The Albemarle Planning Commission does not often get involved with the design of projects in the county’s entrance corridors but recently weighed in on a proposed change to the zoning code to make it easier to place solar panels on rooftops in those areas.
On May 26, the appointed body first got a primer on what the entrance corridors are from planner Margaret Maliszewski. They were first adopted in 1990.
“Entrance corridors are streets that run to or through the historic areas of the county,” Maliszewski said. “The entrance corridor district is an overlay district. That means that entrance quarter regulations are. In addition to the underlying zoning, entrance corridors were established to help ensure that the character of new development is consistent with the historic character of the county.”
For nearly 20 years, the Architectural Review Board had to grant a certificate of appropriateness for every application in entrance corridors. In 2010, the Board of Supervisors agreed to an amendment that created something called a “countywide certificate of appropriateness.” These allow for staff to approve some projects if they meet all of the technical requirements.
“The process was streamlined at that time by making 11 types of development available for staff level review,” Maliszewski said. “These are types of development that are relatively small in scope and or they’re expected to have less visual impact than others.”
For this to work, the ARB itself has to set criteria for each category. The most recent updates were for projects in the Rio / 29 form-based code overlay district and for public-private partnerships. Now the ARB is writing those guidelines for solar rooftops.
“The criteria right now that the ARB are considering are things like how the panels are arranged on the roof, the configuration of the panels, how they relate to the slope of the roof, how far off the roof they are, that sort of thing, making sure that the other related equipment isn’t visible,” Maliszewski said.
The Planning Commission had no objections but Commissioner Luis Carrazana wanted to know if the guidelines could require that sourcing for panels follow an emerging supply-chain protocol called Design For Freedom.
“It’s an organization that looks at humane practices of manufacturing,” Carrazana said. “And with solar panels in particular, there’s a concern how most of the panels or the parts of the panels are manufactured using slave labor.”
Carrazana said the University of Virginia is looking into the issue.
Maliszewski said that sounded like important work but could not be addressed in design guidelines.
The Planning Commission recommended that the Board of Supervisors approve the change to the zoning. The ARB will continue to work on the criteria.
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