Planning Commission Meeting   1/18/2022

Thank you very much.

Good evening, members of the commission and the public, as well as applicants.

Welcome to the January 18th meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-8, paren 16 and ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting are posted online.

We will be having a couple of different public hearings this evening and we'll be providing further instructions on how to comment on those.

Okay.

Mr. Clayborne?

Present.

Ms.

Moore?

She is absent.

Okay.

Mr. Bivins?

Here.

Mr. Missel?

Here.

Ms.

Firehock?

Present.

Mr. Carrazana?

Here.

And Mr. Bailey?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Quorum is established.

So the first item on our agenda is other matters that are not listed on the agenda that the public would wish to comment on.

If there's any members of the public who would like to comment on an item that is not on this evening's agenda, it would be limited to three minutes.

All right, so trying to give a moment there in case anyone wanted to pop up.

All right, so with that, there is no consent agenda this evening.

There is an item that has been requesting, that is requested for deferral.

We do not need to vote on this because the applicant was not the one making the request for deferral.

The request is due to an advertising error and this item will be deferred

to the February 15, 2022 Planning Commission meeting.

And the item is SP-202-100016 CVEC Caches Corner Substation.

So I'm really just making sure that everyone is aware that that item is being deferred to the February 15, 2022 Commission meeting.

Are there any questions about that?

All right, hearing none, then we'll go on to the next item on our agenda this evening, which is public hearing SP 2020-00008, Boys and Girls Club Northside.

Thank you, Chair Firehock.

Okay, can everybody see my screen?

It should say okay.

All right, well, good evening, everyone.

My name is Cameron Langell, and I'm a principal planner with the Albemarle County Community Development Department.

And tonight I will be giving you the presentation on the staff report for SB 2020-08, which is called the Boys and Girls Club Northside.

And this is a request for a special use permit.

So to begin, I'm going to talk a little bit about the site and where this is located.

The county tax map records indicate that this parcel is known as 60-78A.

As you can see, this property is actually owned by the county public school system, and it's the location of Albemarle High School, Jack Jewett Middle School, as well as Greer Elementary School.

The property measures 216 total acres and the request tonight for the special use permit permit is only within a small area of that that measures 5.15 acres.

On the image, I have highlighted the general location of the special use permit request in red, and I will show some more images on some future slides that go into more detail on that.

But this property, of course, is located within the rural area one of the county's comprehensive plan.

and surrounding uses on adjacent properties, primarily undeveloped land, but to the south and southeast, there are some existing single family dwellings.

Particularly, you can see that there's Georgetown Green, which is a single family attached neighborhood.

And then there's some single family detached residences to the west of that.

So this is an image of the zoning map for this area.

Our property again is highlighted in yellow and it's colored white because that is the color that indicates the RA rural area zoning district.

Most of the properties that surround this parcel are also zoned RA.

The Georgetown green properties, you notice that they are orange in color at the bottom right-hand side of the screen.

And that indicates that they are zoned R6 residential, which allows for up to six dwelling units per acre.

The property does touch hydraulic road on its east boundary and you'll notice a variation of colors over there that are pink, reddish, that represents commercial zoning districts.

Our subject property is located within two overlay zoning districts and that includes the airport impact area overlay and the entrance corridor overlay.

So what this proposal is, is this is a request by the Boys and Girls Club of Virginia to redevelop a central portion of the property that is currently used for driver education purposes by the school system.

Again, this is a more focused aerial image of the location of the proposed special use permit.

You'll notice it looks sort of like a driving track.

That's where driver education activities currently are held by the school system.

This is proposed to be redeveloped for a community center use that the Boys and Girls Club would primarily operate.

In the RA zoning district, the Kennedy Center has to get a special use permit approval by the Board of Supervisors.

So the types of activities that will occur inside this new community center building include the Boys and Girls Club before and after school activities, which they currently hold out of Jack Jewett Middle School.

They are also requesting to relocate the Boys and Girls Club administrative offices from their current location on Cherry Street to this new building.

They also would be able to host activities for outside partner agencies at the new site.

The applicant will go into more detail about what partner agencies that could be, but it would be things like, you know, allowing the Junior League of Charlottesville to have an event there.

The building that they are proposing is two stories tall, and in total it will be about 49,000 square feet.

So this is attachment three from the staff report, and this is the conceptual plan that shows how this area of the property would be developed.

The building is indicated by the blue shapes that you see with numbers, and then the legend on the right hand side of the screen tells you what portions of the building would be used for what uses.

You'll notice that outside the building, they are going to be building some new parking lots and then vehicle pull-in areas that will allow people to drop off and pick up students.

Also outdoors, there will be some recreational fields that will be able to be used for a different variety of activities.

Again, the applicant will talk more about their programming when staff has finished our presentation, but this is the concept plan.

This is another image from attachment three of the staff report and it shows the limits of disturbance.

So this is the area that we're graded to construct all these new improvements.

Again, it does show the general location of the building and parking and outdoor athletic courts and fields.

So as indicated in the staff report, we were not able to identify any factors unfavorable with this request.

And there are four factors favorable.

It's consistent with the purpose and intent of the rural areas zoning district.

We have found that it will not create a substantial detriment to adjacent properties.

This use is consistent with the character of the nearby area.

And finally, the use is consistent with many recommendations from the rural areas and community facilities chapters of the county's comprehensive plan.

So the staff recommendation for the special use permit is we're recommending approval with two conditions.

I have these conditions listed on the screen.

They're also in the staff report.

And these are just zoning performance standards that are typical for these types of requests, specifically limiting outdoor noise and lighting.

Again, this will help be consistent with that second favorable factor, which is the use will not be a substantial detriment to adjacent parcels.

So that's why we're recommending those two conditions.

At this time, that concludes the staff presentation and I am able to answer any questions from the commission should you have any.

Okay, questions from the commissioners for staff.

Thank you.

Thanks, Cameron.

Great report.

Very helpful.

Just a quick question.

It looked like on the site plan, there were some areas that were either critical or managed, I assume, managed slopes that are impacted by the project.

I missed that in your staff report.

Is that accurate?

That's correct.

So this property, again, it's located in the rural areas of our comprehensive plan.

So with steep slopes, these are critical steep slopes.

They're not actually the managed or preserved steep slopes overlay zoning district.

Basically, this applicant has done quite a bit of site design for this proposal so far, and they actually are proposing to disturb some areas of critical slopes on the property, but they've already received approval for a special exception from that from the County Board of Supervisors.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Cameron, for the report.

I did read in one of the summaries that there was an original site that was considered and in a CAC there was some conversations about moving it.

So originally when this was proposed, Boys and Girls Club was looking at developing an area of the property that is to the west or located behind Jack Jewett Middle School.

And in order to build the new building there and all the associated improvements that will go along with this community center, it will require much more land disturbance and clearing of trees, as well as grading in areas of critical steep slopes.

So based on feedback that this applicant heard from staff and CAC and members of the public, they reevaluated that original proposal and identified potential redevelopment of this driver's education course in the center portion of the property.

And the Boys and Girls Club would be having a land lease from the public school system.

Thank you.

Other questions from commissioners?

I can share, just because I've been involved with this and this is also my district, that there was a lot of discussion and the community was actually very pleased for this new location.

It actually uses, it sits on the property if you haven't been out there, it sits on the property in a much more unified way.

And I should add, just as a point of reference, there's a group of, the school system has convened a group of people to sort of think about how should the lambs lean campus, which encompasses

in addition to the Ivy Creek School, which sits sort of low there, how that piece of property can be utilized in a way that enhances and then moves forward the education mission of the county and having the, I'm not trying to be Pierce's sort of, you know, sideman on this, but trying to having the Boys and Girls Club there in that location and taking some of their activities out of the adjoining schools

which everybody should understand they're already in, just made much more sense.

There was some angst about losing the driver's ed space but having lived in this neighborhood for 30 some odd years, I can share with you that this is by far a use that helps more people and they're still doing driver's ed the way we've all done driver's ed.

and perhaps there's an opportunity for a driver's ed course to be put up by Bergmar.

That is a story in the future that we may have a chance to talk about.

And I appreciate that background.

Of course, I had the benefit of

going out there with Commissioner Bivins and Supervisor McKeel of what I think it's over two years now and looking at that area.

I'm glad that there is some movement for a campus and that's really the genesis of my question is

The siting of the building seems appropriate for that function and certainly for ease of construction, constructability and other reasons.

It seems like that's a logical location, however, without really having a campus.

So this is really a plug, Julian.

for a more extensive master plan.

I don't know if this is the right time in the session for this, but I do think that this just highlights that we're building a significant building, it's going to be there for decades, and it's a great function.

However, are there opportunity costs?

Because we don't understand what else we could be doing there in trying to create a campus.

We do have a campus, it's just

It doesn't feel like a campus.

It doesn't look like a campus because of all the other legacy functions that we have in there that perhaps are opportunities for us to take a closer look in how we develop that area and then have some more insight as the next building that comes along.

There's a rationale beyond its ease of construction.

Thank you for that.

I can share with you that in fact is the conversation.

I think it begins on Thursday with a group of people that the schools have assembled to sort of start to think about what would be the master plan for the Lamb's Lane campus.

There's a possibility that the

Existing structures could be redeployed or resited someplace else, which would free up a decent amount of land out there.

Thank you for that additional information.

I have a couple of questions that are really short.

Does anyone else have any other commissioners have questions or comments for staff?

So I don't see any hands up.

So my questions for staff, I'll just say them both now and you can answer them in whatever order.

The first question is just what happens to the driver's ed course?

Are they being unleashed onto county roads or is there another location that's been identified?

for the driver's ed course.

The second question I had goes to stormwater on the site.

I'm curious if because the applicant is, it seems like disturbing an already paved site.

Are they not going to have to do additional stormwater or will, I don't know what the stormwater conditions are on the site if the site has good treatment or not.

Thank you, Chair Firehock.

Yeah, I can answer.

I'll start with the second question about stormwater.

This site has gone through a full water protection ordinance application review with our engineering division.

That includes approval of a stormwater pollution prevention plan, which is commonly referred to as a SWIP, which is the acronym for it.

The development of this site will include two large sediment traps, as they're called, and that's to ensure that runoff and stormwater is caught and managed in accordance with

The applicable regulations that apply here, but yes, they were required to go through the stormwater management process and approval for that.

And then in regard to the driver's ed relocation,

I'm not sure.

There has been no site plans approved to relocate the driving course within this property as of yet.

I don't know if the school system is looking at relocating that to one of the other parking lot areas, potentially an undeveloped portion of this site.

Conversely, I don't know if they're looking to relocate it, but I can get a look into that and get you another answer.

The site which was there, the track which was there is the only place among the three high schools that had a designated fenced-in area.

All the other high schools, Western and Monticello, do it the way that Albemarle is going to do it now is they put up cones and those kinds of sort of a track in a parking lot, which is the way the other two do it.

And while there isn't a

A designated track at the moment, there has been some discussion about is there an opportunity to put a track someplace on some land that the county may have access to and that all three of the high schools would then be able to go to.

So what they're doing now is no different than what the other two high schools are doing.

And if you know that area on, I don't know what the,

Hold on, I don't know what the schedule is, but there's a motorcycle school there on Saturdays and Sundays, and they're using the same area that the motorcycle school uses for the parking and for the fundamental stuff before they do road.

Like everybody else, they take their students on the roads.

Thank you.

All right.

Madam Chair, members of the commission and staff, good evening.

My name is L.J.

Lopez with Milestone Partners.

We serve as the owners rep for the Boys and Girls Club.

And this evening, I have James Pierce with me, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia.

So I'll just offer some brief remarks.

We do have a presentation.

We hope it's fun and informative.

I think the staff did a great job with the application itself.

The special use permit is, as Cameron indicated, request for primary use of the Boys and Girls Club.

Inclusion of organizational operations.

So the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia, their home office, their administrative offices will be housed here.

And the ability to partner and utilize the facility, leverage the facility as a community asset to partner with organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Junior League and

adult rec leagues or the garden club when the facility is not in its primary use for before school, after school or summer care.

So we're really excited about the project.

Happy to answer any technical questions on the application.

A couple of notes based on the comments.

Site plan and stormwater management plan following the WEPO ordinance and all of the site plan and engineering review have already been completed and conducted.

Approval is authorized.

We have

For construction, temporary sediment basins, we have permanent underground stormwater management facilities that are corrugated metal pipe.

Land is at a premium on this site and we wanted to leverage it for maximum benefit of the club members.

And so the stormwater management is not surface in a pond.

It is underground to leverage the site and create as much active and open spaces as we could.

We did purchase stormwater quality credits in lieu of any of the onsite measures.

It was, again, part of the overall stormwater strategy.

So with that, I'll just pause for a second to answer any technical questions on the

Special use permit application.

Otherwise, I'll turn it over to James and share screen and run through a kind of review of the facility.

Thanks, LJ.

It's my pleasure to be here.

Commissioners, great to see you.

I love this project.

We responded, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia, responded in 2018 to a request for proposals from the school system.

The need was how do we serve more kids during out of school times.

Thank you for having me.

land right here on this campus where fully 24% of all students from the county schools attend school every day among the four schools.

You see here our wide array of partners that have made this happen.

Monroe County Schools is right there at the top and we're very proud of that.

And here is down to the nuts and bolts of what goes where.

So to the

Page West, you see something that's in very short supply on this campus, which is flat field space.

If you go out anytime during out of school time, you'll see field hockey, lacrosse, cross country, youth rec leagues.

populating every flat space around, we're very, very happy that we can add some flat playable area to the outside.

And that is envisioned to be shared with the school system during the school day.

So that adds usable space, especially to Ivy Creek and especially to Jewett, but also Albemarle High School and Greer for that external space, which will be easy to access.

Page East is an outdoor basketball court that you can see, a sport court outside, which will be accessible also during the school day.

But that's outdoor rec space, small group gathering space, outdoor classroom space for any of the local schools to be utilizing.

You can see some other features outside, specifically below.

There's a terrace dining and program activity space, which is basically a

couple hundred square foot area back there that is a launching point into the beautiful trail system which surrounds this area and then directly east or west of the building there is the bowl area which is a great outdoor amphitheater style natural amphitheater that's going to kind of take shape as this building comes into play with kind of a stage at the base which is that half court basketball area there.

So those are the outdoor features.

The inside is shown here.

Anything that's blue will be mainly used by younger students.

Anything that's green will be mostly used by teens.

And the pink areas are multi-age.

We serve kids ages 5 through 18, so the entire K-12 age group during out-of-school time programming and all day during the summer.

Inside the building we'll have two gymnasia.

One of them is a large one and one of them is a small one.

and then we have a cafeteria, a cooking, instructional cooking space and then about 10 or 11 small group learning spaces and two games rooms, one for the juniors and one for the older members.

These are also usable during the school day for the functional skills class who can come teach classes in the kitchen to, I talked with people at Greer who said,

Gosh, we are given some kind of spare space that they have on the side.

Wouldn't it be nice to set up a all the time installation during the school day where kids from Greer, instead of traveling outside or in some crowded space in Greer, could come in and meet the beekeepers who are coming to talk to all the reading classes during one week.

get set up at the club and have them come over and extend the learning spaces into the clubs.

As we talked more school folks, they're more and more excited about what the uses of our club could be during the school day when we fully expect for this building to be as full as the Albemarle County Schools want it to be.

In the basement, we have a unique sports facility, which is home to one of the most favorite international sports and that is the game of squash.

You all may know that in the city of Charlottesville, there's a burgeoning squash movement.

At our Jewett Club, we have had for about four years now a strong partnership with the University of Virginia squash program.

And so we're very excited along with building to be able to bring

for Squash Courts Online.

We're hopeful that Deb Tyson will help us to have the first and best public school squash team in the state of Virginia that hopefully will take root right here, as well as the developmental program that will start kids at age five learning the game of squash.

In the upper area, we serve six clubs across four counties and city locations all together, and our home base would love to find a home on the top floor of this building.

It's the long, skinny office building.

I don't really have much to say about it.

The images are my favorites.

So this is the large gymnasium.

Again, it's a great space for mentors and positive adult role models to interact with members in planned programming during the out of school time.

This is a, next one is a picture of the teen lounge.

So this is the, you know, right outside that window is that outdoor sports court that I showed in the outdoor space plan.

Next is the squash hallway.

This is with your back toward the wall and looking out back toward the woods just to orient you.

We'll have one squash professional whose job will be to get kids excited about moving and staying fit and learning the game of squash.

Next is one sample of this.

We have about 10 of these rooms that repeat throughout the facility that, again, we'll be using for our purposes during out of school time, four hours a day after school and a little bit before school if needed, and then all day during the summertime.

But during the school day, again, hope that these rooms will be utilized to their maximum capacity by the Albemarle County Schools.

And here we get down to some real pictures about what's happening.

This picture was taken more than a week ago because there's not a white outline everywhere.

There is a live construction cam that we can send a link to commissioners if they'd like to keep track.

I have it up on my desktop fully 100% of the time and use it as a great break between meetings.

So you can see the outline here.

We have a foundation in place.

We actually, this is about a week old because that elevator shaft you can see on the lower part of the foundation is now about twice the size.

I think LJ Wright doubled the height.

as it was in this photo.

So it's really exciting to see this start to come into play.

Thanks, LJ.

I just want to say one last thing.

We have been invited to participate in the campus-wide visioning sessions.

that several commissioners referenced previously.

We're very excited about that.

This building can be a trendsetter and a change agent for what the rest of the campus could look like.

We certainly looked at four or five different locations at the very beginning in 2016-17 with county staff.

We are very, very excited about this particular location and all of its potential in being helpful in the overall campus plan.

We're very happy to be included.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Corey.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Excuse me.

Mr. Lopez for a great presentation.

This is a great project.

I have three questions that we can move on pretty quickly.

The first one is how far in the future will this project satisfy your space needs?

Is this like your forever home?

This is the maximum number of members that we could serve in this location to help with the need on this campus.

So I think

We're hoping to serve 300 members per day in this location.

There is still going to be a need for the county after school program.

So we are not competing with Albemarle County after school program.

It's going to take every community agency to fill the need in this space.

For our needs, I think this building will last, hopefully, five, six decades.

We're hopeful that this building will be a presence on this campus.

Sounds good.

And thank you for that.

I saw your questions.

Looks like you had a great design team there.

I'd love to ask LJ to help me answer this one because I'm not going to do all the planning that went into this enough justice.

I do know that our architect team has brought in a lot of different advisors to make sure that we're using the sustainable materials as possible and with an eye on long-term sustainability.

Sure, James, appreciate that.

So design team is a local design and construction team.

You saw the community partners that we have largely, excuse me, largely all local.

And sustainability initiatives included, one of which we're excited to announce in the kind of final paperwork almost inked is partnership with SunTribe Solar.

So we're trying to leverage all of the available root space for maximum solar production in an offset of energy consumption.

So that's one that's maybe the most visible and most direct that you'll see.

The others are inherent in just

Building design and good design practice, which maximizing daylight.

So daylighting to the building, offsetting the need for light and energy usage.

energy efficiency through just our building envelope, the building system with in terms of insulation, air barrier, the materials that are used and the assembly of those materials to create and minimize as much air leakage and maximize the efficiency of the heating and cooling system, which again is a reduction on energy.

So all of those were

focuses of the design team and we challenge the design team to do beyond what is code required in a lot of instances.

So while we're not seeking any

Sustainability Certification lead would be the one that's kind of most notable and we're not seeking any of those.

I'll add one thing to that, Mr. Commissioner, and that is, we've learned a lot of lessons from the Cherry Avenue facility, which we built in 2009-10.

And we've added measures such as double door entries, like a little vestibule entry rather than a single door, because man, in the summertime, those doors are used a lot.

Kids go in and out, we have them for 10 or 12 hours.

That's great.

It's my hope that this project can be a model for other development projects that come to the county.

Sure, and the reason why I'm asking it is not so much safety as more of as a community need, right?

We just had a snowstorm that brought 12 inches of snow.

This is a community center.

Can it serve that purpose to be a home temporarily for folks who are out of power for an extended amount of time and those kinds of things is the reason why I'm asking.

That would be my recommendation is to please continue that dialogue.

It's an outstanding question and comment.

And we say yes whenever the county police call us and ask us that question at any of our facilities where we are able to say yes to being a warming center, to being a phone charging center.

In our Southwood location last week, we opened for that exact purpose during a time when many residents did not have power and, you know,

So I think that's an excellent idea.

And we will say yes to that.

I will add that to the list of things that we will do if we are able to, which is be on the county's list of possible warming stations.

And I'd be happy to think about how that goal could be met collaboratively.

Thank you.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

I'm finished, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions for the applicant at this time?

Okay, I'll just make a very quick comment, which is simply that I know that the Boys and Girls Club is a not for profit and you are limited by your ability to fundraise and there's a lot of demand on your budget.

But I would love in some time for you to give some more thought perhaps, I know your building is under construction, but there are lots of sustainability measures that can be done in terms of stormwater runoff.

There's some fantastic basketball courts built in public schools in New York that actually infiltrates stormwater in the court itself.

is an infiltration zone.

There are playgrounds that are infiltration zones that double duty as playground and stormwater collection.

So just, I think that as we think about STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math for kids, this campus could down the road, I mean, it's too late now, but perhaps be a place to get kids more excited about science.

in terms of engineering, not just the building envelope, but actually the landscape itself.

So food for thought for the future, but our charge tonight is to really look at whether the use is appropriate in this location, not to review your site plan so much.

Okay, so I'm there for opening and closing the public hearing portion at once.

All right, so it's back to the commission and actually the applicant has an opportunity to make any further comments they like at this time.

No further comments.

I was very appreciative of your time and consideration for the project.

Thank you, great.

All right, so we'll bring it back to the commission for discussion.

As I noted, this is really an application for us to consider whether the use is appropriate.

And so the use that most closely aligns with this application is that of community center.

And as Mr. Clayborne just said, there are even some additional communities to consider, such as emergency facilities in the time of

disaster.

Oh, maybe I'm just missing the obvious, but since the project is already under construction, wouldn't this have already been asked and answered?

I think that's an appropriate question.

I was able to ask that of staff earlier today.

So I think our council has perhaps some elucidation for us on this topic of us reviewing the use where a building is under construction.

So Commissioner Carrazana, I don't know for certain the answer.

I can say that I suspect that what's happened is that this building has been issued a building permit, but that that's a separate determination from whether the use is authorized.

So even in their current condition, they could go and construct a building that met the building permit and the building code.

And it's my understanding that there is some pressure to try to have the construction underway so that they, should we decide to approve this use, that they would be able to meet their timetable for being able to serve their clients in a timely fashion with the school schedule and summer schedules and all of that.

Yeah, I certainly

I think everyone here is in support.

Obviously it seems like a great project and we've heard as much from several of the commissioners.

It just seems like it obviously it's designed for a specific use site plan was designed and approved for specific use.

It just seems like it should have or certainly the order of things would be that that use would have come forth before the planning commission or the supervisors prior to

getting as far as it did, even the site plan review, right?

I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense, and I don't know if staff want to add any comments to that.

I think that in this particular case, fortunately, it's a use that I think all of us support, but I don't know what the situation would be if it was a use we didn't support.

Would we feel undue pressure to approve this?

Because obviously, many thousands of dollars have already been expended to create this structure for this use.

Would you like our zoning administrators got to stand up?

Sorry, you're down in my corner.

That's all right.

So we did do a determination on this particular aspect of the use.

And Mr. Lopez can probably help me along with this.

But the determination was in relationship to how this particular use functions with the school and what it provides the school.

So there's a determination currently that the uses associated with the school are part of the public use.

As an example, the afterschool program.

So limiting that, this particular use to that allows it to be a public use.

This special use permit would allow the use to be expanded beyond the students, beyond the capability to serve just the school or the school system.

So that's really what's happening.

It's really two parts.

We have the public use part where it is acting, if I describe it, kind of like a contractor for the school that provides after school program and some other things that are strictly associated with the school function.

Yeah, it's an astute question asked and one in which we contemplated ourselves.

Would we proceed in the absence of the special use?

And as Mr. Svoboda

outlined, there was a zoning determination submitted, requested, and the club, so it's before school, after school, and summer operations are a public use, they're ancillary to the public use, which is a special use permit in and of itself.

And so it could operate within Jewett or it could operate within its own facility on the campus as an ancillary use in its own building.

So in the absence of a special use permit this evening, the club before school, after school and summer use could operate.

What the club or I should say what the organization Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia is keen to do is operate the building as a facility and broaden that use to include

partnering with outside organizations.

So partnering with the Boy Scouts and utilizing it for its community center use.

All of the positive things that we just spent the last 20 or so minutes discussing about opportunities for the facility.

In addition,

The use that is precluded currently is the organization's headquarters, the administrative function on the second floor.

That's not allowable under the current use as a club, which is ancillary to the public school use and its special use permit.

So in effect, this tax bet parcel would have two special use permits, one for public schools and its public school use.

and a second for community center use specific to exhibit A, I think, which was in the staff report, which outlined the subject area of the site plan as a community center designated use and all of its associated activities.

the club's use was allowable in the building and the club proceeded with construction for schedule reasons to open fall of 2022.

And this special use permit request was running in parallel with that activity.

And it actually, as the report indicated, been initiated on the prior site when it was paused because we had this same

zoning determination and wanted to encompass all of the uses and clean up, if you will, the zoning determination so that the special use permit allowed the club to be a primary use, the partnership opportunities to be a secondary use to that.

And then through the community center use, the headquarters would be allowed to reside in the facility as well.

No, I just wanted to make sure that we're not going to continue to have a back and forth.

Did you just want to confirm with him?

I would say that that explanation that we just had was much clearer than what I've heard so far.

I would think that when this moves to the board, perhaps you think the board already understands all of this, but it would perhaps be worthwhile of maybe a two-page memo.

Maybe one page will cover it, just saying exactly what Mr. Lopez just explained.

I think that because it does give us pause for concern, but now I understand the difference.

So thank you.

for that explanation.

So back to the commission solely, if we could.

I do get the feeling that there's broad support for this particular use, especially now that we understand what use it is we're being asked to approve.

So I don't know if anyone has any other comments or questions that they want to bring up at this time.

If not, O.C., Mr. Bivins and Mr. Missel.

So I would just share, remind the Commission that we went through a similar process with the community space when we did the Center 2, and then we also did something similar with the NC School.

so that it's basically allowing that space to be open to the community or be engaged in community sort of gatherings.

That doesn't take it away from its use as an educational space, which is what this is.

So as you rightly said, Chair, this is not about them being an education space, because that's basically just taking the functions that are over at GWT and placing them in a new location, which could have happened if the school system had just built the

What's different here is that they're letting public non-afterschool, non-preschool activities happen there and perhaps evening activities, if that's appropriate.

And that's the piece that we're looking at.

And that's the piece that is before us.

And that's no different than happened with those other two locations.

I should also just let you know that most of you do not know this, but I live on the

I live near the school, and I have to say over the 30 plus years that I've lived here, one of the things that we benefit from, Corey, like this is that the power comes on rather quickly, if it's possible, because they are putting those four schools back online.

OK, and while it may not come to my house because of the trees, that's a different that's a different issue, but it gets to it gets to hydraulic roads.

at a much quicker pace than I've seen in some other places.

So for your energy piece, I think the county has already got that sort of pre-wired for us.

Thank you.

I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate Mr. Beers and Mr. Lopez.

I mean, this is an extraordinary project.

I know this has taken quite a bit of time, but the potential for partnerships and changing lives is really, really astounding.

I appreciate the comments, especially I know it's a little bit outside of this

about the master plan.

And if any of you are involved in the master plan, encouraging you to think about infrastructure as part of that master plan so you can avoid expensive underground stormwater management and maybe leverage economies of scale for future uses on that site.

But again, congratulations and thanks for letting us be a part of this.

Thanks.

Anyone else want to make a comment?

Looking through the Hollywood squares here.

Okay, so with that, I would like to see if anyone would like to make a motion for or against this.

Madam Chair, I'd be pleased to make a motion if I could induce Cameron to put up his recommendation, that would be very helpful.

There's two options.

So Madam Chair and commissioners, I move to recommend approval of SP 2020.

Is there a second?

Second.

Seconded by Commissioner Clayborne.

All right, discussion.

Any discussion that is necessary?

Everyone has discussed quite a bit this evening.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. Clayborne.

Aye.

Mr. Bivins.

Aye.

Mr. Missel.

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana.

Aye.

Mr. Bailey.

Aye.

Okay, so the motion passes unanimously with those present.

And so congratulations on getting through the Planning Commission wasn't that wasn't that tricky.

I think we just had some concerns and understanding about how this how this came to us in what form.

So with that, you're off to the Board of Supervisors who will have the final say.

And as I mentioned, it will be helpful if I could have a little bit clearer memo to accompany this explanation of the order of events here and what's being decided.

So thank you, gentlemen.

I'll bid you good night and we'll move on to the next

A public hearing item on our agenda, which is SP-2021-100015 Midway, Martin Store, 115 KB transmission line.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Yes, this is a special use permit for a transmission line upgrade.

And there's a map showing the area that says

in the Batesville area, starting in the Midway area up here on the upper part of the map and running southward.

The proposal is to upgrade an existing electrical transmission line that has been in place for several decades for the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative.

And what they are proposing to do is to replace some aging wooden H poles that currently carry the transmission line

which are 60 to 70 feet in height and replace those with single metal poles 70 to 90 feet in height.

So again, this is the first of a few phases of an upgrade running from Midway at the Northern end to the Albemarle-Nelson boundary and then onwards into Nelson.

And this will be done in phases according to the available funding for the utility.

the poles will just be replaced within the same existing right-of-way that they have now.

And just so I'm interesting, the southern parcel of this first phase of the upgrade is the same parcel you all would have seen recently for the Midway solar special use permit, which was approved.

However, this is not really related to Midway solar in that this is a transmission line running, again, between substations in Albemarle and Nelson.

and that solar facility is intended to connect to more local distribution lines.

So it's not going to be part of this project.

An aerial view to give you an idea of what the current right-of-way looks like.

You can see these wooden H poles here, here and here.

And they're just double wooden poles with a crossbar carrying the current transmission line.

And this graphic from the applicants shows you the existing on the right, which are the double H poles and the proposed replacement on the left, which are the metal poles.

And these are ductile iron poles with a natural oxidized or sort of rust colored finish that'll be quite similar to a brown wooden pole.

So I'll just briefly run through the special use permit review criteria from the zoning ordinance.

First, under no substantial detriment, the applicant's proposal here is to replace each poles with taller minor poles within the existing right-of-way.

There'll be no change in the right-of-way, no expansion.

And so we didn't feel that there was substantial detriment to properties, which are basically one-to-one replacement within the same right-of-way.

Same for the character of the area being unchanged.

This utility right away has been in place for 40 plus years and possibly quite a bit longer than that.

And this is just a replacement of the facilities within that same disturbed area.

Harmony with the purpose and intent of the ordinance.

This is a reliability measure.

essentially a public utility or public, not a public facility, but a public utility to provide power to residential uses, farm uses, whatever else is in this area and beyond to open power in from the generating facilities.

It's needed because the existing wooden poles and cross arms are degraded due to age and the applicant has stated the upgrade will provide increased reliability of power to the region.

Public Utilities are in harmony with and supportive of the agricultural and residential uses in the district.

There are a couple of relevant subsections in 5.1.12, the supplemental regulations for public utilities.

Some of the subsections don't really apply because they relate to buildings and structures.

Subsection C talks about removal of poles and other similar facilities.

These existing poles will be removed as part of this replacement process.

Also some of the current

Distribution lines, the local poles carrying the lower voltage lines to local users will also be removed so that the distribution lines can be hung from these transmission poles, thus reducing the total amount of facilities within the right of way.

Subsection D talks about minimizing

New utilities and river crossings.

There are no new river crossings here because this is, again, an existing right of way.

Nothing's changing in the disturbance area.

There is one temporary stream crossing that is proposed that will bridge the banks with a bridge mat to allow equipment to cross that will then be removed.

And there will be no disturbance down in the stream itself.

So earlier chapter talks about protecting agricultural and forest economies as well as natural resources.

As we've seen in some of these others, the idea here is that replacing poles within the existing right of way avoids disturbance or fragmentation to other parts of the landscape.

And the actual impacts of these are limited to the temporary construction work.

So in summary, we've found that utility line upgrade would increase service reliability without increasing physical impacts or widening the existing corridor.

We have one condition along with our recommendation of approval.

This is the standard condition we use for these poll upgrade special use permits where the applicants are replacing aging facilities within an existing right-of-way and not doing any sort of expansion.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much, Mr. Clark.

Are there questions for staff on this application?

It's very similar to several others we have done in the past, these type of pull upgrades in existing corridors.

Thank you, Chair.

I just have one question, Scott.

With the polls going in this span of time, metal poles being a bit taller, will opportunities be provided for cellular service or cellular equipment to be placed on top of them if there's a relationship that's developed there?

So could this possibly enhance cellular coverage in these particular parts of our county?

I'm not aware that the applicants are planning co-locations in these facilities, but they can probably answer that better than I can.

That's not been raised, just an issue during the review.

Thank you.

I'll ask for them, Chair, if you'd ask them to perhaps speak to that, I'd appreciate it.

Absolutely.

I'm sure they heard you, but if they don't bring it up, I'll remind them.

Any other questions for staff on this application before we hear from the applicant?

Okay, seeing no hands, looking at all the little boxes.

With that, we will go ahead and go to hear a presentation from the applicant.

The applicant present.

I see Mr. Davis, not sure who's giving it.

This is Bruce Marhoff, Chief Operating Officer for Central Virginia Electric Co-op.

Chuck Ford is also online as well.

Scott has represented the project fairly well for CVC.

Regarding the question on cell service, none of the structures are designed

to have additional space or allocated for the attachment of cell communication facilities.

That's not to say that at some point in the future a structure could not be modified if an agreement with the cell provider was established.

Okay, so just to be, thank you for that.

And just to be clear there, it's fine, but there is no, there's no particular presentation from the applicants.

So with the staff report and answering questions.

So if that is correct, do any other commissioners have questions for the applicant?

I'll throw an easy one to anyone from the application team.

I assume that the primary purpose of this project is simply to improve the performance and the safety of this corridor, the reliability of it.

Okay.

And we've all been recently reminded just how precious our power lines are and how easily they can come down.

The little factoid is the average tree height in Virginia is 67 feet.

That means that some trees are obviously taller and some trees are much shorter, but the increase in height of the poles would make them a bit less susceptible to the

the lines hitting the wires, but it would also, the poles themselves would be much stronger.

So I don't know if anyone else has any comments about this particular application.

I'm prepared to make a motion since it's in my district.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I guess my comment is more for just the record.

I'm not sure if it requires a lot of discussion, but I suspect that many more of these projects will be coming our way.

And I hate to use the term no brainer, but to me, this almost seems like a no brainer.

Right.

We want to this is clearly for the public good, the public need.

And so I'm just curious if there is some kind of administrative process in the future that we were not spending a lot of time vetting these kinds of proposals.

But

Go ahead, Scott.

That would take a change to the zoning ordinance because currently the local distribution lines are by right, but transmission lines and transmission pipelines and other facilities just like substations require a special use permit.

In this case, this is a line that long predates the zoning ordinance requirements for that kind of facility.

So in order to do an upgrade, they need a special use permit as the ordinance currently exists.

If I may, that might be something that we could look into.

I don't want to oversimplify it, and I know Mr. Clayborne doesn't want to either, but it reminds me of the drive-through windows at restaurants that we used to have to have a hearing every time McDonald's wanted to have a

a drive-through window or somebody wanted to serve coffee out the window of their restaurant that otherwise could go right through and we created design guidance that if adhered to and staff felt they met the design guidance it could move forward without actually having to go through the

process of having a hearing of the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors and certainly you know our dockets are full and there's a delay for people waiting their turn to get on and of course the cost of doing all this so I'm not sure if if Mr. Clark they'd still have had to do all this because of what you just said about the fact that their lines predate having

You know, a permanent place and that they would have had to come forward anyway, but we don't have to answer that here tonight.

I just think that perhaps maybe staff could investigate that and come back to us at a future date with whether there is some sort of administrative remedy we could use because I don't hear a lot of objections.

to more reliable power poles from this commission.

So maybe that's something they could look into and come back to us with.

We can certainly do that.

As you mentioned, we've done that in the past with drive-throughs.

It's probably something to look at with veterinary clinics.

We've had a few of those, and those are always approved with very little comment.

So when we have an item that comes to the commission or the board and is frequently approved with the same conditions every time, that's usually a good case to make those some performance standards that can be worked in an ordinance as part of an administrative approval.

That would be great, because as Mr. Bivins said, we'll probably be seeing a lot of these.

I mean, I hope we will, because I hope we'll be replacing our poles with more reliable metal poles that are taller.

Other comments?

I should just sort of say that given the

The meeting that the supervisors had, I think was last week or the week before that with CenturyLink and the other provider that I think what I took away from that was that there was just really, really spotty coverage in that part of the county.

So to the applicant, to the extent that you can enhance the coverage there.

and I'm sure they will take that to heart.

There certainly already are plans for other lines to co-locate service for other communications and that is some years away yet because I think Nelson is first for some of those but coming soon to a line near you depending on who your provider is.

But with that, is there any other comments on this particular application?

If not, staff, could you put the motion back up?

I'd hope to have two computer screens tonight, but I failed in that endeavor, so I'm just down to the one tiny laptop.

Right, so I move to recommend approval of SB 202100015 Midway Martin Store 115KV transmission line with the condition listed in the staff report.

All right, seconded by Commissioner Missell.

Thank you very much.

Any discussion?

I'll just say yay for reliable power.

if there's nothing else.

Carolyn, would you call the question?

Yes.

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

Mr. Clayborne?

Hi.

All right.

Hearing a round of approval from all the usual suspects on the commission, this motion passes and moves on to the Board of Supervisors for further consideration.

My cat is also trying to weigh in on this.

Go away.

So with that, thank you very much, the applicant, and good luck with the board.

I'm sure they'll be favorably disposed for the same reasons that we were.

So with that, we'll move on to committee reports.

Do any commissioners have committee reports?

You're muted still.

I'm fixing that.

So I got to play Luis today, along with the deputy director.

We were present without vote, which was fine.

This is not a complaint.

This is not a complaint at the reconvened UVA Master Planning Council.

And that's all to say that the UVA, it seems like this is the season of planning projects.

So the city's gone through one, UVA's going through one, which is actually quite interesting.

And then we'll hear more over the course of that as this rolls out from them.

And then we'll be going through one.

So it'll be the trifecta of planning, of master plans.

And so I just want to share that we got a high level briefing by the people who are helping them, talking about what they're looking at, what they're focused on,

It was a good meeting.

I tried to do me as well by paying attention and asking good questions.

And so did Charles.

So we were trying to do our at-large.

Well, I'm sure it was a big job to step in his shoes, but any other committee reports?

Okay, so nobody else has had meetings since we had our first meeting last week.

All right, so with that, we'll move on to old business, new business.

I have some new business, but is there any old business?

That's right.

New business under that topic, I have asked if folks had any travel plans, which is just sort of a usual question at the beginning of the year, so that we can make sure that there won't be any times we're not meeting quorum.

Some of you probably said travel what travel can't go anywhere.

but maybe you're going on a remote camping trip in the woods with yourself and not come in contact with anything that might spread a virus to you.

So I would like you guys to just email if you do know of either professional conferences or family vacations so that we can make sure there's not a time in July when everyone is in the jungles of Borneo or wherever.

The next

The next item, so if you get that back to me, then Corey and I will take a look and make sure that there's no areas where there's conflict.

I know a couple of meetings I won't be here for that I will turn my mantle over to my vice chair to take care of things.

So the other thing I wanted to also bring up is a conversation that we had in our chairs meeting.

Earlier today, we were talking about the commission schedule in general.

I'll just bring this up now.

There will not be a commission meeting for January 25th because we don't have any topics.

for that session, and there is an option that might also be useful to staff as well as to yourselves, which is instead of holding the first three Tuesdays every month and the last Tuesday as the potential work session, basically holding four Tuesdays,

would move to a every other Tuesday format.

And so you would not have to hold the three Tuesdays, you would essentially be holding the two.

And the work session could be held just before one of the commission meetings.

So it'd be something like, you know, maybe from four to five or three to five, you would have a work session, a break, have a snack, dinner, whatever, and then go into the commission meeting.

So you would essentially have part of an afternoon and a Tuesday evening and then another Tuesday evening, but that would be it, in addition to your many other committees that you serve on.

So I wanted to open that up for discussion.

I know for some people, they may not be able to get off of work early to come to a meeting that could start at four o'clock or 3.30.

But for others, it might work.

And I think I also want to let you know, and I'll ask Deputy Director Rapp to weigh in on this as well.

One of the things he shared with us is that

The way that our format works now is that the staff have a late night with us and then they have a late night with the Board of Supervisors and all day the next day and then they're pretty fried by Thursday and so the question was supposed to be at alternate times it would be a little easier on them.

So I wouldn't want to make it easier on them and therefore much harder on you.

And obviously Jenny's not here to weigh in, but what do you all think of that?

Is that something that would be worth entertaining?

Would it be worth looking into?

Would you be amenable to that type of proposal, the every other Tuesday with?

What first comes to mind is just in terms of how much lead time can we have with

with the schedules that would be during the work hours.

So I think if there's enough lead time, then there's ways to accommodate that.

If it kind of pops in from one week to the next, then I think it might create some challenges for some of us.

That's a good question.

I think it would be the same amount of lead time you currently have.

So usually around, at least by the first of the month, you know that you are or are not having a meeting on the last Tuesday of the month at the latest.

Usually it's more like six weeks ahead.

Yeah, so we try to get the schedule out at least once a month early, but we could set a day.

This kind of came about, I set our schedule as I learned when I got here, it was always done, where you have a public hearing, a work session, a public hearing, then the fourth Tuesday off every month.

And as I did that and saw the board meeting a few weeks ago, what the board does is they have work sessions in the afternoon and then public hearings and their meetings are the first and third Wednesday of every month.

And I started to realize that that's actually the same exact timeframe we do it too.

And we're kind of stacking our weeks pretty heavily and then throwing in an additional one.

I thought if we wanted to stagger that, we could do the second and fourth week of every month.

I know some of y'all like to watch the board meetings when we have a few items going.

Staff has to go to those as well, so there might be a way that way.

They were kind of staggered.

And maybe there might be that opportunity to take that third work session.

It would be better for y'all to not have another Tuesday evening and just tack it on to a Tuesday afternoon.

If that was more immutable, that way we'd have two Tuesdays a month versus three, which is what we end up with now.

I'm fully in support of going, sort of going in the opposite of, or the complimenting the Supervisors.

I think that makes sense for staff and I think it makes sense for us to sort of take the load and balance the load that went.

The one thing that I would sort of put before us is to consider for the work session.

As we move through, and this is a question you don't have to answer it now, but as we move through the preparation for the comp plan, I had in my mind that those, a lot of that material would be dealt with as a work session first before we deal with that.

And so I would just caution us

too much on to having a having planning, having public hearings that are disparate from the comp plan conversation.

But I think you would probably need some ourselves better.

if we could have robust conversation about a comp plan issue that was separated from a public hearing.

And that's just a caution.

It's not a saying no.

Because I'm knowing, having a sense about the way we operate, we're going to wrestle with some of the issues that come before us.

and to be able to do that in a way that provides the kind of feedback that's necessary for this process.

But otherwise, I'm supportive of that.

Thanks.

I'm supportive as well.

And I appreciate Luis's comments about notice.

I think that'd be really helpful.

In fact,

to take that maybe one step further, just planning to have a hold on the calendar for almost every month, assuming that there either will be a work session or it will be a hold that will then be canceled.

And that will help, I know my calendar and probably others as well.

That's what we've done in the past.

We sold one, it was on typically the second Tuesday of every month.

But as you see now, we don't always have full work session material.

And so sometimes we cancel, sometimes we load them up.

Got it.

So there may be more than one work session per month at times, or is it always maximum of one?

I have never had more than one, but it certainly would be, you know, if needed, we could always call.

I'm happy to work with y'all.

But yeah, there's a lot of meetings when you start getting into that, because as was pointed out earlier, you also have CACs that you attend, you have particular committees, y'all have one or two of those each.

Yeah, thank you.

And to be clear, I wasn't suggesting extra work sessions.

Yeah, just stop that new guy.

Put the best back on.

You know, I think it would not be an extra work session.

It's not a way to sneak in more work sessions.

But I can say personally that there have been multiple weeks where I have had, because of community meetings, CAC and the Planning Commission, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night meetings for the Commission, literally four nights in a row of meetings and then going to work all day.

And it can be brutal.

The other thing we talked about was

that we would endeavor to make sure, and I know that staff already do this, but Corey and I are pledged to do extra diligence to make sure that we don't have like three major items that are controversial in one night.

Maybe it's one major item and two littles or three littles.

And by little, I mean something we're not expecting 65 people to testify for three minutes each.

It's something that a handful of people wanna talk to us about or it's not,

and envisioned to go on late into the evening so that we would not be overstacking the evenings by going to one less meeting per month.

But I think we could perhaps use our time more wisely.

And I also will say that in some cases where we've, because of things being canceled and one thing or another, we've come together on the dais for a staff report that's,

You know, 40 minutes long, and there's no other items, you know, just thinking about the costs in our time to come down to the county office building for that, just that one thing, and then go home.

We don't need to meet just for meetings sake.

So what I would propose is that maybe Charles will look at what's coming up and the schedule and come back with sort of working through what he knows is in the pipeline and see if this is workable and bring that back for decision on our February 1st meeting.

Because we just wanted to see if it was worth investigating.

in the abstract before, you know, he goes into all this calendar juggling.

But this would not, this would, just for anyone from the public who may be listening, this is not a vision to cause any further delay to anybody's applications.

This would still move everyone through.

the pace that they would expect to move through the commission.

So it's not a slow down by any stretch of the imagination, but it gives us more time to cut all this up in meetings as well, as well as preparation time.

So with that, if there's nothing else under business, I think that the adjourning of this meeting would be till February 1st, is that correct?

Because we do not have the meeting next week.

Thank you, everyone, for participating.

I have been very cold this evening because I just got my heat turned back on in my house, so I'm still a bit of a human icicle, but I will endeavor to adjourn us and go in search of a sweater.

I would like to adjourn this meeting of the Planning Commission until February 1, 2022.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.