The City of Suffolk is on the verge of adopting the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan. This plan just got approved by a vote of 7-1 by the Planning Commission and it now heads to City Council for a vote on Wednesday, August 21 at 6pm at City Hall.
This plan is NOT in the best interest of the residents.
Please sign our petition opposing this plan and read on for more details.
The City received more than 7,500 responses from citizens telling the City what they want for the future of Suffolk. The responses were documented and then summarized, and you can read those here.
The key themes from the public’s responses are in the chart below along with whether the City has a plan to deliver based on the 2045 Comprehensive Plan:
Using all the public feedback, the City could have developed a vision for Suffolk that the people could get behind. However, the 2045 Comp Plan has no vision. With the demand from citizens to invest in downtown, the City could have focused economic development on downtown, but instead, they are carving out new areas for even more warehouses (we already lead Hampton Roads in warehouses!) Instead of limiting warehouse development to existing space and fixing our traffic problems, the 2045 Comprehensive Plan will exacerbate these problems, destroy the open space and farmland people want to preserve, and ruin that small town feel that Suffolk has.
People want to live in communities that are safe and walkable. The push for more warehouses is driving the housing market’s need for higher density housing, and builders want to build where it is cheap and easy (namely on agricultural land), so they can maximize their profits. The City could have focused on community building and infill development close to downtown, but instead we are going to get more of the same suburban sprawl that is NOT walkable, and it will devour more agricultural land. The City keeps allowing these huge suburban neighborhoods and thinks that just because they put sidewalks there, that makes them walkable.
The people of Suffolk value the open spaces and farmland in Suffolk. Farmland is a finite resource that once gone, is gone for good. Getting rid of the land that grows our food is terribly short-sighted. The city pays lip service to preserving agricultural land, but it stipulates that it will preserve it only OUTSIDE the Growth Areas. Yet the City keeps expanding the Growth Areas. They also added language to this new plan that gives them flexibility to build outside the Growth Areas IF the City deems it is a good idea. So basically, no farmland, forestry land, or open space is safe from development, if it can feed the City’s voracious appetite for ‘growth’.
L.5.3 Consider amending the City’s development regulations to add guidelines for the review of exceptional development opportunities outside of the growth boundaries. (p.68 of 2045 Comprehensive Plan)
Before getting public comments, the City met with ‘focus groups’ and staff. We don’t know who attended these meetings, so we submitted a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request, and are waiting for that information, but what is pretty clear is that early on it was staff and certain groups of people that were able to sway this plan to their desires, and it definitely wasn’t the citizens.
Here are some highlights from those meetings (full summary is here):
These focus groups got a lot of things THEY wanted – expanded growth areas along with more land use for industrial and then more land for residential development to support it. They asked for a faster and more predictable review process.
L.1.2 Review and revise current development regulations, including the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) and the zoning map, to improve compatibility with the comprehensive plan. (p.64 of 2045 Comprehensive Plan)
This is part of the “efficient and predictable review process”. It doesn’t matter how many times a staff or City Council Members says that this is ‘just a plan’ and ‘not written in stone’, because the City is planning to rewrite the UDO to reflect the 2045 Comprehensive Plan and rezoning applications that come before them that conform to the Future Land Map will get rezoned. This new Land Use Map is the future of Suffolk. If you don’t know what the land around your home will look like in the future, you should check it out now. This could be our last chance to change this.
The other item that was requested by these ‘focus groups’ was about infrastructure. Developers want it in place so they don’t have to pay or wait for it. Let’s take a moment to appreciate that one about infrastructure. As citizens, we get told all the time that development builds the infrastructure, as in literally, if a developer wants to build, he has to pay for the sewer connection, a pump station if necessary, build the roads and sidewalks, etc.. All of a sudden, developers are complaining about how expensive that is and maybe they won’t build unless the infrastructure is already in place – and so the City adds into the 2045 Comprehensive Plan:
L.5.1 Identify priority economic development sites and make strategic investments to advance site readiness. (p.68 of 2045 Comprehensive Plan)
E.1.6 Strategically expand utility service (water, sewer, fiber) to sites that can support new employment generating businesses. Develop financing options to
facilitate the construction of water and sewer projects to support development.
Use City-funded utility capacity improvements as incentives for development. (p. 81 of 2045 Comprehensive Plan)
The site-readiness is all about having everything in place so developers don’t have to do the work or spend the money to get the land ready. The idea is now that the city will bring in the sewers and other utilities and have the site ready to build on, which will make it more attractive to developers.
Keep in mind that the people asked for fewer warehouses, but now we will get to pay to help build what we don’t even want. How is this representing the citizens? If these warehouses are going to be bringing in so much money, the developers should foot the bill to invest in infrastructure – not the taxpayers!
To entice these warehouse developers that the citizens don’t want, the City is prepared to make Suffolk’s current farmland ‘site-ready’ for the developers on our dime. Knowing this, the City still made the decision to skip the fiscal analysis. The experts that had been contracted to do the FIA, recommend doing the FIA first and then evaluating options, only then should the city write the comprehensive plan. The City of Suffolk decided that it wasn’t going to even evaluate different options for development and it wasn’t necessary to look at the long-term financial impact. This is a HUGE increase in growth for the city, including building large scale warehouses and residential developments on farmland that does not currently have infrastructure.
The State of Virginia requires that comprehensive plans be adopted with the purpose of “prosperity and general welfare of the inhabitants”. This plan does NOT meet that standard. This plan is supposed to be about us, our needs and wants, and our vision for the future of Suffolk, not the Port’s needs, developers’ desires, and the will of City staff.
If any of this isn’t sitting right with you, please join us in opposing the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. Please sign our petition, share with all of your neighbors, friends and family in Suffolk. Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us tell City Council we don’t want this, maybe they will listen to the voice of the people.
Please sign our petition to urge City Council to vote ‘NO’ to the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan.