|
The County was
awarded a $100,000 Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)
Tier II Urban Development Area Planning Grant on January 15,
2010 through the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Secretary of
Transportation. The Multimodal Planning Office is responsible
for managing the grant program, and has just sent the agreement
to all localities receiving the grant awards (refer to
Attachment 1). The first step is to sign the agreement.
Consultant:
It needs to be
noted that VDOT will assign all localities a consultant from a
pool of four qualifying firms: Cox Companies, Renaissance
Planning Group, Rhodeside and Harwell, and Parsons. We have
been assigned the Renaissance Planning Group, which has a superb
planning and transportation team.
County
Projects:
Our grant funds
will be used exclusively on the Bealeton and Marshall Service
Districts. A preliminary description of the principal direction
to be taken in each is summarized in Attachment 2. These
descriptions will be developed into a more detailed work program
and schedule to be discussed with the consultant team and to
insure that costs shall not exceed the grant budget. Accepting
the grant means that the County will need to:
·
Analyze future growth patterns;
·
Designate at least one Urban Development Area (UDA);
·
Revise zoning and subdivision ordinances to create
at least one classification that incorporates the principles of
“new urbanism by-right”;
·
Identify and describe the transportation benefits
that will be realized if the UDA is successfully implemented;
and
·
Create at least one small area plan for a service
district that will be a UDA through a public involvement
process.
All of these
listed grant criteria are easily achievable for the Bealeton and
Marshall Service District Plans.
Other
Ongoing Projects:
Separate from this
UDA grant, the County is in the initial stages of upgrading its
Opal Service District Plan due to the pending construction of
the grade separated interchange for the U.S. 15/29 and Route 17
intersection. The Opal Service District is a planned business
center area that needs a coordinated upgrade for both its land
use and transportation plans. The Service District boundaries
may also require adjustment to offer more effective land use
relationships with street and service road network alignments
and extensions. Here, future land use and transportation
requirements need to be carefully linked and effectively
coordinated.
As a first step,
the County and VDOT have initiated a Public Service Road
Study (Consultant: HNTB) that will establish realistic
alignments for service roads, extensions of existing streets,
future realignment options of Opal Road to the Route 15-29
flyover, access management guidelines, as well as the staging of
engineering design and improvements. VDOT is funding this
consultant work through the Culpeper District’s consultant
on-call program. With staff assistance and funding from the
engineering fund, HNTB will also complete the second step which
is a future land use plan update that carefully establishes the
development form, scale and character in far more detail than
currently represented in the Service District plan. This step
will run concurrently with the service road network phase and
have a citizen and business outreach effort included. Refer to
the draft work program (Attachment 3) for the general details.
Final work program elements have yet to be consummated with the
future land use plan assignment.
|