Much of the discussion about land use planning is conducted in jargon that is not easily understandable by the general public but decisions made will affect the future. On October 22, 2024 the Albemarle Planning Commission continued its review of the land use chapter of the next Comprehensive Plan.
One of the items in that chapter is a Future Land Use Map. Every parcel of land in the county’s growth area has a color on top of it which states what land use category it will have in the new AC44 plan. These range from Neighborhood Residential (yellow) to Corridor Mixed Use (pink) and from General Commercial (red) to Rural Area (light green).
“We have 12 standard categories,” said Tonya Swarzendruber, a planning manager with Albemarle County. “We’re including the rural area in that number.”
Commissioner Nathan Moore represents the Rio District and has advocated for making it easier to build a denser community. He said the current version of the Future Land Use Map doesn’t seem to allow that to happen.
“Last time we were here two weeks ago, I was saying, let’s not have a yellow neighborhood residential,” Moore said. “Let’s start with missing middle, because there’s all this great rhetoric and three pages of all the great things that missing middle can include. And then I look at the map and there’s actually not any missing middle in the sort of urban ring.”
Each color corresponds with a recommended density scale. In the draft land use chapter, “Neighborhood Residential” calls for three to six units per acre and that’s an increase from previous plans that had the lower end of the range set at one.
The “Middle Residential” supported by Moore is light orange and would allow between six to 18 units per acre.
Albemarle Planning Director Michael Barnes said the approach at this point is to locate middle residential and other higher-density areas near the activity centers that are also designated in the map.
“A lot of what we’re doing on the land use map itself is trying to have some fidelity to the previous planning efforts and not change those areas,” Barnes said. “So everybody’s going to be talking about this like richer yellow, you know, the neighborhood residential category. There’s a lot of that on the map, as you’ll see, and that represents a lot of R1 and R2 zoning in our community.”
Moore said he does not feel much fidelity to those plans and would like the county to get moving faster on building more densely.
“It’s just hard when it feels like an emergency,” Moore said. “There’s our prices keep spiking and spiking and spiking and we’re pushing lower income people out today is why I bring that up over and over.
However, Moore said he understood the approach and supported concentrating on centers.
At-large Planning Commissioner Luis Carrazana echoed Moore’s point and suggested there could be less yellow in some areas.
“Some of those activity centers, they’re smack in the middle of yellow,” Carrazana said. “So are there opportunities around those activity centers that then we begin to think, well, is there enough zoning so that we go from the yellow to the to the missing middle around those activity centers?
The conversation touched upon what can be done beyond the map to convince the owner of the Riverbend Shopping Center and other commercial centers on Pantops to move forward. The Land Use Chapter designates the place as a “Regional Center” but decisions about its future are solely up to the Great Eastern Management Company.
Samuel Miller District Planning Commissioner Karen Firehock said she used to ride her bike to the Riverbend Shopping Center and she’s also thought about how to convince the owner to move past single-story development that’s currently there.
“What does the county do to incentivize someone to have this vision?” Firehock said. “I mean, it’s right by the Rivanna Trail so it has a lot of other amenities around there. So it would lend itself really well to residential and mixed use.”
However, Firehock said the county has to do more than just put out a plan calling for action. She also said infrastructure to help support the Pantops Master Plan hasn’t yet been built such as pedestrian bridge that was briefly considered in the mid 2010’s.
“What does the county do to incentivize someone to have this vision?” Firehock asked. “It’s right by the Rivanna Trail, so it has a lot of other amenities around it so it would lend itself to residential and mixed-use.”
White Hall District Planning Commissioner Lonnie Murray said he felt there should be more than one color for the rural area, suggesting that another color be used for greenspace in the rural areas.
Jack Jouett Planning Commission Julian Bivins noted there are a lot of empty storefronts and suggested other Albemarle County departments get involved.
“This is where I think you speak to your economic development,” Bivins said. “How are we going to make that happen? Because it’s not apparent to me.”
Much of the push for additional density is to satisfy one of the purposes of the county’s Housing Albemarle plan which was adopted by the Board of Supervisors in July 2021. The narrative for Objective 1 states that the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service projects an Albemarle population of 138,485 by 2040. (read the plan)
“To accommodate this growth, the County will need to add approximately 11,750 new units to our housing stock over the next 20 years,” reads page 27 of the plan. “The majority of this need—9,031 units or 77 percent of the required new housing – is projected to be met with units already in the residential development pipeline.”
Rivanna District Planning Commissioner Corey Clayborne wanted to know if those numbers are being updated and if an update would help with AC44.
“I’d be curious if we know the housing needs for our community and if based off of what we’re showing here in these recommended density ranges and looking at the activity centers on the map and where we’re trying to push development,” Clayborne said. “If they were built out according to this, what is that impact to the amount of units we actually need? Are we actually solving. How close are we getting to solving our housing issue?”
Bivins suggested the county come up with a way to update numbers more frequently. Carrazana suggested the new UVA School of Data Science could get involved.
The Planning Commission will next see a portion of the AC44 document at their meeting on November 12.
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 is from the October 30, 2024 edition of the newsletter. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.
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