Good evening.

Welcome to the regular meeting of the Blacksburg Planning Commission.

Today is Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023, and regular meetings of the Blacksburg Planning Commission are held here on the first Tuesday of each month at 6 30 in the Roger E.

Hedge Path Chambers of the Blacksburg Municipal Building 300 South Main Street.

Citizens may address the Planning Commission during specified times on the agenda and are requested to adhere to the following.

Please speak at the podium.

State your name and address.

Direct comments directly to the commission.

Please limit speaking time to a maximum of three minutes.

Speak only once during a specific hearing or comment period.

Please silence cell phones, show respect for all speakers, and allow all opinions to be expressed in a tolerant atmosphere.

With that, we'll call the meeting to uh to order.

May we have a roll call, please.

Mr.

Ford?

Mr.

Herbine?

Here.

Ms.

Jones, Mr.

Cass.

Present.

Ms.

Reinhardt?

Here.

Ms.

Walker.

Here.

Mr.

Watson.

Present.

And I am here.

So we have a quorum.

Thank you.

And tonight's consent agenda consists of four items.

The first being rezoning 2203, a request for an amendment to a previous rezoning ordinance of uh 746 to modify a planned commercial PC zoning district, including permitted uses at 1055 Plantation Road.

And the action is uh to schedule a public hearing for February 7, 2023.

The next is CUP 2206, which is a conditional use permit for a mini-warehouse on the planned commercial PC zoning district at 1055 Plantation Road.

And the uh proposed action is to schedule a public hearing for February 7, 2023.

The next is CUP 2207, a conditional use permit request for personal improvement services in the office zoning district at 2200 South Main Street by Stall Fitness.

And the action there is to uh schedule a public hearing for February 7th.

The fourth and final item on the consent agenda is rezoning 22004 ordinance 2007, a request to rezone 44.85 acres of vacant land from RR1 Rural Residential One to PR Plan Residential at 1006 Wade Road by Meredith Jones of Eden Associates.

And the action there is to schedule a public hearing for February 7th, 2023.

And with that, do we have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda as presented.

All those in favor of the motion.

Aye.

And we'll move on to public hearings.

Before we start the public hearing, uh Commissioner Collie has a statement to read.

I am disqualifying myself from participating in this transaction pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-311A1.

I will not participate in any vote, nor will I participate in the commission's discussion of this matter.

With that, we'll move on to the public hearing, which is zoning or ZOA, zoning amendment 42 ordinance 2002, an ordinance to amend the text of the town zoning ordinance to create, define, and regulate small-scale alcohol production facilities, including associated uses such as tasting rooms and retail sales.

And we have a staff presentation by Anne McClone.

There has been a growing interest both locally, regionally, nationally, in small-scale operations for small-scale alcohol production with accessory uses such as tasting facilities or retail sales.

So staff did do some research on the topic to try to look at what other communities were regulating, how they were approaching it.

We also did a review of our own existing zoning regulations, and we did come to that conclusion that we needed to have a zoning ordinance amendment to the text.

So all zoning ordinance amendments start with a referral resolution from town council last September, council referred this amendment to the planning commission for your consideration for you to make a recommendation to town council.

So when we looked at our existing regulations, our code really only covers the idea of a brew pub, which is a small-scale beer production, but in association with a restaurant.

So it really didn't address this emerging trend of tasting rooms that are might be a microbrewery but could also be something like a micro distillery.

So we wanted to address what happens with on-premise consumption when not part of a restaurant.