City Council Work Session

Brooke HardinstaffYes. Thank you, city manager. The current operation was enabled through a special use permit and special exceptions, and tied to those approvals are an operations plan, and they include hours of operation. at least Sundays are not included within the approved hours of operations, so that would need to be amended. So they would need to file an application to modify the special use permit, and that could certainly be processed by staff and brought forward to council for consideration.

Paul Nabtestaffthat if we do not include this provision for additional height beyond the recommendation of the small area plans we could still accommodate it through two potential ways one is through special exceptions our current process for many of the developments that we receive in activity centers is that they use either commercial urban district or one of our commercial districts that allows residential development through a special use permit and then they request a series of special exceptions to things like height and density and other things because the special exception process is There are some general standards that they have to meet, but there are no specific standards such as these saying you have to provide a certain percentage of something to qualify.

And the requests that can, there's no limit on the requests that people can make. They are infinite. And so one process we could have as opposed to including this additional two-story provision where we do have these limitations is to simply allow special exceptions to height in this new district. and we have a whole section later where we'll talk about special exceptions, but we'll explain why we're not recommending that. Another is that even if we do nothing, there are the existing planned development districts, and one of which allows mixed-use development. They have a base requirement of 20% open space, which is what we're seeking here, and then they have some other kind of general standards,

And then the last item to talk about is special exceptions. This is something we have not talked about before. It's not specific to this new district. Special exceptions apply to various sections of the zoning ordinance. that allows applicants to propose elements of their plan that may conflict with various sections of our zoning ordinance the intent of special exceptions is to allow flexibility so we don't get hung up with a development not being able to proceed because they differ from specific sections of our ordinance council has to prove the special exceptions and so the applicant has to justify their reasons special exceptions do not have limitations and so people can request whatever they want but it really it still comes down to the

we had not discussed how special exceptions would apply to this new district. And so now that we are finalizing the amendments and integrating it into the structure of our existing ordinance, we have recommendations for how they should apply. Essentially our recommendation is that special exceptions not be applicable to the core large-scale recommendations of this new district being height, density, and We feel that we are providing tools to allow applicants to meet these standards. And if we allow special exceptions, then that will allow requests to deviate from things that will allow us to get the community benefits that are envisioned in the smaller plans. We are recommending special exceptions be considered for the more fine-grained nitty-gritty type recommendations, including development frontages and access.

in a different article of the zoning ordinance, standards which applies to parking, landscaping, signage, and those types of things. In the current ordinance, special exceptions are permitted for all components of this section. And so rather than kind of disturb the structure of the zoning ordinance, we're recommending they be permitted for these as well. So that summarizes the changes that we're proposing. As I mentioned, the first draft or the final draft is not quite available yet. We will send it to you as soon as it's available in preparation for the planning commission public hearing but we are happy to answer questions and appreciate your feedback on these

Stacy HallI'm not saying they're doing anything wrong. It seems like we end up kind of being on the hook for something that is not really our fault, but we tried to work with and to move something forward, and then there's no timeline, and there's no other ways to pursue that under Virginia code at all, ways? I know you said the special exceptions, but how would that work then if Safeway wanted special exceptions that we agreed to?

Paul NabtestaffTo an extent, but as I think we've mentioned before, the smaller plan review process is going to take time. We think it's going to be a year and a half to two years. And so over the course of that time, the city will continue to receive development applications. And so these standards, no matter what the result of the smaller plan review is, these much closer to the result of that than our current standards, which rely on special exceptions that have no limitations and no guidelines for how the community receives benefits. So our recommendation would be to move forward with these and make changes once the smaller plan reviews occur as needed, because as I said, the types of things that will change