The City of Charlottesville’s Department of Neighborhood Development Services is now reviewing land use applications under an updated set of rules approved by Council earlier this year.
I wrote a story on those changes last week and now report that the Charlottesville Planning Commission got an update on April 14.
“At the end of last month, the new development manual and the development review changes went into effect,” said Matt Alfele, Charlottesville’s development planning manager. “These are all related to last year’s 2025 development code amendments and process updates.”
An information release was sent out on April 16.
“Please visit our website at Development Review to access the latest information, download necessary resources, and ensure compliance with the new standards,” reads a section of that email.
The 2025 review introduced a framework where any change was placed into one of three tiers with three requiring more work and community engagement. Changes approved by Council were Tier 1 or Tier 2 and dealt with grammatical errors and clarifications.
The 2026 review is going to begin soon and a subcommittee has been put together with work to begin in May. That consists of Planning Commission Chair Carl Schwarz and Planning Commissioner Ross Harness.
Alfele said he will give a presentation to the Charlottesville Area Development Roundtable in May as well. One of the ideas is to clarify that this subcommittee works on clean-up of the code and not on larger policy issues. That will be handled by the long-range planning manager.
“Because we deal with the code, we run into these policy issues so we capture them so they can be placed on the larger work plan for the department,” Alfele said.
Many in the community have asked the City Council to amend the zoning code to extend the Core Neighborhood Overlay District to more of Fifeville, 10th and Page, and Rose Hill to stop projects like The Mark on 7th Street SW in Fifeville and an eleven story building at 843 West Main Street. So far, City Council has not publicly directed for that work to begin.
The person who has been the long-range planner now has a different job in city government. Ose Akinlotan is now Charlottesville’s assistant director of communications and public engagement.
The Planning Commission also heard from NDS Director Kellie Brown who said the city will soon be putting out a request for proposals for a consultant to review the city’s stormwater regulations. That’s part of an overall “Environmental Policy and Regulatory Review” funded by a $1.5 million transfer from city’s capital improvement program contingency fund.
“We will be looking to use that to update the city’s stormwater management regulations and developing associated technical reports and toolkits,” Brown said. “And the review team will include staff from multiple city departments to provide a cross functional review and consider alignment with overall comprehensive plan goals.”
Another forthcoming study is on a mobility plan. The Planning Commission has an update on that in late March as I reported.
For more background on the 2025 Development Code clean-up process, here are several stories from the last year. My thanks to paid subscribers and donors for their support.
- Charlottesville Planning Commission briefed on forthcoming updates to zoning code, June 13, 2025
- City Council briefed on Neighborhood Development Services work plan, forthcoming zoning changes, June 20, 2025
- City Council agrees to minor zoning code changes, while some want major reform, C-Ville Weekly, February 25, 2026
- Charlottesville City Council weighs in on student housing changes, January 26, 2026
- Charlottesville PC looks ahead to next set of zoning changes, February 27, 2026
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