Albemarle Supervisors briefed on next steps for zoning changes

To understand how decisions are made in Albemarle County, you have to know something about the Comprehensive Plan and you have to know something about the zoning code and how it may be changing. Such an education is a key component of Charlottesville Community Engagement.

In October, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors adopted an update to the Comprehensive Plan that staff called AC44. Review had begun four years earlier.

During that same period, staff in the Department of Community Development and a firm called the Berkley Group have been working through a series of updates of the zoning code and work on a first phase has been completed and reviewed by the Board of Supervisors in August 2024 but not adopted.

“For background, phase one, we establish the tone, modern language, style and ordinance format of the new project,” said Lea Brumfield, a senior planner with Albemarle. “We worked with the Berkeley group drafting four foundational articles of the new ordinance.”

You can find those first four articles on Engage Albemarle:

• Article 1 — General Provisions
• Article 2 — Administration
• Article 3 — Applications and Permits
• Article 10 — Nonconformities

Both a second and a third phase are currently underway and will be the subject of various work sessions throughout the year. The second phase will continue modernizing the format and the third phase will involve taking actions from AC44 and translating them into new rules for land development.

“There are almost 400 implementation actions in the Comprehensive Plan,” said senior planner Lea Brumfield.”Fortunately, not all of them directly relate to zoning ordinance changes. Forty of them, however, are directly related to zoning ordinance changes that we’re looking at near the short term.”

Brumfield said staff have prioritized actions that can be implemented quickly without years of further study. These are divided into tiers with the first being for short-term action. There are about 30 of these across seven topics.

“The seven topics are not necessarily organized in any particular order, but they are affordable housing initiatives, activity center initiatives, economic development initiatives, modernizing and streamlining development review processes, increasing density across the development areas, iIncreasing mixed use accessibility across the development areas, and the rural area special topics,” Brumfield said.

Much of the public engagement work will be done with stakeholders rather than with members of the general public.

“On specific things like lighting or signage or housing, we’ll have specific groups to do that rather than a mass public work session or public input session on the individual things, because we feel like those took place during the Comprehensive Plan and that’s reflected in the goals,” said Bart Svoboda, deputy director of community development.

Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District urged transparency and said the development of AC44 itself originally involved stakeholder groups where she said records were not kept.

“It was very difficult with the earlier stakeholder groups for the AC44 for anybody not in the secret group to even find out what was going on or what was,” Mallek said. “I mean, there were no minutes, there was nothing available. I wasn’t allowed to listen in. I mean, it was very bizarre.”

Mallek said she supported many of the tier 1 priorities such as reducing minimum lot sizes in some districts as a way to bring down land costs. Another idea would be to allow modular homes as a by-right use in some districts.

“I’m really glad to see that because they actually allow people to build equity whereas manufactured homes do not,” Mallek said.

Rio District Supervisor Ned Gallaway said he favors the approach of allowing stakeholders to take a lead on reviewing the specifics as they are crafted.

“We just did years of engagement on this and it is go time,” Gallaway said. “And this board is the one that has to determine what the actions are and prioritize those actions and go and anything else. Frankly, process wise, it’s not about bouncing or blocking or boxing anybody out. It’s about saving the time.”

There will be another work session on zoning modernization in April.

Resources to learn more:

• Staff report
• Complete list of proposed zoning changes driven by AC44
• Staff’s prioritized list of proposed zoning changes driven by AC44
• Preliminary engagement plans
• Zoning modernization Phase 3 presentation

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