Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

you you good evening welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the city of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday July 22nd 2024 first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance please join me thank you for the record we do have a quorum this evening a couple of our members are missing first order of the next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda mr. chairman I move the agenda be adopted as presented second it's been moved and seconded any proposed changes okay all those in favor please 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 this evening if anyone is present that would like to speak to

the Commission you're welcome to come forward at this time seeing none we will move on to consideration of the July 8th 2024 meeting minutes are there any comments or changes to be made to those minutes that were issued Mr. chair I move the adoption of the minutes from the July 8th 2024 meeting as prepared second we move and seconded to approve the minutes as issued all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes unanimously moving on to our business first order of business is items not requiring a public hearing we will have a presentation by mr. Foreman a motion I think well not quite a full presentation motion to amend chapter 110 quick fairfax related to urban agriculture which we had a work session on our last meeting

yep this is a follow-up to a topic that we discussed here at Planning Commission earlier this month regards urban agriculture Planning Commission held a work session on urban agriculture on July 8th City Council held an equivalent work session on the 9th both bodies were receptive to considering zoning tax amendments to allow urban agriculture as a commercial use now the code of Virginia requires that the governing body or the Planning Commission initiate zoning tax amendments before public hearings are are held or could be scheduled so the item before you all tonight is a motion to amend the zoning ordinance and this is pertaining urban agriculture and just so you all know if the Commission does initiate these

amendments for tonight the amendments would most likely come to Planning Commission for a public hearing in September okay thank you any questions for Mr. Foreman about what we discussed last time hmm now we'll receive a motion mr. chair I move that in accordance with good zoning practice and in support of the public interest and general welfare that the City of Fairfax Planning Commission initiate amendments to the chapter to chapter 110 of the code of the City of Fairfax Virginia as part of the regular review and maintenance of the zoning ordinance articles and sections contained therein including but not limited to zoning districts and regulations site development standards and definitions

and further move that a public hearing be scheduled for consideration of set amendments second moved and seconded any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed extensions passes unanimously thank you next item on public hearings we have none this evening so we'll recess our regular meeting you know we'll go into our work session we have three at work session items this evening the first is discussion of potential zoning options for accessory dwelling units mr. Foreman all righty and mr. Harden and mr. Harden so we're both talking about this tonight and and it's a topic that's come up quite a bit recently in various contexts and the topic is of accessory dwelling units so specifically we're

talking tonight about how accessory dwelling units fit into the zone city zoning ordinance and about potential options for expanding property owners ability to construct or to use ad use accessory dwelling units on their properties what we're doing tonight is really a high-level discussion both to get the Planning Commission's general impressions about this topic and also to see to what extent the Commission might be interested in having staff investigate some of these potential alternatives at a bit of a deeper level so tonight's discussion really could be considered part one of a broader discussion the broader issue wouldn't necessarily be a quick thing there there are some aspects of this that could be done

quickly but others really could be rather complex and those complex topics would really require a good amount of public input so before we start I think would probably help to explain just what is an accessory dwelling unit there there is an actual definition in the zoning ordinance and I'll just read it here briefly an accessory dwelling unit in our ordinance is a dwelling including a separate kitchen sleeping and bathroom facilities that is attached as part of a principal single-family dwelling and is subordinate in the size to the in size to the dwelling so in in everyday terms what that means it is that an ADU an accessory dwelling unit is a separate living unit so essentially like an apartment

contained within a house or or potentially in the case of a detached accessory dwelling unit on another house's properties but the the key terms here it is that an ADU is a full dwelling unit it's part of another house or on part of another house's property and it's subordinate or accessory to the main dwelling so those points are important and it's important they're important because this term is frequently confused with other things so it's important to know just what ADUs are I think it's also important to know what ADUs are not because these two do tend to get confused with other items sometimes so for example ADUs is not an ADU is not just the the renting of a portion of a house to roommates or to housemates it is also not the issue of eliminating single

family zoning and and I bring that up not just because that's a more intensive idea than permitting accessory dwelling units but because the types of units that that process seeks to create are really fully independent fully separate units so not subordinate to another house so that's a significant distinction from a zoning perspective another thing that is not part of accessory dwelling units necessarily or short-term rentals short short-term rentals the issue of short-term rentals can often be conflated with accessory dwelling units because they're they're frequently that type of unit but short-term rentals and accessory dwelling units can function completely independently from a zoning perspective

it's possible for a jurisdiction to permit accessory dwelling units and not permit short-term rentals or vice versa for that matter so from a zoning standpoint from a legislative standpoint they're completely separate issues so that is a long introduction and I know it's a long introduction but hopefully that helps us as far as a larger discussion so you you all are probably aware of a few recent city studies have mentioned accessory dwelling units so this has been both in the comprehensive plan process and in the city's recent housing assessment that housing assessment was completed over the winter the comprehensive plan process is still underway and in both of those there have been some kind of mention of accessory dwelling units

in the comprehensive plan uh there's a housing goal and it's housing goal number one it calls for the city to support a wide range of housing types and one of the actions to support that goal like it says down here at the bottom is for the city to research changes to the zoning regulations to expand opportunities for accessory dwelling units while ensuring that they do not negatively impact the surrounding neighborhood so adus are mentioned elsewhere in the comprehensive plan as well mentioned in the section of providing housing options for seniors and for people with disabilities generally speaking the comprehensive plan takes a favorable view towards expanding opportunities for property owners to construct adus

likewise in the housing assessment one of the recurring recommendations in that assessment is to expand permission if permissions for accessory dwelling units so from the perspectives of both the overall housing mix and senior and accessible housing both of which were focus areas in the assessment the housing assessment adu options or expanding adu options was recommended the housing assessment noted that adus can increase available rental supply and and specifically as it noted for students and for single person households the assessment also noted that due to their typically small size adus generally maintain their affordability affordability if if if you recall a community-wide survey was part of the housing assessment if you read the assessment in its full you'll see that the assessment itself mentions that resident pardon me residents have mixed opinions when asked about their support of expanded use of accessory dwelling units

about half of survey respondents said that they support additional opportunities for adus the rest either opposing or being neutral on the topic and that is really part of the reason why we mention that adu regulations really do require public input it's a topic that just necessitates careful scrutiny and planning if it is to be pursued so i mentioned uh that we're talking about potential options for expanding property owners ability to construct adus and and the reason that we said expanding is because accessory dwelling units are currently allowed under certain conditions uh so before taking a look at these potential zoning changes i think it's helpful to look at just what the current standards are we won't go through all of these tonight

uh but to summarize accessory dwelling units are permitted in single family zoning districts as long as certain conditions are met now prior to 2016 this was a special use uh so requiring a hearing before city council for an accessory dwelling unit since the 2016 zoning ordinance rewrite this is permitted administratively and and there is a significant difference between those uh so importantly as of now accessory dwelling units need to be within the home itself uh so in the parlance of adus that would be an attached accessory dwelling unit as opposed to detached units there are size standards uh so the size standards ensure that these uses are accessory or subordinate to the main dwelling so for example an adu has to stay under 35 percent of the size of the home

the total house uh and has to have a maximum of the total house uh and has to have a maximum of two bedrooms uh the property owner uh must live in either the house or in the accessory dwelling unit and at least one of those units being the house or the adu needs to be occupied by either a senior uh which is defined in this case as age 55 plus or a person with a disability so those are really the main physical and operational standards if you look through the zoning ordinance and this is all in in section 355 you'll notice that there's actually about two pages of standards not surprising uh because it's a complex topic but there are some additional standards and regulations besides those that i just talked about some of those are listed here

listed here and you can see from the summary that that a lot of these additional regulations or details of the primary standards again this is complex material so ironing out details such as what happens to a accessory dwelling unit when uh the property transfers or stating that uh building and subdivision rules still apply or how inspections can take place all all of this stuff is necessary from a policy perspective even if it's not terribly exciting to look at in in the ordinance itself so we're uh we're glad to answer any questions about the current standards uh but really the main reason that we're here tonight is to look at some potential zoning options for expanding opportunities for accessory dwelling units so to that end uh mr harden will go over some of these potential alternatives

this is not an exhaustive list uh but there's really lots of of uh potential variations but i think this will provide a good introduction to some of the major concepts in adu standards and uh hopefully can hopefully can facilitate a good discussion so we can get started with uh with these right now great thank you mr foreman appreciate being here with the commission tonight and as as mr foreman noted this is not intended to be uh an exhaustive list of potential items that the commission and the council may consider but uh it's it's a process to begin the evaluation and so we're interested in thoughts um ideas feedback direction that you that you may have um on this topic so this is the list of items that that will go through and and i'll i'll try to be quick here and you will see a bit of redundancy

um as we look at the pros and cons you'll see things that are mentioned multiple places because as we look at um potentially providing alternatives um a lot of those impacts are are the same um uh regardless of of which um which um which which aspect of the the ordinance is considered for for more flexibility so first looking at expanding um the permissions for accessory dwelling units as mr foreman noted currently the single family detached districts and the zoning ordinance the rl rm rh are those that permit uh accessory dwelling units uh you do see some jurisdictions uh that allow accessory dwelling units and single family attached or in townhouses uh even so certainly something that is occurring uh places uh in

looking at at pros potential to expand the the variety of housing again limited to to three districts um at this point uh in looking at other options that may provide housing that is more accessible to amenities uh jobs transit uh shopping those sorts of things as we start to see denser housing often being located closer to those sorts of things um and perhaps being close to those things may reduce vehicle usage which is a concern uh when when looking at adus and increasing the number of dwellings within a neighborhood uh on the con side and you will see this and in a number of places and the utilities aspect is something that we'll need to explore as we step through this but just increasing the number of dwelling units obviously puts puts more strain on utilities so

um water taps and and sewer taps that would that would go along and and how does that um capacity handled within a neighborhood that was originally designed for for for something something different um also adding additional dwellings potentially in areas that are already more dense again looking at those that aren't single family detached uh are areas that that usually have a higher uh units per acre ratio already um but one of the things to take a look at next is expanding or eliminating the age or the disability requirement as mr forman noted currently the ordinance requires one occupant of either the main unit or the adu to be 55 years of age or greater or have a disability as as defined in the ordinance

um with that limitation removed perhaps there's the opportunity uh for multi for more multi-generational housing we do obviously as the commission knows have goals to provide opportunities for seniors but perhaps that allows for younger households younger tenants um also to potentially take take advantage of of these types of units um certainly would be more marketable would increase um the potential income uh for for the for the for the owner um as well as uh increase the number of potential tenants that they have looking on the cons uh for the side uh again potential for increased density if if the market is bigger uh there will there probably be more of a push uh to create these types of of units um you know could be too successful you know i think is what what these cons are speaking to um again may have some impacts on on infrastructure um

um as also as they potentially become more um uh more available uh those impacts on neighborhoods and neighborhood character and we'll touch on that a little bit more um in an item down the list here um you know may have more of an impact on neighborhood character where they're more limited today and and not as many potentially exist um again impacts on on on traffic and on congestion we see that with a few of these um and overcrowding and overcrowding uh is kind of the the colloquialism but expanding uh the occupancy of the house beyond the household um or the family is something that that may be a potential um negative associated with these on that note the next item is looking at that family requirement

so you know currently the occupancy of the combined units um has to be equivalent to to that of a family and on top of that there is an owner occupancy requirement again that either the owner needs to reside in the main unit um or the or the accessory um currently and so in looking at elimination potentially of the family requirement you'd obviously provide greater housing options potentially more diversity within the units um it would be uh probably a more readily um effective income stream for the homeowner because it truly does become more of a landlord tenant type of situation um from the administrative side one of the challenges that we have uh often with whether it's um you know a an owner and roommate situation is verifying all of those sorts of things and it's kind of a complex process as you can imagine sometimes to go through um without that it reduces some of that administrative and enforcement related issues that that we see um on on the con side you know the

there's potentially less owner oversight um there is um there's less involvement potentially of the homeowner in those units when you move away from from from the family structure again uh increase increased pressure on on utilities traffic congestion um and noted here and mr forman mentioned earlier short-term rentals currently the city doesn't permit short-term rentals it is something that we readily enforce upon it's not a prolific situation in our city the way it is some places but it is a regular issue that we are out enforcing on this type of situation could potentially increase those those those number of those those number of those those number of illegal short-term rentals um that we see

the next item is increasing the allowable square footage mr forman noted it's currently capped at 35 percent so it's a clearly subordinate um structure or or space within the structure um compared to the primary unit um that has some practicality from it if you think about you know a three-story home you know you keep it under 35 percent you potentially rent out um uh or create a accessory dwelling unit on on one floor um looking at that and jurisdictions do this differently some go up to 50 percent some go higher some some don't regulate that um necessarily but certainly has a potential of creating you know more options more variety in terms of of housing uh options that are available larger units maybe that are more livable if we are looking at um larger

um numbers of folks that that are living in these spaces having a larger space for them to dwell may make some sense um and also with the ada accessibility requirements that are that are in the ordinance currently um having a little more space may allow those issues to be addressed with greater efficiencies um on the on the cons side of things again impacts on on infrastructure potential for overcrowding and traffic um not mentioned here but something in thinking about you know goals for affordability larger units would likely be more expensive and so that those two things one of the inherent qualities of accessory dwelling units is they're usually a more affordable option than you would find

for um you know a standalone um unit or or an apartment apartment unit that may be out on the market so those two things may work a little bit in opposition of each other the next item is related to performance and design standards and this is something that that some jurisdictions also do um as well typically through zoning or some sort of a design review process and this can range from you know certain architectural um styles you know for jurisdictions that are really getting into the nuances of it um to materials you know that that are that are utilized or or other features um of the of the of the design and so on the pro side this can mitigate mitigate some of the impacts um of noise lighting views you know if those design standards are are structured around addressing

those types of issues with which often they are as i mentioned architectural design they can they can fit into the architectural style of the neighborhood um and often are well received by by the existing neighbors as it helps them to feel comfortable these these new units or or additions that are put on are going to work in concert with the character of the neighborhood on the con side these can become pretty complex as as one can can imagine um and that can work against implementation or trying to increase the availability of these types of units it may increase the costs that are associated depending on how involved the regulations become in in materials and design and those sorts of features also on the on the staff side it's a it's a lengthier process to review and approve because there'd be additional

additional um standards associated with it um and you know may require more staff to be able to to handle those reviews assessments monitoring and those other those other items that come along with that um with that approach so one that you see maybe not quite as frequently but one that you do see um as well the next one is regarding incentives um and that is something we've seen in areas that that that are you know aggressively trying to promote these types of units and those can be financial potentially from the jurisdiction they can be a streamlined permitting process that we see some places some are using pre-approved you know building plans you know building plans and site plans that a homeowner can come in and take something off the shelf and

um and submit that to the jurisdiction and they're and they're approved as long as they're consistent with that that template so a number of potential uh avenues there if it's something that that the commission would want to explore um it can't on the pro side it can it can be more efficient for the homeowner or the builder in proceeding with construction in a more efficient and timely timely way it could lessen the the financial burden on the homeowner and the landlord as well again depending um on what that incentive is but but time or or money um we'll both address uh the financial costs associated with it on the con side you know obviously less revenue to the city if you're looking at some sort of reduction in in fees or a streamlined permitting or

providing some sort of direct incentive it would also move resources that could be spent elsewhere to um to this particular uh implementation um like everything else resources are finite and those those challenges we deal with day to day on on where those those scarce resources should go um could also increase production perhaps in a way that's negative perhaps in a way that is is beyond what was anticipated um for the program but um some things to think about potentially in terms of incentives and then the last item that we wanted to touch on and this is perhaps one that we are are asked about uh maybe more frequently than than others um is detached accessory dwelling units and whether it's new or whether it's an existing structure

uh i think uh detached or perhaps what folks think of kind of uh on what accessory dwelling unit is when when they have it have it in their minds um both pros and cons again with this um standalone units on the pro side may be easier to construct which may not seem um seem intuitive but from a building code standpoint uh when an accessory dwelling unit is within an existing structure that's also being used for dwelling it becomes a a two-family dwelling and there are different um fire rating requirements and such associated with that so not necessarily as as easy as uh perhaps putting up a wall and and closing a door or something um there's a little bit more to it than that when it's a separate structure it's just a separate separate structure doesn't have those same

requirements as a a two-family and um so that that's certainly um certainly a pro uh potentially due to that those construction considerations maybe more private you know both for the tenant and for and for the homeowner landlord uh it may be preferable for that reason or for others that may be preferable to the property owner we certainly hear folks that are interested in detached units but aren't necessarily as interested in in attached units um and from a utility standpoint can be cleaner in terms of creating separate utilities as as may be needed for those units um on the con side obviously it creates a another dwelling on the lot um in in a neighborhood that doesn't have two two dwellings per lot otherwise and so that certainly creates

more density um potential effects on neighborhood character and and um what those um perceptions may be in the neighborhood um it could end up being you know putting aside some of the building code issues aside it could potentially be more expensive to build as you increase the amount of impervious surface on a lot you're bringing in different uh plan review and permitting requirements storm water those sorts of things so it it may or may not some of that you know is going to depend on a lot by lot basis depends on on on what's there um and because of some of those additional plan review steps can can be more complex administratively or at least more time consuming administratively to to review those for approval so that's that's the list um like like like we said happy to take thoughts comments

um this is just we know our first conversation as mr foreman noted we have work ahead of us both with the commission and with the council but also with the community but but eager to hear your thoughts and take your direction this evening thank you commissioners um about a year and a half ago a student and i started a project that was housing related um we dig we were looking through all the regional statistics uh metropolitan washington council of government said we need to build 320 000 housing units in the region denominator six million people in the region so the city's share of that although obviously probably probably a higher share in the inner jurisdictions but the city shares 0.4 percent which is

1333 housing units between 2020 2030 uh as an estimate um i think we've talked about this before but mr foreman can you remind me whether we're on track to add 1333 housing units generally in the region yes we are and are we above that target we're we are as as far as the council of governments uh cooperative forecasting we are above their target okay do uh we meet the other two criteria which i'm just going to read here because i have to remind myself that 75 percent of new housing should be in activity centers or near high capacity transit are we mostly seeing that happen as well most of the new construction in fairfax is within the activity centers the third is that 75 percent of the new housing should be affordable

to low and middle income households not so much with that one all right so there may be a need in terms of the pricing of this housing and if adus maintain an affordable footprint i think it would be a good contribution toward that goal uh i think one of the thing we've realized citing a jurisdiction on the west coast that has severe housing problems is that uh some of the folks that are uh middle income folks that keep the hospitals running keep the schools running frankly a lot of people at city hall those people getting priced out of the market that they work in is really a negative thing and so uh adus would certainly help in terms of the structure of our local economy which i would support

um one problem i think that you cite a little bit here is a potential con is noise and uh frankly three of us live within a five minute walk of mason and so we deal with a much higher density we deal with both approved rentals and off the book rentals and it just is replete throughout the neighborhood mr foreman you and i have tried to guess at what that rental rate is and it's there's not a good method perhaps that's foolproof for estimating the proportion of homes being rented that might somehow if they were approved and became formal would transition to adus but um the biggest problem amongst the neighbors that i uh that i talk to is traffic kind of congestion and parking specifically parking issues and then noise issues and so it uh do you have any ideas about how we could

tackle that part because certainly amongst the neighbors of mine that are not english fluent they call me on the phone and somehow have a misimpression that i would be effective in calling the police and registering noise complaints and um so i do that on a frequent basis and not a single time i've ever convinced a city police officer to come and respond because it's always uh you know there's no problem here um so extraordinary amounts of noise that might be generated from rentals or from adus is unenforceable based on the quirks of our noise ordinance uh even just the most unbelievably loud uh stuff that happens and partly you know i'm to blame because i live near a college campus and i work

on a college campus i i'm inheriting that problem and i sort of knew that when i moved where i moved but um is there something that we could do in terms of noise abatement and parking issues that would seem like a good idea for us to move toward maybe coming from a place like arlington that's perhaps 10 years ahead of us you know i think of those three uh parking is probably the easiest to deal with from an administrative standpoint because there can be required amounts of parking per adu so so that that is probably the administratively most easiest of those three as far as noise noise is a constant struggle the the city is in the process now of looking at changes to the noise ordinance so that is something if if the city it looks like it's going towards increased adu uh allowability

that might be something to bring up in the context of the noise ordinance as well as the city gets denser and denser some some of these issues and not necessarily i mean the problem that we have in the zoning ordinance is that the noise regulations are really oriented towards constant type of noise not necessarily loud talking or parties or dog barking and and that kind of thing and i think if the city grows denser and denser those kinds of issues would really rise rise more to the forefront uh so that that's a good topic i think for the noise ordinance when that comes forward yeah and it it seems that you know if we do allow adus in neighborhoods that are already fairly dense we're going to instantly see things like

that occur and we i think if there's any way of changing the noise ordinance to make it more enforceable and perhaps like some special use permits if there are violations of certain types there's sort of some enforcement or consequence of that um and and really one other issue within the neighborhood i'm next to is the you know length of ownership their average length of ownership is 35 years in green acres i i wouldn't say average length of ownership but there's a pretty high proportion of long-term over 20 over 30 year ownership and yeah some of those neighborhoods and and what would be perhaps a fairly significant changes to see if adus come in to see that drop it's an incredibly attractive

neighborhood for people to buy into and uh um anyway i think any changes uh perhaps worrisome to some residents and um but i think obviously the affordability issue which is the third regional target for housing we're not quite there we're hitting the other two but um i'm not sure i think i've become a little bit skeptical about the ability of um us to sort of control the affordability issue in a market that doesn't seem to have the rules that would normally apply um anyway let me see if there's any other uh issues here um i think i've reviewed some other places in the country with uh more lenient airbnb and short-term rental they should just generically short-term rentals and um and and and and the impact is certainly um uh seeing uh house prices change dramatically as a result and um

and long-term owners disappearing again sort of a dynamic i don't think we want we don't want to price out folks that want to stay within the neighborhood and uh places that can generate revenue through short-term rentals um um tend to push prices up which i wouldn't want to see i think in some parts of hawaii with friends that live there it's just it's become an absolute crisis because of the limit of developable land um so i think in summary the impacts on parking impacts on noise i'm both concerned about those issues and um i just wanted to uh i think comment more than anything that the city already has a fairly generous uh policy with regard to impervious surface mr harden it's 45 percent in in uh the rm

yeah so uh we increased that i think there are some jurisdictions closer to the beltway and inside the beltway that are allow even higher rates than that but it seems that um we'd also if we get real serious about this would want to hear from mr harden and uh you know mr ito and other folks that deal with stormwater issues if we um conceivably push up above 45 percent many of the areas that are now covered in kind of grass and other pervious surfaces we could be uh complicating their jobs quite a bit so it'd be nice to hear from them i think also feedback from the fire department and other folks that would be impacted by um additional parking additional density and getting feedback from the folks that

actually deal with the issues day by day would be i think quite helpful so my question was actually sort of a follow-on to mr rice's previous question which is in terms of city resources available for enforcing or monitoring compliance with any changes that we were to make what resources does the city have and and is are they keeping up with current demand for adus like you you know what additional sort of infrastructure would need to exist on the on the staff side before this could even be implemented currently um it's handled through the the zoning division um we aren't seeing i don't have a number off hand for you um it is infrequent that we see accessory dwelling unit applications come through

um so in terms of where we are now it's it's something that gets processed kind of routine with with the existing staff that's there um and our zoning inspector that is that is inspecting them and um and enforcing on those that that are occurring without approval uh it's a manageable just again speaking and anecdotally it's a manageable load at this point that's something that we would have to take a look at um if we did expect there to be a significant increase and that may be additional plan review or or inspections i think what we've seen from other jurisdictions is um there is an increase over time but it's not something that every homeowner is going to pursue you know on on day one but we will look at that

as well see what other jurisdictions have experienced when they've made some changes but that is certainly something that we're sensitive to and want to make sure that we can handle whatever change there may be okay yeah because i imagine if there's accessibility and residency requirements that it does require sort of continuous monitoring or regular checks over the occupancy of the unit so just that alone multiplied by a few more it could could add up pretty quickly we were talking you know offhand before the meeting started about whether there most rentals or you know what fraction of rentals in the city are on the books you know registered um are there more potentially more adus currently in operation than perhaps are we're aware of

not in sort of a punitive sense but you know how has that impacted neighborhoods sense just kind of understanding you know what might already be happening organically in in communities in the city um and would that be sort of a a way to start in terms of being more inclusive of bringing units into the program and making them safe and available and accessible um and also my other question was is it within the boundaries of creating you know additional requirements to say that there is a lot size requirement for any additional foot footprint or um separate dwelling like is that allowed the requirement yeah that that would certainly be an option if we decide to go down this path uh to to judge either lot size or

distance from the lot line and or impervious surface or or whatever that that can all be on a sliding scale of some sort or not okay so it wouldn't have to apply blankets all the whole designation correct i'm just curious do we have an estimate of potentially how kind of off of miss lockhart's question of how many non-adu adus we potentially have out there because if to be an adu you have to have a kitchen and a bathroom and a private entrance well if you just put a refrigerator and a hot plate in a microwave it's effectively a kitchen but it's not a kitchen is there an estimate of how many of those potential units are out there not not that i'm aware of um i would say in current times we don't receive as many complaints about that type of a situation that's kind of more like a boarding

house rooming house um where in years gone by maybe we did i think um we will get complaints or questions um about those that have been fitted out probably more or less meeting requirements of the code but never went through um the review and approval process for for the city or are existing already in a detached building on the lot which as noted currently isn't permitted i think those situations we probably hear more about but again it would be a few probably a year that doesn't necessarily speak to what we don't know about but i think that's what we tend to hear more because you know the code currently allows roommate situations some of those that are kind of set up in that boarding house we may not we may not hear

about unless there's been another issue and we do partner with with the fire marshals and property maintenance on inspections when they hear about something that may be amiss um and so we do become aware of those if it's something that hits the radar but it's a challenge you know it's a challenge when we can't get into to each and every home yes sir mr conigand thank you mr chairman uh interesting issue that we've discussed for a long time and several of my points i will shorten considerably because they've been touched on but the one thing i'm going to touch base on with this is the complexity i think of the issue one we're a city that's been around for a long time so we are a city of exceptions if you will whenever we

go through the zoning ordinance and write a rule we're going to find that somebody is in non-compliance and his grandfathered uh so we have adus that predate our trying to write the rules uh and as such they get pointed to as examples of why can't i do that if they can uh which makes it a challenge but the the exceptions are i think part of what drives us when we talk about uh build new versus modify existing we don't have enough land left in the city for residential development to build very much new that includes uh an accessory dwelling unit therefore the bulk of any new construction that's going to come is going to be in the detached or the detached neighborhoods housing that's a tear down and a

reconstruction so if you want to do that and you take the old house and tear it down and now build what you want with an adu in it that's how you're going to get the new construction as i would see it and that means that if it's going to be pushed heavily you may be skewing people to look toward that as the other but it's something that goes on to additional points and one of those is the other is brought up as enforceability and trackability uh in my memory in dealing with this zoning has one zoning inspector who is out there so all of the city's zoning issues that have to be inspected fall to one individual who comes back to the zoning department so that workload when you talk about keeping up with it uh along with all the zoning issues that are there i think is a valid issue probably to be looked at

if we're going to to try to track and enforce uh what our ordinance is going to say and when i look at that for exceptions uh a year ago fairfax renaissance housing asked dr rice and a student to take a look at the city from a standpoint of should that program be modified uh among the issues that were discussed at that point and dr rice will check me on this is that getting information on rental housing uh something was like pulling hen's teeth if you could find it good luck uh if you could get it good luck but having a good statistical base on what rental housing is is non-existent in a public or a researchable way and if it's out there at some point somebody is keeping it very close hold but that's something that

probably needs to be looked at in our single family neighborhoods as well because that takes me to the issue i guess of intention of the program uh the bulk of what we've talked about adus has looked at families uh we've talked about aging populations 55 and over in other words uh people who have lived here for a long time really don't want to leave their house and somebody in the family or that needs to come in and live with them so that they can stay in the house rather than being moved out to some other kind of facility so the dwelling unit ordinance was dealing with family issues and having expanded family there and we've got other discussion on that in there when we talk about making it a rental issue

that people would put an adu in the house so that they could rent it i now get back to the fact that we can't track it very well now and get data on it so we're going into an area that is difficult to to determine impact on and from that standpoint with the other comments that i think my colleagues have made that's something that probably bears on additional discussion as to who and what we want for additional rental housing if we're not able to monitor it which gets down to short-term rental and long-term rental and the other issues that we do have current regulations on one aspect that hasn't been touched on as much as people wanting to stay in place is live-in help many times people who are staying

in single family homes have one or two or three caretakers come in during the day to help them stay in the home for some period of time while they can but if you had an accessory dwelling unit do you open the opportunity for for somebody to have live-in help stay there as opposed to using a rotating basis which typically isn't a residential issue uh i guess another issue that comes to my mind is how does this relate to the issue of affordable housing presumably if an accessory dwelling unit is a rental type unit then it might be priced low enough that it would meet the access the affordable dwelling unit i mean the affordable housing criteria in allowing more people to live in the city at a lower rate but that's

a rental housing ish solution to our problem rather than an affordable housing solution in an ownership style that's a rental housing that's a rental housing that's a rental housing that will be owner occupied or whether we're building or whether we're building apartments in the nodes or the small areas that have a requirement for a percentage to be affordable tracked by the owners of it and reported back to the city but in our questions on some of that housing that's been there long enough to have a history now i don't know that we've got feedback from his planning commission on how successful that is are i scout at the circle managing the number of units that they promise to keep affordable

and do we have any way of tracking it or is it just something that they're doing uh and that gets back to enforcement and trackable uh as an issue uh if we're going to do this and and have it you know occur so that we can look at its impact on affordable housing we get back to having to be able to get data out of this kind of a program to know what's what its real impact is uh when we talk about square footage and that for detached affordable housing i think one of the issues you have is that as we're dealing with many of the older housing and doing updates to them and renovations to them and things along that line and it's noted that you've got plenty of land area on many of the the old smaller hot lots

so that you could put a detached unit on that lot and not meet the square footage requirements for total lot coverage where some of the newer areas especially if you're talking townhouses or the complex uh maple trace comes to mind you don't have enough room between houses or enough land around any house to do anything outside the house because it has been built to the maximum setback requirements so where would this likely occur we've got plenty of housing that i think meets the requirement you could put something there uh as a detached unit and that opens the possibility that it could be done then the other issues come back into play as you've outlined uh sewer water density setback zoning

it's an accessory dwelling unit one unit or if you have a big enough lot and you put a two-story unit behind it could you actually have two rental units next to your house are we looking at accessory dwelling units as a single unit before we get to a multiple home and i know that in the past when we get to enforcement all of these issues come into play because as a practical matter the city has rental housing that may or may not be registered that has been used to house a significant number of construction workers for instance where the house sleeps a fair number of people and they come and go to their jobs and they're temporary and they move and if it becomes an issue with the community it's addressed if it's not it's a condition of not only having students in

noise but things that are tolerated in various neighborhoods so accessory dwelling units when we're looking at it comes back to i think the issue of family or living care as a focus that we're looking toward and then rental would be a subset of that from a management standpoint and something that would require a good bit more and there's no more resources or effort to be put into determining what its real impact was if you opened it up to very much of of the community i will say that i'm in support of adus i know that when you look at existing housing an example recently in visiting a housing with fairfax renaissance housing corporation a young couple was moving in they've got a mother and mother-in-law in this case who was going to move in with them

part of getting the permitting done so that they could do the construction for the house because they were going to segregate a portion so that there would be a certain amount of privacy for the mother and they and their children could live in the rest of the house which had plenty of space and met the 35 percent requirement was that they were told that you know that they could have everything there to make an accessory dwelling unit except the elements to complete a kitchen and in this case they weren't going to have a separate outside access area the access was going to be through a central part of the house but that was relatively discreet from the rest of the way the house was laid out so as opposed to a back door to come in and out of they would be going in a door that would be a side

door through a mudroom or something like that if they wanted private access but there would also be access to the main house it seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to lay it out and the real question became if if you had a bathroom would you allow them to have enough of the kitchen activity in there that the refrigerator the sink the ability to work except you couldn't have a stove in there or the ability to to cook and heat food well that seems to be overcome fairly quickly especially with either the hot forced air ovens we have now or microwaves or other cooking appliances that are merely plug-in devices as opposed to installed ranges that give a full service so i think our details and what actually can constitute an accessory dwelling unit you know still need to

to have the details polished as to to what all can be there or not and when we look at one example on that if we look at the flats they're renting by the bedroom so four individual bedrooms that are rented with a common area that has a small kitchenette and living area is not really much different than an accessory dwelling unit so we have that kind of housing that already exists and is tailored toward an individual community i don't know if any of that's helpful in looking at trying to work on the the guidelines that we're looking for i would support more additional dwelling units but i would support them being tailored toward a family type of usage rather than trying to expand the rental market

because it's it's dealing toward the the social issue i think we're trying to address the real social issue is how do we increase the population and in that case i'm not sure that i agree with the council of governments that if we take a percentage then we have an obligation to provide a percentage of anything my sense still as a city is that we have an obligation to maintain our boundaries as a city and do the things that we can for the population that we have here so that we build a city that people want to come to that's alive and vibrant and meets all the rest of the requirement and the rest of our documents thank you thank you um one observation i'm making here is i'm not sure there's been too much said about the specific ideas that were put before us i don't know if you

have that same feeling um and whether anybody has specific comments on some of these specific proposals i was going to walk through them myself but like the family requirement the age requirements and so forth mr cunningham alluded to some of it i think i think the idea of live and help is a good one that we ought to consider yeah i mean i think i was walking towards that in terms of how are we dealing with the current influx of requests are there so many and they don't meet the requirements that we currently have because of x but it doesn't sound like we're getting a lot of requests or certainly not an unmanageable amount right now so as you start to move levers sort of understanding that which of

these is most likely to create shift potentially push our resources past their limit versus which of these are sort of logical next steps in terms of what we know is the landscape of the city i think the problem is that we don't really know the landscape of the city i really i'm perplexed and but i i understand it's very hard to estimate what proportional homes are rented in particular neighborhoods the context of earlier work was figuring out whether the money that's subsidizing renovations is being spread uniformly or spread fairly and there's really not a good way to figure that out my understanding mr forman is it's a comparison of the mailing address of the property text bills to the parcel address itself and i think in former discussions the idea at least for me was

probably there's at least as many unofficial rentals happening as official rentals on the books and even the rentals on the books we because there are various people who curate the data on business licenses and the assessor has and then code enforcement zoning does inspections there's there's at least three or four different curators of information and not an efficient way to even figure out what the landscape looks like so it'd be hard for me to make any sensible suggestions about increased enforcement or you know even studying this without having some bedrock understanding of what's going on that's probably a step back which i should apologize to my colleagues here but um it seems that in order

for us to really figure out what to do we need to know a little bit more and there's not a good way of knowing what we don't know others before i go okay a number of concerns i have have been expressed but i wanted to walk through each of the ideas just some i had some thoughts on them expanding accessory dwelling units to other residential or commercial zoning districts right now it's allowed in the rm rl rh districts i don't see how you would put accessory dwelling units in townhouse or multi-family districts so that doesn't make sense well if you can have a basement in a single family you could have a basement unit in a townhouse well okay but where i was going is many townhouse communities have covenants that wouldn't permit that so how we do we

want to get in the business of managing those kinds of things so um and i'm not sure how you create a separate entrance as well in those kind of constructions are generally not made that way so i don't see the feasibility of that commercial districts i mean we spend a lot of time talking about residential and commercial and we might be moving the needle slightly on that front but as a general rule we don't support that wouldn't entertain that so i don't see how that works either so i'm not sure this is probably a top priority for us to consider working on would a live work unit be considered an edu i mean how so i know it's been talked about in some of like the industrial uh area redevelopment for

example like live work units for artists that have a studio space and then living space would that be considered an adu of a commercial space or is that a different type of unit entirely the ordinance does allow for um you know single family style mixed use units so you could deliver a mixed use unit in uh you know in a townhouse building type as opposed to you know kind of maybe what you normally think of of a ground floor retail and multi-family above um so could you implement an accessory dwelling unit in addition to that is that is that what you're would it be considered that if you had some sort of multi-purpose space built out if it were i see what you mean uh perhaps perhaps perhaps um perhaps it could be uh we the only we only have one instance in the city of of maybe a true

live work um that i i think are being used mostly for living and not so much for working um um so that would be that would be something a little a little different we would and that was approved throughout through a planned uh a planned development so that's something we would need to evaluate but potentially yes did you have something on the uh eliminating the age or disability requirement um i think there are plenty of rebound children who don't have a way to afford a home and they want to live by themselves but perhaps with their parents so that you know that would be a case but it's it keeps the family member um concept going but it could eliminate an age requirement there and still provide them some independence about independent living and

autonomy so there's probably some something supportable in that thing um um the maybe you can explain something for you about eliminating the family requirement there's reference in the the ordinance currently about unrelated occupants so how does that jive with having a family requirement what does that mean so so right right now the occupancy requirement for the combined adu and main house is the same as for any other main house that it is a family which is divine defined as a uh group of people who are related through blood marriage or adoption plus as much as three unrelated people so the combined occupancy of the primary house and the adu would equal that so the uh you know one one alternative is is to change that definition for

houses that have adus to increase uh the you know for example the number of unrelated people or uh you know that there could be multiple families living within a combined unit and and so on but it sounds like that's already possible that's what i don't understand since it allows three unrelated persons that's i'm trying to understand what the difference is with what we can say now and eliminating the family requirement i think it just comes down to numbers potentially numbers of of unrelated so families can be as big as families can get uh and that definition is expansive i mean on who's who's related it's not just you know mom dad and a couple kids it's it can be other extended family members as

well and that's all permissible um but in terms of number unrelated i think that's what what would be the potential change well let's see if i have something on the others increase the level of square footage i don't seem to be i don't have a particular opinion on that there are probably good cases where that's reasonable to do depending on the size of the property um and so forth performance and design standards some of that's already come up actually is a separate entrance really needed what constitutes a kitchen there's probably some latitude there that could create accessory dwelling unit type things without meeting maybe what we think of traditional definitions of entrance and kitchen and so forth that could be somewhat supportable

develop instruction cons incentives clear the city has a lot of other priorities for its resources i think this is probably a low should be low down on the list um we probably want to work on some of the other options first and detached accessory dwelling units again um possibly in a couple of the residential districts where there's likely to be sufficient property available rm rl um maybe not rh i don't know but again the concerns you raise are the right concerns impacts on the neighborhood appearance and so forth some of the things we've talked about that may have come along with something like that if it were to move forward would be design standards and and so forth enforcement again to me is is it's been mentioned a number of times um the concern how you how we do that

um the resources it may take to do that but you've adequately i think reflected that uh so uh those are just my thoughts on some of those particular things you have questions for us something you're looking for some feedback on but don't be shy just one point of clarification it sounds like of all of these options that looking at the age and disability limitations uh it is something that might be the highest on on the list i know mr feather that you would mention that and particularly as far as rebounding children uh it does the rest of the commission have a opinion on on that item i think we don't have any idea really what the age distribution of people are within things that are adus and function because we really have no specific idea about what the

proportion of rentals are and if 50 of the existing rentals in the city are off the books not inspected and we don't know you know habitability issues or age distributions we we just don't know i think having live-in help that's very attractive i think flexibility in terms of ages would be good but i think uh it would be really nice to have uh the ability to have multi-generation kind of family and i think at least um having some priority on uh 50 plus uh in some way would be useful others uh kind of echo chairman further what you said about the the rebound children the number of agents that in my day job where they come into my office uh they decided to rent or they're moving back home because as we all know affordability for housing and is at an all-time low right now so i think any

opportunity that we can to potentially remove that age restriction where children just out of college making 150 000 legitimately cannot buy a home around here it's kind of ridiculous so i think that would be a smart move to move that restriction okay so just out of curiosity what's the forcing function or the trigger by which we would ever know about inside the property adus that are occupied by a family member like why would the city ever need to know or have an opportunity to know about that at one point in time the code required special use permits for all of the um accessory dwelling units and so through that process obviously we gleaned a lot of information in 2016 when the code was rewritten it became a buy right

process so to your point a little bit more difficult at that time to track that family status you know you still have to come in and and get a permit we have um the homeowner sign an affidavit that they are in compliance with all aspects of the ordinance we are allowed to inspect and we do receive um you know inquiries from time to time to do just that if someone believes that perhaps the tendency has changed you know in an adu that's in their neighborhood and we will go um and inspect on that but it's really a complaint driven um a complaint driven issue and something that that the homeowner acknowledges at the outset but over the course of time it is something becomes more difficult absolutely thank you uh

i guess there was a time when the mindset was the single family home was occupied by by a family that included parents and children and i don't think with the demographic changes that have gone on that that is the mindset that should be looked at as the standard at this time or anymore for the most part we seem to be talking about children who have just left school coming home to live with parents because they can't find other places to live but i think you'll find demographically that you have existing in the city three and potentially four generations living in one house and they are all family and they are all related and the question of an affordable dwelling unit almost becomes one of can we have two kitchens and the ability for

this extended family to live in separate parts of the house without having to all eat and use the common kitchen all of the time so an affordable dwelling unit for some of this is the in-law suite as it has been discussed or the parents suite so that if you had parents and children you could now bring the grandparents in and let them live in the house with you but still have the privacy they wanted when we get down to an affordable dwelling unit who and what are we trying to to do here is is segregate a house so that it can have duplicative functions it can have x number of bedrooms but it can only have one kitchen so now we're talking can it have two kitchens or separate instances or could it have a separate garage you know if you had one on one

side and they had the room they could put one on the other side for additional vehicles to get them off the street those kinds of actions for an affordable dwelling unit in terms of design and accommodation where i may be wrong but if we're talking about an affordable dwelling unit is merely a way to provide a separate rentable space accessory dwelling units i'm sorry accessory dwelling units as a separate rentable space i don't think that's what we're really trying to codify here or am i wrong on that i think what the comprehensive plan and and what the the housing assessment was to do just that to expand beyond what has been has been the standard to move it into to make it possible so that we could turn more more housing

into multi-family as exposed to extended family type dwelling units to consider that i believe that's what those recommendations are are asking okay thank you anything else you'd like to ask of us or get clarification on from us anything here i think that's all we appreciate it thank you we will we will return the public outreach obviously as you said to begin with will be very critical um there'll be strong opinions on both sides so yes there will we'll look forward to that thank you thank you very much thank you okay our next work session item is our continued discussion on the 2035 comprehensive plan review turn it back over to mr napty thank you chair feather and members of the planning commission this is our continuing discussion of the

comprehensive plan review as the planning commission may recall we last discussed the comfort to plan review at your meeting on june 24 and at that time we are at the point of the process where we are bringing all of the recommendations we have together and reacting to initial comments we heard from the city council and the general public through various venues to refine our recommendations on the actions of the plan so this is our schedule for the total comprehensive plan review we are here at the end of what we're calling the refinement phase and as a reminder earlier on we had our our public meetings and our meetings with city council where we heard feedback on some of the items that we were suggesting

and then at the june or the june 24th meeting we discussed some of the outstanding issues and so now we're back to come back to you with some of the remaining issues on those items and try to bring things to a close as much as we can certainly not all the way so that we can spend the next several weeks preparing a draft document and we hope to have that to you in september to begin discussing our schedule is uh changing slightly partially because of one of the major outstanding issues is the idea of residential and commercial corridors that we've been discussing over the course of several meetings the reason we wanted to add some additional time here is because at the time that we met with the city council we still had not come to a resolution on how we want to proceed we made a lot of progress

on that discussion at our meeting in june and i think we're at a point now we're ready to go back to them and share with them what the planning commission is recommending but we did want to include at least one additional meeting with the city council so that the first time the hearing what our recommendation is on this topic is not at the public hearing they have a chance to digest it and give us some feedback before we get to that so we are asking to have a another work session with the city council in september and assuming all goes well with that then we can schedule public hearings as soon as october just a quick reminder again as part of our refinement phase when we prepared our initial

recommendations we shared them through an open house on june 6th with city council on june 11 and then we continued discussion here internally at the planning commission on june 24th we've also had our engage page open this entire time we initially discussed closing comments for it in mid-july but we really think that we can just keep it open allow comments to continue to come in even as we finalize our thoughts and prepare the draft document there's still some room to make changes to some of the actions all the way to the end of the process so we are going to keep that open for now as well and we have had a couple of comments come in since our meeting in june and those are shown in one of the attachments in your staff report so before we get to the residential

commercial corridors discussion or our new mixed use place type there are two actions that we had some discussions on at the last meeting that were proposed to be new these were based on some of the comments we received from city council and the general public the first was uh this one that's shown here that was says to monitor evolving business trends and proactively review codes and standards to ensure cutting-edge businesses can easily locate in the city this was based on requests from city council in particular to be proactive when we're looking at changes in technology changes in business types and trying to be accommodating so we had that action listed in the commercial corridors and activities

section planning commission recommended that we look at moving that to the economic vitality section and so in looking at the structure of the plan there was an area where that made a lot of sense the entire goal was shown in your staff reports you can see where this fits but that's where we're we're showing this now there are no changes to the language from what you saw for this action on june 24. uh and then the other action uh related to the parks and recreation strategic master plan as you may recall this is something that is going to be updated very soon the process is actually beginning now and the concern from the planning commission was instead of directing uh parks and recreation to

update the strategic master plan that we should focus more on our role which is to implement those recommendations and so we change the language here before we stop to discuss these two i did want to point out one of the things we talked about um during our discussion in june was whether or not we should reference the parks for recreation strategic master plan um in any action where um that action is derived at least partially from the existing plan uh and uh staff supported that idea the planning commission at least a couple of commissioners commented that that was a good idea as we went through and looked at it we realized that there were a lot of actions that reference it and this is just a list of those actions um or that where the action is derived at least partially from

the strategic master plan and so we've referenced it that'd be adding a lot of language here and these are just those actions that relate to it from the parks and recreation guiding principle there might be others uh in transportation and neighborhoods and those kind of things to talk about trails so our preference is to just stick with the language from the action um and let that the others sit as they are so i'll stop there before we get into our mixed-use place type and see if there are any thoughts on these two uh actions questions comments head nods of agreement okay great move on please okay uh so this brings us to the mixed-use place type uh as a refresher on where this came from there's been discussion throughout the

process on uh the idea of supporting additional residential uses uh or supporting residential uses in general and commercial corridors uh where they are not currently supported uh residential uses are now supported in activity centers which are limited to certain areas of the city um that cannot be expanded uh beyond what's in the comprehensive plan except through a small area plan and so essentially uh not only does that limit um residential uses in certain areas that also limits where mixed use buildings can be constructed because the mixed because the activity center is the only place type where that building type can be supported so uh we went through several options with the planning commission

and landed on the option that we're moving forward with as of now which is to establish a new mixed use place type kit that can accommodate mixed use type buildings and but rather than mapping this new mixed use place type on a future land use map only identify certain locations where it can be supported and discuss those verbally through the partial specific recommendations which are a section of the comprehensive plan where certain properties that have unique characteristics have descriptions that go along with them that support alternative uses aside from what is on the future land use map so that was seen as a tool that we could convey specifically where we support this this was based out of concern about opening up the

door too much to displace existing commercial development commercial quarters so that's where we are now based on the conversations we had with the planning commission on june 24 there was general support for continuing to move in that direction the planning commission also identified one specific site where we could have a parcel specific consideration so that'd be the one site where this new mixed use place type could be considered but not mapped and since that time the staff is recommending one additional site which we'll get to in a minute the planning commission also suggested that we come up with design limitations similar to what we have for a lot of the other place types this gets into things about

how certain users are situated any key considerations on how sites are designed if they're going to use this place type also look at things like density and building heights so we did not have detailed recommendations for those items at that time so we'll go through those now so we'll start our review of this by looking at those design measures before we get to the location measures these are the four specific types of components that the planning commission asked us to look at one is residential density one is building height one is ground floor commercial area and also the planning commission asked that we looked at how we how we think about the amount of commercial space versus residential space and then the planning commission

also recommended that we specifically state of preference for structured parking over surface parking similar to what we have for the activity centers so the draft language for the mixed use place type is in your packet it is marked up showing the changes that have been made since you last saw it in june so you can see how these items are addressed in there but a couple of these i want to talk about specifically but also want to show you how our initial recommendations compare to some of the other place types namely commercial corridor and activity center to which this place type would sit kind of between in terms of intensity and allowable uses uh so first looking at density the commercial corridor does not allow any residential uses

so we don't have any residential density there for the mixed use place type we are recommending a maximum of 48 dwelling units per acre and this is based partially on the current maximum residential density that is supported in activity centers of 48 dwelling units per acre the caveat there is that that maximum is only where a smaller your plan has not yet been developed once a smaller your plan is developed the identity is controlled essentially by the physical characteristics of the site and there's no actually there's no numeric maximum density and we'll talk about more about the density in a minute for height we recommend a maximum of five stories this is similar to what's in commercial corridors as well as activity centers again before there's a smaller

area plan uh smaller plans recommended variety of heights some exceeding five stories some actually less than five stories for the ground floor the planning commission specifically stated that there was a preference not to support residential uses on the ground floor of buildings where those buildings face main roads and so we're identifying those based on the definitions of the comprehensive plan of what are called boulevards or commercial mains and that would include roads like fairfax boulevard main street and those types of things the the difference between what's a boulevard and what's a commercial main is whether or not it's essentially adjacent to an activity center or adjacent to a commercial corridor so either could apply

and looking at the activity center that has similar recommendations it actually does not support residential on commercial mains because only commercial means would be located in activity centers and that's on the ground floor doesn't apply to upper floors that of course again is pre-smaller your plan there are locations where smaller plans support residential uses in these locations on commercial as a whole we have inserted language that recommend a strong commercial presence with any redevelopment to the mixed-use place type we had previously discussed whether or not we want to have some kind of numeric base to measure this such as looking at a percentage of commercial versus residential or that

type of thing and in looking at the rest of the comprehensive plan this was we didn't have anything that would look like that we also looked at a couple of other comprehensive plans that have mixed-use type designations and that isn't something that's really discussed in a comprehensive plan to our zoning ordinance requirements that have those types of measures but we couldn't find anything relatable so at this time we would recommend keeping that broad and just relying on that language but if we want to look at that in more detail we can certainly do that and then lastly parking as mentioned the planning commission asked that we state a recommendation for structured parking as opposed to surface parking and as i mentioned we have

that language in activity centers and actually we also have that language for commercial corridors which i didn't realize before this in addition both of those two place types have recommendations for parking to be on the side or rear or screen from view and so we have consistent language from those two that we're recommending for the mixed-use place type and before we stop to talk about these there's one more thing i wanted or two more things i wanted to mention about density we are open to discussions on this as i mentioned we're recommending 48 dwelling units per acre at this time because that's similar to what is recommended in activity centers where there is no small area plan the intention of this slide is just to give you a

reference for different things that we can look at also considering this density we looked at recent developments throughout the city and how those relate to some of the standards that are in the zoning ordinance these developments don't necessarily fall within these these place types but they are comparable to what the recommended maximum density is so these are benchmarks we could look at if we looked at something more similar to what supported in the multi-family place type it'd be something more like uh 24 dwelling units per acre uh enclave and mount vineyard as a whole uh are similar to to that density uh something closer to a townhouse type density uh sutton heights and the breezeway um would

be similar to that density even though the breezeway has uh some multi-family units in the form of two or twos overall the density is lower and on the other end of the spectrum where we have uh smaller plans adopted um and usually taller building heights are supported uh we have higher densities we have the willowood proposal that was just uh recently approved at a density of 87.8 dwelling units per acre and the circle gateway proposal that is still under review and a density of 140 units per acre and then looking at the 48 dwellings per acre similar to what's in the activity center scout and the moxley both have similar densities to that this is another reason that we are recommending this type of density

because those are both developments that fall within the similar density range in terms of height that we're looking at have the types of amenities that we'd be looking for and also have a mixed juice component and then one last thing before we stop to talk about this is there are a couple of other design measures that we included these weren't specifically recommended by the planning commission but in looking at the language from our other place types things that we felt should be included one was about building orientation i think we're all envisioning that these types of developments would have buildings oriented toward the street and have a pedestrian atmosphere so we want to make sure that was spelled out so you'll

see that language in there there's language about multi-access multimodal access ensuring pedestrian access from the street that type of thing cross access is where we have standards for having access for vehicles and pedestrians between adjacent sites we don't have anything specific about that in the commercial corridor however there are requirements in the zoning ordinance for cross access to be provided between commercial corridor sites and in the activity centers we have the establishment of street grids and so with the absence of smaller area plans for this new mixed use place type we have language there that suggests cross access that should support at least partially some of the things that we would look for in an activity center and now lastly use standards

the mixed use activity center as a setup would be more similar to the activity center place type because it has it supports different types of uses and so we have separate standards in there for different types of uses whether it be commercial residential industrial those types of things the commercial corridor place type does not have this because it only supports commercial uses so those are our recommended design elements i'll stop there before we get to the location elements to see see if there are thoughts on any of these questions or comments none okay thank you okay then moving to the location elements as i discussed earlier the planning commission previously discussed the fairfax square office complex as an ideal location

uh for having language to support a mixed use place type again this is not recommending changes to the future land use map only having language for the parcel specific consideration that support it as a alternative if that is ever sought this request or this site was identified based on several criteria that reviewed by the planning commission uh including site sizes and building to land value ratios staff once we prepared this we with that analysis we really only looked at commercial corridor sites but once we received this direction from the planning commission we looked at the existing parcel specific considerations to see if any of those should be thought of as places where we want to consider this and so

the one site that popped up is the anova site on chambridge road we already have a parcel specific consideration for that site it supports uses such as multi-family and commercial on the same site it was not identified through our analysis because the current place type is social civic network not commercial corridor uh but when looking at the uses that were already supported staff felt that the mixed use place type would make sense to be able to accommodate all of those uses so that's when we're recommending um also adding and we have language in there which is only simply adding the term mixed use place type not any changes to the uses or design criteria that are already there for that site

uh actually pause there for a second yep you have question mark others one of the observations i made as i was staring at this again um the uh fairfax square site one of the things that sets it apart from other commercial corridor sites is its adjacency existing to residential uh it faces a commercial made or is that a boulevard i forget um but it's surrounded by residential almost none of the other commercial sites and none of that i can identify along the boulevard have residential on the boulevard or commercial main adjacent to it which seems to me to set this site apart in another way that hadn't really crossed my mind before um arguably the parcel adjacent to the fairfax square site parcels if they were to be consolidated you know

might lend itself to the mixed use place type extending the characteristic that uh fairfax square may be pursuing but there aren't that many places like that and that's one of the things that i was trying to describe in my own mind what kind of parcel if it's big enough makes it suitable to the mixed use a combo of residential and commercial and that is the adjacency on the main road of residential you know abutting it there aren't many places like that when i look at main street to the west um there aren't many places like that either what about anything adjacent to the new north facts development the new north facts development all that commercial property well the other thing is adjacent to

activity centers but they're already adjacent the activity center is also is already the place we want to do the development um and that was the other thought i'm glad you you asked that otherwise along the boulevard the commercial property either abuts an activity center or green space or open space it doesn't seem to lend itself to me for that kind of development it's it's the way to describe the boulevard that really does set it apart and make it perhaps less desirable because it doesn't integrate well with other things except an activity center which is where you want to do the development so i just want to make that observation as we think about other parcels i don't think there are that many might be one or two on main street but i'm not sure many were big enough

to make a meaningful development like this so to that end what is the the rationale behind continuing to include language pertaining to parcel specific considerations like i i appreciate them as a way to think through you know where might this apply but in terms of keeping the language in the comprehensive plan what's the what's the thought behind that the language for the parcel specific considerations the thought there is uh there are there two benefits to it one is that it didn't sound like we were ready to really open up this new place type to be something that developers developers or property owners could simply make a request request to the future land use map using our standard process and really convert any commercial property or

non-commercial property throughout the city to it makes it use place type and so by limiting it to just the parcel specific recommendations was a way that we could control that and kind of use these as a test or or or or something like that the other side is that each of these has kind of unique characteristics as to why we would want to support them and so rather than just relying on a general place type of language we can make statements about things like the fact that um fairfax square is surrounded by multifamily complex how do we address that how do we relate to that complex and in nova already has that language but there's a lot of information in there about how to treat in nova's relationship to the

surrounding residential community and so it's really difficult to do that with the general place type language um to accommodate the variety of conditions that we could be dealing with does that answer your question yeah i just i i have some qualms about saying that i i understand the linkage we could we only would recommend or we would only allow mixed use for parts for specific parcels that fall under parcel specific criteria but if we can only come up with two examples is that sufficient does it seem like we've created something specifically only for these two parcels as opposed to hey we think this could be a great idea but only in particular places like i i'm afraid that the way that it's laid out is

seems like we're granting special permission to two sites rather than saying we would welcome new ideas for these types of places that was one of the reasons i went through the thought process i did we might be able to describe them a little differently these happen to be two examples that we can easily identify the other one i identified was would require consolidation of properties but you know we could tweak the language to expand that mr cunningham thank you i guess i've got two comments one in terms of your parcel specific recommendations that is something that came about because at the time that the community decided to deny paul the sixth the ability to adopt or to expand and update its athletic fields

there was no one in this town had given any thought to the fact that that school might leave there was no planning for what would happen to the property there was no foresight so as it worked its way through the process and everybody was a little off balance one of the questions raised was gee why didn't the planning commission see this coming and from that standpoint and looking at foresight there are a number of properties that are large enough to deal with considerable redevelopment as opposed to very small properties in which you're going to have small actions taken without significant consolidation so one of the things that was looked at at that time mr hardin can correct me if i'm wrong was that we would look at larger specific parcels and these are two examples

an additional one which has been dropped this time uh is army navy country club because that is a significant piece of property in the city and were it to come up for redevelopment there is something that can be done by right with it now but is that what the city would want if that larger property came up was it to be sold and purchased with the intention of somebody coming in here and doing a major redevelopment in that much of the city uh is that what the city would want to be done by the city without us having any thought to what could go there and looking at this property in terms of the second issue uh this property is bordered on the north and on the east by residential multi-family residential it is bordered on the west by a gas station across the road and another commercial development

so in what they're talking about doing as initially laid out as a concept is consolidating the commercial property in one segment of the property and putting residential on the other side of the property and looking at that it somewhat makes sense you've got residential on the eastern half of that property now bordering it so if you put additional residential it's not really out of context except that it's on a commercial main and if you moved and consolidated all of the commercial property that's there now into redeveloped buildings on the west side and made them much more efficient in the use of space and didn't give up any commercial property then that's not unreasonable so it's something to think about in the way redevelopment is going to occur

what i would throw in with that is the additional comment made last time at our work session is we've gone from over 50 percent of the revenue of the city being provided by the commercial businesses uh with just a little less by the residences in terms of tax base to support everything we want to done down now to essentially what 30 percent so if we're at 30 percent if you consolidate all of the commercial there on the west side you gain no commercial space but we're gaining residential space so we're continuing to add residential at the expense of our ability in the future to do commercial uh redevelopment and improve the commercial base that supports the economics of the city uh perhaps if we kept the percentage the same

because 100 of the project that's going to be done is residential and the commercial gains nothing so it's a net gain for residential in the city as we keep going back and those are some of the things i think we should be looking at with some of these properties to see if the bigger ones came up would we get something that we wanted or we get something that we'd be scratching our head and say gee i wish we thought of that that's that's the thought process i guess behind why some of this is there now if i could just make one clarification um the the analysis of the commercial revenues versus residential revenues we looked into that after our conversation last month um and it turns out that the 30 to 35

percent that we're at now for commercial revenues versus 50 percent earlier uh is not based on the same type of analysis so we can't really compare uh the reason is the analysis we have for example in the fact book is based on real estate tax revenue uh or actually real estate assessment revenue not even tax revenue the previous figures where commercial revenue was coming in at over 50 percent uh was based on analysis that were done for the budget every year that stopped um around 2010 2012 because the figures were based on a variety of criteria that weren't always comparable and so um it's it doesn't um dilute the the the uh the suggestion that we don't want to lose too much of our commercial tax base because we can certainly go down uh but we haven't lost quite as much as it seems like

we have um by looking at those two different measurements which are based on different things um so actually when when thinking about other sites we you know we we agree looking at these two two sites is um this is really what our analysis took us to uh where we thought it made the most sense we're certainly open to looking at other sites as well we discussed a little bit last time and also the planning commission suggested some other criteria we might want to look at as you might recall we looked at the building to land value ratios and we looked at sites of a certain size and that's what led us to where we are planning commission suggested we also look at proximity to activity centers so we're going back through some of the data we already had but just zooming in on some of the activity

centers and then we can see if there's any that come to our attention at this point staff is not recommending that we add any additional sites to these two but the planning commission sees any that we think are important uh to look at look at more detail than we can we're certainly happy to do that so proximity to activity centers is was one suggestion and the idea there was that perhaps developments of smaller size could occur near activity centers and feed off of the the environment that we have in those activity centers but then it was also suggested that uh rather than have residential development close to activity centers we'd rather have it in it so that could be a positive or negative transportation

access it was suggested that we should look at areas of the city to have best access to transportation major intersections transit those types of things and lastly environmental constraints to make sure we identify sites particularly when we're looking at size look at sites that have infringements of floodplain or resource protection areas and this won't likely affect what our recommendations are because we didn't move forward with some of the sites that have the biggest constraints anyway and one last thing as part of that is suggested that we think about city investments that might be needed to support development in certain locations we'll have to do this on a case-by-case basis but the thought there was

that if we're looking at a certain site is it on a main road that doesn't have a traffic signal and so would the city have to invest in something like that that to make it accessible and perhaps something that we should be aware of so i'll go through uh we have a couple maps to look at feel free to chime in if there's anything that comes to your attention that we can you know we're happy to do some further analysis on any specific sites may i suggest a few tweaks to that list if you don't mind yes so i might change bullet one proximity to activity centers or sites of interest within the city so like the anova site is not necessarily proximate to an activity center it's pretty far removed from old town but it's next to george

mason for example so points of interest or points of importance and i might split number three into two bullets environmental constraints as a standalone and then need for city investment or need for shared investment for number four okay uh first looking at proximity to activity centers uh we'll look more closely at each of of these areas circled which is our our five activity centers and then we also have the area around uh the intersections of main street and berk station and main street and roberts road this is where our fairfax square site is but it's also an area you'll notice on this map where we have um at least one major road uh one intersection of two major roads uh that is outside of an activity center

we are looking at these in comparison to the building to land value um ratio from that map so first starting with the camp washington activity center there's not a whole lot here because this activity center boundary was expanded to include surrounding commercial corridor areas as part of the process so really the only area that we have adjacent is toward the east end along main street uh fairfax boulevard uh there are smaller parts here that many of them have higher relatively higher building to land value ratio so we're not recommending any additions here main street or uh old town has a similar kind of condition uh it's not necessarily along a major commercial corridor main street is kind of spotty in terms of the types of

uses that are along and outside the activity center we have a little bit more commercial corridor type uses to the west also some along judicial drive we're not recommending any changes here primarily due to the smaller lot sizes we do have a couple of sites with lower building to land value ratios and we haven't gotten to the floodplain resource protection area yet but we do have some impairments particularly on main street to the west there north facts this would be the one activity center we might have more opportunity for looking at additional sites there have been discussions about looking at properties on the south side of fairfax boulevard since that is closely related to the rest of the activity center we have a lot of sites here that are

a little bit larger none that met the five acre criteria that we looked at last time for a minimum minimum size also no real consolidations here aside from a couple of sites so we don't have any significant opportunities here but we do have uh quite a few that have lower building to value ratios or building to land value ratios and again the proximity to the activity center is a little bit closer here than some of the others fairfax circle there are the only commercial corridor uh place types are to the west we have a lot of the properties on the north west side are in the industrial area and that's something that we previously discussed wanting to hold on to so we don't recommend any additions there

we have the harley david site which is the the one yellow site in the 40 60 range to the west of the activity center on the south side and then there's a gap where there is city owned land where the creek goes through and so not have a lot of opportunity to expand that to the west there and then lastly looking at picket in maine the only commercial corridor areas again these are industrial sites extending up picket road smaller sites uh relatively moderate building to land value ratios so we don't see any strong opportunities for adding increased place types there and then the last area to look at here was the as i mentioned the area along main street uh near roberts road and berg station due to transportation access not that

it's an activity center so the two larger orange sites and the yellow one in between them on the right side is fairfax square combined that's over five acres uh and so that is uh the one site we're looking at you can see there might be some other opportunities here that are smaller and not necessarily directly connected to that site but worth considering uh regarding environmental constraints uh we again this one we looked at related to site size because it was noted that the size could be impaired by the environmental constraints so uh those three circles are the three sites that we identified based on the size alone the shops of fairfax is is one of those three sites that was initially not pushed

forward because it had a higher relatively higher uh building to land value ratio we can also see that that does have floodplain on it this is even with the recent floodplain uh or stormwater improvements that were done on fairfax boulevard there this is our most recent uh floodplain boundaries from 2023 uh the other sites were the sherwood plaza office building and the tennis center those straddle the the creek and the floodplain resource protection area portions of those sites are actually undevelopable so you can see this has an impact on the size for both of those and then lastly going to fairfax square you can see that this is near floodplain resource protection area this is partially because the stream is

in a culvert below this site but that does prevent it from being in the floodplain and resource protection area so that is not a impairment by our measurement standards and that's it for those we're happy to go back and look at any of those to see if there are any thoughts of sites you want us to look at in more detail or any other considerations mr cutting up thank you if you go back to the area just on the west side of north facts and now go to the slide that shows your floodplain isn't 100 of that undergrounded at the current time i don't i don't recall and that's all surface parking lot that's correct uh i don't know what makes this still be in the floodplain it could be that it backs up but this is the most recent analysis

that was done by fema completed in 2023 after that project was completed so that area is still considered in the floodplain according to fema okay i know they did work on the road to keep the water from backing up and flooding that intersection and then as it came across the south uh past mcdonald's and passed the pvi that's redevelopment then then essentially it opens up down at pat rodeo park but all the rest of that's underground but still it's impaired for development that's correct this analysis was done after those improvements were made so again according to fema this is still um areas still in the floodplain there are measures where propagators can request or do their own analysis and submit it to fema so if this property were ever to try to redevelop and felt that this

wasn't accurate they could submit it but this is the official measure as of now even with those improvements okay thank you others questions comments we had a point of agreement on what this should look like going forward dr rice your thoughts well this is about whether there are additional any of these sites should be included right yeah well he's cut to the end of the presentation like no so i want to make sure that yeah is there is there a bucket that we're not considering things that are perhaps in county hands that would are there things like that in the city that may come up uh that are special circumstances that we need to look at not that we're aware of i mean we use the measures that we thought were appropriate um looking at the site

size and the building to value ratio um at this time staff doesn't feel that there's a need to to expand this that there are no other measures that we would look at and the country club is being treated separately right that's addressed elsewhere yes and so those two parcel specific considerations that we showed earlier are only those where we're recommending where there's language that recommends the um mixed use place type as an alternative we still have the other parcel specific considerations are in the comprehensive plan we're not proposing taking those out we did discuss a few of them um actually that we are taking out the park road properties that are redeveloping and so on but the majority that are in there will remain as they are including army navy

country club so okay if there are no other comments as i mentioned we will be back uh in september hopefully with a draft document so you can see all this comes together and of course there will be continued opportunity at that time to tweak things and revise very well thank you for all the effort that you've put into this and staff your head scratching and so forth it's been very helpful i think we're making incremental progress which is probably the right thing to do with this this matter so thank you our final agenda item in the work session is updates to the implementation guides for the comprehensive plan and small area plans welcome stannie good evening chair feather and members of the

commission this presentation will cover the implementation guides for the comprehensive plan as well as the three adopted small area plans in old town north facts and camp washington so in summary 80 of the 288 action items have been updated with this review the statuses of several actions that are proposed to be removed removed or substantially changed as a part of our five-year review have been updated to reflect those proposed changes but not every action that has proposed changes is noted in this implementation guide just the substantial ones that are proposed to be updated so for land use 19 items were updated including the project to align the zoning ordinance with the adopted small area plans which is currently underway

the housing programs manager manager position has been approved in fy 2025 and is planned to be filled no later than january and this will role will oversee the affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan along with support the proposed housing and healthy communities advisory board and as you heard earlier tonight there are potential zoning ordinance amendments for accessory dwelling units in multimodal transportation there were 24 items updated including the transit development plan which is currently in the rfp stage and is projected to be complete by next summer several projects have been awarded funding including the shared use path extension to northback street pedestrian and intersection improvements on dwight avenue sidewalks on first and second street and the fern street connector path

and in the previous update in january staff told you about the circulation study for old town but there will also be a separate parking study specific to old town as well and the city is developing a process to coordinate tdm monitoring efforts among properties and monitoring strategies such as resident and employee surveys that's one question i think i've got to find where they are in one place i read about the parking study that's planned and somewhere i read i thought i read something is underway that it is planned it's not currently underway let me find out where i can send it to you separately okay i just want to make sure that just for your information i believe that project rfp has gone out and selection of a consultant is under underway so it's very close to being underway if it's not already

so next time we do this it'll be underway anyway so okay all right all right for environment and sustainability 16 action items were updated including the electric vehicle readiness plan which is funded and updates to the chesapeake bay section of the zoning ordinance to address climate change and mature tree plant planting not mature tree planting mature trees the stewardship coordinator position has been filled and that will focus on urban forestry education and outreach tree planting and invasive removal efforts the and additionally the invasive assessment is underway and the tree preservation and landscaping guide has recently been published in pfm four action items were updated in economic vitality including support for reinvestment in sub-a

properties as we aim to keep those in the city in community services 17 action items were updated including the adoption of the community flood resilience plan which provides provides the city with points toward fema's community rating system which can provide discounts on flood insurance premiums city council also passed a resolution for a school bond referendum to update school facilities the city's community response team was implemented last fall and provides specialized rapid responses to behavioral and mental health emergencies and the akutin creek stream assessment is complete and it identified seven potential locations for stream restoration and public work staff are currently working on engagement with the public to prioritize those locations

moving on to our small area plans nine action items were updated in old town economic development has retained a consultant to conduct a needs assessment and economic impact for proposed projects and the courthouse plaza application has been submitted and is currently under review and like i mentioned a old town specific parking study and circulation study for northfax seven action items were updated including economic development has also retained a consultant to conduct retail leakage analysis in both northfax and in old town the urban forest management plan kicked off in may and is estimated to be complete by the end of 2025 and as mentioned before the tree preservation and landscaping guide is published in the pfm and lastly with camp washington five action items were updated

as part of the sprout grant a review is being conducted to find median locations where we can reduce mowing in the right-of-way by replacing grass medians with street trees and low native plantings and like i mentioned earlier the free fern street connector path has been funded and that was all i have no questions any questions great update this time i didn't have a chance to go through the spreadsheets i got them late i figured it must have been something that kept you from getting to me but my initial reaction reading all these is very good progress um it's always gratifying to see new things coming up and other things continuing uh i seem to take particular note of some of the economic vitality ones that

a lot of references to things that the economic development of fairfax city economic development are doing which i think are just exciting for what they can offer the city so i'm particularly pleased to see some of those moving along the way they are now but all good work by all parties involved thank you and of the 288 action items only six remain with no status updates all in multimodal transportation which is our most kind of in-depth section anyway and all pretty much coordination with the county or tdm great so you did my homework for me thank you any else okay great great update okay we shall reconvene our regular meeting and turn it over to mr napty for his staff report thank you again chair feather members of the planning commission looking back toward july 9 city council

meeting city council finally had their public hearing on the willowood project and approved it by a vote of four to one they also had a public hearing on the erosion and sediment control zoning text amendments that you also had that week and approved that unanimously uh tomorrow july 23rd they will be having their public hearing on the fairfax circle small area plan uh where the planning commission recommended with conditions uh at your last meeting uh some revisions have been made to the plan to address those revisions and those will be shared with the city council during their presentation uh a couple of other items of interest of the planning commission uh the planning commission will or sorry the city council will be determining whether to support a housing and healthy communities

advisory board this is one of the recommendations of the homelessness task force uh there will be as part of the consent considering a purchase of the gmu commerce center site this is adjacent to fire station number three and identified as a preferred location for fire station three expansion as part of that feasibility study uh they'll also be having a work session on the green building policy the direction that that uh project has gone is to focus on tax incentives as a way to incentivize uh green building practices as you know per state code uh we cannot require uh these types of elements so it has to be incentives oftentimes those rely on the zoning ordinance uh but as far as this project has moved more in the way of tax

incentives as opposed to the zoning ordinance uh similar to what the uh affordable dwelling unit uses uh which allows bonus density uh so because of that um there's been less dialogue with the planning commission but we'll see where that goes that might have to come before you for some kind of discussion before it's finalized uh lastly uh they will be having the same presentation you had tonight on the accessory dwelling units uh one more reminder about the urban forest management plan open house that will be this thursday september 25th from 6 to 8 p.m in the sherwood center there's also a virtual option for that you can find the information on the city's website uh also wanted to uh put in a plug for planning commission or training the next

session will be virtual and it will be held september 12th and 13th for the first session and november 21 and 22 for the the second half of the session again this is the virtual option um so try to take advantage of that as you can let us know if you're interested and the city will cover your expenses uh that's all i have for our staff report today thank you any questions for staff commission comments mr cunningham no comments thank you sluggarts nothing for the group thank you mr homan hope everybody has a great august yes i was going to say that too thank you for all your work to get to this point of a break and as the song goes we'll see you in september thank you we are adjourned until september

you