Council OKs cash proffers for developers

Members also tighten permissions for new data centers

Harrisonburg Mayor Deanna Reed opened Tuesday’s City Council meeting with a moment of silence instead of an invocation. The invocation has often in the past been a Christian prayer. This was the first regular meeting for Councilman Nasser Alsaadun, the first Muslim to serve on Council, although Reed did not cite that as a reason for the change.

The rest of the council meeting was taken up with a series of eight public hearings. Council approved all eight subjects, which included allowing cash proffers from developers and requiring that any new data center receive a special use permit from the council.

The council approved an ordinance change allowing the city to accept cash proffers from those seeking zoning changes or other considerations. Examples are a developer offering the city payments to offset the cost of road changes for a project, or to offset future school costs. Harrisonburg didn’t previously allow cash proffers, although many Virginia localities do. In 2016, the Virginia General Assembly passed new legislation addressing residential developments and cash proffers, as long as those proffers are specific to a proposed new residential development and directly address an impact to an offsite facility.

The topic came up during the discussion of Bluestone Town Center, when the developer offered cash to offset school costs, but only if the money was immediately loaned back to the city at favorable rates to the developer. The city attorney pointed out that the proffer was not allowed, although the project went ahead anyway. Under this 2016 legislation, localities are only allowed to accept cash proffers for roads, schools, public safety or parks and recreation that would need improvements or a brand new facility as a direct impact of a new residential development.

Councilman Alsaadun voted against the change. During the discussion, he expressed a concern that the cost of any cash proffers would be passed on to home buyers.

Council granted a series of variances to accept into the city road system the extension of East Kaylor Park Drive to Rocktown High School, to include variance requests from the Subdivision Ordinance to allow deviation from public street design standards. Sections of the street are narrower than specified in the city’s Design and Construction Standards Manual (known as the DCSM, which provides design and construction standards for projects within the City of Harrisonburg) but consistent with VDOT-approved widths for a local street.

Basically, the City of Harrisonburg gave the school system a piece of land to build a high school on, authorized payments to build the high school and the roads leading to it, made road improvements along South Main including a new traffic light, and is now giving itself permission to do all that, six months after the school opened. Any deviations or variance from common sense in this process is the fault of state law and not of any action by the City of Harrisonburg.

Council also granted an easement to allow VDOT to cross city property to work on a bridge.

Council heard a presentation on dispersal of the city’s share of Community Development Block Grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the coming year. The amount of the grants varies, but is around half a million dollars a year for Harrisonburg, with about 6 percent of that going to a salary for someone to administer the grants. The grants go to city services related to housing for low and moderate income residents. A training session for CDBG applicants will be held Thursday, January 17 at 2PM. The deadline for grants to be received is noon, Feb. 20, 2025.

Council approved a zoning change to allow Valley Equipment to move from Charles Street to a property on Carpenter Lane adjacent to I81. The change will be from commercial zoning to industrial zoning, and allows the company to move from leasing to owning the property on which their business will be located. The company rents construction and farm equipment.

Council granted an easement of around 1,000 square feet of City property to allow Oak Hill Apartments to construct an additional entrance from Reservoir Street to the less heavily trafficked Eastover Drive. This City parcel is a remnant from the construction of I-81 and is not actively used, and will improve the safety of the street network in the area, city officials said.

Council voted to give small sections of Eastover and Cardinal drives to JMU. The sections are used only for entry to JMU and giving them to the campus will shift maintenance costs and responsibilities to JMU. Both are surrounded by JMU properties, and already maintained by the University. Infrastructure work (new water and sewer laterals, bioretention facilities) needs to be done on both Eastover and Cardinal, and the upcoming work will be more efficiently completed and simpler to maintain on approval of this request.

Council also amended the zoning ordinance to define data centers and require special use permits for them to be built. Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the world, but local ordinances vary on where they can be built. High levels of demand for data centers is driven by AI and other cloud-related uses; about 70% of the world’s internet traffic runs through Virginia. In Harrisonburg, data centers were allowed without restriction in one zoning area, without restriction below a certain size in a second, only with a special use permit above a certain size in that same zoning, and only with a special use permit in one other zoning. The change to the zoning ordinance will require a special use permit - prior permission from the City - before a data center could be built or installed anywhere in the city. Council can now approve or reject the facilities based on impacts to electrical/power infrastructure, water and sewer impacts, facility size/footprint, lighting, and noise.

Council also voted to allow the Harrisonburg Housing and Redevelopment Authority to issue bonds for a non-profit, the Beverley J. Searles Foundation, to build 80 apartments and 84 senior citizen apartments on Mosby Road. The city has to give permission, but doesn’t put up any money. The city had previously given that permission in November 2023 but it expired after one year. There is no liability assumed by the City in approving this, and no fiscal impact from the issuance of the bonds. HRHA is a conduit for the funding, and can earn fees for this service.

Council also appointed Shannon Porter to the Planning Commission and Kevin Comer to the Harrisonburg Electric Commission, and reappointed Joe Bowman to the Shenandoah Valley Airport Commission.