What is an SUP?: Meet Richmond’s most powerful tool to get around zoning rules
For over 65 years, anyone hoping to step outside the lines drawn by Richmond’s zoning ordinance has had a powerful tool at their disposal: the special use permit.
Outlined in the city charter, the SUP lets the city waive any existing zoning rule for a property as long as the City Council concludes doing so wouldn’t lead to any of six potential negative consequences, like congestion, fire hazards or harming the water supply.
While property owners can get around zoning rules in other ways — variances, for example, or rezonings — the enormous flexibility the SUP offers has made it far and away the most popular choice in Richmond, with the City Council considering about 100 annually.
People seek SUPs for all sorts of reasons: to build residential complexes with hundreds of units, to use a home as a daycare, to pour a driveway, to construct a duplex in a neighborhood where only single family homes are allowed and even to build a single family home on a parcel that is zoned for it but doesn’t meet lot size requirements.
Five years of Richmond special use permits
Every SUP proposed since the adoption of Richmond 300, mapped by location and sized by the number of new residential units produced. Use the timeline to watch them multiply over the past five years.
No matter the purpose, all SUPs undergo the same process. City departments typically spend about six months reviewing them before an ordinance laying out what’s allowed is drafted. That ordinance goes to the Planning Commission for a public hearing and recommendation, and then to the Council for another public hearing and a final decision.
Although the SUP isn’t new, it’s gotten more buzz in recent years as Richmond’s real estate market has heated up and officials have embarked on an overhaul of the city’s zoning, a project known as the code refresh.
Planning Director Kevin Vonck has repeatedly said one goal of the code refresh is to cut down on the number of SUPs the city has to handle by allowing more development and uses by right. In particular, he said the aim is to reduce “silly” SUPs — projects that duplicate what already exists in a neighborhood but don’t meet current zoning standards imposed after development occurred.
Additionally, he has contended that because the SUP process is so long, it can sometimes encourage applicants to ask for more than they initially wanted since there’s little time or financial advantage to a more modest proposal.
“If I’m going to go through the effort of a legislative process, I might ask for more,” he told The Richmonder earlier this spring. “Instead of a single family, I’m going to ask for a duplex.”
Read what the Richmond City Charter says about SUPs
The council shall have the power to authorize by ordinance adopted by not less than six affirmative votes the use of land, buildings, and structures in a district that does not conform to the regulations and restrictions prescribed for that district and to authorize the issuance of special use permits therefor, whenever it is made to appear that such special use will not be detrimental to the safety, health, morals and general welfare of the community involved, will not tend to create congestion in streets, roads, alleys and other public ways and places in the area involved, will not create hazards from fire, panic or other dangers, will not tend to overcrowding of land and cause an undue concentration of population, will not adversely affect or interfere with public or private schools, parks, playgrounds, water supplies, sewage disposal, transportation or other public requirements, conveniences and improvements, and will not interfere with adequate light and air. – Richmond City Charter § 17.11(b)
But some residents see SUPs as a critical protection for neighborhoods, a chance for residents to weigh in on whether a proposal brings enough benefits to justify waiving the rules for it. Jerome Legions, head of the Carver Area Civic Improvement League, previously told The Richmonder that the SUP process “forces conversations between the developer and the community.”
With so much focus on the SUP and the ways in which it is transforming neighborhoods, The Richmonder embarked on this project to determine where these permits are driving the most development, what kind of development it is and how long the public review process is taking.
We looked at the past five years because planners began reviewing projects in 2021 in light of the Richmond 300 master plan, which the City Council approved in December 2020. While that document doesn’t set zoning for any particular parcel, it lays out a roadmap for how the city wants to develop and, importantly, encourages Richmond to embrace greater density. Officials routinely refer to Richmond 300 while considering SUPs.
Here’s what we found.
The most SUPs have been proposed in the 7th District
Of the 485 SUPs proposed over the past five years, a full quarter of them — 123 projects — were for the 7th District, which covers Richmond’s East End. No other district came even close to that number.
That finding barely budges when considering approvals. Denials of SUPs are rare, partly because applicants tend not to bring proposals up for public consideration until they get a recommendation of approval from city staff and think they have a good shot at persuading Council that their project is a good idea. Of the 485 SUPs that at least started the public process, seven were denied and 13 withdrawn.
The most housing units approved through SUPs have been in the 6th District
Of the 7,475 housing units approved through SUPs over the past five years, more than one-third — representing 2,522 units — have been in the 6th District, a long swathe of the city that runs from Highland Park in the north through downtown to just south of Manchester. No other district came close.
The findings for the 7th District are particularly interesting: Even though that district has had a disproportionate amount of SUPs, it saw the third-lowest number of units approved through the process, indicating most of the permits are for smaller-scale, infill construction.
Another outlier: the 4th District in Richmond’s southwestern corner, which had just 50 new housing units approved through SUPs over the past five years.
Just 34 projects accounted for over 80% of all new units approved
Projects color-coded by housing type. Click any marker for details.
The vast majority of new housing approved through the SUP process comes from 34 projects that would construct 50 or more residential units. Of those, 15 would produce market-rate housing (3,567 units), 14 would produce affordable housing (2,086 units), three would be senior housing (291 units) and two student housing (278 units).
Some of those permits are concentrated in areas already associated with high density: four in Scott’s Addition and five in and just outside Manchester, for example. But others, like four affordable developments in Highland Park and two around Walmsley, represent new introductions to neighborhoods.
Like all SUPs, not all of these projects have come to fruition.
Most residential SUPs only add a small number of units
Of the 321 SUPs proposed that would have added housing units, almost three-quarters were for small projects — those that added anywhere from one to five new units to a neighborhood.
The percentages stay roughly the same when looking only at approved SUPs, which would eliminate four single-unit projects, seven small projects and one medium project.
There appears to be little rhyme or reason in how long approvals take
Across all SUPs, the average amount of time it took for the City Council to make a decision on a project was 46 days from the time the ordinance outlining its conditions was made public. (That time is in addition to the city’s internal review of all SUPs, which the Planning Department has said takes roughly six months.)
How long the decision took doesn’t appear to have much to do with how big the development was. The fastest decision — 20 days — was for the NOON Ingram affordable housing project in Oak Grove. The slowest concerned an illuminated sign on Virginia Union University’s bell tower (672 days) and a development on Jahnke Road that ultimately proposed 17 new units (300 days).
How we reported this story
We gathered data on all SUPs that came before the Planning Commission from 2021 to 2025 by reviewing ordinances and reports included on meeting agendas posted to the city’s calendar.
In a few cases where applications were missing critical information like the number of units planned, we obtained those figures through reputable news reports from the time.
In addition to tracking the location, voting district and type of development sought in each SUP, we gathered information on what the property was being used for at the time of application.
The number of units reported reflects how many new housing units were added (or, in a handful of cases, eliminated) as a result of the project. That means that if one single family home was demolished and a duplex constructed in its place, the number of new units produced was one.
This total also reflects the final number of units approved by the City Council. In some cases, neighborhood objections led to amendments reducing the intensity of the development — as was the situation with projects on Jahnke Road and on Hanover Avenue last summer.
Finally, we recorded the dates of votes at the Planning Commission and City Council, as well as their recommendations, to get a better sense of how long the process typically takes.
Contact Reporter Sarah Vogelsong at svogelsong@richmonder.org. Reporter Ned Oliver contributed to this story.
Sarah Vogelsong
Sarah Vogelsong
Sarah Vogelsong
