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The Lexington Planning Commission is drafting an ordinance to allow a new type of housing in the city: accessory dwelling units.
Accessory dwellings are separate housing units either contained within or separate from the main structure of an existing house.
The city currently allows accessory apartments, which are interior apartments contained within an existing house or structure, but does not have any ordinances to allow separate accessory dwelling units, such as an apartment over a detached garage. Since its first meeting of the year on Jan. 12, the Planning Commission has been working on drafting an ordinance to allow city residents to build or adapt existing structures into accessory dwelling units.
There have already been several people who have inquired about potentially building an accessory dwelling on their property or converting an existing out-building into a dwelling. City planner Arne Glaeser, in response to a question from members of the Planning Commission, said that he estimates that he’s had “maybe a dozen” such inquiries in the six years that he’s been with the city.
Mirabai McLeod, who lives on Lime Kiln Road, is one such person who has inquired about accessory dwellings, wanting to convert a detached car port on her property into a single-person dwelling that she could rent out.
McLeod addressed the Planning Commission regarding her planned accessory dwelling, noting that the building already had electricity, a kitchen and heat and airconditioning because she for the past several years she’s run a catering business out of it, as well as plenty of space for off-street parking. She said she is planning to retire and would like to be able to rent the space in order to help support her in her retirement. Some minor construction would be required to build a front wall to close in the car port, but she didn’t anticipate the new wall taking much space away from the parking area.
“For me, this building is a perfect dwelling for one person,” she said.
In order to draft the ordinance, the Planning Commission is looking at similar ordinances from a number of jurisdictions, many of which were compiled in a report done by Alisande Tombarge, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, in 2021. Tombarge looked at 10 localities with ordinances for accessory dwellings, including Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Louisa County, Bedford County and Loudoun County, compiling what each allowed and how their ordinances were worded.
“This is hopefully going to be easier than the Planned Development-Mixed Use [zoning district] or the small cell facilities text amendments, because all of this has been considered before,” Glaeser told The News-Gazette. “We’re just going to have to program it or make it fit for our jurisdiction. We’re not reinventing the wheel in this case, because other places have already done bits and pieces of it.” - One of the first things in the ordinance that was drafted was the purpose statement, declaring the intent and purpose of the ordinance going forward.
At the Commission’s Jan 26 meeting, members were presented with intent statements from several of the ordinances included in Tombarge’s report, including examples from Charlottesville and Bedford County, which members of the Commission liked parts of.
Chair Blake Shester noted that Charlottesville’s intent statement states that such dwellings should be “clearly subordinate” to the main structure, while Leslie Straughan said she liked the intent statement from Bedford County, especially the last sentence, which reads, “these provisions are provided to recognize formally previously established apartments and provide for improved safety and physical appearance.”
Commission member John Driscoll combined those elements with a few points from other ordinances and came up with a draft intent statement for Lexington’s ordinance, which reads, “In Lexington, accessory dwellings are intended to provide additional housing options for the benefit and convenience of families and households with changing economic conditions and/or family structure. Accessory dwellings are expected to increase housing opportunities for individuals and households who might have difficulty finding housing in Lexington. In addition, these provisions are provided to formally recognize previously established apartments and provide for improved safety and physical appearance.”
At the Commission’s next meeting on Feb. 9, discussions were held regarding definitions for interior and exterior accessory dwellings. The Commission drafted definitions for two types of accessory dwellings: attached and detached. Both units, under the preliminary definition, are defined as “a complete independent dwelling unit, with kitchen and bath” that are “clearly incidental and subordinate to, and remain under the same ownership as the main dwelling on the lot.”
The primary difference between the two is that attached dwellings are contained within the structure of the main building (but with their own entrance) and detached units are separate out buildings. Both types of dwellings would require their own, separate street address from the main structure.
The one element of the definition that the Commission has not settled on yet is whether or not to set a limit on the number of people who can live in an accessory dwelling unit, and, if so, what that number would be. Several of the ordinances that were presented to the Commission limited the number of occupants to two, but Shester noted that that could potentially limit access to small families.
“I do agree that we want to be mindful,” he said. “We don’t want there to be eight people living in an accessory dwelling unit, but also allowing [for the] flexibility of a young family where it’s two adults and a baby or two adults and a toddler, that’s three people, so saying ‘[no more than] two people’ is extremely limiting.”
The draft definitions include phrasing to limit the number of occupants in an accessory dwelling, but do not currently include a number. -At the same meeting, the Commission also discussed the city’s use matrix and which of the city’s zoning districts detached units would be allowed in.
Interior or attached accessory dwellings are currently allowed within the city, defined as accessory apartments in the use matrix. Such apartments are allowed byright in the city’s four residential districts and in the C-1 (central business) district.
Straughan proposed allowing detached dwellings with a conditional use permit in the R-1 (residential general), R-2 (suburban residential) and R-LC (residential light commercial) districts, and not permitting them in either of the city’s commercial districts or in the R-M (residential multifamily) district.
Shester questioned why detached accessory dwellings couldn’t be allowed in the R-M district, pointing out that all other types of family residential structures are allowed by-right in that zoning district.
A conditional use permit option was added for that zoning district, with both Glaeser and Driscoll noting that the districts where such dwellings would be allowed may change as the use and design standards are settled on.
Different portions of those standards have been discussed at the past several meetings and others will be discussed in the future. Among the portions that have been discussed with draft text crafted are the number of units allowed (one per lot, provided the parcel meets the minimum lot size) and the size of the dwellings (no more than 40 percent of gross floor area of the main structure or 800 square feet for detached units; no more than 40 percent of gross floor area of the main structure or 750 square feet for attached units) and the height and setbacks for any detached structures. - Future topics of discussion will include parking requirements, building and utility codes, fees for applications and the application and review process. Discussion on some part of the ordinance is anticipated at every Planning Commission meeting going forward, with the goal of having a draft ordinance completed by the end of June.
