HomeMy WebLinkAbout04 04 1995 PC Minutes4-4-95
APRIL 4, 1995
The Albemarle County Planning Commission held a work session on Tuesday, April 4,
1995, Room 7, County Office Building; Charlottesville, Virginia. Those members
present were: Ms. Babs Huckle; Mr. Tom Blue, Chair; Mr. Bill Nitchmann; Ms.
Katherine Imhoff, Vice Chair; Mr. Bruce Dotson: Mr. Ton; Jenkins; and Ms. Monica
Vaughan. Other officials present were: Mr. Wayne C'ilimberg, Director of Planning and
Community Development; Mr. Ron Lilley, Senlof Plannef; and M .gravid Benish, Chief
of Community Development. Absent: Larry Davis, County Attorney.
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. and a quorum was established. The
minutes of March 21, 1995 were unanimously approved as amended.
WORK SESSION
Discussion of land use standards and designations in the Comp Plan (pages 1 �4
through pages 203 in present Plan)
Staff's written report, distributed to the Commission just prior to the meeting,
represented staffs recommended changes to this section of the Plan.
Commission questions and comments included the following:
IMHOFF = She asked why the land use standards have been broken down into these
categories. She said: "it either duplicates what will be elsewhere in the document or
it isn't a clear representation of the categories..., If we are going to discuss sub-
categories in more detail, either we don't need these three lumped -together categon a
in the beginning, or we need to be more descriptive about what we. mean by
commercial. These three categories seem artificial to me." She felt this felt "old
fashioned" and was not the way she viewed land use elements working in more
advanced areas.
DOTSON (addressing Ms. Imhoffs comments) - " I think in terms of the core and
satellites. Within the core there are a couple of sub -categories and different kinds of
satellites and different principles would apply. I guess I see these as starting points
and were not looked into them."
DOTSON - "is there a difif Lerent place in the Plait where we talk about flow
communities can be built out of land uses and also about strategies related to
expansion and intensification?" (Staff said this would be placed in the introduction to
the Land Use Designation to the Plan.)
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IMHOFF - "I always go back to our guiding principles. For me, that is the heart of
some of the important things we've said as a group. Some of the things 1 think would
fit really well. Some of those things need to be incl! �ded, somewhere. If it's the Land
Use introduction, fine."
DOTSON - "I had six.things noted beside the introductory statement --the vision
statement, economic development, water supply, fiscal irTipac.t, sustainabRity, and -
transportation. I thinking we need to get into those things to set the framework before
we get into the zoning standards."
IMHOFF (speaking about the Industrial designation) - She recalled that during the
UREF proposal there had been discussions about industrial having a housing and
commercial component mixed in and that an industrial usage that is highly water
denenrlant would not be desirable. "It —ms like we- have gotten more- progressive in
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looking at industrial sites but we don't reflect that yet."
HUCKLE - She expressed the feeling that all developments should be required to
provide access to adjoining properties. She felt this should be a "firm policy."
IMHOFF - She wondered if there should be a category addressing "community
villages."
IMHOFF - "If you are a new person reading this Plan, when you come to the
residential scale development options --they should either be just focused on the urban
area, and clearly that way, or for the whole county and have the whole list.... it
sounds like there are three types of residential scale --conventional, cluster and
planned --but we are also now saying that there are some other things that happen in
the county that should be described here."
DOTSON (responding to Ms. Imhoffs comment) - "It's called scale, but it almost
seems like those are approaches."
HUCKLE - She hoped the Plan could be made clearer and more succinct.
DOTSON - "Maybe what we need to do is look at headings --like 'residential scale'-- as
residential development approaches, ... because scale fits better with what's called
growth areas, where you're talking about urban areas, community and village.... So
maybe we just need to look at the headings to fit it together better."
NITCHMANN - He suggested that the sections should be written with a goal in mind
as to what the section is really trying to say.
JENKINS - He suggested the possibility of references, in the introduction, to further
explanations which will appear elsewhere in the document.
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NITCHMANN - He felt it is important that the Plan be a document which is easily
understandable by both citizens and developers. He pointed out that if developers
must hire experts to help them understand the Plan, it adds to the cost of housing.
IMHOFF - She questioned the intent of the "first couple of paragraphs" related to
development options. She noted that it is not a complete list, so "what's the point?"
"if the idea is that we're going to have a place in the Comp Plan where Sorneone flew
to the community can find some of the residential development options --that is sort of
implied by this section-- but when I read it it says there are three types of options,
though there are probably more ... but how does it really help the people?" (Staff
suggested that these paragraphs could possibly be relocated elsewhere in the Plan.)
Ms. Imhoff suggested getting rid of the first paragraph and say instead: "We have
three types of development options that occur, and... you'd be writing a section that
we have development that can happen to many different type areas of the county --we
have the urban area, we have villages, we have communities, we have the rural area.
Then you can talk about design guidelines for those."
DOTSON - "Maybe conventional and planned applies to industrial and commercial, as
well as residential."
DOTSON - "Are some of the things we're stating in the Plan redundant with what is
already in the Zoning Ordinance? Are these things that aren't in the Ordinance but
should be? Sometimes there are things you really can't say in the Ordinance but
would like to achieve, so you put them in the Plan." He felt the public education
aspect of the Plan was important but he did not know how much of the public
education aspect of zoning matters should be in the Plan. He felt this particular
section of the Plan was more "zoning like" than it should be.
HUCKLE - She wondered if development designs like that used by Ednam should be
mentioned in the Plan.
IMHOFF - Referring to conventional development, she suggested picking up some of
the comments made by the Crozet Study.
IMHOFF - "is there any advantage of trying to target, in the Comp Plan, a couple of
key in -fill areas, either by mapping them or by descriptive language?"
IMHOFF - Referring to the public education component of the Plan, she suggested
there be included some pictures of densities of specific prolects, with explanations of
the densities included.
There was a brief discussion about density definitions. Ma. Imhoff suggested the
possibility of using "gross densities: rather than labels of high, medium..and law, Staff
felt such an approach might be of concern to the public because they would not know
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exactly what the densities would be. Staff also felt this might make the public process
more difficult because it would then be up to the Commission and Board to define the
densities at the time of rezoning. Ms. Imhoff felt the 1-6 range might be too broad for
low density. Ms. Imhoff said: "We've talked about minimum density. To me there are
areas where our low density should not be 1 du/acre. There seem to be very few
areas where we should be talking about 1 dulacre. I want to say that the range
should be 3-6." Mr. Blue asked: "if we do that, how can we possibly say in the Comp
Plan that we want to preserve the agricultural land --that we don't want any rural
residential. That would mean that most of us who are sitting here are living in places
where we should not be living." Ms. Imhoff understood the discussion was about
"urban growth area designations." She continued: "If we're all going to let it come in
at 1 du/acre in our urban areas, that's going to be too low. That's what I was saying."
Mr. Blue agreed. He added: "Then maybe we should be aiming for 95% of the growth
in the growth areas rather than 65%." Ms. Huckle felt those types of densities would
have to have areas provided for open space and play areas.
There was a brief discussion at the end of the meeting about a possible meeting with
the City Planning Commission. It was the consensus of the Commission that the
Chairman should proceed to arrange for a joint meeting.
The work session ended at 8:40.
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