Planning staff advances broad PUD rewrite; commissioners push for clearer limits and reworked incentives

Culpeper County planning staff presented a major proposed rewrite of the county’s Planned Unit Development (PUD) ordinance (ZTA 12-24-1) and commissioners spent an extended work session debating incentives, open-space minimums and the geographic scope of the new tool.

Principal Planner Harrison Previn said the draft ordinance is intended to align the PUD with the 2023 comprehensive plan by lowering the minimum parcel size for a PUD in targeted growth areas, encouraging mixed-use development near town, and building an incentive framework to improve environmental, transportation and housing outcomes. The draft would set a 50 percent open-space baseline, then allow a developer to reduce that requirement by meeting a menu of incentives tied to ecological protections, connectivity and housing types.

Previn told commissioners staff sought flexibility to encourage desirable projects: "We found a way to kinda work into incentivizing different housing types that could be more affordable to the average Culpeper resident or Culpeper worker," he said while noting the county must stay consistent with state requirements governing affordable housing incentives.

Among the incentives discussed were: enhanced buffers along streams, on-site nutrient-control measures (to reduce reliance on purchased nutrient credits), parking structures or shared public parking, EV-ready spaces and solar canopies, and transit/bicycle connectivity. The draft also includes density and lot-coverage bonuses for projects that include a mix of housing types (duplexes, cottage courts, multifamily or mixed-use units).

Several commissioners praised the intent but urged large changes to the draft. Concerns included the potential for the incentive menu to be additive in ways that could reduce preserved open space to a very low floor — Previn’s draft showed a theoretical floor as low as 10 percent if a project claimed every incentive — and that some incentives (notably making units EV-ready or including solar canopies) could raise construction costs and be passed to homebuyers.

"I am not for, as a taxpayer, paying the current EV incentive... so to give a developer the incentive to put the structure in adds to the cost," Commissioner Thornhill said, urging removal or revision of the EV/solar-as-an-open-space-credit approach. Commissioners also asked staff to rework numeric percentages and align incentives so environmental gains are proportional to any open-space reductions.

Other concerns were procedural and geographic. Multiple commissioners asked staff to tighten the ordinance language so PUD rezones are clearly tied to the comprehensive-plan “future growth areas” and to require public water and sewer capacity for more intensive rezonings. Commissioners discussed adding clearer checks so the tool could not be used to introduce high-density developments in remote, rural parcels merely because water or sewer became available.

Staff acknowledged the comments and said the draft was intentionally a work-session prototype. Previn and other staff agreed to revisit percentages, refine incentive metrics, remove (or make optional without open-space reductions) certain contested incentives such as EV-ready spaces, and return with a revised draft for further discussion and a subsequent public hearing.

What happens next

No vote was taken. Staff will revise the draft ordinance to reflect the planning commission’s direction on incentive weighting, minimum open space floors, clearer service-area language and measurable environmental standards, then post revisions for public review and schedule a new public hearing.