Councilman Williams Update - Planning Commission/Council Meeting 6/30/22

Dodson Boardwalk Project- Phase 3B

CUP-03-2022: 114 Beach Terrace DDG Acquisitions, LLC has applied for a conditional use permit (CUP) for a Mixed Residential/Commercial Use Building located at 114 Beach Terrace

My take on the Dodson project and also the portion discussed Thursday:

Dodson has a 4-phase development plan in CB -

Phase 1 - School Town Hill Town Houses (still in progress and people have concerns)

Phase 2 - Three historic buildings, Old Bank, Chamber and School board buildings. All 3 buildings will have residential upstairs (most likely Airbnb style) and the bank building and Chamber building will have shared office space. To me this means no real retail has been added. I voted no for this phase.

Phase 3A - this will be a two-story building on the boardwalk between the pier and high tides. It will be two stories with roughly 4600 ft.² of finished interior retail space with the rest being covered patios. There will also be 9 condo units with one being located on the ground floor. I voted no for this phase.

Phase 3B - The CUP Thursday was for this phase. The request was to be allowed to put in 3 - 3 story buildings with 1200 sqft of retail (2 -600 sqft spaces on ends of the Boardwalk building). The back 2 buildings will be on stilts and the second two floors will be residential rental units (possibly Airbnb’s). The boardwalk side building will be three stories with the top 2 being rental units. We do not know if this will all be Airbnb style apartments. There were a lot of questions mainly surrounding parking and the lack of retail space. Several people including myself raise concerns about the majority of this project being residential. I stated that I am here to represent the people and I do not believe that this is the vision of the boardwalk that the people had and do not agree with roughly 80% of this development being residential. How do we bring the boardwalk back to life if we just put a bunch of homes there??

After lengthy discussion by the Planning Commission PC and Town Council the votes were: PC 6–1 with Will Knuckols being the only no vote.

Council vote 5–2 with Myself and Tom Moncure voting NO. The Mayor, Kenny Allison, Vickie Roberson, Andrea Clement and Caryn Self Sullivan all voted YES

• Originally Dodson agreed to 10,000 soft retail and now we are getting under 6000 (finished interior). If we are going to renegotiate the requirements, why are we not renegotiating the sale price?

Zoning Text Amendment -Zoning Ordinance Article 29-Planned Unit Development-Residential (PUD-R) District to amend and re-enact Article 29 in its entirety. - This hearing was to discuss the PUD-R which as I understand it is the regulation that governs large scale developments (over 15 acres). Currently the only property in Colonial Beach that would fall under large scale development would be the Lennar properties on the other side of 205 across from Wilkerson’s. While the public hearing was held the planning commission requested that the vote be postponed until they could take a closer look at some of the sections and hold a public Townhall to allow more citizens to give feedback. As explained by the mayor and others there’s a bit of urgency on this because currently if the property owner requested a permit the current PUD-R would have very little restrictions on items like the number of housing units per acre and developers’ requirements regarding infrastructure, etc.

It was discussed that there will be a vote on this at the July 20 meeting so any resident or business owner with concerns should investigate now and raise those concerns with the Planning Commission.

Please email or call with questions or comments:

dwilliams@colonialbeachva.net

540-604-4335