Comp plan hearing tonight

Interested in how the town of Culpeper could grow in the next decade?

The Culpeper Town Planning Commission holds a public hearing tonight at 7 on the document that envisions that future. The hearing on the town’s 2010 draft comprehensive plan will be held in the county administration building at 302 N. Main St.

At 135 pages and chock full of photographs, maps, graphics and bullet points, the new comp plan — an update to the 2002 document — looks quite modern. The 2010 version also introduces new terms like “character areas,” outlining distinct sectors around town such as: mixed-use business, neighborhood commercial, central business & town centers, traditional neighborhoods and suburban neighborhoods.

The new plan includes an entire chapter titled “investment areas,” referring to “a group of developed properties in town that are showing signs of deterioration, under utilization, or were identified in the planning process as locations for possible redevelopment.”

Overall, the plan’s “intent and purpose,” according to the so-named chapter, is to provide “a vision for how a community should grow in the future, maintain public facilities and services in response to growth, and address infill and redevelopment.”

The plan is intended as a guide and is not the town’s only planning document.

Town Planner Patrick Mulhern told the planning commission last month that the comp plan does not affect existing zoning or land use rights, saying it provides a tool for citizens, staff and developers to guide growth in town.

However, he noted several changes to the plan’s future land use map, namely a mixture of residential (30 percent) and commercial (70 percent) on the town’s south and north ends.

Further, the East Street area was changed from low to medium density with a focus on not dividing single-family homes into apartments.

Planning commission member Jim Risner, a town councilman, said last month that he liked the 2010 plan’s readability and photos, indicating that it was ready to go to public hearing. Culpeper Town Council will officially adopt the plan at a later date.

Want to go?
The Culpeper Town Planning Commission hosts a public hearing tonight at 7 on the draft version of the town’s 2010 comprehensive plan. The meeting takes place in the county administration building, 302 N. Main St.