For the first time in over ten years, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors has adopted a Comprehensive Plan update to guide development in the 726 square mile locality. The six elected officials voted unanimously on October 15 to approve the AC44 plan which leaves Albemarle’s development area boundaries the same.
However, the growth management strategy that makes up part of AC44 now contains language that lays out some criteria that may be considered if the time comes to make adjustments.
“AC44 emphasizes maximizing efficient land use within the current boundaries and does not recommend boundary revisions,” reads page 11 of the growth management plan. “Looking longer term, it is also essential to plan for potential future revisions, even if none are currently anticipated.”
View the adopted plan:
Updates since last work session
Before the public hearing, long range planning manager Tonya Swarzendruber went through some of the changes made since the Supervisors final work session on October 1.
“We updated the language that regarding the potential criteria for assessing the development areas as well as updated the future land use map per year direction on the Sweet Spot property,” Swarzendruber said.
The owners of an 82.61 acre parcel of land owned by Sweet Spot LLC asked late in the process to have their designation on the Future Land Use Map changed from Industrial to a flexible category that would allow for residential. Supervisors voted 4-2 at the October 1 work session to grant that request.
A Comprehensive Plan contains many strategies that staff are to use to achieve goals and objectives. To guide their work during implementation, AC44 suggests a set of seven overarching principles called “Big Moves.”
One of the first AC44 items to come back to the Board for a decision after adoption will be a way for property owners to ask to have the Comprehensive Plan designation for their land changed.
“We will be back in front of you with a citizen initiated comprehensive plan amendment,” Swarzendruber said. “We also anticipate developing development area plans that cover areas of activity centers, affordable housing, urban design and so on. We’ve heard over the course of the development of AC44 that a rural area plan is needed. So we intend to incorporate it into our work plan over the next several years.”
Planning Director Michael Barnes said staff is working on a process for how someone might initiate a Comprehensive Plan Amendment. That used to be in the county’s land use rules but was removed in favor of only reviewing requests when growth area master plans are reviewed.
“We review applications, we’re reviewing them against the Comprehensive Plan,” Barnes said. “And there may be aspects that we didn’t think about now in a couple years from now that market conditions have changed or individual circumstances or such that we should review the proposal and say, hey, maybe we need to change the game plan.”
Supervisor Diantha McKeel did not seek reelection to the Jack Jouett District and won’t be on the Board when the item comes back sometime in early 2026. She supported staff’s request for flexibility.
“We have to recognize that what you all are experts, we’re not experts,” McKeel said. “We are sort of the eyes and ears of the community. But we have to be flexible because you and us, we often don’t know what we don’t know.”
Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District did not support adding this process. She said the county needed to be careful about undoing policies of environmental stewardship, policies that she said helped attract AstraZeneca to invest $4.5 billion in two factories in Albemarle’s growth area. She said she spoke with the company’s vice president of global operations and chief sustainability officer at the groundbreaking on October 9.
“I had a delightful conversation with Pam Cheng after the ceremony and she volunteered to me that they never would have considered coming to the county without our community culture of environmental and natural resource protection,” Mallek said. “That is their company culture. And they would not go to someplace that did not take that very seriously.”
Mallek had voted against changing the designation for the Sweet Spot land. She said she’d received two phone calls from people who likened it to a vote on June 8, 2011 when another 4-2 vote by the Board of Supervisors revived the dormant Western Bypass project with no advance notice to the public. I reported on that at the time for Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District had also voted no against the Sweet Spot change and shared Mallek’s concerns about provisions in AC44 that set up a future process for being able to swap land between the rural and growth areas.
“I think we need to recognize that there are a lot of criteria that haven’t even been discussed yet and would need to be part of a discussion before anything would take place along those lines,” Andrews said.
Public hearing
Six people spoke at the public hearing beginning with Rob McGinnis of the Piedmont Environmental Council. He said the organization is not against economic development, but feels Albemarle should begin to review potential impacts.
“The county should start the process of identifying potential impacts, and that should be beneficial and adverse if they are, from growth driven by the county’s economic development strategic plan,” McGinnis said. “That hopefully will start sooner than later.”
Neil Williamson of the Free Enterprise Forum called AC44 a failure because the growth area boundaries should have been expanded to prepare for the future.
“You, my friends, own this failure,” Williamson said. “Due to a lack of vision and the reality of an evenly split board of supervisors, AC44 ended up much the way it started over four years ago. Confused, conflicted and perpetuating the status quo.”
Stuart Overby of the advocacy group Don’t Spread On Me thanked the county for adding language about the spread of sewage sludge on agricultural land. Action 2.6 in the Environmental Stewardship chapter reads: “Investigate establishing a biosolids ordinance that allows for testing and monitoring application of biosolids, as allowed by State Code”
“It’s a great first step,” Overby said. “And now that the end of the comp plan process is nigh, I hope that you can find an opening to move forward on actually adopting such an ordinance, perhaps as part of the zoning modernization plan.”
That process has been undertaken concurrently with AC44.
The other speakers were rural area advocate Tom Olivier, Crozet resident Tom Loach, and Carol Courte nay of the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Final changes
Supervisor Michael Pruitt of the Scottsville District said he believed language about swapping rural area and growth area land in AC44 is not quite ready, but had confidence it would be as it is further reviewed.
“This is a policy that we want to envision having, but what that’s actually going to look like, how we’re going to do it, whether or not we might throw the whole thing out because it turns out to be untenable or not popular with the community, those are next steps,” Pruitt said. “Our Comprehensive Plan is us saying, this is something we want to pursue and this is something we want to pursue.”
Before the final vote, Supervisor Mallek made a motion for the Board to reconsider the vote on the Sweet Spot, but it failed 2-4. Mallek also made a motion for the Board to consider a resolution that had been adopted by the Crozet Community Advisory Committee that sought further clarity on language in AC44 that lays out criteria for future growth area expansions. I wrote about that resolution for C-Ville Weekly.
Mallek’s was the only vote in favor of her second motion.
The White Hall Supervisor tried again to change AC44 to direct staff to not proceed with the citizen-initiated Comprehensive Plan amendments. Supervisor Pruitt offered an amendment to her motion to have the final line of AC44 read: “Property owner-initiated amendments to AC44 may not include additions to the Development Areas.”
That motion passed 4-2 with McKeel and Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley voted against. Minutes later, the entire plan was adopted unanimously. AC44 will not go into effect until January 1.
How well did the county do in terms of public engagement? Staff want to hear from you and there’s a survey available for your input.
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