Timberlake-Branham Timeline

Woolen Mills wet finishing foreman James Timberlake builds house, 1886

October 20, 1981- Timberlake-Branham House is added to Virginia Landmarks Register, VADHR file #104-0232.

January 10, 1984- Timberlake-Branham House is added to the National Register of Historic Places, building #84003525, VADHR file #104-0232.

June 5, 1989, City Council grants Special Use Permit for 1512 East Market subject to conditions:

1. Use of day care center shall be limited to thirty (30) elderly persons, exclusive of staff.
2. The applicant, contingent upon his favorable approval of the subject special use permit, has agreed voluntarily to obtain approval of the Board of Architectural review for the adult day care project located on approximately 2.3 acres at 1512 East Market Street, and this permit is conditioned accordingly
.

This SUP, in amended form, persists to this day and its 2.3 acre area is shown on the current (3/19/07) City zoning map.

July 31, 1989- Jeff O’Dell, Chairman of the Charlottesville Historic Landmarks Commission writes Mr. Satyendra Huja with statements of significance for a list of 100 year old buildings being proposed for ADC status. The Timberlake-Branham house and the Woolen Mills Chapel are among eighteen properties cited.

October 18, 1993 Charlottesville City Council zones TMP 56-40.4 as an “Individually protected property,”

July 11, 2000 Site plan review for Woolen Mills Self Storage. City Planning Commissioners are not informed by City staff that the greater part of the self-storage site is covered by an Architectural Design Control overlay. Project proceeds without BAR oversight. Seven buildings are constructed on the IPP/ADC property without BAR oversight.

9/7/00 Burgess Lane Properties subdivides TMP 56-40.4 (1512 E Market) forming “new parcels G&F” (TMP 56-109, TMP 56-40.4A) and reducing the acreage described by parcel 40.4 from 7 acres to 1.188 acres. City Tax Assessor maps are not updated to reflect the subdivision until 2007.

12/22/06 Burgess Lane Properties files a petition to remove the historic overlay from 0.278 acres of land behind the Timberlake house, City real property map 56-109 lot A. Lot A was formerly a portion of TMP 56-40.4

2/9/07 Attorney Erik Wilke writes Craig Brown and copies City Councilors regarding the lack of proper process and legislative action in the apparent removal of the architectural design overlay from approximately 83% of the acreage it originally applied to.

2/23/07 Charlottesville Zoning Administrator Read Brodhead “determines:”

On September 14, 1993 parcel 56-40.4 was approved by City Council as an Individually Protected Property (IPP) under the Board of Architectural Review. In 2001 this parcel was subdivided into four (4) smaller parcels 56-40.4, 56-109, 56-40.4A, and 56-42.3. The existing parcel 56-40.4 as well as the three (3) new parcels were simply new smaller divisions of the original Parent Parcel, 56-40.4. However, the technical mistake that occurred after this subdivision was to add the legal name of these three (3) new parcels were not added to the existing list of IPP’s.

After this subdivision was made, The City Assessor’s office officially added it to their tax maps in 2001, well before the adoption of the September 15, 2003 Zoning Ordinance. As the City was in the process of transitioning from paper to digital tax maps during this period, some of the earlier digital map books showed the original parcel unsubdivided. This may have added to some subsequent confusion over the historic nature of these 4 parcels in question.

When the Zoning Ordinance was adopted on September 15, 2003, it reaffirmed that parcel 56-40.4, and in this case only that one parcel legally named 56-40.4, was recognized as an Individually Protected Property. Parcels 56-109, 56-40.4A and 56-42.3 were not on the list of historic properties prior to the adoption of the Zoning Ordinance on 9/15/03. As a result the only parcel 56-40.4 and all structures contained within this parcel are historic and thus subject to review by the BAR.


Council minutes from 9/15/03 and preceding meetings reflect no awareness on Councilors’ part that they were rezoning, and removing the Architectural Design Control overlay from 83% of the original 40.4 parcel which they had intentionally protected in 1993. Furthermore the specific processes outlined in City Code (section 34-274) for deleting properties from the “protected property list” were not followed.

3/16/07 Erik Wilke files a petition to appeal Zoning Administrator Read Brodhead's determiniation regarding the zoning of the Timberlake property at BZA's meeting, 4/19/07.

3/22/07 Article regarding labyrinthine zoning saga of 1512 appears in The Hook.

4/12/07 Submission deadline for materials to be considered at the 4/19/07 BZA meeting.

4/16/07 Fred Payne, attorney for Burgess Lane Properties and Woolen Mills self storage, submits a nine page "Memorandum of Landowners" with forty-five pages of attachments to the BZA.

4/19/07 BZA meets, 4pm., basement conference room, City Hall. The BZA holds a public hearing, hears from attorneys Wilke and Payne. The BZA decides to seek "independent counsel", defers the matter, BZA 07-04-001 until May.

5/17/07 Independent counsel advises the BZA that they cannot look beyond the plain language of the 2003 zoning ordinance. "The ordinance says what it says." Mistakes might have been made in constructing the ordinance but the BZA's outside counsel opines that correcting said mistakes is not within the BZA's purview. The BZA upholds Zoning Administrator Brodhead's 2/23/07 "determination".

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