The City Council of Hampton, Virginia, held a work session on May 27, 2026, at 1:00 PM in Council Chambers. The meeting covered three major presentations: the Infill Housing Plan Book, a recap of the 2026 General Assembly session, and an update on the Virginia Enterprise Zone program. Council also entered closed session for legal and investment discussions. All seven council members were present.
Good afternoon and welcome to the Hampton City Council work session. Madam Clerk, will you call a role, please? Councilman Bowman. Vice Mayor Brown. Councilwoman Campbell. Present. Councilwoman Fairby. Present. Councilwoman Harper. Present. Councilwoman Muggler. Present. Mayor Gray. Present. And we are going to uh take a couple of take one item out of order on the agenda and moving uh item number three to uh the first item to be presented. So I'm going to ask city manager to introduce the first item. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor, and council members for your indulgence in moving the item out of order. Um this item is the info housing plan book briefing that we were going to have last time, but were not able to because of the unavailability of the consultants to make it. They are here today to present to you, and rather than sit throughout our whole agenda, we appreciate you taking them first. It's my pleasure to introduce senior architect Robert Crawshaw, who will um take you through the work that's been done to date to prepare this infill housing plan book. This is not an item for action today, but rather one for information and conversation. Thank you. Good afternoon. How are you doing? Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Um again, my name is Robert Crosshaw. Um, Robert, if I'm in trouble, Rob, if you want to be casual with me. Um we're gonna recap of the work to date on the Hampton Infill effort. Um, we are a small architecture firm with urban design component in Norfolk, Virginia. Um I previously lived just down the road on Charles Street near the stadium. Um so this effort started with community engagement back in July of last year, where we were asking general questions. Our team went out and photographed some of the existing neighborhoods. Um we took from that and made a report that sort of shared the styles of architecture that we found, but we didn't want to stop there. We had the engagement, we asked questions about a community vibe, if we were missing any of the neighborhood styles and features of the building. And with the community vibe, we were trying to understand the need for privacy versus connection to the community. So this was translated into is your front porch forward, or is your front porch push back? Do you read the front porch as transactional, meaning you're just moving through your front porch to get into your house, or is it an outdoor room where you sit and you participate and what's going on in the neighborhood? Um the uh architectural styles, we had identified, I think about eight and reduced them down to four or five that were common through the neighborhoods that we looked at. And the emphasis was trying to understand the character that has been developed over the years in these neighborhoods so that we could work to do something that's sympathetic to that effort, sympathetic to those styles. We had some historic precedents for those houses that we saw throughout, but we also wanted to understand from both the builders at the time and the community members. Are there styles components of the architecture that are your uh that the community is most fond of, or they identify most clearly with craftsman style or with cottage style, etc. So trying to understand those fine details that kind of make the um the new designs very sympathetic to what's going on because craftsmen here is not the same as craftsmen across the country. Um following that effort, we went to work by developing plans and elevations and various versions of that based on the criteria for site widths and um different conditions where we wanted houses to be able to turn a corner. Um then we met in reverse order. The first session was uh community three meetings and then builder at the end so that we could gather the most information from the builders before we started drawing. This we reversed it. We checked in with the builders first, and we're at we were saying, hey, this is what we heard in the last meeting, uh, and this is how we've advanced it. And then we had three subsequent meetings with different neighborhoods throughout Hampton. And here you can see us taking inventory.