How open should an “open ideas” competition be? That’s the question at the center of a debate among city planners and members of a steering committee tasked with drawing up guidelines for the Water Street parking lots design competition.
 The City Market’s days on the Water Street parking lot may be numbered—but draft guidelines for a city funded “open ideas” design competition are too open for many city leaders. |
The parking lots between Water and South streets have long been seen as prime real estate for infill development. So despite the fact that most of the land is privately owned, the city issued a request for proposals in December for an “open ideas” design competition that would “invite architectural and urban design teams locally or nationally to submit creative ideas for the development of a site.” Only the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CDC) submitted a proposal, and the city issued them $100,000. Add to that $50,000 for the winning designers, though the CDC is trying to raise much of that through private donations.
To prepare for a June launch of the competition, the CDC put together a 22-member steering committee to draw up the guidelines. But the first draft of those guidelines allows designers to ignore city zoning “if the entrants can demonstrate a higher level of achievement” of the criteria. Designs couldn’t exceed maximum volume allowed on the roughly two-acre site, but could have, say, a 15-story building on one half as long as it had three stories on the other half. Current zoning limits buildings on the site to nine stories.
“A 15-story building would not be possible anywhere in our City, by special use permit, imagination, whimsy, or otherwise,” wrote Planning Commissioner Cheri Lewis in an e-mail discussion among city leaders. Others criticized awarding $50,000 for a “fantasy.” The issue was brought to their attention by Colette Hall, president of the North Downtown Residents Association.
The CDC’s John Semmelhack explains the idea behind the open requirements: “If an entry that [doesn’t meet zoning requirements] wins and is a fabulous design, does that mean that the city should relook at the zoning requirements, in terms of the height and volume and massing? …I think that would be a potential outcome if one of the winners showed a really great design that had a lot of support.”
The steering committee met May 14 (too late for press time), and will hold a public forum Wednesday, May 16. “There’re so far two sides, and it seems to be split so far in terms of the preference,” Semmelhack says. “So it’s still up in the air what we’ll do there.”
Charlottesville Tomorrow has a write-up and podcast of a previous public meeting on the Water Street design competition.
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.
