Kellie Brown has been Charlottesville’s Director of Neighborhood Development Services for four months and had the opportunity on January 21 to brief City Council on her department. She gave a similar presentation to the Planning Commission in December.
“We are an organization of 27 staff people and so we are not a huge department by any means, but we do provide resources and staff program areas across a wide spectrum of services,” Brown said. “That includes our building code, property maintenance, code enforcement, zoning.”
A new long-range planning manager will soon be arriving from a similar position in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brown mentioned another new position.
“We are recruiting for a UVA Property Maintenance inspector to support property maintenance enforcement in the student housing surrounding the university,” Brown said.
Brown noted that the city’s new Development Code is about a year old having been adopted in December 2023 and implemented in February 2024. She said improvements will continue to be made to the way the developers and builders share their plans with the city.
“We will be continuing to focus on making improvements to our electronic plan review system,” Brown said. “So we have cityworks, it’s a great tool for supporting digital intake of applications. There’s where we’re still working to improve the way that system works for us and for our, for our customers as well.”
Upcoming initiatives include continuing work on the Downtown Mall as well as work to better understand how many places are offering short-term rentals throughout the city. The city is purchasing software to keep track.
“That’s also just a really valuable data point in our decision making about how we want to treat this use in our community,” Brown said.
NDS will also be conducting a thorough review of the city’s environmental regulations to see if there are any obstacles to the construction of housing that might be tweaked such as rules on critical slopes, stormwater regulations, and tree requirements.
Other items from the report:
- There will be a small area plan conducted for the 10th and Page Neighborhood
- The city will further study the possibility of allowing commercial uses in residential areas
- There will be efforts to educate people on how the Development Code works, as well as other potential changes to the rules for zoning
- The city will also begin work on what Brown called a “comprehensive transportation plan” to consolidate existing documents such as the Streets That Work plan and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan
Another area of study will relate to building heights on the Downtown Mall. The Board of Architectural Review has had three preliminary reviews for 200 West Main Street to answer developer Jeffrey Levien’s question of whether he can build a 184 foot tall building on the site of the Violet Crown. Brown did not mention this project specifically.
“Does the development code really provide guidance for building height, building form on the mall in a way that kind of provides clear expectations for everybody?” Brown asked. “Or is there maybe some additional work we could be doing to kind of clarifying what is the shared vision for building height and form on the Mall?”
Brown presented three options to Council which you can see in detail in the image below.
So far, no one has written about that third review of 200 West Main but you can expect a story here on Information Charlottesville before too long.
Before you go: This article was originally sent out as part of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter in the January 29, 2025 edition. Both are functions of Town Crier Productions. You can support the work by purchasing a paid subscription or contributing monthly through Patreon. You can also send in a check or send an email, but drop me a line first.
