Name: Charlottesville Planning Commission meeting, Feb 10, 2026
Start: 2026-02-10
End: 2026-02-10
Location: City of Charlottesville

Planning Commission

Tue, February 10, 2026

Agenda PDF Minutes PDF Watch Video

Agenda items

Vote records

Discussion summary

Transcript

Meeting summaryAI-generated

Planning Commission — February 10, 2026

This was a working meeting with no public hearings and no formal votes. The session focused on commissioner reports, updates from city boards, and an extended work session on the 2026 Planning Commission calendar and the next round of development code amendments.

Commissioner Reports

One commissioner reported on their first meeting of the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) Technical Committee. Key takeaways from that meeting included:

Smart Scale funding — Virginia's competitive transportation funding formula heavily weights congestion relief and roadway capacity, making it difficult to win funding for bike/pedestrian projects unless they are bundled with capacity improvements. The city is likely to advance the Ridge/McIntyre/West Main intersection study to a Smart Scale application.

Ravenna River Bike/Ped Bridge — The MPO will resubmit a federal BUILD grant application for this project, which has been rejected before but encouraged by federal reviewers to reapply.

Population projections — The MPO's updated travel demand model projects Charlottesville's population will grow 13% to approximately 57,000 by 2050 — the slowest projected growth rate among all jurisdictions in the region.

MPO budget (UPWP) — 80% federally funded, 20% local match.

A second commissioner reported from the Schools Capital Improvement Planning meeting: the Oak Lawn Pre-K project is in legal limbo due to issues with UVA and may face a year or more of delay; solar panels appear on track for the high school and middle school via power purchase agreements; and HB 334, a sales tax measure for school funding, has passed the House and would generate $15 million annually for Charlottesville schools if approved by local referendum.

Legislative updates were also shared: HB 1279 (faith-based housing) passed the House with a two-year total delay before taking effect; HB 282 (real property tax authority for Charlottesville and other cities, not the county) passed the House; HB 888 (eliminating minimum parking requirements) passed the House; and SB 454 (housing near jobs) passed both chambers.

Another commissioner attended a Carr Foundation event where former Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg and attorney Nicole Scro briefed local realtors on the new zoning code, and also attended BPAC (Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee), where notable topics included a new public paving schedule portal (incomplete but available), uncertainty around bike/ped improvements on Main Street and Elliott Avenue tied to utility work, and an unclear future for the city's Quick Build program.

One commissioner reported from the Board of Architectural Review (BAR): the board reviewed bylaws and discussed a procedural concern — under current rules, if the BAR cannot form a quorum, applications in a historic conservation district are automatically approved after 30 days. This happened at least once last year and was flagged as needing a fix.

NDS Department Report

Staff noted that the ADU Manual and Student Housing Study are published on the city's new engagement website (connect.charlottesville.gov) and open for public comment through February 28. City Council will hold a work session on the Tax Abatement Study on February 17.

Public Comment

No members of the public were present or online to speak.

Work Session: 2026 Planning Commission Calendar

Staff presented a draft schedule of regular meetings and work sessions for 2026. Notable planned items include:

March 24: Home-stay/short-term rental work session

April 14: Student housing in-lieu fee and ADU manual work session

May 12: Downtown Mall action plan presentation

May 26: Citywide Mobility Plan scope discussion

June 23 (tentative): BAR guidelines update

November 24: CIP review

December 22: Work session typically canceled

Commissioners offered several additional items they would like to see scheduled:

A joint city/county Planning Commission meeting

A transportation project status update involving NDS, Public Works, and Utilities together (modeled on a 2022 joint PC/Council session), with Ben Chambers serving as coordinator

A dedicated discussion on transit and CAT (Charlottesville Area Transit)

A work session on neighborhood commercial zoning (noted as already in the NDS work plan separately)

Discussions on stormwater/critical slopes, school streets safety, a World Heritage Trail concept connecting UVA and Monticello, corner safety improvements, and city archaeology policy

Work Session: 2026 Development Code Amendments

Staff confirmed the 2025 Tier 1 and Tier 2 code amendments — passed by the Planning Commission at a public hearing in January — will go to City Council on February 18 and take effect at the end of March. The commission then reviewed a draft list of proposed 2026 amendments (Tier 1, 2, and 3).

Key items discussed:

Items to be elevated or expedited:

Food truck courts (B-9): Currently only one food truck is permitted per lot under the temporary use section, effectively prohibiting food truck courts. Commissioners agreed unanimously this is a meaningful problem and should be studied in depth.

Special exception numerical relief (C-11): The code currently allows special exceptions to change dimensional standards but not required numerical counts (e.g., number of parking spaces). This prevents any relief for things like hotel bike parking calculated under a blunt commercial formula. Commissioners agreed to push this forward.

Build-to zone exemptions for existing buildings (C-22): Significant discussion about whether buildings behind an existing primary structure should be exempt from build-to requirements, particularly outside the R zones. The general direction was to explore an exemption similar to what the 2025 amendments created for R zones — if a primary structure exists, additions or new buildings behind it should not trigger build-to compliance. Flagged as a subcommittee priority.

Active depth requirements (C-16): Substantial discussion about whether active depth requirements are too strict, apply to too many floors, use an overly narrow definition of "active space," and whether dwelling units should be exempt. Commissioners agreed to prioritize this and address it through the subcommittee.

Ground story definition / topography (G-18): The current six-foot maximum below-grade threshold causes problems on Charlottesville's hilly terrain, often forcing buildings to be broken into multiple sections or triggering a chain of special exceptions. Commissioners agreed this needs to be revisited.

Private street definition: Staff flagged a new issue — nothing in the code requires a private street to be a dedicated parcel rather than an easement, which can create frontage and build-to measurement problems. Commissioners were open to a Tier 1 fix.

Doors swinging into sidewalks (D-2): One commissioner raised concerns about restaurant doors opening over narrow sidewalks on West Main Street. After discussion, this was set aside as not a current priority.

Building recess depth (D-5): The 30-foot required recess depth for wide buildings creates problems for buildings over parking garages with double-loaded corridors. Commissioners agreed this is likely a simple numerical fix (e.g., 25 feet) and should move up in priority.

Minimum lot sizes for nonconforming lots: Commissioners discussed that a large share of city lots are already nonconforming by size and are effectively undevelopable under current coverage rules. Flagged as a Tier 3 item needing more research.

Items resolved or removed:

Height bonus applicability to multiple buildings on a single site (C-1, C-2): Commissioners concluded this was likely already addressed through the 2025 amendments defining "primary building" to include multiple buildings on a site.

Subcommittee formed: Commissioners Carl (chair) and one other volunteered to form a two-person subcommittee to work through the prioritized 2026 amendments, particularly active depth and build-to exemptions. The subcommittee will feed into a process similar to 2025: subcommittee meetings, developer/builder listening sessions, one or two full work sessions, then a public hearing.

Key Takeaways

Food truck courts are currently prohibited under the city's zoning code, which limits permits to one truck per lot. Commissioners flagged this as a significant gap and prioritized it for study.

Build-to zone and active depth requirements are generating repeated special exception requests and may be poorly suited to Charlottesville's existing built environment and topography; commissioners elevated both as 2026 priorities and formed a subcommittee to work on them.

The 2025 code amendments will go to City Council on February 18 and take effect in late March, concluding the first major post-adoption amendment cycle.

Charlottesville is projected to be the slowest-growing jurisdiction in the MPO region through 2050, with 13% population growth to 57,000 — relevant context for transportation and housing planning.

The BAR's automatic approval rule (30-day quorum failure in historic conservation districts) was flagged as a procedural vulnerability that needs a fix after at least one unintended approval last year.

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

Commissioner's Reports

# Commissioner's Reports Summary

A commissioner reported on their first MPO Tech Committee meeting, detailing the Metropolitan Planning Organization's role in regional transportation planning and the SMART Scale funding formula, which currently prioritizes congestion mitigation and roadway capacity, making it challenging to fund projects like bike trails without roadway improvements. The commissioner outlined several projects under consideration for SMART Scale applications—including Ridge McIntyre West Main Intersection, Route 29 and Barracks Road improvements, I-64 and Fifth Street interchange, and US 29/250 off-ramp extensions—with the tech committee and policy board planning to vote next month on recommendations; additional updates included the MPO's resubmission of a BUILD grant for the Ravena River Bike Ped Bridge and population growth projections showing Charlottesville reaching 57,000 residents by 2050. The Planning Commission reviewed and refined draft 2026 meeting dates and work sessions, with staff presenting key work sessions on short-term rentals (March 24), student housing and ADU manual (April 14), downtown mall action plan (May 12), Citywide Mobility plan scope (May 26), and BAR guidelines (June 23, tentative), while commissioners requested clarification on the BAR guidelines scope from the preservation planner. The Commission agreed that work sessions could be scheduled during regular meeting dates when agendas are light to reduce overall meeting frequency, though staff noted scheduling flexibility would be necessary given potential influxes of applications. Staff also discussed the 2026 work plan for development code amendments, with commissioners supporting a subcommittee approach (meeting 2-3 times), one or two larger work sessions, and a public hearing process over approximately eight months, with two commissioners volunteering for a subcommittee focused on zoning code items.

University of Virginia Report

A Commissioner reported on attending an AR (Architectural Review) meeting where bylaws were reviewed and major/minor historic review processes were discussed. The Commissioner noted a landscape architect vacancy on the BAR and raised a concern about an unintended consequence of the 30-day review requirement for historic conservation district applications in the procedures manual: if the BAR cannot form a quorum, items are automatically approved, which occurred last year when an item was automatically approved. The Commissioner suggested this procedural issue should be fixed.

Department of NDS Report

The Department of NDS Director reported that the ADU manual and Student Housing study have been published following their January presentation to the Planning Commission, and the city is now seeking public feedback. Staff provided an update on 2025 development code amendments (Tier One and Two), which had a public hearing last month and will proceed to city council on Tuesday, with the code anticipated to take effect at the end of March. Staff is beginning the 2026 cycle and invited commissioners to prioritize Tier Three items and consider forming a subcommittee to champion the amendments. When a commissioner inquired about how the new code changes would be communicated to developers and the community, staff confirmed that an email would be distributed to stakeholders the following day, with additional education occurring between the public hearing and enactment.

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

The Commission moved to matters to be presented by the public not on the formal agenda. The Chair noted there were no public hearings scheduled for this meeting and invited any members of the public or online participants to speak on planning commission-related matters. No members of the public came forward to speak.

Agenda items (6)

Procedural (6)

1ProceduralCommissioner's Reports

City commissioners will share updates on their respective areas of responsibility and activities.

What happened

2ProceduralUniversity of Virginia Report

The University of Virginia will present a report on its recent initiatives, partnerships, or activities affecting the city.

What happened

3ProceduralChair's Report

The meeting chair will deliver a report covering leadership updates and administrative matters.

4ProceduralDepartment of NDS Report

The Department of Neighborhood Development Services will report on its work, including housing, permits, code enforcement, and related community projects.

What happened

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

Residents who are not on the formal agenda will have an opportunity to speak publicly about any topic they wish to raise.

What happened

6ProceduralConsent Agenda III. Planning Commission Public Hearing Items

Multiple planning-related items that have already been approved for consent will be formally adopted together, along with any public hearings associated with them.

Verbatim transcript available

509 transcript segments indexed

Everybody Plugged in and ready. Ready. All right. Well, welcome to tonight's, uh, planning Commission meeting. Um, we're going to start with, uh, commissioner's reports. I, I have one. Yeah, I can kick us off.

So I have replaced Rory on the MPO Tech Committee, and I had my first meeting, um, last week, and a few things to report from that. So, um, since I'm new to that committee, and I, I know I feel like we use a lot of acronyms, I'll just give a little bit of background to that committee.

So, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPO, is the federally designated body that, uh, coordinates primarily transportation planning for the region. Um, and it has a staff, obviously. Then there's a policy committee, which is made up of elected representatives of kind of Albemarle County, city of Charlottesville, uh, et cetera.

And then there is a tech committee, the technical committee, which is what, uh, a member from the Planning Commission serves on, which the, the technical committee, um, kind of votes on things to recommend to the policy committee, which then actually adopts 'em.

So it's a lot like the planning commission, the, the real power is one level above, but we recommend stuff to the people with the power. Um, so we heard a couple of updates from, uh, the MPO and vdot.

It's the Transportation Bodies Attend. So Department of Rail and Public Transportation, vdot, um, F-H-W-A-F-T-A, et cetera. Um, federal Highway Administration, federal Transit Administration. And, um, a lot of the conversation was on smart scale, which is the state's performance based process for allocating funding to transportation projects.

So, most of these projects start out as a study, which then results in a smart scale application. Um, and the city, the county, and the MPO are allowed to submit a certain number of smart scale applications.

And then there is a formula that the state uses to basically rank these applications and decide what gets funded. The current formula weighs congestion mitigation and roadway capacity fairly heavily. So it's difficult to win funding for smart scale projects if you're building a bike trail, unless you can show that you're increasing roadway capacity somehow.

Uh, so the current strategy, since I think the city's, uh, goals, and in many ways the county and the NPOs goals are to manage highway capacity while shifting trips to other modes like transit biking and walking.

Um, a lot of what they're focused on in these smart scale applications is finding a project that scores well as smart scale. So it'll get funded. So it means it has roadway capacity, but also has multimodal elements like a path or something like that, or a transit improvement.

Um, so for example, the Ridge in McIntyre West Main Intersection is currently a study that VDOT is leading, uh, kind of on behalf of the city, which will likely result in a smart scale application, and then, um, make its way through this process.

So, um, the tech committee and then the policy, uh, board are gonna basically vote on what, um, on advancing certain projects to the smart scale application phase. So the, the, the ones, the, so the city is probably gonna recommend Ridge McIntyre, west Maine, um, which I, we had a public meeting for that a couple weeks ago.

Al Marle County has four, and then there are five under consideration for the MPO, which is, um, route 29 and Barracks Road that, um, has some kind of sidewalk trail improvements there off the off ramps.

Um, the I 64 and fifth Street, uh, divergent diverging diamond interchange, um, which may or may not have multimodal improvements. Uh, the current status is that, um, VDOT doesn't think that they can basically have a path crossing over the existing bridge there.

Uh, US 29 and I 64 is really more of a kind of highway safety and capacity project. And then there are two, uh, on the bypass, uh, US 29, 2 50 off ramp extension and on ramp extension at Old Ivy Road, which really is just a, a sheer capacity project, has no multimodal benefits whatsoever.

So I think the plan is next month, uh, for the tech committee and policy board to kind of vote on what should be recommended. Um, three quick updates. Um, the MPO is gonna resubmit a build grant application for the Ravena River Bike Ped Bridge, which bill is a federal, uh, grant program.

They've submitted it multiple times in the, in the past it hasn't been approved, but apparently the Feds come back and say, we think you should resubmit. This is a great project. So they're gonna do it again.

Um, the MPO is updating its travel demand model, um, and it's where the, I think the, the, the future year it's planning for is 2050, and their modeling consultant presented, um, the demographic estimates for 2050 for approval, and just as an FYI, um, they're projecting that the city's population will grow by 13% to 57,000 by 2050.

And this is based on Weldon Cooper projections. Uh, however, this is the lowest, uh, population growth of any of the jurisdictions in their region. So, Albemarle County, all the other counties are experiencing, uh, at least according to these future projections, much higher rates of growth, which I think is interesting, um, for us to, to think about.

And then the final thing from that meeting, uh, they presented the, the unified, uh, planning work program, UPWP, which is essentially the NPOs, uh, budget. Um, and so just as an FYI, it's 80% funded by the federal government, so Federal Highway Administration, federal Transit Administration, 20% from local.

Uh, and that was, that was that meeting. So I went on for a while, but, uh, I think I'm done. Mr. S I'm so sorry. Uh, I have two updates, uh, one from, uh, the school's Capital Improvement, uh, planning meeting today.

It is fresh on my mind, uh, and also a legislative update. I will try to be brief. Uh, we talked about the, uh, zoning update on field lighting, uh, which is on our agenda today. Uh, that is not time sensitive.

Uh, although it is good to fix, uh, oak Lawn, pre-K, uh, currently in legal limbo, we may see a year or more of unplanned delay. Our legal team is working hard on this with the university. Um, we will see, uh, s solar on school roofs, which we've talked about for many years, appears to be on track, especially for the high school and the middle school.

Uh, we have power purchasing agreements lined up for both. Uh, and then the smaller schools, we're still figuring out a, a way forward. Uh, the facilities plan is on track for about June, uh, which is related to HB 3 34 sales tax for schools, which passed the house and moves to the Senate Finance Committee.

It would need to pass a local referendum here, and it would generate $15 million a year and needed schools' revenue that could be used for meaningful improvements, especially at Charlottesville High School.

I see that, uh, Ms. Kim Powell, the city school's, uh, chief Operations Officer is attending this meeting, uh, and will be attending future meetings to better coordinate between our two bodies, which I, I personally appreciate.

Legislative subcommittee. We already give you a taste. Uh, HB 1279, faith and Housing has passed the house with a one year delay, uh, with Litech, uh, uh, processes. Well, that's an additional year. So we're talking about a two year total delay, uh, that goes to the Senate Local Government Committee.

Um, HB 2 82, real property tax for Charlottesville Falls Church, Fredericksburg and Newport News, uh, f from Delegate Carlson has passed the house and moves to the Senate Finance Committee. Uh, that does not include the county.

If we want to fund regional transit that we'd have to go another year, HB 8 88 zoning, uh, minimum off street parking requirements has passed the house that goes to the Senate Local Government Committee.

Very similar to what we've done here. Uh, SB 4 54 housing near jobs has passed the House and Senate also similar to what we've done here, much more, but I believe that's the, the key stuff. Thank you.

I would just report today that I attended the Carr Foundation, which is the Local Association of Realtors Foundation. They held a, they held a, um, lunch and learn for realtors where they hosted former Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg and developer and land use attorney Nicole Scro, to talk about the city zoning code.

Um, there was a good discussion about how all of this sort of impacts realtors and how they can think about it when working with landowners and property owners in the city. And there was a good discussion between the, uh, presenters and the crowd.

And I was there to sort of listen and hear what people's concerns were. Um, I got to go to Bpac last week. Um, I'll, I'll get this wrong, but I think Bpac either is advisory to PC or believes they're advisory to pc, um, or aspires to.

But, well, I'll describe the meeting. Some highlights for us, um, highlights to me at least, uh, there is now a publicly available, um, city portal on the, uh, paving schedule. So if you wanna know when we'll have a road, uh, resurface being paved, that's information is, we don't think it's complete or fully correct, but it's there.

Follow up questions are going to public works. Um, there's some omissions there like Rose Hill and Main Street that we'll look into, but it's, it's a place to start. Um, there is, as PC discussed, I think last year, um, hope and also uncertainty about bike pad improvements to follow along with utility work on Main Street and Char and Elliot.

Uh, a topic that that needs to be, I think followed up here and elsewhere. Um, similarly, uh, hope but also uncertainty and questions about, um, the future of the city's Quick Build program, which I think before the two of us joined last year, um, PC discussed more money for quick builds in the CIP.

Um, I think there is at least, um, uh, within bpac not much clarity on how that program will continue in the medium and long term. So things for us to think about as well. Um, and yeah, that's, that's my highlights from the meeting.

No report report. Um, uh, commissioner Joy is not here, so there's no, uh, UVA report. Um, I went to the, um, the AR meeting last month. Um, we didn't have any agenda items, so we reviewed our bylaws, um, and reviewed what con, uh, constitutes a major minor historic review and kind of various levels of minor reviews, um, stuff that goes on behind the scenes, um, that we don't see on the BAR.

Um, we do have a, um, uh, landscape architect vacancy. Just wanted to put that out there for the public. Um, uh, we also, um, briefly discussed, um, or maybe I brought it up, but, um, in our, there were, when the zoning code was, um, redone, certain things got moved outta the ordinance into procedure procedures manual, um, and vice versa.

And one of those items is, um, we, um, the BAR only has 30 days to review a historic conservation district application. Um, I had thought that was in our ordinance. It's actually in the procedures manual.

Um, this was something that was done by counsel when they, uh, created the, um, uh, woolen Mills historic district. Um, the idea was that it would make, um, make things move along faster for homeowners.

Um, the unintended consequence is that if the BAR for some reason can't form a quorum, items that are on, um, that are in a historic con that are part of a historic Conservation district's review are automatically approved.

So we did have that happen last year where an not just got automatically approved. Um, this seems like something that would be good to fix. Um, so I'm just, you know, bringing that up. But, um, anyways, um, alright.

So, um, uh, the Department of NDS, do you guys have anything you'd like to report? I have two items from the NDS Director. One is that, um, the A DU manual and Student Housing study that you were given, um, you were presented with last meeting in January, uh, that's been published and the city is seeking feedback on it.

It's published on Connect Charlottesville, which is the city's new public engagement website. That is connect charlottesville.gov. And that's available for feedback through February 28th. Uh, second item is that city council will hold a work session on the tax abatement study, which was also presented to you in January.

And that will be next Tuesday, uh, February 17th. All right. Um, alright. So now, um, we move on to matters to presented by the public, not on the formal agenda. Um, because we have no public hearings tonight.

Um, you guys can speak to anything planning commission related. Um, does anybody like to speak, see nobody in the audience? Is anybody online that would like to speak Or anyone online would like to speak and raise their hand and I can announce them for the commission.

Mr. Chair, raise hands. Alright, um, we have no consent agenda. So, um, we're gonna now move into a, uh, a work session, um, to review the, uh, draft planning commission dates for 20, um, our, um, work session dates for 2026.

Um, and, um, talk about the, uh, next round of development code amendments. Um, do you guys wanna introduce or Certainly chair? I can. Okay. I'm gonna try to take a bunch of notes. That's why I'm sitting over here.

Not gonna come down and as long as y'all can hear me. So tonight you're gonna start first with, uh, reviewing the dates as part of your packet. There were was included just the, uh, planning commission regular dates and work sessions.

Uh, as noted, this is very draft and because it's draft, there's actually been some changes that I would like to read into. So you can take notes on your sheet, but you just, so you have the most up-to-date information, but that information, I didn't want to provide it after the packet had been posted.

Um, so under work sessions for March 24th, you'll have the home stay short-term rental work session, uh, in quarter two at your regular April 14th meeting will be the housing, uh, student housing in lieu of fee and a DU manual, um, work session.

That'll be a combined regular meeting and work session, no work session, no item listed for April 28th. For your regular meeting on May 12th, uh, there'll be a presentation on the downtown mall, uh, action plan at the May 26th work session will be your Citywide Mobility plan scope at your June.

Uh, currently there's no items of the June regular meeting. June 23rd is a, uh, tentative bar guidelines or sometime in the third quarter. Uh, so that's very general. And then also in for quarter number two, but no date has been set is a work session for the NDS 2026 slash 2027 department work plan that the director puts together each year.

No firm date, but she would like to bring that forward sometime in quarter two, no items so far in your quarter three work sessions. And for quarter four, your October 27th meeting, uh, is open, but you'll have in November 24th, your CIP and typically the December 22nd work session is canceled.

So those are, are the general layouts. This is an opportunity, um, for you to just kind of digest that if there's any, you know, specific things you're looking at, a specific, you know, specific date or just in general quarters, you know, if there's something you'd like to, you'd like to look at, uh, this would be a good time to, to have that conversation.

But you could also work this in as you discuss the next two items on your, So the, uh, the June 23rd meeting, the bar guidelines, what are we, what are we actually trying to get done in that meeting? The preservation planner, um, has been wanting for years to reevaluate the BA's guidelines, and I think this would just be an opportunity to bring those thoughts forward to the planning commission.

Okay. Do you have any general idea of what, what's broken? What, what, what we need to fix? Or, I don't know the ask yet. Other, um, the chair might, Um, what item's gonna be, there's the guidelines do need to be combed through for some updates.

Um, the, uh, there's a, it has not been fully defined yet. We need to actually, I guess what, what is our role? What is the Planning commission's project? What's to updating the bar guidelines? I don't know exactly what our role would be for this work session.

So I will confirm with Jeff what, um, what he's thinking and make sure that this is a productive work session. Um, I, I did ask him about the June 23rd and he said he was, um, it, right now it's just a date to make sure that there's a placeholder.

Okay, cool. Um, Didn't, the, doesn't the, didn't the CIP this year include money for a bar, a BAR guidelines update? Is there, is there like a consultant? Is there a consultant study or something happening?

I think Step one and what we've been working on is making sure the scope is defined. Gotcha. And then hire a consultant to do that. Okay. Um, we've, we did do some discussion on that. Um, yeah, it's an item that definitely needs to be pushed forward.

Um, and it, it is dragging. So that may be part of why this is on our work session, uh, list this. Um, alright. And I guess, uh, as I mentioned the pre-meeting, if we could we'll try and coordinate with the county and hopefully use one of these work sessions for a city county, um, cooperative meeting.

Um, and, um, I, yeah, I guess, um, well, any, any other questions from you guys on this? I do. Okay. Uh, the May 26th meeting says the Citywide Mobility plan scope, is that to define the scope at that meeting, or are you taking suggestions from Scope prior to that Commissioner?

I'm not, uh, sure. I don't have much information on this, but we can get you that information. Definitely. Prior to this meeting, uh, when we sent the request out, it was more just, are there certain meetings you are wanting to come forward to planning commission for a work session?

They weren't providing much detail other than trying to find some holding dates. Okay. So we can get you that information. Sure. Um, on the, if, if it's part of the mobility plan, I don't know that it needs to be a separate plan, but I would like to see a discussion on transit and CAT on what the status of those are.

Um, there's some vision planning that has been done in the past and looking for updates on that front. And then, um, I would like to see, and I don't, I'm new to these work sessions, I'm not sure exactly what defines a work session, but I would like to have us have a discussion on the neighborhood commercial ideas.

Um, I believe that's a big part of the comprehensive plan that for one reason or another isn't totally defined within the development code. So I would like to see a discussion there. And then based on some comments from previous work sessions that I've been paying attention to, maybe it's part of our discussion today or more related to the zoning text amendments, but there's been some suggestions about having larger discussions about stormwater and critical slope and how those mm-hmm.

May play a part or play together or separately. And that definitely the, the last one could definitely be maybe, uh, an update that the, uh, NDS could provide as far as with the environmental study where that is in the process.

Sure. That's 'cause that's one of the larger, uh, NDS work plan items that's, that is ongoing. Sure. So yeah, if there's other places for those suggestions to go, that definitely makes sense. Okay. I think I have a, a similar question.

Um, I also don't, I think it's not yet known, it sounds like what the scope of the mobility plan scope work session will be. Um, but unless this is explicitly gonna be covered there, and it's gonna be combined with transit, possibly, um, there was a joint PC council work session, I think in 2022 about ongoing transportation projects.

Uh, it's been, it's been a while and I'd like to have another one of those if possible. Um, my, my experience trying to track a given project or a network of projects is you have to ask utilities about this and I dream about that, and then they ask about a third thing.

And I find it really challenging even putting a lot of time into it to figure out what, what's on track, what's not, what's being built in a given year. Um, so I would, if it's not too redundant with other things already planned, like to have a work session much like the one in 2022 about, um, ongoing transportation projects.

If we have time. I have one Question. Mm-hmm. Finish writing. Oh, yeah, I have four. Well, let on you can go. Oh, you okay. He's just let on Matt finish writing. Yeah, Sorry. No, take your time. Going, going to the transportation.

I mean, we definitely, again, that could be, uh, we, you could have, um, our transportation planner or and representatives from PWE give an update on funded and currently bidded out projects. If I can be a little bit picky, um, tell me if this is too much.

Um, I would, I would specifically like to have representation from multiple departments at such a work session. Um, because in my experience, I I I've been finding that, um, the different departments don't always, aren't always well coordinated.

And one thing I want to try to accomplish is to, um, make sure that, that the, that the plans from NDS Public Works utilities and anybody else that I'm forgetting about are, are lining up. Um, so I think, for example, the experience of BPAC is that we can ask and d yes staff about a project.

And often the answer is that's a question for utilities or public works. And if you ask them, they might say a different thing. So I, I would like sort of a, a joint high level overview of what's happening across those departments if, if possible.

I think, uh, uh, commissioner, I think that's fair. I would say, um, it wouldn't maybe be a good opportunity to have Ben Chambers speak. That position is fairly new, which is integrated in both NDS and, uh, public works just for that to make sure there's coordination and understanding across departments.

So I think, I think a work session is a good idea, but I maybe would want to frame it more through Ben to make sure we're getting it, uh, the correct people in the frame. Yeah, I, I would love to have Ben be the point of contact, but I do not, I think it wouldn't be a useful work session if half of our questions are answered by, I'll check with a different department, I guess what I'm getting at prior to a work session, having a presentation from Ben so that maybe A work session could be Oh, yeah.

Uh, more tailored. Yeah. Great. That sounds great. Uh, go for a while or who you go for. Thank you. You already sold, I think I'm singing the same song. A lot of us are. Uh, my first one is Transit with Cat.

Uh, it's a huge priority, uh, to get a lot of our housing and, and parking stuff done. We need functional transit. We we're just not there. Um, and I, I'm not clear on why that is or, or how we get there, but that, that's crucial.

Uh, so this is something that we had in the legislative, uh, packet. Um, and I've, I've talked with, uh, public work staff about it, and they're supportive of the idea. And I've talked with schools folks, uh, school streets, and the idea is that some schools really matter to the function of our school system.

And some, you know, some streets aren't, aren't as essential. Um, it, it very much comes to mind with the, you know, the ice. Like some areas when it's icy, the kids can't get to school. Um, we could map those, manage those, fund those, uh, and get that done.

Uh, Paris is working on this, uh, that Canada started a program. Um, this is one of those things where if Cheryl told doesn't do it, nobody's gonna do it. So we could do it. Are you talking about lower speed limits around schools?

Or it could be speed limits could be plantings. Yeah, it could be filters. There's a million things. Or just intentionally managing things such as we can shovel it, that we know that there's a, a, a way, a way to make it work.

Um, play equipment. There's, there's a million things you could do. Uh, the World Heritage Trail. So this is actually a class I taught last semester, and I'm going to try and teach it again. Uh, and the idea is a safe educational trail, uh, between the University of Virginia and Monticello.

We could bring in Piedmont, Virginia Community College in there. We could bring in the middle school. Um, there's a lot of, you know, downtown mall, uh, Jefferson School. There's a lot of potential ways to, to make it work, uh, so that it is safe, educational, multimodal, uh, and of global interest, uh, and could potentially draw, you know, national or, or state funding.

Um, a lot of people excited about it, but we should talk about it. Uh, corner Safety and Accessibility Improvements. Uh, this was another one that popped in in the class. Um, the corner is of Tremend, you know, there's tremendous pedestrian use, uh, limited bicycle use because of, of safety issues.

Uh, and not functional as a, a transportation corridor or for transit or, um, uh, private vehicles just because it, it is so congested during rush hour. It doesn't work. Uh, the, the, the 14th Street Bridge is very funny.

Um, we could talk about that last one. I sat down with the, uh, head archeologist of Alexandria. Uh, the entire city of Alexandria is an archeology zone as defined by state code, um, which creates some problems.

Um, but man, is it good for archeology? Just great. Um, we do have some areas of archeological interest in the city, and I'm thinking of, uh, uh, Swan's Tavern. I'm thinking of Stone Tavern, um, cemeteries, uh, we're bringing that, you know, muscle maybe of value.

Uh, and I know, um, uh, city staff have been interested in this topic. I hope we could talk about it. That's what I have. I will say, um, Jeff Warner has been very good about any time there's a demolition downtown or in any sensitive area, making sure there's a, um, uh, archeology component to that.

But good topic. I just have one question, um, on the dates. So if, if we, you know, are approaching one of these work sessions and our regular session, there's like nothing on the agenda, do you, do you think there might be opportunity to pull some of those work sessions up and use the, use our main meeting date for the work sessions?

So we have fewer meetings in the year. In theory, yes. I think because just how the, the state has kind of changed some of its authority. I, we anticipate actually planning commission, having less regular meetings to handle the things that used to handle in the past.

Right. Special use permits, rezonings. Mm-hmm. Um, it just, it would need to be thought out just because of the preparation and just the timing. Right. I think we can use just as we are tonight. Yeah.

We can use regular dates for work sessions. You just run the risk of suddenly there's a influx of applications and Yeah. So it, it, it can be just, we just have to be flexible. Okay. All right. Last call for comments on, uh, our schedule.

Alright. The development code. Alright. I'm gonna kind of combine these two, uh, and so that it gives y'all more time to have discussion tonight and we can take notes. But what I just wanted to give an update on the 2025, uh, development code amendments.

The tier one and tier two, you held your public hearing last month. That will be going to city council next Tuesday, Monday's a holiday. So it'll be at city council on Tuesday. Um, staff has prepared the material to actually go into effect at the end of March.

That allows time for other active actions that are going on related to the anticipated code amendments that are connected to development review. We need time to make sure that that's coordinating with our workflows, our, our and, um, changes we're making to the development manual.

Uh, but hopefully this will be the conclusion of the 2025 cycle. Um, and we are starting the 2026 cycle. And your packet is a very draft 2026 sheet. But this will be an opportunity not only to, as in the, the, the next item in the list, go over and prioritize the tier three items so that the director of NDS has a better idea of what's a priority to planning commission as she puts together the 20 26 20 27 department work plan.

But this is also an opportunity to give some feedback on the 2025, what we went through. Maybe what you would like to see is you notice in your, um, in the, the memo it talks about, uh, maybe having a subcommittee of one or two commissioners that is championing the 2026 amendments.

Um, so we'd love to get feedback on that. Uh, as we scope out the 2026 amendments, uh, the idea being very similar, we're gonna have tier one, tier two, tier three, we're always collecting data, uh, collecting this information.

But we would be moving through, uh, another batch of tier one and tier twos, hopefully not as many tier ones and keeping the tier two more focused. But this will give an opportunity for y'all to help us shape that.

And then, like I said, going into your tier three and providing some prioritization. So with that, I'll turn it over to you chair so that we can, um, take notes. But I'm here to assist as needed. Alright.

Um, so I think as we discussed during our pre-meeting, we're gonna try and go quickly item by item. Um, I do have a quick question, um, about the 2025 code amendments. Um, how is, um, how is that being advertised to developers into the community?

That there's a new code to download? So there'll be an email going out tomorrow, just mm-hmm. Keeping, um, stakeholders involved that it's going to another public hearing. Mm-hmm. And then we'll be using that time between the public hearing and when it's enacting to do some education.

Mm-hmm. But then we're really gonna be ratcheting up the education portion of this. We've been doing that at our pre-application meetings, letting the developers we do deal with a lot, know that there are changes here are the general changes mm-hmm.

Um, that are going on based on the development code amendments and our process. So it's, it's an ongoing education process. Okay. All right. Um, well, all right. Let's, uh, get started. So we've got, um, tier one.

Uh, the, um, item A one is, uh, I assume that's just you guys are gonna try and that's just gonna be adopted next year. Yes. It's, it's not, it wasn't something that is, was super pressing, but it's Right.

Something we hopefully can fix. It's an annoyance. Um, all right. So B one, um, talked about site distance triangles, um, on the 2026 list. Any questions, comments? What are we, um, are we, uh, are we going, uh, item by item, page by page?

And if we are, what page are we starting On? Oh, we're starting on page, um, 23. So in the 26th, I, I, I did this myself last night. Make sure you're looking at the 2026 table, which is in the second half of our packet.

Yeah. Um, So yeah, page, we're like every one of my, yeah. Page 23 here. We're of the PDF. Lemme put it up on the screen. Good. That'd be great. Yeah, It would, yeah. Um, B two, uh, were you raising your hand or you just, sorry, I thought I saw, I see confusion on your face.

Yeah. Um, Did we want discussion on B one? Uh, is there any discussion? I'm fine with letting staff do what they're doing. That's my perspective. Well, I'd like to see what staff come up with. Okay. Um, B two was, uh, B 10 on the list.

Um, and it's graphics, um, sounds like that's just gonna get fixed. Um, I wanna note that, um, I don't believe B 15 from 2025 was resolved, so that's not, um, Not listed in this list anymore. And that had to do with how height bonuses are, um, are achieved for the RC district.

I think we, we had a B 15 item, but that wasn't part of it, and that was, or that was supposed to be part of it, and I think we ended up resolving something else in the process. Um, so in the RC district, um, there is a height bonus allowed, but it's, um, based on, I think the rules that go with all the other districts and not based on like RB and ra, if you have more than one unit, you're allowed a height bonus.

So I don't know if that got forgotten or if we did resolve it someplace. So we, uh, chair, we did have a B 15, uh, was it a, a one pager? Um, that went through in the Yeah, But I think we re we did resolve something to do with the high bonuses there, but I don't think it resolved the fact that the RC district, it still doesn't define how you get that bonus.

We added in, And maybe I misread. So we Added in a, under, under proposed language for section 34, 4 0.2 0.2 point c3. We added a new three point D, which says projects in the residential district. So it didn't call out each district just r so it cover the rc.

Okay. Um, or residential neighborhood Core R RN District. Sorry. You did, thank you. Okay. Yes. What was I looking? Oh, there's two pages. Okay. I'm sorry. No Worries. Um, thank you. Okay. That clarified that.

Sorry about that. Um, alright. Um, B three was B 20 on the list. Um, linking requirements. Um, okay, so 2026 list. Um, any comments? Keep moving. Yep. Um, B 21 I think was another one that, maybe I missed it, but I don't think we fully resolved it.

And that was, you've got a, um, a sentence there that says, um, calls for a fence type X and I think that was just a typo that I don't know if we picked that up or not. Um, so B 21 is, let me Scroll outta that.

Um, 17, actually it's not in our packet from last month. Um, it was supposed to be included, so we had a whole bunch of changes that we did to the fences, um, and how we define fences. But there's still under the, um, um, accessory, was it, uh, yeah, under accessory uses for outdoor storage, um, there's a requirement for a fence type X and I think that was supposed to be included as far as the fence updates.

And it, it didn't get included in that. Let me do some digging to see if that got, I, I see it on the 2025 list crossed out. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out why. Um, I'm, well let that go into the minutes for, I think that's an easy fix.

Um, or it's, you, maybe you already caught it. If we Didn't catch it, we will. Okay. Catch it For tier One, uh, B four was B 22 finished grade. Um, do you guys think that you're gonna be able to include that in 2026?

It sounds like that one needs some, some thinking. I lost five. Sorry. I'm making it do some PDF gymnastics. Alright. Uh, chair, can you gimme that number again? Um, it was, uh, B 22 on the 2025 list and it's B four on, um, 2026 had to do with, um, how finished grade is defined.

Yes. This was caught, there's a graphic that doesn't line up with, uh, uh, actual language. Um, so we're not sure we, it is just we, we haven't investigated enough to know if it's an easy fix or, Okay.

So can I just ask a clarifying question? So this, this means item B four is on the 20 26, 20 26 tier two list of item of things to work on. So it's Not moving to Q3 or anything? No, we'll use B four as an example.

So on the 2025 list it appeared as B 22. I just wanted to keep the numbers. Mm-hmm. So for when we were doing the history Okay. To be able to connect it. Alright. And I think we got some comments via email after that one session where builders and developers gave feedback on finished grade.

I don't know if it's, if this is just like a graphics fix, but I, I remember hearing from a couple of architects, I think just about some difficulty around how, where do you define the gr the grade or finished grade?

Um, so is is this just a graphics fix or is this a bigger question about how do we define the, the grade or I think, I don't know if that's the right word. Well, and I think that's why it was basically labeled as it is.

Like we need to do more study. Okay. It, it is brought up as an issue, but we have not fleshed out the exact issue. We know there is a graphics issue where the, the graphic talks about, um, finished floor elevation uhhuh.

It's in the, the actual code language since finished grade. Okay. And so there's a disconnect. We know that's a disconnect, but we haven't studied to see if there's other issues going on with this. Uh, I believe there were comments at maybe that meeting or a different one also as well about just the code doesn't really match with the topography of the city.

We have, we very rolling and like, think about Belmont or other areas of the town that have some rolling topography and how the code doesn't really match with that. Is that part of this discussion or is that A separate One?

I think that's more of a broader discussion. Okay. As far as, um, 'cause that's tied into, you know, the, the way that if you have a steep site, it forces you to break a project down in a multiple pieces, right?

Mm-hmm. Um, and I feel like that's leading more into more of a philosophical, is that what we want? Sure. Type question, which is fair game for this. Um, but that, I'm gonna assume that's gonna be a tier three Sure.

Sometime, but is that, but is that currently on the, like is that philosophical question on the list somewhere? I it's a good, I don't think it's on our, it's on the list of development questions, but I don't think it's in the tier three list that we've currently got.

And yeah, if we wanna add that, that would be something to Okay. Why don't we make, I don't, um, let's make note to make sure that if we can talk about whether we want that in the tier three or not. So, um, topography and, uh, height definition and whatnot.

Okay. Um, yeah, I guess I, and my thought on the, on the finished grade is just, I don't know how much of a problem that is for you guys, but I guess you guys, as you're reviewing these projects, would, would know if it's holding things up or not.

Um, B five was B 23. Um, and it has to do with, um, um, I guess it's language for, um, the special exception exception process. And I, I'm, it sounds like you guys are on top of that. So, um, I have some things on B five.

Okay. Uh, so broadly, um, the old, uh, um, I'm forgetting what it's called. Um, this thing that, that is covered by B five On critical slopes here we're, um, it, it is older than current state code. Uh, it, it is, it was, it was terribly innovative, but it's just, it's, it is just old.

Um, so quite a bit of it's duplicative with state code now, which does, does exist, which is great. Um, the rest of it we have sort of standard language that we apply to every project, which is good that we've developed that.

Um, but in, in terms of process, since we always say the same thing, we, we aren't really adding any value. It's, we we're just, you know, copy paste every time. Um, could we move this standard process to a non-discretionary administrative process where the same thing we say every time is applied without a public hearing.

Just, it just happens. Let the staff do their job. I, I would agree if there's more things that we could make administrative, I think that would be better. Um, and I'd be, I mean, if staff has time, I'd love to see what they think would be appropriate items to move to full administrative review versus, um, special exception.

Any other thoughts on that? Isn't there, not even, isn't there not even tier three about making some special exceptions less exceptional? Is that related or are they Distinct? I think that's somewhat related.

Maybe, um, you said that isn't tier three? Yeah. All right, so let's get to that. That I think that makes sense to, to look at. Um, I'm trying to think. Um, no, that is covered there. Uh, I was gonna say B 33, I thought we left off, it looks like it got moved to tier three.

Um, B six was B 37. Um, yeah. Uh, allowing more things to go straight to the, um, building permit review. Um, uh, Lyle, is that what you were just talking about? Or is this, this is a little different.

Do we have thoughts on that or would you just let staff do what they, they think is best? Okay. Um, B seven was B 30. Can We back up real quick? Yeah. In the comments here, staff says they're looking at two options, keeping the current policy or basically the current policy, which is allowing one and two units to go straight there mm-hmm.

Versus allowing anything in the, our district to go there. Mm-hmm. Do we want to opine on preference for their two options? I think because it's how, it has to do with how staff reviews things. Well, I guess, I don't know.

So a little background on this. Yeah. So staff wanted to be as ambitious as possible. When you look at, uh, zoning compliance, zoning compliance can happen, uh, under the code. Changes that we hope go infected into March would be codifying the one and two family going, which is our current policy going straight to building code.

But there is a zoning compliance that happens at building code. So on the zoning compliance side, we could do that at different levels. Uh, it doesn't have to be its own process. And so that there are communities around the country that do they allow more things to go straight to building permit, um, and they do their zoning compliance as part of the building permit review.

Uh, we would love to get there. We don't think we're quite there, uh, as an organization yet to make that work. But it's, it's something we would, we're gonna keep trying to work at to, to break down barriers.

Uh, some of the problems just we're running into just, you know, as, as, uh, we explored this was just some of the, uh, going anything more than two units is commercial from a building code standpoint.

So that creates some challenges just on staffing side and doing it at the building permit side. So that is, would be the goal is to how could we get more things through the process faster that are, that are creating more housing units in the city.

Uh, but we just don't think we're really the, maybe at the place yet where we could say all, all our districts. Um, so that's why we kind of scaled back, but it's still a conversation we want to keep having.

Mm-hmm. And at the end of the day, whichever thing happens, the same stuff will be reviewed, correct? Correct. Correct. So it's not like we're having a lighter review for the, our districts, it's just a different faster process.

Correct. It's just instead of going through a development review, pro review process, then a building permit process, we roll in the zoning compliance with building review. Okay. Makes sense. Because The, the distinction between a minor and a major development review is also at the two to three unit barrier?

Correct. So the, uh, code amendments that are going for next week, one of them is to actually go to a, uh, strict development plan, which is just a zoning compliance, uh, which you'll get more, more people will get value added larger developments where you're trying to get a, a plan vested for a large development.

So you can go to a bank and say, the city can't change the zoning on me while I'm exploring, making sure this is constructible. Um, and then doing major and minor site plans and minor site plans would be additions or anything that does not require a VS and P plan, it's, it would be able to go through the process quicker, it'd be cheaper.

Um, the, the, the review times have not changed yet. That's gonna be one of our next steps in our process as we evaluate this. But it would be cheaper than doing a, um, final site plan, uh, like a major final site plan.

Sure. So it sounds like staff is working on several fronts on trying to get this Yeah. Faster. Yeah. Yeah. And doesn't necessarily need our feedback, I don't think. Exactly. Um, uh, B seven was B 39 and it's just how individually protected properties were represented.

This sounds like housekeeping. Um, any concerns? Nope. Okay. Uh, B eight was B 41, uh, required bicycle parking. Um, so whether we are requiring too many bike spots for hotels or not, um, do we have opinions on this?

I don't feel like I know enough to, I mean, this is also a tier three discussion, I believe, uh, not specifically to hotels, but bicycle parking above four units more generally. Um, yes. Yes. I think it's, I think there's, I think they're distinct, right?

This is about hotels and the others about sort of the opposite about exceptions for smaller develop small developments. So is staff considering those items together or separately? Separate? So there is, how you calculate what you need is very much just residential, commercial and hotels are considered commercial.

There's not, there's no nuance. Um, the other question on the tier three is just we exempt requiring bike parking for, you know Gotcha. Any residential development less than four units. And is that something we want to continue doing?

Mm-hmm. So it is two kind of distinct questions. Okay. Okay. I, I mean, it makes sense to me how many people are riding bicycles to hotels. Yeah. Okay. Like From a practicality standpoint. So basically yes.

Staff we're saying move ahead with figuring this out. Yeah. Okay. Um, and, uh, B nine is the new one on food trucks. Um, and I mean, do we have concerns or thoughts on, um, I, I was a little confused about somebody said that only one food.

Well, yeah. Does our code really say that only one food truck is permitted per lot? I couldn't Find that. Yes, it's a temporary use. Okay. And so this is more about food courts where food, like, so the, how the organ ordinance is written right now, it's about I'm gonna go park on a street or for a, you know, and sell out of a truck.

Not what we have basically like, at, at, at, um, high in the bypass mm-hmm. Where there are continuously parking there. And so it's just a, do we as a city, do we need to explore that? Do we need to explore a different model than currently what's in our code?

Our code is just, it's a temporary use. You're supposed to be leaving in the evening. It's per one food truck per lot uhhuh. So it, it's, it's more of just, it's a use. We're not capturing is it something, are we, are we fine with our current code and we move on?

Or is it something we should explore where this, this stop, this type of use is different really then what's currently in our code. So Just to be clear, if somebody, if my neighborhood had a block party on private property, we could only have one food truck on that property.

Is that what this is saying? That that is what our current code says. Okay. It says that is you get one permit per per truck per lot. Could you not permit the entire food truck lot and then have various number of food trucks in that one lot that's permitted.

It has to be permit per truck. That's how it's written now it's permit per per truck. 'cause it's the temporary use and it's just how the temporary, it's how the temporary use section is set up. It's not, it's not necessarily calling out per truck.

It's when you go to the temporary uses, it's talking about temporary uses are per lot per the one use. Oh. Um, it gets, it gets a little complicated, but breaking it down is just Yes. Our, our temporary use for when we talk about food trucks is supposed to be one permit per one truck per one lot.

Interesting. Oh, this means that we can't have a, uh, food truck court Currently right now? No. That is not permitted. Okay. That's A problem. Or just a private event or wedding or something where somebody wants to have food trucks.

Yeah, I mean that's a problem. The, uh, comment here has the idea of breaking it into an alternative form. This feels like an alternative form specific to a specific use. I think I would prefer to avoid that designation.

Is that how I'm reading this? Correct. I I I will say this is very new. Staff has not done a lot. They were just trying to capture it and trying to capture at least where, you know, how it could maybe be resolved.

But again, we feedback from planning commission can be, it's not an issue. We like how our code is or we, we staff has come across this several times where, um, an applicant has come forward and wanted to do basically a, a food court.

Yeah. Um, and we Basically, so, uh, An example, a practical example would be the, uh, court at the base of High Street and, and, uh, long Street, correct? Yes. Would that be a violation based on our code today?

Correct. Yeah. I mean, food truck courts are, to me amazing temporary uses of vacant lands to try to revitalize or bring some community into areas that have a little bit of vacant land. I would hate to restrict it to one truck.

Is there anybody here who agrees with the current restriction? No. No. Okay. So that's, that's some direction. Um, I isly, Um, I, I'm most familiar with the example at the university where there's, there's an area where you can go and there's a lot of food trucks there and it's lovely, very, very popular.

The, um, could this be an option on public property? I'm thinking of parks specifically. I mean, I think it could be an option. It's just a ma What we're really getting at is staff resources to dig into it, to solve it.

You know, is that, is this high enough priority? Um, or, or not? Uh, yeah, I Feels Really we can, we can come to a solution. I just don't know how much, uh, time and energy would, would take While, Uh, has economic development weighted on this.

This sounds like that kind of thing. They'd like to see them. I mean they, it, the economic development's part of our pre-application meetings, they were part of this where this one kind of came up or where someone had an idea and we had to kind of say it's not permitted in the code.

Um, Ooh, Mr. Chair. I think this is worthy of a deep dive. Yes. Two, some Things that need to deep dive, Deep dive and, um, do we, well, do we consider it a priority or, uh, I Think it's worth it. I think it's worth it.

Okay. All right. So B nine, make sure, uh, okay. Um, outdoor mini space. Uh, it's currently just a flat percentage and doesn't take into account the quality of the space. Uh, this sounds like important but not a priority to me.

I don't know about you guys. There's a lot of things I would do before it. Yeah. Okay. Um, no disagreement. I mean, are we getting a lot of outdoor amenity space that's just blank space? I don't know.

Yeah. What we're getting a lot of is this grass area right here. I'm counting towards my amenity space. I Don't love it, but I don't hate it. Yeah. I, I kind of, to be honest, think the whole outdoor amenity space is a weird requirement.

We have public parks and to require someone to have a, a little tiny playground that probably won't get used on their property is silly. But that's, that's just me deep dive. Yeah. And what, But not a priority.

What, what we're getting under the code right now is you're, you're required to have a percentage. Sure. Mm-hmm. And it, it, it really, I won't say it's an afterthought, but, but developers are looking for what space they're not using.

Mm-hmm. And then just carving that and calling this shape their outdoor amenity space and just, it was staff's thought, would we get better amenity space if we were able to tier them that, um, if you were providing, you know, mini space at X level, you only need to do 2%.

If it's at a less level, you're providing more because it's not, you know, necessarily active. But, um, that was kind of the thought behind it. I think it's a nice idea to, I just think we have other things that Well, unless anybody else agree does.

Okay. I know I'm, I don't mean to be, you know, I feel like I'm pushing all my opinions. Um, someone reading through all these, uh, Before, uh, yeah. Chair, before you jump on, I'll say that this is a living document and we did have add one more and that's why it's not ate.

Okay. But I can just read it to you. Please do. Um, 'cause you'll see it at future things. It'll just be on the list. Like I said, we're capturing all this stuff and, but one thing that's come up is, so under our current code, uh, you can be on a private street or a public street.

And under our old code, all our private streets were connected to town home developments. So we didn't get a lot of private streets. Mm-hmm. But under this new code, now that you can have private streets, nothing in the code though speaks to a private street being a dedicated parcel.

So it could be technically a dedicated easement over a private parcel, which creates a whole bunch of issues. We haven't run into it. This is one we're trying to get in front of. Mm-hmm. We haven't seen it yet, but we could see issues because our code speaks to not only in some areas it speaks to property lines, but other areas it speaks to edge of a road.

A street. Mm-hmm. Which, if that road is a private street only within an easement on a piece of property, it creates a lot of frontage bill to issues. And so staff is suggesting some lang basically a language in the definition of street about a private, a street being either public right of way or private dedicated parcel, not an easement.

Okay. I think that makes sense. It, it's one, I feel like we actually probably could do it tier one, but, uh mm-hmm. And it's can be looked at few in the future by planning commission, but it's a new one added recently.

Okay. Um, and that doesn't, uh, I, I'm thinking to some of, um, uh, I know Habitat was always trying to do private streets and there were some issues with them being taken over by the city as public streets that this is a different issue.

This is more of an issue of, imagine you have a, um, one lot Yeah. And you run a private easement right down the middle. Mm-hmm. And our code speaks to things about the property line, but edge of streets.

And now if somebody wanted to put a building, how are you trying to measure, uh, your bill too? Mm-hmm. Which speaks to property line, if that's bisected and it, it, it'd be better if it, we didn't allow pri e you know, access easements to be streets.

Mm-hmm. It's not preventing you to do an access easement, but we just wouldn't count that as a private street. It needs to be a standalone parcel. Okay. Uh, and this kind of came out too in speaking to the attorney's office.

So I think we, we have language I'd feel comfortable putting it in in tier one, but, um, I just threw it on tier two. That would be a placeholder. Okay. I think that makes sense. All right. Tier three.

Um, alright, so we got C one. Um, what was this? Uh, oh, height based on unit count. So am I right? C one and C two are kind of connected? Um, somewhat they Are, but it appears that staff police C two has been resolved.

Yeah. Um, alright, so we'll see one. Um, so building heights for the, yeah, we did have this discussion, whether it's, um, a single building with multiple units or multiple buildings on a single parcel, whether they can, uh, qualify for the um, uh, height bonus.

Um, do we have thoughts or concerns? Yeah. Wow. My recollection was, our intention was for the height bonus to apply what, regardless of how they're sliced up in terms of lot that if, if you are building them in a way that benefits the public, there should be a high bonus.

I, that's, I believe that's how I remember that as well. So this is basically saying if you have a current building with one unit and you put a second one, that second one can get the question is whether or not the second one gets the height bonus.

Um, yeah. Or it's, let's say in, even, even if ignoring whether there's an existing building or not mm-hmm. You've got something in the RA or RB zone that you've got, um, two houses on a piece of property.

Um, is it one or more that we get the bonus or is it, well, whatever triggers the bonus, you got three houses on a piece of property, um, and they're all separate. There's space between 'em. Do they all qualify for extra height or is it only if they're combined together into a single building, does that get extra high?

And I think what we were leaning towards was, it doesn't matter whether it's a single building or three separate buildings, it you've got three units on that parcel. They should have the extra height.

Yeah. Uh, my recollection is that council, when they were deliberating over this, this was almost like how do we not have mc the mansions? Like McMansions. It's like if you build one unit, you can't build a massive tall building, but if you build mul, if it's multiunit housing, you can get the height.

And so, and I, I agree with, with what others are saying about, like the idea here is, is to not allow you to build one big mansion, but you can build multifamily housing that has a bigger size and so who cares how many buildings you do it in on that lot.

'cause they're probably gonna have smaller footprints. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, um, I don't know if that's a super big priority, but it seems like it would be nice to get fixed and seems simple. I I will, I uh, we actually were talking about this the other day.

I was trying to pull it up before I spoke. I think this actually got fixed accidentally through B five too. Because we added, when you look at B five, we added the definition of building primary and it says the building or buildings occupied or designated for primary principal use on a lot or site.

So it kind of covers that. You have multiple build, you know, if you have multiple buildings on a site, then it would be multi, it would be multiple buildings. So, well, I guess the other question that came with this was also with like maximum length of buildings.

Um, so if you have a string of townhouses that are part of a single site but span multiple parcels, are they one building? In which case they, um, you know, in an RA district they're limited to 40 feet, which is basically just a duplex.

So adding the and site. So now we would consider the site for the multiple buildings mm-hmm. For that primary use. So let me, let me gather 'cause I, yeah, this is this weird thing. 'cause you can either, you can either have one or the other, you can't.

We've had some developers try to argue one and then back to the other. Mm-hmm. Um, so if you had a townhouse development mm-hmm. Which is the site and you're going across multiple lots because that townhouse development mm-hmm.

Six, a row of six, um, You'd get the height bonus now because that's the site where, that was where the problem was. Where you were looking at that, that was an apartment. We would've given you the height 'cause it was one building on one lot.

Um, but if it's town homes, you weren't getting the height 'cause you were one building per each lot. But you could have been that 60 foot width. Uh, I think with the update where it would allow, now that's a site instead of just a lot.

So mm-hmm. That's multiple buildings on a site. So they get the extra height for, for town homes, but the width is still measured by lot. So under, lemme pull up an action. Interesting. I don't know that, I don't know that I like the idea that just because you spread projects out on a single site over multiple lots, that they would get the bonus height.

That seems backwards to what we're thinking. Did I say that correct? Well, I think, but again, I think the council discussion on this was like pretty focused on preventing mansions. Yeah. I'm just gonna say it that way.

Yeah. And so if you've got townhouses across multiple lots, you're not building mansions. No you're not. But they don't necessarily have to be townhouses for it to be a single site. Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Think you could do The just the multi Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. It's, it's a hard thing to, to kind of fix and we, this, this is where that, I feel like that went backwards to what our intention might've been.

But like who's, is someone really going to use this as a loophole to build a mansion? Like they'd have to build multiple mansions. Yeah. Like the, you just said the coal tower. That's true. Well, Yeah, I mean the example you look at is you have a single, you have a lot one lot.

Mm-hmm. And you have a single family home on it and you wanna build a single family home in the, in the back. Mm-hmm. So where, where we're struggling is yeah, you probably gonna get that larger house because now they could build it higher because it's mm-hmm.

It's multiple buildings on a site and not just one building. But the trade off is the whole kind of conversation with, with the, the town homes versus an apartment where physically it doesn't look any different.

If you looked at a row of town homes that wouldn't look any different if there's property lines running between them to, to break it up or it's, you know, to be town homes or not. So it is, it, it is difficult and I, I remember from the work session we had at City Works, you know, this, this was a hard thing to answer, but one of the things I think I was hearing from the commission was the tradeoff is units or units.

Even though yes, you might get that larger house in the back mm-hmm. It's still a, a unit. Mm-hmm. But it's still, but it's also, they're sharing a single lot. Where I'm getting a little worried is now it sounds like they don't have to share a lot to get the high bonus.

And I think that's what you just told me. Well, if you were doing a develop, I mean the, the site would be the six Yeah. Lots of town homes. So that's, And we have a minimum lot width in the RA and RB districts.

Correct. So if you did a townhouse that was, is it 40 feet or is it, what's the minimum lot width Is the minimum or the max Minimum? Minimum. So in the RB it's a percentage, you know, it's 65% Not the build to width, but the minimum, the lot width.

The minimum lot width Yeah. Is uh, 40 D if your front access are 25 of your side over Here. Okay. So theoretically what we're saying is we could have a string of six townhouses that are, each one is 40 feet wide and gets the net, gets the height bonus as well.

Um, Well the maximum width is 60 feet. So we are saying that you're limited to the maximum width. Building width. Yeah. Well then that also seems silly 'cause an ra, that means you could only have duplexes, you can't have townhouses.

And we've just made this whole attached dwelling unit thing to allow townhouses. No, the so that, that your massing, your building width is per lot. Okay. So alright then. Yes. So you've got, your lot is 40 feet wide.

You have a string of 40 foot wide lots. Each townhouse, someone decides they wanna build these massive townhouses that are 40 feet wide and they can go on indefinitely and they get the hype bonus. Is that what we're doing?

That is what we would be doing because it would be Okay. That's, I guess that's where we would need to figure out do we not want, because it's, it's making those two work is gonna be very difficult without getting kind of this trade off for the height.

But It seems like if someone were to actually do this and build a bunch of 40 foot townhouses that are extra tall, like I seems like that seems okay to me because you're not building, you're not building.

I, I don't know, I just think I also am like, I, I think it's a strange thing to try to do with a zoning code to make it impossible to build mansions, but possible to build big apartment buildings like a building is a building.

So I think erring on the side of allowing you to build stuff seems like a, seems like the priority here. And I, I think I see a difference between a string of 40 foot wide townhouses than, than like mansions that are huge single family homes.

But I mean you could also just, your site is a, you know, single development that's built all at once. Correct. So could you do, could a site consist of six parcels and each one has a single dwelling unit on it that gets the height bonus?

Yeah. But like how many, how many par how many, how much land in the city Is there where you could build like six mansions? That's that's fair. That's fair. If, I mean, so, And I will say if someone staff would not, if someone said I'm gonna do it a subdivision.

Yeah. We wouldn't consider that a site with single family homes. Okay. On that we would say no, that is per lot. We wouldn't say you get that bonus height because you just came in and built six single family homes on individual lots.

Okay. Um, it's, but it is different for a townhouse because it's being built at, you know, at once. I are we, we okay with this? I'm Alright with the trade off. Okay. Well then we may have just actually killed one of these items.

Is there agreement down the board? No. Okay. I will say that item C 13 has to do with the definition of a site being only the land and not what's on it. We were just using site to incorporate the building.

Well it's because, um, lot and what staff had added to that language for 2025. Primary building being a lot or, or site. Um, so trying to add that in what, 13 Thirteen's about a site modification That is, let me, let me go to the code because some of this have to do some, I think this has to do with what triggers a certain type of review.

I think Just wanna make sure It does, I just wanna make sure we're using site when we're talking about this town home example mm-hmm. With tall town homes that according to this, that site is only the dirt under the town homes And so on seven eight, which is about the different type of activity site modification, any modification of the existing site that affects less than 50% of the existing site area up to commentary was Yes.

I mean the and staff's recommendation is, uh, change the definition of site to a single log of group of connected lots or improvements. There was just concern that, um, for site modific for specific activity type was it could be a little mis mm-hmm.

Uh, not as strong language could be not as strong as it could be. I guess I'm just asking when you guys review this just to make sure that those two things are working together. Certainly. Alright. So hopefully C one and C two have now been knocked off the list.

Um, we'll see if the site thing changes that, um, looks like C3 has already been taken care of. Um, C four. Um, you SA, it could be a tier one change then let's, let's make it a tier one change. Um, seems simple enough so that a deck is not considered, um, you know, part of a primary building.

Um, C five, um, lots having vehicular access from a street other than Primary Street or not having veh vehicular access at all must meet the minimum with required for lots of other vehicle with other vehicular access specified by the zoning district.

I'm confused by this one. I is this an issue or is this just some, someone thinks there's a clearer way to write it if it's Yeah, it says From any street other than a primary street, which is, or having no vehicular access at all, that leaves a pretty broad set of access points that that covers Which is side or rear access.

Right. I think, I wonder, I think maybe it's just adding that side or rear is the, This seems like a, if it does need clarification, it seems like it's a pretty simple, I believe we might need more, more information, but it could move tier one maybe.

Okay. Um, C six, uh, looks like it was resolved. Um, C seven midblock pedestrian pathways Seems to me, I mean I appreciate the devil's in the detail, but seems like this could be a tier two. I mean, 'cause it's based, um, we arrived that there's, based on erroneous assumption, the assumption being that, you know, there's only one primary, uh, street frontage and around town there are many with, uh, more than one primary street frontage Is the effect that it needs study just that it To make sure.

Yeah. I wonder what are you gonna study? I mean, why is, why isn't it, again, devil's in details. I may be missing something but not a whole lot to study. We can smooth this tier two and move on. I mean I agree unless there's a, the there's something in the code that it's tangled up in some other language.

That's what I'm wondering. I can't think of any, I mean we can move it to tier two if it starts to unravel, we can always Okay. Kick it to tier three. It seems great. Seems simple enough. Um, C eight already resolved, um, C nine that seems super easy, um, without any discussion required is, can we move that one up?

Mm-hmm. I mean that looks like just housekeeping again. Yep. Um, okay, so here we go with the projects with, um, so CC 10 projects with one to four dwelling units are not required to provide short term or long term bicycle parking.

Um, do we have an opinion? My opinion is that things with one to four dwelling units are gonna be primarily in the residential districts and building anything is already difficult without layering on more requirements.

I think if this is a, if we were to expand this to the discussion that we sort of alluded to earlier is with the hotel, with the larger buildings, are those bicycle requirements, um, working well? Mm-hmm.

Well, and one of the other questions is whether it's, um, is this applied per lot or per project? Um, and I'm leaning towards per lot, which means less bicycle parking, but it does mean more flexibility for, um, I imagine if someone is building a, a project that has one to four units on it, um, there's gonna be kinda default bicycle parking as part of that.

Um, but maybe I'm being too presumptuous. I'm just thinking if some of this reform that Lyle's going into about single point access mm-hmm. Ends up being a reality. The vestibule is in other parts of the country sort of used as bicycle storage.

Mm-hmm. So I don't know that forcing people to have a designated area, I'm all for a designated area. Mm-hmm. I'm not saying I don't want that, but forcing that is a different discussion. I would say.

Not requiring these to have bicycle parking. I have a question about how bicycle parking works in the code because a pattern I've seen is, you know, I think most residences can fit a bicycle, you know, somewhere it's just a que I think, I think sometimes the rear bigger problem is getting the bicycle inside.

Uh, we've been talking about the topography of the city. It's hilly. Sometimes the sidewalk is a few steps up or down from the home. And you have to get, especially if we're talking about a cargo bike for carrying children or, or other stuff, uh, I'm not carrying my 85 pound cargo bike upstairs, uh, regularly or wherever.

But I, I'm guessing that's orthogonal to bike parking requirements. You can have a required bike room in, in a structure that's also up some stairs and it's not useful. So if that's, unless bicycle parking means bike parking that you can easily get in and out of, then I think it's fine to expand the exemption and make it lots and not sites.

I just wouldn't wanna see, I live next to a townhouse row and you can't get a bike into any of them because they're all four four stairs up from the sidewalk. But I don't think we can solve that problem here.

Is that right? I I mean if we require that they have, um, bicycle parking. I, I, yeah. I don't know what the, I don't know what the requirements are for the bicycle parking. I don't remember. But it sounds like, um, I, I don't do we require that It's good because if we just say there must be a place to stash a bike that happens to be up a flight of stairs, I don't care about that.

It's not very useful. It, I don't know. Do we, um, So just to, for, to help shape it and current, I, we have a, we have bicycle regulations. They're pretty prescriptive. They, they very much speak to when you provide, uh, short term and long term where it's provided how it's provided, it, it, it's very prescriptive, but right now, uh, up to four units are exempt and there was just conversation, um, coming from different places.

Should we, is that, do we want to keep that exemption or should it be, uh, bike parking should be provided, but it would either be bike parking per what we already have in the regulations as far as if you say, you know, quadplex have to do bike parking.

Mm-hmm. There are standards. Those standards are, but they are pretty prescriptive. I I kind of feel like if someone's doing a smaller development, um, like one to four units, chances are they probably are not providing sufficient vehicular parking.

Um, so they would see something a little backwards. But I feel like it would, it's, the developer would be, they would probably want to provide some sort of bike parking anyways. Um, now that might be putting too much, uh, confidence in the developer, but, um, It, it, it's gonna, from your perspective, it's gonna end up being a, is the market calling for it or not?

Yeah, I don't know. I, I lived in a duplex when I first moved to Charlottesville and there was no bike parking and I, it was really frustrating to me, but I also don't wanna like map on my experience to the zoning code.

So, but like I think tonight, the purpose of tonight is to discuss what tier it should be in and whether it should be prioritized. Right. And this, this strikes me as a tier two item, like something to do more research and more thinking about this year, but maybe not like a whole study that takes a year and a half.

I was hoping there would be a quick easy consensus from the plan commission. Ah, and if there's not then if doesn't sound like it's a priority to figure out or what I would Suggest, this is not a priority At this time.

Okay. Okay. So we'll move on. Um, C 11. Um, let's see. Oh, allowing, um, uh, both physical dimensional and numerical, um, changes, um, by special exception. And also, um, I think attached to this is the allowing parking location, uh, to be modified under a special exception process.

Is that correct? I believe so. I know that this actually not on purpose, but this is tying to the bikes. 'cause again, how the special acceptance is written. You could change and you could change the, the dimensions and all those requirements, but you can't change the actual numbers you need.

Mm-hmm. So if the code says you need 20 spaces, there's no relief from that mm-hmm. Required to do 20 spaces, you could maybe shrink the, the stalls to being almost ridiculous. But, um, so that, that's where this comes from.

The, the parking, uh, uh, chair I would need to look in more. It's not ringing a bell, but I think somewhere there was, um, and it might have been on another list, was, um, whether, um, the location of parking could be modified by a special exception.

Um, uh, maybe it's another number down. Um, but that was somewhere might've been from 2025. Um, I, this I if everyone on the commission agrees that numerical standards should be included in special exceptions, um, I think we could push this one forward.

Is this something we're running up against in current reviews? Yeah, it was the bike parking at a hotel because of how hotels are considered just commercial. And again, how you calculate it is just, it's just residential commercial that's not nuanced.

Mm-hmm. It came up with like 80 space, 80 spaces needed for a hotel. So instead of carving out a hotel, can we instead do the special exception That that's what this is kind of to say is what we ended up having to tell the applicant is we don't have an avenue of relief.

Mm-hmm. Unless you wanted to go to city council and say, I wanna change the, I'm still gonna provide 80 spaces, but the spaces are gonna be two feet by two feet. Yeah. Um, type thing. Yeah. Okay. So yes.

Do you push forward on, okay, let's push forward on this one. Um, I wanna figure out where I got my note from the, somewhere there had been a question about whether parking location could be allowed under a special exception process.

Um, maybe that's not an issue, um, Because that's stemming from people not being able to put parking in the front yard Probably, I'm guessing. Or, um, it may have had to do with, um, it was a workaround for, um, active depth possibly.

Um, we come back to it if it shows up someplace. Uh, C 12, Not an issue. Not an issue. Okay. Yeah, I thought it got updated. Um, alright. C 13, uh, I, yeah, we, we sort of, I think we, we did talk about this.

This seems kind of important for your ability to review projects. Is there any reason this one needs to wait? Uh, one, one shot. Still finish Up. Sorry. Sorry. We on the C 13. Yeah, This is, It sounds like you guys have already figured it out.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think what we're, the staff has a suggestion that we think would clarify. Okay. Um, 14, uh, you guys have determined that's not an issue. Uh, 15. Um, I'm not sure why this one needs to be a tier three as well for sub lot access.

Does anybody have any concerns with, um, access easements coming through, um, other zoning lots? I agree it's probably would move to tier two. Okay. I'll let Matt finish typing. Next one's juicy. Oh It is.

All right. Um, so yeah, active depth, um, we have issues one with parking, but we also, there's other issues with how we wanna define active depth and active spaces. Um, and I need to keep reminding myself that active depth is measured from, um, only the required active width of a building and you've got a 20% allowance for inactive spaces.

Am I summarizing that correctly? Correct. Okay. So it's not as super severe as I have made it out to be, but it still seems, um, I was a little troubled that I think we have some buildings or some lots in town that are, um, you have to get a special exception to actually build anything.

Mm-hmm. Um, and well, going back to our special exception question, um, we can, I assume you can ask for a exception to the depth. Can you ask for an exception to the percentage? Um, Look at that cut section.

Okay. Like, can you change the percentage of inactive spaces from 20 to 50 if you had to 20 20% to 50%? I would like to propose that dwelling units should be exempt. I, I would agree. There's Also the question of applying this to the entire, all, every story of a building mm-hmm.

Which seems kind of doesn't, I don't know why we want to do that. Um, I think what I'm gonna suggest is, let's see if we can maybe get some general philosophical consensus on this one. And maybe this is one of the ones that we could have a subcommittee do, but I'd really like to have this one taken care of sooner than later because it, it just bothers me that you have to get a special, special exception.

Mm-hmm. Um, is that fair for Yeah. So you're, are you suggesting it kind of moves into tier two and then That Yeah, it becomes a priority, but it also becomes one that I think if we do form this subcommittee, maybe the subcommittee could really work out the language.

Mm-hmm. I definitely agree. It should be prioritized. Okay. This sounds impactful As far as philosophy of how this goes. Um, or the, the general concept of it. Um, so we have, you know, one idea exclude dwelling units, um, thoughts.

Yeah, I'm open to it. I mean, I don't, I don't know enough to say like definitely yes, but I think thinking back to when I had this discussion back when we were working on this in the be, um, years ago, um, I had brought that up and James had said something about he didn't, you could have a house that they put all their bathrooms and their everything on the, on the street side.

Mm-hmm. And so that would be one of the drawbacks. Um, my thought was, I don't personally care, but that, I think it is, it's counter to what we were originally trying to do with the code. Mm-hmm. So any further thoughts on dwelling units?

No. Is is this also a discussion of the length of the active depth? I think that's included, yeah. Okay. So how deep it it is I think, um, DX we've got 30 feet, Right? It varies, Which is accepted Varies by area.

Mm-hmm. Um, if, if you, if you only apply to active depth requirements to the ground floor, then the question about exempting dwelling units would kind of be moved. Right. Because Well, there's still active depth for, um, like in our districts as well.

Oh, I thought it didn't apply to like, under a certain unit count. Like if you build a single family home, am I misremembering that then In the section? I believe there is an exception. Okay. I could be misremembering as well.

Yeah. I don't know if it's ground floor or there's two floors, the first three floors, but for it being every floor of the building seems a little, 'cause the reading the intent, I'm not gonna quote it exactly, but it's like bringing the activities that are happening in the building to the street, basically.

But how high up does that impact the experience of the public realm? Yeah, So the current regulations lot with one, one dwelling unit does not have to meet Active data. Okay. Okay. So maybe along the lines of dwelling, unit exempt residential, I gotta think through the implications of that.

Mm-hmm. Um, look at depth, The thing, the thing that we're trying to prevent it right, is like you put a big utility room in the pit, like in the facing the street. Mm-hmm. Or, or a hallway. And so you've got like no windows for some reason, um, blank wall.

Well, that's protected from the transparency requirements. That's right. That's true. Yeah. I'm also thinking of the, the west main, uh, examples where you've got a window into a utility room Oh yeah.

That's on the ground floor. Yeah. I mean, some of that you would hope would be taken care of by just the, the developer wouldn't want to waste exterior wall space in most cases. I mean, I know they sometimes are forced to, but I feel like in that case they literally are forced to.

Um, okay. Um, well, so ideas that we're looking at excluding dwelling units, uh, looking at how deep the active depth is, looking at whether it applies to all the different stories. Um, I I think we should look at the definition.

I don't, I don't think a hallway should be defined as an inactive space. Um, Kelly had brought up the idea of a single loaded corridor, um, fronting on a building. And I guess we have a couple examples of that.

There's one on, um, McIntyre, um, one of those older apartment buildings. Um, I think we've had, uh, what was it, the, was it Cavalier Court? The hotel that was at Ivy and Emmett used to be like that.

Am I right in thinking that, um, is that a concern? Um, parking in active depth, I think that was one of the main reasons that we had active depth. Mm-hmm. Um, or or do we again, if we, if it only is the ground floor, does that, is it still a problem?

We, we talked about some parking variations, like a, a dinga bat seemed to be be a concern where it's just, it's just parking the first first story. Yeah. Uh, we talked about the, the Japanese model where it's, uh, there is parking, but it's recessed down.

So it's less of a, an impact on pedestrians or just Yeah. Put it in the back or stick it up top Or, okay. But generally, are we okay with the idea of second level parking? I mean, I like, I don't love it, but I also think it's, um, I think I could be okay with it just because like what's, is it the draftsman or what's the place over on Maine that basically has this, The draftsman, um, Is fine.

The water Street parking garage. The Market street parking garage. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I What we were gonna do for the Gura site. Yeah. No, I think, I mean, I think I'm okay with that, but, Okay.

And I will just throw out here just, just to consider, uh, planning commission. Mm-hmm. 'cause it is a nice juicy topic. Is this something you feel comfortable with as the commission, again, being the only public engagement would be the public hearing for any changes?

I, I don't Know. I feel like this should stay steer tier three. I guess what I'm hoping is maybe whatever subcommittee we form, we could work on this sooner than later and get something to you guys to then dissect and decide if it needs to go, needs to get more public input, but to push it ahead so it doesn't, it's a problem.

If there's any way we could get it done in a year, that would be fantastic. Um, It seems like such a technical issue that, like for me, I'm not totally sure this is like something that requires a extensive public engagement process.

Are we changing the philosophy behind the code? I don't know that it is. I think it's almost just like saying, do we really intend to make it this strict or can we achieve the same outcomes by making it more lenient?

I, I mean, I, I want to agree, but I, I guess I'm, I feel like staff is gonna end up telling us whether it's mm-hmm. It's, it'll be, um, Mrs. Brown's gut check. Uh, and the public might tell you, but I mean, Okay.

Not too, I, I could be very wrong, but I have a hard time imagining that if there were a public event for feedback on this topic, that people would show up. Uh, may maybe we'll have the event and I'll have that on my face.

But, uh, who's, who's coming to this event if we have one? It depends how well advertised it gets. There might be the development community might show up. Yeah. Um, okay. Um, I don't understand what D 17 was.

So what did we just decide to Do? I, I I, I think we decided and, alright. Maybe I decided. Um, so you guys tell me if that, this one we'd like to push ahead as if, if we can, and we're gonna try and form that subcommittee and dissect it further.

But we've got some general ideas which are excluding dwelling units, looking at how deep the active depth is in each of the zones. Um, looking at whether, um, it's just the first story or every story on primary facades.

And, um, looking at the actual definition of active space. Concur. Okay. Um, what was, I don't understand what we're doing for, what is C 17 all about? The chair. I believe this was, we've, we, there was a lot of discussion on entry entry feature and we staff had made a kind of some determinations when we reviewed plans.

And it just was does this need to be re-explored? It, it seemed like it caused some mm-hmm. Some issues. And consternation. Is this related to, is this like, um, that special exception request we got for was like Kindle Wood.

I forget which phase of Kindle Wood it is, but we, that was one of the special exceptions was um, they didn't have enough entrances. Is is that related to this? I think, I think it is more, it's more general high level.

Okay. It wasn't necessarily getting into like the specific details, but yes, just entrances and entry features are a requirement of the code and a newer, kind of a very design centric mm-hmm. Requirement of this code.

And I think it's more do we want that? Is it, is it, you know, is it, is it getting us what we want or should we So Reexamine It if I may, the current maximum distance between doors is about 40 feet Depending on the unit, depending on, on the, on the district.

Depend on, yeah. I did a little bit of quick checking using the GIS site and based on current built environment, average doors are over 50 feet apart, just like looking at what's built out there today.

Mm-hmm. Um, so, and, and I think the intent is from this is to provide flexibility for future space. You kind of have a door already there so that if somebody comes in and wants to have the space of two doors as one restaurant, that's possible.

But if they want a smaller restaurant, they can have just one of the doors. But I struggle with this one because like doors aren't that hard to retrofit into a building. It Can be difficult, but I think the doors actually have to be usable Forcing them to put a door in today for possible flexibility use.

I struggle with, No, I think it's, isn't it primarily about act, it's like eyes on the street activating the pedestrian realm. Like we want people going in and out of doors on the street so that there is like activity there.

But I, I don't think, I don't think that the entrance requirement really works because like, you know, I just always think of 10th and Dairy. The building on 10th Street, they've got all those doors I've never seen one person go in and out of.

Right. And is it doing anything for us? I mean, I know that wasn't built under this code, but I just, and because we got that special exception permit, it, I was just like, you know, I don't, I don't feel like it's, it's like a proxy for pedestrian activ activization that isn't actually necessarily doing Anything.

I feel like this code is gonna end, make us end up with a bunch of doors that aren't used. Yeah. I think those doors actually have to be Used. Well they have to. Yeah. Like, you know, 10th and dairy, they go into someone's apartment I assume, but I've never seen anyone come in and out of one.

And commissioners as you had your discussion too, that, and I'll just point out 'cause I do like this about our code versus our old code. These sections do have an intent section. So when you're, when you're kind of having these conversations and you're wanting to see where we're coming from and if it's meeting what we're trying to do, like entrances has a, has an intent section so it it mm-hmm.

It's just a tool, um, to think about as you're having your discussion. Sounds like this one is, we're leaving it on tier three and we need to think more about it. I mean, I agree. I I haven't really liked the entrance feature things since before we approve the code, but, um, I, okay.

Um, I, I would just note that lucr requirements make some sense to me. Yeah. Okay. I agree. Um, alright, so we sort of talked about the garage and active depth. So I'm gonna lump that in with the, uh, C 16, um, a C 19.

We've got the, um, athletic field lighting. Um, you talked about that briefly already. Not Time sensitive. Okay. I, I tend to, I think it can stay as a special exception probably. Um, and, uh, the city can, um, go through its own process.

Um, C 20, um, let's see. I'm confused by this one. 'cause the section that's quoted is about ribbon driveways. So I, so It, this one intrigued me, so I dug into it quite bit. Uhhuh the ribbon. Oh Yeah.

Maximum or minimum width is two feet for the tire to go across. Yeah. But if you also want to use that ribbon as pedestrian access, oh, it has to be three feet. But then another part of the code says you can't mix pedestrian access and vehicular travel.

Interesting. And the, the part of the code about not mixing pedestrian and vehicular travel is from what I could see more focused on parking lots. Mm-hmm. You basically want to separate vehicular movement from pedestrian movement.

So public versus private. I, I think it could even be on a private parking lot. Okay. I Is it ribbon driveway pedestrian access? It could be. Wouldn't there be cars parked there a lot of the time? Well, like if the, the graphic in the code shows a home with a ribbon driveway and right here it's three feet, but after you get past the front porch of the house, it's then two feet because the garage is actually behind the house.

So it's like using one of the ribbons as the connector from the sidewalk to the front porch That where the car goes or the whole No, the car goes further than the pedestrian walkway. What if another car goes there also?

Sure. That's absolutely plausible. But the question is, is do we want to allow the mixing of pedestrian and vehicular travel Or at least for small scale residential projects? Yeah, I mean I think you see this in, it's not the greatest thing, but you see it in subdivisions all the time where people use their driveway as as part of their walkway up to the house.

Yeah, that's Right. Mm-hmm. Doesn't to me this seem that bad To me. This is not, this needs to staff could come up with a way to I Is it causing square this circle? Yeah. It does seem like a sort of easy fix that Yeah.

I Don't, I don't want to have to care about this. Agree. That was just the example in there. I'm sure there's other examples where this could be applied to. I generally don't have an issue with mixing pedestrian and vehicular access.

Does for small scale residential development, does anybody on this commission have a concern with mixing, um, vehicular pedestrian access? No. So using your driveway as your walkway up to your house, My only concern would be a situation where there is no possible way to have an, a safe access because there's just not enough parking.

So one would assume that that will be used for parking. That would be my only concern. Alright. Well Let, I think this one's gonna sit here for a while on C3. Okay. Um, do, Matt, do you kind of get our concerns at least?

Yes, I got the concerns. Okay. And I, I do mean it's, it hasn't really come up as a big issue, but it is a contradiction in The code. Yeah. Thrown on the list. It's on the list for a little While. Okay.

Um, C 21 is critical slope regulations. Uh, I, I dunno, it sounds like you guys have a solution already. I don't know if there's a solution, but there's a study. Okay. All right, cool. Um, This is one that we're redundant with the state, is that true?

Not exactly. I was the one who put this into the spreadsheet a while ago, um, based on the research James Freeze did a couple years ago where he showed that the original purpose of our critical slope regulations was to protect against erosion and stormwater in the old days when we didn't have strong rules for that.

And so I always just my thought to try and since we have a 6,000 square foot limit and we have requirements for erosion and stormwater management planning, that anything that doesn't go through those plans should come to you guys.

But it doesn't, doesn't necessarily need to. We did actually talk about this, uh, this afternoon, you know, environmental people and there was a little bit of pushback. So this kind of language may change in the near future when we do more research.

Okay. All right. But you guys are on top of it. Okay. Um, all right. Uh, now for my favorite, um, setbacks and build two zones. Um, so, um, I guess one idea that, um, has been floated is whether there's, uh, exemptions, um, further exemptions to this.

I think we currently have an exemption for the, um, uh, if you're using the, uh, or if you're able to take advantage of the existing building, uh, and the RZ zones. Is that correct? That is correct. That we hopefully that'll pass next, you know, week.

But we, uh, carved out an exemption if you're eligible to use the existing structure bonus, your existing structure would be deemed meeting the bill to and setback. Okay. Just, just to clarify, so if you are eligible for the existing structure bonus, so that means even if you're not taking advantage of that bonus, just if you're eligible, you don't have to meet the bill to Correct.

So it would cover things like you are doing things that maybe, uh, would require you to bring it up to current regulations. Okay. So that does resolve a lot of issues in the R zones. Mm-hmm. Um, one of my concerns is that we have historic structures, um, and even not historic structures that are worth preserving outside of the, um, the R zones.

And so question one is, is that of concern to anybody else that, um, if you, I think currently you're allowed to build onto the back of an existing building without bringing it up to the, um, the bill two zone.

But if you add a separate building on the site, that building or all the, the construction needs to be within the build two zone. And that's because the, the non r zones do not have the existing structure bonus like system.

Right. So like there's no way we can say if you qualify for this bonus, or like, couldn't we apply the same logic to the non R zones and say, if you're not building, if, if the, if the old building remains, you don't have to comply with bill two, I would suggest that's a possible option.

Um, and define existing building the way that we're defining it for the R zones. Um, but I mean, just to make sure, is this a con, is this a shared concern? I mean, the intent with this built to requirement mm-hmm.

Is to bring buildings closer to the public realm. Yes. But I can see how in a brownfield environment or built environment like we are here in the city for existing lots and structures, that that's quite difficult.

So I can understand the exemption for the residential areas, um, even though I think that that's one of the areas that buildings are most far away from the street. So I really struggle with this one. I fully understand the, the current code in a greenfield environment, but in a city that's built like ours is here today, I really struggle with, with this.

I think that in the, the sort of X zones, so the non-residential zones, those are really the spots that I believe that moving buildings closer to the street makes sense with the intent of that purpose.

Mm-hmm. But how much building or growth or development is that going to inhibit if we keep it that way? Is my question that I don't have an answer to. And I think where this, where I got interested in this was our, we had a special exception last year mm-hmm.

For, um, element, uh, construction has a house on High Street that's in a commercial zone, but it's, it's an old house and they wanted to put a workshop building in their backyard. Um, and I forget if that was determined as an accessory use or not.

Um, but had that been a primary use, um, it would've had to go in front of this house. Sure. Um, now that would've started the process of, I guess eventually we would like to see High Street have, you know, commercial construction up fronting on it.

Um, but as it exists now, it's a mix of small commercial projects and houses that are set further back. And, um, whether are we, do we want a code that encourages those buildings to be demolished so that a or to have something built in front of 'em if there's enough room, um, or, um, in order to achieve that street scape?

Or does it, is it more important to maintain, to allow the maintenance of what exists? Um, just for, you know, character's sake and for also, I guess sustainability sake. Um, you know, it's better not to tear something down and build new if you don't have to.

Right. That's kind of the, so those are the two up To, to the point that Danny keeps bringing us back to is prioritizing or moving into a different tier. I think that this is one to prioritize, I, sorry, something I've been thinking about is uses mm-hmm.

For residential uses. I'm, I'm less concerned about this as, as, as the public realm. Mm-hmm. Residential uses is not really the public realm in the same way, uh, for commercial uses kind of is. Mm-hmm.

Uh, that, that may be a useful distinction. Um, okay. So you're saying if it's a commercial use, um, you would be in favor of, uh, maintaining the current code. So even in the case of like elements, um, building With the special exception process.

With the special exception process. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, So, um, I mean I, I think like I always, I always thought of this build to requirement and this, this goal of moving things closer to the street as a, like, if you're gonna build a new building, put it there.

And, um, so I would tend to come down like commercial or residential. I don't think it makes sense to say, oh, you want to build onto the back, sorry. You can't, you have to build onto the front like that.

To me, I think like we're, I don't think what we're gonna in do is induce people tearing down buildings. I think we're just gonna induce the, the property like being, um, of less use to them because they are just not gonna do the thing that they want to do.

Which seems like not what we, not a place, not what we want to do with our zoning code in my opinion. But, um, in terms of priority, like are Carl, are you thinking like tier two For this? I, this is one of the ones that I think I'd like to, um, work out in a subcommittee and try and try and get it done in the next year if we can.

Mm-hmm. My concern is for one, for um, preservation and, uh, architectural design control districts, and we could, one of the suggestions is, I mean, we could tie this to whether a building is a contributing structure, a design district, whether it can have a, an exemption.

Um, I I, one of the thing I find it a little funny that you can add onto the back of a building, but you can't build behind a building. So, um, and I, I, with some of our older buildings, you know, if you attach a building to the back of it, you're gonna end up having to do sprinklers and other, you know, things that change the cost of the project.

So to me, those two things don't change the how things feel on the street. So I'm not sure that distinction that we have currently in the code makes no sense to me. Um, I figure if you're building behind whatever, just keep building behind.

Once you build something in front, then yes, it's gotta start meeting our code. Um, but that's, that's kind of where I'm landing on this. And I, I would like to have a general exception that just does, you know, um, if you have an existing use, um, existing primary use that um, you know, meets the definition of an existing building, um, you, you're allowed to build behind it.

You just can't, you know, once you build in front of it, you have to start meeting our, our build two requirements. But I don't know if that doesn't distinguish between commercial and residential. Mm-hmm.

Um, and it doesn't, um, it doesn't encourage that building up front, um, as much as the code currently does, Maybe from a different perspective. How does this requirement to build to the street inhibit the point of the new zoning code of getting more housing built?

Does it limit potential new units forcing people to build to the Street? I think if somebody has, um, if somebody's not in one of the R zones, but they have a house that they, you know, they're, they have to get their residential units in a, you know, a C zone or whatever.

Mm-hmm. Um, they can't build a backyard a DU, they can build an attached thing on the back of their house, but they can't build a, you know, a backyard dwelling unit. So from that perspective, you're limiting units with current zone, current code.

I, that would be an example of where that would be limiting. Yeah. Is that in the R zones or, or No, that's outside the R zones. Okay. What about the, this simpler idea of saying we do the same exemption for existing structures for all zones that was raised earlier, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that would be, I think that would be one of the things that we'd Want to, does that miss important cases? Exempting building exempting parcels that have an existing structure?

I don't think it would miss any. I think it that, that captures everything. The only issue I would worry about would be like, shed on a primarily empty lot, but we're, We're talking, sorry. The exemption is for preserving the primary structure.

Right. Right. But if, if the shed is the primary structure, But doesn't it have to have like a primary Okay. Don't, didn't we have make some distinction already between sheds and primary uses? Like can you, can you have, You, you have to establish first a primary structure and then you could have accessory structures, but there has to be a primary structure on a lot.

So if there's a existing lot that has just an existing shed on it, that doesn't count as a primary structure or does it, It it gets a little tricky and it would get into whether that's a non-conforming lot when the shed was built on the lot.

Uh, so it could happen, but it'd be very, it'd be very rare. It'd be a handful. Uh, I can think of maybe one or two where there was a double lot and the house is on one lot and sheds on the other, and now someone's thinking about doing something with it.

So they would need to get a zoning term determination letter to figure out the circumstance for that other lot. Could that kind of weird situation be handled For an exemption? Mm-hmm. I, it, it would be very, I think staff would have a hard time with it.

I think we could do it. The, what I would just caution with is this is a foundation, one of the foundation principles of the code. Right. And so it would take, if this is their direction we wanted to go as a community, it could be done, but it would take a lot to update the code to reflect it because this was one of the pillars of how I think the code was built.

So it could be done, but it would, there would've to be a lot of digging and making sure we're not messing other things up, um, based on this. Okay. If we were to form a subcommittee and to work on this, um, is there any concerns with anything we've been saying?

Um, would there be any concerns with the idea of any addition behind an existing building being exempted from build twos? And that's all we're talking about is build two zones. Okay. Alright. So I think, um, we'll try and prioritize this and um, hash it out on a subcommittee.

Um, I don't know if we need to go through all the D's. Are there any that people have issues with or want to discuss? These are our own comments, which I think already made it up into the cs. Are we making it our way through this whole document or just, Um, I'm trying to now abbreviate 'cause we are i's seven 40 and I pretty sure staff's gonna get mad at me.

Let's not. Good. I pulled some G's. I'm sorry. Okay. You said you had some, some G'S one? I do. Okay. Let's, uh, what do you have? Uh, the GS that I looked up, uh, G nine, uh, the, and that goes to the, uh, stormwater, uh, area, 6,000 to 10,000.

Um, the, uh, G six, uh, max coverage regs, max Heights. Uh, just give some, some mercy to allow more kinds of, uh, uh, buildings without, uh, special exception. Yeah. Just, just so I can track, we have skipped the ds.

We're cool with that and everything. 'cause those are all our comments. Right. So we're just, we we're good with that. We're just moving on to the, the GS at loud one. Okay, got it. Uh, I pulled G 14, uh, bill to width, which we've talked about quite a bit here.

Uh, mercy on that. Uh, G 18 ground story definition. Screw this up. Um, one second. Val, can you, you had, um, you said G six, G six, G nine. G 14. Alright. Can you, uh, can you go through them individually please?

Again? Okay. G Six, uh, G six is, uh, max coverage re regulations. Uh, let's see if I can pull it. Uh, and Max Heights are an issue. I think this was coming from, can't remember who this was coming from.

October 14th. Uh, then they talk about, oh, this was Habitat. Um, basically just physically they couldn't get a Habitat house on a standard Charlottesville lot just because the, the restrictions are, are too tight.

Um, we should allow Habitat houses. And we did. So this is the one where we, um, we got rid of stories and just went with a larger overall height, I believe, for the RS zones. So, so it's just max coverage that left Max coverage.

Okay. That is a, and It has to do with having parking in the front. They can do alley in corner, but it's not great. They, they really, their standard design is front parking for, for, for a DA, But that doesn't really work with all the other intents of what we're doing with code.

So what is your, what are you asking with G six? My current thinking is, uh, mercy on max coverage. So just the max coverage, not necessarily the other points? Yes. Okay, Cool. Uh, G nine, uh, this is, uh, up, up the amount of disturbed area for stormwater for 6,000 to 10,000.

That's just maxing or matching state code. Mm-hmm. Um, which I think makes sense. Mm-hmm. Yep. Thanks. Uh, G 14 bill two width, creating a lot of issues. It's true. Uh, utility requirements just physically can't be done.

Um, also slope issues. Um, just giving more mercy or administrative relief, uh, without requiring special exemption or exception. Um, alright. So these are two different issues. Um, what, what would, what's the proposition of a bill two with that?

It's the, the minimum percentages, um, is too much. Yeah. For weird sites and we mostly get weird sites. Rory talked about this a lot. Okay. He had a lot of mathematical examples. I, I mean, I agree. I think that what the intention would've been is that the, um, if you can't build a, a building wide enough, you split the lot up or you re subdivide.

Um, but that's, I guess not always possible. Is that where we're getting at? Right. These are, um, now these are all things that being done by special exception. Is that correct? Okay. But you're still saying, um, minimum percentage is, uh, too high.

Um, what do you want to, what is your, when you're highlighting these, what do we wanna do with them? My suggestion would be that staff look at what kind of, uh, relief could be offered to reduce the number of, uh, special exception problems.

Okay. So we're thinking of shifting these up to like a tier three. Um, and Okay, I am agreeing with you on all these, but I just wanna make sure I know what we're doing. Uh, G 18 ground story definition.

And this is another super in the weeds one, but it's an important one. Um, how we're defining, uh, the ground story. Um, and this is frankly beyond my mathematical understanding, but broadly I think we should be able to make this possible without requiring a special exception.

Yeah. This is the one that I understand that land around here is just too steep to fit the code, or the code is not steep enough to fit the land depending on which way you wanna look at it. So, And, and our code is not allowing them to have one gigantic ground floor where a lot of it is below grade.

Mm-hmm. We're saying you must break it up 'cause you can't have all that below grade. And I think what this comment is saying is like that's, that just makes it more expensive for us to break it up like that.

Let us have, go back to the old definition. We're 50% above grade. Well, the current goat is about six feet and six feet in some areas of town. Yeah. Happens very quickly. Yeah. So then you end up with a building with very small sections.

Yeah. So I don't know if it's going to 50% or if it's expanding the six feet or what makes sense on a, a ReadWrite of that section. But that's what it's about, Is this one that can be dealt with through special exception.

Um, it could be 'cause you can ask for additional height, not stories, a special exception. Mm-hmm. But if you needed additional height, because now, um, you de decide you didn't want to modular the build, the point was to mod the building.

Yeah. So and so if you didn't want to do that, um, for whatever reason, your plates wouldn't match. Mm-hmm. You could ask for a special exception for more height on there. Now I think you probably have to ask for a lot of series of special exceptions because now that exposure, you have a lot of things that apply to first story transparency, blah, blah, blah.

So there's a path that's probably just not a very convenient Path. And that's kind of where I was getting at. 'cause I feel like where I've seen this on the BAR is, for example, the hotel that's gonna go on the, um, uh, artful Lodge site, um, just over next to the Omni, um, it, um, because Market Street slope up so much, they ran in some issues with where their ground floor is.

Um, so they've got, you know, one high ground floor and then there's a lower level that ended up having to be treated like a ground floor. Their floor to floor heights weren't appropriate for that 'cause it was a garage level because it was a garage level.

It didn't, it wasn't gonna have windows or anything. But at the same time it was, um, I think it would be the type of thing that it, that said be error review so we could make sure it looked okay. But it's the type of thing I think we do want to look at, because just as Matt said there, you could have a big facade that doesn't have windows on it, um, doesn't have entrances or just has a big garage door.

And that's so that, that's the trade off. Well There are requirements for a facade like that to have a mural or I think one of the options is a li living wall. So there are mm-hmm. Already ways to mitigate just having a giant blank wall.

Yes. Yeah. But it, it, um, I guess it just ended up being something that was helpful to look at mm-hmm. Um, from a discretionary point of view rather than, um, like a formulaic put this stuff here because they, they, it wasn't gonna meet the code, whatever they did.

Um, that's just a counterpoint. I don't know if Sure. Um, I, I tend to agree we've got some issues with the, the mid max is causing some problems throughout town. Yeah. So I appreciate the special exemption process and what can and can be done through those.

Mm-hmm. But I, because of the topology of Charlottesville, I feel like there could be a lot of special exemptions for this. Mm-hmm. So not only that, but also finding dimensional code language mm-hmm.

That more supports what we've got here in town. Okay. Were There problems under the old code in this regard? I don't think so. The issue, and I, I'm thinking, I'm thinking of West Main specifically, was that you get like one giant building that's sort of like teetering above the rest, the, the rest of the, uh, of, of the street.

So you get sort of odd, like the, there's a sidewalk and it just looks odd, but it's really an aesthetic issue. I don't know if there's a health and safety component. The standard was just a really big engineering screw up.

They built the building a foot too high. Um, sorry, just the, the, yeah, that was unfortunate. Any others? Lyle? I have two that I didn't, couldn't find a G four, but I'd like to note them. Uh, grocery stores, near schools.

It's a, it's a big one. We talk in the comp plan, we just haven't done it in the zoning code. Um, allowing grocery stores, near schools. The, uh, the big pushback was that, uh, there would be tobacco products sold in those grocery stores near schools.

And we don't want tobacco products sold near schools, which I'm very sensitive of. It is now legal in Virginia for council if they're concerned about this issue to say, ah, no tobacco products near schools or whatever.

Um, that is now legal in Virginia as of, I think two years ago. Uh, so The IGA that used to be, so what are we gonna do about that? Because how far is Johnson from that, from uh, the school's pretty close, right?

I One cherry. Yeah. It's right next to us, next to a park. Okay. So we council could say, well, we're concerned about tobacco products being sold next to a park. We will not allow them by ordinance if desired.

Yeah. I mean, the kids will definitely, oh, you know, get tobacco products. That's a political nightmare. Are you the community's expected to have a grocery store there? Do we, do we already have regulations that say you can't have a, they're preventing a grocery store from popping up near schools, Not in the land use.

So what's stopping it? A we killed neighborhood commercial. Well, that's why we're having a work session on it. There was another one, Lyle, Uh, accessory dwelling unit di minimus exception exemption for aesthetic and sidewalk requirements.

Uh, uh, just a, a homeowner who was very upset about trying to build an A DU. He looked at all the numbers for all the costs of actually building an eight, uh, accessory dwelling unit behind an existing home.

This not, you know, possible to see. I think they were trying to build it in Belmont. Uh, and it would've forced, um, substantial, uh, changes to the facade, uh, to meet, to, to get the lot into, uh, conformance, uh, when there, you know, the A A DU was not, you know, would not have been visual.

Uh, so he wasn't able to do it. Uh, just 'cause the, the cost of, of getting the, the, the fac you know, sort of a, a large facade, uh, didn't make sense for the, uh, the, the A DU revenue. But We've, we've fixed that just now.

Yes. Isn't there, are there exceptions to, in the r zones that you could build, uh, an access like a second tooling unit and not have to update the original house to meet all the zoning code requirements?

I mean, it hasn't got into effect, but Yeah. I mean if it's, it's about building that second unit and back, but the first unit front doesn't is nonconforming to bill two and setbacks. Yeah. Because That'll be fixed.

Yeah. I thought we were working, that was part of, uh, next week's. Yeah. Correct. So that would be for sidewalk and that would be for tree planting. Oh. And That stuff For as far as bringing the site up to compliance?

Yes. Um, no, typically we wouldn't. We just, it's the area you're disturbing. Uh, if you were tearing the house down and redoing the lot, yes, you would come up to conformity, but if you had an existing structure and you wanted to build behind it, staff only looks at what's being proposed, not what's outside of what's being proposed.

Okay. So that's, And again, unless it's very specific, which the code we were running into with, you couldn't build that second unit until your first unit met Bill to and setbacks. And that's what we're trying to correct next week.

Thank you. Okay. Um, any others? Can we add, um, adding to Lyle's point, neighborhood commercial is not listed on tier three and I kind of thought, I thought that was sort of like the poster child for tier three needs further review some community engagement, uh, longer study.

Is that in the work plan? Yes. I believe that's why it's not here. It's actually on the Oh, Right. It's a separate thing on the work plan. Okay. I always forget that. Okay, Cool. Um, uh, one Sec. Sorry, I had one.

Um, oh, uh, I'm just gonna note two things from the, the D sections. Um, D two, This just feels like an easy fix. Maybe it's not important at all, but, um, it seems like somewhere we can add in the zoning code that doors shouldn't swing over the required walking zone in the public right of way.

Um, it's, we've had a couple instances where on West Main Street where this happens and you've got this narrow sidewalk and doors from restaurants that just open onto, onto the sidewalk. Um, it's technically prohibited in the building code, but, um, the code official is allowed to make exceptions to that.

Um, and I feel like we should just, in our zoning code, say the required, um, is it, uh, I forget what the zone's called, the pedestrian zone, walking zone, um, whatever the required sidewalk width is, it can't swing into that.

So if you have a seven foot required sidewalk width and you've got a 10 foot wide sidewalk, then no big deal, but just don't swing into the seven feet. Um, is, doesn't that force the building to be pushed back by the width of the door?

No, it forces you to have a recessed entryway if you pulled a new building. Okay. Um, which is one of our entry features that we allow. So there's that option or there's the option of having a wire sidewalk Yes.

Or sliding doors, which is what the Marriott on West Main does. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. Okay. So there's a lot of outs that aren't forcing the moving of the building footprint. Correct. Okay. That's my concern with that.

I, so where this does, where this has happened has been existing buildings have added new entrances, um, or filled in their, their recessed entryway. Um, so that would be the what would be prevented. And, um, I don't know.

I if you guys agree, yay. If not, it's, it, maybe it's not a big deal, but how long The crap open make, how long is open versus closed? I, I don't, It's, I feel like having a, preventing somebody from holding a door open over the sidewalk is one thing, versus not allowing it to open over the sidewalk at all.

I'm thinking of getting smacked in the face with a door. This is a, a thing. I, I hear the concern. Okay. So we'll, we'll put it away. Um, unless, yeah, I guess. Okay. We'll put that away. Um, I had to try, um, the sidewalk on West Main Street has been, uh, it, it drives me nuts 'cause I do get, Well we, we update West Main 20 years ago, um, uh, D five, um, and I saw this was one of the developer, uh, comments as well.

Um, when you have a building with exception, um, you're required to have a, um, a 30 foot deep alcove and, um, if you build a building over a parking garage, 30 feet puts it, it's a dimension that's not workable.

So parking garages are 60 feet wide and if you have a, um, apartment building sitting on top of that with a double loaded corridor, your units are, you know, 26 feet wide, um, 20 or 26 feet deep and you got your corridor, it's in the middle and then, you know, another unit, um, having a 30 foot recess puts the recess in the middle of the corridor doesn't work.

Like it would make more sense if it was 25 feet. Um, I don't know. Which number is this? D five. Yeah. And another one of the developers pulled that, um, mentioned that as well. So I wasn't sure if that was worth bringing up as a, something to move into one of these tiers.

Seems like a really easy fix with minimal disruption to the code. Is this tied to active death? It is tied to, if your building is too wide, um, you need to build a, um, your, the way around that is to build like a, a recessed courtyard To Make it appear is mm-hmm.

More than one Building. And, um, that depth is determined by the width of the building. But it, it maxes out at 30 feet and um mm-hmm. 30 feet. So If you had a corridor going through it, this breakout of the building cuts into the corridor?

Yes. That's the concern. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that seems like should be fixed. Okay. Matt, I don't know if that made any sense to you. I, I heard move it to one or two. One or two To be fixed. Um, yeah, if we could shift that one up just to look at, um, it seems like a, an easy fix for a silly problem.

It would be changing the number 30 to the number 25. Something like that. That's pretty good. Um, alright, to wrap this up quickly, unless there's any other items, I was gonna go to the, the last page and just make sure that we can hit the summary.

I'm sorry. Yep, go ahead. Uh, minimum lot sizes. Uh, we, the hope was that sub lots would make it so that we wouldn't, we would have a relief valve for minimum lot sizes. Um, for existing non-conforming lots that are smaller than the minimum lot size we're running into problems.

Uh, I, I happen to live in an area that is full of them. Mm-hmm. Um, we do want a way to use our existing lots. Um, so I I I, I would like to flag that as an issue. Um, is that a problem with the size of the lot or the fact that you, the percentage that you're allowed to fill the lot is too low?

Yeah, basically all the calculations are based on a larger lot than what we have. Okay. Alright. So that's more of a Yes. Okay. Um, Matt, did that make sense to you? Uh, I would need to look into it more.

'cause we have the non-conforming lot section, which states you're allowed to use your lot for any use. I think it's, Or is it just the, The, like your percentage coverage is what? 60% in ra? So like I'll use my lot as an example.

I can't add anything into my lot because my house is already, it's a tiny house and already there's no room to like, you know, if I added a garage or something, I would go over my percentage allowed. Um, So more exploring what, exploring more to the non-conforming lot.

Yeah. Section basically. Uh, uh, yeah, I mean it's something we can look at it. I think it, I won't say complicated quickly, but Yeah, I mean when we, when we talk about when a house is too small, a house small is too small, like, Well I, yeah, no, I don't mean, sorry, I didn't mean to say my house is too small, but I'm saying No, no, But but when you talk about a non-conforming law, it doesn't, it doesn't categorize non-conforming lots as like teeny non-conforming lots.

Yeah. Small, it's just non-conforming lots. Yeah. And yeah, how would you say you have the right to build on it, but it doesn't mean I have the right to build a 25,000 square foot house. Yes. I could build a 800 square foot square foot house, so mm-hmm.

It gets into just that, that can be a little bit tricky. Uh, when we say the rules should, should change for a non-conforming law, what do we mean by that? Mm-hmm. That sounds like a, a good tier three discussion, But not prioritize.

I mean, I would love to solve it, but Yeah, I think it's a, that needs some, that needs some research. Mm-hmm. Okay. I mean, is the, is the initial research, how many non-conforming lots are there in the city?

Thousands. Like as a percentage of total? Lots? Y Yeah, probably. I think we did do an, an analysis, uh, during the, the zoning code update. I'm forgetting the exact number, but it was, the majority are nonconforming.

Sounds like that sounds like our minimum lot sizes are then don't fit with the city instead of having a non-conforming section. I was just gonna say, I'm not even sure if it's the prob. I don't think the problem is the minimum lot size.

I think the problem is just existing lots are not developable because they, they're bound by the same rules as your brand new lot that you're creating in a subdivision. So I don't know how we'd categorize that or Yeah.

Is that fair to say? Yes, that's my understanding. Is it, are we missing a concept then of reasons for nonconformity? Do we want to say if a lot's nonconforming due to its size being small, we consider some exemptions?

That is what I'm hearing. I I think that's, yeah, I think that's what we want to study. Okay. So not not all nonconforming lots, but particular category. Okay. Yeah. Are the fraction of lots in the wrong, is that the most common reason for that being nonconforming?

Mm-hmm. Okay. But are, are you, not you Josh, but are are like, is it being suggested that, um, we not apply like some of the basic requirements to existing lots, like lot coverage and things like that?

Is that what I'm hearing? You see if there's some sort of relief or lessening of sta like i, I guess studying whether that even makes sense. Okay. Yeah. It just seems like if it applies to small old lots want, I apply it to new lots as well, but yeah.

And then that's, that's like a major, major change, right? So like that's just Yeah, That was sort of my erroneous point about minimum lot sizes is instead of carving it out for non-conforming, just change it.

And The minimum lot size did go down quite a bit from the old code to the new code. Sure. A lot of it is 2000 square feet used to be 6,000. Now there are still 6,000 square feet in the R districts, but it, uh, it did go down quite a bit.

Yeah. And again, I don't really think this has to do with the lot size though. Sure. But my point is, is instead of carving it out for non-conformity, whatever the actual issue is, just adjusting the metric.

Yeah. So are, is the maximum percentage of building coverage in the RAs, is that the right number? Is that kinda what we're saying? Yeah. Okay. I think that makes sense for a, something to look at. Um, alright.

I, is it, do we need to look at this final page or did it make sense what we were trying to prioritize from our previous discussion? Did anybody take note about the ones we wanted to prioritize? I sort of did Reprioritize the prioritization.

Um, so it looks like building height and massing, um, clarify bonus side applies to a lot building with multiple units. So we talked about that. We're, we're good with number one. That's, we can take that off the list, correct?

Yeah, I believe so. Um, bill two setback requirements. Um, this is one of the ones that we, we wanna prioritize, but we're gonna try and do a subcommittee to move it along. Um, active depth, same thing.

Um, special exception permits. Um, I think we agreed that this is a one that we wanna push forward and prioritize. Change my color on that one. Um, uh, street typology map. I, yeah, I think we decided this was housekeeping and we were hoping that you guys can just Is A non do That non tier three item.

Yeah. Out. Alright. Um, definitions and site modification rules. Um, I forget which ones those were. I, I, I, I think the others are, we agreed are not huge priorities. What about the, um, storm water?

So we added that for 6,000. Um, that's being studied as part of the environmental. I think you'll get more information as that moves along is Okay. Being considered. Alright. Let's see if we missed any big ones in here.

Setbacks or did active depth? Um, special exceptions. Yeah, I think those are the ones that we, we pushed to be a high priority. We didn't talk about the EV charging. Is that something worth, uh, further deliberation?

Yeah. Do we need to discuss that? Is that something I thought you guys were working through a way to make that work. There's a currently a study mm-hmm. Um, uh, that's going on. You'll hear more information out of this came out of kind of some preliminary internal, so we wanted to make sure it was on the list so that when y'all got more information on the actual report, whenever that comes out mm-hmm.

That you're prepared for. Okay. Are the fire folks working on that? Excuse me. Are the Fire folks working on that? Uh, I believe fire is involved along with environmental. Thank you. And that's a, the ev thing is a discussion about, uh, level one and level two chargers being allowed in parking lots and parking structures.

That, and also, um, you know, on the public side, like where could public chargers be, uh, but the level one, level two chargers. Yes. And just how, how could be incorporate, you know, is it, is it something that should be, um, in public available space areas in the city?

And where would those be trying to identify those? So what do you mean by public charger? Like at a park? Like imagine having one Okay. At a park or on the, the side of West Main Street that somebody could plug into Or more like in a park or publicly publicly controlled garage.

Or if it's a feasible to have in right of ways or not. Um, I think there's a lot of discussion going on with it. Is that study gonna come before this group? Um, I'm not sure. It's not run. It's, I think it's run out of environmental, but we can get you more information.

I know that, uh, Uh, I haven't heard on it in a while. Um, they had these kind of preliminary findings. It was a while back when I put it in, in this paper. Mm-hmm. So we can follow up on that. I just feel like ev charging is just a such an intense infrastructure upgrade that we really need to be considerate about where we want that to be potentially in the public right of way or on public structures, publicly controlled things.

Mm-hmm. Just because it's really is so permanent. That's my comment. Alright. Um, and did that study include, um, or I don't know if it's even an issue, but I guess in residential neighborhoods, um, people being able to plug in their own cars if they live across the street from their parking space?

Uh, I mean it's, it's come up more from a, um, public service standpoint mm-hmm. And right of way access and aada a mm-hmm. Uh, than, um, a private, uh, land use kind of issue. Okay. Uh, not blocking your a DA accessible routes in a public right of way.

Mm-hmm. Kind of the real big issue for, for that. I forget what level charger that is, but for your small residential, there wasn't necessarily a building code or fire concern. Okay. But the concerns were more around, um, uh, crossing into public right of way and, and a DA issues.

Okay. All right. Um, well thank you guys for humoring us on this. Uh, did or are you feeling like you got our understanding we're, um, what we tried to get through tonight? I think I got good, good feedback where Okay.

If you, I would say where just maybe a few minutes. Mm-hmm. Um, because the steps I would be taking is kind of preparing the 2026 work plan for this. Mm-hmm. And I know we kind of in general in the pre-meeting talked about a subcommittee, um, and talked about in the report, but it'd be not, you know, hearing from planning commission on how y'all want to be involved in this would help me kind of flush out the plan to bring back to you to say, here's our, our plan for 2026, um, here as we're gonna go.

You know, what I'm hearing right now is you'd like to have a subcommittee. Um, so if there's any other kind of just information along that, that we especially learned from 2025 mm-hmm. That maybe would be helpful to hear as we prepare the 2026 path.

Um, like are you, are you asking like, I mean, if you should report back to us periodically or is um, Yeah, I mean, so what I'm, you know, what I'm hearing is there's, there are a few of these, uh, items that could be tier two mm-hmm.

Or your tier three that you'd like to discuss in a subcommittee. Yeah. So a subcommittee is definitely, you know, I think, uh, part of how you would like the 2026 to, to go. Mm-hmm. Um, I would imagine we envision one or two larger work sessions.

Mm-hmm. Uh, but I, you know, I wanted to hear if that's what, what you all are thinking. So how we did 2025 is we, we came forward with a list. Mm-hmm. We had several work sessions. We, you know, we, uh, had a listening session with the, uh, local builders, um, and developers.

Then we had a public hearing. Mm-hmm. So, you know, the, the thoughts being there probably would be a subcommittee that would meet maybe two or three times a probably one or two work sessions to, to discuss what came out of that subcommittee.

And then, you know, having the public hearing make recommendations. Uh, just saying that out loud is probably eight months. Mm-hmm. Um, in general. So just wanted to get some feedback on just, you know, what y'all not putting you on the spot, but what y'all felt about the 2025.

But you know, just going into 2026, how we lessons learned and what we could do. If there are anything that sounds what I just said sounds good, we can roll with that. I think it sounds good. I mean it's, yeah, I think as you guys dig into some of these things and if you've run into roadblocks to let us know that these are all the things that are complicating what you want to achieve, you know, we, you know, think of something else or whatever.

I mean, it's kind of giving us feedback if we've asked for something that's impossible to achieve, um, through, but also yeah, these, um, you know, work sessions as necessary to, um, anytime you guys need feedback from us.

Uh, and as far as the subcommittee's concerned, can we form that tonight? Sure. So it's two of us. Um, I would love to be on that unless anybody else, if you guys wanna fight me for it, not fighting me, but, you know, argue for it.

There's more than one, right? We could have two, two people. I mean, there's more than one subcommittee, Uh, For each of the topics or is there One sub We could do it that for Both topics? Well, we could, we could do it either way.

I thought it was gonna be one that does, you know, anything zoning code related. But if you wanna go no further, I would recommend that you just go with one. So that, uh, that's what you better coordination.

Would anybody like to join me? I'd be happy to join. Okay. We good with this? It works. Okay. So, Um, I will say I wasn't terribly involved with the 2025 stuff, but my thought is is that as the, the 25 items were the first round that I would imagine that going into future rounds, these work sessions may not be as long in involved as they were.

So maybe that helps with some of the, uh, time commitment and work involved in doing it. So maybe just from that perspective itself, it won't be so cumbersome. Um, but I do think that since we're going through these first round of tweaks, it would potentially be nice to get the people that do the work in real, in, out in the field to give us feedback on if we're hitting the mark or if we're off.

I thought the developer and builder listening session, that's what you meant was informative. Okay. So going to the developers and Okay. Yeah. Um, let's figure out how to set that up. Other thoughts or, um, should be close.