Four public hearings for Charlottesville Planning Commission including CIP 

The Charlottesville Planning Commission will begin the year at 85.7 percent of its total capacity as there has been a vacancy since June when Commissioner Liz Russell left and was not replaced. The Commission will also continue the practice of holding a pre-meeting at 5 p.m. off camera in a conference room in City Hall. This is not a closed session and anyone can attend to witness discussions of the agenda. (meeting info)

At 5:30 p.m., they will walk down the hall to meet in City Council Chambers. City Council will join them at 6 p.m. for public hearings. 

Will this be the first meeting for Michael Joy, the new non-voting representative from the University of Virginia? Joy will replace Bill Palmer, who has been in that position for five years, according to a letter sent by the UVA Architect to city officials in mid-December. 

The first public hearing is on the Capital Improvement Program. The planning Commission had a work session in November on the $136M five-year plan and there’s a memo in the packet  with additional information. Some highlights:

• The city will produce a draft sidewalk priority list by the end of the fiscal year. That’s June 30 if you didn’t know. 
• The city has seven Smart Scale projects and three will begin work after July 1 when FY2025 begins. They are the Emmet Street Corridor Streetscape Phase 2, the 5th Street SW Corridor Streetscape, and the Ridge Street Safety Improvement project. 
• There is a table listing how many trees the city has been able to plant in the past several years. A metric I’d like to see is how many survived. 

Items not currently in the CIP are continued investments to implement City Manager Sam Sander’s initiative to address homelessness, a pre-K center at Walker Upper Elementary School, and renovations of Central Library that would cost the city as much as $8 million. 

The second is another public hearing for VERVE Charlottesville followed by an additional public hearing for 2117 Ivy Road. The developers of both agreed in December to increase the amount that would be paid into the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, but that requires an amendment to the proffer statements for each rezoning. The amount for Verve Charlottesville is $6.8 million and the amount for 2117 Ivy Road is $3.25 million.

The fourth item on the agenda is for a rezoning and special use permit for 108 Lankford Avenue. This application was last before the PC on November 14 and civil engineer Justin Shimp sought a deferral as I reported at the time. 

“The applicant is proposing a multifamily residential development with up to 46 units through new construction,” reads the agenda. 

This project is still under the old development rules but the Future Land Use Map designates the property as General Residential. Is this project above that level? And what changed? 

“The application materials (Attachments B and C) now show retention of two of the three existing structures along the front of the property, which staff finds consistent with the neighborhood pattern and scale,” the staff report continues. “However, the three proposed buildings will be taller and have a larger footprint than the typical patterns of the Neighborhood.”

The staff report also notes that several residents of Lankford Avenue voiced concerns about speeding on the street at the November 6, 2023 City Council meeting. The report also notes that no one spoke at the Planning Commission’s public hearing on November 14. 

The Charlottesville Planning Commission will next meet on January 23 for a work session to follow up on the adoption of the Development Code. 

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 January 8, 2024 Week Ahead. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.