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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSP201300012 Review Comments Special Use Permit 2013-05-31COUNTY OF ALBEMARLE Department of Community Development 401 McIntire Road, North Wing Charlottesville, Virginia 22902 -4596 Phone (434) 296 -5832 Fax (434) 972 -4176 May 31, 2013 Dr. Lyn Warren 841 Wolf Trap Rd. Charlottesville VA 22911 RE: SP201300012 Les Yeux du Monde Dear Dr. Warren— Thank you for the recent application for this special use permit. Please find review comments included in this letter. Please see the enclosed resubmittal schedule for a list of dates on which you can submit your revisions and responses to review comments (below and attached), as well as for possible Planning Commission dates. (Please note that the listed dates are the earliest possible, but actual dates need to be selected to suit the revision schedule for each project.) COMMENTS Planning (Scott Clark) The primary concern for the Board of Supervisors in considering this request will be the appropriateness of the use under the Comprehensive Plan. Your property is located in the Rural Areas, where agriculture, forestry, and resource protection are the primary goals. Commercial uses in the Rural Areas are usually evaluated on the scale of their impacts on those primary land uses, and on the degree to which they serve rural land uses and communities. You are also located in a Mountain Protection Area and the Southwest Mountains Rural Historic District. All this means that a proposal for a commercial retail use, even one as unusual as an art gallery, will be considered very carefully. The scale of the use and its potential impacts on rural resources and infrastructure will be an important part of the review. If the Board decides to approve the request, there are likely to be conditions of approval that limit the scale and frequency of the use. Your property is included in the Eastham Agricultural/Forestal District, which is one of the County's voluntary land - protection districts. Any special use permit request in a District has to be reviewed by the Agricultural/Forestal Districts Committee. The Committee provides a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors, who, in the case of special use permit requests within districts, need to make an determination that the request is consistent with the purposes of the districts before approving the request. (Those purposes are contained in Chapter 3 of the County Code.) Please let me know as soon as possible if you will be unavailable or out of town at any point in the next couple of months, so that I can schedule the Committee's meeting on a date when you can attend. Committee meetings are usually held on Mondays. • If the Board of Supervisors approves the permit request, there would almost certainly be conditions limiting the numbers of opening events, the hours of operation, etc. Therefore I'd like to confirm that the numbers in your application (maximum 10 openings per year, maximum attendance at each 75 persons; 20 talks and closing events per year, maximum attendance 20 persons) will be sufficient for your needs. Also, it appears that your latest operating time is 7:30pm. Given that some events run longer than expected, what would say is the latest you would want customers on the site? We will likely need to recommend a closing time that allows for slightly longer events but that prevents late -night activities. • How do you control the number of attendees at an event? Are tickets sold or provided in advance? If not, do you have a way to prevent attendance levels from significantly exceeding the typical 75 persons? • Do you ever use amplified sound systems, either indoors or outdoors? Would you be willing to accept a condition of approval prohibiting outdoor amplified sound? From past experience, that is a good way to address concerns over noise. • Have you installed, or do you plan to install, any new outdoor lighting for the gallery? If so, please describe the design of the fixtures. (We usually require full- cutoff fixtures to avoid impacts on adjacent properties.) • The application mentions a forest - management plan. Please provide a copy of the plan so that we can look into ways to use that existing plan to help limit visibility of the gallery. • Have you had your well or septic field evaluated by the Virginia Department of Health for the level of use the gallery generates? Please provide any information you have on your well and septic system. If you don't have any evaluation of their suitability for the proposed use, we can work with the Health Department to find out what information they have, and what their concerns are. • Do you have catering and/or food preparation at the gallery? If so, for which events? • Please confirm that the commercial use of the gallery building would be only for the art- gallery uses described in the application, and not for paid meeting, weddings, or other events not related to art sales. Zoning (Amelia McCulley) • Please see attached memo. Engineering (Glenn Brooks) • [Planning note: The County Engineer will have comments on the physical aspects of the use. I expect to have his comments next week, and will forward them to you as soon as I receive them.] Virginia Department of Transportation • [Planning note: Having reviewed their initial response, I have requested more detailed comments from VDOT. Those comments should be available next week, and I will forward them to you as soon as possible.] Building Code (Jay Schlothauer) • No objection Fire /Rescue (Howard Lagomarsino) Based on application investigation and information from the building official stating that the occupany load will be limited to 50 persons or less, fire rescue has no objections. Planning note: The application states that you could have up to 75 persons per event, but the Fire /Rescue approval is contingent on their not being more than 50 persons in the gallery building at any one time. Please describe how you will prevent occupancy from exceeding 50 persons if more than 50 customers are on the site at one time. The content of the VDOT, Fire /Rescue, and Engineering comments will tell us whether or not you need to re- submit with additional information, as described below, before preparing this proposal for its Planning Commission hearing. As noted by the Zoning Administrator, we should meet to discuss the potential conditions of approval once we have all the reviewers' responses. Resubmittal or Public Hearing Within 30 days of the date of this letter, please do one of the following: (1) Resubmit in response to these comments on a resubmittal date as published in the project review schedule (the full resubmittal schedule may be found at www.albemarle.org in the "forms" section at the Community Development page). Please use the enclosed resubmittal form; OR (2) Request a public hearing be set with the Planning Commission based on the information provided with your previous submittal (a date will be set in accordance with the Planning Commission's published schedule as mutually agreed to by you and the County), OR (3) Request indefinite deferral and state your justification for requesting the deferral. (Indefinite deferral means that you intend to resubmit /request a public hearing be set with the Planning Commission after the 30 day period.) If we have not received a response from you within 30 days, we will contact you again. At that time, you will be given 10 days to do one of the following: a) request withdrawal of your application, b) request deferral of your application to a specific Planning Commission date as mutually agreed to with staff, or c) request indefinite deferral and state your justification for requesting the deferral. If none of these actions is taken, staff will schedule your application for a public hearing based on the information provided with your original submittal. Please be advised that, once a public hearing has been advertised, only one deferral prior to the Planning Commission's public hearing will be allowed during the life of the application. The only exception to this rule will be extraordinary circumstances, such as a major change in the project proposal by the applicant or more issues identified by staff that have not previously been brought to the applicant's attention. As always, an applicant may request deferral at the Planning Commission meeting. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to meet or need additional information. I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the issues raised by this application. Sincerely, Scott Clark Senior Planner, Planning Division r *'. County of Albemarle Department of Community Development Memorandum To: Scott Clark, Senior Planner From: Amelia McCulley, Zoning Administrator Date: May 30, 2013 Subject: SP 2013 -012 Les Yeux Du Monde Gallery I have reviewed the initial submittal and have the following comments: 1. After meeting with the applicant, reviewing the Zoning Ordinance and discussing the use with Greg and Wayne, I advised them to apply for a special use permit for "gift, craft and antique shop." A craft shop is defined (below) while the other terms are plainly understood. Craft Shop: An establishment wherein hand -made goods are offered for sale. 2. The regular activities (gallery, special exhibitions, artist's talks and other educational events, etc.) should be accommodated with the 10 or more parking spaces that are more formally established on the property. Please ask the applicant to provide information about numbers of parking spaces typically used for the peak events such as the larger (75 people) openings. I have not yet visited the site; although the aerial photo shows sufficient room along the access road. It will be good to hear the County Engineer's advice about whether any improvements, such as gravel widening, are necessary to approve parking along the access road. 3. One of the neighbor's comments regarding visitors missing this property can be resolved with a business sign, once this use is approved. The applicant can apply for a sign permit for up to a 24 square foot freestanding sign at their driveway onsite. 4. The scale and intensity of this use are limited by the size of the building and the hours of operation. I suggest that these become conditions for approval. 5. Because the use has begun, before it is in complete compliance with the Zoning Ordinance, they will also need to comply with any conditions of approval. Once those conditions are drafted, we can discuss with the applicant what an appropriate timeline might be for meeting them.