The staff in PEC's Charlottesville office works with citizens to solve the many land use and conservation challenges facing the Charlottesville and Albemarle area.
Hold on, while we catch our breath! It’s been a busy week in the world of the Albemarle Comp Plan but we want to provide an update and encourage you to participate in the final Planning Commission work session on Feb. 27, focused exclusively on the Rural Areas Land Use and Transportation chapter. You can download the updated Topic Report that includes background information, the draft Goals and Objectives, and equally important, an updated Growth Management Policy in the link.
Since the beginning of this process, we have been strongly advocating for the protection of the resources and communities in the Rural Area, which encompasses 95% of Albemarle County. The Rural Area draft Goals and Objectives have thankfully been given more time and attention than originally scheduled, so to take advantage of this opportunity, we hope to see you there.
Ways to provide comments before Feb. 27 or right before the Work Session:
Speak Up Tuesday, Feb. 27, at 4 p.m.: Community members have three minutes to speak directly to the Planning Commission prior to the start of the work session. Come to Lane Auditorium in the County Office Building or comment virtually to have your voice heard.
Attend the Work Session: Showing elected and County officials that their community members are paying attention to the decisions that impact them is significant. Tell your friends and family what you heard after the work session.
Answer the Questionnaires: All chapters have questionnaires open for review and responses are presented to the Commission and Board.
With less than a week’s notice–a process that normally has approximately three weeks of review time–the draft Goals and Objectives for the final three topics of Phase II were released to be presented at the Feb. 13 Planning Commission Work Session. We rapidly reviewed the draft and were prepared to make a statement about the Rural Area Goals and Objectives only to find out on the morning of the 13th that the Planning Commission’s review and discussion of the Rural Areas Land Use and Transportation Goals and Objectives was rescheduled to a separate work session on Feb. 27.
Instead, the Planning Commission reviewed the draft Goals and Objectives for the Development Areas Land Use and Transportation chapter, which includes topics such as when, where, and how to expand the Development Areas boundaries, activity centers, and multimodal transportation networks. They also reviewed the draft Goals and Objectives for the Community Facilities chapter, focusing on topics like expanding public sewer and water and the siting of large-scale solar facilities.
Map showing many historic, scenic, and water resources in Albemarle County’s Rural Area, including conserved and publicly owned land. View in Flickr. Map by Watsun Randolph/PEC.
PEC supports many elements in the draft Goals and Objectives for the Rural Area, the Development Areas, and Community Facilities. However, we have strong concerns about some elements of the draft Goals and Objectives. Stay tuned for our talking points as we get closer to the meeting!
If you know anyone who may wish to receive these AC44 email updates from PEC, please forward this email to them and let them know that they cansign up for the list here. You can also find our past AC44 alerts here. We hope to see you next week!
Thank you!
Rob McGinnis, PLA FASLA Senior Land Use Field Representative Albemarle & Greene Counties [email protected] (434) 962-9110
Are you interested in making it easier to walk, bike and get around without a car? The Charlottesville / Albemarle Active Mobility Summit invites you to join other residents, businesses, and organizations for a full day of discussion, celebration and collaboration.
You might have heard some of the recent buzz about data centers and surging electricity demand. We invite you to attend a community meeting to talk about potential impacts on our community and on the state’s ability to meet its climate goals Tuesday, February 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville, Va.
The explosive growth of this energy-intensive sector, the only growing sector of electricity demand in Virginia, is requiring historic expansions of our energy grid and will thwart our ability to get off of fossil fuels – all of which will likely be funded by Virginia ratepayers like yourself.
We’ll also share what we’ve learned about the potential for new transmission line projects proposed in our area, especially the proposed “wreck and rebuild” expanded transmission line through Albemarle and Charlottesville (mapped below), as well as new power generation – and prolongation of dirty legacy sources – to supply the projected demand.
This sweeping project will cross through and impact scores of community neighborhoods and schools from Gordonsville and Charlottesville to Crozet and Waynesboro, parcels of permanently conserved land, the Historic Southwest Mountains, the Historic Greenwood-Afton area, Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive, several Albemarle County parks including McIntire and Darden Towe Parks, and the treasured views of the mountains throughout.
The unprecedented development proposed for our state will erase hard-won conservation and climate gains in Virginia, on top of the local impacts. We are working to develop solutions to this new challenge for Albemarle and beyond.
We hope you will soon be logging off and, like the black bears and chipmunks, taking a winter reprieve. Whether you are hibernating at home in the Piedmont or migrating south or somewhere else for the winter, we wish you a happy holiday season.
Before you go, we’re happy to share with you a few major conservation, land use, and trails updates worth celebrating, plus some impactful projects we’ll be focused on in 2024 and beyond. We hope you’ll support our efforts in the new year by becoming a member as we continue to work towards our mission of protecting and restoring the lands and waters of the Virginia Piedmont, while building stronger, more sustainable communities.
Skyline Drive snakes northward through the narrow bend of Shenandoah National Park, with adjacent private private lands behind. Efforts are underway to widen the corridor of protected land with permanent conservation easements. Photo by Hugh Kenny/PEC
For the past several years, we’ve been developing a landscape-scale forestland conservation project by working with multiple landowners adjacent to Shenandoah National Park in Albemarle County. This spring, that project was awarded grant funds through the federal Forest Legacy Program, which will help us permanently protect over 4,300 acres adjacent to the park.
Now, we’re working hard to take the project a step further to conserve more land by applying for a second round of Forest Legacy funding. If the grant is awarded, we can add 767 more acres of permanently protected forestlandalong this boundary of Shenandoah National Park, bringing the total to over 5,000 acres conserved.
This work to expand the landscape of protected lands in the Appalachian corridor is a national and global conservation priority, with implications for climate resiliency, watershed protection, biodiversity conservation, and additional scenic and recreational public benefits.
AC44 Continues with Win for the Rural Area
Albemarle County’s Rural Area isn’t vacant, as maps of the Development Areas often show it to be.This map shows the opposite, highlighting its conserved land, water resources, rural communities, and historical and scenic designations. Map by Watsun Randolph/PEC
In our last email about Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan update, we told you that we are fervently advocating for seven recommendations to be adopted into the current draft. In a major first step, and after a year of effort and community engagement, the County has made a change that aligned with our first recommendation! There will be a dedicated chapter for rural area planning, which brings it in line with widely held public opinion that Albemarle’s agricultural and natural landscapes, as well as the unique rural communities that exist there, are worth conserving.
Three decades of community survey results and recent feedback specifically related to the AC44 Comprehensive Plan have consistently revealed, with great clarity, that a majority of Albemarle residents highly value and want to prioritize the County’s Rural Area.
Planning will continue through 2024, with opportunities for citizens to voice their concerns and opinions throughout. This plan impacts every aspect of life in the County and will serve as the guidelines for decisions that are made about the community in the future. Stay up to date by signing up for AC44 updates.
New Signs Show Fifeville’s Changing Landscape
One of two new historic signs on the Fifeville Community Trail. You can learn more about the trail and read the signs at www.pecva.org/fifeville. Photo by Peter Krebs/PEC
Charlottesville is layered with rich and complicated history. Evidence of ways the landscape has changed is visible along the Fifeville Community Trail, and some of its stories are now highlighted by two new interpretative signs that PEC produced with support from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. These signs combine our community partners’ careful archival research with resident interviews in a beautiful, easily understood format.
One of the signs reveals that what is now a green oasis was once an industrial operation (a brick manufacture). The other shows how Fifth Street was relocated and enlarged during Urban Renewal. That led to both an expanded park and the loss of several homes. This happened during the lifetime of many area residents and we believe it important that stories like these be memorialized.
The Fifeville Trail is truly the fruit of community leadership — and of their sweat equity. Speaking of which, we hope you’ll join a community work party, led by the Rivanna Trails Foundation and PEC, to maintain and improve the trail on Saturday, Jan. 13 at 9 a.m. at Tonsler Park.
Looking Ahead to 2024
PEC is vigilantly looking toward the future in our work, in preserving the land, the intentional planning of towns and communities, and using our knowledge of land use and environmental threats within our region to anticipate what lies ahead locally, in our nine-county service area, and in other regions of the Commonwealth.
Data Centers
Supporters at the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition press conference. Photo by Hugh Kenny/PEC
In the Virginia Piedmont, one looming threat is the proliferation of data centers— the physical structures that store the digital world — and the energy infrastructure they will require. The explosive growthof the data center industry represents a major challenge to achieving a clean energy future as they require extraordinary amounts of power and utilize dozens of back up diesel generators per building. The massive buildings and associated electrical infrastructure also place a heavy burden not only on our land, water, and community resources but also will impact the electric bill of Virginia ratepayers as transmission lines and generation facilities are folded into everyone’s bills.
To serve exploding data center demand in Dominion’s utility area, the electrical transmission grid operator, PJM, has moved a plan to expand an existing transmission line running through Albemarle County and Charlottesville forward. Dominion will assess its final engineering and design and then the Virginia State Corporation Commission will likely approve it. In light of this, PEC will be holding a Energy Infrastructure and Data Center Community Meeting to share more about data centers and their impacts on energy demand and land use in late January.
Rivanna Futures
Albemarle County is acquiring 462 acres of land along the east side of Route 29 North adjacent to Rivanna Station, the home of three federal defense intelligence agencies, with the goals of retaining those Department of Defense installations and expanding the private defense sector in the community – called Rivanna Futures.
An initiative with such goals will most certainly have major land use, transportation, and infrastructure implications for the County and its residents, especially for the eight-mile stretch of U.S. 29 going up to the southern edge of Greene County. As we learn more about the Rivanna Futures project, we will continue to update you on ways to advocate for smart growth and resource protections.
Virginia’s Research Triangle
Last but not least, following last week’s groundbreaking for U.Va’s Manning Institute for Biotechnology, Governor Youngkin announced that a network of research institutions will be established between the University in Charlottesville, Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke, and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medicines for All Institute. The announcement emphasized the desire for increased commercialization between the three cities, similar to North Carolina’s Research Triangle. We’ll be focused on the wider implications for land use, smart growth planning, transportation, infrastructure, and natural resources in our community in the coming months and years.
Contributions like yours make our work in Albemarle and Charlottesville possible. Give the gift of membership this holiday season, become a monthly sustaining member or donate today to support the protection, restoration, and planning work of our locally-based staff.
It’s official! The County has decided to prepare standalone Rural Area and Development Areas chapters in the AC44 Comprehensive Plan, reversing course on their initial proposal to combine the two into a single Land Use and Transportation chapter. This is a big win! Thanks to all of you who helped advocate for this change.
Three decades of community survey results and recent feedback from public engagement specifically related to the AC44 Comprehensive Plan have consistently revealed, with great clarity, that a majority of County residents highly value and want to prioritize the County’s Rural Area. The County has done this in the past two comprehensive plans with the inclusion of a Rural Area chapter. A separate chapter is required to adequately address the complex interrelationships of natural and cultural resources and Albemarle’s unique rural communities.
At the time of our last AC44 update, we were encouraged by the direction that the AC44 process was going after hearing that a standalone Rural Area chapter might happen. Now, armed with confirmation of this milestone achieved, PEC’s sights are set on the next Planning Commission work session next Tuesday, Dec. 19. We are advocating for the adoption of six other recommendations for the AC44 Comp Plan to ensure that Albemarle County is planning with respect for the environment and the people who are impacted by it.
PEC’s Recommendations for the AC44 Comp Plan
Include a Rural Area chapter to address the complex interrelationships of natural and cultural resources and the County’s unique rural communities.
Include a strong recommendation for the creation of a Rural Area Plan that addresses the specifics within that chapter with the same intentionality as the master plans for the Development Areas.
Include a recommendation for the establishment of a Development Areas Task Force to overcome the obstacles to accommodating projected growth in the current Development Areas.
Do not map/identify potential expansions of the Development Areas because it would draw attention away from currently feasible strategies that direct growth into the Development Areas.
Limit future planning of the I-64/US250 Yancy and I-64/US250 Shadwell interchanges to protect the Rural Area and its important resources.
Include strong recommendations for consistent and dedicated funding for the land conservation and purchase of development rights programs to protect aspects of the Rural Area, including drinking water supplies and biodiversity.
Include a recommendation for an updated Historic Preservation Plan and a Historic Preservation Ordinance to preserve and revitalize our important places and communities.
AC44’s timeline was adjusted to accommodate the Rural Area / Development Areas chapter change. The next work session on Tuesday, Dec. 19, will still cover land use, transportation, and feedback on the County’s specific planning priorities, called Toolkits. But instead of releasing the goals and objectives prior to this meeting, as they have in the previous work sessions, they will be presented in early 2024 at an additional Planning Commission work session to review Rural Area Land Use and Transportation, Development Areas Land Use and Transportation, and Community Facilities. Questionnaires for these topics and their draft goals and objectives will likely be shared with the public in January. We will share them when they are made available.
Until then, we strongly encourage you to engage with the Planning Commission in writing, in person next week, or virtually – it’s up to you!
Ways to Provide Comments Before or During the Work Session:
Speak Up Tuesday, December 19, at 6 p.m.: Citizens have three minutes to speak directly to the Planning Commission at the start of the session. Come to Lane Auditorium in the County Office Building or comment virtually to have your voice heard.
Attend the Work Session: Showing elected and County officials that their citizens are paying attention to the decisions that impact them is significant. Tell your friends and family what you heard after the work session.
If you know anyone who may wish to receive these AC44 email updates from PEC, please forward this email to them and let them know that they cansign up for the list here. You can also find our past AC44 alerts here. We hope to see you next week!
Thank you!
Rob McGinnis, PLA FASLA Senior Land Use Field Representative Albemarle & Greene Counties [email protected] (434) 962-9110
On Tuesday, Feb. 6, we hosted a community meeting on data centers and energy infrastructure in Charlottesville at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
We need your help opposing House Bill 1459 (Owen), which will be voted on by the full Counties, Cities and Towns Committee this Friday morning at 9 a.m.
CRHA to buy Downtown Mall building for $2.65 million; Nelson PC holding public hearing on Comprehensive Plan
As We Move Into The New Year...
Help us continue our momentum in conserving the natural and cultural landscapes of the Virginia Piedmont. Make a tax-deductible gift to The Piedmont Environmental Council before midnight Dec. 31!
