setbacks – Care4Suffolk

Toothless Text Amendment

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 16:45:07 +0000

In September, we wrote about the City of Suffolk’s plan to add warehouse regulations to the UDO (Unified Development Ordinance). We applauded the city for addressing a glaring omission in the UDO – the lack of guidelines for the building of warehouses. We may have been too hasty in our praise.

When the Planning Department first proposed the text amendment, the setbacks for warehouses were going to be set to 30 feet, which is already the minimum standard for M-1 and M-2 zoning. Citizens Voice, a group of concerned citizens, met with the city personnel before the September 20th City Council meeting, providing well-researched documentation regarding setbacks. They also provided feedback during the public hearing, presenting a petition signed by Suffolk residents along with responses to a survey they had sent out. The citizens of Suffolk want larger setbacks. Even Mayor Duman agreed that 30 feet is not enough.

A 30-foot setback is about the same length as two averaged-sized cars parked bumper to bumper. That is not much of a buffer. Do you know what else requires a 30-foot setback in the City of Suffolk? According to the UDO TABLE 407-1: DIMENSIONAL STANDARDS, houses built in the RLM (Residential Low Medium density) are required to have minimum front and rear setbacks of 30 feet each.

The table above is from the UDO TABLE 407-1: DIMENSIONAL STANDARDS as lists the setbacks required in the City of Suffolk based on the zoning district. The highlights sections relate to the RR, RLM, M-1, and M-2 zoning districts’ minimum setback requirements.

That’s right: if you purchase a half-acre lot and want to build a 2,100 square foot house (average size in Virginia) on a RLM lot, you will have to make sure your home is 30 feet from the road and 30 feet from the rear property line, the same as a warehouse in a M-1 or M-2 zoning district. If you build that same house on a one acre Rural Residential (RR) lot, you better make sure the setback is 45 feet from the road. In other words, 15 feet further back than a warehouse is required to be.

To be clear, the City’s stated purpose for this amendment is: “To mitigate potential adverse impacts of warehouses and warehousing uses on adjacent public property, residential uses, institutional uses, or recreational uses, and the public roadway network.” With this in mind, do they really think a 45-foot tall warehouse with no minimum lot size and no limitations on square footage, should actually be placed CLOSER to the road frontage than a 2,100 square foot house on a 1 acre lot?

Above are the maps presented by the Planning Department at the October 18th City Council Work Session.

At the October 18th City Council Work Session, Kevin Wyne, Director of Planning and Community Development for Suffolk showed a series of maps with colored lines drawn on them to show the difference between the 30, 60, 100 and 500-foot setbacks. The City stated that it couldn’t require a 500-foot setback because of ‘regulatory taking’, which basically means that because too much of the land would be required for the setback, the owner would not be able to use the property.

So why just stick with 30 feet because 500 isn’t plausible? What about the other options of 60 or 100 feet? There was no mention of those distances or if they would be considered ‘regulatory taking’. There was no talk about why regulating a residential property to a 45-foot setback ISN’T ‘regulatory taking’ but increasing warehouse setbacks IS?

Instead of taking the feedback from the citizens of Suffolk into consideration, the City has listened to developers. The revised text amendment does not increase the buffers, which would protect Suffolk citizens’ quality of life. In fact, according to the UDO, M-2 zoning required 50-foot minimum side and rear setbacks. The new warehouse text amendment is just 30 feet. Did citizens just lose 20 feet of the previously required buffer? Why is the city even considering lowering it to 30 feet?

They also removed other aspects that had been in the draft, but presumably were objectionable to the developers. For instance, the draft version applied to public property, residential, agricultural, conservation, and recreational uses, and the public roadway network. The modified version removes conservation uses and agricultural uses.

Initially, it required pulsing back-up alerts for yard trucks and forklifts, which is a less noisy alert than the usual high-pitch beeping sound. Now this is just a recommendation, not a requirement.

There was also a requirement for truck/cab parking and stacking space dimensions of 14 feet x 75 feet. Now it is 12 feet x 60 feet.

Something else to note, is that the amendment only requires one parking space for every 10 bays/doors. There is a new warehouse complex set to be built across from the Amazon fulfillment center in Northgate Commerce Park that will have 150 bays, but only needs to have15 truck parking spaces available. Truck drivers are required to take breaks after certain driving times. Where are they supposed to go? Nobody wants them to risk driving while tired, both for their safety and everyone on the roads with them.

The City already acknowledges there is a problem with truck cabs parking on city streets and private lots. City Council Member Johnson asked the Planning Department, how do other areas deal with this? “Trucks are out of control,” Johnson stated, adding that it is getting to be a bigger and bigger problem. The City attorney says that we can’t require more amenities from the developers. City Council Member Fawcett’s solution was to just put up “no parking” signs. That may solve the problem of them parking on public streets, but it doesn’t provide a safe place to rest before they start driving again.

None of this addresses the real problem, which is that the Suffolk City Council has been rezoning land for years to allow for these warehouses and distribution centers with no plan in place to accommodate the traffic or the disruption to the citizens’ quality of life. This text amendment is a minimal effort that will do very little to offset these impacts. Instead of using it as a chance to help mitigate the negatives that come with warehouse development, the City has once again bent to the will of the developers and made this amendment toothless. The problems of road congestion, truck parking, noise and accidents will continue to get worse, unless the City decides to listen to its citizens over developers.

City Council will be voting on this text amendment on November 15th. Please email council members (council@suffolkva.us) to let them know what you think. Or better yet: come to the meeting and during the public hearing, let them know how this impacts you.

City Council Meeting Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 6:00p. Address: 442 W Washington Street, Suffolk, VA 23434

Link to the Amendment to Chapter 31, Unified Development Ordinance, Article 7, Supplemental Use Regulations, to add Section 31-726, Warehouses and Warehousing of the Code of the City

of Suffolk, Virginia

Warehouse and Warehousing Regulations to be Added to the UDO

Care4Suffolk — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 21:30:51 +0000

At last week’s City Council meeting, there was a public hearing for an ordinance to amend the UDO (Unified Development Ordinance). The changes are for Chapter 31, Article 7, Supplemental Use Regulations where the planning department has recommended that the city add a section (section 31-726) for Warehouses and Warehousing.

Planning Commissioner Mills Staylor made a motion at the July 2023 Planning Commission meeting to direct the city planning staff to draft language that would create supplemental use standards for industrial development in the M1 and M2 zoning districts when adjacent to residential districts, institutional uses, or public recreation uses. The motion passed unanimously. Credit goes to Mills Staylor, the other Planning Commissioners, and the planning department for seeing this need and acting on it.

As Kevin Hughes, Deputy City Manager, explained at the City Council meeting on September 20, 2023, that currently there are no specific Supplemental Use Regulations for warehouses and warehousing uses in Suffolk. For housing projects, the UDO provides guidance on setbacks and things of that nature when developing a neighborhood. There is currently nothing in the UDO to provide guidelines for the building of warehouses.

Kevin Wyne, Director of Planning & Community Development, gave a presentation with slides that explained the new proposed regulations. (Watch the presentation, mark 43:51) The new regulations include setbacks, sound barriers, noise, truck parking, stacking (tractor trailers queuing to enter and load), truck routing, and landscaping buffers.0

After the presentation, the Public Hearing opened. Denise Murden, of Citizens Voice, spoke. She stated that her organization agrees that this ordinance is needed, but there is also room for improvements. Major concerns include the environmental and health impact, noise impact and traffic impact. She stated that setbacks should be 500 feet from residential developments, not the proposed 30 feet setback in the new regulations.

Former City Council Member Don Goldberg stated he was disturbed by all this, saying that no one in the manufacturing and warehouse industry knew about this. However, this text amendment went before the Planning Commission on August 15, 2023 (after the motion passed in July) and was also presented at the previous City Council meeting on September 6, 2023. For comparison, that is the same amount of time that citizens had to respond to the proposed and passed Port 460 warehouse complex from last year (which Mr. Goldberg voted to approve against strong citizen opposition).

There were two additional speakers before the Public Hearing on this closed. City Council voted to give this an additional 60 days before it comes back for a vote. It is great that the city is creating these guidelines, however, it is also important that citizens look into this and share their concerns with City Council (council@suffolkva.us)

Setbacks and Buffers

The proposed setback is 30 feet.

For comparison, the photo above shows a 30’ sailboat, from bow to stern. Two average sized cars parked bumper to bumper are also about 30 feet. That is the distance. Imagine a residential property and just one sailboat, or two cars, from the property line, where a warehouse can place the driveway for trucks to enter the site, or a parking lot where semi cabs can idle, or the side of the warehouse loading dock can be located.

If the industrial site has operations that are loud, it will require a barrier to dampen the sound. These regulations will require a buffer of 60 feet (total distance, not in addition to the 30 foot setback). A quick visual for this is the image below, where the boy is pitching on a mound which is 60’6” from home plate. Throw a few trees in there between the pitcher and the batter and that’s all the buffer required.

In contrast, Citizens Voice suggested the setback be 500 feet, which is about 7 average-sized tractor-trailer trucks lined up bumper to bumper. That may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that a warehouse isn’t a single story building. The Amazon fulfillment center in Northgate Commerce Park stands at 4.5 stories high (95 feet) with a footprint of over 800,000 square feet (that’s more than 18 acres or about 14 football fields!) Imagine your property line being 30 feet, 60 feet and then 500 from a giant warehouse. Which one seems the more appropriate distance?

Be sure to let your City Council Member know how you feel about this: City Council (council@suffolkva.us)