Danville’s growth has outpaced its comprehensive plan. Here’s how the city is dealing with it.

In March, the Danville City Council approved an apartment complex on a West Main Street parcel that was designated for low-density residential housing.

Two months later, the Pittsylvania County Planning Commission recommended approval for a large data center on a piece of land that was designated for residential and commercial use, not industrial.

Both of these decisions came via special use zoning permits, despite resident opposition and counter to recommendations in the localities’ comprehensive plans.

Comprehensive plans, while not contractually binding in any way, are meant to guide localities and provide a framework for future development.

But the growth in Danville and Pittsylvania County has largely outpaced what was anticipated in their comprehensive plans, which were adopted in 2015 and 2010, respectively.

“I’m not sure people anticipated the kind of growth and change that has occurred recently,” said Danville City Manager Ken Larking. “People were hopeful. … But to have it happen in this way and so quickly, not many people would’ve predicted that.”

This growth means that the city and county have had to diverge from their comprehensive plans at times.

“Obviously, when planning for 20 years in the future, best practices and new uses can change the trajectory of the plan before the life of the document has expired,” said Emily Ragsdale, community development director for Pittsylvania County.

Sometimes, divergence from the comprehensive plan is met with opposition, like the apartment complex and data center decisions.

Other times, however, it is met with enthusiasm, like the riverfront park in Danville that is under construction despite hardly a mention of outdoor recreation in the current comprehensive plan.

Usually, the city diverges from its comprehensive plan on a case-by-case basis, Larking said, although there are emerging trends — mostly around housing, for which the city has a pent-up demand .

Danville is now in the process of revising its comprehensive plan, with an unprecedented effort to engage the community in this process through an initiative called PLAN Danville .

Comprehensive plans are 20-year documents, and Danville’s 2015 plan was meant to carry the city through to 2035. But because of Danville’s rapid growth in recent years, city staff felt that a new comprehensive plan was needed sooner, Larking said.

The in-progress comprehensive plan will likely be adopted this year. The goal is to provide a framework that is more conducive to Danville’s current and future needs than the 2015 plan.

And Pittsylvania County is looking to do a rewrite of its comprehensive plan “in the very near future,” due to current and anticipated growth, Ragsdale said.

In the meantime, the city and county are navigating ongoing questions about when to adhere to their existing comprehensive plans, and when to overrule them.

What do comprehensive plans do?

Comprehensive plans are long-range planning documents that suggest goals and strategies meant to guide future growth and development, said Renee Burton, director of planning and zoning in Danville.

“It’s state mandated that every locality has a comprehensive plan to lay out physical land developments of the community,” she said. “It’s a 20-year plan, mandated every five years to revisit.”

Though the Danville and Pittsylvania County plans have not been completely rewritten since 2015 and 2010, they have been revisited every five years as mandated by the state.

“Many decisions are weighed against the comprehensive plan, especially zoning-related decisions,” Ragsdale said.

In addition to land development, comprehensive plans can steer development around jobs, transportation, amenities and infrastructure.

“It could also touch on various other city services like recreation and fire services,” Larking said. “It could talk about what level of service the city should be providing to its constituents.”

These plans are not binding in any way, which separates them from other documents like zoning and development codes, which are “very prescriptive about what can and can’t happen on a certain property,” Larking said.

Comprehensive plans might suggest one type of development on a specific piece of land, but if a locality finds that another use is better, this suggestion can be ignored.

There might also be barriers that prevent a locality from following its comprehensive plan exactly.

“A lot of things can impact your ability to actually follow these guidelines,” Larking said. “Usually, budget constraints are number one if it’s at the service level.”

Often, new comprehensive plans are followed by updates or revisions to zoning and development codes so that these documents are consistent, he said.

Danville likely will see a zoning code update after its new comprehensive plan is adopted.

The most recent zoning code was written in 2004, before even the closure of the major economic driver Dan River Mills, not to mention the economic distress and subsequent revitalization that have occurred since then.

Writing comprehensive plans is tricky, because there’s no way to perfectly predict the change a community might see in the next 20 years, Burton said, and there are many factors to take into consideration.

“Say we deviated from the plan five years ago, so there are developments somewhere now that weren’t in the plan,” she said. “Or maybe there’s a new flood area that we didn’t know existed, so there could be environmental changes that occurred between the plan and our current development. There are a lot of factors.”

This is why the plan is not only reviewed every five years, but can also be amended when necessary, Ragsdale said.

Responding to growth

In Danville, most of the decisions that run contrary to the comprehensive plan deal with housing, said Burton.

This is partially because the city has a large identified need for housing. There’s a pent-up demand of about 600 homes, according to a 2022 study .

It’s also because Danville now needs a wider variety of housing than it used to, Burton said.

“Historically, the city of Danville has been mostly single-family detached dwellings,” she said. “That’s the housing that we’ve been able to offer in general. Now, we’re looking more toward diversity of style. Townhouses, patio homes, apartments, condominiums.”

The city is trying to attract young professionals and families, who often have different housing preferences than older adults.

Most recent housing projects have been multifamily developments, which are sometimes planned on parcels that the comprehensive plan designated for single-family homes.

“We’ve been hearing about the need for more housing and the need for more dense housing …[though] it may not be exactly what was projected or follow the guidance of the 2015 plan,” Larking said.

In March, when the city council approved an apartment complex at 1700 W. Main St. on a plot initially designated for single-family homes, several residents mentioned the comprehensive plan during the meeting.

“Please look elsewhere for places to build the apartments and honor our city’s long-term comprehensive plan,” said Kathy Collins, a neighbor of the parcel.

One resident, Jean Vernon, filed a complaint with the Danville Circuit Court in an effort to stop the apartment complex from being built. A hearing is scheduled this month.

Part of her argument is that the 2015 comprehensive plan recommended low-density residential development on this parcel. Vernon’s filing argues that nearby residents have depended on this designation to reinvest in their properties and make future plans.

Chris Winslow, Vernon’s attorney, acknowledged that a comprehensive plan is advisory rather than binding. But he said that it represents a citizen involvement and engagement effort and should be adhered to.

At the meeting, Burton acknowledged that this development is not consistent with the comprehensive plan’s designation. But city staff still recommended approval of the project because it would help address the city’s dire need housing.

“We look at the overall city benefit of a particular development,” which is often a different perspective than that of nearby residents, Burton said in a recent interview.

When a single issue — like housing — continues to crop up in planning commission or city council meetings, it’s an indicator that it needs to be revisited, Larking said.

Danville’s planning commission and city council have seen dozens of special use applications around housing this year alone.

“You can sort of tell when you need to do an update to your comp plan and your zoning ordinance when you start getting lots of code amendment change requests,” he said.

One example is short-term rentals. The city’s comprehensive plan did not address these types of properties — things like Airbnb and VRBO properties — because they weren’t “contemplated as an issue in 2015,” Larking said.

But recently, there were so many special use permit applications to operate short-term rentals that the city adopted an ordinance to provide more concrete guidelines around when and where these properties are permitted.

A fuller update to the city’s zoning code will likely take place after a new comprehensive plan is adopted later this year.

PLAN Danville

The experience of outgrowing a comprehensive plan is informing Danville’s effort to write the next one. And to do this, the city is engaging its community like never before.

While writing comprehensive plans typically involves some level of community input, PLAN Danville is taking resident engagement much further than usual, Larking said.

“I would describe this effort as being well beyond what we’ve ever done before, not to disparage any of the previous efforts,” he said.

When the last comprehensive plan was written, only 14 residents showed up to a community input meeting, Burton said.

But the PLAN Danville initiative has been drawing hundreds of residents to its block parties, which are held outside the PLAN Danville storefront and give residents an opportunity to learn about the new comprehensive plan effort and share their ideas for what it should include.

Residents can also stop by during the week to speak with community outreach ambassadors, who have established trust in different areas of the community and work to connect these neighborhoods and the city.

This is important because portions of the community have felt overlooked in past citywide decisions, said Roshay Johnson, one of the community ambassadors, in an interview at a PLAN Danville block party in May.

With this new effort, the city is making a concentrated effort to hear from these residents.

“Because we knew so much change was happening, and because our community deserves to have a very high-quality comprehensive planning process, we made sure to reach out to all parts of the community and create opportunities for people to participate and offer input,” Larking said. “We want them to tell us their hopes and dreams for their neighborhoods and for the city as a whole.”

Some of the most common feedback is around recreation, Johnson said.

“A lot of people used to see Danville as just a retirement community,” she said, adding that she often hears from residents about the need for family-friendly and outdoor activities.

Some of the recreation requests are already being answered through projects like the riverfront park and splash pads, which were not part of the 2015 comprehensive plan.

City officials hope that this resident input will help the next comprehensive plan more accurately anticipate future needs and wants of the city.

A draft of the new plan is expected to be completed by fall. An early version shared by the city in June included eight sections: community, land use, transportation, infrastructure, housing, economy, environment and culture.

Danville has never done anything like this before, Larking said, adding that most localities probably haven’t, because of the amount of time and resources it takes to engage the community this heavily in a comprehensive plan overhaul.

The city hired a consultant to help it through the process and received a grant from the Danville Regional Foundation to help fund PLAN Danville, he said.

The PLAN Danville effort was one of the reasons that the city recently was recognized as an All-America City by the National Civic League.

The theme for this year’s All-America City award was “Strengthening Democracy through Local Action and Innovation,” and the winners were cities that best exemplified the power of civic participation and innovation.

Other Southwest and Southside localities that are growing quickly may be facing these same challenges, and Larking emphasized the importance of getting an early start on rewriting a comprehensive plan, which is a lengthy process.

Danville first began having conversations about the rewriting process in early 2023.

“If you’re seeing growth happening, it’s always better to be proactive about it,” he said. “We felt like it was important to get ahead of the curve and do it the right way so that we’re not rushing the process. We wanted to give people an adequate opportunity to provide input.”

An early start also allows for revisions to be made as needed.

“You can hire the best consultants in the county, but they are from different places with different world experiences,” Larking said. “They can never know the Danville way of doing things. So you have to have those check-ins along the way to make sure they’re heading in the right direction for what makes sense for our community.”

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