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Albemarle staff refining process for county master plan update

Photo via Skyclad Aerial.

Albemarle County has spent the last two and a half years updating its Comprehensive Plan, a document required by state law for each locality to guide “adjusted and harmonious growth of the territory.” 

For four and a half decades, Albemarle has used that plan to designate the vast majority of land in the county to be rural areas where intense development is discouraged and generally not allowed. As of the last plan update in 2015, growth is to be concentrated in the urban ring, U.S. 29 North, and Crozet. That’s about five percent of the county’s 726 square miles. 

The current update goes by the name AC44 and had been expected to be completed by this fall. Two of four phases have been completed so far with input from hundreds of county residents, the Planning Commission, and elected officials. 

“We processed this feedback and took the time to develop a structure to improve the clarity of the resulting document,” says Abbey Stumpf, the county’s manager of communications and public engagement. 

This now results in a timeline that will see a public hearing and approval next year after another round of community engagement in the fall. But first, the PC was asked on July 9 whether they support what staff calls “refinements” to the process. Among these are a transition away from chapters for “plan elements” as well as fewer goals and objectives. 

The number and clarity of objectives concern the Piedmont Environmental Council, an advocacy group that has worked to keep growth area boundaries intact since they were formed. 

“It is not clear how the previously prepared draft goals will be revised into a single goal and whether or not some goals have been eliminated and new ones proposed,” says Rob McGinnis, Senior Land Use Field Representative for PEC. 

McGinnis says PEC is also concerned that there has been no direct engagement with the public over the summer while the staff has been working on a draft plan. 

The head of a pro-business group with much experience watching planning in Albemarle said he welcomes the new timeline. Neil Williamson of the Free Enterprise Forum says he hopes the refinements will lead to a more focused document with less room for interpretation of what the county wants the future to be. 

“In the past, the comp plan was an amalgamation of all public comment received rather than a statement of direction from the elected body,” Williamson says. “We may not agree with all of the goals, objectives, and actions planned, but [we do] applaud making the hard choices that show direction rather than making everyone happy and saying nothing.” 

Localities are not required to make major changes in their Comprehensive Plan. After some years of review, Fluvanna County has opted to re-adopt their 2015 plan with a few modifications. Greene County took a similar approach whereas Nelson County hired the Berkley Group to write a new document.

However, Albemarle has experienced much more change than those localities. Since 1980, the county’s population has more than doubled from 55,783 to an estimated 116,148 in 2023 as calculated by the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA. 

Work on Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan update had been expected to wrap up this year, but staff has taken extra time to finalize plan goals. Community input will begin in the fall with possible adoption by next spring or summer.

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If you build it: Despite pandemic, land use projects moved forward in 2020

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.

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‘Baby step’ boundary adjustment could deter brewery

Supervisor Liz Palmer led the charge for a much smaller addition to the growth area than originally proposed. Photo: Submitted

The Albemarle Board of Supervisors snatched victory from the jaws of a 223-acre growth area expansion and approved the addition of only 35 acres south of the Interstate 64/U.S. 29 interchange to the comprehensive plan’s development area at a September 23 special meeting.

When the supes last met September 9, it looked like they were ready to add to the growth area land that Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, had allegedly expressed interest in. But when they came back to hammer out the details, the Samuel Miller District’s Liz Palmer, the most vocally opposed to the amendment, managed a “rear guard victory,” according to Scottsville District candidate Rick Randolph, and swayed three other supervisors to vote for adding the much smaller 35 acres plus 16 acres for green space instead of the 85 acres for light industrial with 138 for park and green area originally proposed.

“An engineer said it would be very, very challenging to build any type of facility on the land we approved,” says Supervisor Ken Boyd, who admits he’s “disappointed” with the way the board went and the likely loss of around 100 “good, middle-class” jobs.

“It’s truly a baby step,” he says. “We need to grow up a little if we’re going to have a vibrant economy.”

Opponents to the amendment like Randolph, a planning commissioner who joined that body’s unanimous vote against the expansion in August, applauded the baby step.

Christine Davis, who gathered signatures on a petition against the amendment, is concerned about the precedent this decision makes. “If land will be added piecemeal to the development area,” she says, the board needs to publicly acknowledge that policy.

Rio District Supervisor Brad Sheffield moved that the board not consider any other comp plan amendments until the economic development office provided an inventory of land designated light industrial in the county.

Faith McClintic, the county’s economic development director, says, “The fact that the board did anything is progress. We still have a long way to go.”

According to Boyd, following Governor Terry McAuliffe’s visit to September 14 visit to Deschutes in Bend, the company will pay another site visit to Virginia. “They’re going to Roanoke,” says Boyd, “not here.”