Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Happy New Year. Welcome to the first regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission. It's January 13, 2025. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise as you're able and join us. 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. Thank you. Next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued several days ago as required. From the commissioners, any proposed changes? to the agenda? If not, Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Second.

James FeatherSecond by Mr. Denton. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings scheduled for this evening, so this is the time for anyone in the room the Planning Commission to do so. Has anybody signed up ahead of time? Okay, then we'll open the floor. If anybody would like to come forward, you'll have three minutes to make comments. Anyone? Okay, seeing none, we will move on to consideration of the December 9th, 2024 meeting minutes. Those were issued to the Commission for review prior to the meeting. Any comments, corrections, or changes?

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that the Commission adopt the meeting minutes from the December 9, 2024 regular meeting as issued. Second.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Next order of business are items not requiring a public hearing. First item is nomination and election of the Chair and Vice Chair for the Commission. This is something that we're required to do annually at our first meeting of the year. over to mr. Cunningham

Paul Cunninghamthank you mr. chair tonight we will have nominations first for the chair and an election for the chair and then we will have nominations for the vice chair and election for the vice chair and after those two items are completed I will turn the meeting back over to the chair so at this time the floor is open for nominations for the chair of the Fairfax City Planning Commission mr. rice

Matthew Ricemr. Cunningham I'd like to nominate mr. James feather to serve as chair for the upcoming year

Paul Cunninghamokay we have a nomination for mr. feather do we have a second we have a second are there any additional nominations seeing none I will close the nominating process and we will move it of electing mr. chair mr. feather as our chair for 2025 please signify by saying aye aye opposed abstentions and mr. feather is reelected unanimously congratulations brother we will now open the floor for the nomination of the vice-chair do we have any nominations for the position of vice-chair mr.

Anthony ColemanCunningham I'd like to nominate miss Kirsten Lockhart for the position of vice chair of the Planning Commission

Paul Cunninghamokay we have a nomination for Ms. Lockhart do we have a second

Matthew Ricesecond

Paul Cunninghamwe have a second from mr. Rice are there any additional nominations seeing none I will close the nominating process and we will move to a vote all in favor of Ms. Lockhart as the vice chair signify by saying aye aye opposed and abstentions and congratulations Ms. Lockhart on your reelection as our vice chair for 2025. Mr. Feather the agenda is again yours as our new chair.

James FeatherThank you Mr. Gunningham thank you all for your vote of confidence I appreciate that I'm sure it's Lockhart feels the same. Next item agenda is appointments to boards and commissions this is something that we also do annually I've had discussions with all of you who are currently serving in those roles. And I think the process is going to be that we will, based on your feedback, get nominations for those positions to formally make the appointment. We don't necessarily need to do this as a matter of law, but Mr. Naptie advised it probably would be a good idea as a matter of practice. So we will go through the process. First is Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. currently being filled by Mr. Rice and he has expressed willingness to continue

James Featherto serve but I'd like a nomination to formalize that process we'll pass our nominations on the City Council for all of these for formal reappointment.

Paul CunninghamMr. Chair I move that Mr. Rice be appointed as the City of Fairfax Planning Commission representative to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.

James FeatherYour second? Second. Mr. Denton, thank you. Any other nominations for that role? Seeing none, we'll close the nominations, move on to a vote. All those in favor, say aye.

Paul CunninghamAye.

James FeatherOpposed? Abstentions? Thank you, Mr. Rice, for your willingness to continue to serve. You've done this already for a couple of years. It's a valuable liaison. There are so many things that are important to the Planning Commission and the PRAB reflected in the comprehensive plan, and your voice has been very valuable. in echoing and carrying those messages. Next is the Board of Architectural Review. It's been served. Mr. Denton has served in that capacity for the last year plus, as I recall. And for the record, I have raised a question about the need for continued participation of a planning commission representative on the Board of Architectural Review for a couple of reasons. We won't have a discussion on that tonight

continue our discussions but the feedback so far from folks is there is value seen I have seen gotten feedback from the chair of the Board of Architectural Review himself one of my esteemed colleagues here feels similarly but we will have that discussion at some point particularly as we consider potential changes to the Planning Commission's role in the review the review process anyway which we may which may come up in our later discussion but for the time being we to have a nomination for the Board of Architectural Review. Is there a nomination?

Matthew RiceMr. Chair, I'd like to nominate Mr. Denton to continue serving as our liaison to the Board of Architectural Review. Is there a second?

Anthony ColemanSecond.

James FeatherThank you. Any other nominations on the floor? Seeing no closed nominations, go to a vote. All those in favor of nominating Mr. Denton to continue to serve on the Board of Architectural Review, Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you again for willing to stand for this extra burden because it does involve a couple of extra meetings a month for you, I know. The third item that we have a representative of is the Facaded Interior Improvement Program. It's a program run by our economic development organization. It has representatives from the EDA, from the Planning Commission, and from the Board of Architectural Review. in size and scope but it's important to our businesses in the city you were

looking to perhaps get some assistance in improving the appearance of their facilities so mr. Coleman has served in that capacity we thank you for that he has expressed willingness to continue to do that so if I could have a nomination to formally fill this role I would appreciate it

Paul CunninghamMr. Chair, I nominate Mr. Coleman to continue his representation on the Community Appearance Board.

James FeatherIs there a second? Second. Second. Moved and seconded. Are there other nominations? Volunteers. Okay, we'll close the nominations, move to a vote. All those in favor of Mr. Coleman continuing in that role, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions. Thank you very much, Mr. Coleman. That gets those out of the way. We have one other things that we must do at the beginning of the year and that's to review our remote participation policy. Turn that over to Mr. Napty.

Paul NabtistaffThank you Chair Feather. We wanted to point out that there were a couple of changes to the code of Virginia this year that applied to remote participation policy for local boards and commissions and so in reviewing those there were a number require changes to the Planning Commission's policy, but there were two changes I wanted to point out that are in the draft markup that we sent to you that you'll be considering for adoption that results of that. The first is that the code now requires that the policy be reviewed every year, and so we added language there saying that the Planning Commission will review it at your first meeting each year, which coincides with when you do your other administrative issues.

And then the second is a change that I think is beneficial that says that any Planning of any board or commission participating remotely who has a temporary or permanent disability or other condition that prevents their attendance or is a caregiver of a person with a disability shall count toward the quorum as if they were physically present. This is because typically people who are participating remotely cannot count toward the quorum so we still have to have the minimum number of commissioners in the room. This would allow people in those conditions to still count toward the quorum which would be a benefit to us. That change to language is proposed as well. otherwise feel free to take action

James Featherany questions for mr. Napty

Kirsten Lockhartmr. chair I move that the Planning Commission adopt the revised Planning Commission remote participation policy as provided an attachment one of the staff memorandum dated January 13th 2020 and it's presented herein by mr. Napty

James Featheris there second second the moving seconded any discussion further discussion or comments we will move to a vote all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye aye opposed abstentions motion passes unanimously thank you

Justin Wallaceokay next

James Featheritem of the agenda is public hearings we have none this evening as I mentioned so what we will do is recess our regular meeting and go into a work session first item is a work session for zoning map amendment a rezoning pursuant to city code section 110-6.4 from RM Residential Medium District to CU Commercial Urban District while retaining the transition overlay district and a general development plan with proffers for an upper story mixed-use building that consists of 276 apartments, approximately 6,319 square feet of retail, approximately 4,188 square feet of office, acres approximately, located at 4131 Chainbridge Road, tax map 57-4-02-040, otherwise known as the Davies property. Mr. Sutphin, I think, will make the staff report.

Jason SutphinstaffThank you. The application is currently in the post submission phase. There have been pre-application briefings with the Planning Commission and with City Council. Application had been filed and has been undergoing review at the staff level. There has been a formal work session with the Board of Architecture review. It is important to note that there has been a change in the applicant on this property. The application has stayed active. however the the applicant party has changed to the property owner itself just a little background I don't know if everyone has this background so I thought it was important to provide just some context that a number of different concepts have been explored at this site over the last nine years there have

been multiple apartment concepts presented senior living concepts townhomes and the most recent application by TDC which is now the Hill Davies family with substantial revisions since the last iteration and as the chair said this is a zoning map amendment and it would take you from RM to CU commercial urban retaining the Fairfax Old Town Old Town Fairfax transition overlay district site is located in the activity center there are a number of special exceptions that are proposed I have a slide at the end I'll go over those in more detail and a certificate of appropriateness would be required for the new construction the site is currently a single-family home it is situated between University Drive and Cambridge Road on approximately 2.6 acres seen

here the property is north of Armstrong Street and it is located at the terminus of judicial and Cambridge and Breckenridge Lane with University Drive the purple on this map indicates where the activity center lies it is one of the southern parcels and what we call the mega block that in the ends of court which is just across from City Hall on the other side of Armstrong Street is the southernmost portion of that block to the east is a collection of townhouse neighborhoods to the west is primarily the Fairfax County Courthouse complex and some commercial property this is the zoning map current zoning map you'll see the site is the only residentially zone parcel in that block and the proposal

would take it to a commercial district which is in keeping with the designations along that block the activity center was created with the small area plan for those larger consolidated areas with mix of a mix of uses and commercial areas where pedestrian oriented mixed uses are strongly encouraged the plan was adopted in June of 2020 and I'll make a note here that the retail should reach at approximately 6,000 square feet on the left this was a backup slide I had it in the other one that that failed just a minute ago but the the previous plan you'll see changes in where the applicant has taken the plan down from 355 to 276 units they've added to the retail about 1200 square feet again I'm sorry for the quote here and an additional 4100 square feet

approximately of office has been added the height has been reduced by a story on both sections of the building so where it was six and five stories is now five and four stories along with the height itself it was proposed at a max feet the density the resulting density has changed by about 30 dwelling units per acre as the result of a reduction in total units two other items here worth noting one is that the setback and I know my cursor is hard to see University Drive the the step back of the building from four to five has increased significantly from what was 56 feet which was in keeping with the minimum recommended by the small area plan to what the applicant is now proposing as 70 feet proposed here I'm outlining and what was the screens not working but

what was proposed previously is the upper image on the right just in context for what the small air plan does envision over the coming decades an increase of 250 dwelling units is envisioned as being absorbable and market-driven with the 79 that were approved by City Center West this one would propose an additional 276 office space the smaller plan envisions an increase and this provides a portion of that along with retail there is no institutional or hotel proposed at this site this illustrates the separation of the building into two buildings due to grade and separation of the units themselves the building code is prescribed has prescribed what is defined as buildings you'll see perimeter landscaping and sidewalks along the

southern eastern and western edges of the site with the greenway going up the center of the property and a private street that runs east to west of the northern portion of the site along with the 276 apartments the the site does have to meet the city's affordable dwelling unit program at 6% for rental approximately 17 affordable dwelling units would be required the mix would have to correspond with the mix of studio one bed and two slash three bed units and they would have to be dispersed throughout the complex the project is also proposing 424 parking spaces where the zoning ordinance requires 402 the shared Greenway concept that is a major focus area in Carried forward in this design. It is primarily shown as a pedestrian way in this concept

Rather than an alley for vehicular traffic There is one area that staff has noted and has asked for the applicant to reconsider Which is an area for a garbage truck to pull in for loading and unloading of the trash that's stored In the lower level of the building, but that area is primarily in the approximate location shown here And staff believes it could be carried north and south as sites either redevelop or choose to incorporate the design Site circulation Because of the proximity of Brickham Ridge Lane to this site Any offset will require a right in right out on University Drive That is twofold one is the distance in the offset from the intersection One is that there's a shared dual left turn lane that runs down the middle of University Drive,

which resulted from the redesign or reconfiguration of University Drive as a road diet, which added pedestrian and bicycle facilities. Same with Cambridge Road. Proximity of the signal with judicial drive requires that it's a right in, right out point of egress, ingress, egress. The final design will be The final design at that intersection still needs refinement Public works is exploring whether or not a medium physical mediums needed along 123 or if a pork chop or Separated in out it will suffice on that entrance This this image shows where the proposed pedestrian facilities would be located with the dots and the arrows 10-foot sidewalks are proposed along both University Drive and Chambers Road

the center spine at a 43-foot total width has several access points to the building and a six-foot meandering path that goes from the property line at the south to the private service Drive it terminates at the private service drive there is no proposed sidewalk along the northern stretch of the private street at this time staff has noted that that is an application request by the applicant as for streetscape and other landscaping the applicant is proposing a buffer along the southern property line and street trees along both university drive and along chambers road there no street trees proposed along the private street which is required by the ordinance the applicant has requested a special exception from that you will see a number of trees that are planted

internal to the site primarily primarily around the pool the greenway and then a central courtyard those are on top of a roof structure i believe it is the upper roof structure level of the parking decks that are below hopefully the applicant will be able to demonstrate in some of their slides to greater detail the the parking arrangement and where the roofs line up with the grade staff is awaiting a transportation impact study that is updated per the approved scoping that our transportation department held with the transportation engineer these are some data points from the scoping document itself that show the difference certainly from a family detached to a proposed mixed use site there will be a significant increase especially

where there's only one existing home on almost three acres the the net total proposed is anticipated at just over 1800 trips per day split out in the am and pm peak hours you'll see totals of 141 and 175 the TIS will undergo a full thorough comprehensive review by our Transportation Department once it has been accepted and evaluated in context with the

Matthew Riceplans.

Jason SutphinstaffBoard of Architecture review in December had reviewed the updates to the architectural concept. Overall the board was pleased that the applicant had taken to heart the recommendations primarily for the two facades that face the public streets but also the southern facade which used to line the southern property line because it was it did not accommodate for windows or other breaks to the building that has been pulled off of the property line and now there is undulation along that building wall with higher quality materials and with fenestration one focus area that the bar had was the southwestern corner of the building which is the gray area here they asked that the applicant focus a little more attention on that corner of the building this is

the eastern facing facade along University Drive that faces the Breckenridge community the board felt that the the applicant had made strides in presenting something that was more compatible with townhouse design and residential noting some materiality that they recommended for the roof to change some technical deficiencies and items that the applicant will continue to work on with staff have been noted in both both meetings and in the comment letters one is sanitary sewer capacity or utility entity has indicated that the capacity leaving the site with the significant change will will put the capacity at a point of failure heading to the juncture point just south of the site they have stated that a study is needed and that this

needs to be reconfigured I've noted the TIS utility plan our utilities coordinator has noted some difficulties with the existing utility lines how they primarily the Chambers Road section at the intersection and hit Fairfax County specific design resolution is going to be needed and consultation with Dominican Power I mentioned the location of the trash truck loading staffs recommending that they re-examine an area somewhere else other than the greenway for loading pickup of refuse it does not seem to be the most pleasant area especially with with the greenway and then with internal and off-site trees streetscape our urban forester has made a few recommendations as it pertains to the streetscape and

has noted that a few off-site trees are proposed for removal as part of the tree inventory and comments are provided there are a number of special exceptions that are related to the proposal, one of which is the requirement in the ordinance that upper story mixed-use buildings present 75 percent of the ground floor as non-residential uses. I've asked the applicant to provide a more accurate number. We don't have a sheet that has all of the floors on one sheet, given that there's so much grade change through the site, but the cumulative estimate of where it stands right now is around 28 percent and i'll defer to the applicant if they have refined that any further obviously the ordinance permits 24 dwelling units

per acre and that has a proposal of 102. the transition district as it currently stands caps the height at 48 feet or four stories the proposal is four and five stories which is consistent with the recommendations of the small area plan there are some requirements for landscape strips and street trees which as I've noted are not proposed for the internal street private street there's a requirement that vehicular access is provided to non-residential properties along arterials and collectors so this would be the property to the north and south There is a significant amount of topographical change that is precluding the applicant from meeting these requirements. There is a requirement for sidewalks on both sides of a public and private streets, I should say.

It is not proposed along the northern side of their private street. And then there are some requests to modify the transitional yards against the property to the north. The proposed tree canopy requirement is 10 percent. What is the requirement is 10 percent and what is proposed is 5.6 percent. Next steps. So, the council will hold a work session later this month. We will anticipate getting any comments out to the applicant and will await a resubmission with meetings with staff, receiving support documentation. There will be any follow-up work sessions where they may be necessary with yourself, or City Council staff and City Council have urged the applicant to continue to have outreach meetings with the surrounding communities and I'll let the

applicant explain how many or what meetings they have had since our understanding they have held quite a few and eventually we will move towards public hearings once the plans and other documents have reconciled that concludes staff's presentation I do have some details or images from previous concepts should at some point you want to look at those tonight the applicants here with a presentation and their team

James Featherthank you Mr. Sutton are there any pressing questions for staff otherwise we'll go on to the applicants presentation okay All right. Welcome the applicant forward.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantWelcome. Hi. Good evening. Good to see some of you familiar faces. My name is Micheline Kasten-Smith, and I'm with Paradigm Development Company, and I'm the developer and applicant working with the owner who is the actual applicant, and that is with the Davies. We are here to talk about the project. Thank you for the presentation. We are here to walk through the application and the process, entertain any questions. I have with me here today, of course, we do have the owners. We have Bankhead and Gail Davies who will come up and give a brief comment. We have David Houston who is with Bein Kinney and Quarman who is representing as our zoning attorney. He will give a brief presentation then we'll turn it over to our architect who is with Lessard Ulysses. We have John

here with urban engineering who will discuss the landscaping but we also urban as well as transportation representation with growth slaves. And we're all here to answer any questions that you may have. So I'll turn it over quickly to the Davies.

Matthew RiceI want to first thank you all for taking the time to

Bankhead Daviesapplicanthave this work session. I'm Bankhead Davies. To just give a little background, the property 4131 Chamber of Trode has been in the family since 1920. My parents and my two sisters we moved into the house in 1954 and the city was not a city it was the town of Fairfax and I can tell you it looks a lot different today. We've experienced and seen a lot of changes tremendous changes over the years specifically around our house a lot of commercial development has sort of surrounded us. My was to live in the house till they passed away. My two sisters and myself made sure that that was possible. And they passed away in 2013. And then my sisters and I started a process starting in 2015 to redevelop the property,

try and bring it into what I think is more coming of what that property should have. I just want to say that I hope that you all will see after getting all of the information that the benefits of the current proposal is something that will enhance and be a benefit to the city and again I want to thank you for your time okay

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantwe'll bring up David Houston please with being Kinney and Corman

David HoustonapplicantHello, I'm David Houston. Recently had a hip replacement, so I walk funny. I'm glad to see Mr. Davies is here. What a pleasant surprise. I just wanted to speak briefly about kind of why we're here. the last the original applicant on this application the TDC entity we thought they were the contract purchaser we were working with them we thought they were doing a good job and at the end of 2023 they had work sessions one before this group and one before the City Council and they came to us in the spring of 24 and basically said we don't think we can continue on with this project which was not unexpected but what we decided the Davies family and Micheline's group was we think it's a good project a good plan we had a 10 plus page staff comment

memo and we thought we would get a new team together and try to tackle those issues in that memo and that's what's the result is what you'll see tonight. We addressed every issue. We didn't solve every issue but I think we've come a long way. There's been many positive changes to the plan. As Mr. Sutvin said, there's been a reduction in density, in height, increased step backs, increased parking. There's no more compact car spaces proposed. We have 20 EV spaces proposed. We increased the retail and added some office, which, you know, it could be tough, but we're we're going to give it a go and try to meet the closer to the ordinance requirement of 75%. We have two buildings. We feel we meet it on one building, but the building that

fronts on University Drive, we just didn't feel was a retail setting based on the neighborhood. We think you'll hear tonight how this project, as we've revised it, is very much in conformance and in harmony with the small area plan that you all adopted in 2020. That's really all I had to say at this point, but I'll be available for questions when needed. I'll turn it over to Ulysses from Lessard Design Group. Good evening.

Ulysses Montes de OcaapplicantThis is Montes de Oca with Lesart Design where the architects got engaged to continue this application. I'm going to give you a quick overview of how the overall project works. I'm trying to keep control here. Just the site topography, there's a drop. Cambridge Road site is higher than University Drive it's about 29 feet of grade approximately three three floors that's how how different it is so we're following the transition overlay district and the old town small old town small area plan with the greenway requirement it's perfect opportunity to completely split the project it's also a long construction that will require physical subdivision adjoined so we have one building we call building a fronting

Cambridge Road which is five stories plus its associated parking basement below below grade the main main entrance is gonna it's proposed on Cambridge Road and then the northern side of that frontage is retail like it was just discussed minutes ago the previous application proposed the project to be right against property line on the southern edge and it was also a closed enclosed courtyard there was no opening so part of the changes we're proposing here is to step back from southern property line to allow for real openings and building articulation and also to open the courtyard because this internal driveway is also going to function somewhat. It will have pedestrian activity. So we'd like to create some events to make it less of a long wall walk.

So we have the amenities of the buildings over the parking levels facing that internal driveway, facing north. Similarly, on the east side, facing University Drive, there's a second residential access. And here we're stepping the building, the full depth of the building. there will be a corridor in the center with units facing the courtyard and units facing university drive the entire depth of the building this is part of exchange of comments uh that we we reviewed uh with your team um so the the taller portion of the building is in the back five stories and then four stories facing university drive similarly there's a amenity courtyard facing the internal driveway there's an opening that wasn't there

before also the 10 foot it's 10 foot 7 feet setback from southern boundary allows for real openings and building articulation another change was the previous application had the two building segments connected with the bridge there was like four floors of units over the greenway this this new design that we're presenting you it's completely open to the sky and with the the greenway we have i mean we have reviewed the guidelines we have reviewed the small area plan and there's some um multi-function for this greenway the guidelines also describe this could be service so we have some services located nearby but we do have the flexibility of not locating them there I will I will go in more detail next on the retail

percentage it's a clear break I mean above ground you will you will not see the connection between the two buildings so the building building a facing Cambridge Road the hatched area that you see that's the area that will be public it'll be retail and commercial so just that segment we it's it's what we're proposing that would comply with the 75% ground floor percentage. We also believe providing 75% of the overall footprint all the way to University Drive may be excessive for this area, for this traffic count, for this pedestrian count. The frontage along University Drive is a little bit more dispersed and there's a lot of green and surface parking lots. struggle to survive if the case is that we're required to provide it there.

Please feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions on anything I'm saying. The application, we include a site analysis of what's the current urban setting in terms of mass, architecture, colors, ornamentation, as well as the street presence. So this was discussed also in our presentation with the Board of Architecture. Why the shapes that we're proposing, the colors and the pallets are derivative of our analysis. There's also in the guidelines there is a requirement to split the building into multiple multiple elements to maintain human scale and we took that to the letter. We're proposing multiple breaks vertically and horizontally to make sure this building fits well. It's respectful and at the same time it's some good asset that will be there for a while.

This is an updated rendering that Mr. Denton you haven't seen. One of the comments we received with your group was this corner that if we could consider maybe a step or a terrace, I think it was the right approach. We also updated the lower floors. I'll show you next. It's basically to create more emphasis on that corner since driving north along Cambridge road that's going to be a very visible corner so that could be a feature it's also we're stepping down the architecture towards the lower mass on the southern neighbor so this is this is in this picture what you see here this is the residential access and to the left is the retail the retail frontage today the site has a retaining wall the the grade of the site is like four or

and it's very narrow, not very welcoming for walking. So this proposal, it's placing the building far in the back and also removing the retaining wall. It was an extensive grading coordination that we went through. Along University Drive, the architecture character is different. It's far more residential, more individual structures, and that's what we're proposing also, that the multifamily looks like a big house in the city. This is residential access, and then the rest are apartments. It's a different character also. It's part of the guidelines, how we're breaking the architecture. This element is not, it's a true standalone element in the overall building. It's not like after this wall, we paint the brick different.

This is a completely different mass than the rest of the building and we're treating it differently on purpose to blend well with the University Drive frontage. This is an overlay or a comparison with the mass of the existing buildings. The building on the north, the office building, sits approximately a couple of feet. There's a driveway between property line and the building. And then it will be the proposed building. Obviously, we will have the internal driveway setback, which another change that we did, the previous application had proposed 20-foot drive, the width of the drive aisle. we increase that to be 26 feet that would accommodate fire truck with aerial equipment requirement per code and we made sure that that was accommodated

then on the on the southern property this is the distance that we're leaving the previous application was proposing the building right against property line and then this this series of steps on the on the building mass on the top brick at the base helps blending with the smaller lower height structures on the south. Going from bottom floors to upper floors from University Drive, on the first floor we will have units and lobby access and through the internal driveway there will be the vehicular entrance. This is where cars come in, they circulate and then there's a ramp that takes either to one level down or to one level up. We have the transformer vault and utility rooms facing the internal driveway and the

transformer vault is right under the greenway. That's for convenience of maintenance if If there's any crane that needs to be there for maintaining transformers, it's the right place to put it. This is where I was going to explain to you how the service works. Each building has its own loading area internal. It's from the internal driveway, a truck can back up, and then internally there's connection to the building, to the elevator, to take the people that are moving in or out to their units. Also, there's a trash room that each building has. The trash room could either be serviced through loading if we needed to, or the bins could be carted out to the greenway and have them picked up on the greenway.

again the documents were reviewed from the old town small area plan and transition overlay district and guidelines suggest that greenway could be serviced that's the reason why we're doing this but we have the flexibility of servicing trash through the loading space that each building has we also are using the greenway for accessing bike storage each building has its own bike And there's a pet spa, part of the amenity provisions. So this area could be also enhanced socially by the residents when they're bringing their bikes, maintaining their bikes, or grooming their pets. We don't anticipate this being a high pedestrian activity, at least on day one, until, I guess, more properties develop and continue this greenway.

livable but in the meantime we're proposing some activity and the bike storage is across the street from the other bike storage so there's some similarity if residents want to walk from one building to the other they can do it through here and the upper floor is what I showed you earlier it's retail space lobby co-work business center and fitness and units facing Greenway or facing the courtyard the top residential floor we have an amenity terrace that would be the roof of the lower structure that I showed you facing University Drive the mechanical equipment we have it proposed to be located in the center of the building approximately 20 feet from any carpet line we have an exhibit that illustrates how tall the puppets are proposed and

from the pedestrian from any right-of-way this equipment will not be visible the only element that will be visible is this exit stair and we're thinking on coordinating that with the architecture of the building to make sure it's part of the the architecture we're proposing maybe it looks like a chimney stack or some trellis element that it doesn't look like a service thing popping up but that's required by code because of the occupancy on this amenity terrace we do need to have a direct stair and that's the one. I'll show you next. This is to show you from property line along Chambridge Road. The narrowest point is 12 foot 7 and the widest is 16 and a half feet. Along University Drive is 9 foot 4 consistent.

This is the exhibit where we're showing you how the puppets help to visually block any equipment on the roof from internal driveway, from University Drive, and from Cambridge Bridge Road. This exhibit shows the different carpet heights and the elements that are on the roof, how far up they go, condensing fans, hatch roof access, elevator overruns, and the stair that I just mentioned of that amenity terrace. Part of our composition, like I mentioned earlier, to maintain human scale, we have a horizontal lines that are not straight. They go up and down in a playful manner on purpose to show some randomness and interest for pedestrians. And that's what this exhibit is about. We're emphasizing the base with a different material and highlighting the top also with

a different material. The materials are a combination of brick on the lower floors and fiber cement on the upper floors. lighting on the elements that are recessed. We have Juliet balconies. We expressed in our session with the Board of Architecture that we have a series of pallets and every pallet has different window groupings, different window colors, different window formats, and different materiality different puppets to make sure we we follow the guidelines to the letter and the proportions of width and height are within the guideline what the guideline is requiring this is the elevation of the south elevation of that a building B if you recall previous application this whole thing was a blank wall so this is how the building steps now and we have

windows we even have some Juliet balconies facing south the north side from this is the basically the view from the internal driveway on the lower floor this is a parking garage entrance and then as we drive up we have loading and then the greenway and next will be building building a this is the courtyard So this is both buildings together. On the left is building A facing Cambridge Road. This is the view from the south side looking north. Greenway in the center. Then how building B is already stepping one floor below building A and then steps down again along University Drive. this is the view from the internal driveway looking south building a is now on the right side this is a retail space facing Cambridge the courtyard loading greenway loading and

we continue driving down parking garage and University Drive these are just enlarged we're treating the storefronts and the details and different colors of window treatments along the three different architecture styles signage we're proposing placeholders for signage maximum boundaries ultimately when we have the you know the real building name provided your blessing and retail they have their own name their own signage style whatnot we're we're we're defining would go that are also consistent with guidelines this is an exhibit on the question is retail is on the high side and parking entrance is on the low side so how do we do we make sure people find their car so this is an exhibit that internally walls can be painted and paths on the floor can be painted to

indicate where to park so the the orange arrows show the path for retail parking users they can access and then go up the ramp and find their spot and there's an elevator that would be used those elevators are front and back one side would serve the lobby residential lobby the other side would would go either directly to the retail space or the retail space could carve out a small lobby for easy access because even if retail parking parks on the lower level, they would have to walk two floors up in order to get to the store. So we're suggesting drivers go up, park, and then take the elevator. These are the architecture pallets that I mentioned. This one is more traditional Fairfax. orange color stone accents and colonial a little bit modern also and the next one

we call it modern industrial it's the one that would be the transition between the old town Fairfax and then the new modern Fairfax it's windows grouped in different different order different detail on the windows as well and then And the one along University Drive is more residential. And the two on the far right are the transition pallets between each architecture style. These are typically two feet to four feet recessed from the exterior wall. These are just comparisons of the previous application. The red dashed line is what we are proposing and the faded image is the previous application. See how grading is also different. and we made an effort to make sure grading is meeting the internal driveway and it's

also meeting the properties on the north and the south for future development. That was another effort we undertook. These are more exhibits. This is along University Drive. The red is what we're proposing and the one in the back is what was proposed last time. Our material board, the different bricks, four different bricks, five different brick types. We're still haven't found the right product. one of the comments we received is that the roof for the elevation along University Drive to be something different than asphalt shingles we're still in the process of finding the right product that's pending but the rest is cement issues fiber cement board decorative grills for the little openings that are exposed from the garage levels and the colors for the architectural

coordinates lines and that's the end of the presentation the architecture

Anthony ColemanHello.

John LytleapplicantI'm John Lytle, landscape architect for Urban Limited. Urban is also the civil engineer for this project. So Ulysses did a great job of running through the architecture, how it is settled in the site, and what I'll do is run through all the remaining spaces, which is where all the landscaping is. So the first slide that you see here is the overall site rendering with a blow up of the Greenway the following site I'll go through more detail about the streetscape on chain bridge and then the go into more detail on the Greenway and then also the streetscape along University Drive so here you'll see the sections so far left is chain bridge during BAR were asked to look at swapping the sidewalk 10 foot required

sidewalk with the landscape panel the reason why we did this was line of sight of the trees would put put these I don't know if you see my cursor but the cars leaving here would be in jeopardy with the trees right along the curb but During B.A.R., they asked us to do a study, to study this more, to flip it, and we have. But because these are commercial entries that got to be ADA compliant, the grade does not work with the sidewalk being directly abutting the building and the trees in the right-of-way. So we feel that this is a stronger design. In the green way, you'll see we have this sinuous path that goes through the middle. It's a six-foot sidewalk plus another material where we're still exploring.

It could be another hardscape. We were thinking pervious pavers, but I think it's going to end up being just another type of hardscape to give it a little bit of color and to add to that sinuous design. But we have raised planters on either side. So the design thought here was these raised planters were needed, number one, for soil volume to have these large trees in here to get our canopy trees in there. But these walls are actually seat walls, so you can sit along the entire path. And that's why we push this walk up against one side. So all along the middle, you have these raised planters on either side. Then on university, also I'll be remiss to point out there's other seeding nodes in addition to the walls.

So we have seeding nodes here, here, and here. little areas to step off and surround yourself in the vegetation. So back to the sections on University Drive obviously you can see here the grades pretty pretty different from University Drive to the first floor elevation. So here we did a very quick study to put the sidewalk on where you see the landscape panel and the landscape panel up against the curb that was not going to work due to this grade but we feel that the dual path along this streetscape with the street trees in the middle serves to to be a good design along university. Then the last slide I'll show, well actually there's one more. This one has the landscape elements that just a pallet of what we're thinking.

All of this is complementary of the architecture building, of the architecture elements on the building. Both the paver and the bench is directly from the historic overlay district. in the transitional, but ultimately that greenway is going to go all the way to Main Street through the historical overlay district. But this is just to give you a taste of the landscape architectural elements that were proposed on site. And then the last slide is also a palette, but this is a palette of the vegetation that we're proposing. We're, of course, working with the city arborist to come up with the exact species. but this is just our initial selection. So with that, I don't know if I want to, Micheline, you want to take it over from here?

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantOkay, that concludes the formal presentation. Again, we are all here to answer questions from the civil engineer, traffic, transportation, landscape, and architectural, and of course our zoning attorney, myself, and the Davies. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you very much. I think a number of important improvements have been made, as was stated in your presentation. I thank you for taking the time and covering those in much detail. I think that's important and provides context for our discussion. I will open this up for comments and questions from the Planning Commission. Commissioners? Lockhart?

Kirsten LockhartSure, thank you. staff if I may just a few sort of context setting clarifications my first one is about the trip calculations for estimated peak trips am and pm 424 spaces 85 trips is that really a reasonable extrapolation

Jason Sutphinstaffit is in the realm of the ITE standards it is something that we'll need an in-depth review by our transportation engineer.

Kirsten LockhartOkay and my next question is do we happen to have as a city occupancy data for the Moxley, the Scout, and the One University complexes?

Jason SutphinstaffWe do have some that is information that we can send you as a group. I don't know how current it is though.

Kirsten LockhartOkay I'm just kind of wondering like again to Chair Feather's point the evolution of this plan and the responsiveness to some comments and feedback is fantastic. I appreciate the detail. But what I don't have a good sense for is whether this is a needed asset for the city. I'm seeing studios, one bedrooms. I don't know that there is a demand for those types of units in the city writ large, but more especially right here in the heart of Old Town area. So I would like to see some occupancy data, some demand data, economic signaling from some of these other larger developments that have gone in to kind of understand how this might fit in the need signal for housing.

James FeatherI was wondering if any of that had been done as part of a small area plan the earlier ones we did had a lot more analysis and projection that might be a place to look as well but it is as you're thinking about that.

Jason SutphinstaffI don't know Mr. Napty if you're aware have we done any updated market studies and I Certainly we had a more centralized one with Camp Washington and the circle but has there been any further evaluation?

Paul NabtistaffYeah. When those plans were developed we didn't do occupancy data as part of their other market analysis done. I will say just from hearing from some of the questions that have been asked of Mr. Foreman in the past that Scout and the Moxley are essentially considered fully occupied. Projects of that size are always having some kind of turnover so I could see it would usually 95% and once they reach that point both of them reach that point after 18 months or two years of opening have been pretty consistent for the flats is a very different animal and I just don't have the date on that.

James FeatherAnything else? Others? Mr. Rice.

Matthew RiceI have a page full of questions here I probably shouldn't ask all of them because we'd be here for a while.

James FeatherYou may ask some others.

Matthew RiceYeah. Yeah, let's see here. The width of the greenway still seems inconsistent with the vision in the small area plan. What I'm kind of seeing here is it's a possible place for bikes, for pets, for the residents, possibly for trash loading and loading, rather than sort of what we imagined, significant travel corridor stretching all the way to downtown that would incentivize pedestrian activity the kind of literature and pedestrian how to make things walkable suggests that there has to be a kind of a purpose behind the walk and that it has to be pleasant to get people out of their cars on the kind of into areas like this and I think our vision of this area was that there would people from adjacent communities coming into walk I realize the difficulty and

we've had this happen before in several other development proposals with you know one proposal for one parcel coming in where the adjacent areas you know there still uncertainty about what will emerge but a real clear message from feedback that's been communicated to staff and to the Planning Commission is that there needs to be a coherent vision for this entire area and it's not fair to say that every developer needs to you know meet and talk to each other and align their greenways and make sure the road network kind of aligns properly that would be unfair but what we do have is a small area plan and so we can say you know meet the vision in the small area plan and then we're going to be okay

with it so I still don't see it I think in the previous versions we talked possibly about width and vehicular traffic through this central corridor in the case of emergency response or fire the road on the north is kind of articulated in letters from some of the residents doesn't provide a lot of for delivery parking and for extra vehicle you know all the kind of uber lyft amazon you're

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicanttalking about now

Matthew Ricethe access yes correct sorry switch okay

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantno worries there no I would just one big sir I can answer all of them in

Matthew Ricetime so there is a concern that some of that traffic will end up parking on that north road prohibiting fire and ems from getting in and out uh there is no clear other entry point and if there's a blockage there you know in a delay that could be a serious problem there's uh not sufficient width there to include kind of road parking and the full width of the roadway and so forth it's um still a possible problem and then again the lack of knowledge about what would be on the north side and the south side 20 years in the future still leads me to question whether that plan works properly is there also is there a clear vision for right in right out and whether there's some way of prohibiting kind of a delay for folks wanting to turn left mm

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicant-hmm okay

Matthew Riceokay yes sorry I'm We're not phrasing those as questions. No, no, no.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantWe can address them. Is that okay? Are we allowed to address?

Matthew RiceBut

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantif there are any

Matthew Riceinsights or comments or...

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantIt's

Matthew Ricea work session. We're going to work here.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantPerfect. Okay. Well, I have my team here, and we can talk about all three of them. So what I understand is the width of the greenway that I

Kirsten Lockhartbelieve is

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantavailable for... Mr. Rice, did

James Featheryou have others?

Matthew RiceAre there others? You want to just

James Feathertake them a little

Matthew Ricebit of time. I'm going to try to be real efficient here. Sure. I'm going to give you a fourth and a fifth item.

James FeatherOkay.

Matthew RiceBe ready. Thanks. perhaps where the stormwater vault would be in the documents. It's designed for relatively modest, you know, one-year, two-year, five-year, ten-year events. We're seeing, you know, my other hat I wear is, you know, as a scientist, we do see storms that exceed that on an annual basis, even though, you know, the name indicates that we shouldn't. The RPA and the water flowing underground is just, you know, 100 meters further east. So the RPA starts, and the question is what happens when the capacity to store stormwater, because we're essentially losing a huge amount of pervious surface here, and the dynamics of the stormwater underneath as it goes toward the Daniels Run is a real concern,

particularly for residents that live to the east. And we don't want to overwhelm a community that's been around for a long time with a significantly different stormwater condition than they've had in the past. This really is the largest kind of contiguous privately owned green space south of Main Street of and so we are going to be changing things significantly by losing all of that pervious surface so the stormwater issues are of interest and then certainly the fifth issue perhaps is that the 75% kind of coverage on the ground floor is the requirement I really do see University as someone who travels the time I see that as not a residential corridor I see it as a retail commercial oriented corridor myself I've lived in the area about 16 years travel

that a fair bit and so once you pass Sager it's all retail commercial there is no residential property kind of access directly to university north of Armstrong there are only two townhouses that have a token doorway you know 45 feet from the street single-family homes and townhomes are you know a much larger distance from the roadway so I don't think of it as as residential I really do think of it as retail and commercial through that corridor and certainly I think what may be developing within that block from Armstrong to Sager definitely will be kind of on the transportation corridors I imagine to largely be retail and hopefully with a green spine all the way up the center so that was a huge number of comments all at once it's only about a third of what

I have written down here we'll have plenty of time to you know talk further about this future events it is nice to see a response to the Evie thing I brought that up last time and I really do think a lot of folks are going to be using that and I that's an easy

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantone

Matthew Riceyeah it is it's an easy one and even if you don't have those implemented day one making sure that the infrastructure of the building allows conversion to Evie charging is is a must I think I'm gonna leave it there for now so those five issues

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantwe can address them real quick if we can sure what are you you're going to talk about the greenway sure I

John Lytleapplicantwas gonna mention so I don't think I said this in my presentation but the width of the greenway is might be misleading because I put the six-foot walk in there yeah it's actually 15 total feet from planter to planter and in small area plan calls for 15 so we're maintaining that 15 foot clear width even the seating nodes and all the benches and everything are outside of the 15 feet that from building to building it's roughly 43 43 feet yeah so that's yeah Yeah, so the 15 feet width is meant for vehicles to go, emergency access vehicles if needed to go down.

Matthew RiceIs Chief Seitz looked at the plan and given any indication about whether a 15 foot width would allow vehicle?

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantI believe it was reviewed, but we didn't receive any comments on it. I would have to go to staff on that. I don't remember in their initial responses if we received any comments from the fire marshal. Okay, so

Matthew Ricefor me to support any project necessary, it would have to have, like, a thumbs up from the fire department, and it would have to have a thumbs up from the stormwater utility group. They're super, super good at what they do, and they'll instantly be able to see flaws in the plan if there are any. Yeah. And we want to just make sure that we're not causing problems for folks down the road in those two areas. Of course. in addition to reaching out to the neighboring folks to at least cover a few of those bases.

John LytleapplicantAnd then I wanted to, I think your next point was the width of the access drive. It was 20 originally, then we increased it to 26. So I don't know if Clayton could probably speak to that a little bit better.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantSo he's correct. of the 26th I think that was a request again the fire marshal I believe that came from the fire fire marshal department what they're going to do is pull up you had a concern about drop-offs Ubers Grubhub deliveries those sorts of things so the architects going to pull back up the access and show you within the garage where those parking spaces are so there will be no parking on the access drive that's intentional because we understand that needs to be clear space for for getting into the garages for access and for emergency vehicles yeah i i recognize

Matthew Riceyou do have extra places to get into the garage

Ulysses Montes de Ocaapplicantyes

Matthew Ricethe actual chance of an uber or an amazon delivery or grubhub actually doing that is approaching zero um i'm not um you know i deal with that as a you know person in charge of an HOA it's just the plan has to accommodate behavior rather than you know the ideal it's I think that there will be a lot of vehicles parked on that private roadway because frankly right now just two or three blocks north they double and single park on the driving lanes of the roadway on a routine basis all the way from North Street all the particularly on the west side of the road they're already parking on the roadway and it's a problem on a private roadway they're definitely going to park on that roadway they're not going to go in the garage anyway sorry that's

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantbut I do just want to make

Matthew Ricesure

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantthat everyone's aware we did we have planned for inside the garage we have spaces that are designated for that as again for the intention of keeping that access drive open the right in right out is what is planned currently and as part of the traffic plan again we have growth site here to discuss that but on both University and on chain bridge it is a right in right out only there are no left-hand turns proposed either on chain bridge or on University

Matthew Riceyes so the neighbors are imagining a buildup

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantright or an accident in between and that's why again it's all a right in right out right in right out as the other comment was stormwater and I believe we're gonna works with urban he's representing the civil engineer so

Speaker 1the first question was where is the stormwater management vault so we have a stormwater management vault over here outside of the right of way in university drive in front of university drive downstream of the stormwater management vault we actually have two bmp filters to treat the water before it leaves the site so there's a vault here and two bmp filters right in this location the vault themselves have been designed the one, two, and ten year post development flow below the pre development flow from a flow standpoint. So we have a betterment of the flow leaving the site for post development than pre development conditions. As far as the outfall analysis, if we go to this sheet here, we understand it discharges

into the floodplain and RPA in this zone here. We'll do a more detailed analysis during the site plan process but we'll make sure that channel is able to handle both the two-year flow and 10 or 10-year capacity be

Matthew Riceworth going and looking the channel there's not big and the underground kind of passages are not very big either so if this has been an ongoing discussion in the north side of our city as well with some development projects there it just the likelihood that you know even a modest storm is going to overwhelm that high

Speaker 1so so we need to analyze up to the 10-year storm event for discharge from the site we understand that storms are more prevalent and more more intense but the code requires the tenure analysis but we'll continue to work with staff to see what additional analysis they need be done during okay

Matthew Riceand the reputation of the people who you'll be talking to in stormwater is as good as it gets the city We have absolutely the very, very, very best stormwater engineers and folks that do these calculations and if they don't give this a thumbs up it will be very difficult to accept without major modifications.

Speaker 1We understand.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantI think the last comment was regarding the retail on university. Again, we getting conflicting yet appropriate comments. from the community that it's more residential they don't want the retail we've heard from previous groups from the city that the retail really should be on chain bridge we even just came from a city a community meeting from one of the residents they don't want any retail they don't think it's going to be viable so we're struggling to keep up but we will definitely relook at the the university side and see what's possible so we're taking the comments down

Matthew Riceokay and great feedback from the Breckenridge folks on the east and also a smart growth group locally that does a very deep dive into proposals and both of them have a list of things articulated that have been circulated really widely and so folks are reading all those and it would be worth kind of digging through those very carefully because we do as well

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantthank you

James Feathermr. Coleman

Anthony Colemanthank you mr. chairman I think you guys have done a really good listening to the feedback and kind of coming back to us with some some good stuff. My colleague has hit on a bunch of the things. Two comments for you guys. Service through the Greenway. I think that interpretation is fairly liberal. I can't imagine seeing a waste management or a blue AAA dumpster just kind of sitting out there. Kind of the same thing. We got to look at the behavior, not just the intent, because I can't really imagine wheeling out a dumpster each time trash needs to come

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantthrough. We can take that right through the loading aspect.

Anthony ColemanI think as you guys hinted towards that, you know, the trash can be reconfigured. I think that would be a good idea. The other thing I'd like to echo, Dr. Rice's comments on retail on the university. I think it, same way, I look at that corridor as an up-and-coming retail environment. Your renderings even show a vibrant pedestrian activity on it. So it's kind of, I think the renderings even support the retail there, especially considering in what's already been proposed in other work sessions for the properties just north of this. You could have a really cohesive block there that really could be impactful. You guys have done a good job kind of blending it in with the rest of the community, and I see that being a space for the community as an extension of their existing neighborhood.

So those are my two comments.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantI appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you, Mr. Chair. I've got some comments I guess they're gonna fall into two areas one is going to be more general some are more specific and there are a number of good things here I would like to thank the Davies family for coming tonight I know this was a great place to grow up I've only been here since 1980 so the city has changed considerably since I've been here and acknowledging the the landscape that you've seen change and I know from the house when you look across the street that's not the courthouse you grew up looking at that's a whole new building when we did the small area plan and looked at this area we looked at it somewhat holistically and said things are changing and they have been for a

long time so how does it look and if you go back we're to go back and look at the overall plan you'll note just to the south of this at the townhouse complex you'll see a few townhouse buildings and you'll see ace an ocean of parking spaces that's not the future of that particular property this property which was residential and rightly so to a point is now in the mix for being redeveloped the building just to the north of it is a single building on Cambridge Road and if you look at the depth that goes back to university because that property does you will see another ocean of parking and above that you will see an ocean of parking and above that you will see an ocean of parking and eventually we get to the point when we looked at the small area

plan and said how are we going to redo this area and what do we get in something that will be cohesive in the future how do we do it so that consolidation was one of the terms that came up and I don't know that that's been a player to date I don't know if that is a player going forward or if the property has to be developed individually as this little piece right in the middle of this whole area because in any jigsaw puzzle you know as you take the pieces apart and put them back together if you can rewind them in something that's more cohesive there's a value to that so the development of this is one piece in a puzzle that then is going to impact the ones on either side development as well

James Featherand

Paul CunninghamI know when we're dealing with individual projects you might not want to think of that but when we did the small area plan that was one of the thoughts of how do we move things in that direction as redevelopment is occurring so I think some of the comments that come into this look to that and say how can we make this better for the city of the future it's not going to remain single-family there are not going to be future single-family memories made there but what memories are going to be made and I think that's important to looking at the holistic redevelopment of this piece of property to get something that in the future complements the city complements the redevelopment of the court process court complex across the street the areas to

the north and the areas to the south try to give us a better relationship with as well as redevelopment up to a historic district so there are a lot of interesting factors that go into how this thing has gone since we were young and some of us aren't so young anymore when I look at that that's one of the things that colors what I look at from the standpoint of the property when I look at things that are there if we went to a few slides of yours for some comments one the width of the street is 26 feet on a previous development I ended up asking a question and it had to do with parking spaces Because we were going to have on-street parking And I asked what's the difference? What's the distance between those two white lines?

That you're painting to delineate an on-street parking space the answer as I recall it and I'm sure my colleagues will correct me if I'm wrong was 26 feet so the width of your street is the width of one parking space and I don't know what you think of when you think of the width of a parking space do you think of that being a traffic lane that accommodates two-lane traffic going in both directions as well as somebody being able to park there when I think of a parking space on space it's not that big and when I turn it sideways that's the width of the road and the travel way so that I see that congestion on that side street if it's 26 feet wide and you've got all the people we've talked about and I know it's been addressed

for internal parking still is a concern and a consideration so that's one

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicanttwo

Paul Cunninghamwhen I look at the first floor space on I guess it's building a that's the one on University and look at the courtyard I'm assuming if I walk out of my apartment on on the first floor on a and look at that area there that I'm walking out to the deck level of the whole patio is that a reasonable assumption

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantthe courtyard the

Paul Cunninghamcourtyard

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantyes okay

Paul Cunninghamwhen I look at the depth per floor and talk about we're gonna have four or five stairs but we're gonna stay within about 50 feet I'm gonna give about 10 feet per story so from the floor I'm going to take it down about a foot in order to have the stable base for that floor and above it I've got eight foot of ceiling and then I'm gonna have ceiling and floor and HVAC and that above it. When I look at the swimming pool that's there, how deep is that pool? One foot?

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantTypically our pools run between three and four feet.

Paul CunninghamJust three and four feet?

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantTypically.

Paul CunninghamAnd another foot or two for the base that has to be built underneath them to support them for weight?

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantI haven't designed them so that would be more of a question over here, my architect who actually knows the square footage it

Paul Cunninghammight be but I'm trying to drag it to your question from the first floor level if I go down six feet am I in the garage oh

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantthere'll be a drop ceiling area where the pool is that's typical right

Paul Cunninghamso how tall is the garage it's 12 that's

Ulysses Montes de Ocaapplicant12 feet floor to floor 12

Paul Cunninghamfeet floor to floor yes okay so I don't have a challenge then with a with six feet of that being pool coming down in in terms of coming in the door and having to Oh

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantno there was going to be a clearance oh yes and some pools I was trying to follow where we were going with

Ulysses Montes de Ocaapplicantthat It's a little bit of detail coming down the road when pools are designed sometimes they're designed above the courtyard level they're raised partially raised it could be that option but if If you see here in this section, that floor in the courtyard is at elevation plus 442. And the garage below, the floor is at elevation 430. So it's 12 feet floor to floor. We only need seven and a half clear for parking. So there's room

Paul Cunninghamto drop. We're not losing parking spaces. No, no. By putting an amenity in there. No. Have we thought of putting anything over that pool to make it a year-round amenity instead of a three-month amenity? this point

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantit been enclosed no no

Paul Cunninghamokay one I would commend you on the amount of dirt that's going to be removed because in order to to put your garage up front under the commercial space you're going to have to take out a lot of dirt and there's only a small amount of that left until the road so taking the retaining are all out and removing the dirt from that area allows you to bring the front of the buildings to essentially street level is that what I'm observing in the new Board of Architecture review stuff when you've got essentially the sidewalk at street level with the building and we've done away with the retaining wall that goes across the front

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantyou're saying at Chain Bridge on

Paul CunninghamChain Bridge you've essentially taken all the dirt out of that area and we're moving a lot of dirt in the first place and you're just you're taking it out to level the lot yeah

John Lytleapplicantthat retaining wall up front it will be removed but yes we would have

Paul Cunninghamto and all of that goes in and in effect gives you more building space that's lower to the existing street level

John Lytleapplicantyeah it's it's definitely going to be more level to it not completely but you got a great change because chain bridge itself is also has

Paul Cunninghama bit of a change yeah okay there are things that I

Matthew Ricesee

Paul Cunninghamthat I like about it there are things that I still have questions on one is one is the side street from traffic congestion two is the path and being able to ultimately connect it going north and south as the whole area redevelops in that this is now going to constrain the rest of the development and getting back to the idea of potentially running judicial drive through the center and consolidating with the redevelopment of the parcels to the south and to the north to make better development for the entire project is one of the things that I haven't given up hope for although when you're dealing with simple properties and we can't go any further than that I see that that's a major challenge I think that's the the essence

of my comments at this time I

James Featherappreciate it thank you thank you Thank you. Mr. Denton, anything?

Kevin DentonIt's obvious there's a lot of work been put in to address the comments from the prior building, the reduction in density, the one wall that had no windows now having windows. I think you can see that a lot of work and some improvements have happened. The addition of office space, I think, is great. As far as the greenway is concerned, there's obviously going to be a lot of staff input and a lot of staff expertise that will make certain that it's wide enough, and then those changes will come if need be. So I don't want to mirror anything that anyone else has said concern-wise there. The two things that come to mind would be the desire for more retail. think to to echo some things that have been said on the university side it makes

a lot of sense that certain people stakeholders that you've talked to would talk about the need for residential there maybe the desire for residential there because on the when you think of this small area plan this being on the south side there actually is residential across the street whereas the further you go north it's it's commercial on both sides and although it may not seem like commercial just to have a an ocean of surface parking it truly is a business somewhere as you go

Speaker 1towards

Kevin Denton123. so i think that i could see why some stakeholders would would talk about the desire for there to be residential on that ground floor um and it's always tough to be the first to redevelop greenway that we want you to match up to what everyone else in theory is going to build later and we also want you to kind of match the retail flow of that area and i think a desire for more retail i have as well as it to necessarily be on that first floor on university side it is great that there's a corridor there units on the other side and then the pool So there is a break between what could be, if retail were added, retail there, and still a residential break before the pool. Another thing is the canopy.

So I think from the old plan to now, obviously there's more. I don't think that number was necessarily captured. But what was captured is the 10% requirement, if you will, and maybe you're at just under 6. Is there a way to capture more canopy on the fourth floor? I know obviously you have an attic space on a fourth floor. It doesn't have to carry a ton of weight. But does it count in your actual calculation if you do have some trees up on that fourth floor drop down? It will if we have the correct

John Lytleapplicantsoil volume. So we are actually looking into adding more vegetation in the courtyards. So Ulysses and I are going to be looking at either, I think one of your ideas was folding a slab a little bit, also raising planters. But the goal being getting more soil up there in order to get more trees,

Anthony Colemanbecause that's the only way we're going to be able to,

John Lytleapplicantthat's the only way the city arborist will accept those trees

Kevin Dentonas canopy, is

John Lytleapplicantif we

Kevin Dentonhave adequate soil. Understood. um in that greenway the what we see is a walking path is that just is that a concrete sidewalk or is there the ability to have grass pavers for i i don't want to say what it is can you just tell me what it is in the

John Lytleapplicantdesign now so we were originally thinking maybe grass pavers but then the question of because there's the parking garage slab underneath the drainage of all that and i think um differentiating the hardscape is what i'm trying to demonstrate in that section you know six foot walk and then something else we're looking at that material right now but it's probably going to be some other kind of hardscape especially if we need to accommodate a vehicle

Kevin Dentonuh you know the plastic grid i'm sure you're more familiar with it than me but sometimes Sometimes I've seen where you have the hardscape and then you have an extension that just looks like grass, but it truly has the plastic grid underneath. So in the event of an emergency, not something you want to drive on daily, but an emergency vehicle for a fire, let's say, could totally drive on it and it would support that. Obviously, there might be some beautification that's needed once it pulls away if it was wet that week or whatever. But that is maybe an option to have your hard sidewalk surface and then have grass right beside it. But it truly has that grass plastic grid paver underneath so that you don't have to take up even more of what could potentially be your soil that provides for canopy underneath.

Right,

John Lytleapplicantcorrect. And that's the challenge. But there is that plastic grid. They do make a vehicular grade version of that.

Kevin DentonAnd I think that's it. Maybe one other thing. at what stage you're at but you did touch on it some of the landscaping items you showed you talked about the bench in particular is that something that's is that spec'd out by that's actually in the

John Lytleapplicantit's it's in the historic overlay district standards and

Kevin Dentonit just shows

John Lytleapplicantthat specific spec'd item yeah yeah understood it's a do more all right thank you

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantMs. Marcus Thank you

Betsy Briggsby voiceHi I think this building is absolutely beautiful I love the design of it and the steps and the different facades and everything I just love it I feel like in an ideal world it it should have more retail since that is the guideline that we have set up I wonder if it's a requirement or a goal that we are 75% on the main level because we seem to run into this a lot the the greenway being what 15 or 16 feet wide I feel like inside of really tall buildings that's gonna feel really skinny when you're really there what's in what is on the inside of the walls around the walkway well

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicanti want to make sure that with that 16 then we still have open space so it's not as if the buildings are right up on that 16.

John Lytleapplicantit's 43 feet from building to building

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantit is

John Lytleapplicantyes that's yeah that's

Betsy Briggsby voiceseating area oh that's great

John Lytleapplicantoh if you want to go to my section i got dimensions on that but the 15 feet width is just a planter wall to planter wall

Betsy Briggsby voiceSo it's how many feet from building to building? 43

John Lytleapplicantright now.

Betsy Briggsby voiceOh, that's wonderful. Okay. That's great. The parking for retail, I think I heard you say that the parking currently is on the other end of the building from where the retail is located. Did you say that?

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantWe have retail parking, and then we also have convenient parking for, say, Uber or Grubhub. And so he's going to pull up the garage plan. The retail parking we have near the retail and we added an elevator so they could go up. The, you're there yet? Yeah, this is Uber

Ulysses Montes de Ocaapplicantparking. These blue dots are the.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantThat's the Grubhub, Uber, the quick delivery sort of thing. But the retail parking, go ahead and.

Ulysses Montes de OcaapplicantThat's further down the side.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantBecause that's on the other level and that's why we added the elevator. Here we go.

Ulysses Montes de OcaapplicantSo we're entering here and then the arrows take to the ramp, go up one floor, and then this would be the retail parking.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantRemember, there's a big grade change. So you enter at a different level.

Betsy Briggsby voiceThe retail parking is near the retail. Right underneath it. Correct. Okay, good, because I thought I heard you say it was not. And retail spots or Uber spots outside, ideally, I mean, you only have so much space to work with, and it is beautiful, the design, the way it is, but it does seem like it would be ideal to have some parking outside and not inside for sometimes maybe the retail or for the Uber-type delivery, DoorDash-type things. It seems like it would be better to have some spots, you know, like five or ten spots outside.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantIt would be great, but I know we can't park on University or Tain Bridge, and again, we were talking about the alleyway or the access drive, and so that's the conundrum.

Betsy Briggsby voiceYeah, that's pretty much all I had. I appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome.

James FeatherOkay. A number of things that were on my mind have been said. Some I think are worth repeating. I will be a bit of a contrarian when it comes to non-residential uses along University Drive. You know that the requirement 75% ground floor that's in the zoning ordinance and one of our work sessions this evening later is how we bring our small area plan vision and our zoning ordinance together so that we can better reflect what the small area plans reflect. Small area plans do not reflect retail at all in this area and I think it's actually a bonus that you're providing some retail and other commercial space in building on Cambridge

Bankhead Daviesapplicanton Cambridge

James FeatherRoad so that to me that's a bonus and there are a number of other exceptions that are required because of the lag in our updating our zoning ordinance catching up with our smaller plans so that doesn't concern me we don't know what the redevelopment north will be yet. We may be hearing some more things soon about that, which may support more non-residential uses along University Drive, but at this point, what you propose is probably a step beyond what the small area plan calls for. It's just not consistent with the zoning ordinance, which we know is behind. So I'm not too concerned about that. The Greenway does concern me a little bit. If there's one thing that's going to tie this whole area

greenway we need to make sure that what you're putting in as the first to the table will be compatible with what could happen south and north we don't want one smaller parcel driving trying to drive the redevelopment north of it that's why we have the plan laid out with a broader vision so some better sense of fidelity to the vision for that greenway from the small area plan would be improvement and one of them as I recall so I might want to look at that hmm let me go to my other lists mr. rice commented the new street functioning as the shared use service alley and I think it probably would actually need to be wired to accommodate some of those uses when I go back to the images in the small area plan

The vehicular access abutting on residential properties, I get we don't want a street there, but again, the greenway sort of serves the function of providing that connectivity for potentially small vehicles or something. So that gets into the greenway. The tree canopy is a concern. We have a very modest tree canopy requirement in the commercial urban district meeting that is going to be a challenge I think for not only some of us here but possibly potentially some of the City Council members so I think you need to be prepared to address that it sounds like you're trying to do that I spent a little time on the Board of Architectural Review it's not the purview of Planning Commission from a recommendation standpoint but we are

free to comment on any aspect of the plan the one thing that puzzles me a kind of a Mansard style roof facing University that seems like 19th century France rather than historic Fairfax I'm not sure what the other options are but that seems out of place I really appreciate the improvement in getting something a little more historic looking facing the residential area but that style roof just doesn't seem to fit with the character of the city so you might want to think about that I don't know if that came up in the Board of architecture review or not I know you had a conversation about the material the material and asphalt shingles and so forth but the scale of this is is much improved I think that's a real positive I agree with comments on the east west

driveway and the concerns with having short-term drop-offs and deliveries you know as on a speech UPS and all so I think I would look for some creative ways to provide some pull-off space for those kinds of things and I think that covers my comments does okay I don't know if you want to comment on any of those but that's feedback okay I surely phrases questions but okay I appreciate

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantit on you no no the more the merrier we want to

James Featherhave sufficient feedback Steph up mr. Sutton point

Jason Sutphinstaffsince it's the site next door if when you're out on a walk or a drive along University Drive the ends of court has an open space right at the corner I've got our pro open here and it's approximately the width of that from the retaining wall to the curbs about 50 to 55 just for some context and comparison if you want to see an example of something that's somewhat akin to our greenway.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantOkay. Good thought. Okay. I appreciate everyone's comments. I appreciate your time. We're going to take into this.

Kirsten LockhartWe've talked a lot about consistency, continuity across the entirety of the megablock and what is north and south of this property. Could you share with us if there have been any discussions about consolidation with other property owners on either side or you know any other sort of negotiations amongst the those with with big ideas for this area of the city and David

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantcan speak to that and also the Davies I've been involved since 2015 where we've had a little bit of history with this and there have been questions and requests to consolidate we have spoken with some of the owners and it just doesn't work out it doesn't pencil out economically it doesn't pencil out with the timing it just doesn't work and so that's why we're proceeding with our property

Kirsten Lockharteven from an easement perspective because I'm just having a hard time thinking about how you'll even build this with like the lot coverage being what it is without some sort of easement or oh

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantlike a construction easement for trailer or access that's a difference that's a different subject and we'll talk to the property owners to the left to the right to the front and back when and if approved but that that that's solvable because that's typically short term but when we're talking about redeveloping on somebody else's property that that's quite different

James Featherokay anybody else thank you for your time thank you for all the detail thank you for the improvements. No,

Micheline Kasten-Smithapplicantwe appreciate the feedback.

James FeatherThank you. That you brought forward.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantThank you.

James FeatherThank you.

Micheline Kasten-SmithapplicantHave a good night.

James FeatherThank you, Mr. Sutton, and thank Mr. Frederick Porras, too, for his work. Okay, next item on our agenda is introduction and discussion of potential amendments to the City of Fairfax zoning ordinance related to the adopted small area plans, as we had just commented on. Mr. Dernapte.

Paul NabtistaffOkay. All right. Let me just make sure that we get our join. Thank you.

Justin WallaceGood

Anthony Colemanevening, commissioners. Thank you for having me

Justin Wallacehere today. I'm joined virtually with Caitlin Cameron from our group. And we're here to talk about the small area plan zoning implementation. First, we've enjoyed working with staff, Paul and his staff, and getting to know some of the community members so far as part of this process. And so the purpose of the presentation today is to introduce the project and to get your insight, feedback, make sure we're on track, heading in the right direction, and to give a snapshot of what we've heard so far in the process. For those that may be viewing, we do have a URL code to take you to the project website where you can provide feedback. Oh, thank you. And that URL code is on the page in front of you.

So who am I? My name is Justin Wallace. I'm with the consultant firm White & Smith Planning and Law Group. My background is in architecture and urban design and planning. I've been with White & Smith for quite a few years now. Mark White is was supposed to be here but he had another planning commission so we divided and conquered but we're also joined as I said Caitlin Cameron who is a fellow urban design planner and also serves as a chair for her local planning board so we are looking forward to bringing our expertise on this project over the US and Mark has clients all over Virginia so we look forward to bringing what we can to this project in terms of strategies and solutions and bringing the zoning ordinance up to date just a quick agenda we're going to go

over the background which you are very familiar with as far as the comp plan and small area plans we'll talk about the project timeline and what our goals are and then we'll give a snapshot of some of the issues that we've heard thus far. I will not spend too much time on the comprehensive plan, as you know. It was adopted in 2019. It's been amended since then. One of the key components of the comprehensive plan is its future land use map, which outlines the different character areas and place types for the city. we're going to be focused on the purple areas, the activity center areas. These are areas that are anticipated to expect mixed-use, walkable, pedestrian areas development over time.

And so that is kind of the scope of where our implementation will be focused on. After the adoption of the comprehensive plan, the city embarked on efforts to do more detailed analysis on a small area plan level focused on Camp Washington, Pickett and Main, or excuse me, Fairfax Circle, Old Town, and Northfax. And four out of the five activity centers, small area plans have been adopted. And so these are more nuanced investigation about what the future character of these small area plans will be like in the next decade. And so they go into more nuance with the types of uses, land uses and activities, what the desired density, intensity, and overall character and aesthetic, what the future street networks look like, what types of infrastructure improvements in terms of stormwater,

getting those access improvements in, and also considerations for parking and open space qualities. For those that may not be aware that are listening to the presentation, there is a difference between land use policy and zoning, and we are trying to align the two. And so when we talk about the comprehensive plan and the small area plans, those set the overall vision and goals outlining how the city wants to grow and what it wants to preserve. These are documents that our city officials use for decision-making, and these are updated from time to time, but they do not change the zoning. So therefore, we were brought to the table to look at the city's zoning ordinance and update it. And the zoning is regulation, it's the law, and it controls the physical characteristics

as we know with the allowed and permitted land uses, density, height, setbacks, landscaping, and all types of other physical characteristics on a parcel by parcel basis. looking at the city's zoning ordinance to make sure that it is up to date, which we frequently, it's a working document, so we need to consistently look at it and make sure that it's aligned with the policy documents. And so that is our goal and our task. So examples of those discrepancies and gaps between the policy documents and the zoning documents. things that were looked at in the small area plans such as as we heard tonight height what types of land uses and activities open space what does that look like feel like and what does the future transport rate rotation access

and what does that look like in these character areas and so we're looking at all of these things and seeing what strategies and solutions we can provide fill those gaps and needs in the zoning ordinance. We've started this project back in the summer, and we began in August meeting with staff and different department leadership and just trying to get a sense of what the staff's issues were. And we did a site tour. We toured all the five activity center areas, just seeing what's on the ground, existing conditions, trying to get a sense of the nuances of these different areas and what's on the ground today. Later in the fall, we met. We had a series of technical meetings. The consultant team and staff held a series of deep dives just to understand how frequent users of the code,

what their challenges are, what are some of the top issues that they're dealing with, and just hearing things out. These were listening sessions. So we had a series of five different groups that were tailored around specific topics. Later on in November, we had our first community meeting here in this room. We had not as much attendance as we would have liked. It was cold and rainy that day. Chairman Feather was there. But we did get some feedback. People came interested, engaged, asked a lot of questions. And so we did feel like we received some insight into what people are looking at with the zoning ordinance update. In terms of overall phasing, we're at the tail end of phase one. That includes much of our discovery and understanding the issues that people are facing ranging from the staff to stakeholders and the general and the public at large.

Our next phase will be strategy development. So we'll take what we've learned thus far and we'll begin putting our heads together and identifying strategies. and that will be included in a written report and we'll be back in front of you to prevent those findings and then ultimately we'll go into phase three with the overall drafting of the ordinance updates and then into adoption mode. So we're early on in the project and the overall objectives, what's in our scope is really implementing the small area plans. Ideally, this would improve the challenges that private developers are facing. In your case, how the public is investing in the community. We've been looking at recent trends in development,

understanding the issues through the different boards, planning commissioner, planning commission council, and understanding what those trends are in terms of city negotiations. And we're looking at what the gaps are, what the discrepancies are, and of course balancing community interests, what we've heard from the community with what the market is seeing. So ideally our outcomes, our goals is to align with the policy, the comprehensive plan, small area plans, and we'd like for this to be as clear and purposeful as possible. Mark likes to say make the right things easy. So we'll try to look at streamlining and creating an efficient development review process as part of this and just clarifying and supporting the community goals and objectives.

So I believe in your packet there's a issue summary and so what I have here on the screen are eight buckets that summarizes what we've heard so far and I'm going to go into a little bit of detail but there's a written description in your packet following each of these. Again, our goal is to align with the comprehensive plan. When there's misalignment, it leads to inconsistency and unpredictability. And so ideally, we'd want to build in that predictability into the zoning ordinance. We'd like to reinforce the distinctions of the small area plans. There are nuances with each of these plans. So we'd like to build inconsistency, but ideally find solutions that are tailored to the specific nuances of each of these areas.

And establishing a clear path for mixed-use development. The recent development is trending more mixed-use, so ideally the zoning ordinance would enable that and create a clear pathway. and we'll be looking at different strategies to do that, whether that is a new zoning ordinance or addressing current zoning districts, excuse me, zoning district, is still yet to be determined, but we'll be developing strategies with Paul and staff to understand what's the most effective strategy to go forward and bring that back to you. Obviously, there are infrastructure demands with these larger developments in terms of access as we were talking about with the previous discussion. And so there's more coordination that needs to happen for these larger developments and

we need the zoning ordinance to address those with all of those challenges that developers and are dealing with with their site plans. We heard a lot about open space and trying to understand what is open space and how it's defined in the zoning ordinance. And also applying that consistently across the zoning districts. Right now there's some inconsistency from what we've understand. So really understanding what open space is, whether that's various typologies, and clearly understanding what the expectations are with urban development. Next, we'll be looking at the city's policies for utilities and streetscape elements. So that area between the building and the street, we want to understand what the policy is,

what the hierarchy is, prioritization, and just adding more flexibility where there is room to add flexibility for the streetscape elements. And another critical issue and thing that we'll be looking at is incentivizing community needs. So we heard a lot about resiliency, environmentally sound development, and sustainability goals. and while we are constrained with Virginia's state statutes and what they permit and what we can mandate, we can look at incentivizing these through the zoning ordinance. So we'll be looking at different frameworks that other communities are using, whether that is a community benefit program, a tiered system, or a point system. I think, you know, something along those lines will be evaluating what would be most effective as a tool to incentivize what the community has said they wanted out of development.

And then finally, enabling flexible development frontage. We heard a lot about the 75% requirement for non-residential, as well as, you know, when you think of activity centers, you want an engaging storefront or you want an engaging presence at the street. And so what does that look like and does that mean it has to be a non-residential storefront condition? I don't know, but I think that's worth investigating. So I think we'll be looking at different alternatives that may be appropriate for activity centers and that may vary by activity center, but I think we're in the exploration phase and trying to address what we've heard based on that issue in particular. And so those are kind of the big top eight issues.

We'll be looking at these in greater detail in the report. And so there will be a lot more research, case studies, best practices, and looking at fellow communities in the region and also across the U.S. and trying to develop the most effective recommendation or strategy that we think would benefit the city of Fairfax. And so the next step will be writing the report. We've already started, and we hope to be sharing that with staff soon and keeping that conversation going. But that is kind of the next big step is the preferred strategies and recommendations report. and I'm going to stop talking but ideally we'd like to hear from you just insight any questions you might have so far in the process and how we can stay on track going forward so I'm done with

the presentation but I'll turn it over to you guys

James FeatherMr. Nathana do you have anything else to add

Paul NabtistaffNo, I think that summarizes it well, just to reiterate that we will be back in front of you as we're developing strategies. You'll have a little more information about the way things could work, and we're looking for your feedback on that. But certainly tonight, we do see the Planning Commission as a user group, because the Planning Commission goes through the process of reviewing projects you've experienced probably more than anybody. So any feedback you can find at this point that will help go in to develop those strategies will be extremely beneficial for us.

James Featheryour timeline do you think we might get to that next phase

Justin Wallacesoon we

John Lytleapplicantare almost done with a

Justin Wallacedraft of the report but I think we still want to have conversations with staff and make sure that everything they're looking for the expectations are there but we were pretty much you know 75% 80% done with the report and so we'll be sharing that with staff soon.

James FeatherThank you. Commissioners do you have any questions or comments? Mr. Cunningham?

Paul CunninghamA couple of general comments I guess along this line. 15 years ago we had leadership in the city that thought strategic plans were anathema and so there was resistance to them it's about 10 years ago that we started a process recognizing that the old zoning ordinance which had been around for over 40 years at that point was filled with contradictions and other things like that so we went through the process of the zoning ordinance recognizing that we were going to get a somewhat vanilla product out of it because any outside contractor who came in with expertise was not going to recognize all the nuances going within the city of what zoning meant for the absolute character of the city. That zoning ordinance as you have referenced was adopted in I think 2016.

Since then and it was predicted at that point we would start going through a series of amendments to the zoning ordinance that were designed to personalize it for the city if you would and it wasn't until 2019 that the small area plans actually were put on the table and came out of a comp plan review 2019 we have been developing the small area plans and recognize that They really didn't fit what we had done and that there were nuances as you have referenced them So what we're trying to do? I think is personalize The plan to those areas and then personalize the overall zoning ordinance to those peculiarities that are worth being codified in law or zoning and going with that. At this point, I think we have overcome most of the original challenges

in that I believe we have adopted master plans for almost everything I can think of as we're going forward, you know, from parks to the city to everybody has now developed a master plan. And so I think one of our challenges is to get our hands around the master plans see if they do form a coherent vision moving forward so that the rules that we write will meet the needs of the citizens of the city which means recognizing the character of the city what we are and what we want to be and then balancing that with the fact that we are victims if you will of the area we live in. We are not going to get away from denser development. We are not going to get away from upscale business activities and the things that go with being in this geographic area.

And so that's what we're trying to catch in all of this is a set of rules or zoning ordinances that will allow us to move forward so that people like the Davies who may have grown up here long time ago can still navigate through the process of moving to the future. As some of us older people are trying to move to the future from living in our past. There are good things we want to retain. There are things that we would like to make better. And that's what I think we're trying to catch in here. But on a basis that personalizes it so that people who live in any neighborhood can recognize that I've parked my trailer in my yard forever, and now you've just told me that I can't. Or people who have a small business that is a home business

but happens to deal with guns don't have to fill this area when we come back through to a Zopta zoning ordinance change with all of their friends who are gun owners to tell us we're getting it wrong. Those are the kinds of things I think we would like to move past and get a zoning ordinance that that fits the five individual plans or the four that we've got plus the overall city since we're still trying to move forward with the density of setback and height and how do you trade those one off against the other that's what I see as our problem or our challenge in coming to this so I think you've outlined a good program that's where I come out isn't something when we're done with it we can read and feel like it's

personal to the city not something that would fit any city in in the state or the country that you were going to drop it on

James Featherothers

Kirsten Lockhartcould you speak to your professional opinion I on special use permits or special use considerations in zoning I see it referenced sort of offhand a couple times in the issues summaries but nothing is an outright recommendation I do feel like there's an overall tone towards consistency and standardization which I greatly appreciate and obviously is a weak point but that seems to be a very glaring black hole of differentiation that

Justin Wallaceis a great observation I think as we came into this project we heard special use permits, special exceptions, and frankly the negotiation process quite a bit. And I think that is something that we're going to try to mitigate as much as possible and to make sure that the zoning ordinance is clear enough in terms of the expectations so that if something can be by right, then we should allow it if it's possible to do And so we're going to be looking at ways to mitigate the applicants from having to go through the negotiations process as their only path. And I think that has been echoed in some of the technical meetings that we've had and with the community because there's a certain optics that's being presented to the community too.

and I think by allowing you know mitigating those special use permits and special exceptions would be a benefit to the community as well not just the developers so

Kirsten LockhartI'll throw a curveball and I'm gonna sound like I'm contradicting myself but I'm just sort of thinking through this an example of a buy right development in the city recently that was met with a lot of surprise was the dispensary that went in on former drugstore facility and it was by right because the use case was essentially considered the same. I do not think anyone in the neighborhood was expecting to see that pop up, and certainly not buy right, you know, sort of skating right through. So while I'm a firm believer in consistency and repeatable processes, can we get to the level of granularity in buy right that we would prevent those sort of potentially, I don't want to say unsavory, but things that would upset the community

when they find out that it was completely above board.

Justin WallaceYeah, no, absolutely. And I shouldn't just say, you know, that everything should be by right. But I guess in the context of activity centers and mixed-use development and standard development that you see in other communities that developers and applicants are not having to go through kind of the loops and the hurdles to get what they're getting by right in other communities. coming from but absolutely i mean things that might be cause a nuisance for one reason or another maybe it's causing noise i mean absolutely those those types of things are um should be reflected in the the use table and that's where yeah

Kirsten Lockhartreflecting sensitivity and then my final question is right now our special use permits um special exceptions kind of bifurcate our review processes and often we as the planning commission don't see a lot of those things they go directly to council despite the fact that they have a big impact on a small area plan or an activity center or even a comprehensive plan. So as part of your work on the zoning, is process part of that work or is it just the letter of the law?

Justin WallaceThat's a good question because the zoning ordinance, there are certain processes and procedures in the zoning ordinance, but there are also things outside of the zoning ordinance that's in the subdivision ordinance that is kind of outside of our scope. So while we are going to be looking at ways to streamline the review process, I think that's going to be part of the solution. We're going to be looking at all different kinds of facets to the zoning ordinance. So ideally in the end, the process will be more clear than it is today. but I think to answer your question yes we'll be looking within our scope as much as we can at review processes yeah

James FeatherI thank you others mr. Coleman I

Anthony Colemanjust have a quick question out of the eight issues that you kind of summarized what do you think is the most difficult one

Justin Wallacethe most difficult there you go curve question. That's kind of hard to answer. I know there's some that are, you know, there's just needs more clarity, more flexibility. I think the challenging part would probably be looking at incentivizing the community benefits because that in itself requires balance and you have to weigh priorities and what is most valuable and an objective point of view with the developer's needs, and it has to work. So that is probably going to be the most challenging effort, but also I think one of the more exciting ones because I think the community will look at it and see the personalization aspect of it too. Thank you. Yeah.

Bankhead DaviesapplicantMr. Rice, anything from you?

James FeatherThank you for this great summary. As you alluded, I've seen this once or twice before and appreciate the update for the entire commission. A couple things. I think Mr. Cunningham was getting to this when he talked about some of the developments in the city. Not all mixed, and you, I think, are aware of this, not all mixed-use development, which we're talking about focusing in the activity centers, actually occurs in the activity centers. So I'd like to make sure that whatever we do to the zoning ordinance to address mixed use is not just focused on the activity center. Maybe there's a new whatever zoning district or something to address things that are outside of the activity centers. Because they bring with them the very similar, very same kinds of concerns and issues in the part of the community,

in the part of our economic well-being. about residential in commercial districts. There's some positives to that perhaps, but our economic development people and our city council would like to see us maintain a very strong, robust commercial base and not replace everything with high density residential. So some of those are happening outside of activity centers. So I think whatever we come up with needs to reflect this. This includes some of the process things. There are process aspects of the zoning ordinance, comment or question about special uses. There are roles defined for the various review bodies in the zoning ordinance. And that's a place to address some of the things that I think she was talking about.

And I've raised this issue before. Those who have gone before me in this chair have also raised the same concerns about ensuring clarity of, you know, process clarity is one thing, but what is sensible from a review with a review standpoint of what makes the most what what what brings fidelity to our development you're bringing together a comprehensive plan and development who are the right people to look at that an objective body like the Planning Commission could well be one of those places we're out of step with our neighboring jurisdictions and some of those respects

Speaker 4mmm

James Featherone of the things that struck me about this and we have run into it for quite some time now are the inefficiencies in our process right now because of the countless special exceptions that have to be documented, reviewed, discussed and so forth. So the objectives to get past some of those, particularly in the activity centers where we're going above and beyond what the zoning ordinance is, it's a great objective. I know that's kind of the heart of what's driving this. I just want to reinforce the importance of getting that as right as we can. You've talked about what's community needs. When you use that word community, what do you mean? Who are you talking about? Which community?

Justin WallaceWhich community?

James FeatherYeah.

Justin WallaceWell, I think in general, the city. But I think it's more nuanced. you know the small area plans are neighborhood specific more detailed and so I think you know when I was at the community meeting we had individuals talking specifically about Camp Washington area and you know the multimodal hub and others talking about resiliency and tree canopy and so as a whole I think it's we're hearing a lot of voices but I think each each small area their own nuance and characteristics and priorities I think it just has to I mean when you can't compare you know Old Town to Camp Washington they're just two different contexts so I think you know we're gonna hear different things from different activity centers and that will need to be ultimately reflected and in

whatever recommendations we have it's

James Feathera bit of a loaded question just kind of what's happening around us you know there's some things we're going to it will be difficult for us to avoid in terms of development i'd just like to make sure we're talking about the development community as well um we can't grow the city and and and and we don't necessarily want to keep up with exactly or match what's going on in the neighbor neighboring communities or neighboring jurisdictions but we're going to be working with the same people who would like to bring some of the same things including some benefits to the city and you know I hope they're engaged as a stakeholder as well as all the communities but others anything else

Justin Wallacethank you well thank

James Featheryou very enlightening of you really useful discussion I think you've hit the nail on the head a lot of the cases and the issues you've heard so far you've heard some reinforcement for some of those and and some of you have heard maybe not specifically on this list. So thank you.

Justin WallaceI appreciate your time. Look forward to next steps. Thank you. Thank you.

Paul CunninghamDid you get what you wanted from tonight's discussion? Oh, that's a good question.

James FeatherI usually ask that question.

Paul CunninghamDid you get what you wanted from tonight's discussion?

Justin WallaceI think so. We're excited to be in Fairfax, and I think we've collected a lot of information, And it sounds like we're at least heading in the right direction. And so I think we're good. Yeah. Appreciate that.

James FeatherWe look forward to the next steps. Okay. Next item on the agenda in our work session, the final item on the work session, is the continued discussion of the proposed fiscal year 2026, fiscal year 2030 capital improvement program. discussion in December, raise some concerns. What we were seeing, welcome also our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Martinez, here this evening at our request to perhaps answer some of the questions and address some of the concerns we have. But I'll let you start, Mr. Napdee, with anything you might want to present. Great. Thank you. Then we need to give a little more background.

Paul NabtistaffYes. I'll try to be brief. Just want to make sure everyone's up to speed with where we are and provide a little bit of background of what we've heard from you so far. So a quick recap of our schedule. The Planning Commission first received a briefing from the city manager in November and we continued our discussions on December 9. We are now here highlighted in red January 13. This is our final opportunity to have a work session on this topic because at your next meeting, January 27, we will have our public hearing to hear your final recommendations to City Council and we are held to that date because you are scheduled to present your recommendations to City Council on their first work session in February on February 4. A quick recap of the Planning

Commission's role. A couple of the key bullets here are to determine conformance of proposed projects within the CIP with a comprehensive plan. This is something we haven't had to spend as much time on recently because each project in the CIP indicates its relationship to the comprehensive plan. So the Planning Commission's role lately has been to advise City Council on priorities among proposed projects. This is assuming that the City Council may have to make decisions about which projects to prioritize and some to defer to later dates and to anticipate future considerations. The goal here is to identify components of the comprehensive plan that may not be in the CIP yet to make sure that the City Council is aware of that or things that might be in

the CIP and to just make sure that those are identified and called out as being important in the comprehensive plan. So for developing our recommendations, the type of information we've gone through so far we looked at the Planning Commission recommendations for last year's CIP we looked at projects that are specifically identified in the smaller your plans as well as those that are specifically identified in the comprehensive plan we looked at new capital improvement projects that were not in previous CIPs that are applicable to comprehensive plan and since we just adopted a major update to the comprehensive plan in October of this year we looked at new comprehensive plan priorities identified some of those that

relationships to the CIP including some that already have CIP projects one thing I wanted to go over with you today before continuing is that we have some additional Planning Commission recommendations from previous years after the previous meeting the Planning Commission asked that we send the some of the revolution resolutions to City Council from years prior to last year's CIP review so so for last year's CIP review we sent you the list of items included projects related to transportation parks and recreation sustainability and natural environment and then following that we sent you the years going back to FY 25 to or FY 21 to FY 25 sorry that's a typo in there it says 27 and a couple of the things that the recurring themes that are

noticed in looking at these in multiple years the Planning Commission suggested prioritizing pedestrian safety whether it be as a whole or identifying specific projects and did want to note that over the course of these years specifically a pedestrian master plan and a safe streets for all or vision zero plan were recommended those are now underway as part of the same project in combination with the old town circulation study so those have been funded there have been consistent recommendations related to parks whether it be about the parks master or about specific projects. For several years, there were specific recommendations to support the Willard-Shirtwood Community Center, which has now received all the funding that's been requested.

And there have been recent recommendations to support projects that are listed in the fairly new environmental group of projects in the CIP, which just came about in the past two years. And lastly, I wanted to mention for the FY21 to 25 year, this was the first year where a recommendation was made after the comprehensive plan was adopted in 2019. We included a set of recommendations from the newly developed implementation guide at that time and identified potential upcoming projects or upcoming efforts that should influence the CIP. There are 37 action items in here. I did want to point out that among these 37 at least 29 of them have had some kind of progress related to them most of them are not specific projects most of

them are general concepts and so we've had projects that relate to those concepts so many of them are ongoing so not the kind of things that we can check off and say they're done they'll keep but keep going but just wanted to identify how that has been impacted over the past several years in that attachment with those list of actions from the implementation guide at that time was included in your packet. Lastly I wanted to remind the Planning Commission of some of the comments that we heard about potential items to provide feedback to the City Council along this year. This is what we heard from you at your last work session on December 9. First that acquisition of County property art continues to be a priority as land is one of the resources

that we lack for some of the things that we're trying to accomplish in the We should continue to support school facilities and the types of requests that are being made related to schools. Multimodal transportation safety continues to be a priority. Two exceptions to this. It was noted that the previous questions that were provided on a proposed traffic signal at University Drive and Layton Hall Drive may still be a concern. I want to note that we did reach out to transportation staff about this project and they identified of the Willard Sherwood Community Center traffic study is believed that that signal is now warranted again which is why that project has returned also the Planning Commission stated that they noticed waning interest in the Country

Hub Club Hills connector trail this is something that is still in the design phase and we'll be hearing more about it in the in the coming months planning Commission wants to recognize external funds that are received this is focusing situations where the city is able to obtain external funds to pay for items that are in the CIP so we aren't as dependent on the general fund. A lot of this is transportation products because there's so many programs for us to receive those funds in Virginia but it can apply to other things as well and that we support previous investments. This was getting at situations where the city's already invested in certain projects whether it be design or other efforts that we should continue to invest or contribute towards those

And then lastly, not listed here, but the planning commission had some questions about the varying amounts in the course of the CIP as it was presented. And so we wanted to note to you that there was a document that was sent to you that was sent to us from our finance department that showed some potential adjustments. This is a draft, but it is something that the finance department is considering that will help even this out. And as the chair noted, the CFO, JC Martinez, is here and can answer questions about this. So lastly, to confirm the goal of tonight's discussion is to confirm from the Planning Commission the types of items or the specific items that we want to discuss in our resolution to the city council.

We don't have to work out our exact language yet. Staff will work on that and send that to you for review with some instructions on how to provide feedback to make sure that we're not having any private meetings. But that's something we can continue to work on before our next meeting. And then we'll have that information ready at your public hearing. That will be for January 27th. And, of course, even at the public hearing, we can continue to revise the language if you want to make some last-minute adjustments in a public setting. so that will get us ready and have us prepared to make a presentation to City Council on February 4th so that's all I have for my presentation happy to answer any questions and welcome to discussion

James Featherin the presentation package you have some some helpful backup material which I hope you all have a chance to look at as well you know intend to cover those I suppose specifically identify projects new projects in the CIP we talked about some of those previously mm-hmm

Paul Nabtistaffyeah we can go through those those were in the previous presentation so I didn't want to go through them again unless you want to or if you have specific questions about any of them we can go to through them

James Featherwould commissioners like to see those again we're prepared to just have a discussion I think the challenge I put out at our last meeting was for you to come in prepared to put on the table you know what some of your top items are you think we should be emphasizing to the city council in our recommendations particularly those related to the comprehensive plan we virtually always in our report affirm the general compliance of the cip with the comprehensive plan if there are areas that you've seen that does not appear to be the case feel free to identify those I did want to I just do what I did I do one thing this afternoon that I thought about mr. napty provided the fiscal year 2630 draft CIP project specifically

identified in the comp land he provided that list I went through that list as well see if there have been previous appropriations for those which projects and he's captured you know those like the West Drive property or acquisition not previously appropriated in the plan for this year some others previously appropriated one presumes we're not going to make a recommendation all of a sudden stop something that's now in progress like the climate adaptation resiliency plan for EVs readiness plan solid waste management things like that these were appropriated in fiscal year 2025. van dyke master plan implementation can we put a lot of emphasis in parks that was appropriated using arpa funds for example um and then he identified a few

specific to some of the activity centers um fern street neighborhood connectors already appropriated and so on. Germantown Road, Route 29 improvements and corridor improvements, not previously appropriated, now in for fiscal year 2026. These don't rely on general fund balances. They take advantage of other outside funding sources, but they do address some of the transportation issues and needs in the city. and other things that are one other thing that popped out at me as in fiscal year 2026 not previously appropriated was the smart smart scale funding appropriative or a line signed attributed to the South Street extension so that's a project fiscal year 2026 important that will be an important piece of the street grid that we've been talking about around Old Town a number of

other ones on the list not appropriated previously but they're in the out years as well North Fax East West Roadway fiscal year 28 University Drive Leighton Hall intersection this will year 27 so just to give you a feel for some of the things that were on that list that mr. Napkey provided in his staff report definitely some appearing in 26 some down the road many already appropriated perhaps important to continue to emphasize the broad concepts behind some of these as Mr. Napti outlined parks and rec pedestrian safety transportation improvements and so forth so just a little bit more background at least from my analysis there's somebody that the chief financial officer provided potential changes what what's the state of these

they certainly help balance the concerns that we had this for the record the one of the concerns that struck us was it felt infeasible to really do everything that was on the list starting in 2026 so it's gonna be difficult for us to perhaps make recommendations if we didn't really know what might be deferred this is very helpful to guide that but I don't know if you want to make any further comments about that as well so so it's clearly pushing some things down the road I'm not sure what the sense of agreement is elsewhere in the city or with the City Council of course if we concur with timing on some of these I find the and many of them are very important to the comp plan we can say that too

Mr. Gunningham

Paul CunninghamIn looking at the previous printed copy or the draft copy of the comprehensive plan one of the things I noticed in getting to the rather high 83 million dollar number with there are a significant number of projects that had been added new this year and it was very nice to follow some of the original requested guidance that those to be bolded when projects are added new out of the five-year cycle working its way through but it did highlight the number of projects that were added new to that year and now looking down some of this list that we grant provided tonight I am seeing some other projects that said that some of these projects have been moved to out years to let it flow more easily I think

that's a benefit one concern that I would have out of this is that when I look at schools capital projects I don't see any projects that the schools have we've just passed a 220 million dollar bond project our bond for major renovation of two elementary schools in the high school roof but aside from that and there are a significant number of projects listed between pages 169 and 175 that are listed essentially as applying to all schools whether it be painting whether it be carpeting and tiles I don't I didn't get a sense of how those fit with renovation and I don't get a sense how many of these smaller projects and you know twenty five fifty a hundred thousand dollars fit and they don't appear on the new budget line in the out years does does

the school board not have a plan for capital improvements to use money out of the city's budget for programs that aren't related to the major renovation or how do they fit together I guess is my question since I'm not seeing any line items for 28 29 and 30 and what I believe is one of the line items from 26 has been moved back to 28 so that's prudent in movement as we're making progress but how are we since we don't talk to the school board anymore about or or the department heads anymore about what projects they have come coming through how do we communicate what they're trying to do so that we have a better understanding of how they're dealing with the CIP

Speaker 4sure so Commissioners thank you for having here tonight regarding that question I work very closely with the school board school board chair and also the superintendent of schools Jeff Blattenburg he actually was in the other room in the work session room tonight presenting his FY 26 budget as well to the school board which kind of mirrored this I will say that to your point the school board and the school bond referendum just passed you know 70% for the 220 million dollar school bond for the two elementary schools and for the high school group. Understanding that we, the city, the school board are still trying to get some momentum in that specifically in the upcoming FY 26 budget trying to set money aside to start doing some A&E, some community

engagement to figure out what is needed, what is, we know what is needed based on but more of how they wanted to look and then what the priorities are as well. The reason for the, these are my words, the sparse school capital projects in the CIP, specifically in the out years, is the school board knows and realizes that this is city funds that they, and I do my air quotes, control or request. They also understand that on an operational side, not CIP related, but on an operational side, we are starting to see increasing tuition contract costs. So they're trying to balance that request and I guess the stress of additional funding requests while we're trying to figure out how to best utilize a $220 million potential bond as a maximum.

So they're not wanting to over-ask and say, we need more and more and more to do whatever needs to be done specifically for the middle school or the high school because they also are aware that in the coming years five seven years down the road There's potentially going to be another ask another bond referendum to start addressing those needs within those two specific schools Hoping I answered your question there Commissioner

Paul CunninghamI think that answers it partly and I guess wonder I I wonder, was there any benefit, since we have streamlined the process, to the Planning Commission being able to talk to the department heads and ask them, are you getting what you need, what you have submitted to city council, I mean, what you have submitted to the city manager and to yourself for that? How is that being filtered coming through? you know and general communication to say are you looking at these kinds of things going forward do you have what you need and right now what we got we've gotten was a piece of paper we got a briefing from the former city manager and you've been responsible on answering questions but but our communication has

been diminished as I would see it an example I would use for that is that the station garage has been on the discussion block for a number of years now right a couple of weeks ago we just had our first significant snow in several years which highlighted the fact of plowing streets you've got to remember how to do that if you don't use it you know if you don't use it you forget and then I drove through the library parking lot because my wife needed to return a book that was and what i noticed was a significant number of police vehicles parked in the library parking lot because it's covered and i don't know how that relates to the parking garage that they're talking about but all of these things seem to be interconnected

when we're asking do you have what you need what are your priorities uh and are they aligned with what's coming out of staff so that we have a good dialogue about all of these things why things are being done as well as what's being done I

Speaker 4think those are all valid points and comments priorities have to compete with resources and unfortunately and there is a limited number of resources I think it's that collaborative conversation between the department heads of what are the highest priorities in compared to what we have as resources as well what city council the planning commission and other boards and commissions prab comes to mind of what their priorities are as well if you look at the draft basically revision on that was presented to you the police parking garage is sort of being deferred that is a potential we are hoping to hear back from a grant that we submitted to Congress specifically an economic development initiative also known as an earmark if those funds come in prior to

the budget being proposed then we would go ahead and actually keep that in line for FY 26 hence there's that resource therefore we we can make that priority happen if not then you start competing against other priorities and potentially try to defer that not not delete it but defer that back and again try to rebalance and reallocate in the out years if need be

Paul CunninghamI understand that and I think it's a good process one of the questions that we have just been asked by mr. Napty is to prioritize what we feel is the most important part of the So that we would think that these are the things that we would, the planning commission would think should be looked at first. One of the things we don't think about is that each one of us is a resident of the city and all of this costs money. And if you're going to pay for these projects in the way we have changed financially over the years, residential is paying more than commercial at this point in carrying the workload. so every time we say pay for this and this and this and this what we're saying is my back pocket is feeling flush here take this from me and use it to do this

stuff so all of the things we do have a personal relationship as well as a relationship to everybody in the city the more we spend the more we have to pay for and we're the ones that are going to pay for it so I think in the communication process of saying how do we prioritize some of those discussions will be left with you you know the city manager and and you and the council to make those decisions but it informs our decisions when we have those kind of discussions to know what we're recommending what is what is gaining priority what is not and and whether we're so flush that we can say hey 83 million no problem or wow 56 million is that still doable or if affordable housing is the thing am I going to raise taxes on the lowest end of the

population and create that many more people who need affordable housing right so it's all a balancing act and getting to an ultimate goal so I appreciate you know the things that have gone on and I think we've got a well put together CIP the debt service aspect is one of the things that I think would be a priority for us to look at and say are we staying fiscally responsible as opposed to saying you know unlike the federal government who is willing to pay for our you know our present with our children's future are we going to stay more conservative and keep us in balance to keep that triple-a bond rating not to overreach recognizing we can't have everything we want

Speaker 4and I think you're absolutely correct I think the key word there was balance trying to balance the priorities with the resources ultimately with the Planning Commission and other boards and commissions are recommending along with my recommendation to the city manager and then ultimately City Council as well and if I could really quickly trying to balance not only within what projects have gotten funded So I'll try to make a case here of sort of our thought process and discussions with the previous deputy city manager, Val Marie, the current acting city manager, Melanie Zipp, where specifically in Parks and Recreation, Parks and Recreation has Willard Sherwood sort of still going on. That's about $60 million over the course of its life as an initial investment.

Thias Park was just approved. That's about $11 million. So those are two big projects just within the parks domain. So trying to potentially pause and defer on Van Dyke for a couple of years and then balance that to other areas or other departments may seem beneficial. Of note, and I heard you say kind of earlier, so previously Van Dyke was appropriated $2 million via ARPA funds in FY23. That's sort of still sitting there in discussions with Stacy Summerfield, the director of Parks and Recreation. She feels that that $2 million is enough to sort of carry her for the next two years, free up a little bit of capacity, specifically in public works and the project managers, to start focusing more on Van Dyck as well.

And so more funding can come via the CIP as designated there.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Yeah, there were, I think, at least five major projects that were looking to be funded in this year. vehicle garage fire station three Sherwood Van Dyck and the property yard and those are all important projects but what can we do reasonably is getting us back into our prioritization discussion so thank you

James Featherso what is your priority all of the above one of my concerns is just the capacity of the city again this is a city council concern and the city management concern about the capacity to actually carry these out not to mention the residential capacity the residents capacity to pay for it but you know that's what's making this particularly difficult here and considering the magnitude of the growth even in the reduced case general fund expenditures projected expenditures is a 75% increase over what's proposed the adopted for 20 It's an improvement from the 156% previously.

John LytleapplicantCorrect.

James FeatherBut the question is, do we really have the capacity? Again, it makes it hard for us to prioritize. But, you know, we can still focus on the big things. Others?

Paul CunninghamYou asked what was my priority. One, do the public safety agencies have what they need to operate on a daily basis So that we have adequate public safety available in police in fire in sewage and sanitation To see that see that the basic infrastructure and protective structure is functional Then do we have the additional? People that we need which is not really CIP but but adequate to staff the functions we have To keep it in balance Next do we have the things that we need to keep the city a place that we would all like to live aside from The Davies and some of us who lived here for a long time There are people with young children in schools that would like to keep this a viable community by having great schools so

communicating with the schools to see that they have the essential needs they have for improvement when it gets to a 220 million dollar bond issue with with no meat on the bone if you will that raises a big question mark for me as opposed to saying this is what we need and this is what we're going to do with it and that to me is much more important so it surprises me but I'm an old guy that we would vote for here's the big box fill it with whatever you need as opposed to here's all the stuff we need how do we fit it into the box and that's that's a challenge that I have with understanding the changing priorities in the city but what do we have in capital improvement which goes to updating facilities that are getting old and becoming unsafe do we understand enough

of what they are to to deal with the safety concern there and that falls back into those are the core priorities and then beyond that what do we have in the capability to reach out and make it better and the tax ability to fund those things should be balanced with the entire budget and kept in in an affordability standpoint recognizing that you know these may be the best of times but when you wake up and they turn out to be the worst of times you can and that's where we go so we keep it in balance and that was the operative word and you caught on with that so keep it balanced those are my essential priorities working down and then there are programs we've talked about roads and improving what's in the in the small area plans for the basic core things to

keep them moving toward the future that the vision has laid out.

Speaker 4Understood, Commissioner. And I will say that in discussions, again, with the acting city manager, Melanie Zipp, some of the public safety department heads as well, I'll sum it up as life safety and security from an operational standpoint is paramount for us on an operational daily basis as well. So that's what we want to focus on. Fund replacement costs on apparatuses for the fire station, fund for any vehicles that need replacement. Try not to defer those for the police department or the fire department or even public works as well. Those are the big ones. And then, again, the key word, trying to balance between all the departments their needs and their priorities as well. As listed in part of the biggest expense upcoming in the next few years is the property yard.

about a third or a quarter of all city workers actually work at and has not had any significant investment in probably 50 plus years. I know they've had the firing range which is a public safety aspect there. That is probably the newest nicest thing that's gone there but everything else has sort of just been patched for the last couple of decades.

Paul CunninghamAnd when we look at a property we apparently acquired in 23 but may take possession of in 26 27 the other county property yard

Speaker 4West Drive then

Paul Cunninghamthat falls into the the planning aspect of the property yard for how do we keep the facility moving forward in an efficient way so that as the adjustments are made that they're made in an orderly manner and keep keep those services up to a high level where we have them yes sir so

Kevin Dentonthat's

Paul Cunninghamthat's the essence of what and by the way pages five six seven in the CIP I think it's excellent reading for anybody it's the CIP review team who all participates in making this process work page six that's how we go about this process and that's imperative for us to be playing in as I would see it and then page 7 is a good overview of how it should work and moving it forward so you've got excellent guidance out in the CIP for us to work with so thank you it's a good document it's just when it gets into odd budget numbers raises questions on occasion thank you

James FeatherMr.

Kirsten LockhartChair if I can make a recommendation for the Planning Commission sort of statement to the City Council not that we shouldn't get down into specific projects that align with the comprehensive plan I get why that's important but perhaps we should open by speaking to the need for the importance of the feasibility studies the prioritization studies the long-term capital studies because the sense I got sense of urgency these are all hair fires we have to put them all out now and they all landed squarely in fy26 right and not to say that they aren't real problems but when you approach them from that way you end up as um commissioner cunningham pointed out kind of throwing good money after bad right buying new police vehicles without a garage to put them in patching a property

yard that we're only going to be there for a few more years so sort of as the voice of reason as the drafters of the comprehensive plan um pointing out the need to sort of think through some of these larger investments even the the point about the school board the school bond rather we understand tactically based on the assessments of the buildings what's wrong with them but there's a usefulness aspect that you're obviously the city is obviously looking to get community engagement in as well to make sure that again not throwing good money after something that won't be usable ten years in the future so as the as the voice of planning and as the voice of the comprehensive plan sort of preface by saying we understand there's hair fires

and staying the course with these strategic thoughts.

James FeatherVery thoughtful, yes. Thank you. Others? Mr. Rice? Any thoughts? Mr. Coleman. When I was looking at this myself, I started drafting some kind of words, trying to think we might put some projects under it. the context you set maybe is that we don't have to quite do that but I sort of caught some thoughts that still capture the higher level things that we we've continued to talk about and maybe we need to capture some of the urgency thing comments that you've said too and the feasibility schools continue to be important there's cup there may be competition coming soon for city resources for funding our curriculum improvements and enhancements and for high-quality education that we want to provide

and the facilities that we need to provide them in, that they need to be safe, they need to be modern, and so forth. So at the same time, doing a routine maintenance to keep things going, as Mr. Cunningham alluded to in our public safety area. It's the same thing for education. But we're not the body to probably make those kind of judgments at this point. needs and the importance we see, the importance that's reflected in the comprehensive plan in all these areas. Projects to improve and expand major city facilities that support these essential services, community needs, stayed the course where we've committed is a good strategy. We're not going to back out from the Willard Sherwood Center at this point, I think.

at the same time we're seeing a convergence of some very high priority projects understanding and doing some of the priorities the feasibility studies that are driving some of these we've talked about a property yard feasibility study we haven't seen the results of that but we're showing huge amounts of money in the out years budget let's make sure that we complete the work and make sure we have a really well planned enhancement based on that study i don't think we can count on west drive as becoming our future property yard there are other uses that the city's contemplated for that so parks and open space potential site for future school so we may have to live and adapt what we have elsewhere in the city

for the facilities but let's complete the study fire station three we've started that process Does the timing warrant the pace that's anticipated here? The police garage, we're already contemplating a different pace to do that. I don't know what these needs are, right? But it's important to understand when we have to make difficult finance decisions, well, the council does the things that are on our minds. But continue to enhance and provide those services. Public safety is very critical. You did talk about, somewhere along the way, external funding sources. I think we need to continue to emphasize the importance of going after those. Public-private partnerships have been brought up in the past for some facilities, such as parks.

Grants, as we've received for the tree program, for example, other things out there like that are going to be key to helping us meet some of these needs. So part of it's additional effort, perhaps, on the part of staff to identify more and more opportunities. Foundation I think it was a key step to looking for external funding for things like this environmental and sustainability Initiatives there may be opportunity out there Earmarks as you talked about we need to be aggressive at looking for those These are all important and maybe the projects we have Bring them important enough that they'll get passed and funded But which which one or two we might pick and choose? It's probably a bigger thing. So let's I think a big approach that Ms

aren't laid out is important. And the thing that we've talked about it virtually every year, pedestrian safety, bicyclist safety in the city continues to be more and more of a concern as more and more cars go through here. Up there, we need to stay the course. I'm not sure there's any specific project that we can pick here or there. There are specific sidewalk projects that are out there that may enhance that. But things that we can do to keep our people safe on the streets get them off the streets sometimes with good trails systems i think are important and they provide recreation opportunities as well so trying to bring together multiple needs is also a good thing to set help set priorities

if we can bring together recreational opportunity of a trail with the transportation opportunity provide connectivity in into and through the city and provide connections to our businesses it handsome be enhanced and thrive those are probably good projects you know things that we can get a lot of bang for the buck so how do we identify with some of those are trails in some cases we've talked about this already can meet some of those needs as well so I think it's a difficult this year in particular considering the magnitude of the increase not going for sure still with the capacity of the city will be to fund some of these this is a year what might be nice to have a better sense of where the council is willing to go on budget

to drive the CIP instead of trying to make decisions on the CIP before we have determined the the will of the council in terms of what they're gonna ask to be paid for it's just this year just seems backwards for and maybe for good reason maybe it'll make our new council do a little harder work but it makes our work harder to at this point I'm not sure that's helpful but those are my musings see a head nod here there I don't think we've managed to do what we hope to do

Paul NabtistaffI wouldn't say that I think I mean generally what I'm hearing is is a desire to provide recommendations that are more general targeting council in a certain direction as I think about these things as opposed to calling out specific projects which is something we've done in the past we've kind of done a mix before but if you want I can kind of read through what I have here and if we if we want to proceed with this I can send you this full email list and we might say you know maybe we don't need quite as many things or you know this is these two should be combined or something like that but if for the most part what I've written has been kind of general conversations about what priorities are how we should go about thinking about this as opposed to

specifically identifying projects and it seems to me that's what you're trying to convey

James FeatherWhat do you think all?

Paul CunninghamCan we do 56 million?

Speaker 4If council so choose it I'm assuming we can.

Paul CunninghamWhat's the implication on the tax rate because when I look at the rest of the budget pages it looks like most of the budget projections are fairly stable. back there hair down from last year moving across and so you've got stability going across all of the budget projections and yet you've got instability coming in the CIP which means that something's got to give someplace if we're gonna stay within the the total parameter so that's the reason that why I would ask that question

James FeatherI did have one question maybe before you answer that the ones we're looking at here or general fund and that's probably a good focus does that include debt financing money that goes into the general fund from debt or how does that work

Speaker 4no so the projects that were listed here are general fund but they're not debt debt financing is not listed in here so we have a plan of finance a generic general plan of finance we are actually on the process of doing our second tranche or second debt issuance probably within the next month or so 30 days 45 days about 54 million dollars that was on the previous approved CIP up to 2028 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 8 of about 300 million dollars so currently we do about 40% pay go meaning 40% is over over the course of the five or six years of the CIP is paid with cash anywhere between 10 to 14 million dollar transfer from the general fund to CIP projects is cash the remaining balance about 60% is debt finance but it's not all at once so for

the example of the school bond we won't pull 220 million dollars all at once we'll phase that as we need it very similar to here some of these projects they need money for design for engineering for feasibility but that's kind of relatively small until you get into construction construction's where you really burn through a lot of this cash so we'll try to time it and that's sort of what you see here at the fire station and some of these other properties and discussions with public works and their project managers is like no we're a little behind on our gantt chart of where we think we're going to be we can push it back a bit and not need that debt financing until year two year three year four from now so we'll go

and talk to uh davenport our financial advisors go talk to the rating agencies and any potential debt into the issuers who can finance some of this debt at a later time so to commissioner cunning cunningham's point regarding the 56 million we don't need 56 million dollars right now so the through this and say how much cash do we have to sort of finance what we need and then do a planned debt issuance at a later time to give you an example that 54 million dollars you're looking at in interest and principal payment of about 2.5 million dollars per year so we would plan that out going forward of we need to cover x number of revenue whether that's just appreciation or a real estate tax rate increase to ensure that we can cover that two and a half million dollars of principal and interest payments for the next number of years.

Answer your question.

Paul CunninghamOkay. You've got six million dollars in debt that's going to be paid off on the debt page that you have in the CIP. Is that going to be paid off with cash or is that going to be refinanced?

Speaker 4I'm hoping that is going to be paid off with cash. That's the process that we're in right now. $5.5 million that we're trying to see if we can cover it in FY26 because I do not want to refinance debt that's in my mind these are my words it's like using a credit card to pay off another credit card and that is not good financial practice I do not like carrying debt personally or within the city and I'd rather pay it off

Paul Cunninghamokay thank you sure that's good answer

Bankhead Daviesapplicantthat's right that's right

James Featherokay did you have more or

Paul Nabtistaffwhat do you want me to read through kind of the notes I took on how we're going to start a list of comments and then we can wheel it down from there might

James Featherbe helpful to summarize them okay

Paul Nabtistaffwell I think I'll start with Commissioner Lockhart an opening statement but said make statements about prioritization of feasibility studies to make sure that funds are being used thoughtfully and then going through topics we have that general question do public safety agencies have what they need to operate do we have adequate well the staff part is more is kind of outside of the TIP issue. Do schools have what they need for improvements? Do we know what facilities are becoming unsafe? Projects should be placed on making these situations better. Support for small-year-plan transportation networks. Some of these might be duplicative, so we'll work on wheeling them down. Schools continue to be important even as other competing demands arise.

Projects to expand and improve existing facilities are important. Stay the course once projects begin. Let's make sure we use the feasibility study to properly guide the property yard project in terms of next steps. Does the timing of the fire station 3 project warrant its pace? Environmental projects continue to be important. Pedestrian and bicycle safety continue to be important. Also important to focus on projects that serve multiple purposes such as transportation and recreation through trails projects. And the last one, I couldn't read my own handwriting, continue to emphasize importance what it was not just transportation projects but including other grants things like the Park Foundation as well as public-private partnerships

Betsy Briggsby voiceit's great did you mention the sewer system

Paul Nabtistaffno I see under the first under public safety as Commissioner Cunningham was reading those he combined sewer with public safety but that is something that we should also identify as a separate item

James Featherstormwater and wastewater management separately funded enterprises.

Paul NabtistaffYes.

James FeatherRight, we generally are self-funded. And what I recall looking at them, they're pretty stable year on year as well. I think the program they have in place is quite rateable in terms of maintenance and enhancements where required. So, yeah, those we tend not to come in. I like some of the technology infrastructure as well. be relatively smaller anyway some are funded in other ways but we can offline do some more massaging of these

Paul Nabtistaffyeah as we prepare these we will I know there's some that overlap with each other so we will consolidate them and then when you receive a list we can move them around and if

James Featheryou have some written words Ms. Lockhart that you've put together please share them I'll share mine back

Paul NabtistaffThat would be great as well, yes.

James FeatherAny else? Nope.

David HoustonapplicantOkay.

James FeatherAll right. We will reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff report.

Paul NabtistaffThank you again, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. for tomorrow night city council meeting the one work session item we have will be the presentation you received tonight on the potential zoning text amendments related to smaller your plans this will be also an introduction to them we'll spend a little more time with them giving them some background as city council general has not been involved with this as a planning commission but also with the new city council we're trying to bring them up to speed also for your awareness before tomorrow night city council meeting there will be the swearing in ceremony at 6 6 pm followed by a reception on january 28th they will receive the presentation on the davies proposal that you

received tonight some other items of interest that night will be a update on the green building policy the planning commission received an update that on this in october i think there have been some changes since then then heading to February 4th they will reschedule to for them to receive the presentation from the Planning Commission on the CIP we're also potentially going to give them a brief introduction to the implementation guides because at your next meeting you also be talking about your annual report including a moda you got updates to City Council and we see has an opportunity to give them a little background on that they have several other work sessions that night they'll be receiving a presentation on the accessory dwelling units potential zoning text

amendments planning commission last had a work session on this over the summer there have been some updates but this is primarily to bring the new city council up to speed on that project they'll receive a pre-application work session on a proposal what they're calling the the ox B this is the former Enterprise Center on University Drive proposals for residential with ground floor retail and it looks like the application will be a special use permit only which is why plenty which is not receiving this presentation they will also receive a or scheduled to have a post application work session on the Gatewood Plaza proposal this is office building on Fairfax Boulevard City Planning Commission is scheduled to have that

work session at your next meeting on January 27 more about January 27 your next meeting we will have our public hearing on the capital improvement program I mentioned the Gatewood Plaza proposal you will receive a presentation on the Planning Commission annual report and implementation guides assuming these are ready to go then we can discuss them with the City Council when you meet with them on February 4th. There are three other potential pre-application briefings that you may be having on 27th or shortly after that. There is a proposal for a conglomeration of properties in the site south of the Block A proposal in the block bounded by University Drive and Chambers Road and Sager Avenue and Armstrong Street. This is actually one property removed from

the Davies property to the north there's a proposal there for mixed-use development the far property on Main Street there is a proposal for that site to be used as a hotel and conference center while preserving the existing bar house and there is an incoming proposal for the redevelopment of the Fairfax Circle shopping center this is something that was discussed somewhat as plan so we've expected that for quite some time last thing I wanted to mention is that some of you may be having issues with your city emails or otherwise getting information from us so if you have any concerns about that please let me know chair Fetter let me know that he receives support from our IT department to set everything out to make sure everything is functioning properly

so if we need to do that with anyone else then we're happy to do so so that's today looking forward to working with you all in the new year

James Featherany questions for mr. Napoli yeah the other thing we talked about and some some of you folks I think may prefer to use personal emails I don't think there's a prohibition against that but just be aware if there's a freedom of information request that ever comes in that they want to know where your city business is it's on your personal email they'll be in your personal email so maybe some incentive from your personal standpoint to consider you consider focusing on your your city email and keeping things separate but that's apparently a personal choice i don't think of the requirement on the part of the city all right i personally use my city email for virtually everything it's easy to include a foia disclosure he has a has a signature line as well which looks really official

if nothing else but uh anyway if you have any questions on that talk to mr napty or or miss Jillian, I'm sure she can work with you on your preferred mode of communication. All right. Oh, yeah, don't forget your disclosure. We've been requested by the deputy city clerk to complete those and file them by basically the end of the month. I've got mine here. I was going to give it to Tina to give to her, but I'll just bring it when I meet with you tomorrow and drop it off. Okay, commission comments. mr hatton the bar meets this week yeah mr cunningham

Paul Cunninghamwelcome to the new year congratulations to our continuing chair and vice chair thank you very much for your leadership in the past we look forward to it continuing

Matthew Ricemr rice i attended a parks and recreation advisory board meeting on the 8th and it was a long one we talked about a lot of different projects the parks and Recreation Department is has complex large projects that are simultaneous ongoing with a lot of money at stake so they've benefited from the help of a public works project management professional and keeping everything going as part of multiple big projects at once. There's some kind of shuffling of space. Old Town Hall will be offline for approximately 18 months while some renovations are done. Some activities may shift to some other sites in the city. As you heard a little bit, there's already some shuffling of vehicles to various places weather related comment about police vehicles

but more city vehicles being placed in other areas so amongst all the projects and things going on my request to to private the last meeting was to try to articulate what they would like us to recommend and emphasize and we reviewed the past recommendations that we've made and always had support for parks specifically for the Parks and Rec Advisory Board the Van Dyke master plan and its implementation is critical it's a really important location within the city heavily used it kind of forms the northern part of a spine that's continuous all the way from City Hall all the way up through you know Daniel's run st. Leo's and so forth the park is just really important it's also inherently tied to all the things happening with Willard Sherwood

redevelopment so there may be some senior center activities which now happen outside of Green Acres which may be partially deployed to Van Dyke and so Our support for that is their request. And so, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, there are some things that's very specific. We won't perhaps name specific sports or European ball games that they tend to play a lot outside. But generally, the importance of Van Dyke is quite clear, I think, to most of us. that kind of it is a critical kind of noted that top of an activity corridor and so I think that was a request will it share what is it a 50% design place I think that indicates even though we joked about pulling back we're not going to pull back once it reaches a certain phase we're fully committed we go

In the same vein, supporting other projects that are well on the way, perhaps things like the Eaton Place redesign. We just shouldn't be undercutting funding and progress on projects that have had years and years and years of support and where we've already outlaid hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, in you know design and engineering and you know feasibility and then undercutting just seems sort of silly that's a personal view the next parks and recreation advisory board meeting will be toward the beginning of February and it'll fall after our joint meeting with City Council so that's all I have thanks that's

James Featherplenty thank you for the

Anthony Colemanfacade interior program we had their application so we actually are looking to we're looking at some other options to replace those funds so that was the one update from that good to see everybody for the new year and I just wanted to commend the city employees for doing a phenomenal job with the snow removal I had the privilege of traversing plenty of Fairfax County in Arlington and they did not touch the city so I just want to give a shout out to them

James Feathergood thank you um not much from me at this point I attended the City Council retreat on Saturday for the session that was presented by community development planning well represented by mr. hired and mr. napty and mr. Sutphin so I wanted to hear what the council was hearing it was well done well presentation that covered the whole range of things from planning to zoning to development and so forth so met another face-to-face another one of who's one of our new city council members so looking forward to planning some discussions with them so I would like to do some maybe two-on-two conversations with with them to talk about planning Commission so I'll see what we can get set up other than that nothing else

So with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.