Lots of people want to live in Charlottesville. To help meet the demand for housing throughout the city, leaders have hired Arlington-based consulting firm Rhodeside & Harwell to rewrite Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan, a document that guides land-use policy in the city. As part of that process, the consultants are now taking public comment through June 13 on a colorful document known as the Future Land Use Map.
The map “sets the stage for the city’s long-term vision of how it’s going to grow,” says Ron Sessoms of Rhodeside & Harwell. “You can think of this as the 10,000-foot view of the city, defining where there are opportunities for growth.”
Some residents feel the process was rushed and that the proposed map would allow for too much new density. Others say the map doesn’t go far enough, and the proposed plans aren’t proactive enough.
“We’re really looking to increase the availability of housing in neighborhoods that have had what we’re calling more exclusionary zoning, that’s really limited to single-family uses,” says project manager Jennifer Koch. “At the same time, we do not want to increase pressure on neighborhoods that may be at risk for displacement, including lower-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods where people were displaced previously.”
It’s important to note that this land-use map is created to recommend policies for a subsequent zoning rewrite. This is not a final zoning map. Once the land-use map is adopted—currently expected to happen later this summer—the more granular zoning evaluation will begin. For now, the conversation is about the map, a purely advisory document.
There are over 15,600 separate parcels of property, and each is represented on the map by a color. That color tells planners, builders, and the general public what level of development is desired in the state-mandated Comprehensive Plan.
Right now, more than half of the city is rated “low-density residential.” Under the draft map, many of those areas would remain low density, though the map recommends zoning changes to allow up to three units per lot on the large swathes of the city that are currently zoned R-1, allowing only single families. The name of this category would change to General Residential.
The draft plan also creates a new category called Medium-Intensity Residential, that recommends zoning to allow multi-unit buildings with between four to 12 units. This would allow construction of row houses, townhouses, and other housing types known colloquially as “the missing middle.”
Under the draft map, General Residential would make up 39.4 percent and Medium-Intensity Residential would be 14.4 percent. Many of the areas designated under the new category are along main thoroughfares such as Cherry Avenue, Rugby Road, and Grove Road. Other neighborhoods, like 10th and Page, remain essentially untouched by the new map.
Diana Dale, a resident of the Martha Jefferson neighborhood and member of a steering committee overseeing the Cville Plans Together Initiative, says her neighborhood association supports upzoning but isn’t sure why some neighborhoods were chosen for the possibility of increased density.
“The entire board is totally in agreement with the strategy of eliminating R-1 across the city and allowing for this soft density approach where you’re allowing for flexibility in in-fill,” Dale says. “When you look at this map, it’s clear that certain areas have been selected to carry the higher medium densities. When people look at this map, there isn’t any narrative about why these areas were selected.”
Emily Dreyfus, an organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center, says the map needs to be refined to further demonstrate the city’s commitment to adding density to wealthy single-family neighborhoods.
“This does not go far enough in terms of integrating neighborhoods that have been historically exclusive,” Dreyfus says. “We all knew it would come down to this kind of debate—people who live in those neighborhoods not wanting to see change.”
Though the current engagement period is only for the land-use map and draft text, a subcontractor called Code Studio has been hired to work on the subsequent zoning rewrite. One consultant says one single color on the draft Future Land Use Map will not result in one single type of zoning.
“There would be two, three, four implementing zoning districts that might all have appropriate strategies for different types of the community, but those can’t quite be figured out until we can understand where they are likely to be applied,” says Lee Einsweiler.
Einsweiler says he is hopeful to have a first draft of a land-use map to work off in the near future, and that there will be other opportunities for feedback. The current schedule shows adoption of the plan by the end of the summer, followed by work on the zoning rewrite. The next City Council will vote on that plan, which is currently scheduled to be adopted in the summer of 2022.
Planning Commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates says the goal of the plan is to figure out how much the city can build in the future.
“The way I think that the Planning Commission is thinking about the Future Land Use Map, which may be different from anyone else, is that it’s the outer envelope of what is possible,” says Solla-Yates. “It isn’t destiny. It isn’t what the city is forcing. It’s just the maximum we are imagining.”
Dale says she and many others would like a delay in the process, to make up for a year where the pandemic distracted people from local issues.
An online petition from Barracks/Rugby residents to “slow down the vote” has garnered 210 signatures, though it’s not clear from the petition exactly what vote the signers are concerned about. They say they are specifically worried about the inclusion of two mixed-use nodes in their neighborhood.
Koch says a delay is being considered, but notes that the next important date on the project’s timeline is a June 29 work session with the Planning Commission. If you’re interested in commenting, email engage@cvilleplanstogether.com.
Updated 5/26: On May 25, Rhodeside & Harwell extended the deadline for the public comment period from May 31 to June 13.