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A seven-story apartment building is proposed near single family homes in Charlottesville.
Charlottesville has not yet been rezoned, but a big national developer, together with their Charlottesville architect, has been confidently citing the Future Land Use Map to justify building an oversized (seven-story) 390-student luxury apartment building on Jefferson Park Avenue (JPA). It is designed to occupy the entire city block between Observatory and Washington Avenues and extend halfway up those small side streets. Ever since the adjacent residents first heard about it last fall, they have been protesting this high rise, which will tower over their houses, cut their light, exacerbate parking problems, and add to traffic congestion on JPA.
Observatory Avenue dates to the 1920s and Washington Avenue to the early 1930s. Most of the existing one- or two-story houses were built in that period, like the historic landmark Fry’s Spring Station one block farther down Jefferson Park. In contrast, the proposed high rise, made of fiber cement panels, looks as if it were designed for Stonefield Plaza.
The project far exceeds what is permitted by the site’s current R-3 zoning, so the developer needs special use permits in order to build. Their siren song is the Future Land Use Map (FLUM), disguised as the Comprehensive Plan. (Curiously, the November 2021 Comprehensive Plan presents the FLUM not as a proposal for the future but as if it dictated present zoning—perhaps because it was written by the same company that devised the FLUM. The FLUM relegates the JPA neighborhood to “high intensity residential.”
The disparity between the residents’ vision for the future and the developer’s is vast: the homeowners imagine raising their kids on a safe, dead-end street or, depending on their age, enjoying a tranquil retirement amid their gardens. The developer envisions their homes demolished and replaced by high rises. In the 5/10 Planning Commission Public Hearing, the architect said, “Single family houses won’t be there for long.”
The city’s Neighborhood Development office has announced that, in the spirit of “Charlottesville Plans Together,” feedback from the public will be solicited before Charlottesville is rezoned. But contradictorily, Neighborhood Development has failed to put the brakes on this particular developer’s run-with-the-FLUM mentality. In fact, in its April 2022 staff report Neighborhood Development evaluates the project not just in terms of the city code but in terms of the FLUM.
In a March staff report, the Entrance Corridor Review Board did offer some criticisms of the project: “the unbroken east and west elevations exceed what is typical within this corridor; in fact, exceed what is typical in Charlottesville” (p. 3); “when viewed from a distance, the tall, unbroken walls read as massive and overwhelming” (p. 3); “whether applying the EC guidelines (60-feet) or the Comprehensive Plan (five stories) a height of 75-feet exceeds the recommendation for this location and therefore results in an adverse impact” (p. 2).
The neighborhood agreed, but found the city response too oriented on mitigating the height and the density by this or that strategy instead of declaring these dimensions flat out unacceptable. The developer, meanwhile, deferred putting the application before the Planning Commission “in order to address concerns in the SUP and ECR (Entrance Corridor) staff reports,” according to Neighborhood Development.
Here the plot thickens. The developer did not modify their application. Instead, what got changed was the city’s staff report! In the new (April) staff report, the previous criticisms largely vanished. All the criticisms cited above are deleted. Instead we read, “No adverse impact on E[ntrance] C[orridor]; impact(s) of increased height can be mitigated.”
Hocus-pocus! We wonder exactly in what manner the concerns in the original staff report were addressed. Since no explanations have been forthcoming, we speculate that the developer administered a concentrated dose of FLUM to the city staff. For the April staff report states: “The requested height increase ... is generally consistent with the Comprehensive Plan, which envisions this corridor becoming an area of higher residential density and mixed-use....” (p. 3)
Still Neighborhood Development Director Freas had told residents, “To be clear, existing zoning controls.” Yet in the May 10 public hearing, one planning commissioner raised the question of whether they should be going off the FLUM or current zoning. The question was bounced around, and the special use permit was approved 4-3.
Now the proposal goes to City Council. We wonder: will City Council also be seduced by the siren song of the FLUM? Or will they follow the standard for issuing special use permits in existing zoning as spelled out in the city code?
Lorna Martens and Ellen Contini-Morava are residents of the neighborhood where the apartment building is proposed.
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A seven-story apartment building is proposed near single family homes in Charlottesville.
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