Fredericksburg’s Creative Maker District could soon be home to sixty three new luxury townhomes, but questions are being raised about whether the project is being allowed to “short circuit” the city’s normal processes.
In January of this year, the Mary’s Landing, LLC. proposed adding 63 new three-story townhomes on the parking lots on the 400 blocks of Hunter, Elm and Germania Streets in downtown Fredericksburg’s Creative Maker District. The homes would be built on 64 existing lots that were first established and recorded in 1891 by the Fredericksburg Development Company, with the project utilizing “boundary line adjustments” that would result in one fewer lot than before. Price tags are said to start between $600K and $700K, and the Mary’s Landing project would be the Creative Maker District’s largest project to date.
It didn’t take much time for the proposal to draw scrutiny, both for its size and the approach staff had selected for its potential approval. A pair of meetings organized by the Canal Quarter Neighborhood Association allowed residents an opportunity to voice concerns. Much of the disagreement centered around whether or not the city is shuffling the project past public input, potentially providing the tacit approval for a much-desired source of tax revenue while saving itself a potentially contentious public debate and unpopular vote, like last year’s ADU debate.
The Fredericksburg City Council attempted to address the concerns about Mary’s Landing with an April memorandum. Drafted by Development Administrator Marne Sherman, the memo provided background on the project, precedent for the recognition of the 1891 lots, the developer’s rights as a landowner, the goals and vision of the Creative Maker District, and hitherto the only available insight into the city’s decision to approach the Mary’s Landing project as an “administrative subdivision” to date.
The city says ownership of these existing lots allow the landowner to develop at 16 residential units per acre (single family or townhomes), which is more than double the Creative Maker District’s existing 8 units per acre. Normally that process would include a special use permit and hearing, opportunity for public comment and vote by city council.
According to that memo, working off of late 19th century lot lines isn’t unprecedented; the city has recognized lots from 1891 and later before Fredericksburg’s first subdivision ordinances were created in 1967.
But the classification of subdivision, however, isn’t as established and straight forward.
Since 2015, Fredericksburg has had three subdivision review processes; administrative, minor and major. Administrative subdivisions involve no more than nine lots and shift in lot lines or “other boundary changes where no new lots are created.” Minor subdivisions involve 10-50 lots, and major subdivisions address projects greater than 50 lots. An administrative subdivision review process only requires the approval of the final plat by the Development Administrator, while both minor and major subdivision review processes include a hearing, opportunity for public comment and vote by city council.
Because the Mary’s Landing proposal doesn’t result in the creation of any new lots (in fact, it results in one fewer), that memo states that the project would fall under an administrative subdivision under the city’s code. The boundary line adjustment option, states the memo, would allow the project to “achieve goals of form-based zoning criteria that have been deemed desirable by the community through years of public input processes.”
But an administrative subdivision provides the only review process that doesn’t include a hearing and opportunity for public comment. Or a vote by city council.
The decision to designate the Mary’s Landing site plan as an administrative subdivision caught the attention of a number of local residents. Some questioned the interpretation of the city code, which could potentially allow developments consisting of any number of lots to be completely “adjusted” without a hearing, public comment or council vote, so long as the total number of lots doesn’t increase.
Citizen FOIA requests for communications related to the Planning Commission’s decision to proceed with the project under the designation as an administrative subdivision returned no related queries. hyperbole reached out to both City Attorney Kathleen Dooley and Kelley Lackey for clarification about the interpretation of the city code and received no response.
This perceived lack of transparency around the Mary’s Landing project was one of several recent issues that prompted city residents to organize the Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition, a non-partisan group of neighbors “advocating for sensible growth to preserve Fredericksburg’s unique character and to ensure livability” for all, according to the description on its Facebook page. Launched publicly in July, it’s organized weekly meetings to share information about city services and infrastructure, taxes and fees, traffic and parking concerns, environmental issues and the city’s historical resources. The group has since met weekly to discuss a response to a number of topics, with the new Mary’s Landing development a priority for discussion.
The Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition sees Mary’s Landing as another example of “uncontrolled growth,” deeming it too large a project to be approved solely by city staff. They question why an 1891 plat trumps current zoning standards and the studies that helped form them. The group provided hyperbole with an overlay of the newly proposed Mary’s Landing project with the original 1891 lot lines, a diagram that appears to show not a single boundary line remained unchanged. In other words, the developer has completely redrawn all 63 lots. The Coalition questions how the new lots don’t qualify as a re-subdivision and fall under the city’s established review process for major subdivisions (50 lots or more), an interpretation they’ve labeled “uniquely bizarre.”
In their view, this project and the process behind it “constitutes a power grab by developers” and another project that the city may soon regret. Frustrating matters further is the city’s reluctance to engage with them on the issue, a result of their decision to hire an attorney to review the matter.
When it comes to the developer’s property rights of the existing lots, the Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition would like to see the Planning Commission “call the developer’s bluff.” In a recent email to followers, the group says it’s skeptical that the newly proposed homes could meet the Creative Maker District’s minimum lot size requirements (or whether the developer could reap a desirable profit under that approach). The Coalition tells members it also has a hard time believing that Mary’s Landing will be the last high-density development to be approved under an administrative subdivision designation, and the group is asking the city to identify other existing by-right lots, which it alleges it “failed to do when they proposed, promoted and approved the Creative Maker District.”
Where does the City Council stand?
That’s not entirely clear, as the project hasn’t (and possibly won’t) ever reach their dais. But at least one councilman has been made aware of the scrutiny surrounding the project.
In a March blog post, Councilman Jon Gerlach (who represents the site of Mary’s Landing in Ward 2) wrote that he attended those neighborhood meetings and heard the concerns voiced by residents, but that “by-right projects like Mary’s Landing don’t come to City Council or the Architectural Review Board for approval, but are instead reviewed and approved / rejected at the administrative level” by staff. A more recent letter written to representatives of the Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition on behalf of city council by Mayor Devine advised residents to take their concerns up with the developer.
Currently, the Mary’s Landing project hasn’t been approved yet. City staff are currently awaiting a third site plan from the developer.
There’s no doubt that the members of the Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition don’t want another “cookie cutter” townhome community at Mary’s Landing, but beyond their disdain for what they describe as “uncontrolled development” (and the corresponding cries of NIMBY-ism from the other side) is their deeper concern that the city is demonstrating the same reluctance to manage transparency as it does to manage growth. However many townhomes eventually touch down in Mary’s Landing isn’t nearly as impactful as the perception that the city is now not only discounting public opinion, but now also ignoring its own policies despite it.
Learn more about the Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition and join their mailing list at www.fxbgnc.com.
