Tag: Kimber Hawkey

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Drop it: Belmont residents call it quits on petition against church rezoning

Residents who opposed the city’s rezoning of a Belmont church in order to build a 15-unit apartment complex have dropped their case. PC: Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church

Last fall, a band of city residents stirred up controversy when they filed a petition against City Council, demanding that it overturn its decision to allow a Methodist church in Belmont to build a 15-unit apartment complex, with four to six units set aside for adults with developmental disabilities

After a lot of backlash on social media, some residents removed their names from the petition. Now, even those who didn’t initially back down have stopped fighting the structure.

The residents opposed the philanthropic development effort because they had concerns about a large, commercially zoned building in a residential neighborhood, says Mark Kavit, a petition leader.

“The way the media handled it…they really vilified the neighborhood, and made them look like they are against housing for the disabled and affordable housing, when that wasn’t the case,” says Kavit, who lives in North Downtown. “Residents’ concerns have been first and foremost about the zoning, and then the size and scope of the development.”

Over the past year, the petition has been a “bit of a headache” for Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church, but not a big problem, explains Kim Crater, who’s leading the planning of the apartment complex. The structure will be called Rachel’s Haven, in honor of the church’s pastor’s wife, who died of breast cancer in 2016.

“We’ve had to adjust the order that we do things in,” says Crater. “We don’t want to spend the money until we are 100 percent sure that the zoning is going to stay in place, so we’ve delayed [certain] tasks and done other ones instead.”

“We also have been hands off with the petition, because [it] wasn’t against us. It involved them and City Council. We weren’t even a party to it,” she says.

Before the petition was filed, Crater and her team worked to address neighbors’ reservations about the church’s rezoning application. Some feared the property would eventually be sold, and turned into a business, which they believed could cause problems for the neighborhood, explains Crater.

“Initially, we put in a proffer that we won’t build any restaurants, since that seemed to be the big thing they were worried about,” Crater says. “But then they [worried] we could put in a store, so we put in a proffer that said no commercial enterprise—this is only residential.”

The church also hosted public meetings to explain why the zoning change was necessary to build Rachel’s Haven, which will also include several affordable units, rented out at rates accessible for those making 80 percent of the area’s median income.

Last month, the petitioners finally abandoned their effort. “We decided to non-suit without prejudice, due to the complications of organization, and health in the pandemic,” says Belmont resident Kimber Hawkey, another petition leader. “It’s also a question of trying to fight this in the courts. The cost of hiring lawyers to take this on is prohibitive.”

“We had heard [that] many, many of them had dropped off,” says Crater. “We had hoped this was coming.”

Despite dropping the petition, Kavit and Hawkey remain concerned about the church’s commercial zoning, pointing to issues Belmont has already experienced with properties being rezoned from residential to commercial. Southern Crescent Galley & Bar drew ire from neighbors last year for playing loud music and adding two cabanas. The bar was later fined by the city.

Petitioners also worry that, should the church change hands, future property owners wouldn’t be legally required to abide by the church’s proffers, which aren’t binding. They hope the city will create a new zoning category allowing the church to build the apartments without permitting future commercial use.

Because the petition was dismissed “without prejudice,” the group could pursue it again in the future. While they’re not sure if they’ll ever take it back up, Kavit says he will lobby the city planning commission for a new zoning category for projects like Rachel’s Haven.

Meanwhile, Crater and her team continue to look for ways to fund the apartments, specifically through the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. They also plan to partner with an affordable housing nonprofit.

Though Crater does not expect the petitioners to file again, she hopes their concerns will be properly addressed.

“If they feel that the city did not respect their rights in this rezoning process…then I almost hope that they will file it again,” she says. “I never want people to feel like their rights are trampled, and that their voices aren’t heard.”

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Legal action: Belmont residents file petition against church rezoning plan

Reverend Robert Lewis of the Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church appeared before City Council on August 5 to express his support for the apartment project. (Photo: Eze Amos)

A dispute over the rezoning of a Methodist church that wants to add affordable housing units reached Charlottesville Circuit Court on September 5, when a group of city residents filed a petition for the plan to be thrown out.

Thirty-one people, including Belmont/Carlton Neighborhood Association president Kimber Hawkey and Quality Pie owner Tomas Rahal, are requesting that a judge overturn City Council’s August 5 decision to unanimously approve the project, citing a lack of sufficient notice for public discussion and violations of the city’s Comprehensive Plan. But at least one of them, local filmmaker Brian Wimer, says he never signed the petition.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Wimer said in an email. “My wife was involved in the petition. I really know very little about the petition and the project.”

Petition organizer Mark Kavit submitted an amended version of the document Monday, adding eight new names to the list and removing five, including Wimer. Kavit says names were originally listed on the petition based on responses to an email distributed by Hawkey. Some of the individuals who asked to be removed, he says, did so because of public “shaming by people that don’t understand what this is about” on social media.

Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church is hoping to build a 15-unit apartment complex, with several rented out at 80 percent of the area’s median income, along with four to six units reserved for intellectually disabled occupants. The project is named Rachel’s Haven after pastor Robert Lewis’ wife, who died in 2016 from breast cancer.

“The…neighborhood is not against the concepts that Hinton Church wants to provide,” Kavit said in an email. “[Their] concern is with the commercial zoning place on the property instead of residential. Zoning stays with the property. The neighborhood wishes success to the church for what they would like to accomplish.”

Originally scheduled to be heard by the Charlottesville Planning Commission on May 14, the rezoning proposal was at first put on hold for the church to address neighborhood concerns by  including restrictions of all nonresidential uses of the property outside of its daycare facilities and educational efforts. While it’s still seeking a neighborhood commercial zoning designation–the only zoning available that would allow for apartments to be built–the church’s proposal is written with the intention of preventing potential future owners of the property from using it as such.

But the proposal still received pushback after the amendments were made. Twenty-eight Belmont residents co-signed a letter requesting that commissioners Rory Stolzenberg and Gary Heaton recuse themselves from voting on the proposal when it was presented June 11. Neither commissioner did, and the plan was approved unanimously—albeit without the presence of commission chair Lisa Green.

“It was a unanimous vote with everyone acknowledging it was a less-perfect proposal, but it was one of those situations where perfect is the enemy of good,” says Heaton, who’s the minister at First United Methodist Church on East Jefferson Street. As for the petition, “I don’t think we have to get volatile…I think it’s [part of] the process we have, and the process is good.”

Kavit notes that there’s a nationwide trend of churches closing down, and says he still fears another business assuming the property and ignoring its proffers. Violations of proffers aren’t monitored by the city and, for the most part, aren’t addressed unless local residents submit a complaint.

He points to other Belmont businesses like Southern Crescent Galley & Bar, which met with Neighborhood Development Services in June to discuss proffer violations—playing amplified music and installing two cabanas without a permit—but received what he says was “a slap on the wrist.” NDS prohibited Southern Crescent from playing amplified music moving forward and assessed “a penalty fee for the [cabana] violation which could require double payment of the permit fee,” according to meeting notes compiled by NDS Director Alex Ikefuna.

The court has yet to establish a date for the hearing. Although the plaintiffs aren’t seeking any compensation other than the plan being overturned, all five members of City Council, as well as the council itself, are listed as defendants.

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Staying social: Public officials take different strategies to social media

An argument on Nextdoor led some residents to ask Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg to recuse himself from voting on a rezoning plan. (Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith)

When Rory Stolzenberg accepted an appointment to the Charlottesville Planning Commission last October, he hoped to play a role in how the city government shapes its citizens’ way of life. What he didn’t expect is just how much weight his words would now carry online.

The 27-year-old software developer has an active presence on social media—most notably on Twitter and the neighborhood-based platform Nextdoor—and drew the ire of some local residents after engaging in arguments online.

In a June 11 letter to the Planning Commission, a group of 28 Belmont residents asked that Stolzenberg recuse himself from an upcoming vote, citing his comments on social media about the issue, a proposed rezoning plan for affordable housing units at Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church. Stolzenberg’s comments were “denigrating and filled with sarcasm to neighbors,” the residents complained.

Although the letter (which also requested that Commissioner Gary Heaton recuse himself because he’s a Methodist minister) wasn’t addressed at the meeting, where the Hinton Church proposal was approved in a unanimous vote, it raises the question of where public officials  should draw the line in their online comments.

As a general rule, Stolzenberg says he doesn’t comment on pending applications, but will enter online discussions about them when he believes others are missing or ignoring critical facts. He says he tries to be factual and base his opinions on evidence. “Certainly, there’s times, especially on [Nextdoor], where the quality of the conversation overall has kind of regressed,” he says. “Often there are insults being lobbed at me, or renters.”

In the sometimes-heated thread on Nextdoor about Hinton Avenue, Stolzenberg responded to the rezoning concerns with a photo of a well-kept multi-family home on Belmont Avenue and wrote “SICK FOURPLEX absolutely DESTROYS neighborhood character! Who will save us from this CREEPING THREAT?!”

In the ensuing exchange, Kimber Hawkey, one of the letter’s co-signers and a Belmont resident, accused the commissioner of having “blatantly called out and challenged residents who would dare to speak out against this project.”

Hawkey declined to comment for this story, saying “the documents speak for themselves.”

Kevin Driscoll, an assistant professor in media studies at UVA with a background in political communication, says too little is known about the effects of social media on local politics. But his hope is that local officials use social media to gauge public opinion in a productive way.

“I think there’s a need for public officials to step out and define what leadership looks like in a social media environment,” Driscoll says. “The trick for folks going forward—especially at a local level—is to create the feeling of localness within these massive platforms.”

Stolzenberg is by no means the only public official in Charlottesville to communicate on social media. His fellow Planning Commission member Lyle Solla-Yates is also vocal on Twitter, and all five members of City Council have active profiles on various social media platforms. Mayor Nikuyah Walker, in particular, uses Facebook to communicate with constituents, highlight projects, and vent frustrations. Many of the posts on her personal page center around race, including a photo she shared Thursday that said, “Black women are stereotyped as angry but have you ever told an old white man he couldn’t have something[?]”

Walker drew criticism last July after protesting a candidate for interim city manager on Facebook Live. Her comments played into Sidney C. Zemp’s decision to turn down the offer, citing in a letter that he “would be unable to serve the public needs, instead being mired in petty fights and paralysis.” Walker declined to comment for this story.

According to City Attorney John C. Blair, there’s no state or city policy that restricts how local elected representatives use their social media accounts. The only thing they’re not allowed to do is block users. A case involving a Loudoun County official reached a federal appeals court in January, stipulating that even temporarily blocking an account is a violation of that person’s First Amendment rights.

“If a city council member had a question, they would contact our office and we’d talk about how the law stands [on social media] at that time,” Blair says.

Councilor Wes Bellamy, who came under fire in 2016 for offensive tweets from his early 20s that resurfaced courtesy of Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, says he thinks it’s important to post his opinions online to keep people informed, but he doesn’t have to engage with everyone who disagrees with him.

Developing thick skin helps, and “understanding that just because somebody has an opinion doesn’t mean that I have to respond to it or validate something that I know is just completely ridiculous,” Bellamy says.

The reality of local politics in the 21st century is that a significant base of constituents relies on social media for its news and political commentary. So whether or not public officials engaging in arguments is helpful in the long run, most tend to agree it’s important to use social media to inform citizens and initiate important dialogues.

“I think there is a role for public debate on social media, like for important issues that we’re discussing … so that people can see them,” Stolzenberg says. “If we have more discussions about topics publicly, it gives a window into important considerations that we’re discussing on either side.”

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Hogwaller haggling: Urban farm developer struggles to move forward

Developer Justin Shimp wants to build a nine-acre urban farm and residential complex on a city floodplain, which worries some local residents. Photo by Stephen Barling

When Hurricane Camille dumped 10 inches of rain on Charlottesville in August 1969, folks were spotted rowing their boats up and down Nassau Street.

Now, developer Justin Shimp has proposed to build an urban farm and residential complex on the same floodplain. The project, called Hogwaller Farm, is in compliance with the city’s safety and environmental guidelines. But when Shimp went before the city’s planning commission December 11 to request the special-use permit and zoning change he needs to build it, the commission voted 3-2 against it. City Council will make the final call next year.

Shimp’s nine-acre development, which includes two multi-story apartment buildings, a greenhouse, a farmstand, and farmland, would straddle Charlottesville and Albemarle. The residential buildings and structures would be on the city’s side, with the county’s land saved for agricultural use. This is likely because Albemarle does not allow residential development in the floodplain.

The dangers of building in such an area are well-documented. A November 29 article in Slate, titled “How We Built Our Way into an Urban Flooding Epidemic,” says the country has seen approximately 3,600 instances of urban flooding over the past 25 years, or about one every two to three days. And it’s largely a result of man-made landscapes of asphalt, concrete, and iron.

“If you fill in a floodplain, the water is going to be pushed on somebody else,” says Kimber Hawkey, a community member who has advocated against the approval of Hogwaller Farm for mostly environmental reasons.

City floodplain administrator Tony Edwards says the city now receives between five and 10 applications to build on the floodplain each year, because that’s where the available land is. The city generally approves these as long as developers meet certain requirements meant to minimize the risk.

Shimp, as he told the planning commission, has already met the city’s requirements by demonstrating his project won’t raise flood elevations or cause erosion. He’ll use compacted soil that he excavates, or “native soil from the area,” he says.

The developer has had a fill permit for about a year, and he’s only recently started to hear any opposition to it, he adds.

“The floodplain thing never really came up,” Shimp says, adding that neighbors were previously “very concerned” about the potential for existing contaminated soils on his site.

“I spent a couple thousand bucks doing soil tests,” he says. The lab results came back clean, except for one test near the drainage output, which returned higher levels of hydrocarbons. Shimp says he’ll run more tests at that location before growing any vegetables there.

Community members are also concerned about the impact new development could have on nearby Moores Creek, which is already considered “impaired” by the city. The marshy Hogwaller site has long acted as a natural sponge and filter, which absorbs stormwater runoff and cleans it before it enters the creek, and eventually, the Rivanna River.

For this reason, Hawkey says the construction of Hogwaller Farm won’t jive with the city’s comprehensive plan, which has specific goals of protecting the riverine system and water quality, and managing stormwater runoff.

While planning commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates says the development would go against a land-use map (which he says is outdated), it does address a number of needs discussed in the plan’s housing chapter and an updated housing needs assessment “that we are not succeeding at.”

Hogwaller Farm’s apartments will include three units—10 percent of the total—of designated affordable housing. Shimp is requesting a rezoning from residential to highway corridor, because that’s the only type of zoning that would allow him to build a greenhouse. And he’ll need a special-use permit to build the apartments.

“Three units is not really gonna move the needle on the affordable housing crisis,” commissioner Taneia Dowell said at the meeting.

While Dowell voted against recommending Hogwaller Farm, Solla-Yates was one of the two commissioners in favor of it. He says city planners get “very few” opportunities to use special-use permits, and though they don’t get much housing out of issuing them, it’s one of the only tools they have for building affordable housing units.

“I know there are people in the city who have real concerns with projects like this in the floodplain, but we are out of land and out of options,” says Solla-Yates. “If we can’t use the tools we have, and we don’t have new tools, our problems will get even worse.”

Environmental review has been a priority for council for years, and the city is “amazingly well-staffed” for it, according to Solla-Yates.

“We have the resources to do floodplain development safely and responsibly,” he adds. “We paid for that, but if we don’t trust our staff to carry through we are wasting that public investment at a time when every dollar counts.”