Lessons learned

 

Nearly two years after it began, the Goochland Board of Supervisors ended the Centerville Small Area Plan revision by unanimously voting to deny its adoption on October 4.

Begun with great promise in February 2022, the CVSAP attracted a great deal of citizen engagement that sent a strong message of “don’t bring Short Pump to Centerville.”

The first version of the plan, crafted by an outside consultant, contended that branding strategies including fonts, slogans, and a new color pallet would attract commercial investment to the area.

That proposal supported dense residential development supported by renderings of tall buildings huddled around open spaces that looked nothing like the rural village envisioned by citizens. A November 2022 presentation of a final plan, replete with flowery and vague rhetoric, was met with dismay by the community.

Early this year, the county hired Timmons Group to distill the work of the initial consultant into a clear plan. That version was presented to the community as a done deal in May. Somewhere along the way, the “new” plan added “appropriately scaled” lodging, mixed used residential to the entire village, and expansion of the village core west of Manakin Road.

The final plan ignored extensive citizen input, and included more depictions of wide roads, tall buildings, and intense development, not at all rural.

Citizen outcry resulted in the supervisors postponing their August vote on the plan and creating an online portal for community feedback. Response to the portal was so robust, generating 679 amendment suggestions, that the supervisors voted unanimously to deny adoption of the plan, leaving the 2035 Comp Plan dealing with Centerville unchanged. (Go here  to see the responses)

Kudos to Timmons for providing and indexing the massive feedback report in a short time frame.

Before a brief public hearing on October 4, Charlie Vaughters, appointed last November to fill the remainder of the term of the late District 4 Supervisor Don Sharpe, observed “an immense amount of work went into this project. It is not to be dismissed. I entered this process midstream…I think we’re a community that hates waste. So, I looked at the project and said let’s see what we can do. We got great feedback in this amendment process, and I think we have reached the conclusion that was done with the appropriate intention to have a plan, to have a vision for the east end…We’re going to incorporate the learning from this in any future project.” He stated that he could not support adoption of the proposed plan.

Vaughters also commented on tensions during the process. “We have to appreciate and support our staff. There was a lot of nastiness that cannot continue. I will defend our county staff and support services nonstop. People have to realize that we’re doing the best we can for this county…accusing people of lying, malfeasance is not the way to go.”

Susan Lascolette, District 1, said she liked the idea of a revised plan for Centerville. “We don’t want uncontrolled growth and we’re Goochland, we don’t want to be like anyone else. I thought a plan would be of benefit to everyone, citizens, staff, developers, so everyone knows where we’re going. In my opinion, we can’t agree on what this plan is going to look like.  We did learn a lot. Citizens and staff put in an immense amount of work. We are listening to citizens.”

Comments during the public hearing repeated concerns expressed many times since February 2022, among them ensuring the county’s ability to provide core services, especially fire-rescue, keep pace with growth. Others decried the plan’s failure to supply even “guestimates” about population increases for suggested densities that could result in triple digit growth percentages in the next decade. This could result in the east end gobbling up a significant portion of the county’s transportation resources.

Paul Costello, who has been actively involved in Centerville land use matters since 2004, and deeply involved in this process, said “I understand the fatigue factor that we’ve all been through. I first want to thank the community and all the citizens who have worked so hard to share our vision about how we will grow. We are very fortunate to have so many caring, talented citizens willing to voluntarily share their diverse expertise to help strengthen our community and foster community pride.

“We greatly appreciate the Board of Supervisors for not acquiescing to a proposed plan that does not reflect our vision and values just to get it done. On behalf of the community, we thank you for all the care and time that you have put forth on this important planning initiative. I also want to recognize the county administrator. We welcomed you into a new role and were very appreciative of your accessibility and willingness to quickly engage in this project. Mr. Carpenter, thank you and your hardworking and dedicated team for all you do. Your combined efforts are greatly appreciated. I also want to thank the Timmons team. You led a very professional and informative analysis. We plan to take what you provided and put it to good use.

“In short, we plan to use all the information gathered in the lessons learned to seek opportunities for improvement, most of which relate to greater transparency, follow-up expectations and communications.”

Costello said that, as a result of the process, citizens have a clear understanding of the key attributes and design objectives for a successful village that align with their vision for Centerville. He reiterated that the high intensity urban development that characterizes Short Pump is not right for Centerville.

He concluded that the proposed plan ignored citizen input on the crucial elements of a village vision and asked the board to deny approval.

Ken Peterson, District 5, who will conclude twelve years of exemplary service to Goochland at the end of 2022, said that there is consensus that it is better to have a plan than no plan. That failure to evolve risks obsolescence and that change is inevitable. “I had hopes when we launched this plan that it would take a reasonable amount of time and cost a reasonable amount of money. It took longer and cost more than expected. I was full of hope that with a reasonable amount of citizen input we could develop a consensus and a way forward. That didn’t happen.”

It is hard to implement opposing suggestions and please everyone, he said. Peterson also mentioned the twenty-four thousand Goochlanders that did not weigh in on this process.

He said there are downsides to not having an updated plan, which makes it further out of date and further obsolete, leaving decision makers grappling with the same patchwork approach to Centerville land use that has proved unsatisfactory in the past. “Flexibility and the ability to evolve ensures success going forward. It’s important to have update plans to embrace change.”

Board Chair Neil Spoonhower, District 2 said that “the vote will have consequences that a lot of people will not like. When those consequences come to fruition, remember where you were when the vote was taken.”

For better or worse, the Centerville Small Area Plan initiative is over. Data gleaned during the process should be used, as much as possible, to make sound land use decisions going forward.