Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, February 10, 2025. Our first order of business is Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It's so good to hear so many of you recite that with us. Good to see you this evening. We do have a quorum. We're known to be a couple members short. I think we're waiting for our vice chair to show up. But we do have a quorum, so we'll proceed with the meeting. First order of business is discussion adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of this meeting as required. Are there any comments on the agenda?

Mr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Second. I move the second to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentation by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening, so in our work session items there will not be opportunity for public comment. But if anybody is here who would like to address the Planning Commission on any matter, now is your time. You will have three minutes. And we will first acknowledge and recognize folks who have signed up previously. Are there any such signups? Yes, we have Bill Fort. Mr. Fort. Thank you and good evening.

My name is Bill Fort. I live at 3425 Preservation Drive in Pickett's Reserve, and I'm here representing the Pickett's Reserve Homeowners Association. And the topic is the Highlands at Mantua, which is a proposed development that 14 townhomes that will be directly adjacent to the north side of Pickett's Reserve. We've been following the development of this project for more than a year now, and we have some concerns that we hope you will take into account. First, the plot is 2.12 acres, which is really quite small for the size and height of the townhomes that the developer wants to put there. There won't be enough buffer against the Pickett's Reserve property. It's very close to several homes in the development, so we're very concerned about the height as well as the distance from the homes that are standing there.

The developer has been asking for planned development residential zoning for the plot rather than the RT6 general zoning that would, I think, typically be for a townhome development. We're thinking the motivation is that that lets them really violate several requirements of the normal zoning. It doesn't meet the requirements. There are presumably 13 criteria that one uses to decide whether it can be RT of our PD or rather than RT6. We've looked at those. We don't think the developer meets enough of those requirements to justify the change. The third thing is that the developer plans on removing more than 100 trees from this two-acre plot. We think this is quite excessive. It doesn't make any sense.

We count on the trees for buffering, for sound, and for vision, and we would hate to see us lose all of those trees. We hope you'll take all these things into account as you consider the developer's request. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Part. Any other sign-ups, Madam Clerk? Others who are, feel free to come forward. If you have a form already, you can present it to the Clerk, and that'll be fine. Otherwise, just please give us your name and address for the record. Thank you. My name is Stacy Langton, and I live at 3804 Daniels Run Court in the Farcroft subdivision. Our neighborhood just became aware last Thursday about the plan by Ox Hill Development Company to develop the Five Chimneys House property, which is adjacent to our neighborhood, and it is located at 10230 Main Street.

And the property is owned by Ann Farr Lewis, and it has the historic Five Chimneys House, which was built in 1880. So, needless to say, our homeowners are really not happy with the idea of this development. So, it's a 9.3-acre property, and it's zoned RM, and it is intended for only single-family homes. The request from Ox Hill Development is for rezoning to commercial status to accommodate a proposed 96-room, three-story hotel and a 20,000-square-foot convention center. I think I speak for everyone I've spoken to in our 270-home neighborhoods so far, and everyone agrees that this would bring a distinctly negative change to the character of our neighborhood. We are a quiet residential neighborhood of homeowners who do not want to live mere yards away from a busy hotel and its associated problems, which would include noise, traffic, and crime.

This would decrease our quality of life and our home resale values. There's something important that I think the public probably doesn't know, and probably most of my neighbors as well. The Ox Hill Development Company currently has another proposal much farther along in the city's process, which is called the Ox Block A. This includes a 170-room, seven-story hotel operated by Hilton Hotels, and it has a 4,000-seat concert venue and a 27,000-square-foot convention center. This complex is only three-fourths of a mile down Main Street from the proposed hotel on the Five Chimneys property. It goes without saying that the presence of a much larger Hilton Hotel at the Ox Block A renders the Five Chimneys property proposal utterly unnecessary.

It is offensive to the residents of our community who want to preserve the peaceful nature of our beautiful neighborhood of Farcroft. In the event that the Five Chimneys property is ultimately developed, our residents would prefer that the land be kept to its original zoning with only single-family homes in a style similar to Farcroft. A plan proposed by our builder, Beshear and Edgemore, in 2018 would be acceptable if a similar one came along from another residential home builder. And I think it's important to note that the Ox Hill Company has not done any outreach and their video with all of this information on the internet has only 96 views. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Are there others who would like to address the question?

Okay, seeing none, we will move on in our agenda, which is consideration of the January 18th of the year. We will move on in our agenda, which is consideration of the January 27th, 2025 meeting minutes. Those were issued prior to the meeting. Any comments or corrections to those minutes? Mr. Rice. Chair Federer, I propose that we approve the meeting minutes from January 27th, 2025 as distributed. I second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Moving on in the agenda, we have no items not requiring a public hearing, nor do we have any public hearings. We will recess our regular meeting and go into our work sessions.

First item is a pre-application briefing for a hotel with 96 rooms, spa and pool, conference and event center and restaurant on 9.38, approximately acres, located at 10230 Main Street. Just so those in the room know, this is a pre-application briefing, so we will have only a report from staff. We will not be hearing from the potential applicant this evening. Mr. Frederick. Mr. Frederick. Good evening. This is a pre-application briefing for a concept plan for Far House, also known as Five Chimneys, located at 10230 Main Street. Staff met with the potential applicant to discuss the preliminary plans and have provided some initial feedback on the concept plan. Staff will provide a brief presentation outlining the proposed concept.

So, the subject property again is located at 10230 Main Street on the north side of Main Street, west of Barcroft Drive, east of Main Street Marketplace, and north of the terminus of Locust Street. The subject property is one of several parcels listed in the comprehensive plan, detailed for parcel specific considerations. The subject property again is 9.4 acres. Some of the highlights from the comprehensive plan, parcel specific considerations, speaks to resource protection area in the rear of the property. Although no historic designation exists, it should be explored for inclusion within a historic overlay district, and our alternative use may include single family attached neighborhood. And any additional, any development should retain the existing house, minimize disturbance in the RPA, and consider appropriate relationship to the Farcroft neighborhood to the east.

Draw your attention to the map in front of you is the area of photo of the subject property with the Farcroft neighborhood to the east and slightly to the north. To the west along Main Street is the Marketplace Shopping Center, and there's a residential or an office park, a residential neighborhood to the west, to the northwest. The subject property has single family detached neighborhood place type with a current zoning of residential medium. And again, the subject property has floodplain and research protection to the rear, to the north of the home, north and west of the home. The proposed concept plan shows a hotel and hospitality venue with 96 rooms located on the eastern property line adjacent to the Farcroft neighborhood,

neighborhood neighborhood, especially restaurants closer to the western property line, and bar area as well as a spa, indoor outdoor pool area, conference event center, and underground parking. So the positional applicant also plans to retain the home. the home the applicant has stated that the home would would would be preserved and moved approximately roughly 15 20 feet once the structured parking the buried structured parking is buried underground the home would still be preserved on site and would maintain the home in the middle of of the site and the additions would be wings on either side of of the existing home here's conceptual rendering of the proposal so a couple of renderings show uh looking at this at the site uh the rendering

on the on the left shows the hotel um addition uh rendering on the right shows the uh the the main uh private drive leading to the uh existing uh single family home uh additional renderings uh show the uh uh uh the the hotel and the in the restaurant area also the existing single family home and then the picture on the right the rendering on the right shows it from the uh from the looking from the north uh the back side of the proposed concept uh staff provided preliminary staff comments on your packet uh will not go through all of the the uh comments provided by staff but they are aren't in your packet if you have questions related to any of these comments we more than welcome to uh to uh to discuss uh but one

of the things that should be noted is that staff uh mentioned switching the hotel location from the east property line to the west property line uh placing uh the uh the mo the hotel um further away from um from the single family uh neighborhood to the east uh a archaeological assessment is warranted also uh tree protection and uh uh tree preservation plan and a guidance for preserving as many trees on site as possible um was also mentioned to the potential applicant the um application would require a complaint amendment and rezoning and also a rpa study in a wqia uh assessment um again uh uh street trees would be required open space would be required uh meeting the tree canopy requirements uh depending on the zoning district um the proposed zoning district uh one of the items

pointed out from staff is that a transition yard to the um brockcroft neighborhood would be critical and encourage the applicant to start community outreach with the surrounding neighborhoods in terms of uh pedestrian activity uh sidewalks are required along the main street um along main street as well as street street improvements along main street in terms of access transportation uh would only support one uh drive from main street and uh their realignment uh would would probably be the best location would realign with the entrance to locust street the minimum uh driveway would be a 26 foot minimum driveway with in order to ensure that the largest emergency apparatus would be able to to enter and exit the site

and there also would need to be turnaround locations uh for the largest apparatus and finally staff provided information on sanitary sewer sanitary sewer and stormwater management those details would need to be provided as the application moves forward if if the if the application moves forward the application moves forward so in terms of the potential land use requests again the applicant would need to seek a comprehensive plan amendment a rezoning water quality impact assessments um application an rpa site specific study a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping and of course those would go to the board of our board of architectural review with recommendations to city council

uh in terms of next steps the applicant has a pre-application meeting set for february 25th uh followed by potential land use applications based on feedback from tonight and also from city council and if the potential advocate wants to move forward we would receive an application uh take it to development review process work sessions and ultimately public hearings um going forward and i'll stand by for any questions you may have thank you mr frederick commissioners any questions or comments for staff mr rice mr frederick are you uh aware of the elevation change between the east side and the west side whether it's uh i believe to some extent it drops from the east side toward the west side i'm thinking specifically

about the height of the existing structures over the property line that are in far croft and the top of the three-story structure adjacent has there been any analysis of at this point we have not received any any any analysis that deals with the the elevations or anything okay contours all right all right the renderings have a nice full tree canopy um and i know under our guidelines there's a requirement to preserve mature trees that uh to make the impact on uh the neighborhood less and certainly to help the ecology of the area um uh i don't think the packet had enough information in it to determine exactly how many trees that would be saved it was just a general comment to make sure that there are enough that save as many trees as

possible but as if there is an application that comes forward then of course we would get into um you know the transitional yards and how many trees could actually be saved based on based on a deal and development i think miss safford's you know review of this deep review would be super helpful i spent part of my august with students um going through this area with urban heat sensing equipment and the drop in temperature was so remarkable as you exit main street and the shops and then you dive down into the uh daniel's one trail um it was so dramatic some of my faculty colleagues didn't believe that data was real they said your device must not be calibrated and i took offense and shook my academic hand at

them and i said no it's it's actually pretty dramatic if you walk it you'll suddenly see there's what we don't want at any cost is is a change in that dynamic which is helpful not just within the daniel's run woods but in farcroft and the areas nearby that cooling effect is substantial and we'd want to at all costs even if there was a flip to get the hotel on the west side structure on the east side we really would need to make sure that we uh understand the dynamics well enough that we don't mess that up it is one of the few large in tract parcels of tree canopy in the center of the city we may be losing some others we don't want to lose all of it um my armchair quarterback kind of thoughts

are just that the suggestion by staff to put the hotel on the west side perhaps changing its configuration just a little bit and having the green roof and some of the parking and other amenities on the east side would be quite a beneficial change i'm sure that part of this is avoiding encroaching into the rpa the current plans do a great job of you know skirting the rpa on both sides um but it seems like there is a solution here that would work when i first saw the plans i thought that adhering to a traditional design kind of a colonial style was appropriate it was good i i think color wise the you know copper roof and the red brick and the gray next to it to me was a little incongruous the style was correct

the colors weren't but we have a board of architectural review to go through issues like that and i can't pretend to have expertise in that area but um there are some things about this that are positive um but things that certainly do have to change and i think we just want to assure that every single developer that comes in that has a proposal one of our first questions is have you talked to the neighbors what have they said you know what's their feedback and so at least i will be listening for that um i do want to comment that the green roof the efforts made by the developer to implement really good practices specifically green roof uh ideas is to be applauded and we should uh every developer that comes in should be encouraged to do things like this because it's not just

you know the heat and the impact on the heat but it's water quality it's making sure that the runoff kind of stays in that green roof long enough for the contaminants to settle and the water to run into the watershed so there are a lot of good things but certainly um changes would need to be made that's all i have thank you mr rice uh others sprigs any comments questions mr cunningham thank you mr chair as usual i guess i'll have a few comments uh one i will commend staff because every time we get a proposal we dig into the details and we head down and we we enumerate all of the details and the things that have to be worked on and while i will commend staff for doing that i guess the bulk of my comments

tonight are going to be in terms of why don't we step back sometimes and take a look at what we're actually going to dissect and dig into the details on a few years ago we had a situation arise in the city when something came up that no one had given a thought to and it was a process that ended up in some major changes and a lot of uh consternation and effort and how do we look forward to change this and i'm talking about paul the sixth and the redevelopment of that property because nobody in the city up to that point thought anything was ever going to happen with the school and all of a sudden it was happening and we didn't have a game plan for what to do with it uh one of the things that we did in the comprehensive

plan was look at certain specific properties within the city that we felt we should look at and i will ask staff is this one of the specific properties that's on our list of things that we should look at yes this is one of the sites identified in the partial specific recommendations in the comprehensive plan and have we done any specific study and looked at it to see how it should be treated going forward if we were going to get any further and it were to actually come into being as as a site that we would have to deal with that for an actual proposal we haven't done any additional study on it the purpose of those uh sites is not to recommend further study is to recommend alternatives uh if a proposal for an

alternative use is is submitted okay well now we're up with one more of those sites and there are a few more in the city and and we need i think to be looking at what is the right way to use some of these designated properties i guess to see how we should deal with them uh and that's a wider study than just the comprehensive plan or the comp the planning commission or the staff looking at the properties but i think getting community input and other things in advance on what we should be doing in certain areas so that we're building the kind of community that people want to live in as it develops around them uh it saves i think some time when developers come in and we end up with dealing with specific

properties uh we just completed a five-year comprehensive plan review and in that we talked about these kind of properties and we talked about many general things and we studied it but we did not come up with a wide range of alternatives that we recommended in the comprehensive plan plan because we didn't have feedback so one of the things that we need is a planning commission especially when it comes to dealing with some of these specific properties that uh are going to draw a large attendance at our meetings and having been on the planning commission for a long time i appreciate great attendance and community interest in what we're doing uh i wish we could get it in the early stages of a process as we're doing it now rather than the later

stages when we're dealing with the controversial aspects of the project so i would invite everybody to be involved with this kind of thing before it happens and have input as well as just in the immediacy in the five-year comprehensive plan as i say we looked at this we didn't recommend a change in zoning we didn't recommend a change in the comp plan for how to deal with it so those are things that are now be seeing just being suggested in the details of how we work with something like this next i guess my comment is that at a recent work session talking about some other properties in the city our mayor made the observation that zoning ordinances have been around for about 100 to 125 years now

and maybe it's time we just throw them out and start all over uh i don't know if that that is something that's practical or that the community really wants to go back to square one but each time we come up with a process like this and we're talking about what we have built a vision to put in place we find out that we haven't quite gotten it right it's not supposed to be single family residential it's supposed to be densely commercial it's supposed to be something else that causes us to go back and say what did we get right what did we get wrong as we built a zoning ordinance and have reviewed it and updated it as we build a comprehensive plan and talk about looking at these kinds of properties so i think

there's a challenge there that we have to try to get the vision for where the city is going and keep that more in focus than trying to deal with what i'm going to call bright shiny objects proposals that come in because developers and people with money can get great graphic artists and the graphic artists will give you beautiful pictures of what something's going to look like and if you get a beautiful picture that's a bright shiny object to see that's really cool but the next question is where is it why is it what's the context how does it fit with the bigger picture of what's around it as opposed to just being a single point that really looks nice and so getting sold on the bright shiny objects in the long run may or may not

be good for what we're trying to do in building a city where we still can all work together you know where we can transition from really appreciating this city and the fact that it has hills and streams that go through it and as dr rice alluded to has cool places because of tree canopy and other things like that and where cows walk up and down hills i don't know if anybody remembers cows walking up and down hills many of you may be living on those cow paths now and never knew that that's what happened there so things are going to change and as we're changing uh how are we doing it to to be moving forward and keeping us the kind of community we all say we like to live in uh process at this point

when i see another project that has great detail work but none of the details fit any of the guidelines that have been laid down i have to ask what are we getting right and what are we not getting right in our comp planning and our zoning ordinance so that we move forward on its own merits uh taken in the context of only one property this may be a very good proposal taken in the context of the neighborhood and the environmental impact and some other aspects that fall into dealing with this kind of development and it may be not so great a proposal and i guess my question on this one tonight is where do we fit in all of that as we get into the detail work of only dealing with the details and not dealing with the

greater context and as we said we've we've identified things to look at how can we get back to looking at these so that we're proactive instead of totally reactive when they get into this work this sphere because now that you have a proposal we're tied into dealing with it we're not tied into laying the groundwork that would make this a proposal the developer would come in and say yeah i can fit within the the box that you've said within the rules that you've laid out for what you want to see with anything like that as opposed to here all of my stuff is different than what you want you just make enough exceptions and maybe we can make this happen and i don't know that we get what we want out of that situation or that we

don't create more friction than isn't sometimes necessary i guess those are my comments on this i'm not going to say it's a good proposal it's a bad proposal i'm going to say we're going to have to do a lot of work to move forward thank you some of my sentiments have been expressed already i'll repeat a couple and uh mr rice i appreciate your comments again about the tree canopy because my reaction initially the staff comment was about moving to the west side would make sense if this was a proposal we wanted to pursue but concerned with the tree canopy and loss of that um recognizing the urban heat we have um that's an important consideration um but i actually go back to some of mr cunningham's thoughts as well when we review the updated

comprehend when we're revising the comprehensive plan we looked at parcel specific considerations again and this was one one this was one we chose not to make any change to the proposal is for single family attached homes is the the notion these are townhouses uh alternatively i could see a community like the one i live in um which has a mix of townhomes and single family homes there is a standalone home on the site as it is um that's our base case and this proposal doesn't really address that uh the other thing that we haven't heard anything about is whether in fact we might need two hotels two conference centers in the city of fairfax i'd like to hear from our economic development office about that and whether there's

such a demand for this kind of use that it warrants us changing our comprehensive plan um so um i'm very concerned about protecting the rpa we don't want to move too many things but um the scale of this against the farcraft community is a concern uh we haven't seen enough detail to know whether they comply with the other requirements of the zoning ordinance uh there's some concern about compatibility being that this is adjacent to a residential area we also recognize it is on a commercial main street so there's some uh thought that it could be commercial but that wasn't the vision of those who prepared the comprehensive plan before i was on the commission and those of us who are on the commission now when we

reviewed it so again i share the concerns that mr cunningham mentioned those that mr rice had mentioned as well it's a nice shiny object an exciting concept i do ask the same question do we need it if the other proposal goes through i'd like to hear from our economic development folks to see whether uh there would be a market for such a thing so i think there's work to be done to uh to make this something that we really should consider reopening our comp plan about um but uh mr rice looks like you have some other thoughts not to restart any discussions i think you've summarized things well and mr cunningham always has excellent comments that kind of set context um i have a lot of visitors to the mason campus uh when

mason closer hotel it was really a problem for us we end up driving folks out into uh camp washington beyond the city boundaries for to hotels or you know to north facts um it was an issue it's a problem i think the need for at least additional hotel space is real i don't know where it belongs i don't know if there are other locations that would be much better um but i think at least on just an anecdotal basis not a well-studied economic basis there is a need for hotel space um this particular parcel zoned as residential medium could develop 36 to 40 single-family homes uh and perhaps more if it were as dense as some of the single-family homes up on farcroft uh if we traded this idea for residential medium single

family homes we'd lose a vast amount of um surface right now that's grass and that's vegetated and it will remain so the entire front half of this development is essentially going to remain intact that's quite valuable on its own um so i think there are some alternatives that could happen given the zoning and no change in the zoning that might not be as preferable from an environmental standpoint this is a relatively modest proposal for this particular parcel given what other things could possibly happen the height that's proposed in the lot coverage and the green amenities kind of built in and do at least to me seem attractive but again right next to the rpa they've skirted the rpa with this and i'd be very interested in seeing if there was a kind of reconfiguration of the location of the

hotel whether that we could end up with a better result particularly for the residents just to the east that distance is not far and someone with a home that had development you know within 40 feet of my back wall it's you know it does make an impact quality of life changes when you can no longer look out across the far property and see a beautiful green open space um so we had that happen and so we want something good and i think recognizing this is a very unique parcel i could be mistaken but by value it's the very largest uh in terms of the very largest uh in terms of assessed value in the entire city uh largest single parcel um it's an outlier by a significant uh degree on its economic values so i understand there's going to be interest in seeing this change

because of its value in this location um and hopefully changes and discussions with staff and discussions with the residents will see things uh kind of reconciled and decisions made by the developer in the community and that's all i have thanks thank you last bite at the apple okay thank you do you feel you have enough feedback from the commission yes sir thank you we will move on to our second work session item this is a post submission work session uh it's which is discussion on a request to amend the existing general development plan and a comprehensive plan amendment from commercial corridor place type to townhouse single family attached neighborhood place type or rezoning from pdc platts plan development commercial

to plan development residential in the architectural control overlay district and then approval of a master development plan for 14 townhomes on approximately 2.12 acres located at 9431 silver king court 9450 and 9464 silver king court and 9495 silver king court and more particularly described as tax map parcel 58-2-10-001b tax map parcel 58-2-11-cg-000 10-1-c-000 welcome back mr frederick good good evening again this is a post submission work session for rjl associates inc incorporated david houston with being kenny cormann is representing the applicant the applicant submitted a formal application on april 8th 2024 the plans under consideration for tonight's discussion were submitted on january 7 2025

the applicant is requested an amendment to the existing general development plan a comprehensive plan amendment from commercial corridor place type to townhouse single family attached neighborhood place type a rezoning from plan development commercial to plan development residential and architectural control overlay district and approval of a master development plan the line use application is subject to a major significant of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping the applicant seeks to replace approximately 21 500 square feet of office space with 14 front loaded townhomes on 2.12 acres so the subject property is commonly known as mantua professional center and is located on picket road

about a half mile south of the intersection of fairfax boulevard on the east side of the property is a city county boundary with single family homes that detached homes in mantua subdivision and fairfax county on the west side of the site is picket road and the army navy country club south of the subject property is pickets reserve a single family detached neighborhood and to the north of the site is the ice park the subject property is the subject property is outlined in the comprehensive plan as a parcel specific consideration the comprehensive plan amendment from commercial corridor place type to townhouse single family attached neighborhood place type the maximum of three floors and landscape setbacks for that portion of the site

that is adjacent to single family detached homes so in this case it applies to uh to the single family homes to the south and we treat the single family homes uh to the to the east uh as the same so the setbacks and the maximum three floors would would apply to the south and to the uh to the east uh townhome single family attached neighborhood supports up to 14.4 dwelling units per acre so uh that's the proposed change to uh townhome a single family place townhome single family attached neighborhood uh in terms of the zoning district the applicant is sticking near zoning from planned development commercial to planned development residential and architectural control overlay district requires a

minimum of two acres uh for a master development plan with substantial conformance with the comprehensive plan and at least 20 percent of the area as a recreation and open space so change to uh pdr here's the master master development plan so you're looking at 14 front loaded townhome units with a density of 6.6 dwelling units per acre the general development plan has a density of 10.2 units per acre the townhomes are 24 feet in width by 40 feet in depth with the maximum building height of 47 feet the applicant is proposing four spaces per unit with 25 surface parking spaces a private one-way street uh off of silver court our silver king court with open space and amenities on site in terms of the circulation uh the applicant has proposed a one-way vehicle access uh through the townhome

subdivision that connects to the new school and the enclave on condominiums you also see the production and connections uh from picket road uh throughout the site sidewalk connections interior to the site just north of the parking spaces and also a sidewalk uh be in front of the units the applicant also propose uh sidewalk connections interior to the site the site uh between the two recreation areas um that connect to the existing open space um in the general development plan of the existing general development plan uh in terms of uh trip generation uh you'll see a reduction in am total um um counts pm counts and as well as uh the daily traffic uh so going from gen from general office to town homes you will see a reduction in overall trips

the open space as i mentioned before the two areas highlighted uh provide open space for the general development plan the applicant is proposing uh roughly 40 percent of the site to be open space of that 40 percent um 0.5 acres 23 percent of the site meets the minimum requirement uh 50 by 50 according to the master development plan regulations and the site is the two open space areas are connected so it also meets the uh the six percent the 60 percent of the requirement for the sites to be connected in terms of landscaping the applicant is proposing a 10 foot buffer um around the site the applicant is seeking a waiver to eliminate the six foot fence or wall requirement along the um along the northern side and the southern side and as well as the eastern side

the applicant has proposed uh 28 percent tree canopy with a combination of new plantings and tree preservation exceeding the 20 percent canopy requirement in terms of setback the applicant has proposed a typical layout shown in the master development plan uh front yard of 18 feet on the side uh five feet and rear yards of 15 feet and so in terms of the overall setbacks the nearest property lines you're looking at uh 15 feet to the north uh it's not on your screen here but 15 feet to the north 43 feet along the eastern property line uh 28 feet identified on um on the screen in front of you to the south and 51 feet to the west so in in comparison to the rt and rt6 districts the applicant is proposing uh yards and setbacks that are greater than what would be required

in the rt and rt6 district so the applicant has had conversations with the board of architecture review they've gone uh to a work session and got feedback from the uh from the board uh one of the items that staff has pointed out to the applicant and it's also in your packet is the height for the um for the proposed townhomes and based on the comprehensive plan the height requirement is three stories so the applicant will need to make sure that they're in compliance with the uh with the place type height limitations uh three stories next to single family homes so there's pictures of the rear of of the 14 units so you'll see the the uh the image shows uh what appears to be a four-story um townhome and again so the applicant

will need to um conform to the three-story uh maximum requirement in terms of items to be addressed um and it's in your packet uh we'll not go through all the items but there are some items that i you know think that's fairly significant that uh we we can talk um we can talk about i'll walk you through a few of them so in terms of uh again the elevation uh requirements of the two sticks of four stories being uh above the three story the applicant will need to address that uh no more than 10 uh no more than two or any or any 10 or one of three abutting dwelling units should have the same front yard setback the applicant will need to address the variation and setback uh there are a few uh buildings or a few units

that have the same front front setback so there is some adjustments that need to be made in terms of the sidewalk requirement on both sides of the street staff does not support the proposed stamped asphalt path flush with the street as an alternative to a sidewalk on the on the south side of the private drive and then the applicant would need to provide information as to provide the width of the right-of-way for picket road uh right now the plans show that it's a variable width and staff would need to know the uh the details of the width of the road and that would maybe generate a a dedication if the requirement if the width of picket road is does not meet the requirement in terms of screening the applicant should provide screening for all ground

mounted mechanical equipment a few other items to be addressed is uh the utilities uh the applicant has requested a modification for the uh for the requirement in section uh 411 the applicant is seeking to to propose a payment in lieu of the required underground utility work staff is reviewing the request for the modification and we'll have further discussions with the applicant um going forward and finally the applicant would need to provide a lighting plan that demonstrates compliance with section 4.8 providing illumination um within the plan they provided a plan sheet but it didn't have enough detail to determine whether or not if uh if they're in compliance with the section 4.8 of the ordinance

uh in terms of next steps the applicant has a work session scheduled for the 25th of february uh followed by development review uh team meetings resubmission of plans and associated materials and then the public hearing process with planning commission board of architecture review and city council again the next uh work session for the applicant with city council is on february 25th uh and i'll stand by for any questions you may have thank you mr frederick once there are any pressing questions for staff we'll invite the applicant to come forward if they'd like to make a presentation thank you chairman feather uh my name is david houston with bean kenny and corman i'm happy to be here tonight

with this application uh this property uh this property has a long history it was first uh rezoned in the 1970s the first development didn't come until the 1980s and then in 2004 the new school took over a third of the project and in 2015 the enclave condominium took over another third of the project the original development were were these four multi-level office buildings and the original plan from the 70s was to have like 22 of these buildings uh but with the development of the new school and the enclave and the general uh malays of the office market especially not in the central business district areas uh the four existing office buildings have struggled uh so uh cam lewis with me here tonight is his family his father was the original developer of the property

and cam is the applicant and that company is the applicant tonight also we have clint good our project architect and eli goldman of imeg engineering uh we were last here i think it was june of 2023 uh and uh we're still plugging along as as fred mentioned the project's 14 high quality townhouses to replace the four older office buildings uh and to make it clear the current plans that were submitted are three stories uh it was dropped from four to three after the initial uh bar work session and with the submission re-submission of plans in early january it's three you know uh in trying to figure out what would be appropriate as far as a redevelopment option uh mr lewis looked at the current comprehensive plan and as commissioner cunningham mentioned in the earlier

matter there are a list of properties in the current plan that talk about the possibility for replanning in different uses this property is one of those and the current master plan comprehensive plan says you know the original approved plan has been amended several times including separate amendments that converted portions of the site to be used as the private school and multi-family condominiums as a result the original complex is now occupied by three distinct uses alternative uses could include multi-family residential or townhomes in the portions of the site currently designated as commercial corridor that's this site is designated currently as commercial corridor one option to redevelop would be to stick

with the commercial corridor and build up to a five-story office building on the property didn't think that that was a good use and not appropriate but this the current plan talked about either multi-family or townhomes and again mr lewis looked at it and we remember the enclave hearings and the concerns about height and density and we came upon the townhouse idea the reason why the application is for pdr is the mantua professional center has private streets and to have any new residential development you have to have access to a public road the only avenue to have residential development in in this instance would be through the p zones which do allow private streets for access that's the sole reason

the the undersupplied in the city currently. We think it makes sense. I'd be happy to answer any questions or have our team address any specific issues. Thank you, Mr. Houston. Commissioners, questions or comments? Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, Mr. Houston. Good evening. And the questions I have, I guess, are both for you and for staff. The first one is one of interest to me. You talk about access to Pickett Road and our need to worry about something with Pickett Road, and yet I need an explanation on that because I don't see where the driveway, as it's proposed, has anything to do with Pickett Road. So what is the implication with the width of Pickett Road? Is that planned for future widening, or is there something there that causes this to have to address Pickett Road?

I'll take a stab at that, Fred. First, there's no changes proposed to the existing entrance. I think what the issue was is our plans didn't give a dimension for the width of Pickett Road. They would like us to put that dimension on the plan and then compare that dimension to what the ultimate right-of-way width would be. And if it does require additional right-of-way, I'm sure that could be accommodated through a dedication. So I don't think there's an issue. I think there's just some missing information at this point. Okay. But Fred can correct me. That's actually a pretty good summary of, in simple terms, of the public facilities manual details. So we have a right-of-way width requirement for arterials, and we need to make sure that the width has already been provided.

If not, we'll need to get an additional five feet or whatever it is. I want to turn to Mr. Stepman to find out what the required width is for arterial. Thanks. I'll take my standing position here in Barrow, Mr. Frederick's mic. An arterial street requires a right-of-way width of 100 feet. From center line to property line is 50 feet. So what we would be relying on is a field survey that identifies center line and then the measurement. I think the plans say variable width. Okay. Did we require the same thing of the enclave when we went through that process? Because I don't remember it. There was a small dedication with the enclave, but it wasn't a lot of, like 2,000 square feet. I don't remember where it was located.

All right. So this is a minor issue that you're talking about there. The next one I'll ask then is on trees. When Pickett's Reserve was developed, and you look at one of your earlier graphics that shows essentially the lot lines, there is space between the back of the lot lines on the two single-family homes that would directly abut this property. And what is the property line? Was tree canopy left on the Pickett Reserve side for future growth and buffering? You're asking what they did? I'm asking what they did because the next question I'm going to ask is the other side of the property line, where I look at your townhome lines for that and say that there is space there. And between those two, have we left existing trees for buffering between the houses in either side or both?

Pickett's Reserve has a 30-foot-wide conservation easement going up to the property line. And then there's another 20-feet rear yard to those houses that you're referring to. 20 feet on the individual townhouse properties or 20 feet from the property line to the back of the property line for the townhouse? I was talking about Pickett's Reserve. Okay. So they have roughly 50 feet of area there. And then we have a rear yard of 15 and then a buffer area of about 10. Okay. Are there trees in that area? And what is their likely disposition? I know we should go to Mr. Stafford to get better information from an arborist, but what kind of buffer are we leaving between the two properties, between the residential units?

Many of the existing trees are not necessarily healthy, but we're leaving some and removing some. I can show you a picture of Pickett's Reserve where everything was treed, and they cut down every tree to build that development. But there will be plenty of vegetation, but we are removing some trees. Okay. I think my question is what kind of vegetation are we looking at since we have property, we have conservation easement, we have a small easement, and then we have property. So what do we have for buffering in there? And is this a buffering that's going to be there in 25 years, or is this potential buffering that we'll be filling out as development goes and respects where construction is going to occur to try not to damage any more than possible,

as opposed to cutting the entire lot to the line and just moving forward? I think the latter. But unfortunately, our landscape architect has COVID and could not attend tonight. I don't know if Eli, Eli Goldman from my make. And if he's going to answer that, then he can go to the Mantua side because you've got a significant elevation difference and explain what the buffering is going to be between houses that I don't care how many stories they are, they're going to tower over as the Mantua residents are going to explain it, the neighbors. And so what are we going to have for buffering on those two sides? So I'm Eli Goldman, civil engineer at IMEC. And to start off answering your question, we have looked at a detailed cross-section at the pinch point.

So that's the westernmost townhouse with the westernmost house. And at that point, it's about 90 feet from the corner of the townhouse to the house. And so about just under 40 feet is on our Mantua side, and just over 50 feet is on the Pickett Reserve side. And kind of looking at the buffer of the 50 feet, I believe 30 feet is the tree preservation area. The 20 feet is back of lot for the Pickett Reserve. And then over on our Mantua side, we've got about 14 feet of buffer area and then 15 feet for back of lot. So our 15 feet with the 30 feet of tree buffer area is about 45 feet, 44 feet of tree preservation area. And as you go south, it kind of widens out with the wedge. And I don't know if you're aware of this.

We've got a retaining wall on the south side of our lot. So that's going to be a segmental block wall. And the good thing about constructing those walls, you can pretty much cut your limited disturbance there and install your wall back onto your site. So that can limit any kind of disturbance down in the tree preservation area on the south side. On the east side or the south side? On the south side. The south side is Pickett's Reserve. Yeah, on the south side of the townhouses. Okay. As you get, is that immediately at the westernmost townhouse or is that as you get further to the east toward the property line? Yeah, so on the west side, our townhouses are sunk below the retaining wall. And then as you go east, it transitions to no retaining wall.

And then the townhouses are higher than the trees to the south in the southeast corner. So kind of we can, the next submission, we're going to include this detailed cross section. But the Pickett Reserve House will be above the townhouse, the top of the townhouse, kind of from south to north if they're looking towards us. Okay. Okay. Thank you. How about on the east side with the houses down in Mantua? On the east side, I know we've got a little more buffer there. I think we're about 43 feet from our townhouse to the property line. And then I'm not too sure about from property line to the adjacent house right there. So we'd have to spend some more time on cross sections on the east side. There's a big elevation drop to the east side as well.

At the east side, yeah, our townhouses will be elevated on top of the retaining wall. Okay. I think the question of how the buffering is going to work with the trees and what will remain as opposed to it all being clear cut to a line. And we're going to put some small trees in that in 25 years will give me some buffering. Yeah. That's. Yeah. The intent will be to kind of preserve everything that's below the retaining walls and then add some more understory and also other screening trees down in that area. And then I guess just to clarify for the tree removal along the south property line area, there's only about a dozen trees coming down that area. Most of the trees that are coming out in the center and east side of the property.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I guess another question I have comes with undergrounding utilities. And it would seem at this point with what's there and the ability to work in there that undergrounding utilities would be preferable to having above ground wires running back and forth all over the place. Mr. Goldman. So to clarify for underground utilities, everything on our site feeding the new townhouses will be underground. So the undergrounding is referring to the overhead lines on. On Pickett Road. Yeah. So there is one pole that is on our property. And we have a meeting I think next week. Yeah. Next week. The pole is just south of the entrance off of Pickett. So if you can follow my cursor, it's roughly in this area up in here.

And that pole continues to the south above ground. And it cuts across the street to the west. And it also goes north along Enclave, which those poles all remain and power lines remain along the Enclave. So just based on preliminary numbers from the dry utility team, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars just to take down the— Underground one pole. Yeah. And a lot of times— And go under the street and come back up and go above ground again. Is that what we're talking about? And one thing we'll get into is if you remove the pole, sometimes you have to set two new poles to offset that. Right. Pros and cons. Okay. So essentially the existing power poles on the road are going to continue, but you're going to come down off of that and go underground so that—

Correct. The entire townhouse complex has underground. Yes. That would seem to make sense. So I'm actually concerned about it. There looks to be a utility easement or some lines that run east-west close to the south property line. Your largest mature trees, the most beautiful ones that can provide the most screening, will likely be negatively impacted by an undergrounding that happens on that south side. I can't see the exact routing of that utility line, but it is not the pole that Mr. Frederick talked about, but it's very, very close to the southern border of the parcel and looks to run to the east toward Mantua. Is that correct, that there's an existing telecommunications line at least that runs through there?

So there are a lot of utilities running through the site there in existing easements, and we'd be abandoning those easements, vacating them, leaving those utilities in place, and then all of our new feeds would stay kind of within our disturbed area on site. So we wouldn't be going down in the trees just to rip out those utility lines, so everything would just be on site within the LOD. Okay. Sorry. You do have utility lines in an easement that run east-west along the south property line. And you would be able to underground those without disturbing the mature trees that are sitting on that property line, providing the screening to the Pickett's Reserve homes. We wouldn't touch them. You wouldn't touch them.

So we'd be putting our new lines on within, like, the new private street, and then any existing lines that are down in that area, we would just abandon and not touch. Right. So the line I can see... Mr. Cunningham wasn't through with this. Okay. I understand. Maybe we can just... I'm just concerned about... It sounds like we're not all on the same page yet. An undergrounding project on that south side would be actually detrimental to the screening. Yeah. I think you were talking about the long picket, though. Okay. Please continue. With the undergrounding and that, it affects trees. And one observation I'll make that may not be... That's of interest from a perspective standpoint. When Pickett's Reserve was built as a community, it started out as the development of two communities, which then ended up being merged, a southern one and a northern one.

When the northern one was developed, there is a house that is just beyond the purview of this that is an old farmhouse that is still visible from the road, from Pickett Road. One of the reasons, or the principal reason, for preserving that townhouse in the approval process was a tree. There was a state record tulip poplar tree that was just south of that white farmhouse. And that drove the development of that property so that the house was preserved because the tree needed to be preserved as opposed to taking both of them out and putting in a new house consistent with the rest of the development. So, how long did that tulip poplar tree last, or have you seen it lately? No, it is long gone. So, preserving trees is one element of building a good property and respecting your neighbors, but it can't be the only element because the trees have a lifespan also.

And that's where the questions of what kind of buffer come in because it's important to save those trees and the buffering that can be done in a prudent manner. But you have to respect the fact that if it can't be, then find a better contractor to do your digging so that he doesn't have to take everything down to the border. But preserve those trees that can be and recognize that some rebuffering is going to have to occur with new trees and other planting. So, I understand what you're trying to say from that standpoint. And I recognize that there's a very good example as to why it sometimes doesn't work out that's very close to you. But that's my, that's, those are all my questions. Thank you.

Dr. Rice, take, take away. Yes. I'm still not sure I follow where you're talking about versus where staff is talking about. Sorry, let me just try to summarize that thought that was a little scatterbrained and kind of getting in Mr. Cunningham's way, which I apologize for. There appears to be a utility easement that runs across the south side of the property. And the hugely mature trees towering above the site on that south side would potentially be impacted with anything that happens in that corridor. And we'll just have to wait till we see more in terms of buffering and specifics and elevation transects and so forth to see how that works out. But I think any sort of contrary to Mr. Cunningham's, preserving mature trees does seem like a very good idea.

And maintaining some intact canopy for 10 years, maybe it's only five years, I think. Eleven oaks over my back fence, mature trees lasted two or three years. But I think all of us appreciated the effort to keep them there. It was kind of a symbolic move by the developer to sacrifice money in exchange for preserving trees, which is a nice thing to see. I think in seeing this last time, I was really under a misimpression about the relative elevation of this parcel with regard to neighbors. My just looking at elevation contour data sets on the city's website, which has great public data, very worthwhile to use. It looks like the townhouses are 10 to 12 feet above, in terms of ground elevations, above this site.

And I would have guessed it was the other way around. So the townhomes are actually, excuse me, Pickett's Reserve homes on the south side are actually higher in elevation as a starting point by a story. That's correct. And as you move, though, toward, I think the name of the street's Glenbrook, over on the Mantua side, there's a substantial drop. It's significant. It's several stories in terms of elevations down to the single-family homes. So I think outreach to that neighborhood and making sure we don't have a jurisdictional kind of crisis would be worthwhile. Just making sure that those residents are well aware of the plans and so forth. We do outreach to city residents as a default, making sure we do that.

Just to mention that some of those neighborhoods are being impacted by some of the Tice Park redevelopment activity that would be happening over the next few years. So I think there's already issues on their mind. I know the city has done a great deal to change the lighting plan and change the sort of directionality of the ball fields and all sorts of things to kind of minimize the impact on that neighborhood. It's a great effort to kind of do that. I wouldn't want to unwind that goodwill that we built over changes in Tice Park with something here that may not be acceptable. The more trees we leave intact, even if they're there for 10 years and then replaced, it would be worthwhile. The feedback of our urban forester, all of us listen very closely to that.

Has Chief Seitz, a member of the kind of fire marshal's office, the head of the office, has he reviewed the plans and the turning radii and so forth? The submission that we are discussing tonight, we did not receive comments from Chief Seitz. Okay. That'll be a must that we get their feedback. I think the concern is that if people end up, especially on the section that's on the Far East side, if they park in their driveway apron, you know, we assume sometimes that people are not going to be in the garage, that they're going to be sort of hanging out in the street. And a fairly narrow street with parking on the other side will cut close what they can do with their apparatus as they come in. And with an entrance over on the west side that's a bit narrow, getting feedback from them will be real important to make sure this is viable.

So there's only five or six or seven things that are like absolutely must have and the fire marshal's signature is one of them. Yeah. With that, we have run turning movements for fire trucks accessing it. And even though it's one way, we do have 23 feet width. So it's like a full width road for the fire trucks. Okay, so it's 26 or it's 23 is the minimum for fire truck. Let's do that. We've had 23 feet. We've had 20. Go ahead. I'm saying we've had 23 feet and what we coordinated with him on the North Vax townhouse development, that was 23 feet there. Okay. Okay. So we'll follow up. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Could you explain to me perhaps the idea behind no walls on three sides? You did mention the construction of the wall on the south side and how that might be a preferable kind of way of building a retaining wall.

But the requirement for walls in the other places, what's the advantage of not having those walls in place and waiving that requirement? So I think the requirement we're talking about is the fence for the transition yard. Yeah. Yes. That's right. So I think we're just going more of the natural landscape buffer for that whole area. And I think if a fence was recommended and requested as part of this process, we'd be open to installing the fence. But we'd just see it being a vegetated area, kind of not going in there to install anything, then help preserve those trees was kind of the best bet for moving forward on this. Okay. All right. So it will be worth hearing from the residents on both the east side and the south side about what they prefer.

And I know there are options that would not, you know, provide a detrimental kind of viewshed that, you know, you could put in nice architectural fences that kind of can see through and so forth. But perhaps if there's another reason, you know, wildlife or other things passing through, I don't know. But, yeah, I think that covers my questions. Thank you for your patience with me interjecting and asking a lot of stuff. So great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rice. Just to the underground utilities is what step. Mike keeps dropping out about the south, the southern property line or along Pickett Road. Was that the nature of the staff comments? The staff comment, we were looking at the poll on the along Pickett Road.

Okay. So, yeah, I don't know that the comment was related to on the south side. It was more or less on the Pickett Road. Yeah, you might just want to make sure that you're all on the same page regarding that question then. But we are having a meeting next week. Okay. So we'll be discussing the utility and taking a look at the plans with that. I appreciate my geospaceman here having easy access to all these things that can raise the questions. Thank you. I think there's utilities running north-south and utilities, telecom at least, running east-west. Good to know. Okay. All right. A couple other comments. I like the nature of the development. It's consistent with our comprehensive plan and our parcel-specific considerations.

And, indeed, there is a need for townhouses in the city. When you look at our excellent fact book, it shows a relatively small proportion of these kind of residences in the city, which, indeed, are good first-step housing for some folks to get into the housing market. So I appreciate that. Relatively good green space and tree canopy. I will talk a little bit more about trees in a moment. The accessibility options, I think, very important. The fact that there's an option to include elevators, very important. As an owner of a home that has an elevator in it, which my wife recently needed to use after surgery, very appreciative that we make those kind of things available. I want to come back to the question about the zoning district to make sure it's very clear.

This is proposed to be planned development residential. The whole site is already a planned development district. And a residential townhouse zoning district is not appropriate because of access to the main road. Is that correct? That's correct. And also that it's already a planned development district, so you're looking at a PDR as appropriate district. Right. And there are many sites around the city that have PDR zoning, including the development to the immediate south for these kind of reasons. So I just want to make sure it's very clear the reason for going in this direction. First of all, preserving the existing planned development, which makes a lot of sense, of course. Some of my questions have already been asked and answered.

I want to talk about parking. The site is well over parked. We've had a lot of discussions on recent development applications about that. I understand there's a shared parking agreement. I didn't find anything in the narrative about what is your required commitment to the other parties in terms of parking spaces. Sure, I can address that. When the enclave was approved in 2015, they were asking for a parking reduction at the time. And one of the conditions of the council's approval was that they had to go seek overflow parking from either the school site or the office site. And the office site was the likely candidate. And I think the final number was over 30. And we actually approached the enclave, some board members, probably a year ago, about whether they would actually need that number and could we reduce it.

And they were not willing to give any up. Although, in actuality, those spaces are rarely used. They're only for nighttime and weekends. So not during the workday. And even with that, they're rarely used. But they didn't want to move from that. And it is a condition to their approval. So we honored it. Okay. And I came up with the number 32, what was approved versus what? Was it 32? Something like that. Yeah. But you're still well over parked. The new school parking, as the staff report indicates, they have the parking that is required. Right. So it seems like there's no need for a shared parking agreement with the school. Not with the school, no. But even so, this is well over parked. Let me tell you why I bring this up.

You've asked for an exception to buffer islands in the parking lot. If you've got more parking than you need, I don't see any reason not to meet the requirements for providing the islands and whatever additional green space comes along with that. We'll look at that. I'm looking for opportunities. One island short, but we'll take a look. I don't know. You've got well more than one parking place excess. Yeah. Each townhouse will have two garage spaces. Yeah, I understand. And then their driveway. And their driveway. Are all, that was one of the other questions. Are all driveways a minimum of 18 feet deep? Yes. Yes. Excluding the sidewalk? No, the sidewalk, I think. There's no sidewalk along the townhouses?

Well, there... Or is this the stamped asphalt issue? We were proposing the stamped asphalt as a... Does that count as part of the driveway or is that in terms of ATV? Well, you can drive over it and... But could you... Is it... Can you park in the driveway and not overhang the stamped asphalt sidewalk? So are these really parking places? That's the question. Yeah. That's the concern. Because we've had these discussions in the past about parking in townhouse. But there is also a sidewalk on the other side of the parking lot. I understand. Yeah. But people are going to want to walk along from townhouse to townhouse. They're not going to walk across the parking lot and go to their neighbor five doors down.

So that's my question about whether the driveways really count as excess parking. But I would look at really the parking demand. And to the extent that... Excess parking invites bad behaviors. I've lived in enough communities where that has occurred. People decide to just park in the street. It's easier than getting the car out of the garage. If they haven't filled their garage with stuff, which would be a violation of the covenants. But I don't know of any HOA that actually enforces that. It just invites bad behavior. So to the extent that we can maybe promote better neighborliness, better use of parking facilities, and provide some additional green in trees. Again, I appreciate that you exceed the requirements of zoning ordinance.

I think there's opportunity for more. Roadway width is a question that was in my mind, too. Recent developments, we've talked about 26 feet, even though I read about 30 feet in the zoning ordinance. So where are we getting these various numbers? I think we got the 26 from the Davies property and the alley that they're proposing. I get that that's two-ways traffic. And that's a two-way situation. But it looks like this... I'm not exactly sure how people access the new school. Do they have to come in turn right and drive by the townhouses to do rob-offs? They do. But they will. No, they will. So I'm a little concerned about getting too narrow with school drop-off traffic, people getting in and out of driveways,

and whether that's appropriate. But 23 feet one way is pretty wide. Okay. Again, I'm thinking of other numbers we've talked about, 30 feet, 26 feet. So we'll leave that to staff to manage. I did have concern about the height. You did say these will be three stories. Does that meet also the 35-foot height that the zoning ordinance talks about? No. I think it's... I don't think it's 47. And what you have, what Fred showed... One of your colleagues here would like to address that. Yes. There we go. Let's take it. Yeah. So we met with BAR, and they had the same concern. I think originally we showed four stories of conditioned space with a flat roof, kind of your urban townhouse look. So one of their concerns, they don't...

Four stories are allowed, but they would prefer three stories, I think, was their language. They said they would entertain four stories in certain places. But so another point was they wanted to introduce some other traditional elements of design, such as a pitched roof instead of a flat roof. So our newest design actually is three stories of conditioned space and a pitched roof with a rooftop deck. We've since moved the HVAC equipment up to that roof as well instead of ground mount at the pedestrian level. So they are three stories. The roof structure has an attic storage area. It probably doesn't look like that in the rendering because it shows glass, but that's not an inhabitable space in that roof area.

I think one more back, Fred. I'm Cam Lewis, by the way. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. So the top, which you think is the fourth level, is actually... Can you go to the mic, please? Well... Clint Good is our architect. He can speak to Drew it. The rendering is incorrect in that it shows glass on the top level double doors. Those are simply storage, attic storage doors. So those were corrected and we didn't get the information to you. But it is uninhabited space for attic storage and in a bit of a terrace, a roof terrace. And also on the height issue, this says, I think in our plan, 47 feet height. That's actually to the peak. I think typically in the city of Fairfax, it's measured in the median. So you take seven feet off of 40, 43.

43.9 is the height to the peak and the mean is 36. So we're getting close to that. And it's 43 to 47 because of our grades as well. But it's 30. But take back seven feet off of that to the median. So it's 36 to 39. So if that makes any sense. That does. Mr. Suckman, do you have a comment? All right. Sorry. I might be able to clarify. I'll go to add confusion. The zoning ordinance has two different provisions when it comes to height. One is, as the server just explained, that height is measured when there's a gabled roof to the midpoint of that sloped roof. Stories is a bit different, both of which, stories and height, are referenced in the zoning ordinance as following the building code. The building code has a very specific definition of story where when you have a gabled roof, if the rafters sit on the plate of the wall, the top plate of the wall,

if they sit flush with the floor below, certainly that's not a story underneath that gable. If there's an e-wall or some extended wall that's two feet or higher, then that space under the gabled roof would be considered a story. Here, we just don't have the level of details that we need at this point. It's something that they'll have to give us. It becomes a little unusual, maybe, in that you have access to the terrace. We're going to have to work with the building code officials to see what their determination of story is in this case to use for guidance for the zoning ordinance definition of story. I think it's sufficient to reinforce the concerns with height, visual impact on the neighbors and so forth.

How we manage the neighbors to the east that are so far below, that's a whole other matter. I did go over to the site today to kind of understand the elevation change from the west side to the east along the south property line, and there's definitely a difference, but my understanding is that the townhouses themselves will be pretty much at the same elevation. So, okay. Yes. Let me see if I have anything else. I asked about the grade difference, height, comp plan. Got that. Oh, rear yard, 20 for the zoning ordinance, 15 is provided. So that's an exception request that council will have to deal with. Correct? The rear yards? No. No. Since it's a planned development district, the applicant actually, there isn't a set requirement to actually provide the dimensions.

We often go back to the underlying home type, so in the general district for guidance, but I get that. Okay. Thank you. All right. We talked about that. We talked about that. All right. What was that? Oh, okay. Yeah, you've included a number about estimated yield for the schools. Those are kind of hard really to come by. Townhouse communities, when I first moved into the city, I moved into a townhouse community, and the student yield was greater than what staff estimated for what it's worth. It's a good stepping in point for young families, so we may see more children, but, you know, if it's three or if it's six, I don't imagine it's going to be a big impact on the schools, but it's just something to keep in mind in any conversation with the school folks.

All right. I think that covers my comments. Where are there? Mr. Rice? Yeah. I feel like tonight I'm just muddying the water a little bit with some of my questions, and I apologize for that. If the rendered fourth floor windows are not windows and they're not doors, how does a resident get onto the terrace? They are doors. So there is a... They are doors, but it's... You don't have a floor plan, but there's a stair that goes to the attic, and it's an accessory. But it's not conditioned space. It's not livable space, but it's still space that is used to access the terrace. Correct. Okay. I don't know if the clients must be up there. It's fine. Let's wait for the next meeting, and we'll just look closely at it when the time comes.

PDF file. Yeah. Yeah. For the one and two weeks. I think that just is still maybe some more details about what that actually is. Yeah. We'll get this on a PDF. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get that in full briefing materials. We'll look at it closely. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Scrodingham. Thank you. My sense from that comment is that that area up there in that attic space is a great place to store my table and chairs that I'm going to sit out on the deck on in the summertime, but I want to get out of the weather for the wintertime so I can put them back in and move in and out because that deck space, I presume, is usable to go out and just sit and enjoy the sun and whatever. The other comment that I would have is that recently in our discussion, we've talked about

the loss of commercial space and commercial space being replaced by residential space in the city. And yet, I am very appreciative of the fact, as you pointed out, Mr. Houston, in the comp plan, that we have looked at this site before and we have mentioned this as something that was anticipated as a possibility so that we're working within a realm of something that we have worked with by possibility and know that it was going to happen and coming, which I think makes it easier for us to work with the detail and the transition and doing that than something that comes out of the blue. So I will thank you for that even though we're getting more residential and losing commercial in the process. And we have spoken with and coordinated with the Economic Development Office and Cam,

Mr. Lewis has kept the tenants informed. Most of them are on very short-term leases. But the city does offer a program called LIFT. And if the tenants want some assistance, moving to another location in the city, there's some funds available to help. We understand there might be some office space coming available in the near future elsewhere on Fairfax Boulevard, perhaps. Thank you. That's all I've got, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Anything after all that discussion? Stimulating? Okay. Do you have enough from us? Thank you. Mr. Frederick? Mr. Sutton? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Good discussion. Thank you. And I appreciate the input that we've gotten from the community as well. Do stay engaged with them.

All right. We will reconvene our regular meeting and move to the staff report. Mr. Napty. Thank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. A quick review of a couple of the past city council meetings going back to January 28th. They had a work session on the proposal at the Davies property. This is the same proposal that the Planning Commission received a work session on January 13th. On February 4th, a number of items that are related to the Planning Commission. First off, the Planning Commission or some Planning Commission members presented your recommendation on the capital improvement program to the city council. Thank you to Chair Feather, Vice Chair Lockhart, and Commissioners Rice and Cunningham for coming and participating in that discussion.

They had a work session on a pre-application briefing for the Ox Block B. This is the site at 4031 Chambridge Road where a mixed-use residential project is proposed. This is one of the sites that can be accommodated just with a special use permit without a rezoning, and so it does not require a Planning Commission review. They had a work session on the Gatewood Plaza proposal that the Planning Commission discussed on your meeting on January 27th. They had a work session on the ongoing potential zoning ordinance amendments related to accessory dwelling units. The Planning Commission last discussed this topic back over the summer. At the same time, city council had a work session on the topic at that time with a new city council that decided to give them an update.

Essentially, the staff was given the direction to prepare immediate amendments related to the current age and disability requirements for accessory dwelling units. So this can move forward fairly quickly and over the longer term to begin reviewing potential to accommodate detached accessory dwelling units. This will require more of an effort because there will have to be some community outreach. We'll have some public meetings on that type of thing. We'll keep you posted as that moves forward. For tomorrow's meeting, the city council, assuming tomorrow's meeting happens because of the weather, if it does, city council will review, we'll have a second public hearing on the proposal for pathway homes in the Joshua Gunnar building on Stager Avenue.

As you may recall, this was approved by city council in the fall for a total of 10 units. because of a technical error it should have been proposed for 15 units so they're going back to request the additional five units otherwise the proposal remains the same they'll have a work session on the Christopher Fairfax proposal this item of the Planning Commission discussed on January 27th they will review the two-year transportation program this process has been underway for a couple of months if all is well it will be considered for adoption by City Council at their next meeting on February 25th and then lastly they will have a discussion and update on the transportation project at Chambers Road in Eaton Place this is one of the major transportation projects that

is listed in the comprehensive plan a side item Fairfax County is moving forward with a review of their policy plan component of the comprehensive plan so this is essentially all of the general guidance not anything that is specific to certain areas of geographic context this is there if you go to the website just search Fairfax County plan forward you'll find information there about the different aspects of that they have some research papers it might be of interest to you and you can sign up to receive updates and they have a series of public meetings that are going on over the course of this month some virtual some in person I said I went today it was very informative that explained what some of the

things that they're doing I'll actually send an email to the planning commissioners with a link to this so you can see but I definitely recommend taking a look and lastly certified planning commissioner programs the next one is coming up again I try to highlight the virtual ones because I think they're more attractive the next virtual option will be again in two phases the first phase is April 7 and April 8th and then it concludes on June 2nd and June 3rd the next option will be in person this will take place in Richmond with the sessions taking place in July and September if any planning commissioners are interested please let us know and the city will cover your attendance in that that's all we have for the staff report

thank you any questions for staff commissioner comments sprigs anything they are interesting thank you I hope everybody who attended the chocolate lovers festival this past weekend around the weekend of the first and second excuse me got their fill of chocolate I noted that we were down in the number of people attending the the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows

whether chocolate was going out of favor or if it was just too far removed from Valentine's Day but we'll wish everybody a happy Valentine's Day and look forward to seeing you at the end of the month. Mr. Rice. The meeting schedule kind of aligns occasionally the PRAB meeting after the Planning Commission meeting sometimes before and this is an example of it being after and so I'll have more to report next time but the Old Town Hall which is our venue for Chocolate Lovers Festival and many other great things will be offline for oil for renovations and so I think during our last PRAB meeting that start of those events which were scheduled to be immediately after the Chocolate Lovers Festival will now happen at some point in March or April but it

should be about a 12 month closure so I'll have more to report next month thanks. Okay thank you. From me I mentioned last time I was going to be attending a breakfast with the chairs this was the Planning Commission chairs or equivalent to some of our nearby jurisdictions that was organized by the Planning Board chair in Montgomery County there was reasonable representation on everybody who could have been there was there but the representatives from Frederick County, Montgomery County, District of Columbia which interesting to me does not have a Planning Commission they have a some other structure that the mayor actually apparently is the Planning Commission equivalent chair but there was a

representative from their zoning organization very interesting to hear that. City of Alexandria which just by the nature of its jurisdiction is similar to ours they'll be interesting make some contacts there their chair is turning over here in the next within the month so I look forward to meeting the new chair and me able to compare notes and the chair of the Fairfax County Planning Commission or Commission was also there so I made a connection with with him I'm actually going to be meeting him for some further discussions so I'm looking forward to that and I have a meeting coming up at the end of the week with our economic development office just I do that periodically so be interesting to

have some discussion with them particularly light of some of the recent development projects that we've had on our plate as well so and I will report back to you on how that goes and what I learn and what we might be able to how we might be able to better interface with the county as well I appreciate your bringing up what they're doing right now so I imagine we'll have some interesting discussions as well about projects like what's gonna be going on the courthouse complex and perhaps even the one we spoke this evening about it meant to because the adjacency to county residents so anyway I look forward to those connections so if nothing else we are adjourned thank you you you you