The Blacksburg Planning Commission held its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. in the Roger E. Hedgepeth Chambers of the Blacksburg Municipal Building, 300 S. Main St. The meeting was called to order by Chair Andy Kassoff and adjourned at 6:53 p.m. All eight attending commissioners voted unanimously on every motion. Commissioner S. Rinehart was absent.
Welcome to the regular meeting of the Blacksburg Planning Commission, which are held here on the first Tuesday of each month at the Roger E. Heads Bath Chambers of the Blacksburg Municipal Building, 300 South Main Street. Citizens may address the Planning Commission during specified times on the agenda and a request to do adhere to the following. Please speak at the podium. State your name and address, direct comments only to the commission. Please limit speaking time to a maximum of three minutes and speak only once during a specific hearing or comment period. A wireless microphone is available to anyone requesting assistance. Please silence all cell phones, show respect for all speakers, and allow all opinions to be expressed in the tolerant atmosphere. With that, we'll call the meeting to order. May we have a roll call, please. Mr. Britt? Here, Ms. Herman, Mr. Ford, Turbine, Ms. Jones. Mr. Castle. Ms. Reinheim. Ms. Walker. I am here. We have a quorum. Excellent. First item on is our consent agenda. We have three items on our consent agenda. The first item is approval of the Planning Commission minutes from March 5th, 2024. The action is to approve. Second is AFD 241 ordinance 2052, which is a request to withdraw 3.03 acres from the agricultural and forestal district on 701 Bishop Road for Jim and Carol Berger. The action there is to schedule a public hearing for May 7th. And the third is zoning ordinance amendment ZOA, an amendment to the town of Blacksburg zoning ordinance to create a new small lot option in the R4 load density residential zoning district to allow smaller lot sizes. And the action there is to cancel tonight's public hearing, April 2nd public hearing, and reschedule for May 7, 2024. I move approval of the consent agenda. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Moving on to our public hearings tonight, the single public hearing that we were to have was uh plat 2320 Glade Spring Crossing Major Subdivision Preliminary Platte review for 176 lots on 45 acres at 1006 Gladespring Road. And we have a staff presentation by Kenji O'Shea. Thank you. For orientation, Glade Road is on the left-hand side of the screen, and U.S. 460 bypass is at the bottom of the screen. The state uses subdivisions as by right uses of land, provided that all of a locality's regulations and standards are met. However, any variance requests are discretionary decisions. The first variance request pertains to landings at intersections for bike trails. In order for the bike trail that connects Gladespring Crossing Gladespring Drive with Village Way South to have an overall grade of less than 15%, which is the town standard, the landings at the top and the bottom of the slope where the trail intersects with Gladespring Drive at the cul-de-sac and village way south must be greater than 2%, which is the town standard. The applicant proposes that the landings are would be no greater than 5% at these two intersections shown in red on the screen. The second variance pertains to the water and sewer standard specifications and the subdivision standard for providing public utility easements. The applicant stated in their justification that a low retaining wall up to two and a half feet in height is necessary for the rear yards of several lots to be graded to be graded to be usable and to reduce erosion. The location of the wall intersects the side public utility easements as seen in this slide in the red.