City Planning Commission to Discuss Second Draft of Comprehensive Plan Update
Added language prioritizes traffic calming, housing diversity.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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The Fredericksburg Planning Commission will meet on Wednesday to review a second draft of the city’s updated comprehensive plan that proposes two new “walkable centers” and adds language emphasizing traffic calming and housing diversity.
The first draft of the updated comprehesive plan—titled Fredericksburg Forward!—was released in February. The second draft reflects comments on the first draft received at a March 26 joint meeting between the Planning Commission and City Council and an April 9 Planning Commission work session.
The walkable centers form the “core” of the comprehensive plan. There are regional, city, and community centers, and each is envisioned as offering public services, amenities, housing, and open space that “contribute to the quality of life for nearby residents, people coming from across town, or visitors from the metropolitan area and beyond.”
The new draft proposes one additional city center in the Canal Quarter Maker District, centered on “historic Princess Anne Street.” This area was one of the city’s “first automobile oriented corridors,” according to the draft, with old filling stations and repair shops and some of the city’s first large shopping centers adjacent to residential neighborhoods.
“The Canal Quarter Maker District exemplifies both of these types of fabric with some larger vacant / underutilized parking lots but with the historic use / building/ lot / block patterns that, when replicated in redevelopment, can restore a human-scaled environment,” the draft plan states.
The other city centers proposed in the draft plan include Westwood/Greenbriar; the area around the Eagle Village Shopping Center, the hospital, and the University of Mary Washington; and Fredericksburg Shopping Center, adjacent to Normandy Village.
The new draft plan also proposes a new community center in the Alum Springs Maker District, located at the intersection of U.S. 1, the Blue and Grey Parkway, and the VCR Trail.
This is “a legacy industrial area with a sign maker, office, wholesale, and storage uses adjacent to a newly developed residential area,” the draft states.
The other potential community centers identified in the draft comprehensive plan are Idlewild, Mayfield, U.S. 1 Center (around the exisiting car dealerships), and Central Lafayette (shopping centers and neighborhoods behind Walker-Grant Middle School).
The plan proposes that each walkable center should have an access and open space plan, and new language has been added to the second draft recommending that development regulations “in and around the walkable centers” be reviewed and updated “to prioritize pedestrian and bicycle connectivity and safety over vehicular traffic.”
There’s new language recommending that traffic calming methods be integrated into the city’s capital improvement plan and “prioritized and proactively implement[ed]” in the walkable centers, near schools and parks, and in neighborhoods that experience cut-through traffic.
There’s also new language added to the chapter on housing, recommending an incentive zoning program for affordable and/or workforce housing “with an emphasis on achieving a diversity of housing types within the same development;” and encouraging housing that promotes aging in place and proxmity to community services.
The new draft plan recommends that the city partner with regional agencies like the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors to understand regional housing needs; that it “track housing development to understand available housing supply in relation to all income brackets;” and that it come up with “new or adjusted” policies for providing housing to “identified underserved populations.”
The new draft also recommends that the city engage with major local employers such as Mary Washington Healthcare and the University of Mary Washington to “understand their workforce housing needs and explore potential partnership strategies.”
Wednesday’s meeting is the last opportunity for the Planning Commission to discuss the plan and finalize it before a public hearing on May 14.
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