make sense? That does make sense. That's not what I understood you saying- Okay ... last time we talked about it. I don't remember what I-- That's all right. I'm also very good at mumbling and mixing up my words.
That's all right. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Sure. Okay. But I feel like this makes me feel happier about where we're at. Yeah. From a language standpoint, do we need the distinction between the interior lot and the corner lot?
The only difference between the two languages is subsection C. Hmm. And the one subsection C just references the other subsection C. To explain, you're suggesting have the same language for both? Yeah.
So right now we have a distinction between new primary building on an interior lot and then new primary building on a corner lot. Yeah. And the language in those subsections A, B, and D are all the same.
I think it was just consistency with how the code is formatted. Just, if you went to that section, even though it repeats the language- Yeah ... it was-- Yeah. When I was putting this in, I know it was repetitive, but it was trying to keep the same formatting as the code sections.
There was other sections that I thought we were trying to break out places that you were going to have to maintain two sets of language that say the same thing. So I just figured I would bring it up here as well.
Well, if we can reference a subsection, can we not reference the entire A, B, C, and D? We can keep separate sections for interior and corner lots, but one can reference the entirety of the first. Yeah.
That's an optimal way to get around, to save- If you want to have both sections ... repetition as well. Yeah. It seems weird to reference C, but not A, B, and D. No. But it's really up to staff because it's your work to maintain it.
Yeah. Is the language for A, B, and D the same in both? I read through them and thought them to be the same. I did not compare them word for word. Honestly, I'm fine either way, that staff makes- Yeah.
It's fine either way. I just- I am wondering, is there an instance where we have a side street yard in a interior lot? By definition, it wouldn't be an interior lot anymore. Yeah. But again, if it is simpler just to keep the A, B, C, and D the same, as long as the issue's fixed.
Yeah. I'm open to it, but I'm inclined to keep the formatting. Just, I know it's repetitive, but it's- Is the way the code was broken out to talk about interior lots versus corner lots, and having it broken down into that A, B, and C.
Like I said, I'm open to if there's other suggestions on doing it, but yeah. The result's the same? Yeah. Absolutely. We can just merge all of that. Yeah. I think we're on page 77 now. We're talking about, so these are just as tier two amendment.
So we've got floodlights, outdoor lighting. We okay with this? Yes. Okay. Page 78, average grade clarification. That makes sense. Yep. All right, so that was all of these. Let's go back to food trucks, which that was 73.
I have sort of a broad philosophy- Yeah ... question on this one. Do we not have, and should we not have, a permitted designation for a food truck court? Very good. I guess would one of the commissioners at that meeting like to...
I know probably everyone didn't get a chance to see, and no one's following our Connect Charlottesville page- Thank you for the email ... or continuously forgets it exists. Because on that page, we have a summary of the meeting of the staff with the commission meeting, and that came out of that.
If somebody wants, I'm happy to pull that up, or if a staff or planning commissioner that was in the meeting wants to share with our other commissioners how that meeting went. Who was? Who was in it? Me and Carl.
Yeah. Oh, it was us. You tell. How'd it go? I have a feeling Matt may do a better job, but, or Ross, you can correct me, but I feel like it was, there's a... You're right into... So I emailed you all the agenda, and there's a list of potential concerns for having food truck courts on the back, second page.
And I think we realized that it's a very confusing topic. Yes. And yeah, we didn't make a lot of progress. So I think we did make progress on single food trucks or just a couple of food trucks as a temporary use, but the idea of food truck courts, I think we do need to discuss and maybe figure out what type of things the commission wants to permit or would be concerned about and would not want to permit.
And once we get a consensus of what we think is good and what our concerns are, figure out how to solve those or at least give staff some direction that maybe they can look at it as well. And Ross, you had a great idea- Yeah ...
I thought. So for all intents and purposes, food trucks aren't really allowed in the city right now. The only real way they're allowed is if they park on the public right of way and they sort of serve to the sidewalk.
That's largely allowed. As soon as you take a food truck onto private property, you have to do things and, with the city to get permitted. And as the packet calls out, if you have more than one food truck, you can't have more than one temporary permit.
There's sort of a- You can have more than one food truck- So- ... but you can't have- There are different temporary uses out there, such as a circus or a outdoor event. And currently, our code says you can only get a permit for one temporary use at a time.
So if you had an outdoor event, you couldn't also have a food truck. So that's one thing that this is fixing. And that leads to a question I've got about this. And they talk about the ability to have the operator on 10 different properties- Mm-hmm ...
with a permit. Are you able to do that concurrently, or do you have the ability to park at one property on Monday and move to another property on Tuesday? You can move to any of the 10 that you have a permit for.
You can't have concurrent operations for all 10? Well, I mean, a food truck can't be in two places at the same time. But- And there can't be a second food truck in the same place ... so the permits are to the individual food truck as opposed to a company that has multiple, for example.
A company has multiple food trucks. Yeah, that's a fair question. Do you know, Reid? I would say it's to the food truck. Okay. Yep. So wait, if I own a company that owns five food trucks, I just need to get five permits?
Yeah. As opposed to one. Or you get 50, and you've got 50 different places you can go to. Right. Mm-hmm. So, and another thing is that the temporary use permit goes with the truck currently. Yeah. And philosophically, if that truck is going onto private property, when you think about other temporary uses, like the amusement park, does the amusement park get the temporary use, or does the property owner of the properties get to temporarily use?
I thought it was a user that got the use permit. It is currently, but- Currently ... philosophically, is that how we want it to work? Why wouldn't we want the user to be the one responsible? So when your...
So who's the user? Is it the truck driver, or is it the property owner? See, it's the owner of the truck. Whoever's making money on the truck. That's how it's currently written. It's how it's currently written.
And maybe, so your idea was to separate this out into four different categories. Yeah, so after the meeting, it took some while to figure out. We kept kind of going in circles- Yeah ... because it all interplays off each other.
I came up with four different levels of food trucking in the city, if you will. The current one is- How we have it today on street. Function as they do today. A food truck has to get its fire and health certificates, and any other business permit it has to do, and it operates on the street.
Then, probably confusingly, the most confusing option is how do you have a truck operate temporarily on private property? So, if you have a block party, your block party is on empty lot in your neighborhood, and you want a food truck to actually get onto the empty lot in your neighborhood, how do you have a food truck on that lot?
Did we look at Albemarle? I've been to a wedding, just saying, with multiple food trucks. Yeah. There was the dessert food truck, and the bar truck. Maybe I can- Well, we didn't really regulate these until just now.
Is that correct? Yeah, we've been regulating them since the last 10 years. But as a temporary use permit, or just as a- It was a provisional use permit. Okay. But when the code changed, we got rid of provisional.
So, that's the problem, is we've lumped this use, and really, we only have temporary use. There's two categories, and this is the one that it doesn't fit. That's just where it was placed, and so that's the main limitation is that, you can see for these other ones, you can't have two temporary construction yard permits at the same time on a piece of property.
Mm-hmm. But we want to be able to have more than one food truck on a property. Yeah. So then, if you have a food truck for a one-day event on private property that's setting itself up with maybe a table for condiments, and a table for people to sit, but they're going to be gone that night, do you need a temporary use permit for that sort of food truck use on private property?
Well, one thing is we do have a temporary use permit. So, if you had a block party, you would get a temporary use permit, and it would be lumped on underneath that. So, like the- I don't know ... block party, Southerland Park, farmers markets, they're usually lumped underneath that.
So it's one temporary use permit- One- ... but it covers multiple- A cupcake ... asks for that temporary use permit. Yeah. But if you don't have some other event with a umbrella temporary use permit, but you as a truck operator had an agreement with somebody to operate in their parking lot for a day- We might not.
We might never know ... you currently need a permit to go for that one day to operate in that parking lot, even if you're leaving when the sun goes down. We try to regulate everything, but sometimes we miss things as well.
Sure. Well, that's the event. That would be that. Yeah. That's the event. We'd miss that. But that truck would still need to get a health permit. Sure. And the more important things are the impacts. Yeah.
So my thought is- Or no impacts ... continue to require them to get all the things they need to run as an operation. But if they're actually temporarily operating on private property for a day, do we require a separate temporary use permit for every parcel, lot, or whatever they're trying to operate on?
Before we get into that question, though, there's a third intensity limit, which is when we get into actual courts, in my mind. This is a small court with a limited number of vendors that can be debated and defined, and their intent is to leave their vehicle on the property overnight.
We would have some sort of light zoning requirements to regulate the impact of however few vendors we have. And we would potentially allow some sort of infrastructure, but not require it, such as like a Dominion pole to bring electricity to the site so they're not all running generators all the time.
Yeah. Or if they want to have some sort of port-a-potty, that'd be allowed. And then once you get over some threshold, you get into a larger court, and that's when the city starts requiring them to have restrooms, or the electric pole, or other examples.
So, how do you scale up from working on the street to people that want to set up full-time as their business food courts, and every option in between? How do you create a structure? And the stuff that staff proposed for today is on the most temporary side of that scale.
Yes. But to have a full food truck regulatory framework for the city, we need to discuss the entire continuum. So, my proposal would be that if you guys are okay with the idea that we've got food trucks on the streets, a temporary use of food trucks, which your temporary use currently in the code allows you a year.
So, you have to remove the truck every night, but it's good for that parcel for a whole year. So if you were to park at some brewery or something in their parking lot, you could come every Tuesday for a whole year or something like, I think, which is what they usually kind of see.
Am I saying that correctly? So, yeah, what staff has proposed here deals with the temporary use. So, we can tackle that right now, if you guys are in agreement that the courts are a different thing, a more permanent use, and then we'll come back to that.
Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. And I think Ross's idea that maybe there's a smaller thing that could be approved by staff, and then a larger thing that might have either more restrictions or might be an SUP or something, can hash that out.
So, for the amendment that staff has proposed for temporary uses, questions, concerns, comments? I know there was some talk about the tables. Yes. Let me pull that up. So, there's a line in there that's, "A mobile food unit operator cannot," and then there's several things they're not allowed to do.
One of them is to have more than one covered 10 by 10 table. That staff has crossed out. To me, that means they can have as many tables of whatever size and shape they want. Yes. But when you read the analysis, it says the opposite.
Yeah. So that was Jose's question before. Right. We're trying to get rid of them altogether. We're trying to get rid of the tables. Yes. It's a mobile food unit, to your point, where this is the one that shows up for a day and selling its wares.
It's not supposed to be staying there forever. Right. And so by establishing this infrastructure, that's what it's doing. I'll tell you the intent of this, and this is actually poorly written because the old code said set up more than one 10 by 10 tent to then cover a table for condiments.
Yeah. And that was what the original planning commission proposed, so that you can put ketchup on your hot dogs. Sure. And now it was never intended to allow people to set up tables and chairs for people to eat their hot dog at the actual food stands.
So, did you guys not intend to cross that out? Yeah. Well- So what does crossing it out-- Intended to do that I think it was intended to remove even the ability to have a table. Okay. I don't read it that way.
I don't read it that way at all. Yeah. Okay. I read that as you can have as many tables as you want, as long as you take them with you at the end of the day. Do we-- How do we feel about tables? I noticed that when you go to an event at The Pavilion, there's usually the food trucks have a table for condiments and stuff, or napkins, and whatever.
How do we feel about a single table? Or do we have a concern with that? That's not an answer, Lyle. No opinion. All right. The single table seems to be a thing. Okay. I think because they clear people away out of their line, they can be like, "Oh, go get your stuff." They're not all- No.
As long as the table's going with them, I don't care how many tables they have. Yeah, I agree. So you're for infinite tables. How many? I'm somewhere between no tables and infinite tables. At least two.
So should it be covered, though? I don't think it matters if it's covered or not. Okay. So just put back in- I would just- Put it back in. Yeah. Don't put it in because that's what they cannot do. Right.
Well, no, it's saying you cannot put up more than one. Well, then uncross it out. Yeah. Keep it in the code. So that would just allow one. You would allow one. Yeah. But I would remove the "provide condiments" because I think the tables should also be allowed to have people sit at.
I don't care what the table's used for, as long as they take it with them. They'll see "read condiment" and they'll quickly put relish on the table. So, all right. So you're saying just say set up more than one covered 10 by 10 table.
We could get rid of the covered if you don't want it covered. I don't want it covered. That's a tent that comes out of someone's trunk. Well, that was the idea. Yeah. Easy tent. And if it goes away at the end of the day- It doesn't bother you ...
it's temporary. Yeah. But we're okay with one of these? That's consensus? Yeah. Okay. So does that make sense for however you want to edit that? We're okay with one covered table, no more? And the consensus is that people should be able to sit at said table?
Or they put condiments on it, or do you both? But it's just one table. I think it makes life a little difficult. You're going to do condiments, you're also going to have people sitting there, and you're going to have people with food.
Either or. Yeah. Either or. I think in general they're probably just going to be condiments. My preference would be to not allow folks to sit at the tables. But it would be there for condiments, and they just walk up and eat their hot dogs or walk around to the next food truck to see what else is there.
That just feels like a whole other level of policing. Mm-hmm. That I don't think we'll ever actually do. People can have chairs on the property. Have there been table complaints? Right. This is why I'm like, as long as the table goes with the truck, at the end of the day...
Do they want tables? Like if the food trucks people said... I'm wondering- I don't see tables. No one wants tables ... this is for this year, but it seems like there should be a meeting with food truck people to iron out the details- Jesus ...
for the future. Well, yeah. Maybe not-- This one seems pretty easy, but for the next year. Yeah. Let's at least get a band-aid in for this one. Yeah. I'd rather not have people sitting at the tables, but I don't care.
But not enough to fight it. Okay. I'm thinking about Long Street. I don't see any tables. I don't see people sitting at tables on Long Street. With Taco Gomez? Oh, yeah, they have tables. There's loads more tables there.
I've never noticed that. Oh, they got tables. Cool. Legally, apparently. It is a hopping corner some nights. I know. I don't care. But I want to point out, even with this fix, that is not conforming to the- Correct.
Right. It's a different scale. Again, the wording could be something along the lines of not provide tables or furnishings not directly connected to the service of food or... Did it say table? Just allow a covered table.
I think that's the easiest. It could be condiments- You get one covered table ... it could be people sitting Let's keep it simple. Yeah. If it's- Move that down, too ... if it's small. And then 10 by- Well, by keeping condiments in there, you're alluding to the fact that it really is just for preparing your food, and then you're moving on.
So, we can enforce it, I guess, how I believe cheese- Are napkins considered condiments? Does someone actually make a square 10 by 10 table? I think it-- Well, that's what I thought it was like 10 by 10.
The 10 by 10 is pretty small. Yeah. How big is this? That's the 10, not the table. Like the vendor stands on the mall are 10 by 10. Yeah. 10 by what, two? To the length of the tent? Yeah. Understand? The spaces for the downtown mall vendors are 10 by 10.
Oh, okay. So, if you can imagine that- That's why it says- ... that big, 10 by 10, and so. Okay. So we're good with that? So what are we good with, Jason? So, we're good with a covered 10 by 10 area with a table in it.
Yeah. A table, yeah. Yes. A covered 10 by 10 table. So it would read, "A mobile food vendor operator cannot set up more than one covered 10 by 10 table." Yeah. And it's got to go with them. Yes. Yeah.
I'm not sure, is that implied, or does that need to be in there? Well, that's the question- The table goes with the truck at night ... well, that's the question for the other addition that they have in here, which says that they need to provide the location of the mobile food unit when not in use.
What if they say that the location of the mobile food unit when not in use is that parcel? That's what he just said. You just care about the location. You don't care that the location is not the same location of the temporary use permit.
We ideally want them to leave, but it's a tricky situation sometimes. So the AB... Or sorry, the health department requires them to have a commissary, where they prepare their food, and that was the case in 2015, but I think that the truck can be the commissary.
Yeah. So that's the difficult situation. There are some cases down at the site that you had mentioned where there's gray water tanks and old cooking oil, and that's not what we want, right? Yeah. So we'd like to know where they're going to put the truck, so we can know how temporary it is.
Maybe we're going to ask them to move the truck away from the street. Maybe we're going to ask them to park it in a real spot. But we want to know. I guess to the question, if someone had an application that said, "Our location of the food truck, when not in use, would be on the lot," then you would deny the temporary permit?
Good. So, the intent is to figure out if they intend for the truck to continue to be mobile. How mobile is this truck going to be? Yeah. Ideally, we could go in and say, "Please move your vehicle in the next 10 minutes," and they should be able to move along.
Yeah. Okay. So if that's the intent and the goal of the addition of E, then I think it makes sense that the table has to go with them. And I think that it is implied, but do we need to be explicit that the table has to go with them?
Should it be like mobile food unit and all things that- All accessories ... come with you in your mobile food unit when not in use? Does that make your life better or worse? Well, I think the conversation that you guys had about the next topic, that's where you can keep things on the lot.
Mm-hmm. But this is really supposed to be temporary. Yeah. So I guess what we're asking is, do you guys need to add a line to one of these things, probably section three, that says any accessory items with the truck need to leave with the truck?
Does that make more- We could put that in there. Or it might maybe more actually in the opening provision, which expand, extrapolate temporary means used during the day, removed at night or something.
I think that could be- When not operating. Yeah. Because we actually don't allow, we don't limit hours, so, just when not in operation. Yeah. That would help that out. Yeah, I think it'd probably go somewhere in here, under A.
There are places where we will want to regulate hours. Yeah. Well, you could add that in here if you choose, but I don't know how much we want to expand that. I'd like to at least know what the intended hours are going to be.
Because some places, it's fine. It's next to a highway, and another highway. It's fine. In some places where it's a quiet residential area where people are really going to know- Mm-hmm ... that'd be good to have a hold of.
Mm-hmm. There are both of those situations right now. Okay. Well, they do have all the playing music that's audible outside the vehicle. Mm-hmm. This light might be a thing, but we don't want people...
Maybe just the traffic of people coming. However, we only allow them in commercial zoning districts, so if there's a residential property next to a commercial district- Fair ... it's the same kind of deal.
You have a convenience store, let's say. Sure. So you have a truck operating into a convenience... Go on the other side of Belmont, for instance. Belmont Bridge. Mm-hmm. The property directly behind it is residential.
There's a house there. So we worked with the food truck owner and the convenience store to provide a power, terminal power, so that he could plug in instead of run the generator all day long. Yeah. So we're trying to mitigate impacts as well.
Yeah, that should be the goal, right? Is to mitigate the impacts, not- Yeah ... restricting the usage. How do churches work? I really like it. I mean, so you put your order in- You sit in the view ...
church parking lots. So church parking lots generally are not separate. They're- I mean, a lot of them are in residential districts. That's right. So we wouldn't allow it. Interesting. But they could always park in the street.
Yeah. There's limitations in Chapter 28 when they can operate- Okay ... in residential neighborhoods. Yeah, I was about to say. So the Chapter 28 regulates how they... And so when we did in 2015, we worked with the police department to make sure that it would work.
And so you can't operate in front of a restaurant that's open. Mm-hmm. And then after certain hours, you can't be with a residential district. Okay, but that's like sometime at night that you'd have to leave.
Yeah. So the- 10:00 to 6:00 or something. 6:00 PM. 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Oh, 10:00 PM. Okay. Okay. So yeah, so a neighborhood could have their block party. Mm-hmm. Food truck could park on the street, and they'd be good, and they have to clear out by 10:00 anyways, because the noise ordinance would shut down any music and whatnot, right?
Am I thinking that correctly? Or there could be that temporary use permit. Mm-hmm. And so maybe if there's hours established. In that we can require that the police department, there's someone be there from the police.
There's safety issues. Okay. Other questions on this amendment before we think it's okay and move on to more permanent situations? Seeing none, thumbs up? Looking good. Okay. Yay. All right, so we got one of these solved.
Quick question before we start this, though, is, so, like, the lot on East High Street or some of the other kind of existing situations, like the farmer's markets, are these grandfathered in? Do I remember that from our subcommittee?
It's not grandfathered in. Okay. No. So we do need to figure something out if we want to continue. Because they're annual permits. Whether or not grandfathered in. Okay. The High Street one is not grandfathered in.
The farmer's market is different. Okay. All right. So we do need to try to figure something out, I guess. All right. Are there some more urgencies in this? So yeah, Ross, your idea. Something small that could be approved by staff versus something large that I think would take an SUP.
I think you probably still want to approve by staff. I don't know. I mean, you brought up a good point that until we have time to, like Bethany said, talk to operators and talk to apparently somebody down on Fifth Street that wants to put in a pretty permanent food truck court sort of situation.
So until we get more feedback from them, I think an SUP would be a reasonable band-aid. Mm-hmm. But I know sometimes you put a band-aid on things, and then the band-aid ossifies into amber and it doesn't come off, so.
Yeah. Well, I think it would also give us a chance that we would- Yeah ... we could see someone propose an example and see what type of mitigation things they're thinking of putting in, and we'd come up with our own.
So just kind of a chance to... Because I don't think we can actually think all these through ahead of time. I think there's going to be some surprises- Yeah ... on a case-by-case basis probably. Yeah.
I have three conflicting ideas. Idea number one, minimum viable product. Basically, let them stay overnight, and that's about it. Otherwise, it's exactly the same as the temporary, it's just they stay overnight.
Number two, cheat off of others. See what other people are doing. I'm thinking about Austin, Texas especially. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Let's just use the existing best practice, copy it.
Number three, look at what people are doing, and try to find a way to define it in code. Yeah. A different kind of don't reinvent the wheel. I think all are valid, but we probably can't do all three. Well, can I just ask, this informational thing.
Something, they're out of compliance at Long Street now, right? Yes. What are all the things that are not allowed that are currently happening there that we know? I don't know what aspects of that project are going to be set up for enforcement, or which ones are okay.
So just like how illegal is this? We have health and safety issues. Mm-hmm. In my opinion, that's number one. Okay. And that's like the gray water, the cooking oil? And sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.
I would say it's the furniture and the tents that are permanently there. The safety as in there's no barriers around, so when people just drive through and park wherever they want, it's kind of surprising no one's gotten hurt.
Is it dangerous, or is it unappealing? I get why you don't want old cooking oil lingering for a long time, but is there a fear that someone's going to be hit by a car there? Well, there was a fire at one of them.
I don't know what started the fire, but one of the food trucks burned a couple of years ago. Was that because it's a food truck that has propane and gas on it? I don't know why it burned. So- Grease fire.
It was a grease fire. What point are you trying to get to, Josh, here? Well, first of all, on urgency, is there some pending enforcement action that's going to cause problems there? Because if not, maybe that goes to the point of how soon are we going to do something about it?
But then, Lyle's third thought, can we legalize parts of what's currently happening? Yeah. I would need to know what parts of what's currently happening are not currently allowed. Most of the things you think about when you think about that property.
The parking's okay Right. Well, I guess to be more precise- ... which things that are happening there are not allowed, deserve to be not allowed. I like people not... I don't like grease fires. The aesthetics don't concern me.
I think it's fair to say some of the restrictions there are valid and should continue, and some are not. So I would need to make a list of the things that are currently not allowed and ask which ones we think should continue to be not allowed, and which ones we think we want to relax.
Or, we can start from scratch and do Ross's, here's the food truck court plan. I think those are two ways of getting to a similar point. Do we start from a clean slate and say how should things look from scratch?
Or should we say, "Well, we have a thing happening. How do we alter that until it's okay?" Can we do both of them? Yeah. Meaning for the smaller version of just a few vendors and low impact, sort of start from zero and say what we do want to happen.
And then for the larger courts, start from what is already happening and what we don't want, and take away the things we don't want. Sure. Well, let me back up. Do we feel like there needs to be a distinction between a small minimum viable product, if you will, and a larger, permanent, more commercial enterprise?
Yes. Or should we regulate those the same way? Different. With the scale. I agree with you. I've been to so many of these in different cities. But I brought that here and didn't even ask the question if we thought that would- Yeah ...
the direction to go. I've been to lots of different examples of these in different cities, and they're fairly different. Some, they're pretty permanent in their spots. They have their hours up, and then maybe there's music at night.
And then some have actual bathroom infrastructures. I've just seen some are in a field, and some are attached to a building. One in Traverse City, Michigan, where an entire block, all the buildings surrounding the perimeter hold restaurants.
And their bathrooms, everything is running out of those restaurants. But there's multiple trucks kind of making a courtyard or whatever. So maybe we just need to think about versus the one day, what is the permanent or multi-day cluster approach?
And decide what's safe, or some rules that go along with that, but... But I don't know if we know all the... I think bathrooms is a question. Yeah. Maybe there's a cert. But I love the energy of that corner.
There's a lot of people that seem to feel comfortable hanging out there that I wouldn't see maybe on the mall. It seems like a good gathering place to me currently. I'm glad they're enjoying the space.
Yeah, so just what would we change, like you're saying? But two different things. I think you're thinking there are these ones that I've seen in different cities that are definitely a thing now, and maybe that's the highest tier.
You're pretty permanent. Right. And maybe one truck leaves- Not even water ... a year and a new truck comes in, and you might switch up who's where, but- Right ... which is a little different than the High Street, which seems to just...
They don't have as much infrastructure. So yeah. So- But they do seem to be the same people. So to reiterate what I said at the beginning, my idea is the smaller court, you have a limited number of vendors.
They stay overnight. There's very light zoning requirements that are probably covered in other parts of the code, like noise and a lot of the things that Ree just brought up. But there's no permanent infrastructure required.
But if they wanted to pay for it, they could have certain infrastructure that reduced the impact of the food truck court, and then there would also be things that they wouldn't be allowed to keep on site.
They wouldn't be able to keep a big grey water tank or a big grease tank and stuff like that. So that's low level. Yeah, that middle. Yeah. Then you get above a certain threshold, and I haven't figured out how to define that threshold yet, because I don't really like the number of vendors.
Because what if you have a big lot in a commercial area- Right ... versus a small lot in a residential area? I don't know what the threshold is. But you get above that threshold, then you have to have a bathroom, you have to have a dominion pole.
Maybe you can have the grease trap. I don't know. I don't know how would people think about that. I'd worry about cost effectiveness. I don't want to make it possible to have three or four or five, but suddenly there's six.
I'm worried about that. Yeah, absolutely. You can create a barrier that you can't actually get above because the economics never work out for it. That's kind of what you're getting at. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know where to make the barrier, but somewhere there's a barrier, and you get these two different sets of rules.
And then the other thing to talk about is where in the city to allow these things. And does it have to be a food vendor versus... I saw a thing about Green County, actually, that they're having a similar conversation, and they're trying to move from just food to physical goods and services that's out of a mobile thing.
Hmm. Then does this become a neighborhood market sort of thing? Outdoor neighborhood market. I don't know why it needs to just be trucks- Yeah ... that serve food. This feels very much like a method of saving money by avoiding the building code.
It is. But maybe we should talk to the Beacon Kitchen. That's like what it started as, with a food truck, right? Yeah. You don't have to buy a whole building, you can just go buy a truck and outfit it how you want.
Well, but there's a lot of life safety requirements- Correct ... that come with buildings, and I'm wondering how much of that we're... Never mind. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. What if we asked the Beacon Kitchen?
So they are incubating all of these new chefs, and a lot of them have a food truck, but they're learning skills. I wonder if there's a way to just survey, ask some people about, like, "Hey." I don't know exactly what the make or break in terms of the infrastructure they need or would want or...
But they would probably have some minimal, when they're looking for a space, there's some minimal things that they're hoping for. Well- And then in terms of health and safety, we could figure out ... Well, so I mean, obviously homework that needs to be done.
Maybe we step back and think, well, yeah, the question of where are we okay with these? Are we okay with food truck courts anything but a residential zone? Are we okay with them in residential zones? Are we...
Thoughts on that? I think the smaller ones I would feel okay in RC. Okay. So that's one for RC. I mean, I- So I struggle with this, because I can understand the desire to put the more intense sort of highest tier versions into commercial industrial zone areas.
Yeah. But those are also the areas of the city where land costs the most. Yes. So if you force them into high cost land, this whole idea about avoiding cost and having to do brick and mortar stuff- Mm-hmm ...
land might be so expensive that you never actually get a permanent court. Yeah. Or renting. Well, yeah. Well, but I guess, are we okay if we had a food truck court next door to us- So- ... where we lived?
The thing about that, and I don't know if this is practical to restrict, so am I okay with someone selling food, foot traffic, music near my home? Yeah. Am I okay with a diesel generator running for many hours a day near my home?
Yeah. No. So if there's power available and a restriction saying you can't burn diesel on site, what I think is okay becomes much wider, right? I don't know if it's practical to do that. Like if we say, "Oh, you can put the truck in next to my house if you can procure power somehow," and that's impossible to do, then we haven't legalized anything.
But my feeling about just as a selfish homeowner in a quiet neighborhood, would it bother me? As long as there's no diesel, I'm fine with it. But it's a question for... There's also no outlets people can plug into on my block.
So I don't know that it's possible to ask for that restriction, because maybe it's just totally impractical. I'm not sure how I feel about a food truck court anywhere where you've got trucks permanently burning diesel all day.
Well, I think to Ross's point about bigger version, maybe we require that power pole to be there or something. I think at some size, just for health and safety reasons, I don't want 10 trucks burning diesel in the same place anywhere.
But again, I don't know who's going to bear the cost of that or what that cost is. So if we spoke to people from Beacon Kitchen or people at Long Street and said, "Hey, if we let you stay here, if you paid for this power line," they might say, "I can't do it." So for homework, it'd be good to know, what's feasible to ask there?
I'll say that the Long Street lot, they all have temporary power poles. Yeah. I don't know who approved those permits, but- ... they got them. It's not you? No. Are they rent... I mean, the person who owns the lot- Yes ...
is allowing this. Yes. So they probably- Yep ... at least allowed the power. I mean, there's something. Sure. Possibly for temporary use. Yeah. So then, this also gets into the larger neighborhood commercial discussion that- Yeah ...
we haven't had yet is, do you allow this idea to be like arm in the water for a larger neighborhood commercial, or do you wait until you have the larger discussion with the community to figure out what people want in terms of neighborhood commercial before you bring in larger food truck courts?
It's like a sort of a chicken and the egg question. I think we need to have that larger discussion of neighborhood commercial before we start. I know we all seem to want neighborhood commercial, but if that ends up being something that needs public input, then I kind of imagine food truck courts would go right along with that.
Yeah. So like in an interim use, you could put them in RX and more intense- Mm-hmm ... but not the R zones. Maybe as an interim until we have the larger conversation. How loose can an SUP be in our zoning code?
No. Like, maybe no? No. You can't just have a, "You need to get an SUP and we can figure out 90% of it?" Okay. Well- ... I mean, there's a state standard when you- Uh-huh ... review an SUP. Yep. That standard has words.
Um. I love it. But they're very planner lingo words. The health safety impacts on neighboring properties, things like that. Can the language in the SUP be, these are all the items you need to address, but not specifically say how to address them, and then the planning commission figures out that these items have been mitigated fully?
We can make restrictions. Yeah, there can be restrictions when you talk about a use. When you define a use, you define a criteria of what that use allows, doesn't allow. And then you put that use with these type of things is either allowed by right in certain areas, with a special use in other areas, but it's not like the criteria changes because it's in a special use.
It's just you're looking at that through the lens of the impact on the neighboring properties. In a residential zone. So think of it like a car wash. Yeah. If you're saying, "I'm having a car wash," car wash is used by right in the commercial districts.
Mm-hmm. A car wash is by special use in our districts. Mm-hmm. You're not changing what a car wash is, what all the parameters, it's just now another layer needs to be looked at it through the lens of the state legislation of special use.
Right. So when we looked at the car wash, I think we were talking about how noisy it was. That was something that came up a lot. Yes. And any mitigating factors that could do for that. Could we do the same sort of thing for a food truck, but it wouldn't just be noise?
It would be noise, it would be- Hours. Yeah, hours. Mm-hmm. Lighting- Source of power. Yeah, that would be source of power. I don't know how you guys would feel about that. Obviously, there needs to be some rule that you can't dump gray water on the site, you can't dump cooking or used oil on the site, so that has to be taken away somehow.
Maybe, also, the SUP would dictate how that's taken away, or maybe not. That's more the... I think that'd be more up to you guys. Whether restrooms are required, all those things. So it's open-ended, but there's some basic, like we list these issues and- How are we mitigating?
Yeah. It would be hard, and I'm just nitpicking on the restroom, would be hard to say of... You don't address restroom. If you address it, it's what you call food court. Mm-hmm. Yes, that could translate into an SUP.
But you wouldn't want to say a food court is food trucks parked private property, and that was it. Mm-hmm. And that's being held to a different standard, and then suddenly, for an SUP, you're saying, "Well, where are your bathrooms?
Where are your..." So, if it was addressed, it has to be addressed in what the use is, and then it can be looked through a little more fine-grained at an SUP. You can't be arbitrary and just say, "We don't care about restrooms, but here we care about restrooms." So it sounds like you would have to do an SUP for the small and the large court, as I've been defining them so far.
Mm-hmm. You couldn't do a small court by right and then a large court. Okay. Well, if you defined, if you had a strict definition of each of them and where they're allowed by right- Yeah ... versus special use, you could do that.
You could have eight different types of food courts. Right. The nice thing is, like the Long Street example, it's just people can walk to it. Mm-hmm. That's the nice thing about having them close to residential is, whether it's three makes a court or two makes a court versus a single- But is that a residential lot?
No, that's not. I guess because it's adjacent to residential, but I'm thinking maybe this takes more time to see if a neighborhood was okay with three. Does that make a court? I don't know. How do we...
But I do, like in our neighborhood of Woollen Mills, and it's lovely to be able to walk if you wanted to, to some of those things. Or the new River, the River Company just got a coffee shop. Yeah. So it would be nice to encourage these small-scale, walkable types of enterprises is all I'm saying.
Yeah, it's economic development, it's the first scale of kind of like the Beacon Kitchen. There's lots of benefits to doing that, it's just how do we make it- Yeah ... palatable through the city. But also, just to remember that it is also possible to park your food truck in a residential neighborhood- That's true, yeah ...
and stick around for a day. Yeah, so I guess we're scared- Just wanted to put that- ... of saying that more permanently ... before pointing into anything I fully agree that the generator's running is probably one of the bigger worries to have here, one of the biggest impacts to try to do something about.
Does anybody have any idea how much a temporary power pole costs from Dominion? No, I don't. Would it be too much to say that you've got to have temporary power pole? I think if you have a permanent food truck situation of any number, yeah, I would say we should start with saying you have to have a power pole.
Yeah. I think that's fair. And then that might draw the second one because someone will- Because now you've got power. Yeah. But I do like your approach, this tier, the maybe three tiers or something that get defined.
Seems like a good way to... Yeah. Although we just have to... We need to define them. Yeah. So what are the impacts we're trying to control? That's what I wanted to go the easy route- We got the single on the- ...
and make a big SOP for all of them We got the single on the street done. Yeah. We got that done. And we have the temporary one done. Or temporary multiples or whatever, but the temporaries are done. So, yeah.
Fire, transportation. Fire, as in? Fire safety. Okay. So what's your requirement for that? Initially, I would just say some thing. Some thing. Some review, some plan. So reviewed by the fire department.
Yeah. Okay. Transportation, so yeah, reviewed by, now both of these things are saying they've got discretion. Entirely. Okay. You talking about even for like two trucks on a property? If it's permanent, yeah.
Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out where you're at. Yeah. This is like just for straight health and safety stuff. Sure. Are we... Well, I think, yeah, parking. Do we- Parking requirements throughout.
Okay. Restrooms. I don't know that we need restroom requirements. I don't either. Just wanted to bring it up as a discussion point. Okay. So noise, fire safety. And noise, are we covered by the zoning cover or the- Just the code.
Okay. Doesn't have anything on- Sure ... unless you wanted to add a layer, but I mean, we can't. It would be really hard to go out and regulate noise- Oh, that was- ... on a zoning standpoint. It is. That was a question that, sorry, um, I wanted to add it for later.
Don't we have an issue with the noise ordinance? That it's- It still references the old districts. Excuse me? It still references the old districts. Oh. Well, doesn't it also say that noise generated in a residential district is only the part that's regulated, and that- That's- ...
entering a residential district? That, there was interpretation. Uh-huh. Staff has interpreted the code to say, what it says is, "Noise generated within a residential district or building." Okay. So a next-door neighbor in a commercial zone making a lot of noise, we don't regulate that.
I don't see how the code addresses that. Okay. All right. I'm making a small little list of additional- ... items that we need to look at. What are we really attempting to do with this conversation today?
We're attempting to come up with some sort of zoning designation for a permanent food truck court. Because I agree with Ms. Retker that we probably don't need to reinvent the wheel. We may want to just take a look at what they do in Austin, for example.
Yeah. Let's go look at best practices, and then... Well, the problem is we don't have time as a committee, or as a commission, to do that. Wednesdays did. So you guys want to do it tomorrow? Mm-hmm. Bring up lunch.
No, no, at this point. I think- Yeah ... our next- The tip sheet was December ... you guys want to review this again, right? Yeah, that's fine. I thought we were attempting to do the temporary piece, which we've done.
Yes. I don't think we're attempting to put together a strategic plan for- No, but when do you guys, do you want to present all these for a vote in December? So in the temp, yeah, I mean, no, yeah, we wouldn't have time to put a new section in of the code.
The temporary one, we can- I just don't want to rush this. Yeah. And again, if there are people out there who know how to do this and they've done it better than others, we ought to... So you're saying that we're having this discussion, but there's no way that any of this, we couldn't possibly craft something that could go into the code next year?
I don't see how we would have the time- Right ... to stay on the schedule. But I do think this is a good primer. We're coming up on the end of the year. We'll be putting it to the next year, and so this is a good conversation.
I was going to say, Reid has done some research on food courts. Mm-hmm. And I think provided some of that during our smaller meeting, but, um- But does that mean we're a full calendar year out from regulating the things that are already happening?
Well, we would go out. Yeah, in this first round, we would go out and regulate using the changes. So we would allow more than one food truck to operate. We'd go down to High Street and make sure all those people get permits, make sure they're not keeping their furniture out overnight, work with the property owner.
We'd probably see if they voluntarily would create a circulation plan to make it safe. Mm-hmm. We'd probably ask them where they're going to make sure the trucks are mobile. We'd work with them. They are established, but clean it up some.
So there is a way to bring the places that are operating now into conformity just off of the change that- Yeah. The original- There's a couple other sites that have more than one truck. Yeah. Okay. Because the code says with the temporary use, we can issue five permits, but no two permits can operate at the same time.
So we're telling people, "Self-regulate," and that's impossible for people who want to sell all the time. Yeah. So I think it'll help us enforce this ordinance. It just so happens nothing has really changed except for the fact that now it's a temporary use permit instead of a provisional use permit, because it just kind of got lumped in somewhere.
So we will not be kicking the food trucks off of that spot. I was asked not to- ... by other people who are not at this meeting, because they're small businesses, and I think it really is not ethical to come in and have the code change, and then tell all these people, "By the way, because of some technical glitch, you can't operate your business here." I think you and I were thinking that that still wasn't allowed.
Yeah. No, I thought we needed to come up with a solution to keep them there, but I guess I'll... Okay. But I do think that there are-- We talked about it in a smaller session of these other localities that have these more permanent things.
A lot of ones in Texas, as you mentioned. A lot where there's a building, where maybe there's an established building that might sell drinks or have a stage or something, and then they invite trucks to come in.
Mm. There's a lot of small sites that could operate maybe six or eight trucks, have a small footprint. We've also had a person come in and ask to do a food truck park or explore it, and he was proposing to have a structure that had maybe a kitchen or a place to wash hands or a bathroom.
But then if you have a structure, that's not going to meet our development code- With setbacks ... with setbacks. So that's something to think about and how you would allow that. So, we can continue to keep doing research, continue smaller meetings, Matt will coordinate that.
But we can put together materials. There's not a lot of examples in Virginia, though- Mm ... of these food truck parks, because they are these temporary things that they come in, occupy a space, and then they leave, and it turns into a parking lot on Monday morning.
Put it together. Virginia Beach. That was the one I saw, and it was just utilizing a parking lot. Also in Richmond. Well, since I guess we don't have to hurry up and figure that out, and we have more time, the consensus though is that, yes, we're good with food truck courts, and it sounds like the idea of maybe doing something that's easily approved and something that takes an SUP is the direction that we think makes sense.
Yes. Yeah. Until we discover something else. Or we get more feedback from the food truck owners. Yes. What would make your life better? All right. What about not being restricted to food? It doesn't seem to make a difference to me- Yeah ...
if you can sell hot dogs versus T-shirts. I'm not sure there is a difference. So I don't know if- Well, when you eat. So the farmers market has everything. Yeah. Kind of- We don't have a section of the code for farmers markets, do we?
There's a definition of farmer market. It's in the use matrix. Okay. But we also have temporary outdoor sales if someone wanted to, for instance, once again, the High Street lot, they'll come in with an 18-wheeler and sell steaks.
Before the food trucks became popular, someone asked, "Can we sell cars from this lot every Saturday for the next..." Because they're trying to see is it worth making this more permanent or leasing us some space or going through a special event or a special use permit.
So we do have that. Okay. Derrick's Road might do that. They'll pop up their tent and sell stuff, and they'll get that permit. Is that a one-day thing, or is that like they could do it for a year? It's up to staff to decide- Okay ...
what temporary is. So there's a way to do that. Okay. But we also require a permit because I recall back maybe 15 years ago on Cherry Avenue, people would just sell stuff, and you get complaints. It just depends.
I mean, I don't know. Yard sale versus- Yard sale. Right. It was yard sales and stuff like that. So just to form wise, it would require a permit. You can have a temporary outdoor sale and a temporary food truck, of course.
At the same time? Yeah. Probably not. No. So I- Well, no. You're allowed to mix. Now you're allowed to mix. Now we're allowed to mix them. Or once this is approved- Sure ... we're allowed to have more than one temporary use.
So yeah, we can have temporary outdoor sales and food trucks, I'm assuming. There is a $250 permit associated with the temporary outdoor sale, so it is a little bit cost prohibitive for an individual to do it.
Mm-hmm. But it's- And I think that's what drove away a lot of the yard sale kind of people- Mm ... is because it's just a lot to ask. But if somebody wanted to sell T-shirts every Tuesday for a year, it would be 250 bucks for that sort of permit, depending on if you guys approved it or not?
Yeah. Okay. I don't know if we would do a year, but maybe four months. I don't know. Figure it out. What about-- Sorry. I just- Maybe getting way off topic ... I just envision, but end way over here- Yeah ...
is a farmers market, but like- Yeah ... in the neighborhood. Which, like it would do- I was going to say, in the downtown mall, though, they have their own way of getting their produce. The people selling in the mall.
Imagine if we have a farmers market on Saturday at X Park in downtown. We also have one at 10th and Page. We have one on- We used to have one at Mead and- Off Orange Street ... Chesapeake. Yeah, that's a good- We have one in Johnson Village.
Which was nice because it's a park. We have one, like, around the city. City land, so it was nice. Where entrepreneurs are trying to figure out if they want to do brick and mortar or something. Just- I'm sure ...
selling a T-shirt. Right. So farmers market is allowed in all the districts other than R. Okay. By right. So- So all the parks ... all the- Yeah ... all the commercial districts. Everywhere, yeah. But not the churches.
Some churches that aren't in residential zones, yes. It does sort of feel like there might be a way to take the farmers market and turn it into what we want. Yeah. Possibly. That's good. That's why I said, we're talking about food trucks, but does it have to be food, and does it have to be on a truck?
Like ... So if it's not just food and it's not on a truck, we should probably call it something different. Which then brings it back to what Green is trying to do. Did we exhaust this one for what we can accomplish today?
I have a complete change of topic that I wanted to bring up if we'll return. Okay, and I have some additional items that I want to bring up. I think that's it. Well, first, are we okay to move on? Okay.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I would love to work on it more. Yeah. But- I think we hit a stopping point for tonight. Yeah. Okay, Austin. I was a little surprised to not see some of the technical changes for home stay.
Right now- Oh, that's right ... they reference the home occupation. Home occupation doesn't allow you to operate at night. You can't really operate a home stay, not at night. So that seems like a technical tier one change to me.
I was a little surprised not to see it come up. Yeah. I think we probably need to do the whole rewrite all over again. I think that's probably coming eventually. Okay. There was work on it that was paused- Got you ...
when directors changed. Okay. For instance, one other thing, it's an annual permit, and that's just difficult for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, that is a bigger-- I can understand why that's taking longer. Yeah.
But not being able to operate at night seems like a quick scratch out of that line. Yeah. Or there was a couple other ones I can't remember off the top of my head, but that's one that stuck out in my mind of, like, that prevents you having a home stay at all.
But I've just kind of thought that we would see some of that roll cleanup in this round. I think just because when that started, there was a more holistic look at that, and so we weren't looking at it at all, and when that got paused, it just wasn't in our vision at that time because there was a separate task to- Yeah, it was a much bigger conversation.
Yeah. Okay. Is that good? I feel like we should make the change to allow a home stay at night, but I can understand where they're coming from. It's not changing how we use in practice, from my understanding.
Yeah. That's good news. I think it sounds like Betsy may have been the only person who actually looked at the table that you provided. I looked at it and just shrieked. Well, yeah. I mean, like, actually read it.
That's because I had it printed out. When I did it on the screen, I was just like... Maybe at the next subcommittee meeting, we should review that to make sure that we're still... It looks like staff had added some responses on there, and just make sure that- Yeah.
It is a hard document because we try to keep it live. Yeah. So. But I did want to add some items for future consideration. We talked about the required outdoor amenity space, and whether we actually need to have that.
That came up with over off of Harris Street. Whatever the one that's over in Fry Spring is. The noise ordinance. Do we need to take another look at that? Well, that's not in our chapter- Yeah ... is the problem.
16. But is that still something the planning commission advises on, or is that...? We can make a recommendation. And the other thing was, maybe this is being worried about absolutely nothing, but data centers don't seem to be very well-defined in our development code.
Yeah. And I'm assuming that the cable building on West Main Street and the phone company, Brightspeed, I assume those are both data centers, and they're pretty innocuous. They don't cause any problems.
But, I don't think anybody ever would buy the whole Vinegar Hill Staples parking lot situation, but if they did and they put an actual data center there, I don't think we have any safeguards for noise or for water use or- Pollution ...
yeah. So I don't know if that's something we- Yeah ... maybe I'm being scared about nothing, but something to consider. Second. Yeah. Worth conversation. For step one might be just defining different levels of data center and whether one needs more review than another.
UVA just finished one, right? Over on Fontaine. That's a data center? No. I think so. They have, yeah. Yes. So it'd be interesting to see how big that... We have a local example. I haven't looked at it, I just know that it got- There are some- ...
built ... requirements for certain districts, talking about not exceeding 50% of the floor area on the lot. Can't be within 30 feet of a primary street or side street. There are some provisions. Yeah.
But they didn't seem to address the things that we seem to be most scared of when it comes to data centers. I have another broad one since we're going globally. Very early on, years ago, long ago, we had this beautiful idea of a form-based code that would replace all of the case by case discretionary approval processes.
And we'd just have it perfect for everything, and we could get rid of the VAR, get rid of the ERB. We're all good. We did not do that. That is not what happened. But we still have all these additional aesthetic regulations in the R zone as though we didn't have them, which has led to some redundancies, complications, confusions, and in ways that I didn't expect and seem burdensome to me.
I'd like to think about that issue. Redundancies with VAR or redundancies with...? Design restrictions on buildings. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm thinking of transparency. I'm thinking of active depth. Yeah. Where I hadn't imagined that they would apply to the R district.
Okay. To the R district. But they do. Yes. Yeah. No, I agree with you on that. I'm slowly picking away at them. As much as Matt will let me or let us. Okay. Other topics that need to come up before we adjourn?