City Council   7/5/2017

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Okay Duly noted, Pastor.

Calling this meeting of Charlottesville City Council to order.

Welcome everyone to the Charlottesville City Council.

It's great to see everyone.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

We'll combine them and go from my left to Ms. Galvin.

One announcement.

OK. Great.

And it's right in front of me.

Sol Smart Bronze Award.

Charlottesville is working to be nationally recognized as a solar friendly community through the Sol Smart program.

Sol Smart is supported by the Solar Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy and has provided us assistance in the form of a dedicated solar technical advisor.

Our efforts to date include supporting solar energy installations on city buildings and in the community, training of fire rescue response regarding solar PV,

and including solar energy in the city's long-term planning goals.

I'm happy to announce tonight that Charlottesville has successfully reached bronze level designation, making us the first community in Virginia to receive Sol Smart designation.

This distinction recognizes the leadership and success of our community and positions us well to achieve our goal of silver by the end of the year.

Susan Elliott, is she here?

I can't find it.

Oh, why?

I just wanted to comment that we've been working with the Solar Foundation which administers the Soul Smart Program for a little bit over a year now.

There's a lot of actions that we got credit for and towards getting this that have been part of our community for years now and so it really is a community-wide effort.

Thank you.

And I just want to really give kudos to Susan and Crystal and everybody in the Office of Sustainability.

They have been real drivers and Tish is the person who's been helping us, who's, I guess, away at a wedding.

Anyway, thank you very much.

You have taken a dream from two years ago when we got the technical assistance grant from Smart Growth America and you made it a reality.

I would like to announce the very special Arts Art Opening Reception.

The free VSA Art Opening Reception is this Friday, July 7th at City Space from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m.

Please join VSA and host Charlottesville tomorrow for art and light refreshments.

Lots will be going on.

The Lighthouse Studio student films will be screened.

You'll get a one-time only glimpse of some of the top student films from this year's International Festival Circuit.

The short movies were created right here in Charlottesville by local middle and high school students.

The evening also features a virtual reality tour moving through local news by local artist Jeff DeBrouw.

I hope I said that right.

Many VSA artists will be at the opening.

VSA Charlottesville Albemarle promotes and develops opportunities for art and creative expression for people of all ages and abilities with a focus on serving individuals with disabilities.

Okay, I have a couple of announcements.

The first is that I'll be holding my monthly open office hours on Wednesday, July 12th at 12 o'clock p.m. here in the mayor's office on the second floor of City Hall.

Anyone who would like to speak can get a spot ahead of time by contacting Page Rice, our clerk, at 970-3113 or by emailing at RiceP as in Page at Charlottesville.org or drop-ins are also welcome on a first-come, first-served basis.

I also would like to announce a whole series of events that have emerged from the community as alternatives to the planned rally from 3 to 4 o'clock p.m.

a chapter of the modern day Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina that will be in what is now Justice Park.

This list is probably not all inclusive because there's a lot happening, so I'm gonna read the ones that I've been able to put together from a couple different websites and the meetings that I've been in, but there may be more.

But this is a list and the community really is rising to the occasion of telling a totally different hour story on this day rather than letting another story be told for us.

So from 7 o'clock a.m. to 2.45 p.m. there will be a presence at Justice Park by the Charlottesville Clergy Collective.

From 9 a.m. to 1130 p.m. there will be a Unity Day morning at the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center which will include the following.

9 a.m. meditation in the JSCC Park led by Ebony Bugg, 930 a.m. gospel in the Heritage Center, 10 o'clock a.m. a presentation on KKK to the alt-right history led by Frank Dukes and others, 10 a.m. for our youth, Isabella Gibbons, local history center,

The African American Heritage Center, 1030 AM, Charlottesville, Who Are We?

This is a presentation which will include representatives from Sin Barreira, Seville Pride, Seville Islamic Center, Black Lives Matter.

11 o'clock AM, Breakout Sessions, a presentation by the Office of Human Rights.

and 10 a.m. and there may be other events as well during that whole morning at the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center.

From 11 a.m. to 2 o'clock p.m. there will be what's called the People's Picnic at Ix Art Park, a potluck and community picnic to come and hang out with other people.

From 1 o'clock p.m. to 5 o'clock p.m. there will be a hospitality safe space at the First United Methodist Church, again sponsored by the Clergy Collective,

in downtown Charlottesville.

From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. there will be a steadfast and immovable rally sponsored by the Charlottesville Albemarle NAACP at Jack Jewett Middle School cafeteria, 210 Lambs Lane, Charlottesville, Virginia.

From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. there will be a Unity Day free concert at the Sprint Pavilion featuring the bands Crystal Garden, We Are Star Children, Chamomile and Whiskey, and a warship

a worship choir session as well.

At 3 o'clock p.m. there will be a peaceful counter-rally at Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park, sponsored by the Charlottesville Black Lives Matter, Surge and other groups.

From 4.15 to 5 o'clock p.m. there will be a presence, that's after the rally, the rally is scheduled from 3 to 4 p.m. there will be a presence at Justice Park, sponsored by the Charlottesville Clergy Collective and finally

Last but not least, 10 o'clock p.m. to midnight, there will be a Unity, Charlottesville concert, a Grits and Gravy dance party at the Jefferson Theater.

And I believe during the day, there is also a Musicians Against Hate, I think that's the name, afternoon event on the downtown mall.

So there's a lot going on.

There are a couple different places to find out what is going on.

Again, these are mostly community generated.

There's a website called unityseaville.com.

The Charlottesville Clergy Collective, I understand, has a Facebook page.

and there are doubtless many other things out there happening as well.

So you see the community coming together to tell our story.

Thank you, Mayor Signer.

Just have a couple of quick announcements.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

Good evening, Wes.

Thank you.

Y'all take his lead.

Good evening, everyone.

There we go.

There we go.

All right, thank you.

In all seriousness though, I have a couple of announcements.

The first one being from Mr. Alexander.

He wanted everyone to be aware of, in light of all of the events coming up, his normal routine of yell, let it go is all around the city.

So he has a

Series of different initiatives in which he talks about Yo Let It Go at cookouts, Yo Let It Go at different rallies, Yo Let It Go and Think Clearly, so he wants us all to be reminded of that.

Also, the Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement, we will be looking for individuals, African American males between the ages of 17 and 29, who are currently looking for job employment.

Please contact bmacville at gmail.com.

We have a series of different jobs available currently as well as job training for individuals who are looking for skill trades and carpentry, electrician work, as well as any other hands-on skills that you may need.

So you can contact us once again at bmacville at gmail.com.

Again, that's any African-American male between the ages of 17 through 29 who's looking for employment.

And then lastly,

I'd like to say something very briefly in regards to the events that are taking place this upcoming Saturday.

I would like to say I'm very, very pleased to see the community coming together in several different ways to arise and have a litany of events.

I promised my wife that I would let her know under also some direction from Pastor Edwards.

He said, if I don't say this, I'm going to be a beat.

I think it's important that the community know once again I'm very very proud of everyone who's going to be doing all of the events and I think as Mayor Signer alluded to we have several different options for everyone to attend and you don't necessarily have to pick this or that there is no right or wrong way in terms for you to let your voice be heard personally I won't be attending any of the events this Saturday as it would be my one year anniversary

and I've decided to make sure that I give my wife that time.

I would definitely let the community know that I'm here with you in spirit.

I'm definitely gonna be here rallying with you on the front lines, but I think it's also important that my family as well as the love of my life know that she is number one.

The community's a close second, but she's definitely number one.

Thank you.

Smart man.

Smart man, okay.

Mr. Fenwick.

This is Parks and Rec Month, but I'm going to lead in with the programs for July Parks and Rec.

July 7th, as you've heard, the VSA Art exhibit, City Space 530 to 8.

July 7th to 9th, City Golf Championship at Middle Creek Golf Course.

July 9th, Sunday Sundowns at Washington Park and Swimming Pool.

And July 15th, Carver and Smith

AFC Open House.

Now we have a proclamation for Parks and Recreation Month.

Whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Charlottesville, and whereas our parks and recreation experiences are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in our communities,

ensuring a healthy lifestyle for all our citizens and contributing to the economic and environmental well-being of our community and region.

And whereas parks and recreation programs build healthy, active communities, aid in the prevention of chronic disease, provide therapeutic recreation services for those who are mentally or physically disabled, and improve the mental and emotional health of all citizens,

and whereas our parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide new learning opportunities and memorable experiences for children and adults by connecting with nature and the outdoors and whereas the United States House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month

and whereas the City of Charlottesville recognizes the benefits derived from parks and recreation resources, now therefore be it resolved by the Charlottesville City Council that July is recognized as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Charlottesville, signed and sealed this fifth day of July 2017.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council.

My name is Vic Garber.

I'm the Recreation Division Manager for Parks and Recreation.

We are very pleased and proud that you understand and appreciate the many benefits and huge part the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department plays in everyone's lives in the city and the region.

Thank you for all of your support so we may continue to serve our citizens.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

As you may recall, most of the comments from our last meeting during matters by the public on June 19 centered on the event scheduled for this Saturday.

We had a lengthy discussion about whether the city can prohibit the KKK from holding a rally in Justice Park this weekend.

Both Mr. Brown and I explained that we cannot deny them the opportunity to assemble in the park based on the content of their message regardless of how reprehensible it may be.

Oh, the one in August, okay.

But at this point, we do not believe we have cause to deny them the right to protest.

Thank you.

All right, we now move on to boards and commissions.

I would like to move the following individuals for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Audrey Oliver, and Letita Talbert.

Discussion?

All right, we now go on to matters of the public.

I will say at the outset we have a very packed meeting tonight.

So the last few meetings I've been trying to really keep the train moving with the whole meeting and I just want to flag for my colleagues and for everybody I will be really trying to keep on the time limits that we have to our rules.

because we do have a lot going on tonight.

We've got 10 items ahead and there are a couple ones I think we'll have a fair amount of discussion.

Okay, so and I'm gonna do what we've been doing recently.

I'll read what we always read before each one, before each public comment.

We welcome public comment.

It's an important part of our meeting.

Time is reserved.

near the beginning and the end of each regular city council meeting for matters by the public.

Please follow these guidelines for public comment.

If you're here to speak for a public hearing, we have three of those tonight.

Please wait to speak on that matter until the report for that item has been presented and the public hearing has been opened.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

and here is the section, rule 9 from our procedures.

Improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council may not use this platform to A.

Campaign for public office, B.

Promote private business ventures, C. Use profanity or vulgar language or gestures, D. Threaten violence toward council, city staff or members of the public,

F. Interrupt other speakers or engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting.

Rule 10, any speaker who violates the rules will be called to order by the mayor.

If the remarks or conduct persists, the mayor shall order the speaker to cease speaking and be seated.

If the order is not heeded, the mayor shall direct the sergeant in arms to escort the individual from the meeting room.

We have a, sir, if you raise your hand, this is our friendly member of Charlottesville's finest.

He is here to help enforce these rules.

You don't need to make as acquaintance.

The point of the rules is that we will move efficiently through all these items, everybody's three minutes, and we'll get on to the business of the meeting.

With that said, we have 14 folks who have signed up.

We have 10 spots that you sign up ahead of time.

And then we have five that are signed up in person.

We have four signed up in person and a number on the waiting list.

So I'll get to those once we finish with everybody.

The first person on the list is Mark Heise.

Mr. Heise?

Okay.

Going once.

Sarah Tansey is number two.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

I'm here to speak on behalf of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective.

We have issued a statement on the summer of 17.

The Reverend Elaine Ellis-Thomas.

I'm from St. Paul's Memorial Church and I'm here representing the Charlottesville Clergy Collective.

Thank you.

Our statement is entitled Standing Firm, Moving Forward Together.

The Charlottesville Clergy Collective is a gathering of faith leaders in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region whose mission is to establish, develop and promote racial justice.

We are committed to challenging the resurgence of groups promoting racist, white supremacist ideals this summer.

with prayer and action, galvanizing the community to act in a spirit of love and radical hospitality, respecting the dignity of every human being.

On July 8th, the Charlottesville Clergy Collective will be present in and around downtown at events organized by the city and other community leaders, in addition to hosting activities under our banner.

The focal point of our activity will occur and be launched from the First United Methodist Church.

Our overall aim is fourfold, to provide action.

Prayers begin in Justice Park in the morning and continue into the afternoon with a march from the Methodist Church to Justice Park to bear witness as a faith community and to the pavilion for a time of prayer, song, and celebration surrounding the area with our presence.

Safe Space, the First United Methodist Church will be open from 1 to 5 p.m. for prayer, music, community building and conversation.

Accompaniment, we will be available to walk with those who might be hesitant to move around the areas between the Methodist Church and Points Downtown.

And education, training and conversation events leading up to July 8th and plans for ongoing witness in the days and weeks following.

As people of faith, we've been working together to address issues of justice and equality and to heal divisions in our region, and these events of July 8th are a continuation of that work.

We have much to do to create a community in which all people feel welcome, safe, nurtured, and fully included in our common life.

We will stand firm in our pursuit of justice and the honoring of all peoples, and we will move forward together as one community

United in our common humanity as beloved of God.

Thank you.

Hi, Walt Heinecky, 1521 Amherst.

I came to talk a little bit about form-based code because I see it's on your agenda tonight.

But before I do that, I just wanted to say how disappointed I was in your allowing the police department to harass activist groups in towns prior to this rally that's coming up.

I know that certain activists were contacted individually.

An organization that I helped to start, EPIC, was contacted and asked questions that I don't think were appropriate.

I felt there was a suppression of our free speech rights and I think it's an instance of where local government goes too far in terms of interfering in the right to assemble and people's free speech rights.

So I hope you'll check yourself when you think about these things and ask the police department to act.

more responsibly in the future.

I think it's antithetical to democratic process.

But I came here to talk about foreign-based code because I know it's on the agenda tonight.

And I wanted to let you know that the citizens of Charlottesville demand more equitable development processes in this town.

We're heading for a gentrification crisis of epic proportions in this town.

In five to ten years, there won't be any low-income people here.

The community of color here will be significantly reduced.

Has anyone stopped to reconcile form-based code proposals with affordable housing ordinances in this town?

Form-based code could very well kick off gentrification in Charlottesville into high gear.

We should be focusing on affordable housing over a focus on form-based code here, which may again accelerate gentrification in this town.

This is an issue of fairness.

Many people in this town have been placed in public housing over the years with absolutely no choice.

And now with form-based code, we're heading into what only looks like a land grab.

Arlington has created a requirement to build affordable housing units in every new residential or mixed-use development in their town.

Stop making it easier for developers to pay into the Affordable Housing Fund rather than build actual units of affordable housing.

Form-based code has been designed by developers to expand development by right, not slow down unfair development.

Form-based code saves developers money.

You need to get past this notion, these models of concentrations of poverty when you're thinking about redevelopment.

September 11th through 14th, there's going to be a charrette on zoning.

I hope the public comes out and participates.

I think council needs to be much more aggressive when it comes to public and affordable housing actions.

If you feel you're constrained by state regulations, then start thinking out of the box and start thinking about floating multi-million dollar bonds for affordable housing in this town.

My name is Jason Kessler.

I live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

As I have for most of my life, I was born here on like the Yankee cart, the baggers who are trying to tear down my monument.

I don't really have anything planned to say, but first of all, Mrs. Szakos, you're pathetic.

I mean, you think that you're going to shut down my rally, which just keeps growing larger and larger every day.

It's a free speech rally.

It has nothing to do with violence.

You can't stand people who disagree with you.

That's a problem for you, and it's going to be a problem.

You can go into your safe space or whatever, but we're going to say what we want to say.

As far as you, Mr. Signer, talking about BLM and Surge, right now on the Charlottesville Surge page, they have an article saying, in defense of punching cops.

Give me a break.

You guys are pathetic.

You defend Black Lives Matter, which has killed police officers and started riots around this country.

Bellamy's talking about black men out of work.

Obviously, there's a lot of them based on what's been going on downtown with these guys fighting each other in the Water Street parking garage.

It's getting out of control.

This is your idea of diversity.

It's this kind of violent, chaotic behavior.

Meanwhile, your people, Surge, BLM, are the ones who are harassing and intimidating people.

You guys are the ones who are not allowing people to just sit on the downtown mall, mind their own business, and have a drink.

I think you guys are pathetic.

You've wasted so much money on this statue issue, which you are going to lose.

You're going to lose.

You lost your job on the Virginia Board of Education just like you lost your job at Albemarle High School.

Mr. Bellamy, you're going to lose this as well.

To be able to pay for it, you put these parking meters downtown and hurt local businesses, that doesn't make any sense.

You've allowed this mob behavior to drive people away from the downtown area.

Now with the limited parking that we do have, you want to put in these ridiculous parking meters, doesn't make any sense.

Most of us are just working class people.

We're not rich, entitled liberals or tokens like Mr. Bellamy.

We have to do what we have to do to survive and we can't afford to be able to

pay for parking meters when we just want to go downtown and go to our jobs or get something to eat.

I really think you guys should rein in some of your spending, stop spending it on so many racist policies like Mr. Bellamy.

I was looking through a list of some of Bellamy's policies.

It's basically tax whitey and then redistribute the money to people of his own race.

Ethnic studies courses basically demonizing white people, blaming everything on white people.

Redistributing income for scholarships which are only available to black people, redistributing white people's income for minority businesses, i.e.

to be eligible you can't be a white person.

So your discriminatory policies are racist.

Everybody knows who you are and your Twitter frankly is pathetic now because nobody interacts with you.

I see you do so many tweets and your Twitter is so famous but you're just tweeting to yourself in an echo chamber.

You should hear.

You're done.

Will you ever get another public notice?

Reverend Susan Minasian.

I'm Reverend Dr. Susan Minasian.

Minasian is the correct way to say it?

Sorry, Minasian.

Is that right?

No, that is correct, actually.

That's the Armenian way.

I'm pastor of Sojourners United Church of Christ and live in this county.

Dear members of the City Council and Charlottesville community, I began serving as a pastor of Sojourners United Church of Christ on March 1st.

As a new member of this community, I wanted to come and offer my support and make a promise to you as we continue to live in these tense and troubled times.

While we continue to meet hate with love and strength,

It is not lost on me that a sleeping giant of white supremacy is awake again.

This giant has always been a part of our national fabric.

It is here now and will probably always be here, even though we will work toward its end.

So I promise my support with you during these days.

Tonight, I want to speak with you as a person of faith who's promising to bring my best self forward.

This past Sunday, an 11-year-old child in my congregation asked to speak with me.

I moved out of the greeting line to hear her tell me about her fear and her anxiety.

as she is experiencing as a result of the KKK and all right groups coming to town.

I assured her that there are more people of love and hate than hate and that we have her back.

I also said that while it is true that they will come here, she needs to know that they have always been here and it isn't new.

I can't change how the children in my congregation feel about this, but I can assure them with what I know.

I know we have the power to decide what kind of town we will be,

That is in our control.

Freedom of speech does not allow yelling fire in a crowded theater.

It is illegal to incite people to violence.

Slander is illegal.

You aren't allowed to inflict harm on someone through words, in person, on the phone, or in an email or social media.

or at a council meeting, I think we have forgotten this.

I pray that you, our elected officials, will have wisdom and courage to make decisions that benefit the well-being of all of us who trust you, who look up to you for leadership, protection, and care.

This Charlottesville council statement says that we are leaders in justice, healthy race relationships.

Healthy sites and cities and communities of mutual respect do not allow hate to flow freely

in the Public Square streets.

In the vision statement, it explicitly states, in all endeavors, the City of Charlottesville is committed to racial, cultural diversity and inclusion.

Therefore, I hope future requests for gatherings in their community will be considered with your vision statement front and center as a guideline.

And I promise you that I will support this community in partnering with you to make sure that this vision is indeed lived out because it is not just on you, it is on all of us.

Thank you for your time and your attention.

My name is Matthew Gillican and I live at 726 Orangedale Avenue.

I'm a speech-language pathologist at the University Hospital and my wife is a teacher in the city schools.

I wanted to speak briefly about the city's approach to housing and something that I think is missing from the conversation.

We talk about an all of the above approach for improving housing accessibility, which includes things like increasing the housing supply through high density development, providing incentives for building affordable housing, and in some cases, providing subsidies to renters and buyers to promote accessibility.

However, let me suggest that we need to focus on one more area, and it maybe should be a primary focus, which is partnering with Albemarle County to help grow the housing supply in the city and the county.

In my opinion, the county's current land use policies, which put significant limits on growth, are probably the biggest barrier to an equitable and just housing market in our area.

The gentrification that was talked about earlier is a direct consequence of that, in my opinion.

I would like for the city to work with Albemarle County to encourage more development in the county.

More county land will be available for development.

The area's housing supply would increase and we would see more opportunities for housing that is affordable for low and middle income people.

One possible way to get the county to participate would be for the city to use the revenue sharing money we received from the county to develop systems, partnerships and incentives to better, to promote better land use and zoning policies.

It's kind of the county's money anyway, so why not let them use it to our advantage?

The practicalities of this would likely require significant concessions from both the city and the county.

But if we are truly serious about affordable housing, we need to work with the county to make sure our community is accessible to all.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Kevin Cox, I live at 311 Fairway Avenue here in the city and I'm here to talk about a small issue, a little more pedestrian issue than

what's been occupying you for the last few meetings really a pedestrian issue in fact it's about more than just pedestrians it's about anybody who uses West Main whether they're a pedestrian or bicyclist or in a wheelchair or driving a car West Main right now is seeing a huge increase

in the amount of traffic, particularly pedestrians.

I've walked down West Main to work almost every day for about 30 years.

And for many of those years, I was the only one on the street.

Now when I get to the intersection of Roosevelt Brown Boulevard and West Main, there's five, ten, a dozen people standing there with me waiting to cross the street.

And that's going to continue.

The increase in use of that street is going to continue.

There's going to be more and more cyclists and pedestrians.

Residential development is seeing to that.

It's a good thing.

More and more people are taking the bus.

The trolleys crowded in the morning.

But right now, the situation on West Main is chaotic.

The development has infringed on sidewalks, bike lanes.

Bike lanes are blocked.

Pedestrian bypasses have been erected that are just laughably assembled, totally not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There have been repeated problems.

The city is aware of this and has tried to fix some of them.

and so I think though that this cloud of chaos that's descended upon West Main can actually be seen as having a silver lining.

I think that West Main could become a pedestrian cyclist travel corridor where people do the same thing, behave the same way that they behave

at the corner or at the mall crossings.

You know, people behave differently at different places.

And at the corner, people are very courteous.

They're very cautious.

They know that this is a place where I have to watch out.

It's even more true at the mall crossings.

And I think that that's the real key here.

All the flashing lights and signs and everything else are not having an impact because people's attitude is not changing.

and what needs to happen is people's attitude needs to change and the missing component in all of this is the Charlottesville Police Department.

They are not on West Main, the pedestrian, the traffic division is not enforcing the pedestrian laws, so we have chaos.

We have pedestrians ignoring walk signals, bicyclists ignoring traffic signals, drivers ignoring pedestrians and cyclists.

Thank you.

I came to speak about the Verizon appeal of the cell tower on 1521 University Avenue.

It wasn't a public hearing, so I signed up for this spot.

As I was reviewing the things on the council agenda, I noticed that they were using a lot of the photos and notes that are carefully cropped to make the tower appear not visible when it is.

from the northwest side where the parapet wall is much larger.

It's 21 inches on the back and sides of the building.

I think their drawings show it to be four feet tall, then the tower is four feet tall.

So from the front, they have it appear that you can't see it.

If you want to show your photo you can hold it up if you'd like to go on and then you can pass it around.

This photo shows standing on the roof where you can see those buildings.

So you can clearly, you will clearly be able to see the tower from those spots.

So I spoke at the BAR meeting when the BAR voted against it.

I saw that the Spectromat Act is explained in there.

So if we put one tower on the roof of this building, we're opening it up for unlimited towers without hearings.

The way I understand it, if you can see it on top of historic building,

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Chukma Nakne.

I'm actually a resident of Lynchburg, but I come here today as a concerned citizen, observing from afar.

I'm an absentee member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

So for many years, the people of this country have sought to oppress and remove Native Americans from the land and have used a plethora of tactics including most normally intimidation, physical intimidation, mental intimidation and the like.

I see a lot of these qualities in surge in Black Lives Matter.

Essentially, if you don't agree with what they have to say, they target you, they bully you, they just make your life miserable.

I know several of my friends have had their places of work contacted in an attempt to get them fired.

Truthfully, I don't see how you can support an organization like this.

I've wound up on the Know Your Nazi list that was placed around town because I merely supported the Lee statue and to me that hits too close to home.

So I just ask you to consider your support for this organization and that goes for everyone here as well.

Also if you're feeling

particularly guilty, I urge that some of you consider giving the land back to the Monacan Indians.

Otherwise, just stay quiet.

Thank you.

I'm Reverend Seth Whispleway.

I reside at 410 13th Street Northeast in the city, 22902.

As a member of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, as a ministry leader in the city, and a lifelong grassroots organizer, I just wanted to stand up and affirm that clergy will be showing up more and often in our public spaces, whether it's through overt

opportunities like these rallies or votes and to address concerns surfaced, I thought, very well by Mr. Heinecke and so on, that we will be doing a better job when we help collectively y'all do a better job and just wanted to make my face and name known for what it's worth.

Okay, we're now going on to our wait list because as you all heard, a number of folks weren't here.

So we have John Hayden, Jacqueline Cieslak, Mr. Tuchmar already spoke, David Caron, Don Gathers,

Joanne Robertson and Mimi Arbeit

I want to thank everybody for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

I say this every time.

It takes a lot of courage to come up here.

The dais is a little higher.

We take these comments extremely seriously.

The city manager will respond.

There were a number that went directly to questions of city policy as administered by staff.

And as you heard this meeting, respond next meeting to those that went to questions to be addressed by staff.

We read also and take very seriously your phone calls and your emails to all of us.

Collectively at council at Charlottesville.org or individually.

Our emails are all on the website.

We get many, many of these and we read them very carefully.

So thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

Mayor Signer, I do.

And to the point about the form-based code, Arlington County was mentioned as having a model affordable housing policy.

It also has a model form-based code, so they are not mutually exclusive.

That is a really important thing to keep in mind.

It's all in how it's crafted, and this community, this city, this council is

is 100% behind making sure that we supply affordable housing everywhere in the city, not only in certain neighborhoods, but everywhere in the city.

I would also like to say that the form-based code, yes, it does provide better process.

It's more transparent.

It expects more from the applicant, but it also allows for a much quicker way to get affordable housing than what we do now.

and that's through bonuses, height bonuses.

We figure out where that happens, where it goes.

It's built into the code.

It doesn't have to have layers and layers of extra review that we are currently going to be having tonight with special use permits.

It's very important to understand the details.

We are committed to affordable housing.

The form-based code is a tool to provide both quality of place but also affordability.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to our consent agenda.

Again, a lot of business in the agenda tonight, so I'm going to try to keep things moving in keeping with our layout here.

Item A, minutes for June 19th.

Item B, appropriation, Virginia Department of Health Special Nutrition Program Summer Food Service Program, $90,000, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation, $23,312.37 to Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund for Loan Repay, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation, Strategic Investment Area Form Based Code, $228,000, first of two readings.

Item E, a resolution expanding McIntire recycling center hours, first of one reading.

Item F, a resolution RSWA local government support agreement for recycling programs, first of one reading.

Item G, a resolution cemetery access, I'm sorry, an ordinance cemetery access easement at Buford Middle School, second of two readings.

Item H, an ordinance city land conveyance at Grady Avenue and Preston Avenue, second of two readings.

Are there any comments on this request?

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further questions or comments?

All in favor?

Carries five to zero.

Okay, we now move on to the first regular item on our agenda.

This is a public hearing and ordinance.

This is approval of the sale of the Baylor Lane lot.

This is the first of two readings, meaning we only need a motion and a second.

We have Mr. Brian Daley, Director of Parks and Recreation will be presenting.

We have 10 minutes allocated to this item in its entirety.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council.

The item before you this evening is the approval of the sale of a piece of property owned by the city on Baylor Lane.

Several years ago, the city purchased this parcel to secure the lower portion of the property as parkland for trail connection and stormwater management purposes.

In April this year, City Council approved a critical slopes waiver

to ensure compliance with the subdivision requirements and included a pedestrian access easement on the property.

The property was then advertised through a request for bids process and the high bid that was received was from Southern Property LLC at a price that was higher than the assessed value of the land.

A public hearing and an ordinance is required to authorize the sale of the property.

If approved, the proceeds from the sale will be used to leverage other parkland acquisition in the immediate vicinity to expand Jordan Park and further provide

I just have a statement that comes out of a question that I had asked and I'm not opposing this at all but one of the recommendations that we received from our housing advisory committee recently

and it had unanimous support from council was to consider affordable housing as a best use, not the only best use, but as a best use for any property being sold by the city.

This particular lot would have appeared to be the perfect example of where affordability could be a preference in disposing of city property.

But because the process of selling this lot began before our decision to support that policy, the RFP for the lot included a minimum bid of $80,000 and no mention of affordability.

So I understand that the proceeds from the sale are going to be used for parkland acquisition, which I fully support.

It's another preferred use for the sale of property.

And so I don't plan to oppose the sale.

But that said, I hope that any RFP that's developed for any piece of property sold by the city in the future will take into consideration a preference for affordability.

Thank you.

And with that, I make a motion.

Oh, we haven't done that.

Any other questions for Mr. Daly?

Okay, with that I will, I have a public hearing that was signed up sheet that was up here the whole time.

Nobody signed up for it, but I'm going to open the public hearing.

If anybody would like to speak to this item, now's your chance.

And just come on down.

Okay, we'll close the public hearing.

OK, so we have a second?

OK, any further discussion, questions?

Oh, and that's it.

Ms. Galvin.

Okay, we're going to get on to the next item.

I wanted to advise everyone though who's here for the one after this just so you can prepare in advance.

We have 15 people have signed up for the public hearing on the 1011 East Jefferson.

I'm going to put this back down here in case anybody wants to sign up.

One other time this year we had a long voluntary public hearing like this.

We're not required to do this public hearing by our procedures because it's not an ordinance.

If we go to the full three minutes on this we'll be here for 45 minutes probably longer so

I've consulted with my colleagues beforehand and what we did with the statues hearing we're going to do here, which is you're going to have two minutes instead of three.

So if everybody could, if you've prepared remarks, please just bring them down to two minutes or don't be mad if you have to wrap it up at two minutes.

So we'll use this timer here.

You'll have two minutes instead of three, but we've still got a ton of people talking.

I think that it'll be a very ample sampling of public opinion on this issue.

Don't want to be here all night.

Okay.

So now we're going to move to the next item.

We have another Missouri, or would one of you mind?

That's the public hearing sheet for the next item, King Street rezoning application.

This is another first of two readings.

This will be a motion and a second.

Matt Affleck.

And before Mr. Affleck starts, can I just clarify that on our agenda it says that we're considering a special use permit but we're actually considering a rezoning.

Correct, and it was updated.

The current agenda has it.

So City Council before you tonight is an application for a rezoning.

on between 910 and 916 King Street.

Planning Commission held a public hearing on this item on June 13th of this year.

Hotel use, traffic, and the impact of the recently acquired UVA land to the north as property were discussed during that public hearing.

The Planning Commission was concerned that uses other than the development being proposed could be placed on this site and it was explained to them this is a straightforward rezoning

that if rezoned, all the uses provided in the matrix, with the exception of what has been proffered out, which is a 30-room freestanding hotel, could be used in the future.

The applicant, Atlas LLC, has a proposed development they want to do there, but again, it is not part of the rezoning.

The rezoning would facilitate them to do this development, but they are not proffering their development to the rezoning.

Planning Commission heard this, like I said, on June 13th and took a vote and voted to recommend approval to City Council four to one.

Okay.

Thank you.

I prepared the slides in front of you so you don't have to crane your neck if you don't feel like it.

My name is Oliver Platts-Mills, and I'm here today representing Atlas Projects LLC.

We own and wish to redevelop a parcel of half an acre on King Street, adjacent to Roosevelt Brown.

You can see in the picture our parcel sits behind the corner restaurant parking lot.

I wanted to thank Matt Alfley and also Carmelita and the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, who have been working with us through this process and have been very helpful.

Before you today, this is an opportunity for the city to rezone a piece of land in order to capture an increase in density, residential density, through the mixed-use designation in the Cherry Avenue corridor.

And also, at the same time, for the neighborhood to benefit from locating a mid-sized mixed-use development, which we hope can serve as a catalyst to redevelopment in this corridor.

The project is in an ideal location in the city of Charlottesville.

It is adjacent to a wealth of public amenities.

It's adjacent to transportation options.

And it's within 500 yards of the University of Virginia Health System, which is the largest employer in Charlottesville, if not the state of Virginia.

The project has found approval with the neighborhood.

We've been working with the Neighborhood Association.

Public meetings and we've talked directly with neighbors and stakeholders and we found the majority of neighbors support an increase in activity, increase of density in this particular area.

And finally our team we believe is particularly well positioned to redevelop this piece of land.

Myself and my wife live two blocks away in the heart of Fifeville.

We've been here for 12 years.

We've been attending neighborhood

meetings and been involved and were both personally and sort of familiarly invested in the neighborhood.

However, I believe that I share the fears of many of our city's residents when we think about redevelopment.

I have a fear of massive out of scale buildings.

I also have a fear of uses within buildings that has nothing to do with the neighborhood that it sits in.

So in particular, our neighborhood

Labeled sort of onset of student housing, specific housing and standalone hotels, something that they feel like does not fit within the character of the neighborhood or is not accretive enough to the neighborhood.

That being said, and I think that all of these concerns are certainly legit, but that being said,

We believe that the project has the ability to address some very real needs in the city and the neighborhood and that we believe that because of its sort of some of the characteristics we'll be able to mitigate some of the negative impact.

The location of the parcel I've mentioned is you know with the University of Virginia Hospital with we have seven bus routes etc.

The other really important aspect of this project is that King Street runs rather steeply uphill.

So a large building that is allowed to be built by right would sort of necessarily sit below the residential part of the neighborhood, which starts at the crest of the hill and heads back.

Not only do we think that it won't dwarf the neighborhood, but it will provide an important buffer between the commercial district and the residential part of the neighborhood.

Zoning Congruity is something that is spoken about in the comp plan and sort of in best practices.

Right now, the other side of King Street was already zoned Cherry Avenue mixed use, but has been recently purchased by the University of Virginia, so it's now zoned UVA whatever it wants, which I think probably will be part of the health system at some point, which if recent buildings are any guide, could be eight, 10 stories, I don't know.

So we don't feel like single family residential makes sense.

I'm going to go quickly through this one.

This just shows you, I think everyone's familiar with the site.

This shows you in more detail where our site is.

It's the dotted rectangle, and it really shows you that the Cherry Avenue mixed-use designation was designed as a sort of mixed-use buffer around Cherry Avenue and Roosevelt Brown, which is a very, very active corridor of transportation between the University of Virginia Hospital

Greater Charlottesville Albemarle region.

It was done in a fashion only 20 years ago when they built the road through and this area had houses since then.

Our particular piece of land has had the houses taken down with the exception of one that stands derelict and everything around it on the other side of the street.

The houses were unfortunately knocked down in 2007 and they are now empty and they're now owned by the University of Virginia.

This really I think is one of the most, to us, when we were first sort of thinking about this project as one of our favorite aspects of the project, which is that due to the low sort of height level of Roosevelt Brown, it's really well suited to have sort of larger buildings, higher density use, and the neighborhood can stand protected.

This is not always the case in Charlottesville, and I know that you struggle and deal with this on a regular basis, but in this case, we have the ability to build

a large building.

It's close to transportation corridors.

We've been, you know, I wanted to highlight our community engagement.

We feel like it's been an important part of the process for us.

We've been meeting with the neighborhood.

We've met with the city in various capacities.

I've gone through this.

One of the main concerns for any neighborhood is transportation.

We've been working with the transportation engineer.

In fact, one of our proffers is to allow for the changing of King Street to a two-way street at the lower side and still have enough space for large sidewalks to meet the Streets at Work initiative.

Basically, my final major point is that the city of Charlottesville is searching desperately for more housing units to meet a housing crisis with respect to affordability.

This particular location sees 12,000 cars a day going largely to the University Health System.

Most of those folks work there and live in Waynesboro or other places because they cannot afford to live in the city of Charlottesville.

The demand for housing in our neighborhood is massive.

If we don't meet it, then the current housing will just continue to be targeted and the prices will continue to rise so that we know I feel strongly about that.

The preservation of Fifeville is something that we've thought a lot about and as a neighbor and as a resident, I have personal concern.

When I've spoken to older residents in our neighborhood, they remember a time when we had a lot of commercial activity and you could walk to a store.

We no longer have any of that.

We're down to

a restaurant and a half and a gas station that sells amazing chicken, but we don't have, we have a lot of empty parking lots where we used to have neighborhood businesses and we want to get back to that.

So I look forward to any of your questions.

Well, let me start with a comment.

I do appreciate your community engagement.

Now, this is a compliment, so you can take it sitting down.

No, you don't have to defend yourself.

But I've seen this young man in the neighborhood meetings, five, six meetings in a row, letting the neighbors know, getting their concerns and comments.

Some of them pretty sharp, and he came back for more.

So you really sold this to the neighborhood.

It's like a model of how

I'd like to echo that.

I must say, Oliver, you've done a phenomenal job with putting this together.

I spoke to several different residents in the neighborhood about it and it's been rather amazing that I haven't got any pushback.

People seem to be very optimistic about the plan.

It's well thought out, so

Definitely has my support and thank you for going about this the way in which you did.

I think it's definitely a model that many others could follow within our community in regards to bringing about projects like this.

Well, these are supposed to be questions.

Oh, questions.

Those both sounded as if they might have had questions.

Right, yeah, right.

So let's get a motion on the floor.

And we have a public hearing.

Excuse me.

So I'll open the public hearing now.

So I'm going to open it right now.

Nobody has signed up from what I can tell down there.

But if somebody would like to come and speak to this, this is the time.

OK.

Closing public hearing.

I'd like to make a motion that we, let's see.

I'll just echo what our colleagues said down there.

I think this is, you know, it's an early project.

It's a lot easier to be, you know, positive about a conceptual thing than actual building things that you can see, but I think that you've really

Eased a lot of concerns of people that you know of what it could possibly look like what would be the worst case scenario if you know for some reason something happened to you and somebody else ended up there and it was owned like this because that's what we have to do and I think that you have answered those questions to the satisfaction of the neighborhood and the Planning Commission and me Okay, I do have some comments, okay The materials that included the profits

Thank you, that was exactly what I meant.

Mr. Brown, is that sufficient to clarify for the record?

Yes, I do support this project and I do think it's amazing because it actually filled a gap in our own comprehensive plan.

The comprehensive plan in this case didn't have anything like a transition zone between the high intensity corridors and the lower intensity single family detached and this applicant actually made one for us.

So I appreciate the sensitivity, the understanding of how to work with the topography,

and it is pretty rare that you do get this trifecta of approval where you get the majority, the vast majority of the Planning Commission approving it.

You get a neighborhood association to approve it and then you get the residents themselves approving it.

I do see that the rationale for making a workforce housing is absolutely critical here.

It could actually pull people off the road in a commute pattern.

I do think, again, the Cherry Avenue zoning designation itself is not excessive in its density.

It's 43 dwelling units by right, and the existing zoning that's there is one dwelling unit per acre, or the R1S, which is woefully, woefully underutilization of very valuable space in the city.

So I applaud you for working with the community, working with the planning commission, working and working to get the topography to work in favor of a project that's sensitive to the context and provides a model for the city moving forward as it does its own rezoning and comprehensive plan update.

So I can only hope, however, that, and you mentioned it in your narrative, that as the Cherry Avenue becomes a small area plan,

Right now it doesn't have any design control that would come from the benefit of an architectural control district or an entrance corridor.

It's beautiful for a form-based code to provide that built-in safeguard against out-of-scale, out-of-context buildings, at the same time providing affordability.

So again, thank you.

I support this.

And we had the motion in a second, so we don't need to do any further votes on this.

Any further comments?

I just want to add that Fifeville has a lot of neighborhoods in Charlottesville that have a lot of strong opinions about development and to thread the needle in this way and to be sensitive to the

I think both the immediate and the broader concerns I think is an accomplishment that speaks well to the values that seem to be in the project so far.

And you all were very active members of the Neighborhood Association and so on.

I see Carmelita Wood here.

So, just wanted to say that.

Okay, anything further?

Okay, so no vote.

We're good, we're moving on.

So that'll be on probably on the next upcoming agenda.

We move on now to item number four on our regular agenda.

This is the public hearing resolution for 1211 East Jefferson Street Special Use Permit.

This is first of... 10 11, I'm sorry, did I say?

Well, 10 11, sorry, excuse me.

So I just got reading glasses for the first time and I'm not wearing them.

I understand this is a no go back moment, but they're not on me right now.

And Ms. Szakos, I appreciate the correction.

I stated before that we weren't required to do a public hearing, but I think the actual answer is that we are required to because we didn't have quorum at the planning commission meeting where there was a prior public hearing.

required to do this public hearing under our rules.

Okay, so let me just explain everybody what the ground rules and the layout of this agenda item are.

We have 40 minutes allocated to this.

That's twice the amount of a typical baseline agenda item.

We do 30.

We put 40 on here.

That is not going to include the public hearing.

We're going to do the public hearing after the initial presentations are completed and the questions on the presentations.

Then we're going to

stop the clock.

We will go to the public hearing, and there's a ton of folks up there.

Everybody, as I said, has two minutes, not three minutes, to make their points.

It looks like we've got 27 people signed up, so it's going to be a long time.

Buckler receipts, we usually go, or vice versa, we usually go, we usually take a break at nine o'clock, so at some point we'll take a break, then we'll get started again, and then we'll get to a motion and discussion by my colleagues on this.

Evening, Carrie Rainey with Neighborhood Development Services.

Valerie Long and Ashley Davies of Williams Mullen, acting as representatives of Jefferson Medical Building Limited Partnership, have submitted an application for increased residential density at 1011 East Jefferson Street.

The applicant requests a special use permit pursuant to city code section 34-480, which states that residential density up to 87 dwelling units per acre is permitted with a special use permit.

On June 12, 2017, Ms. Long submitted a package of updated materials that included modified renderings showing a new building design, the inclusion of commercial uses, an updated traffic analysis, a market study and fiscal impact analysis, and an updated narrative.

These materials are found in your packet as attachment C.

The application describes a mixed-use development that would include 126 multifamily units with a maximum of 100 bedrooms of one- and two-bedroom apartments, as well as potential commercial uses.

These would be arranged in a building that varies from three stories along the 11th Street side to five stories along the 10th Street side.

At the October 11, 2016 public hearing with Planning Commission, the Planning Commission discussed the following items.

What the buildable envelope is as allowed by right, including the maximum allowable height and allowable setbacks, the main impacts of the proposed density on vehicular traffic and building massing in relation to the surrounding neighborhood, the number of individuals in attendance at the joint public hearing, the majority of who spoke against the project,

The recommendation for a density potentially more than the by right allowed density of 21 dwelling units per acre, but less than the requested 87 dwelling units per acre.

The Planning Commission indicated the requested density may be too much for the transitional nature of the parcel and area.

They also discussed the proximity of the strategic investment area and revisiting the application once related zoning changes for the strategic investment area were completed.

And also they expressed a desire to see more information, particularly regarding the potential buy-write commercial uses.

The Planning Commission took the following action.

Mr. Tantowski moved to recommend denial of this application for a special use permit.

Mr. Claiborne seconded the motion.

The Commission voted 4 to 3 to recommend denial of the application for an SUP for increased density.

Should City Council choose to approve the special use permit, a proposed resolution is provided in attachment A.

Please note that this resolution incorporates suggested modifications due to the amendments that were provided on June 12, 2017.

Subsequent to the posting of the council packet, the applicant also worked with staff in the environmental department to create an additional proposed condition as follows.

The redevelopment of the subject property shall include the installation of solar energy systems sufficient to, at a minimum, offset the electrical usage in the common areas of the development.

I have just one question.

You said that the limit of bedrooms that they were offering is how many?

One hundred and eighty.

Okay, I think you said a hundred and I just wanted to make sure that... My apologies.

I have a question.

Mr. Mayor, you may have trouble seeing.

In a little bit, you're going to have trouble hearing.

You introduce yourselves too, of course.

I will.

I'm going to see if we're going to have this on the screen.

Mr. Mayor and fellow members of council, I'm Chuck Rotkin and appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight on behalf of Great Eastern Management Company in its capacity as a general partner and a small minority owner of the majority physician-owned Jefferson Medical Building Limited Partnership, which is the applicant of the pending special use permit request.

This has been a rather interesting four year odyssey, two and a half years since we initially ran our redevelopment ideas past the city staff and received some welcome encouragement.

Without question, however, the continued interaction with staff and the neighbors have clearly led to a much better design massing and pedestrian oriented proposal.

I do want to thank council for agreeing to move this public hearing from July the third until tonight.

Great Eastern has been developing and redeveloping properties for almost 50 years.

This is only the fourth rezoning or special use permit request we have made.

It's the first one in the city.

Together with our related entities and individuals, we were among the first to invest in the renovated downtown mall area, and those investments have continued even during recessionary periods.

In addition to having our footprints on many buildings along the mall, over the years, we have been involved with most of the major apartment buildings in the north downtown area, including the Altamont Towers and Charlottesville Towers, among others.

We helped VIN Planning Director Huja facilitate the concept for The Simple Place.

We worked with city staff to keep the McGuire Woods law firm downtown and help the Economic Development Office create the TIF program that brought world strides and it's now 400 plus employees to the city as an employment anchor for the west end of the mall.

And we served as a template for ushering CFA into the former Martha Jefferson Hospital campus to serve as an employment anchor for the east.

I point this history out to help confirm that over the years we've not only been good corporate stewards, but we have developed a good understanding of the market and its needs.

More germane to the issue before you tonight, in the early 1970s we helped numerous medical practices and doctors join together to purchase the Jefferson Medical Building property and then to construct and finance the current medical building.

Some of those doctors are here this evening.

As you are certainly aware, particularly over the last decade, the practice of medicine and the delivery of health care, like many other businesses, has changed dramatically to a great extent because of technology.

As a result, the existing Jefferson Medical Building has reached its functional obsolescence.

Recognizing the need for a more modern facility, we initially suggested constructing a new medical building on partnership owned property, fronting on 10th Street, one half block away.

Subsequently, discussions were held with senior management of Sentara Martha Jefferson about the possibility of our physician practices joining with the hospital to construct a more expansive medical facility on the hospital's remaining property at the corner of 10th and East High Streets and across from the old hospital.

It is now hoped that this new building will house our physician practices together with primary care practices owned by the hospital, as well as several specialist practices, a lab, and in the future, diagnostic facilities.

This new facility would be a terrific amenity for the downtown area and provide high quality medical care convenient to city residents, particularly the significant Medicaid population that the practices treat, some of whom use the city buses for access.

Based on our experience and knowledge of the market, we considered various redevelopment alternatives by right and those that would require a special use permit or even a rezoning that we could recommend to the majority of physician owners.

We ultimately concluded and recommended to our physician partners that while the by right use allowed for the property would potentially be more profitable, we believe the community and particularly the neighborhood would be better served by well-designed, high quality and less massive residential structure.

As confirmed by our market analysis, which is part of the special use permit application package, and supported by the city's own 2016 housing study, there is no question that the city, and particularly the downtown area, is woefully short of affordable and workforce housing.

There is an unmet and growing demand for millennials wanting to live within walking distance of their jobs as well as from empty nesters, both of which aspire to live near the downtown area ambiance and its restaurants, shopping, services, and entertainment venues.

If the city is going to facilitate its downtown viability for employers and revenue-producing businesses, it is critically important that housing options be made available within walking and bicycling distance of these attractive venues.

Now before I conclude my remarks, earlier this week we were made aware of an email from David Bruns on behalf of the nearby Charlottesville Day School.

Mr. Bruns expressed opposition to our proposal but requested as a condition of an approval by council that consideration be given to the partnership agreeing to vacate its access to the existing alley that bifurcates his school and is a safety issue.

He also asked if a condition could be added that would reduce the unit density to reflect any addition of commercial space.

Once we learned of the alley concern, we offered to vacate our access very early on in this process, and we are certainly agreeable to the staff condition of approval in that regard.

We also are agreeable to add a condition suggested by Mr. Bruns that would reduce our density by one unit for every 1,500 square feet of commercial space that is constructed.

All that said, I respectfully request that Council accept staff recommendations.

for approval of our special use permit application with the additional condition relating to density reductions I just mentioned.

We would also appreciate, as council discusses this matter after the public hearing closes, having the opportunity to respond to questions raised during the discussion or if we legitimately feel that there are factual issues that may need some clarification.

While Valerie Long, who has helped shepherd us through this process, prepares a short PowerPoint presentation,

I do want to mention that we have in attendance tonight our architects, our civil and traffic engineers and economic consultant who have helped us from a technical standpoint and who are available to answer any questions from staff, council or the public.

We also have as well Percy Montague, our co-general partner.

I'm not sure that mic is on.

Okay.

That'd be great.

And I will condense my comments as much as I can.

We talked about the extremely low vacancy rate for newer apartments in the Charlottesville area is a very unhealthy, very low percentage of 0.7%.

That makes it very hard on young people in particular and others in the workforce who want to live near their place of employment.

We thought it was interesting.

This is from the Obama administration.

It was released last September.

As part of an initiative it was working on to try and help cities grow and revitalize, they made a number of suggestions for how cities can help address this challenge.

And one of the suggestions was to allow for the development of higher density and multifamily housing

especially in transit zones.

So the East Jefferson Place project is a small step towards trying to address the need and shortage for workforce housing in our community.

It's bringing the workforce housing closer to the workforce.

The project is ideally located within a short five minute walk of a number of large employers within the city.

This map shows the existing uses.

The tan color are commercial uses.

It's entirely surrounded by other commercial uses.

The only exception on the opposite side of East Jefferson Street is a residential, it's a home that we believe is used as a homestay.

The zoning map also helps demonstrate how the project will serve as an excellent transition between the high density properties that are zoned downtown north

to the west and south of the parcel and allow for much higher densities.

I have a quick question.

All the dwelling units per acre, though, those are based on SUPs, correct?

Correct.

That is correct.

So this special use permit is obviously for an increase in residential density.

So as part of that, we've worked very hard throughout the process to think through what are the impacts of higher residential density and what measures can we implement into the project to help give everyone confidence that this project will not have an impact on the community or the city as a whole, an adverse impact.

The first one that comes to mind is, of course, the number of residents.

If you increase the number of units, you increase the number of residents.

So we implemented a number of measures that would help prevent there being too many.

We've offered to limit the types of units to only one in two bedroom units, no threes or fours.

We've volunteered a cap on the number of bedrooms at 180.

We've agreed to a condition that would prohibit renting by the bedroom.

and by comparing that to the by right use where we could have 30 units as well as commercial space, those could have four bedrooms each which would equate to 120 beds.

The other big issue of course that comes up with requests to increase residential density is traffic.

So we commissioned voluntarily a traffic study.

We hired a professional firm that specializes exclusively in transportation engineering.

and as Mr. Rotkin mentioned, we have our traffic engineer here tonight if anyone would like to address any specific questions to him.

We compared the existing number of trips with the existing use to the proposed trips and it is a negligible increase.

It's literally an increase of two additional trips per day compared to the existing use.

The traffic engineer also conducted a capacity analysis to confirm that all of the streets and intersections surrounding the property will continue to function at high levels of service, which they will.

We've also added an on-site alley in the back of the property.

I have a slide on that later if anyone wants to see it, which was specifically addressing concerns and comments that we heard from the community

They were concerned about traffic backing up onto 11th Street, queuing up when that was our entrance.

So we added the onsite alley.

We've added crosswalks and curb bump outs, which help calm the traffic and improve pedestrian safety.

And the buy right uses that are permitted at this property would generate significantly more trips than what is proposed.

Affordable housing is, of course, another impact that people are very concerned about, as are we.

Because this is a special use permit request, we trigger the affordable housing ordinance.

We'll comply with that.

As you all know, that ordinance allows for three options for providing, complying with the ordinance.

You can pay cash into the housing fund, you can build units on site, or you can build units off site.

We're voluntarily committing to have actual units and not pay into the fund.

The city's own 2016 housing study supports

the need for additional workforce housing, and of course the buy right density would not require any affordable housing or funds.

We also looked at the infrastructure.

Is the infrastructure sufficient to support the additional number of dwelling units?

We think it is, but we also went further and were agreeing to conditions that require wider sidewalks, high visibility crosswalks, and curb bump outs for pedestrian safety.

Those were all suggestions of the city

staff to bring the project into compliance with the streets that work plan that council recently adopted.

We have on-site underground parking.

We've agreed to solar panels on the rooftop.

And we've offered to carry out improvements to the 11th Street and Little High Street intersection if they are desired by the community.

Again, crosswalks, curb bump outs.

And finally, we looked at the building mass.

Height is already allowed under the buy right use.

We're not proposing to change that.

The massing, while arguably is not even related directly to the request for increased density, because we could build a far larger building by right than what we're proposing.

So we feel very confident that we have mitigated the mass of the building with the larger setbacks on all four sides.

The architects have designed building step backs into the building.

They've included some townhouse style units right on the front along East Jefferson and 11th Street that have direct pedestrian access, private entrances from those streets to help break down the massing and activate the pedestrian streetscape.

We've also agreed to more intensive landscaping and larger green space areas.

This demonstrates that the building footprint, the building itself, is 40% smaller than what is allowed by right.

You see the by right footprint in blue.

The areas in green are the by right setbacks, 20 feet on either side, five feet along East Jefferson Street, and no setback at all along the back of the property.

By contrast, this is the proposed building footprint.

So all that area in blue becomes green under our proposal.

providing space for green space, courtyards, plaza, streetscape improvements.

The design has evolved significantly, again, with the input of the neighborhood community.

We hosted a number of community meetings.

We also met individually with as many neighbors as we could.

This was the first submittal, not very well received.

Our architects were up to the task and improved the building significantly.

This was our second submittal.

This is what you saw last year in October at the public hearing.

Two wings essentially joined together by a common courtyard and elevator, both four stories tall.

At the public hearing in October, it was suggested by a number of individuals that

The project would be much more well received if we could shift the massing of the building away from 11th Street, which is closest to the neighborhood, and towards 10th Street, which is the commercial corridor in that area.

We thought that was an excellent idea.

Again, our architects implemented that suggestion.

Is there a thunderstorm?

Interesting.

I was nearly finished.

If you would like, I can take a break, or I can keep going and show you.

Is the rest visual, or could you describe it to us?

I can do a little of both.

I could also probably turn the PowerPoint around and let you look at it.

It's whatever you'd like.

How many more slides?

Just a few more slides.

Well, we could take an early break and let you finish up and then iron out whatever just happens.

What do you all think?

and then you can get back online and then we're going to go straight through the whole.

Let's do that.

So worry at yourself.

We'll be back in our seats 10 to 9.

So we're taking our 9 o'clock break.

18 minutes early.

Thank you.

getting back up front.

Thank you everyone.

We'll get started one more.

Let's do three minutes.

I think that'll be enough.

Can we finish up?

Okay, and you're all queued up here?

Thank you again.

This was the updated design of the building based on following input from the community to shift the massing of the building away from the 11th Street side, which is closest to the residential area, and towards the commercial corridor side of the project on 10th Street.

So you can see the right-hand side is now essentially a three-story building, and the left side along 10th Street corridor is a five-story building.

This is the view from the intersection of East Jefferson Street and 11th Street.

So you can see, I think a little bit better, the stepped down version of the building and the lower massing on this side.

You also can see a number of the direct pedestrian private entrances leading directly into these units.

as well as the wider sidewalks and the curb bump out right there at the corner, that area in green.

That's again part of the Streets at Work plan that staff suggested and you can see some of the high visibility crosswalks that we would add and increase pedestrian safety.

We have an onsite alley in the back that's shown again a suggestion of the neighborhood community to reduce the amount of traffic or any queuing of vehicles in and out of the building that could build up

and caused backlogs on 11th Street.

So the architects shift the building away from the rear lot line and added this on-site alley, which provides direct access into both levels of the parking garage.

You can also see to the right of the arrow, that leads down into what's currently an alley, which this property has access to right now.

And as Mr. Rockin mentioned, we volunteered from the very beginning to cut off our access to that alley.

because we didn't want to add any additional traffic to that alley, especially with the day school now using it so much.

This is a view from East Jefferson Street trying to highlight what we call the townhouse style units.

These provide, again, direct access, smaller form.

This is intended to mirror the form of the residential structures that are on the opposite side of the street and that are located throughout the neighborhood and along 11th Street.

It helps these individual doors and porches help to respond to the rhythm of the residential scale architecture in the neighborhood and also help to activate the streetscape.

We think this side does a really good job of helping to show the difference in the heights of the two wings.

and also the building form and how it's articulated with the small townhouse units, mirroring the structures across the street.

I should also point out that those structures across the street, again, they're essentially all commercial now.

Those properties are zoned downtown north.

They can be redeveloped at a much higher use, higher intensity.

Some have also provided input that the proposed building is significantly out of scale with others in the neighborhood.

We asked the architects to provide a height comparison, and you can see here at the far corner, the top of the proposed building is actually slightly shorter than the top of the Randolph Building, which is just a block away and slightly down the hill.

So I'm going to end with this.

We always look to the city's comprehensive plan for guidance.

There are a number of provisions in the code in the comprehensive plan that this project supports.

We enumerated most of those at the Planning Commission public hearing, but these really stuck with us.

In order to be a truly world-cross city, Charlottesville must provide sufficient housing options to ensure safe, appealing, environmentally sustainable, and affordable housing for all population segments and income levels

including middle income.

Consequently, city neighborhoods will feature a variety of housing types, which this would do, housing sizes and incomes, all within convenient walking, biking, or transit distances of enhanced community amenities that include mixed use, barrier free, higher density, pedestrian and transit oriented housing at employment and cultural centers.

connected by facilities, parks, trails, and services.

So we'll end with that.

If I may add two quick things, we do have a few other slides on a few other issues.

So if anyone has questions, I may have a slide that will answer that question.

And finally, we do have a number of the physician owners of the partnership.

As Mr. Rochkin alluded, Great Eastern is just a small minority owner.

The owners are really the physicians who've been providing health care services to this neighborhood and to the Charlottesville area.

for literally decades.

Some of the partners have retired, some of them have passed on, some of the new younger physicians have joined the partnership.

There's a number of those physicians here and their families, so we'd ask that if any of those physicians are here or their families, other members of the partnership, if you would at least raise your hand high so people can see that you're here, or feel free to stand.

So we want you all to know that it's the physicians who are the owners of this project.

They're our clients and we're working for them.

During the break I mentioned this to Ms. Long and as land use attorney this is a provision of the state code she's more knowledgeable about than I am but I wanted to bring it to the attention of the council.

It doesn't preclude anything that's being suggested here tonight but you do need to be made aware of it because this is a residential special use permit that includes an affordable housing component.

This is what the state code says, conditions imposed in connection

with residential special use permits wherein the applicant proposes affordable housing shall be consistent with the objective of providing affordable housing.

In other words, you don't want to put on a lot of conditions that make it impossible for the applicant to provide affordable housing when that's another condition.

When imposing conditions on residential projects,

specifying materials and methods of construction or specific design features.

And I think there are some specific design features here.

The approving body in that city council shall consider the impact of the conditions upon the affordability of housing.

And we accomplish that by considering it under our

Are there any questions, Mr. Brown, on this?

Okay, all right, so by my take we've probably gone to about 20 minutes out of the originally allocated 40.

I expect we're probably going to go over that 40 and we do this a lot and we have complicated items.

So let's, Ms. Rice, if you wouldn't mind just putting us on the 20 minute clock where we originally were.

This will, again, we'll stop this when we get to the

Public Hearing, but now we can begin with any questions to the applicant or to staff, and any parties with the applicant.

Mr. Fenwick?

Yeah, a quick question.

Yes, Mr. Fenwick, there have been a number of changes.

We changed the design of the building to shift the massing away from 11th Street towards 10th Street.

We added the commercial space.

At the Planning Commission public hearing, we had stated several times that we would agree to add commercial space, but we hadn't officially committed to it.

We didn't understand at the time how important that was to the neighborhood.

But based on subsequent conversations and feedback after the Planning Commission meeting from a number of the neighborhoods

resident representatives, it became clear to us that that was a very important desired component of the project.

So we've added a commitment to have up to 10,000 square feet of commercial space.

We've said that we will have small scale neighborhood service type commercial uses, things like a coffee shop or a small deli type restaurant, kind of a combined coffee or deli

Restaurant.

One caveat, that's not actually allowed in the B1 zoning district right now.

So in order for us to include those types of commercial uses in the project, we'd have to have the zoning ordinance amended slightly to allow it.

We also, based on feedback from the neighborhood representatives, we learned about some safety concerns that they have at the 11th Street and Little High Street intersection.

So we asked our traffic engineer to study that

intersection and provide some suggestions.

One of the suggestions was to shift the stop signs from 11th Street to Little High Street.

We've since heard from several residents that they are not at all interested in that.

So I want to be sure you all know that we're not pushing that.

If they're not interested in it and if council isn't, we won't.

But we've still offered to implement the other suggestions, which are to add those same high visibility crosswalks and the curb bump outs at the corners that helps with pedestrian safety.

We updated our traffic study to make certain that with the addition of the commercial uses that we would not create any additional traffic impacts.

We added the provision for solar panels on the roof of the building sufficient to offset the energy required to power the common areas.

That is correct.

Those are since the Planning Commission.

I have a couple questions or maybe just one.

Some of the visuals, it's the area that has the three story piece and that seems to be on a berm.

and then the other side, which is the five-story piece, seems to be right at the same grade as the street level.

Thank you, Ms. Galvin.

I may ask Mark Kessner with Henningsen and Kessner Architects to come forward and help address that question.

probably more accurately and professionally than I can.

Thank you, Mara Kessner.

So there is an approximate 10 foot change in elevation from 10th Street to 11th Street.

Part of the project is a two-level parking facility below grade that is not seen from 10th, 11th, or East Jefferson.

It's accessed totally and completely from the alley.

So we're working with the natural grade and the berming to mitigate the impact of those two levels underground so that they're not experienced on any of these public streets.

From 10th to 11th, it's right at 10 feet and then as we go down

from the corner of 11th and East Jefferson, it's still falling off.

And so where we would cut into the alley, we're down another 8 or 10 feet.

It's a gradual fall over about 400 feet.

It's a gentle grade.

Quick question.

Actually, this is for both Miss Long and Miss Rainey.

I really appreciate the fact that you all hired traffic engineers.

I know that during the time when this was being developed, we were between traffic engineers and then had a couple of different traffic engineers.

So I appreciate the need to do that.

But I did wonder if the city had had a chance, the city traffic engineer,

Yes, Brynn Duncan who is our current city traffic engineer has reviewed the materials in detail, spoken with applicants about the materials and found them to be accurate and acceptable.

Okay, great.

I think that

Actually, I just have one other question for Mr. Brown when you say we have to consider the impact on affordable housing Does that mean that like if we said well, we want a floor lopped off of the entire thing That if that would increase the cost and make affordable housing impossible to provide or or is it really just it's more than that It is if your conditions are

And just as an example, there is a condition requiring open air plazas.

I think that would fall within the category of a design feature.

Should be considered.

Okay, alright, thanks.

I do have another question, but I'll ask later.

I had a question for the applicant in regards to rent.

Now is the appropriate time to ask that?

Sure.

So, I know there's been some discussion in regards to people talking about affordability of the units that'll be there, and I know that you all plan to provide some affordable housing

You need to understand, everybody needs to understand, including us, that this is sort of a domino effect.

We can't do anything on that site until we've constructed a new building for the physicians.

And that's at least 18 to 24 months in the future.

I will tell you that on the workforce side, the rents will be market.

and you could look at what the rents are at places like CityWalk and others today to get a baseline, but we're going to be dependent upon construction costs in the interim and also on interest rates in the interim.

Now for the affordable piece, that's a different animal if I understand it correctly.

We have somebody here who might understand it better than I do and if I get it messed up, he'll hold his hand up.

We are committing on affordable housing to rent to families who make 80% or less of the adjusted median family income.

And as I understand it, they can't pay any more than 30% of their income towards housing costs.

We get more credit if we rent to people that are less than 80%.

of the median family income.

So if we rented to somebody that's 50%, that would be more beneficial to us.

Now, those applicants still have to comply with all of the other criteria that goes into approving an application, credit, rental histories, jobs, that kind of thing.

But we're market-based

people.

We also have changed our view a little bit as we are rebuilding properties that we built in the 70s.

Now we're trying to build them so that they'll last 100 years, so we don't have to rebuild them.

This is going to be a very expensive process, and I suspect children and grandchildren will be happy that we did it.

I hope that that's responsive to your... No, no, that was...

Okay.

Sure.

There are about 100

Parking space is extra than needed as required by zoning and it does impact affordability because as I understand it, I've looked at some statistics, it can cost about $200 to $250 per month per unit to have a structured parking space built into the rental fee.

Number one, why the 100 extra spaces, especially when I've been hearing that CityWalk, for example, is at 40% of their residents actually walk to work?

I'm going to try to answer that, but again, there are people here that may have a better answer than I do if they want to hold their hand up.

First of all, it's not $250 a month.

It's probably $22,000 to $25,000 a space, which factors out to probably not being quite that much money.

My guess is that of the 126 units and the mix of one and two bedrooms, that probably one and a quarter spaces per unit

will be what's required so there might be 60 or 70 spaces left over.

We are not committed to making those additional spaces parking spaces.

We can put a gymnasium fitness facility down there.

Storage is always a very big issue with apartments today.

We might put some of that aside for storage, but the reality is we've got to build a foundation anyway, so that space is there.

We just got to find the best use for it.

We do not intend to get into the parking business.

Now, if the Charlottesville Day School came to us and said our teachers would like to have 10 spaces, yes, we're going to rent to them.

I would suspect that those parking spaces will have that indoor or that structured parking will have the impact of taking cars today off of the street to make those on-street parking spaces available for others.

Sort of like what you all are proposing to do with the parking meters downtown.

Can I just add one supplemental point, which is that with the commercial space that we're agreeing to add, the additional spaces would also be for the employees and guests and customers of those commercial spaces.

So since we don't exactly know what those uses will be, that's why, as you said, you've got to build the foundation anyway so you end up with two levels of parking.

And so those extra spaces may be needed by the commercial units.

If they're not needed, they have options for how to accommodate them.

But they're not trying to get in the parking business.

And in fact, the city ordinance right now wouldn't allow that.

It would require an amendment to the ordinance to allow others to park there.

I have a couple questions.

Firstly, I understand that you're presenting this project to us and it's gone through a lot over this period of time and not trying to hang over our head or your other partners the alternative use to this if this were to be voted down.

This is what we think based on our experience and knowledge of the market and we are in the apartment business and we are in the shopping center retail business so we have a feel for the market.

This is not the highest and most profitable use if you sat down with an envelope to try to figure out the economics of this deal.

But this is what we feel as local citizens and as local business people the market needs.

The 10,000 square feet of commercial that was added was not an insignificant consideration on our part once we considered it, particularly given the existing ordinance because there's some uses that the neighbors would like to see in there that are not allowed today in the B-1 zone.

That's a subject for a different day.

So to answer your question, we really think that this is

I understand that but that doesn't answer my question so I'd still like to know, I would like to know what is the by right potential use of this property because I know what happened with Charlottesville Day School which is right across and they built right up to the to the sidewalk almost and they built up right up to the height and it's a

Big box.

Apologize.

And my second question, which is tied into this, is what's the decision making structure within this partnership?

How do they go about making decisions?

If you all are part owner, what's the, so what I'm trying to play out, what I want the public to understand is if this doesn't go through today, what then starts to happen by the entity on the other side of this and

If it were office, that would probably be five to six hundred employees, maybe a little more than that.

The apartments, my guess is, if they're four bedroom apartments, they're going to have a lot of people there.

We like not to think about that because that's not what we want to do.

But that's by right.

That's by right use.

The decision making, the doctors rely to a great extent, I think, on the general partners, and they have for more than 40 years.

But the decision making process is the doctors.

It takes a majority of, to do something big like, to borrow money.

If we weren't going to borrow money, it would be different.

But if we're going to borrow money, we just would take.

It's going to take a majority of the partners in interest.

And how many partners are there in the partnership right now?

No, they run between 2 and 10 percent.

Nobody, I think, has over 10 percent.

Okay.

All right, thank you very much.

If there's no other questions, then I think we should get started.

We've got three minutes left on the clock.

Is everyone OK with adding?

We're going to need to add probably 30 minutes to the discussion after the public hearing is done.

But we got through the early items pretty quickly.

All right, we're going to go to our public hearing.

Again, two minutes for everybody.

We've got 27 folks signed up here.

We can have more people sign up.

The sheet is in my hands, but I, you know, hopefully everyone has signed up who would like to talk because it's going to be a lot.

Okay.

So we're going to start with George Gilliam and same drill as before.

Please comments.

Let's begin with your name and address.

Mr. Mayor and members of council.

My name is George Gilliam.

I live at 210 10th street.

Northeast, you all are being asked to do something that is almost without precedent in terms of the extent of the additional density that this applicant would like.

By right, they could do 21 dwelling units per acre.

They're asking you to go to 87 dwelling units per acre.

Why do I say that this is unprecedented?

From what I've been able to find out, talking with the city attorney, is that there's only been one project in the history of Charlottesville that has had that much of a jump.

The neighborhood feels that it's too dense, that it's too many.

people being added in.

We would like very much to see this sent back for further modification with instructions that the size and density be reduced.

Would this prejudice this developer

As you heard from Mr. Rotkin, they can't get started on anything on this site for a year and a half to two years until these doctors can be moved to a new facility.

The new facility, according to what the market study here says, is still on the drawing boards, so we don't really know how long that will take.

The point is that there is plenty of time for this thing to be worked further.

What else is on the drawing boards that will be coming up?

The comprehensive plan revision or review is supposed to be done by 2018.

The strategic investment area, strategic investment area planning

should be done soon.

All these factors should be considered in deciding what would be a proper use and a proper perspective on this.

Thank you.

Elizabeth Lawson.

I'm going to say the name of the next person coming up.

Elizabeth Lawson, 1201 Jefferson Street,

I at the last public hearing was one who suggested that the neighborhood association would give consideration to this project if there were single family dwelling units, i.e.

townhouses along 11th Street.

Saying that what they are proposing now, which is stacked apartments, only three stories, but if you look at the plans, the fourth story goes back, is not a response to the neighbor's suggestion.

The only thing that our neighborhood has asked has been that the density be lowered on units per acre.

There has never been any movement on that part of the developers.

Secondly, at a public presentation at City Space, we brought this up again about density and we did have a response from the developer and it was, that's not part of our business plan.

I ask you as the city representatives, since when does a business plan affect zoning?

Thank you.

So what I mean is that if you're coming up, if you could come down as I call your name as you're coming up so we don't have, so the next, Phyllis Ross is coming up next and Page Giller.

He's next.

My name is Carolyn Belt and I live at 1011 Little High Street and I'm against special use permit.

To me, it's a basically win-win for the city and the developers.

The contractors have to pay into the city's affordable housing fund, which many have put in thousands of dollars so they could build an affordable, so they could build a few affordable apartments.

And I think Great Easton wants to build four out of 126 apartments.

So I don't know if that takes about a pain in the affordable housing fund or not.

The contractors also put in sidewalks and other amenities that the city would require.

And the way they're handed out these days, I don't think they're so special because the contractors expect them, I think, when they do this.

And that's the reason that this is a B-1, Zone B-1 for 1011 East Josephson.

and that is so the density fits into the neighborhood and when it doesn't, it is just an eyesore.

And that is what the neighborhood is concerned about.

Tim Halbert.

Mayor Signer, Vice Mayor Bellamy, honorable city councilors, good evening.

My name is Timothy Halbert.

I reside on Brandywine Drive in the city of Charlottesville.

I work in the city across the street for the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Before I'm going to take a leave here, let me say on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, we're very proud to stand with the city and

and others in the condemnation of the legacy of hate of the Ku Klux Klan.

Tonight you have an opportunity to help remedy a glaring and growing need to accommodate attractive, affordable, accessible, walkable workforce housing in the city for our city-based enterprises and their ability to retain and attract the 21st century workforce.

As you know, our Chamber has communicated with you earlier on the merits on this project.

and tonight you have heard a very powerful presentation on the merits of that project.

There's no need for me to go through them again.

Suffice to say that we reaffirm our strong support for this project which, as you know, meets numerous community development goals clearly articulated in the City of Charlottesville Comprehensive Plan and further by your own City Council direction.

Our chamber has been and remains a partner with the City of Charlottesville in advancing projects that meet important avowed city goals.

The East Jefferson Place project meets the City of Charlottesville's identified goals and our chamber's goal, many of them in partnership.

We believe that this special use permit should be approved on its merits and we urge you to do so.

We look forward to your favorable action.

Thank you.

Mayor Signer and Councillors, my name is Phyllis Ross.

I live at 210 10th Street Northeast.

Right now I feel like a little fish in a big pond following the slick presentations and all the supporters that embrace Eastern management.

But I am a neighbor and I will be living there and I am the one that it's going to be concerning.

I moved to City of Charlottesville nine years ago.

and quickly became interested in the city and its government and new projects.

I've watched other developments go up in Charlottesville, some good and some not so good.

Today, I'm dismayed about the size and density of the proposed SUP requested for 1011 East Jefferson Street.

The building will be built on the highest part of 10th Street.

It will tower over the neighborhood, removing two stories on 11th Street and adding them to

10th Street makes no sense.

The photos shown by the developer mainly showed the lower part, and you didn't see the higher part, how big that building will be, the part that will be on 10th Street, even though they say it is a commercial area, but it's low density commercial.

The building is massive and will take up a whole block in this quiet residential neighborhood.

I have given you two photographs of the area as it now looks.

It's now in a similar five story building in another area of town that will explain my resistance to this large project.

Previously I received a letter from Kenneth Wirth, a resident in our neighborhood.

I would like to read a portion of his letter to you.

The structural footprint of the complex would be about two and a half times the footprint of the current structure there.

The complex would be at least twice as high as the current structure

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, I'm Page Gillum.

I live at 210 10th Street.

In the applicant's project narrative dated June 12th, they assert that the project will be transitional in form and use.

But because the engine driving this project is an outsized density,

The project is not transitional, particularly on the 10th Street side.

The part of East Jefferson that runs from 10th Street to Court Square is a commercial area with a distinctive residential character.

Businesses there are located primarily in former two-story houses.

The unique sense of place that exists east of 10th flows west across 10th.

Indeed, on East Jefferson between 10th Street and Court Square, there are no buildings higher than three stories.

That includes the SNL building, which, as it fronts on East Jefferson Street, is only three stories tall.

If the applicant had been willing to make the same sort of mitigating changes to form on the 10th Street side as it made on 11th Street, the result might have been more compatible with all of the surrounding area and there might be a smoother transition across 10th Street.

But density has been a closed issue.

There has not been an inch of give.

It seems pretty clear that the design concessions on 11th created a density deficit that had to be made up somewhere.

So the floor taken off 11th Street was put on top of the 10th Street side.

The applicant is depending on a relatively modest amount of commercial space to tie the 10th Street side functionally to the commercial uses across the street.

But that fails to outweigh the primary use of the project, a 126 unit apartment building.

This is not a blending of uses.

It's a massive interruption in context.

Thank you.

My name is Herbert Beskin.

I live at 1107 East Jefferson Street, about 200 feet from where this building will be.

I ask you to look at four things in evaluating this proposal.

The first is the impact on this established neighborhood.

You're about to double the number of family units in this neighborhood and forever change the character of it.

Secondly, it's a transitional site, but this is not a transitional building in terms of form, size, units, or its effect on its environment.

It is not in harmony with the surroundings as a comprehensive plan requires.

Thirdly, think about the precedent you're setting by allowing four times the allowed density.

How are you going to enforce this in future projects that come before you?

When you have a situation like this where you have such a glaring exception to the zoning and you have all this community opposition,

What justifies this kind of exception?

Fourthly, the alternatives to this site.

This is a favorable site that other people are going to want to develop if this developer won't provide the changes that the community wants and the city requires.

You have alternatives here.

This does not have to be a mammoth apartment building.

In closing, Charlottesville is expanding upward.

This is a neighborhood-defining project that you're considering, but you're going to have a number of these coming down the pipe.

This project is a tipping point, and the precedent you set here, you're going to have to follow through on other projects.

So I'd ask you to keep in mind this is all a question of balance, but this one is out of scale, it's out of sync, and it's out of compliance.

We would ask you to honor the terms of the zoning ordinance, the spirit of the comprehensive plan, and the opposition of the neighbors like myself who have to live in the shadow of this building.

Sumner, Brown.

Sumner Brown, 1107 East Jefferson Street.

I want to state first of all the objection our neighbors have to having this on the busiest vacation week of the year.

So many of our board members even and the people who have worked so hard on this whole thing are on vacation.

and so many people.

When we did this before in October for the Planning Commission almost every seat in here was filled with our neighbors.

We're passionate against this special use permit.

The whole neighborhood is with very few exceptions.

And so I really wanted to be a spokesman that our neighborhood a lot more would have wanted to be here.

You might have people stand up who are against the special use permit because not everybody wants to speak.

Also, I really disagree with this traffic study in that it's not using common sense.

The doctor's offices are one at a time traffic in the weekdays.

It does not impact rush hour.

It does not impact the nights.

It does not impact the weekends.

It will be a very different situation.

I know several people who live at city wall.

None of them work downtown.

They all drive to work elsewhere.

It's just kind of a pie in the sky.

This is what we would wish that everybody

lives here, will work downtown, they'll all walk to work, but we can't say that any of them will do that.

So it's all kind of based on wishful thinking, not necessarily fact.

And affordable housing, only four units out of all that is not very much affordable housing.

Our, lots of the houses in our neighborhood cost less than the city walk apartments.

We have a wonderfully economically diverse neighborhood.

We're proud of that.

It's one of the most in the city.

Lots of nice small houses.

We'd love to see some affordable townhouses there for families, our teachers and policemen that we hear about that can't afford to live in Charlottesville.

Thank you.

Good evening, counselors.

Greg Powell.

I'm an architect with a practice on 208 3rd Street.

We focus on urban mixed use, creating exciting urban environments to live, work, and play, which is what our comprehensive plan invites for our downtown and near downtown areas that are walkable to our downtown.

The comprehensive plan is very clear on that.

It has a higher density downtown, and then it transitions through zones such as this one that allow four stories.

and then it further transitions before we get to the residential areas.

There are two real potential developments that could occur on this site.

One is to make it apartment units, they could be large units or we could aim at where the market is not being served and that is smaller one and two bedroom shared apartments.

I would submit that it's because of

Perhaps an unintended consequence of the zoning in our mixed-use areas that there's a control on dwelling units per acre that discourages, in fact, I think it's almost impossible to build small units within

the DUA that the city states.

So one option is the option before you, which is a residential building that scales itself down from four stories down to three stories.

The other option is a four story office building that, by my calculations, can be roughly 120,000 to 150,000 square feet, which is 600 to 700 employees that could, as of right, without any public hearings, without any

Council, Planning Commission, or BAR, submit a site plan and building permit to build that large office building.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to our concerns tonight.

I want you to know, first of all, that I'm not just speaking for myself and my husband.

I'm speaking for many people who are out of town for the Fourth of July Vacation Week.

And they all share my concerns.

I hope you realize I'm representing more people than myself.

My name is Elizabeth Kernan.

I live at 210

10th Street Northeast.

I live just one block from the proposed site.

And although I have several concerns about it, my main concern is about the four times density that is being proposed.

I realize that a traffic study had been done,

I hope each of you read a letter that one of my neighbors, Ken Wertz, sent with very detailed information about the traffic situation.

And it certainly presented a different picture from the one that the applicant has presented.

And I believe that there will be much more traffic noise and commotion.

And I see this new building as being a harsh,

disruption into a pleasant neighborhood.

I think there are children being dropped off at the day school in the morning and picking up in the afternoon and that causes a lot of congestion.

The parking in the area is very tight.

The present building provides parking for all the people who come and go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have to move on.

Thank you.

David Gist.

You are, yep.

And then we have Shawnee West, Dane Dale, Alison Campbell, Brian

and Julia Weissman.

Thank you very much Mr. Mayor and Council.

My name is David Geis and I live at 210 10th Street Northeast.

I'm speaking also with permission of my wife for her.

We are recent city residents having previously lived in the county for 38 years and I was rather alarmed to discover the plans for this huge new building which brings with it as we've discussed tonight issues of

safety, density, character of the neighborhood, traffic, and balance.

But I'm most concerned with the decision to remove that one story from the east side, apparently as a goodwill gesture to the eastern neighborhood residents, but then plunk it on the west side, on the 10th Street side, in essence not reducing the density at all, and in fact increasing the height of the building on the west side by 20%.

So my request is simple.

Just please keep this a reasonable scale building.

To quadruple the by density right would forever change the character of what we've come to discover as a very gentle and very lovely neighborhood.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Shani West.

I live at 1204 East Jefferson and I've lived there for almost 16 years and I love my neighborhood as many of us do and we love the diversity, the economic diversity and just being able to walk to town.

I agree with everyone who has opposed this special use permit.

Mostly, most people have opposed the density and I think that is the greatest issue to be concerned about.

So instead of like 21 or 30 units available currently for the zoning, they want to quadruple it of course.

You've heard this to 87 or

I don't recall the number.

So that is the main concern and there has been absolutely no compromise from the developer.

There has been none at all as far as the density and so I don't believe that they've really listened to us as neighbors and it's not transitional and you've heard it's way too out of scale considering

you know the rest of the neighborhood so we propose to go back to the drawing board and you know scale down the density and I think people would be much happier and if everybody else who is opposed to this please stand and rise and let them see that this also would have been a lot bigger many people are out of town this was unfortunate timing

for many people who are out of town.

But as you can see, there is great objection to this as it is.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Diane Dale.

I live at 1104 Hazel Street.

I'm a next door neighbor to this neighborhood.

I am on Martha Jefferson Neighborhood Association Board.

I don't think anybody can quiver with the fact that new housing is good, residential development supported.

It's a great idea.

The idea of mixed diverse neighborhood, good idea.

No complaints about that.

But I hope the council fully understands what you are or are not approving.

I'm a retired urban designer, so I have a few thoughts about it.

I'll leave it to two comments.

One is the visual impact.

The applicant showed us some illustrations and then one dimensioned diagram

that showed the comparative in height to the Randolph Building, which of course was most favorable to their massing.

I suggest that you ask them to extend that same rigorous analysis in all four directions, to look at the height impact of the adjacent blocks, which as everyone has noted are much lower.

And I think it's not just the context, the immediate context of this building,

neighborhood to neighborhood, block to block, but the viewshed.

This building's going to have a big impact.

As others have noted, it's at the peak of a hill.

You're going to see it from a while.

We've got plenty of examples in this town of visual impacts that weren't quite fully worked out, right?

There's some viewsheds that have been impacted by development unintentionally.

The issue of the slope, the berm, that's a 10 foot high burp along that block.

I'd be curious about what the full impact of that might be.

The second one is the traffic impact.

I understand that the city has looked at it and agreed with it.

As the point's been made, there will be 180 beds.

approximately, so let's say 180 cars, maybe more if there's two people per bed, and that pattern of movement is going to be during the rush hour, morning and evening.

Thank you.

Alison Campbell.

Hi, my name is Alison Campbell.

I live at 1120 East Jefferson.

I bought my house when I was 22 years old.

I made $7.50 an hour and I worked my butt off in this town.

I'm an entrepreneur.

I own Revolutionary Soup.

I own Zazu's.

I currently run a restaurant in the downtown mall.

I have a 16 year old daughter and a beautiful wife.

When I walk to work in the morning,

I walk up past my neighbors in 1100 block and then there's a couple of houses at the 10-hundred block on East Jefferson on the left-hand side and then there's that doctor's office and then at 900 block there's a bunch of other houses and they're commercial use.

My lawyer is on that street and I keep walking and then I get to the SNL.

What they're trying to do is they're trying to take

This neighborhood and all of a sudden put this huge building in the middle of our neighborhood.

This is not a transition.

There's no transitioning at all.

The houses on the 900 block are houses.

1,100 block, they're houses.

1,000 block, they're not going to be houses.

It's going to be this huge, huge, huge eyesore with a bunch of people who don't care about our neighborhood because they're renters.

Renters don't care as much.

I'm sorry.

I've been a renter.

I didn't care as much.

This is our neighborhood.

This is where my kid is growing up.

I don't want to walk up the street and be blinded by this huge building and then get to the next block and see a bunch of other houses.

I understand that we need development.

I do.

I understand we need more housing in this town.

Believe me.

but the density of this place is ridiculous.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Esteemed Council.

My name is Brian Keena.

I live at 1126 East Jefferson Street, about a dozen houses from this proposed project.

I've worked and or lived in this neighborhood for almost 20 years now, and I'm neither an architect nor a lawyer nor an engineer.

I've seen a lot of projects be built, a lot of development come up around this neighborhood, including the monolith known as City Walk.

And with regards to this proposed development at 1011 East Jefferson Street, I respectfully ask that you be forward looking.

By quadrupling the density allowance, you will forever change the skyline and the scale of our neighborhood.

Traffic is already an issue on East Jefferson Street.

I can tell you that with great accuracy as I play baseball with my son on the street and afternoon traffic is already, it's pretty busy.

What is enough?

We asked City Council exactly how much this development intends to charge for rent.

I find it

Disturbing that no one representing this project tonight.

And I say this with great respect.

But with everyone here, no one is able to even give us a ballpark figure of what they're proposing for rentals.

And I ask that the developers return with a lower density.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Julia Weissman, 1208 East Jefferson.

I also agree in the density is too high.

We have repeatedly asked for decreased density.

There is no one in our neighborhood that I've spoken to or heard from who has said they're against density, just not this much density.

I think that we've been quite reasonable.

They've done a fair bit of reaching out to us and addressing some of them with the exclusion of the density.

It's really about the density, the impact that it has on our neighborhood.

With it doubling the units in our neighborhood, it's just hard for me to believe that is not going to have a tremendous negative impact on our neighborhood.

Thank you for remembering that we are citizens, tax paying, voting, and we matter as much as the big business folks who are bringing housing.

Affordable housing is important to our neighborhood as well for diversity.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, I'm William Wiley.

I live at 1111 East Jefferson, just down the street from this project.

One of the first things I'd want to say is the physicians have shown up to talk about how they support this project, the physician owners of this building.

I would ask where those people live.

It makes sense to them as a business opportunity, but not for this neighborhood to have something like this there.

I'm an artist and I can guarantee you that this would be an aesthetic nightmare.

The building of this scale, even with their plans, is going to be a major visual block, as has been pointed out.

The density is way too high.

Everyone has been saying this, so I'm just repeating something that you're hearing from everyone.

but also the traffic.

That's come up a number of times.

I cannot possibly comprehend that this would be the same amount of traffic as is currently in that building.

Also, they brought up tonight that the commercial space would be available.

I'm wondering if, considering they don't know what they can actually put in there for a commercial space, whether it be a coffee shop or a cafe,

or whether it would just be offices.

I wonder if that amount of traffic has been thought about in this study that the city has approved of.

And it just doesn't make sense to me that something with this many units, this many people, this many cars would be the same amount of traffic.

So I respectfully ask you to reject this SUP and send it back to the drawing board with something with less density.

Hi, I'm Grace Hale.

I live at 1111 East Jefferson, which is very, very close to this proposed building.

And I would like to ask all of you tonight to reject this special use permit.

I find it insulting that these developers and doctors are telling us that their major concern here is affordable housing.

It seems to me insulting given four units out of 125 or six and no estimate on what the rental costs will be for the other apartments.

Seems pretty clear they're motivated by profits.

All I want to say in conclusion is we had an example tonight of what planning can look like with the Fifeville neighborhood and the rezoning request.

I ask that you give our neighborhood that same process.

I ask the developers that, I ask you that.

We have not had that kind of process.

Hello, I'm Anne Mercer, I live at 1200 East Jefferson Street.

I'm asking that you vote against the special use permit, because it would set a bad precedent in several ways.

Firstly, it would open the gates to every owner of every office or business of similar zoning requirements in this area, north, south, east and west of 1011 to do something similar.

The dental building directly east of 1011 that is neighbours with a single family house is of great concern to us because that could go the same way if you grant this special use permit.

If developers are allowed to use our streets to gain the greatest profits possible, it would be hard for others to resist when the developers come knocking.

We have seen that once a project is let loose, others follow and rob the streets of their character.

We see this on West Main Street where the Community Credit Union is wrapped in the enormous embrace of the uncommon.

We see this on Market Street where the ABC Preschool sits on top of two houses that used to be there and smugly between two others that seem to know their days are numbered.

Granting permission for this SUP would override the deliberations of the Planning Commission who, whenever I have seen them in action, have always, always understood the words, the worries, the cares, the passion, even the history of the people living in the targeted neighbourhoods.

Those of you who were there when we appeared before the Planning Commission will know that nearly 30 of us spoke

and a petition was presented with over 90 names, all opposed to the SUP.

I know the developers have changed their plans in response to our input, but they consistently did not address our number one concern, density.

and as the people of our neighborhood have become regular observers of traffic accident near misses, I've seen the increase in traffic all over town, bottlenecks where they never used to be, people dashing, driving recklessly through red lights to avoid another cycle of waiting.

Thank you.

Logan Blanco.

I'm Logan Blanco.

I live at 1200 East Jefferson.

I do not support granting this SUP.

This one building on one third of a block is going to double the number of housing units in our neighborhood.

The density I object to, I think it's going to have a tremendous impact.

I won't

try to repeat everything that everybody said, but I thought some people were really very articulate about the issues, and I agree with all of them that were brought up.

Also, one thing I wanted to mention, if we were doing form-based code at this point, I don't think that this would pass.

It really, the way it affects the neighborhood, and I was really impressed by the presentation that the

form-based code people did.

And the pictures of real transitional housing, there's so many, so many different things we could do.

The other thing that I've heard come up a lot tonight is the market needs, that we've studied the market needs and the market needs.

Well, there's also some people living in the community, and we would like you to consider the people's needs.

We live there.

I don't know that much about market needs, but we do live there.

Affordable housing is important.

I think there's ways to do it, but not with a special use permit.

So I ask you not to grant the special use permit.

Thank you, my name is Luke Juday and I live at 1002 Rose Hill Drive in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm here to speak in favor of the SUP.

Neighbors have made some valid complaints which I think have resulted in changes to the proposal over the past year or two.

The only issue remaining before us today is the density.

many from the New York Times to President Obama who was quoted tonight have addressed the trend of liberal cities like Charlottesville betraying liberal values by using restrictive housing policies to shut the gates and drive up prices rather than maintaining an open and inclusive market that creates more sustainable modes of life and makes room for all to share in their success.

Homeowners in high demand neighborhoods lobbied to maintain artificially low densities and already wealthy areas pushing demand into lower income neighborhoods or perpetuating inefficient and environmentally destructive land use.

But this isn't the community.

It's only a part of it that you see before you today.

The community also includes the hundreds of people who wish they could live downtown but can't because the current residents are holding the land hostage.

The proposed building is not an unprecedented density, as has been said, and it's surrounded by buildings of a roughly similar height and use.

It's two blocks from the downtown core in an area where the street grid and infrastructure are there to support density.

So if not here, where?

If this isn't the place for more housing, where specifically, what block do you think that it should go on?

Leadership is helping citizens to confront the contradictions in their values.

We can be an open and accepting city that makes room for everyone and encourages environmentally sustainable ways of life, or we can cater to homeowners' fears and profits from their asset, which is also a consistent position.

But if you take that position, I would ask you to please take down the statement of values on your wall, because that's just BS in that case.

Thank you.

Matthew Gilliken.

No more.

Can't have that, sorry.

We gotta be able to go through.

My name is Matthew Gillican.

I live at 726 Orange Dale Avenue, and I wanted to provide a perspective of another neighborhood.

I live in the Fifeville community, and I'm kind of trying to think through how this project, if it were denied, would potentially impact our neighborhood.

For one thing, we live

pretty close to downtown.

If there's not as many housing units accessible to downtown, I expect that people would try to push more into the Fifeville neighborhood, potentially even across Cherry Avenue to where I live.

It seems that people are starting to like 40 year old duplexes that have broken water lines in an effort to find housing in this town.

I think if we have more housing closer to downtown, it will prevent people from pushing out into other neighborhoods.

Additionally, traffic's been mentioned many times

Our best chance at having the lowest amount of traffic is having a lot of housing close to downtown.

If people cannot live close to downtown, they're going to have to live further away, which means they're going to have to drive more miles, which is going to put more cars on the road and also have a negative impact on the environment.

Additionally, I would like to say that if, as one person mentioned, maybe we are at a tipping point, the city can elect to decline to do this type of development.

which will probably lead us down a road to becoming something like Boulder, Colorado or Palo Alto, California, the sort of town that's not really accessible to anyone who doesn't have a lot of money or we could choose to approve projects like this and move forward with projects like this and have a more stable housing market, have better traffic situations and provide more accessibility to all sorts of people.

Thank you.

It's Nicole Scrow.

So good evening.

I'm Nicole Scrow.

I live at 3000 City Walkway.