Charlottesville agrees to settle zoning lawsuit while others call for reform

Charlottesville City Council has voted to enter into a settlement agreement with a group of property owners who sued the city over adoption of the zoning code in December 2023. The action at the October 20 Council meeting comes at a time when neighbors of two proposed buildings are demanding Council revisit the code and make changes to stop or limit development.

City Attorney John Maddux briefed Council with a brief history of the Cville Plans Together initiative which created an affordable housing plan, a new Comprehensive Plan, and a new zoning code. All three have the intent of making it easier for developers to build more housing without needing approval from the Planning Commission or the City Council.

After a series of legal hearings, the main issue in the suit is whether the city complied with Virginia code. Plaintiffs have argued that city staff did not seek a traffic impact study from the Virginia Department of Transportation. A trial is scheduled for September 2026.

“In between there we would have to conduct significant discovery, including depositions,” Maddux said. “We would have to get our experts up to speed on the case. We would have to depose the plaintiff’s experts. There’s a lot of litigation that would happen between now and September and then that assumes that there wouldn’t be any further appeals necessary after that case.”

Maddux said he believed the city would win the case, but one of the plaintiffs approached City Manager Sam Sanders with an offer to settle the case if the city would conduct the study. He added this would save the city in legal fees to prepare for the trial.

“It’s going to bring a lot of stability and reassurance to our development community and help us really move forward with some clarity and purpose around our zoning,” Maddux said.

The study itself has not yet been commissioned but Council agreed later in the meeting to use $650,000 from the city’s Capital Improvement Program contingency fund for work to create an understanding for what infrastructure needs the city might need as it grows.

“I am hopeful that as we move through the scoping process with VDOT and as we refine the scope for the growth, for the growth model and the associated studies with that, that we will be able to bring those prices down,” said Deputy City Manager James Freas.

Council voted to direct Maddux to proceed with the settlement and Freas to proceed with the study.

Earlier in the meeting, the chair of the board at the Public Housing Association of Residents spoke out against a proposed apartment building at 843 West Main Street adjacent to Westhaven.

“City Council must change the zoning code to prevent these luxury high rise apartments from being built around our low income, historically black neighborhood,” said Joy Johnson, a longtime Westhaven resident. “And we need more than one opportunity to comment on the by-right buildings which is currently only at the [Board of Architectural Review].”

Under the Corridor-Mixed-Use 8 zoning, LV Collective is seeking an 11 story building. To get that height, they must provide an additional ten percent of affordable housing units on site or pay into the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund.

Westhaven itself is being redeveloped to increase the number of units using $15 million in funds from the City of Charlottesville. Neither Johnson or any other representatives from PHAR mentioned this information. I wrote an article about the site plan in today’s C-Ville Weekly.

Another student housing building is planned for Fifeville and went before the Board of Architectural Review on October 21. The night before, nearby resident James Snyder asked Council to invoke emergency powers.

“Unfortunately, our properties got rezoned to seven stories,” Snyder said. “Now that’s ridiculous and it needs to be fixed.”

Snyder read from a resolution he had prepared to create a historic district citing Virginia Code §15.2-2306.

The Development Code already has a zoning overlay district designed to limit building height on sections of Cherry Avenue and Preston Avenue. Properties within the Core Neighborhood Corridors cannot exceed seven stories and to get that height Council must grant a special exception permit. Learn more on page 103 of the Development Code

“These racially diverse and affordable neighborhoods historically met their day-to-day needs on adjacent corridors,” reads the code. “The Core Neighborhoods Corridors (-NC) district is intended to support these neighborhoods and implement the Comprehensive Plan goals of encouraging construction and continued existence of moderately priced housing, creating and preserving affordable housing, [and] respecting the cultural heritage of the adjacent neighborhoods.”

The city’s Department of Neighborhood Development Services is currently in the process of making minor revisions to the Development Code with a focus on revisions for clarity and fixing grammatical errors. Council last had a briefing in June, as I reported at the time.

City Councilor Lloyd Snook said that with the lawsuit out of the way, the elected body could decide to make more changes as demanded by neighbors of those two projects.

“Do we want to revisit the question that allows by-right projects such as the LV Collective project, such as the 7th Street project?” Snook asked. “If we were to do something about those, as we are being asked to do, we would have to amend the ordinance.”

Council adopted the new zoning code on December 18, 2023. Five days earlier, they made several decisions at a work session including about the role the Board of Architectural Review might play in determining height. At the time, Snook had suggested any building over five stories anywhere in the city should require a special use permit. (read that story)

“And that didn’t get any support from the rest of you guys,” Snook said. “And we basically wound up with what we have right now, which we’re hearing complaints both as to the 7th Street project and as the LV Collective project on Main street, which at the moment, as our zoning ordinance is written right now, the City Council does not have the power to affect.”

City Councilor Natalie Oschrin said she is not ready to have that conversation because she claimed the lawsuit has prevented the Development Code from being implemented as designed.

“The market hasn’t gotten a chance to actually do what it has done, what we’ve engineered it to do,” Oschrin said. “The zoning code lawsuit has held up development because. And I’ve heard this from people trying to build because they’re not able to get the financing to build those larger projects throughout the city.”

Oschrin asked for an update on the zoning updates that NDS is working on. The Planning Commission held a listening session on October 14 that will hopefully become a story on Charlottesville Community Engagement.

At this point in the conversation, Maddux said he was concerned that Council was having a discussion about potential changes in the zoning code without it being properly advertised.

City Councilor Michael Payne suggested his colleagues take up the matter sooner rather than later given neighborhood opposition in 10th and Page and Fifeville.

“I think it’s clear that the community expects us to have that conversation and to be transparent about our thinking in whatever decision we ultimately come to,” Payne said.

Sanders said he would try to arrange to have a further discussion at the November 3 meeting.

With two projects in development, one question: If Council does make a change to affect these two projects, would the developers have standing to seek remedy in the court?

Before you go: The time to write and conduct research for this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the October 22, 2025 edition of the program. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.