An update on Charlottesville's Comprehensive Plan update
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On Monday, August 24, an advisory group charged with overseeing the review of Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan will meet at 4 p.m for the latest in a series of meetings that have taken place this year, mostly virtually. In broad terms, the C'Ville Plans Together initiative is reviewing the rules and goals for how things get built in Charlottesville. The steering committee is charged with ensuring a wide range of community input.
Last year, the city hired Rhodeside and Harwell for nearly $1 million to complete work that began in early 2017 with on the update of the 2013 Comprehensive Plan, a state-mandated document that requires the Planning Commission in each Virginia locality to plan for “physical development of the territory within its jurisdiction.” That work stalled after civil unrest in the summer of 2017 and after an early draft was revealed in the summer of 2018 that caused some concern.
Rhodeside and Harwell and subcontractors, got to work earlier this year. On August 11, the city Planning Commission got an overview to date, which in addition to the update of the Comprehensive Plan, also includes a rewrite of the zoning code and a new housing plan. Let's hear that again from Jennifer Koch of the firm Rhodeside & Harwell. The acronym NDS stands for Neighborhood Development Services.
"The effort that we're calling Cville Plans Together is an effort that we as a consultant are working with NDS, the Planning Commission and others to continue the update to the Comprehensive Plan that was started in 2017, 2018," Koch said. "That includes a big focus on housing and housing affordability with a specific housing plan that will be part of the housing chapter of the Comprehensive Plan."
The consultants took feedback from the public and stakeholders in May and June. Their work builds on a draft Comprehensive Plan that the Planning Commission presented to Council in the summer of 2018.
Draft Comprehensive Plan Chapters – from 2017-2018 process (from CvillePlansTogether website)
Housing – Edited version, Clean version (no edits)
Economic Sustainability – Edited version, Clean version (no edits)
Urban Environmental Sustainability – Edited version, Clean version (no edits)
Historic Preservation & Urban Design – Edited version, Clean version (no edits)
Transportation – Edited version, Clean version (no edits)
Community Facilities – Edited version, Clean version (no edits)
Community Engagement
One of the subcontractors is a firm called Brick and Story. LaToya Thomas with the group reviewed the material from the community engagement phase from May and June. (link to survey charts)
"One of our primary goals when we started this effort was to really make some good connections in the Charlottesville community across a broad swath of residents, stakeholders and interest groups," Thomas said. "Our goal was also to develop partnerships now that would also be leveraged going forward in this process. There's a very robust and rich network in Charlottesville already so our big focus is to try to tap into those networks."
The COVID pandemic has affected much of the engagement work that was supposed to have occured. Thomas said they had to go online.
"As most of you know, we adapted our approach to virtual and telephonic methods," Thomas said. "Some of the key tools we leveraged were the project website to share information and collection information about the community, Zoom-based webinars, Zoom-based virtual conversations."
There were also mailing to homeowners, as well as targeted conversations with different interest groups ranging from JABA to African-American home-owners. There was also a community-wide survey that has 1,170 responses.
"We got a lot of comments on the survey, rightly so, that it's hard to comment on different priority areas because they are very connected," Koch said. "I think as we think about the overarching values for the Comprehensive Plan, to get those guiding principles, that's really the place where I think we can start to pull something together and create that narrative."
Taniea Dowell, who has been on Planning Commission since August 2014, said she didn't see anything new in the survey. She said that a lack of perceived community engagement efforts was one of the reasons given by City Council when they decided to hire a consultant to continue the review of the Comprehensive Plan update.
"As a Planning Commissioner reviewing this information, I'm having a hard time seeing where any of the data you have collected has changed from our first run of collections," Dowell said. "It seems that we have the same people responding and we're still not hitting that mark of the younger generation and also people of color responding to our survey."
Thomas said they will look at this data to plan new ways to get to communities that did not respond. For instance, only 8 residents from Westhaven responded, or 0.7 percent of the total. She acknowledged there are other gaps.
"We certainly didn't have much youth participation as we would have liked," Thomas said. "We had a call with a few of the Charlottesville Youth Council representatives as well as with the Charlottesville City Schools, also understanding the schools were navigating their own challenges," Thomas said.
Thomas said the consultants will also help educate people about what Comprehensive Plans are for and how they are grouped into different chapters representing different aspects of a community. If you're really interested, I recommend taking a look at previous documents:
2001 Charlottesville Comprehensive Plan (chapter by chapter)
2007 Charlottesville Comprehensive Plan (full document)
2013 Charlottesville Comprehensive Plan (full document)
A lack of trust?
Commissioner Lisa Green went through the review process that resulted in the 2013 plan. She was also on the Commission when review of that plan began in January 2017, as was Commissioner Jody Lahendro.
"Jody and I were at the Westhaven Days and you said you had not a lot of response from Westhaven. I think what I heard the most at that time was that it was a lack of trust."
Green said many in Westhaven in 2017 were concerned about being displaced by new buildings. Westhaven and all of the other public housing properties were part of a master plan adopted in 2010 that was created by the firm Wallace Roberts and Todd.
The move comes at a time when the Charlottesville Housing and Redevelopment Authority is already moving ahead with new units for the first time in a generation. The Piedmont Housing Alliance will break ground this fall on the first phase of the Friendship Court subsidized housing complex.
Recommending future policy changes
On August 11, the Planning Commission was shown a 14-page presentation on the philosophy behind the emerging affordable housing strategy. Sarah Kirk and Phil Kash are with the firm H R and A, the consultant subcontracted to work on the housing plan.
"We are a planning, economic development and public policy consulting firm and we work on a broad range of issues, but we are primarily the bridge between public sector and private sector actions,"Kash said. "In this case it's housing where the public sector wants to take on housing issues and is trying to, part of that necessarily involves the private sector."
Kirk said the guiding principles for the work are promoting racial equity. Another is that the problem can't be solved within the 10.4 square miles of Charlottesville.
"Housing is a regional issue and we [believe] doing meaningful regional collaboration is going to be important if we're going to make meaningful change and progress in addressing this priority housing issue," Kirk said.
Kirk said the housing policy will have a component that seeks to alter the city’s land use rules. On Thursday, August 27, the Steering Committee is expected to get a first look at some of the potential solutions.
“Land use is really about revising the city’s regulations and development approval processes and the goal of that is to allow for an increased supply of housing production in proportion to the amount of demand and particularly we’re thinking about increasing the supply of housing in high opportunity areas," Kirk said. "When we say high opportunity areas we talk about areas that are either served by transit, have access to good schools, moderate and high-income neighborhoods, and basically talking about where people live.”
The firm Code Studio, another subcontractor, is working on zoning changes to increase the amount of housing that can be developed in these areas, as well as increasing the amount of accessory dwelling units.
“We’re talking about identifying additional areas where multifamily can be allowed by-right and areas that allow multifamily right now making sure that special use permits are less necessary so it is more actually by right in practice,” Kash said, adding that will cause some people to get upset but that is the case in any community he has worked in.
Commissioners review
When it was time for the Planning Commission to weigh in, Commission Chair Hosea Mitchell said the city is largely built-out.
"We need to factor in to that whatever we do that we are built out and there is not a lot of space to build stuff so we’re going to have to take stuff down to build up stuff and the spaces where there is space to build stuff,” Mitchell said.
Commissioner Taniea Dowell, a native of Charlottesville, said she was concerned about the city becoming too dense.
“I know we definitely need more housing, we need more affordable housing and not these ridiculously priced high-end units that the average working definitely person cannot afford," Dowell said. "We need housing that does not require you to be someone work 40 plus hours a week over more than one or two jobs and you still have to apply for a subsidy in order to live in the city. We also need to keep in mind that while we do need more housing we do not want to be built to the max either. I think that was one of the other things the earlier commission when working on this comp plan discussed. I guess we know that we need more housing but we don’t want to have these enormous skyscrapers to get us that housing.”
Kash said that new development will likely always go for the highest rent, but that inclusionary zoning practices could add units that can rent below market.
“Inclusionary zoning is a requirement that in new housing that is developed and existing housing that is significantly redeveloped, a portion of the units are affordable," Kash said. 'It generally targets 60 percent of area median income or 80 percent of area median income. It’s normally in the range of eight to 12 percent of the new units. And there’s a lot of variation about whether there is any incentive such as allowing for additional density or waiving parking requirements.”
Kash added that the pandemic will likely not hurt the desirability of Charlottesville as a place to live.
“COVID is not going to hurt and make Charlottesville less desirable,” Kash said. “People are going to have more flexibility in location. We live in a free market economy which means that people can bid on properties and those with more money win those bids, and that bidding and that leads to displacement.”
Kash said building more new houses should take pressure off of existing neighborhoods, but that there is a limit to that theory. He said there are no easy answers.
“And Charlottesville may decide it doesn’t want to go that approach, that it doesn’t want to have supply keep up with demand, that it wants to preserve character," Kash said. "The ability to protect affordability if it doesn’t, though, requires either very strong tenants’ rights or an enormous amount of subsidy.”
Commissioner Lisa Green, who is wrapping up ten years on the commission, said the extension of Water Street between Carlton Road and downtown Charlottesville would have been a great location of affordable housing. But units built as part of C&O Row are now selling for over a million a piece.
“And to me, I fought that because I said that’s a perfect place, it’s on a bus line! " Green said. "That’s the most desirable place for affordable housing. It’s near downtown, it’s near jobs, and it’s on a bus line. And [now] we have a row of…$1.3 million town homes. And I don’t see where those have taken pressure off of the surrounding neighborhood to provide affordable housing.”
Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg said he wants to see more residential growth in the city as well as Albemarle’s development area. He said he would like to see more denser apartment buildings in North Downtown such as the one on Altamont Circle and at the old Monticello Hotel at 500 Court Square.
“The vast majority of growth in the region has been in Albemarle County lately and in the outer counties surrounding that, like in Ruckersville up in Greene putting in lots of townhomes," Stolzenberg said. "From a climate perspective, that’s obviously very bad because we’re sprawling further and further out, and we’re disturbing more of the natural environment and people are commuting further to come in.”
Stolzenberg said the price points in outlying communities are more affordable, so many still drive to qualify. He would also like to see more density in existing neighborhoods, but laments that many existing redevelopment doesn’t help those with lower-incomes.
“Single family homes that get torn down and get rebuilt as much much more expensive single-family homes or just renovated into much more expensive single family homes,” Stolzenberg said.
Commissioner Dowell said she wanted to make sure there was room for home ownership in the equation.
“I know we need more units and I know we’re talking about multifamily, trying to get those, but I do feel like if we are going to make change in this city, especially for those below 80 percent of [area median income], you still have to figure out some type of affordable single family home because an affordable single family home not only makes a difference today," Dowell said. "It creates generation wealth that makes a difference ten, twenty, thirty, forty years from now.”
Commissioner Jody Lahendro, who has been on the Commission since August 2014, said he hoped the work of the previous commission to identify locations of more dense housing would not be lost.
The Steering Committee begins at 4 p.m. on Monday. If you want to get a preview, take a look at the video from the August 11, 2020 Planning Commission meeting.
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