To quote singer Bob Dylan- “For the times they are a-changin’.” And they appear to be changing quite dramatically for Richmond’s Carytown area.
Richmond City Council voted 9-0 at their March 28th meeting to approve a special use permit for a new retail development in Carytown Place on North Nansemond Street. The council also voted 6-3 to approve a city master plan amendment for the area. And many in the community are not pleased with the council’s decision.
The controversial master plan amendment called for certain properties along Floyd Avenue, Ellwood Avenue, North Thompson Street and North Nansemond Street to have their designation in the city’s master plan “land use plan” changed from “transitional office” to “community commercial”.
Councilman Bruce Tyler, whose 1st District includes the site in question, began the council discussion at the Monday meeting by pointing out that “this is not a business decision, this is a land use decision.”
Tyler explained that, “The Commonwealth of Virginia provides us with certain rights as a city, and one of those rights is to delegate land issues and land use issues to the city.”
He said the commonwealth does not delegate to the City of Richmond the right to decide what business goes in a building and which one does not. “If I have two competing businesses, well it’s not my place to say this one can come in and this one can’t,” Tyler said.
He also explained that SUP’s have to be decided on according to the criteria set forth by the code in the city’s master plan. “And the criteria’s very clear – it cannot increase congestions, in cannot encroach on other people’s property, it cannot be overdeveloped [to name a few],” Tyler said. “That’s critical.”
Tyler is for the development, but against changing the master plan to cater to the developer.
“I just felt it was inappropriate to do it that way,” he said, referring to the changing of the master plan so that this one project could be approved. “If you don’t do spot zoning, you shouldn’t be able to do spot master planning.”
Zoe Anne Green, a representative from the Museum District Association’s Board of Directors, agrees. She said the association spent 8 months working with the developer on the plans for this project and “certainly not everyone’s happy, but we feel like we did the best thing for the neighborhood with that property.”
Green said the MDA, feels like the planned development is a really good use for a vacant property that is not really suitable for office space. Green added, “The parking lot is oriented towards Thompson, not Nansemond, so we believe it’s not going to have a lot of impact on the residents on Ellwood and Floyd.”
voted in November to oppose the SUP, but the developer made several changes and the association then voted to support the altered plans.
However, the association does not feel like the city administration did the right thing by introducing the master plan amendment. “We would’ve preferred that council voted against that,” Green said, adding, “It’s more on the way it was done than what it was.”
She said the association feels that there wasn’t enough notice given about the amendment and there wasn’t enough opportunity for public input. “But we feel they did the right thing on the SUP.”
Hunter Jamerson, attorney at Macaulay and Burtch and representative of Don’t Big Box Carytown, claimed that these plans would violate Virginia Code Section 15.2.22.1.
"Long story short, that code section governs the relationship between localities and the state with regards to transportation planning,” Jamerson explained, adding, “It says that any time [the city is] rezoning an area, and the SUP is a form of rezoning, that is within 3000 ft. of a state controlled highway and it creates a substantial impact on state controlled highway transportation, then you have to report to the Virginia Department Of Transportation (VDOT) with regard to what [the city’s] site plan is so that [VDOT] can review it and determine whether any changes need to be made.”
In this case, the Carytown Place development is about 1500 ft. away from Interstate 195. If the new development generates more than 250 vehicle trips per day, then a site plan must be given to VDOT.
"It's going to generate traffic in excess of the reporting requirements, so that requires VDOT to study it.”
Jamerson explained that VDOT has a system similar to assigning letter grades to these projects “like A-F and my bet is...these are C level intersections”. So while the project would not fail, it would require some changes to the existing traffic pattern in order to improve the situation.
“And those would be things like removing street parking on Ellwood Avenue and that block in order to alleviate the strain, changing some of the one way patterns or signage and little things that,” Jamerson said.
Jamerson wrote a letter to the city council members explaining all of these details, but claims no such report or study has been made.
Supporters and opponents had packed council’s chamber at the March 28th meeting, offering conflicting viewpoints. A prominent voice amongst those in opposition was the group Don’t Big Box Carytown.
Jamerson said Don’t Big Box Carytown opposed the project in principle on the basis that this was not an appropriate development for the neighborhood. “I think our basis for [that belief] is [the council] had to amend the city’s master plan to even justify this kind of use in this neighborhood,” Jamerson said.
He added, “We would have preferred to see this kind of development go on the Boulevard or Broad and Belvidere; somewhere where there’s an appropriate site for these kinds of development.”
As Jamerson put it, “This wasn’t just a ‘not in our backyard’ campaign.”
Jamerson said the group’s main point was that something along the lines of a mix-use, small retail housing or multi-family housing, like apartments or condos, would have been a much better fit, and “probably would have generated a better product for the local, existing retail.”
“If you build more apartments you create more retail space for the merchants you already have there,” Jamerson explained. “Instead, they’ve added another grocery store to compete with the existing three.”
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