Six townhouses planned for single-family house on Alderman Road

When the Charlottesville City Council adopted a new zoning ordinance last December, one of the main goals was to create more housing in neighborhoods that had been zoned for single-family use. A legal challenge remains alive as I reported earlier this month. 

The Development Code went into effect in late February and so far there has not been an onslaught of applications seeking to take advantage of additional development rights created by Council’s vote. 

Now perhaps the first such plan has been filed with the Department of Neighborhood Development Services. Evergreen Home Builders paid $835,000 for 303 Alderman on June 17. Exactly a month later, Shimp Engineering submitted what the new rules refer to as a major development plan for a proposal that would remove the existing single family house in favor of six townhouses on the 0.31 acre lot. 

Under the old rules, a property owner would have needed Council to approve a rezoning for that level of development, a process which allowed a process where members of the public could express their thoughts at an official hearing. Now the land is designated as Residential-B, which means that six units can be built without Council’s permission. As many as 12 can be built if half of them are designated as affordable. 

In order to build what is in the plan, Shimp Engineering has to ask city staff to grant a waiver to exceed the maximum height in order to all six units on the site while meeting other technical guidelines such as “minimum built-to width” and “maximum building massing.” In Residential-B, the latter is 60 feet. 

In this case, the primary street is Alderman Road and the lot is 96 feet wide. 

“In order to meet the build-to requirements, buildings along the primary street must be at least 65 percent of 96 feet or 62.4 feet,” reads a July 17 letter from Julia Moore of Shimp Engineering. “Our proposal meets this minimum by proposing three townhomes each with 21.7 feet of frontage for a total of 65 feet.” 

However to make the dimensions work, Shimp Engineering has designed a plan for the buildings to be at 65 feet. The development code gives the zoning administrator the ability to make a designation. 

Moore said an “administrative modification” of the rules would not affect other properties. 

“All buildings are still well within the setback requirements,” Moore writes. “In addition, because the three townhouse facades’ depths are staggered, they create the appearance of three separate buildings rather than one large massing.” 

The other three townhouses would front onto Minor Road. 

So far there is no city response available in the development portal or on the zoning website. There are no provisions in the new Development Code for public input into the process. 

The major development plan offers a glimpse at the new requirements in the zoning code. 

• In Residential-B, buildings cannot cover more than 65 percent of the lot. In this case, the total size is 14,395 square feet which creates a maximum of 9,356 square feet. The proposal is a total footprint of 6,105 square feet. 
• The code requires a nine foot ceiling on the ground floor but this proposal would be for ten feet.
• While no parking is required to be built, each unit has one garage.
• The plans also include a six foot wide “clear walk zone” on Alderman Road as well as a five foot greenscape zone.

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