The Transportation and Land Use Committee (TLUC) held a special meeting on November 5, 2025, from approximately 5:00 PM to after 6:30 PM, to receive stakeholder input and discuss proposed amendments (CPAM-2024-0002 & ZOAM-2024-0002) concerning food service, food trucks, farm wineries, limited breweries, and limited distilleries in Western Loudoun County. The meeting focused on four main issues: accessory events, hours of operation and noise, setbacks and parking, and accessory food sales/food trucks, as well as the rural restaurant use. No formal votes were taken; the committee will use the input to develop proposed ordinance text in future directional meetings.
It is five o'clock. Good evening. I would like to call to order the November 5th, 2025 Transportation and Land Use Committee special meeting. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, switch your hearing aids to telecoil mode. If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please see the clerk to request one. For this special meeting, committee members will be allowed two minutes for questions, and we may do uh more than one round if needed. Tonight's meeting will occur in the following order. Staff will present their introductory presentation. Thank you, staff. Following staff's presentation, the TLUC members will have two minutes to ask questions. Then I will call on each stakeholder to provide their comments. Each stakeholder will be allotted three minutes. Staff will introduce the issue topic. We will hold a 20-minute committee of the whole session with a two-minute time limit per speaker. So I'll make sure everybody gets a chance to speak. After this input session, staff will return to a future regular TLUC meeting to summarize the discussions and receive guidance from the committee on the agenda topics before they begin to draft proposed text. We also have three TLUC directional meetings where TLUC will give staff direction on the questions that we've been discussing here for the last few meetings. The first one is planned for December 17th. The second will be in January of 26, and the third one is to be determined that will occur following the eighth and final stakeholder input session. But tonight, uh, the purpose of this meeting is to receive uh stakeholder input and discuss the issues associated with food service, food trucks, rural restaurants, wineries, limited breweries, and limited distilleries, particularly the event portion uh of that uh side of the industry. Uh we're looking to have a robust discussion and basically see all viewpoints. I would just like to add that you know, staff is here to uh listen and gather input. If there are additional questions, anything that uh you have, uh we can, you know, if we don't know the answers, we'll do our best to answer it. But if we don't know, we can go back and research that topic and bring it forward to you at one of the TLUC direction meetings if you so choose. But having said that, I will turn back over to David, who will go over the pertinent zoning ordinance regulations that we will be discussing tonight. Thanks, Brian. So tonight we'll be focusing on the standards in section 303H for mobile vendors and 30304E for special events. Um as a continuation of the July T LUC meeting, we'll be going back to these specific standards in 40805 for limited brewery uses, 40808 for commercial wineries, and 40815 for farm wineries. And then, as part of our discussion tonight on food service, we'll also be looking at these specific standards in 408 or 40518 for rural restaurants. So the standards in 303H for mobile vendors are specific to those not operating in the public right-of-way. They provide regulations for hours of operation, maximum number of vendors permitted at a location on at one time, um, transient business license and health department approval requirements and placement, placement surface, clearance, noise, and waste disposal requirements. Uh the most relevant standard in this section for our discussion tonight on food trucks would be 303 H4, which requires mobile vendors and any associated outdoor seating to be removed daily from the site of operation. And it also states that any mobile vendor or associated component that is not removed is considered a principal use and is subject to all regulations that apply to principal uses. The regulations in section 304E for special events include minimum acreage on residential properties, signs, event duration, and maximum number of events. This section allows the same parcel or lot to host no more than 10 events per calendar year with a maximum duration of 14 days per event unless extended by the zoning administrator. The use specific standards for limited brewery uses include licensing and inspection requirements, agricultural zoning and acreage requirements, setbacks for outdoor tasting areas, and requirements for limited breweries that share private access easements. The use specific standards for commercial wineries include minimum acreage, maximum gross floor area for accessory food sales, tasting rooms and storage areas, maximum floor area ratio, setbacks, landscaping, buffering and screening, and roads and access. And then the use specific standards for farm wineries simply include the use permissions within AR cluster subdivisions. Next for the rural restaurant uses, the use specific standards include require the use to be directly related to on-site agriculture and require at least 51% of the food and or ingredients being served to be produced or processed on-site of the use or on another property engaged in agricultural production within Loudoun County. Other use specific standards include hours of operation, minimum acreage, maximum structure size, setbacks, floor area ratio, exterior lighting, landscaping buffering and screening, and roads and access. So lastly, there are the definitions of several relevant terms to the sections that we'll be discussing tonight. All the definitions are found on pages six and seven of the staff report and in chapter 12 of the zoning ordinance. Just to recap the first three ABC use definitions. A commercial winery is defined as an establishment with facilities for making and bottling wine for sale on site or through wholesale or retail outlets. A commercial winery is a winery that does not meet the definition of a farm winery. A farm winery is defined as an establishment located on a farm with a producing vineyard, orchard, or similar growing area, and with facilities for fermenting and bottling wine on the premises, where the owner or leasey manufactures wine that contains not more than 18% alcohol by volume or located in the commonwealth with a producing vineyard, orchard, or similar growing area, or agreements for purchasing grapes or fruits from agricultural growers within the commonwealth, and with facilities for fermenting and bottling of wine on the premises where the owner or leasey manufactures wine and contains not more than 18% alcohol by volume. A limited brewery is a brewery license as a limited brewery in accordance with the code of Virginia, Section 4.1206.1 as amended, and subject to Section 40805 of the zoning ordinance. A mobile vendor is defined as an establishment, including any employee or agent of another who sells or offers to sell barter or trade from a mobile vehicle, such as a food truck.