Since 2018, property owners in Albemarle County have not had the opportunity to request an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan to change the designation of their land in the Future Land Use Map.
The final paragraph of the implementation chapter section of Albemarle’s new Comprehensive Plan suggested the county consider a change.
“To offer options to property owners, the County may look at revising the process to include property owner-initiated amendments to AC44,” reads page 224 of the section. “Property owner-initiated amendments to AC44 may not include additions to the Development Areas.”
Since 2018, Supervisors can initiate an amendment on behalf of a property owner. Landowners can also file for a rezoning or special use permit and make a request for a Comprehensive Plan change at that time.
At a work session on May 6, Supervisors learned that staff’s preference is to not make any changes.
“The previous experience with the [Comprehensive Plan Amendment] application process did not result in viable proposals by the Board and diverted resources from other work priorities,” said David Benish, Albemarle’s development process manager. “We believe the same would occur again if that were reinstituted.”
However, staff suggested an alternative where a Comprehensive Plan amendment could be made concurrently with a rezoning or special use permit application.
Benish said there are times when applicants make de facto Comprehensive Plan amendments such as when there is a request for additional density in the rural area. Two recent examples are a proposal for a mobile home community in the rural area called Chestnut Grove which exceeded suggested residential densities. Another is the Beaver Hill Mobile Home Park in Crozet. The Planning Commission recommended denial on the latter on April 28 as I reported for C-Ville Weekly.
Benish said under the alternative, the Comprehensive Plan amendment idea would be tied into the rezoning or special use process.
“What we envision is that staff comments on the CPA component would be provided within the first round of comments,” Benish said.
Planning Director Michael Barnes said there are many times in the development areas when a land owner may want to change the designation in the Future Land Use Map.
“This may be something to say they want to change something, for example, from industrial uses to a residential uses,” Barnes said. “Is that okay? Is that something we should even be processing from a county standpoint? And if the Board’s willing to entertain that, then it may be something that either we have to do a Comprehensive Plan Amendment to let that move forward.”
Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District had asked for the paragraph not to be included in AC44 which was adopted in October 2025. She said the practice in place since 2018 works well and she wants to keep zoning review separate from the Comprehensive Plan review.
“I am, I guess, very concerned about collapsing the process because I’ve seen a couple that have come through all together, but they were not in the rural area,” Mallek said. “They were in the growth area. There were but many that have had the good, good approach to do the CPA first before investing the time in doing a whole code of development, et cetera, et cetera.”
Supervisors reached consensus to keep things the way they are.
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