Salvation Army expansion to go before Charlottesville Planning Commission

Editor’s note: I have decided to begin posting items from the Week Ahead to this archive of Charlottesville Community Engagement in order to be able to find items more easily as I search for when things took place. As I write this on this date, I know that in the future I want to take an additional step and provide a better intro to these. For tonight, though, I’m just cutting and pasting. I’m glad to able to do this in the hopes of getting as many people as possible to know what’s coming up in local government. Anyway, for now…

The Charlottesville Planning Commission will meet at their pre-meeting at 5 p.m. followed by the regular meeting at 5:30 p.m. They gather in CitySpace at 5:30 p.m. (meeting info) (meeting files)

One item on the consent agenda is the final subdivision plan for the Hillsdale Apartments that will be built as part of a redeveloped Seminole Square Shopping Center. The Great Eastern Management Company presented a preliminary site plan at a conference in March 2022 as I reported at the time.  The final site plan is still under review and will include 352 residential units, 18 of them will be designated as affordable. 

This subdivision plan divides the project into two lots with two new public streets to be built in the future. 

The other item on the consent agenda is the site plan for Hillsdale Place. That’s the name Riverbend Development has given to the redevelopment for the former K-Mart building. That went before through a site plan review conference last October, as I wrote about at the time. 

There’s one public meeting and that’s for the redevelopment of the Salvation Army on Ridge Street.

“The Applicant is proposing to expand from 58 emergency shelter beds to 114 emergency shelter beds; expand meal capacity from 80 seats to 120 seats; increase the size of the multi-purpose room from 1,928 square feet to 2,415 square feet; and expand the meeting rooms capacity from 40 seats to 84 seats,” reads the staff report. 

That requires a special use permit. The existing use is nonconforming.

There will also be a discussion of the zoning ordinance update. As of this writing I still have to get through the work session from July 5. It does not appear that other media outlets in this community want to write about this process. Why is that? Could it be because there’s no further detail about what the subjects might be? 

Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the July 10, 2023 Week Ahead. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.