Tag: board of architectural review

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Should a downtown movie theater be demolished to build new housing?

Heirloom Development is seeking BAR approval for demolition of a Downtown Mall movie theater so design can proceed for a 184-foot-tall building under the city’s new zoning code. Image via Kahler Slater Inc.

Crowds rarely attend meetings of the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review, but quite a few people showed up for a November 19 preliminary review of a potential 184-foot-tall building at the Downtown Mall site of the Violet Crown movie theater.

“I completely understand the magnitude of the importance of this property cannot be overstated,” said Jeffrey Levien of the firm Heirloom Development.

Levien has a contract to purchase the site, so he was allowed to ask the BAR for its initial thoughts on the height and massing of the proposed structure. He said the current building underutilizes a location that would be used to support the new Comprehensive Plan goal of providing more housing.

“It’s a very important first test of our code,” Levien said.  

The BAR will eventually be asked to approve a certificate of appropriateness to demolish the building because it is a contributing structure to the Downtown Architectural Design Control District. It would also have to approve plans for a new building. 

Jeff Werner, the city’s historic preservation planner, said little remains of the original building constructed on the site in the late 1800s. He said the BAR has approved projects with height before, such as the CODE Building, which rises to nine stories in some locations. What matters is context.

“BAR’s review is not just the building, but its relationship to the historic district as well,” Werner said.   

Under the city’s new development code, the building can be up to 10 stories or 142 feet by-right. There is also a bonus provision if additional affordable units are added above the 10 percent required by the code’s inclusionary zoning provision. If the city is satisfied, the building could be 184 feet or 13 stories. 

So far, Levien has not demonstrated how he would fulfill those requirements. The Office of Community Solutions would be responsible for ensuring compliance. 

“The Violet Crown is a jewel,” Levien said. “But it’s a jewel that’s just become outdated as far as a business model in the world of theaters. That’s my opinion based on a lot of fact.” 

In a statement released after The Daily Progress reported that closure was imminent, the company that operates Violet Crown said it is still in business and plans to continue operations as long as it has a lease. 

The president of the group Preservation Piedmont reminded those in attendance that the Downtown Mall is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“As the members of the BAR, in effect, you’re the curators of the Mall, which is our city’s special space,” said Genevieve Keller. 

Keller said any demolition of a property on the Downtown Mall must be considered very carefully. She said this location, as well as a proposed hotel at 218 W. Market Street, are in what used to be the Vinegar Hill neighborhood. Levien is the principal owner of that project, which he was previously planning to develop as a nine-story residential building. 

‘When an application comes in for a demo there, just down from McGuffey School, that would be taking out the last fabric left of Vinegar Hill,” Keller said. 

The BAR took no action because the discussion was a pre-application conference. 

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(Don’t) take a seat: Downtown Mall still lacks public benches

The Downtown Mall has hundreds of private seats owned by restaurants and cafés, but only 37 public seats. PC: John Robinson

Last year, the Seattle Department of Transportation installed 18 new bike racks on a stretch of pavement underneath Highway 99. However, the racks were not meant to provide more resources for cyclists—but to prevent the homeless people who had been camping there from coming back.

Seattle is just one of many cities known to use hostile, or “defensive,” architecture to deter “unwanted behavior,” such as loitering or sleeping in public spaces. Curved and slanted benches, street spikes and dividers, boulders and spikes under bridges, and benches with armrests—among other examples—have been spotted and posted on social media in cities across the country.

While city governments claim that such architecture is needed to maintain order and public safety, critics say it unfairly targets the homeless, preventing them from having places to rest.

In Charlottesville, this debate has lasted for years, specifically surrounding public seating on the Downtown Mall. In 2012, the North Downtown Residents Association released a report (endorsed by downtown businesses) claiming that the increasing amount of panhandlers and loiterers on the mall “yelling obscenities, verbally assaulting passersby, fighting, and engaging in other disturbing behavior” made mall employees and patrons feel unsafe and uncomfortable, The Daily Progress reported. The report recommended, among other things, that sitting and lying down be banned on the mall.

The same year, the city removed the fountain-side chairs in Central Place near Second Street, and replaced the seating in front of City Hall with backless benches, in an effort to prevent “disorderly conduct” on the mall. 

However, no bans on sitting or lying down were passed, and, as of today, “individuals who are residentially challenged or unsheltered” on the mall are not breaking the law, but “can be arrested for trespassing…if [they] are blocking entryways to businesses, or for aggressive soliciting, just to name a few examples,” says Charlottesville Police Department Public Information Officer Tyler Hawn.

Controversy arose again in 2016 when the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review unanimously denied the Parks & Recreation Department’s request to replace all of the mall’s wooden chairs with backless metal benches to discourage loitering. BAR members believed the benches would be uncomfortable, and they’d prevent those who did not want—or have the means—to spend money at a business from fully enjoying the mall, dishonoring architect Lawrence Halprin’s intentions and design (which included 150 public chairs).

The city has since listened to mall patrons’ complaints that the backless benches in front of City Hall were not “human-friendly,” replacing them with the originally designed wooden chairs, says city Communications Director Brian Wheeler. But it has not added any more public seating to the mall, which, according to Wheeler, currently has 37 wooden chairs 

Stephen Hitchcock, executive director of The Haven, says the issue doesn’t feel as loaded as it did a few years ago.

“Obviously, you’re going to have people who have pretty strong opinions about folks who are holding signs on the mall, or asking for money, or sitting in front of the landmarks,” says Hitchcock. “But, I feel slightly encouraged, at least in contrast with what I hear happening around the country [with hostile architecture]…something that I feel is really important about the Downtown Mall is that it is one of the only places where the city sees itself, across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, you name it.” 

However, on January 4, Charlottesville resident and activist Matthew Gillikin revived the discussion surrounding mall seating on Twitter, pointing out the very few public chairs available, compared to the hundreds of private chairs owned by restaurants and cafés.

In response, someone else listed the fees the city charges each downtown business with outdoor seating: $125 annually, plus $5 per square foot—revenue generated from what is ostensibly public space.

The Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, currently under construction on the west end of the mall, could add more public space–plans call for an exterior courtyard and outdoor amphitheater for public and private events.

According to Wheeler, if the community wanted to add more wooden chairs to the mall, or even “a different type of bench that was much longer, [that] you could lay down on,” the proposal would have to approved by the BAR. 

The city would also have to allocate a significant amount of funding for the seating, says Wheeler. He estimates the wooden chairs on the mall cost $1,200 to $1,500 each, and says they are expensive to maintain.

And while the city wants to be “good stewards of the mall…the number one architectural change we can make for our homeless population is to give them an affordable home and economic opportunities,” says Wheeler. “We want to get people out of homelessness.”

 

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STARS saga: Occupancy request receives a unanimous “no”

The owner of the STARS group home on Park Street is requesting a special use permit to increase the number of girls allowed to live in the home from eight to 12. Neighbors say it's not a good idea, and so does the planning commission. Staff photo

When the owner of a Park Street group home for at-risk adolescents went before the Board of Architectural Review November 21 to request permission to increase the number of teens allowed to live in the house, the board opted not to make a recommendation.

“It was out of our purview,” says BAR member Carl Schwarz. “There’s no negative effect on the historic district, but it’s not something we could recommend for or against.”

Twenty years ago, Kara Gloeckner started the Structured Therapeutic Adolescent Residential Service program in Charlottesville. Five years in, she moved some of the STARS operation into its current location at 517 Park St., where the organization’s administrative offices are housed and eight girls rest their heads each night.

The home, built in 1984, was originally designed to house 16 mentally disabled adults, says Gloeckner, who interned there at that time. Allowing that many girls to live there would be fulfilling its intended use, she says, and replacing the offices with bedrooms would make for a more home-like environment and alleviate parking stress.

Gloeckner’s original special use permit request doubled the number of girls living there, but after a community meeting at which most residents were adamantly opposed to having 16 troubled teenagers living in the same home in their neighborhood, she asked the City Planning Commission November 14 for permission to house 12.

“With more girls, there is more negative energy for them to feed off of,” local teacher Jennifer Ferguson said before the planning commission. “The proposed expansion is harmful to a group of girls who need undivided, individualized and committed attention even more than the average teenage girl.”

Gloeckner says she’s aware of community concern. When she first asked for the permit in 2001, because neighbors were worried about increasing the number of girls in the home, she says she withdrew the application. “We just felt like time would help them understand what the experience of being our neighbor would be like. Fifteen years later, I feel like we’ve been a really great neighbor.”

Regardless, the planning commission unanimously voted to recommend that City Council deny Gloeckner’s permit.

“I don’t question the intent or the goodwill of the program,” said planning commissioner Corey Clayborne at the meeting. “The part that I’m struggling with is when we’re assessing the impacts, whether it’s parking or whether it’s noise, we’ve heard the public testimonies that have come before us and have read multiple emails and documents, and I’m really struggling to see how this benefits the public necessity.”

Gloeckner will go before City Council with her request later this year.