New Albany ARB OKs food pantry site design, adds screening, bike parking and reduced sign lighting

The New Albany Architecture Review Board voted March 9 to recommend approval of the final development plan and certificate of appropriateness for a proposed New Albany food pantry at 5220 Jamestown Road, subject to multiple conditions addressing landscaping, signage and parking.

The board approved the 8,460-square-foot building and site plan, with conditions that the applicant meet the city landscape architect’s comments (subject to staff approval); reduce external sign lights to less than 3,000 Kelvin; ensure signs meet code (subject to staff approval); address engineer comments (subject to staff approval); add bicycle parking; and work with the city to provide and install evergreen screening for neighboring properties in James River Park consistent with the meeting packet. The motion passed with five votes in favor.

Staff framed the board’s role as limited to architectural and design review, not use, and said the updated plans shift a retention pond so no trees are removed on the southern portion of the site and show additional plantings along the western and northern sides of the parking lot. The site is encumbered by a 120-foot private utility easement that the zoning text acknowledges and that exempts required landscaping within the easement.

Todd Parker, the project architect, told the board the team had revised the plan after the prior hearing to address design-review comments and added the planting shown on the plans at the city landscape architect’s direction. “I’m the architect for the food pantry,” Parker said, and described coordination with the city and a local landscape architect on screening and park plantings.

Neighbors who had engaged with the project offered mixed views. A resident introduced as Francis said he and other neighbors were working with the applicant and staff and that he was “supportive of the condition the 4th condition added tonight,” while Richard Wolford of Ashcombe said neighbors who could not attend were “vehemently opposed” and argued the location “is inaccessible” for pantry users, citing a lack of direct vehicle access and bus service and saying, as he put it, “No 1 wants it there.”

Another resident, Charles Schumacher of Biddock Court, asked why the pantry could not be sited to share the church’s larger parking lot and urged inclusion of bicycle parking for pedestrian and bicycle commuters.

Board members said the updated landscaping and a five-foot screening approach addressed prior concerns. One member noted the packet did not show bicycle parking; the motion adopted at the meeting added bicycle parking as a required condition, subject to staff approval.

The board’s recommendation sends the application to the Planning Commission for final review on March 16; the ARB’s action was limited to architectural and design elements and did not determine whether the site may be used as a pantry under other approvals.