The proposed Future Land Use Map shows were planners believe the city could benefit from zoning that allows increased density.
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.
The Breezy Hill development, shown above, would have seen 130 new units constructed off Route 250, but a necessary rezoning didn’t pass the County Board of Supervisors. Courtesy Albemarle County.
As the greater Charlottesville-Albemarle area continues to feel the effects of a housing shortage, a panel of developers argued last week that localities in the area can incentivize new construction through land use reform.
“We intentionally, through our comprehensive plans and our zoning ordinances, limit the supply of land for new homes,” said Charlie Armstrong, vice president of land development at Southern Development, during a panel discussion held by the central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership, a program of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.
Additionally, Armstrong noted that the land set aside for new construction has limits on how many people are allowed per plot: “We intentionally, as a community, limit the density of new homes that is allowed on any one piece of land.”
That’s especially troubling given that a 2019 housing needs study commissioned by the RHP found that housing prices and rents have increased steadily over the years, while wages have not. Since 1980, Albemarle’s Comprehensive Plan has set aside roughly 5 percent of the county’s 726 square miles for residential development. However, much of that land also has to be rezoned for dense development. Since rezoning approvals are no sure thing, the zoning code adds to the cost of each unit.
Fellow panelist Chris Henry of Stony Point Development Group pointed out several recent projects in Albemarle that would have seen denser housing constructed, but which have been stopped or stalled due to opposition from neighbors. That includes Southern Development’s 130-unit Breezy Hill project near Glenmore, which failed to get a necessary rezoning from the Board of Supervisors in January.
“At some point we have to have some tough conversations as a community about how we want to solve that problem,” Henry said. “Where are we going to designate areas that we want to develop in a way that allows the price of housing to come down and more supply to come on line?”
A housing plan under development in Albemarle County calls for reforming the zoning code to allow thousands more units on designated land in the form of triplexes, bungalow courts, and other structures that require more residential density. Albemarle County planners have also added language in the Crozet Master Plan to try to make it easier to build this so-called “missing middle” housing, though some members of the Crozet Community Advisory Council have panned the idea.
“Southern Development would love to be able to produce those kinds of things, but there just aren’t places to produce them,” Armstrong said. “We need to put that missing middle into our zoning ordinances and remove the barriers that exist.”
Henry said another external factor is that many people who end up purchasing homes are moving to the area for the first time, and can outbid those who are seeking to move up the property ladder in a place with limited supply.
“A retiree moving from northern Virginia, for example, has a lot larger budget for a home than a young professional trying to find a job in Charlottesville,” Henry said. “Some of those folks are pushed out to areas like Staunton, Waynesboro, Palmyra, Richmond.”
Henry also said housing is more expensive to build now than when many existing neighborhoods were first developed. Back then, developers did not have to comply with regulations to reduce stormwater runoff or meet requirements to build sidewalks and other public infrastructure.
“Municipalities used to be in the business of building roads,” Henry said. “A lot of that has been pushed off to the private sector for various reasons, a lot of them are reasonable. But it’s added to the cost of homes.”
Another factor in the increasing cost of development is the increasing complexity required to get a bank to finance a project, especially if the proposal includes both commercial and residential elements, noted Andrew Clark, vice president of government affairs for the Home Builders Association of Virginia.
Clark works as a lobbyist to pass legislation in the General Assembly, and this past session focused on a bill to create a housing opportunity tax credit. Such a credit would help fill the financing gap, but opportunities for credits are limited. Various nonprofits and other entities compete for limited low-income housing tax credits provided by the Virginia Housing Development Authority.
Clark said other solutions include making it easier for localities to create tax abatement programs and to waive fees for development. Albemarle County is considering doing the opposite, and increasing fees developers pay in order to cover the cost of processing land use applications. The Board of Supervisors will take that up at a public hearing on April 21. Armstrong also hopes that Governor Ralph Northam will sign a bill directing the state to study how accessory dwelling units might help increase the supply of homes.
Armstrong said if people want change, they have to speak up at local meetings to support additional housing.
“That’s not just at the comprehensive planning level or in the zoning ordinance level,” Armstrong said. “That has to go all the way down to the very small technical policies, standards, and specifications that cities and counties publish that everyone has to follow because that’s where the cost comes in.”
City Council agreed in October to contribute $5.5 million in a forgivable loan to support the first phase of the Piedmont Housing Alliance’s redevelopment of Friendship Court, the 150-unit downtown public housing complex that was built in 1978. PC: Grimm + Parker Architects
In a year where many of us followed guidelines to stay at home, the skies of downtown Charlottesville were marked by cranes building new spaces for the 21st century. In their shadow, projects to provide more affordable units moved through the bureaucratic process required to keep them below-market. Before the clock strikes 2021, let’s look back at some of what happened in 2020.
Public housing
After years of planning and complaints of decay from residents, Charlottesville’s government took steps to renovate the city’s public housing stock. In October, City Council agreed to spend $3 million to help finance the renovation of Crescent Halls and the construction of 62 new units on an athletic field at South First Street. A date for groundbreaking has been postponed several times, but officials with the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority hope it will occur early next year.
At the same meeting, council also agreed to contribute $5.5 million in a forgivable loan to support the first phase of the Piedmont Housing Alliance’s redevelopment of Friendship Court. The 150-unit complex was built in 1978 in an area cleared by urban renewal. The first phase will see up to 106 units built on vacant land along Monticello Avenue and Sixth Street SE. The loan dictates that the new homes must be made affordable to people who earn less than the area median income. As with CRHA, there’s no set date for groundbreaking yet.
Also this year, a firm hired to complete an overhaul of Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan unveiled a draft of an affordable housing plan that calls for $10 million a year in city investment in similar projects. The draft also asks “to bring diverse voices from the community into decision making structure of the City and partners it funds.”
As the Comprehensive Plan edit process continues, affordable housing advocates hope to reform the zoning ordinance to make it easier to build more housing units without seeking permission from council. This conversation will spill over to 2021, as work on the Comprehensive Plan continues and as voters prepare to elect or re-elect two members of City Council in November.
Downtown towers
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of square feet for offices and other commercial uses are under construction. The largest is the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, which is being erected on Water Street on the site of the former Main Street Arena. The triangle-shaped nine-story building will include a public courtyard, retail area, and incubator space intended to grow new businesses. Completion is expected by August 2021.
On Second Street, within sight of the CODE building, a nine-story office building called 3Twenty3 nears completion, despite a crane collapse in early January. The structure is ready for occupancy and tenants include Manchester Capital, CoConstruct, and McGuire Woods.
Not too far behind is the new headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, an eight-story timber-built structure on Garrett Street designed by Charlottesville-based William McDonough + Partners. Ground was broken in October 2019 and the building could be completed by the end of 2021.
Elsewhere in Charlottesville, Albemarle County hired Fentress Architects to design the $45.2 million renovation of the judicial complex in Court Square. The new general district court complex will be shared by both localities. Construction on the court building won’t begin until at least 2022, but the project is already drawing plenty of attention, as the city continues to move forward with the planning process for a parking structure at Market and Ninth streets to support the new facility.
A previous City Council bought the Market Street parcel in January 2017 for $2.85 million, and the current plan is to build a four-level parking structure with 300 spaces and 12,000 square feet of commercial space. Opponents have argued the structure isn’t needed and the city could invest the $10 million price tag in other projects, including affordable housing. The city says the new spaces would provide enough inventory to allow the nearby Market Street Parking Garage to be retired and redeveloped in the decades to come. The hulking parking garage is among the biggest decisions council will need to make as it hashes out a capital budget for next year.
What about Albemarle?
Albemarle County is also working on a new affordable housing plan. The draft calls for zoning changes that would allow for thousands more units to be built compared to the existing rules. This year, however, the county Board of Supervisors has not approved two projects that would have added to that number. In June, concerns about traffic left the board deadlocked on a vote that would have seen 328 units built on 27 acres at the northern end of the John Warner Parkway. In early January, supervisors are expected to take a vote on a rezoning for 130 units to be built near Glenmore. Neighbors cite traffic concerns for their vehement opposition to the project.
Charlottesville is a growing city. We’ve added 5,000 residents since 2010, with another 10,000 in the county. And by 2040, projections from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service show an additional 6,000 people in Charlottesville and 33,500 in the county (roughly), bringing our total population to more than 196,000.
Now imagine if all of those people are relying on their cars to get around. The typical suburban household generates 10 vehicle trips per day, according to the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Without an efficient public transit system, our traffic and parking problems—not to mention greenhouse gas emissions—are likely to get much worse.
Transportation makes up almost a third of the carbon emissions generated within the city limits, says Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s climate protection program manager. Investing in public transit will be crucial for meeting the new, more ambitious climate goals that are currently being set by the city, county, and UVA. And in addition to helping manage traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, public transportation can also reduce household costs, and is vital for those who can’t afford a car.
Charlottesville wasn’t built around mass transit, but as the city evolves and rethinks its ideas about density, we also have the opportunity to support a 21st-century transit system. And now might be just the right time. In 2017, the area’s planning district commission created the Regional Transit Partnership to help our patchwork of transit systems work better together. The city will soon hire a new director for the city-owned bus service, Charlottesville Area Transit, and other developments make this a promising moment for public transportation.
While systemic change is needed, it’s also up to individuals to change their habits and commit to making fewer trips by car.
“Setting a personal goal, like to avoid driving one day each week, could help people have an impact and transition into being comfortable with other available options,” Elliott says. To hold myself accountable and inform the work I do at the Piedmont Environmental Council, I’ve spent the last month retraining myself to go as car-free as possible.
After some growing pains, I learned how I can make Charlottesville Area Transit work for me. Now, I want to help others figure out how they can change their commute and to help our localities and institutions find solutions for others. For those who live outside the central core of Charlottesville, that will require a better regional bus system.
Environmental advocate Sean Tubbs embarked on a month-long experiment to ditch his car and rely on public transit to get around. Photo: Eze Amos
Declining ridership
I bought my house, near Buford Middle School, in 2008, in part because there was a CAT stop six houses away. For five years, I frequently took the bus to work, a mile and a half away from home. I could get there in 15 minutes.
But in 2013, City Council approved a major realignment of CAT routes in order to increase the efficiency of the buses. The intent was to make routes more direct, but the changes coincided with a ridership decline that continues to this day.
In 2013, CAT reported just over 2.4 million trips to the U.S. Department of Transportation. By 2017, that number had fallen by nearly 9 percent. Ridership on all CAT routes declined another 5.35 percent from December 2017 to December 2018.
My decision to stop riding is reflected somewhere in those numbers. What had been a fairly straightforward journey to work became difficult and confusing. Rather than a straight shot downtown, Route 4 now looped around UVA hospital. Route 6 took 30 minutes to get downtown. Driving became the default, a choice I could make because my former employer paid for my parking pass.
It is conventional wisdom in transit planning that people are more likely to take the bus if they can simply go to a stop where a vehicle will come along every 10 minutes. However, expanding the system to run buses more often takes money.
Better road ahead
One reason that hasn’t happened is that for years, the region’s public transportation scene has been fractured. Charlottesville Area Transit, which had a budget of $7.42 million in 2017, has been owned and operated as a branch of city government since 1975. Albemarle County pays for service on several routes but has traditionally had no formal say in how the agency operates.
JAUNT, a public service corporation founded in 1975 to provide mobility to senior citizens and those with disabilities, has evolved over the years to also provide commuter routes from outlying counties.
And University Transit Service, the bus system at UVA, is its own separate entity, providing high-frequency service in a 1.5-mile area.
A previous attempt to merge all three into a Regional Transit Authority was aggressively studied at the end of the last decade, but the idea did not become a reality, in part because the General Assembly refused to allow a referendum on a sales tax increase to pay for expanded transit.
But the new Regional Transit Partnership, combined with other recent encouraging developments, could finally put us on the road to making mass transit a viable alternative to driving a car.
In recent years, JAUNT has launched a series of ambitious routes to bring additional service within Albemarle County’s development area. These include an early morning and late afternoon hourly service to Hollymead Town Center called the Route 29 Express, as well as a public route between the University of Virginia Research Park and Grounds. The latter even offers wi-fi.
On August 5, JAUNT is expected to launch service between Crozet and UVA Grounds via Charlottesville. This is the first of several new commuter routes the agency hopes to begin.
Public transportation factored highly in the final report from UVA President Jim Ryan’s University-Community Working Group, with calls for greater regional cooperation—a move that would be welcomed by city and county officials.
City Councilor Heather Hill, a member of the regional Planning and Coordination Council, says it’s important to look at the role UVA plays in our transit system, given how many of its employees and contractors come into the city from across the region. And Albemarle County Supervisor Diantha McKeel says UTS can help with data on where people live and where they’re going, to help the partnership determine community transit needs.
But as someone who wants to reduce driving now, I realized I had to adapt to the system we have. I bought a 30-day pass for $22 and began my experiment.
Rethinking my commute
I started with the closest Route 4 stop, up a steep hill on Cherry Avenue. I used CAT’s app, which is supposed to allow riders to see when the next bus will arrive. Unfortunately, the tracking software that runs the app isn’t very precise. I would walk out of my house, check the app, and begin the trek to the stop, confident I had several minutes before the bus arrived. On at least two occasions, however, I watched the bus blow by the top of my street, even though the counter still told me I had minutes to spare.
Inconvenience will stop people from trying transit, and in years past, bad experiences had convinced me to not even bother to try. But with my rising concern about climate change, I knew it was up to me to take some time to learn the system. Eventually, I realized I should walk to another spot on Cherry Avenue, where the bus was more likely to be stopped at a traffic light, giving the app’s counter time to catch up. That also built a 10-minute walk into my commute, which is good for my health.
On the first day I had my pass, I made it a challenge to meet JAUNT director Brad Sheffield at Stonefield by taking the Route 8 bus. It took me just under an hour to get there from my house, and that included a brief pit stop to get a coffee downtown while waiting for a transfer. As I rode down Hillsdale Drive, I could envision the redevelopment of shopping centers into more homes and businesses closer to our core.
Sheffield is taking a customer-centered approach that’s worth listening to and emulating.
“We have to inform residents about all aspects of their transportation choices at the moment they are making the choice of which mode to use,” Sheffield said. “We have to go beyond simply comparing a bus route and schedule to travel time of driving a car.”
In other words, we need to consider all the benefits of public transit (and all the costs of driving). In my case, technology used by CAT has helped me get my commute down to about 20 minutes. That’s still twice as long as driving, but I don’t have to worry about paying for parking, I’m saving money on gas, and I’m getting some exercise.
On other days, I experimented with new routes to see how long it would take to get to parts of Albemarle as a passenger, reacquainting myself with the landscape. One day I took the Route 10 to Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital to meet with planners in Albemarle to talk about the future of Pantops. My conversations about land use have changed significantly now that I see the world a little differently as a bus passenger.
But I also experienced how inconvenient it can be when the system is disrupted. On the day of the Charlottesville marathon, I had planned to take the bus as far north on U.S. 29 as I could go, so I could go on an urban hike. However, many routes were canceled to make way for the race.If I had to rely on transit to get to a job in the same location, I don’t know what I would have done.
On one Thursday, I used Route 9 to travel to a Little League game at McIntire Park. The journey to get there took much longer than I would have liked. Thankfully, the game ended before the final bus was scheduled to leave the YMCA at 8pm, so I wasn’t stranded. But the family of six I met on the bus who was traveling to the Dogwood Festival wasn’t so lucky—they had to take a cab home.
In 2010, 11% of households in Charlottesville and 6% of households in Albemarle County did not have a car. Source: Charlottesville Transit Study, 2013
What’s next
After a month of taking the bus, I feel much more in tune with what’s going on around me. I’ve managed to figure out how to learn the rhythm of the system in order to navigate it so I can drive less. I have bought a second monthly pass.
But not everyone is willing to spend 30 minutes or more on a commute that would take 10 minutes in a car. And what about those who don’t live near a bus route? After years of monitoring land use and transportation issues in this community, I feel we have a golden opportunity to make a serious push for a better regional system.
As the city prepares to welcome Tarron Richardson as city manager, and as the search for a new CAT director begins, the system has an opportunity to adjust to meet the needs of those who want to take public transit.
In the near future, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on to ensure the buses run much more smoothly. The regional partnership’s first major success is a funding agreement that will give Albemarle a more transparent look into how Charlottesville calculates the cost of providing service in the county. Such a move should inspire Albemarle to have more confidence in the system, and then more funding for more routes to expand coverage.
Another step forward would be greater integration between the University Transit Service and CAT, so areas of Albemarle and Charlottesville like Ivy Road continue to be served when the University is not in session.
And advocates would like to see further study of a route that connects Harrisonburg and Charlottesville, to provide an alternative to the thousands of people who commute every day from the Shenandoah Valley. The idea was looked at by area planners in 2017, but an initial effort to fund a pilot project was not successful.
But most importantly, we need a regional system that works together for the purpose of moving people across the region.
For this to happen, our transit systems must continue building working relationships. And we, as individuals, can work on changing our habits.
Since challenging myself to get out of my car a month ago, I’m experiencing Charlottesville in a much more human way. If I’m stuck in traffic now, at least I’m not driving. I don’t have to worry about where my car is parked, and my employer doesn’t have to pick up the tab.
I don’t plan on selling my car anytime soon. But relying on it less is possible, and I encourage you to give it a shot if you can.
Sean Tubbs covered land use and transportation for Charlottesville Tomorrow for many years. He currently works on smart growth issues for the Piedmont Environmental Council. You can follow his transit exploits on Twitter @seantubbs.
