Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Jason Sutphinstaffbeen 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

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

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 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?

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?