Albemarle’s next Comprehensive Plan passes through Planning Commission

The end is near for AC44, the name given to the update of Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan. The document provides overarching guidance for growth and development, including continuation of a policy that restricts growth to about five percent of the county’s landmass.

Albemarle County did not hire a consultant to write the update process and instead took on the project inhouse. The last plan was adopted in June 2015 and Supervisors officially began the review in November 2021.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to adopt AC44 on October 15 after a public hearing. The Planning Commission had their public hearing on October 2 and got some community engagement figures from Ben Holt, a long range planner for Albemarle County. In all there were four phases.

“We’ve had more than 40,000 visitors to our AC44 website,” Holt said. “And throughout the four phases, more than 2,700 people have participated in AC44 engagement in the form of online surveys, email comments, chat kit, discussions, and attendance through either in person or virtual events.”

Many elements of the 2015 plan have been condensed such as reducing the number of activity centers and consolidating more than 20 land use categories into 12 in the development area. AC44 builds off of the recently adopted Economic Development Strategic Plan and the Housing Albemarle policy adopted in July 2021.

“The overall length of the plan has been reduced to 278 pages in comparison to the previous 406 pages in the 2015 plan excluding the appendices,” Holt said.

After the Board adopts AC44, the document will not go into effect until January 1. In the meantime, staff will create an implementation plan that will include additional details about how AC44 will begin to influence county policy.

“Staff will also further refine our process for small area plans, including those activity centers and incorporating multimodal transportation plans,” Holt said. “AC44 will also continue to inform the zoning ordinance modernization project as our county code is updated and rewritten.”

Another item in the implementation plan will be a restoration of a way for property owners to seek approval from the Board of Supervisors to have rural land added to the designated growth area. This would take the form of a citizen-initiated Comprehensive Plan Amendment, an ability removed by a previous Board who wanted new additions to only be considered when individual master plans were up for review.

“We recognize that with the opportunities for somebody to amend the future land use map really being set upon when we do master plans for each area that may not be frequent enough to meet existing conditions and things that are changing in the market,” said Michael Barnes, Albemarle’s Planning Director.

Changing the Sweet Spot?

During the public hearing, two men who own land near the interchange of Interstate 64 and U.S. 29 asked for their property’s designation to be changed from from the purple of Industrial to the pink of Community Mixed Use. Land owned by Sweetspot LLC was brought into the development area in 2015 as I wrote at the time for Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“For the last 10 years there has not been any interest in our land for industrial purposes,” said Doug Holliday. “However, there has been interest in developing the property for other uses.”

For two years, the land was included in Riverbend Development’s rezoning request for the Sieg property that went before the Planning Commission for a public hearing in early September. The company asked for a deferral to come back with a more concrete proposal. One of the sticking points was that Riverbend was in no position to guarantee an easement across the Sweetspot land to future county parkland.

While there was some support for recommending the change, the Commission opted not to do so at this late stage in the process.

Public hearing

Another speaker at the public hearing was Neil Williamson, president of the Free Enterprise Forum. He called AC44 a missed opportunity to expand the development area to provide for housing and commercial space.

“This is a plan for the status quo and will result in further gentrification and less housing affordability across Albemarle County,” Williamson said. “Virginia state law mandates that all local governments adopt a comprehensive plan to guide future development and ensure orderly growth as outlined in the Code of Virginia.”

During the AC44 process, Supervisors directed staff to remove consideration of studying some commercial uses at the Shadwell and Yancey Mills interchanges on I-64 as I reported for C-Ville Weekly.

The draft still contains language that sets up criteria to be considered when thinking of future growth area boundary adjustments and a representative from the Southern Environmental Law Center asked for that to be removed.

“Because premature expansion of the development areas would undermine the county’s growth policy, we remain concerned about the inclusion of criteria for development area boundary revisions in the Comprehensive Plan,” said Carroll Courtenay. “Such criteria should instead be developed through a separate planning process in order to give them appropriate, appropriate attention and to allow for adequate public input.”

After the public hearing was closed, Commissioner Julian Bivins noted that there had been many emails sent to the county asking for the language on expanding the development areas to be removed to a different document. He expressed disappointment that an active campaign at the very end of a four-year process would result in a change that had had support from the Board of Supervisors.

“It feels like we’re wordsmithing because some people took the opportunity to send group emails because a number of the things that we received over the last 48 hours for all intent and purpose, was the exact same email, except they changed their name at the top and at the bottom,” Bivins said.

Commissioner Lonnie Murray expressed his concern about the language during a work session on August 26 and repeated the comment after the public hearing.

“There’s a lot of factors at play that really aren’t being discussed here,” Murray said. “And I think that it needs a lot of work.”

Commissioner Nathan Moore said his reading of land use data is that the development area is filling up.

“It’s not full, per se, but we’re getting there and we’re going to get there,” Moore said. “It’s just five percent of the county’s land. And I feel like we should be starting these conversations now about, you know, where to expand the development area.”

Moore suggested one way to proceed would be the development area boundary as it was in 1979.

However, Commission Chair Fred Missel suggested they look at the criteria and Murray read through many of them asking for them to be eliminated. Moore said he didn’t support any of the changes.

“At most, I would support putting the word ‘potential’ in the headline where it says potential criteria,” Moore said.

Commissioner Luis Carrazana said the AC44 project has been imperfect and a long process and the section on future development area expansion was not quite ready. He thought a recommendation could be made without getting too bogged down into the specifics.

“What we’re signaling to the board is, hey, this is a section that we got to pay attention to and we don’t think that these criterias are necessarily hitting the mark, so let’s sit down, spend some time and evaluate and come up with a better set of criteria for, for this section,” Carrazana said.

Bivins said the criteria would help staff and future Planning Commissioners make determinations as developers seek land they can build on. He agreed with Moore that the county will eventually run out of space, but homes can always be built in the rural area for those with means.

“I just feel as this plan gives you, gives us, or gives future people a reasonable way to engage with the planning commission on how do we sort of continue to bring this community forward,” Bivins said.

The Planning Commission voted to send the draft on to the Board of Supervisors with some recommended amendments. The Board of Supervisors held an additional work session on October 3 and that will be my next story on AC44.

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