Chesterfield County officials are hearing presentations on a project that aims to update the county’s antiquated zoning rules.
“I think of it as like an old car, you wouldn’t take the manual for a very old 1970s vehicle and work on a 2020 car,” said Rachel Chieppa, a planner and project manager for the Zoning Ordinance Modification Project — ZoMod for short.
“What we’ve done is patched and patched and made it work, and we’ve gotten to the point where we just need to start fresh.”
Under the current rules, for example, county officials can’t approve entire mixed-use developments combining residences and businesses; the existing regulations never anticipated mixed-use developments would become a common building approach. Instead, developers are required to submit a conditional use plan of development for each individual component of the project.
CUPDs seek exceptions to the existing zoning rules to allow for developments with features that go beyond what the county’s zoning ordinances allow. Over the years, those exceptions have created a tangled web of carve-outs that have made it increasingly difficult to understand what can be built where.
Chesterfield, once largely rural farmland and coal mines, has become a complex mix of residential developments, industrial zones and agricultural areas. Planners consulted a cross-section of similar zoning ordinances from other large Virginia localities — Virginia Beach and Prince William and Loudoun counties — in an effort to find a happy medium.
When planners presented the second draft of ZoMod to the county’s planning commission Aug. 20, vice chair Gib Sloan said there was a “one-size-fits-all” feel to some of the proposals. He suggested that the plan should be more flexible to account for the fact that eastern Chesterfield is more populated while western Chesterfield is more rural.
Planners working on the project say that while the whole county will eventually get new zoning designations, grandfather clauses will be incorporated to allow existing developments to remain as-is.
In other words, even if a new 500-unit development requires the preservation of five acres of woods to be approved, pre-existing 500-unit developments would not need to meet that requirement.
“Anything that’s already entitled on the property, that stays,” Chieppa said.
The county hopes that the third draft is the charm and the project will be approved by early next year.
“We’re hoping draft three is [the] one we’ll be taking to the public,” Chieppa said.
“But a lot of times when you go to the public with what you think will be the final draft, it needs more changes.”
