Laura Dobbs remembers trying to help a first-generation American family with their plans to set up a mom-and-pop business. All the family needed was a permit to operate an ice cream truck in a Chesterfield County parking lot.
But Dobbs, the policy director for advocacy group Housing Opportunities Made Equal, said the family hit a zoning brick wall.
County officials told her “it’s just not even lawful under our current zoning to even offer you a conditional use permit because you’re less than 1,000 feet from a residential neighborhood,” she told VPM News in an April interview.
Dobbs held that up as proof that Chesterfield is operating under antiquated zoning ordinances, something that county officials have been grappling with as they work to overhaul the county’s zoning rules for the first time in 50 years.
On Monday at Thomas Dale High School, Chesterfield held its last community meeting to answer public questions about the refresh, known as ZoMod.
While the existing zoning regulations have existed since the 1970s, the county's development needs have changed significantly over the last five decades. When planners look to create projects that don’t fit those rules, they have to get conditional use plans of development (CUPD) approved by the Board of Supervisors for each new project.
Rachel Chieppa, a planning manager for the county, said she hopes the new plan — which has been in the works for five years — will be more flexible and facilitate modern developments.
“It should be a document that is always revising and changing,” Chieppa said Monday. “We’ve ‘Band-Aided’ things for years.”
VPM News asked residents who attended Monday’s Q&A about their development hopes.
“I would love to see more public transit in the county, especially around where I live on the Route 10 corridor,” said Edva Kashi, who lives in Enon.
The need for affordable housing is another concern being brought up by advocates like Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia.
“We do think that as they think about land use,” said HOME's executive director Thomas Fitzpatrick, “they can allow for more three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments.”
Chieppa said ZoMod plans to allow for the construction of homes on smaller lot sizes than before, which could help meet some of the regional affordable housing needs.
Another approach that could result in more affordable housing is mixed-use developments, which combine residences with commercial space like retail businesses or restaurants. The mixed-use developments currently in the county, like Chester Village, were created with CUPDs and required a patchwork of exceptions and carve-outs to the decades-old code.
Chester Village also includes something that the family Dobbs was trying to help wanted: an ice cream stand adjacent to residential dwellings.
Chesterfield will mail postcards to its 140,000 households in June to explain how zoning will be tweaked. The county’s planning commission is set to consider ZoMod that month, too. If the commission approves it, Chieppa said, supervisors are set to vote on it by October.
