Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, July 8th. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise as you are able and join us. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Our second order of business is discussion and the adoption of the agenda. The agenda was published as required and was available on the outside table. Are there any changes or suggestions for amending that agenda? If not, I'm a motion, Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Chairman,

Paul CunninghamI move the agenda be adopted as presented. Is there a second? Second.

James FeatherSecond, moved and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, motion passes unanimously. Should declare that we do have a quorum present. A couple of our members are missing this evening, but we do have a quorum. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter, for a public hearing. We do have two public hearings this evening. One is on the Fairfax Circle small area plan. So if you wish to speak to that, we'll receive your comments at that time. And the second public hearing is on proposed amendments to the city code zoning ordinance related to development standards. And your comments will be received at that time for that. Any other matter you'd like to address to the commission,

you are welcome to do so now. Madam Clerk, do we have any of those who've signed up

Speaker 8We do have one, Joe Lothrop.

James FeatherWelcome.

Joe Lothroppublic commentGood evening. I'm Joe Lothrop, property manager, agent, property manager of Fairfax Boulevard Center at Fairfax Circle. Had the zips, dry cleaners, et cetera. In watching the progress of the small area plan. Excuse me,

James Featherif this is about the small area plan. No, no, no.

Joe Lothroppublic commentokay before that i had to preface that my my concerns are before we even get to that we all know about the crime at the circle and until that particular aspect of fairfax circle is addressed adequately by the police department and the county attorneys etc i think that any kind of expenditures or modifications to anything a fairfax circle should be put on hold because for instance a cleanup of aquitaine creek for instance going to be nearly impossible until they saw the problem of the homeless folks defecating and urinating in the public spaces and bushes which as soon as it rains right down in aquitaine creek and if you're going to do any kind of clean up down there you better be wearing a hazmat suit secondly the

crime they talk about bicycle this bicycle that and that's that's great however if you live at the Scout you can't leave a bicycle at the Scout because it gets stolen there are people at the Scout one running for City Council this year as a matter of fact lives there she used to work at Artie's she will not she quit working at Artie's because she was afraid to walk home after dark and now leave her apartment after dark because of the fear of crime. So at some point all this other stuff if it if it comes to fruition will probably be helpful to all the businesses and people down there but until you the resolution of the crime that I talked about and the homeless situation and I don't know what that's going to be but until that's addressed adequately I think that this

would be not a waste of time but I think it would be not really functional and and not going to improve anything a whole lot until you solve that first issue so that's what I wanted to make sure you guys know I'm sure some of you do you know in your neighborhood a lot of your neighbors won't even come down to the shopping center to even go to the dry cleaners because they're afraid of you know being harassed and intimidated and panhandled so thank you for your I appreciate it and hope you'll give that some consideration.

James FeatherThank you. Thank you. Anybody else who would like to address the Planning Commission at this time, you're welcome to come forward. Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next order of business, which is consideration of our meeting minutes. Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamI move that the meeting minutes for June 10th be adopted as presented. Is there a second?

Matthew RiceSecond.

Paul CunninghamDiscussion?

James FeatherChanges? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay, passes 4-0-1. Abstention.

Paul CunninghamNext item is June 24th meeting minutes. Mr. Dunningham. Mr. Chairman, I move that the June 24, 2024 meeting minutes be adopted as presented. Second.

James FeatherSecond. Moved and seconded. Any discussion, comments? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Next order of business is items not requiring a public hearing. We have none this evening, so we'll move on to item six on the agenda, which is public hearings. This is the public hearing and the recommendation to the City Council on the proposed Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan. Mr. Napty, will you kick it off? Yes. And then we'll turn it over to our consultant. Thank you.

Paul NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. As the Planning Commission is aware, the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan has been underway since April of 2023 and based on participation by members of the community, including residents, business owners, property owners, planning commission members, city council members, and other board and commission members. The planning commission last had a discussion on the draft Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan in April. And so tonight's presentation, as we prepare for public hearing, is going to focus on some of the things that have changed since then. But we will also touch on the general recommendations that you have heard before. But we want to make sure that anyone who's hearing about it for the first time understands

the general concept of what is proposed for the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan. Also, we have had the report posted on our Engage page since early June. And we have received several email comments, particularly over the last couple of days. at the end of the presentation I will provide a brief summary of what those are so we can factor those into your conversation as well.

ForemanstaffSo with that I'll turn it over

Paul Naptystaffto Lee Quill to get the presentation started.

Lee QuillapplicantOkay, Chairman, members of the Planning Commission. It's wonderful to be back with you again on this small area plan for Fairfax Circle. I think the last time we met was April if I remember right with you all A lot of notes from what you all were speaking to at that time. And then we had planning commission. After planning commission, we had city council. So we went back and our staff worked on these issues. And we're excited to bring before you the small area plan. Next. So going through, as we always do, for those who are new to the process, the location of the fourth small area plan, the activity center for Fairfax Circle. The next slide shows you the designated area within the red of the plan in the schedule.

We are now at the end of the line in the process of meeting with you and with city council before the final votes. Next. As you know, we had an extensive process on this of community engagement, which was actually wonderful. We got a lot of good feedback, a lot of input, and a lot of suggestions. And it was truly a community-based plan that came with a lot of thought from not only you and city council and the boards, but also many, many, many citizens and the businesses. We met with a lot of the businesses and spoke with them. We had over 20 stakeholder interviews, and we had three community meetings, a town hall, a charrette and community workshop, multiple staff. staff and county meetings, both in person and virtual.

And the stakeholder meetings really helped hone and fine-tune a lot of our work. And as you know, we're very visually, graphically oriented. We have over 200 diagrams, plans, et cetera. The key goals of the plan we tried to distill down, you know, when I was talking to Mr. Cunningham earlier, when we first started this effort, the nature what was the soul of this place what should this small area plan be was not self-elevant or relevant and coming forward easily obviously we had to creek we had a lot of asphalt and we had the Fairfax circle with its identity but that was problematic so as we worked and talked with the public and did our research and spoke with you all and staff it started to evolve and continue

So the four major goals on this were really creating a sustainable place, slightly different than North Facts, which had a sustainable background, but really to make this creek, this small area plan, link to the creek much stronger than previous efforts. We also wanted to look at the need for the change in the Fairfax Circle connection right there at the circle and how to improve transportation so how do we reinvent and safely memorialize the circle there are opportunities for creating a center right now everything is shopping centers you know in parking lots and we saw and evolved a an opportunity for basically a village center and part of this came from the ownership of the land that they had an interest as well as what

we saw and how it related to the to the Akatine Creek and then obviously the the mobility through this area it's a major access point to a metro but it was also an area that was crisscrossed by many bike paths walkable areas from the nature perspective going in along the creek and coming in from downtown so we wanted to increase the mobility and accessibility throughout the area so putting those together some of the key things we're going to talk to you about tonight are we clarified the trail system and connections to the creek and how that worked there was question of how did the connectivity to the creek how did the creek become the main focus of our work did we turn our back on it or not clarifying building frontages and footprints throughout what was happening

on the different road conditions but also on the creek better activating the frontages along the creek there was a perception which we talked to that we were turning our back on the creek because of the diagrams we had shown and we made that very clear now that no we were seeing the creek as a major asset and activator and we've clarified that we'll take you through that and then we got rid of some of the confusing potential road connections and simplified the grid so that we had clarity to a hierarchy of streets and how we might create a road system in there that could make moving around the area easier both by pedestrians cyclists and cars but also still have some suggestions with you'll notice in the plans of dash lines where in the future depending on how development comes in

alleyways or connectors might happen and then we also added more detail to the graphics to address these issues the major goal number one is sustainable neighborhood linked to the creek if you go to the slide that has the two areas here we noted early on that the impervious area in area in other words asphalt either asphalt or rooftops in this area is pretty extreme it's very Camp Washington but even Camp Washington had parks large park areas up there with Kootener Park here it was the creek now is about it so when you look at the diagram on on the left you'll see the pink is really what it looks like with regards to asphalt the other big issue so we wanted to address that in the stormwater runoff and how do we bring more green and sustainability into the

area in the the next plan to the right of that was the issue of the flooding we went back and talked with our civil engineer so this diagram does has been passed on to us correctly show the area of the floodplain the fema floodplain and as we've all known that it has a pretty big impact on foxcroft and the southeast quadrant where the the park is right now at Gary Park as well as going into the area of the shopping center the Fairfax Circle shopping center and there are ways we can address that but that is something that we need to keep in mind as we go through the plan one of the ways we were addressing the sustainability was to really take advantage of the creek as a center point of our work the environmental

components. It's a wonderful resource to walk along. It's just most people, a lot of people don't do it because they don't know it's there. They don't see where the paths are. It doesn't interact with the buildings well. And it's kind of hidden because once you are below, you know, below the road at Blenheim, et cetera, you may not even know it's there when you're bike riding, et cetera. One way we were looking at this was to bring the green infrastructure, low-impact development up into the plan area to actually soften and bring and collect water and to try to get rid of some of this extensive area of impervious surface. As you can see right now, the existing plan is about 77% impervious and about 23% green. We believe we can get to closer

to a 50 50 ratio or even better depending if buildings start to incorporate green roofs etc and we're really trying to accentuate this aspect of sustainability and watershed so the idea of these green fingers little green quarters that come in with low impact development that start to pick up water and run off from surface lots and from the top topology there is something that we're introducing we're also looking at trying to help inform the effort right now the Gateway Park Amy will talk a little more about that later as they're working on their effort right now of how to maybe re-envision that if you look at the next slide this directly addresses the issue of activation which we did not previously

so we have done that very clearly here we see the we don't see at you know there a discussion about well should you switch your activation from spring street the new kind of main street to the creek and the answer is it should be both we want to activate and get a new kind of a village center street that's active with retail and shopping and and outdoor eating etc but on the other side we have much more of a green frontage that will be discussed by adam a little bit more and what that means is how we engage the creek with the activated facades and building frontages along the creek facade is another important element. Also, extending the pathway a little bit differently on the east side of Blenheim

so that on the north side of the creek, it really starts to engage these buildings and these spaces that are to be redeveloped and integrates with Gateway Park in the very long run. and on the west side in the shopping center of actually as redevelopment occurs that there's a new path that runs along the creek in that particular area where there is none now it's just a parking lot next to arties and the shopping center it becomes much more of a connected network on the south and the north bringing people to this amazing resource as you go along these images are just meant to give you kind of a character feel for what this could be like in a sense of uh the the creek and how the the path would work its way through the woods and the bridges that

connect again we want to accentuate and really propel forward the cycling and the recreation component because we do have this as a major component here but we also have opportunities such as the image in the lower right where you can activate the creek and the bike path area with retail and restaurants and coffee shops, et cetera, along the path. If you go out along the WOND trail, there are a number of places that you head out to Percival where they have actually coffee shops and restaurants, et cetera, that you can stop along the path. And we'd like to have that as an opportunity suggest that here for this area because this would also be an opportunity to bring people to the area that are coming through

Finally in the next image When you see the Accutene Creek Trail system We see this, you know, we have the existing townhouses on the south side, but on the north side we have very much of a a green infrastructure along the creek and an improved area right with the water flow and with the flooding areas for capture of flood water etc but also having the buildings face toward the creek where you can have balconies for residential units etc take advantage of this amazing resource which is just not really embraced at this particular time and as we get along to looking at some of the network this next image kind of shows how even along the creek we could have areas that open up just like we did on the plaza which

Amy will talk to etc of how we can engage in a very more natural and a more natural way of sitting out under the trees and canopies to really take in a very pastoral setting if you want to be on a more busy active Main Street you can do that on on the other side of the building or in the the park area I'd like to turn it over now to Amy to take you through a few more of the sustainable elements in the circle Amy can

Amyyou all hear me okay awesome um hi everybody um so yeah speaking to that Akatine Creek Plaza um since we've last saw you we've really tried to develop it as sort of being a neighborhood a main threshold into this wonderful Aquatink Creek space. So you'll see here in the rendering that we have, there's all sorts of landscape elements, paving, spaces to gather, even a pavilion space that could maybe serve for public performance or gathering or dining or retail, but serve as a way for retail to really spill out into the creek and for people to really engage with it. You'll remember from last time, too, our precedent of Tanner Springs, which you can see here in the middle image, taken that as a precedent and really followed it as a way to, you know, bring people down.

But again, sea stormwater capture not as sort of something that we need to be worried about, but something that we can really use to create a gathering space for people. So continuing, at the other end of our site, we have another activation center, which would be the Gateway Park, which Lee had spoken to. This takes on a different context. This is more of our nature center, whereas Akatine Creek we saw as our civic center. Here we just really want to make sure that, you know, unfortunately the issue of stormwater and flooding cannot be avoided. So let's try and use it as an asset again down at this node. So you'll see Gateway Regional Park using this area as being an extension of all the efforts that are happening there.

And sort of using the parking lots that are facing the rear as more sort of eco-parking spaces where you've got sort of more natural porous landscapes that are sort of connecting you again back down to a more natural setting. Again, going off of this idea of, again, wanting to pull you down to the Akatine Creek, natural elements, we've definitely clarified in our plan that we want to make sure that any sort of planning recommendations we're making incorporate native plantings, pollinator species, but also compensate for soil volume capacity. So you'll see on the left here, you know, as tree species are getting larger, we want to make sure that the planning volume under all of our pedestrian paths are compensating for that.

So just because we've turned, you know, towards the creek doesn't mean we haven't turned our back on Fairfax Circle. So goal two, reinventing Fairfax Circle. Just to sort of recap some of the issues that we've been dealing with here, you know, we've all been through the circle. We know it very well. You know, a lot of isolated and unusable green spaces, confusing intersection design, multi-stage pedestrian crossings, no crosswalk on southern and northern leg, and many driveways located close to the intersection. And all in all, it's confusing and it presents a very dangerous condition. With our new plan, we're really hoping to make Fairfax Circle a more efficient and safe place for everybody to travel,

which, again, is outlined here. redesigning the circle, a little bit of a closer look. You'll see that we've continued this idea of stormwater capture here, outlined at number two, pulling that idea up from the circle. It's an issue that's, you know, unfortunately throughout the whole study area. This is now following a more traditional, safe intersection design. So you'll see here, you know, new design replacing the circle, stormwater that's going to reinforce the circle identity. We're not getting away from, you know, what the circle was. We're still trying to keep the integrity and the idea of the circle, but just want it to be an overall safer, nicer place for people to be and travel. Again, some of these ideas that we're thinking, you know, maybe it becomes a shade structure,

you know, circular landscaped elements, water features, but also, too, maybe it becomes something that's a motif in the landscape. You know, you have seating elements that are circles or signage that is in the shape of a circle, still resonates the idea of the circle for the plan. So handing it over to Adam.

AdamSo the third core goal of the plan was to create an economically vibrant mixed-use village to live, work, and play. So to recap some of the existing challenges and opportunities that we found in the study area, this is already an amazingly mixed-use area. You have Scout with multifamily housing, you have Foxcroft, you have amazing destination restaurants, and you also have industrial uses. What we were interested in is post-pandemic, single-use districts are not as resilient against economic or health challenges. And so we wanted to strengthen that mixed use, and we've started to add more detail towards that, particularly for the near-term plan. Anchoring this new mixed-use center, we've talked about this before, is Spring Street

as the new Main Street. Here you can see some of the precedent images we provided that sort of show the aspirational feeling of that space as a walkable, a place you park and walk from store to store, and that is a neighborhood node for this small area. In the next slide, you see we've added a more illustrative and detailed rendering. This really shows you can start from the right to the left, the stormwater capture along Akatee Creek, then the plaza and civic space anchored by a retail that's sort of connecting the two as well as a pavilion. And then finally, kind of in the center of the image, you know, an amazing tree-lined retail Main Street that serves as this hub, experiential hub of this entire area.

We also added more details to how Spring Street will actually work and the more fine grain details. You can see in this image, we're showing parallel parking and a comfortable two-way street, as well as wide sidewalks that could host restaurants, outdoor seating, trees with large And then as well as buildings with balconies, patios, and other kind of eyes on the street. So in the past presentation, we went through the variety of different frontages in the study area. We talked about active frontages, which we've revised to really be tailored towards Spring Street, that are more pedestrian-focused, that more walkable retail Main Street. We've also looked at flexible commercial frontages, and I think a good way to think of this is almost like a heat map.

You know, Spring Street is your biggest hub of activity, and then these flexible frontages have retail storefronts, are still very pedestrian-friendly, but they may be entrances to residential buildings. They may be having to balance a busy main road and kind of accommodate that as well. And then we've added at the suggestion of the Planning Commission a third sort of frontage called green frontages, which really are designed to connect to either the green fingers, the park system, and the Akateek Creek behind. So the illustrative images here show how those buildings that front the creek or that front nearby green spaces might operate. It's, you know, we're encouraging, you know, green and natural design elements in those buildings, balconies, patios, and large windows that really start to engage and be part of that green space.

And also provide needed eyes on the street to, you know, on the creek or on the trail to sort of give life to that space. as well as providing seating and where possible outdoor dining or outdoor retail, particularly at key nodes adjacent to Spring Street. We also added a few precedent studies about how gas stations in the study area might be utilized as well as looking at urban agriculture. So we found in this small area plan, as well as in our work and other parts of the city and region, gas stations often present a huge challenge to redevelopment. They're expensive. They have underground tanks. And they're often the last to get consolidated, the last to redevelop. And they oftentimes are found empty.

We noted in the study area the number of gas stations that front the critical moment around the circle, the study area and wanted to provide just a number of precedents of how those might be adaptively reused. So some of these images show retail, other ones show green roofs that could be activated for urban agriculture, nurseries, and a number of other different kind of uses. We were also interested in at least exploring or presenting some ideas and concepts about urban agriculture so those could go on rooftops they could be vertical but they could also occupy the ground plane into community gardens and other spaces particularly in smaller difficult to develop sites or in more community oriented parks or plazas

so the fourth goal is really that connective tissue that's holding all this together it's providing easy access to the entire study area by car by bus by bike or on foot so you know to recap where we're at you can see in this diagram we have two major arteries in yellow that really dominate the study area and then only really one connective street at old picket road and our big opportunity here is to create a better grid of streets that helps alleviate some of the traffic concerns, also helps people easier walk from business to business, and it just creates a better connectivity in the study area. And you can also see there's no major trails or connective tissue to the creek, so the creek feels a little bit like everything has its

back turned to it. So in the long-term vision, on the next slide, we really tried to incorporate a walkable grid of streets that also can allow cars to navigate as well, demonstrated in red. We explored in the dotted green line connective tissue or connective paths and sidewalks that can connect to the creek and bring that kind of life and energy from those roads and from those spaces to the creek. And then in the purple dotted line, these are just suggestions of alleys, spaces that can provide other kind of arteries, particularly when properties redevelop. These might be more back of house spaces. They may not exactly occur right where they are shown, hence the dotted line, but the idea is we're encouraging that kind of connective tissue, particularly north of Fairfax Boulevard.

As part of the report, we also clarified a number of different diagrams, clarified how the two-way parking works gave a little bit more clarity on the shared use paths. And then we also made a number of changes to urban design elements. This is kind of the core changes you'll see in the next few slides. So kind of summarizing the transportation plan, a lot of the work on the Akatee Creek, the Fairfax Circle, we clarified what the character of these streets are. there's Spring Street which is that retail main street there's commercial mains which already exist in the study area and then more neighborhood streets that cars go down but maybe move a little bit slower to allow people to park to go to a business or to a residence and then we show

potential connectors and trail connectors we last presentation we also reviewed with you building heights this diagram has not changed but it's a good reference to remember that the street character and the entire input of this urban design plan really is looking at fostering density more to the north and then tapering down to Foxcroft and tapering down to the residential users to the south. And between all this, another sort of summary diagram that we developed that's new for you is the idea that these are starting to imply different character areas. see this a little bit in the way the urban space is now around the Scout and the Northeast area. We're imagining that to expand and have another building perhaps bisecting into the county

line and be this sort of residential retail dominated node that's closest to the metro. We're imagining in purple the central area that is Foxcroft and Foxcroft Colony will continue to be one of the dominant features here, but it will be a more connective and a pleasant kind of environment centered around Old Pickett Road. To the south, we've talked to this extensively. This is where we imagine a lot of the particularly near-term energy to happen in the study is Spring Street and the creek, and this is the retail node that also is connected to the creek system. And to the north, particularly in the near term, we're seeing it is a production and sort of repair district. And along Fairfax Boulevard, you know, have an improved liner and improved kind of face to that part of town.

I'm passing this off to Lee to talk about phasing through the vision.

Lee QuillapplicantSo as we've done on the other plans, how might this come about over the next few years? So in our near-term development scenario here, we're pretty excited about where it might go actually in the near term because there's been a lot of discussion that we've all had with property owners, especially in the southwest quad of the Fairfax Circle Shopping Center. There seems to be some interest in trying to move on some redevelopment in that area, and we've talked with them and we wanted to provide some more guidance. area as we have with the creek etc so in the next 10 years one to 10 years we're kind of seeing a number of things number one there'll be a lot of discussions about fairfax circle itself

there are a number of people who have questions about how things might work in that particular area and there would be much much more discussion with wendy and the team on that particular area but there has been a desire to come forward with a vision for what this may be and making a better intersection so we do believe that will be moving forward more quickly the Southwest quad as I mentioned in the shopping center area and adjacent to that there's been a number of people that have talked with the city and we believe that this area could start to evolve into this new neighborhood centered village center and start to develop you know there is kind of a road that runs in front of the existing shopping center right now but part of it jogs we're

against the ski shop that Alpine ski shop it's closer to the to the building and then the parking is out and then in the center there's a bulb out where you have a little seating area we're going to try to realign that with the road that actually comes out of the shopping center across the street where Home Depot and my Changs are so that we can get this alignment for Spring Street and also then start to look at the gathering space of where we can start to bring people together. I mean, right now, when you're in this particular area, you're meeting your neighbor over the trunk of your car in the shopping center over asphalt. We think there can be a lot better situation. And the owners of this property are really interested in trying to provide a really interesting new center.

So this looks like that will come about. That would include an Akatink Plaza. Shared paths and boulevards we've talked about we've talked about the improvements to the trail system So obviously in this area that would be part of that and then the green fingers would start to extend up into the area Where redevelopment is happening or along Blenheim? This will be a slow process Coming in but people will start to look at at that in a residential Southwest quad again has the opportunity for bringing in mixed use in ground floor retail with residential above and there's some other projects just to the north of the shopping center right there that are looking at that and again improving the pedestrian and bike connections both

along the Foxcroft and Scout areas for the trail system in those areas also finally right now everything is is focused on the car and we're moving precinct one of mobility through bike scooter you know walkability etc the other modes that might come on by I'm not sure segways will come in up here yet but they might but the idea that we have pedestrian paths and a wider path etc along the main roads and wider sidewalks along these new streets that infill like the main street of being Spring Street that provide for easy walkability and there will be some enhancements to the area around Fairfax Circle as that effort comes in also and the PDR area which is the automotive uses there'll be some change up in that area mainly around the circle but

talking with the owners are not envisioning a lot of change in that area obviously the area around the Lamb Center will have change but that's prior to this with the new building that's coming in in the long term we start seeing more infrastructure moving forward into the plan area with the green fingers we see depending on how the industrial area evolves it may be longer time but there could be incremental changes down near gateway park it may not be this full area we're showing here we know that the the owners of a number of industries for the asphalt plant etc are not interested in moving right away and we can accommodate that as transition occurs and they're interesting trying to be good good neighbors and environmental stewards here so

we're continuing to talk with them on those types of things but we do see that increasing at least to the west to some degree depending on what happens with home depot there are many models that are more urban and the big box retail that can happen in here we would and have talked about how that either could have additions on the front to improve the facades or could potentially even redevelop with a home depot or a target type facility on the first floor and possibly even residential above that will evolve over time but we wanted to show that as a particular opportunity other connections of the road network will start to come in and the idea of being able to walk from the Scout down to the Southwest

Quad easily through the intersection and through a network of streets will start to come about more readily in the first 10 years but definitely in the long term and a move away from just traffic and cars and parking lots to a true sustainable neighborhood is where we ultimately see this going. As I said, when we started this effort, it wasn't quite evident where this might be able to go as a plan, but what we're very excited about now is that with everybody's help and discussion and kind of digging in, we're really excited about the opportunity that the Fairfax Circle area as an activity center and the residents and visitors in this area being a destination for the neighborhoods surrounding it or from outside the area and other areas in the

city and being something that has its own distinct character which is authentic to the Fairfax Circle area and not just a duplication of someplace else at that point I'm going to turn it over to Paul he has a couple wrap-up components he wants to talk about and then we'll open up the questions thank you thank

Paul Naptystaffyou Lee Tonight's public hearing is for the Planning Commission to provide a recommendation to City Council on how to move forward with this plan. City Council will take the ultimate action on whether or not to approve it. The Planning Commission's options, as you will see in your packet of sample motions, are to approve the plan. Approve the plan with amendments, in which case you would state what those amendments are. Defer a decision, in which case you would state a date for the Planning Commission to continue the conversation. or to deny the plan, in which case this plan would proceed to City Council with a recommendation of denial. Next slide. Next steps. Tonight has the Planning Commission consideration in form of a public hearing.

Following this, assuming we move forward, would be a City Council public hearing to consider the plan. If the Planning Commission takes action tonight, that public hearing will be scheduled for July 23rd. uh following that we will uh go through a comprehensive plan amendment process that will be part of the current uh comprehensive plan review that is underway uh any planning commission members that were here for previous small area plans may remember that uh at the same time that we took action on those smaller plans we uh included a comprehensive plan amendment to incorporate that smaller plan uh today we're taking or this time we're taking a different approach because we have this comprehensive plan review underway and we will incorporate those

changes with the comprehensive plan review that will include new pages that reference the plan and any changes that would happen to something such as a transportation plan you also notice in the sample motion if the planning commission chooses to approve or approve with amendments there is language about the approval being contingent upon the approval of the conference of Plan amendments, that is included based on the review process we're going through with VDOT. VDOT has to review this plan as well as the full comprehensive plan review. And so this approval wouldn't be able to take effect until they complete with the full comprehensive plan review. So it's kind of a technicality of our administrative process.

Once the plan is adopted, we could also begin work on developing an implementation guide. We have developed implementation guides for each of the other small area plans that identifies projects that should be city-led that we will be working on, identifies who is responsible and what our time frame is, and then we track progress on those twice a year as we do with the other small area plans and the comprehensive plan as a whole. Again, those focus on city-initiated projects, not private development projects. And then lastly, before we wrap up the discussion, I wanted to go through comments we have received As I mentioned earlier on, the draft plan report has been posted on our Engage page since early June.

We have received some feedback via email. I know that some of the people who sent emails might be here tonight and express what their comments are through the public hearing process, but others might not have done that. And so while the Planning Commission has seen those comments, we did prepare a very brief summary of what those are. So we're aware of, so the public can be aware of what issues came up as the Planning Commission holds your discussion. through those very quickly. Some of the comments that came up involve concern about property impacts of proposed new east-west road street or street between Spring Street and Roanoke and loss of access to individual properties with removal of left turn lanes.

Also, concerns about maintaining property access with Fairfax Circle intersection improvements. There were suggestions about creating a traditional traffic circle at the Fairfax Circle intersection. planning commission might recall that this was discussed earlier in the process support for recommendations shown in the plan for place making around the circle underground utilities shade trees and pedestrian safety improvements however also further recommendations to enhance these with lowering speed limits street parking along blenheim boulevard wider shared use pass and separation of pedestrian and bicycle amenities uh comfort walkways and allowing taller building heights to support such recommendations a recommendation to extend beach street

from draper drive to the east beach street is the street that connects draper drive to draper park and a recommendation to extend the planning area of this study to draper drive as the planning commission might recall this was also discussed early in the process there were recommendations about looking at the impacts of the near-term spring street extension east of blenheim boulevard on home depot also concerns about potential loss of home depot in general as a result of these recommendations in this plan recommendation to increase building setbacks along fairfax boulevard to be similar to what is currently at scout and what was shown in the fairfax boulevard master plan that was developed in 2007 also to consider fiscal impact

of residential development and then we had another comment about increasing the width of shared use path particularly on glenna boulevard to at least 12 feet as opposed to 10 feet was shown in the plan or preferably to have separate facilities for bikes and pedestrians in this area and then lastly we received some of the planning commissioners might not have seen we received a email at 6 30 that had a couple of additional recommendations one with concern about the impact of the green fingers on foxcroft colony and general concern about communication with foxcroft toward the end of the process a general statement that fairfax circle area feels safe in contrast to other comments received and support for more green space and better pedestrian and bike

infrastructure as shown in the plan so again those were just comments i received via email i'm sure you'll see some other comments tonight and so unless you have any closing comments that is all we have for tonight

James Featherthank you that's quite the quite the summary and uh it's a good segue I think into receiving additional public comments before we go into our own questions and discussion. Mr. Napdy, I wonder if it would be helpful, maybe step back and provide a very high level kind of comment about what a small area plan is. I've used the terms, these are concepts, not contracts. We're not taking away anybody's property or forcing them to do anything, but it's conceptual. Do you want to add to that about what this really is and maybe perhaps what it's not?

Paul NaptystaffOkay, yes. And there are a lot of things to consider. So I think the main points of a smaller plan are to provide additional guidance for development interactivity centers, which is where we anticipate the majority of new development happening over the next several decades within the city and redevelopment, not just development. And the purpose is to think about as development of individual properties happens, how it can happen in such a way that it creates a cohesive environment so that as nearby properties redevelop in the future, whether it be five years from then or 10 or 20 years in the future, ultimately it will create a cohesive environment so that the different properties can work together.

At the same time, it does provide guidance for the city to think about where we want to be doing our part in investing in infrastructure. That could include things like storm water and streets, but really the city is not taking a proactive measure in developing new streets or doing anything on private property except in a few extreme cases. And so what we see in this plan, the majority of it is anticipated to be provided through private development with really supporting investments from the city, if that helps.

James FeatherYes, thank you. So the summary of comments we've received by email I think is a good segue into the public hearing before we get our own discussion. So without objection from the commission, we will open the public hearing and start to receive your comments and questions. This is an opportunity for you to address us. We will not get involved in an engaged discussion necessarily, as we don't have a lot of time for that anyway. but we want to receive your input and I know we will listen to it as we've digested the email comments we've already received so we will open the public hearing madam clerk do we have anyone signed up previously

Speaker 8yes mr. Joe Lothrop

James Featherwelcome back

Joe Lothroppublic commentthank you pleasure to be here so I will looking at this these plans etc and I attended a lot of

James FeatherI should mention you'll get three minutes okay so

Joe Lothroppublic commentI attended a lot of the meetings and spoke to the folks down there and my big one of my biggest concerns was the Askaloo building was and it was some design that they're going to run a road through from picket through the back of my property up to campbell um totally unfeasible i'd lose 14 parking spaces on my dumpster pad site so vehemently against that issue come into fruition and again i go back to the um elephant in the room uh the green spaces the green fingers the this the sitting out by ecotene crink And if we didn't have the crime problem down there and the homeless problem down there, that might be feasible. But until that is resolved somehow, some way, with the city police, prosecuting attorneys, Commonwealth attorney, to stem the flow of the crime, I don't see anybody making any major investments down there.

I mean, if I were a larger developer, i.e. Fairfax Circle Center, I wouldn't risk millions of dollars to build any kind of retail housing units above that facing the creek or not facing the creek because with what's going to happen or what's already happened down there and nothing has been done to successfully stem the tide of the crime, you know, you hear – just look at the weekly police reports. It speaks for itself about the thefts from the scout building. The people won't leave the building at night after dark because of crime. I've got people in communities surrounding my center that won't even come there anymore to even go to the dry cleaners during the middle of the day because of the panhandling

and the aggressiveness of the homeless folks down there. And the police are busting their chops trying to resolve it and do it. But, you know, they arrest these guys. They get taken up to the jail. And next morning they're right back out in the street doing the same thing all over again. to this plague upon the city and I don't know how it gets resolved but until that gets resolved I can't imagine anybody want to invest any money to of any magnitude at Fairfax Circle to redevelop anything down there so I'm sounding redundant here but again it's it's pretty prevalent you can ask any of my tenants all my ten I have eight small business people in there and they can if to tell you of all the issues they have to deal with almost on a daily basis so

thank you for your time and consideration hope you'll consider that thank you

James Feathernext clerk

Speaker 8Zachary Schreit

Zachary Schragpublic commentgood evening I did send in an email but I think this is an opportunity for me to expand based on the comments we heard tonight I I of number four of easy access by car, bike, and foot. I think if you look at the grid that is being proposed, it really does depend on these shared use paths to have both north-south and east-west connectivity. For a bike route or a walking route, the chain is only as strong as weakest link, and if someone can bike a mile and then there is another quarter mile where they can't cross, they're not going to be able to take that route at all. So I really think the shared use paths are crucial, and my concern is that they are too narrow for the purpose to which they've been given.

I'd like to draw everyone's attention to two photographs. One is on page 27 of the draft plan. The other is on page 41. And both have been taken from the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which is a similar share use path in Indianapolis, Indiana. And if you look at that, you see pedestrians having a great time. They are walking in the sunshine. They are enjoying each other. They're also doing what pedestrians do, which is behaving unpredictably. Some are walking on the left. I don't know if there are a lot of Australians in Indianapolis, but there seem to be people walking on the left. There are other people walking on the right. There are people walking in the middle. There are people walking next to each other.

There is one person looking at his phone. This is what pedestrians do, and that's fine. We should encourage that. That is the active life that this plan is designed to create. But you'll also see bicycles there, and they are just barely squeezing by these unpredictable pedestrians. weave through, they have to go over to the edge. There's really just barely enough space. And that's Indianapolis, and they have 12 feet of space. If you took away that 12 feet and went down to 10, you're going to have collisions, or at the very least, you're going to have people uncomfortable. They're going to be not willing to walk there. They're really going to be unhappy. 12 feet, I would say, is a bare minimum. Better still would be what Indianapolis does when it can,

what Falls Church has done with its segment of the WNID, which is to separate bicycle and pedestrian traffic with a buffer. If you do eight feet for each and a two-foot buffer, do my math right, that's 18 feet. Indianapolis does 20 feet. And if you look at the diagrams on, I think it is, yeah, page 52, you'll see there's a lot of width to work with. So I really hope that these planners can just give us a little more space to get at very least a 12-foot width, or better still, a separate bicycle and pedestrian paths in order to make this whole plan work. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you very much. Any others signed up ahead of time? Yes, Henry Waters.

Henry Waterspublic commentGood evening, Hank Waters from Mosby Woods. 3251 Shiloh Circle. You know, it reminds me of Santana Row in San Jose, California, what you're attempting to address here. I look at the plan, though, and I'm just an engineer, all right? And planning plans like this carry with them cost, schedule, and performance. Great vision of what could be, but the cost, the schedule, without zoning, without city investment, we've done a great plan that cannot be achieved. individual developers are going to walk in and do one little piece of the puzzle and put this area plan to truth, I think that's far from it. And so I don't object to it, but 950 units are described as part of the livability of the property, the project area, and yet there's no math to explain how that will work in the

transportation network there's no math to explain why we eliminated probably the greatest safety device we have which is the circle when you enter the city all right an intersection is an invitation for speed not an invitation to slow down all right look at our surrounding communities route 50 has them rotaries on them now and nobody's crashing but it does two major things it slows traffic And if you're going to crash, at least you're at an oblique angle. It reduces the severity of crashes, and it reduces the number of crashes. That's the gateway to the rest of Route 50 into the city. If we want to slow traffic down and we want to keep it to a level that's acceptable, why are we putting in a major intersection?

There is no discussion about other methods of the intersection of 29 and 50, or Bellum, Old 29. You know, there's no underpass, no overpass discussions, nothing. That terrain certainly would support other feature designs, and yet we're going to go back to an intersection. I look at that, and I see area businesses materially affected by that simple intersection change. I drive through every day, and Chick-fil-A is a busy business, right? And we're going to make it so they can't get there, right? So we're taking a major business. Home Depot is the home of almost every tradesman that works in the city, and we're going to take it away. That area plan says they're gone. It doesn't say they're going to figure out how to drive into the bottom of the building

and get their lumber and leave. So I appreciate all of the vision. I just think that without zoning decisions made now to support the plan, without a city investment plan to support the plan, that we have simply passed on to another generation an idea. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Are there others?

Speaker 8No others signed up.

James FeatherSo we'll open it up to the general public. Please state your name and address for the record. That slide can be taken down. This is not a Q&A session.

Kevin Farrishpublic commentMy name is Kevin Farish, 9610 Fairfax Boulevard. And our family owns many, many properties that are presumed affected by this potential change and the changes. I fully recognize that this is an overall plan and it's nothing is in granite and you're relying upon property owners and business owners to develop in this direction. If you can look at the screen, and it's hard to describe, but I'll just draw your attention to it. All of the roads, the new roads that are being shown here, most of which show great accessibility. The one that doesn't make any sense to me, and hopefully to you, is the ones on the north side that have the twos beside them. And that's very, very close to Fairfax Boulevard.

Those streets go way back and border the county. Normally, when you do a road like that, you would do it on the back side of the overall properties, not so close. As soon as you make that turn you have potential for for stacking and other Accessibility concerns that would be very concerning from a safety standpoint And it's my understanding and having conversations with some of the folks in the planning team That those are not going to be required of a property owner, but if any of the property owners choose to develop their properties then we will have to have discussions with the city on how that how to navigate that and that's really concerning to me as a property owner that by showing two roads that really don't do anything

other than incur a great deal of expense to create there the business owners or the businesses that are on all of the all three of those streets we don't go forth to each other. So we're providing this access to no one that has a need for that access, if that makes sense. So, you know, if it makes long-term economic sense to do something, I would certainly be in favor of it. But those particular don't show any real long-term viable planning or benefit. And I'd ask that you try and get those taken off of this overall plan. The other other thing is with the with the advent of the change of the circle One thing I know about these these processes. I believe If the city council approves it then the one thing that they are going to move forward on fairly quickly or as quick as they can

Is to actually affect the road change to the circle And so I have a lot of concern because one of the properties shown would have zero egress So I have you know one one property that has no way of having people come and go So that that it would have to be addressed At some point in the plan. So I'm very supportive of the overall plan I like the concept and I'd love to see it eventual, you know Become an eventual reality But I just would ask that you please take those that those two roads out of the system because I don't think that they achieved the desired goal. Okay, thank you so much for your time.

James FeatherThank you. Are there others who would like to address the Planning Commission? Okay, seeing none, we will close the public hearing and turn it over to the Commission for questions, discussion, and comments. Commissioners.

Matthew RiceDr. Rice. Good. It's gratifying to see a room full of people. Honestly, the discussions that we have about things like this are so much better when the public and city officials and staff are here. It really is not good to have these discussions in a vacuum in that context. I'd really like to thank Mr. Farish, Dr. Schrag, Others who were kind enough to email us and give some input. That's extremely helpful. We need that and we really read all of it. And when you email, that goes to every single one of us. You may target someone individually, but we all find it important enough that we share all of it. So I think the connecting roads, I think the general principle, something most of us I think ascribe to is,

blocks and people can actually see the shorter block length they're much more likely to walk or they're much more likely to interact and so in the context of industrial uses in a car dealership I do kind of agree the road currently as it stands with the businesses there may not make sense but when it does redevelop it probably does make sense and in exchange for the changing roads is an unbelievably prominent opportunity for a business frontage, whatever that future business may be, and signage and a facade that's in a focal point for the entry into the city. So I don't know what the future will hold. I was here 12 years ago, I think, when conversations started about Scout on the Circle. There was a great deal of skepticism about combined property's ability to build that

and make it work. And I was in the audience making public comments to a planning commission into a city council on behalf of a smart growth group. And it just, they didn't know if it would work out. And I do want to emphasize that on the corner, there's still a business, the Dunkin' Donuts. And they did not want to redevelop with Scout. there was an attempt to do that but I think the city really respects people who have the guts and have the energy to put everything into a business it's extremely difficult I'm an academic I don't take those kinds of risks I also don't have the profit on the backside when it works so I respect all the comments about potentially losing businesses. I do see a tremendous opportunity. Home Depot is our

number one sales tax payer in the city. Has been for a long time. I think it will continue to be for a long time. And so I see a lot of very good things in this. I'm quite optimistic. I want to just address a few things in particular. If I could ask you about the crossing times and if you could summarize perhaps that analysis. This originally was presented by a gentleman we became quite familiar with named Nandor and he had just a fantastic way of presenting and you know his colleague transportation of them kind of really it was striking to get the times associated with it the transit from the northeast to southwest side is over five minutes is that correct so somewhere you know we could see just across the road it's virtually

impossible with the current configuration and circles are notorious They are quite good at avoiding the collision that a direct intersection might invite. They are really good, perhaps, at calming the speed. The one thing they're absolutely abysmal at is dealing with pedestrian issues. You can't create a crossing point if cars don't stop. So it's extremely difficult for anybody to even conceive of walking the northeast to the southwest corner. It just, that doesn't happen. 12 years ago. I'm going to try not to get it worked up about this because this is kind of my soapbox I stand up on and I rail about. Walkability is good for business. Absolutely. Bottom line, we heard that from a famous consultant in DC that we paid a lot of money to come in and

promote that idea. Walkability is not about DEI. It's not about helping. It's about business. people into a neighborhood that are going to be spending money and that is real and it's dramatic and I see the intersection as a way for us to get there and not just the intersection the other part of this that's I really love is the stream channel and the focus on the creek and I think between the last time we saw this and this time there's a great deal of emphasis on the Akatink Obviously, problems that are there now need to be worked out, but in the future, we may have an absolutely spectacular green space. If I could ask a question, perhaps, and then maybe some of the things I've talked about, if you have comments that are insightful, I'd like to hear, but I'd like to figure out

whether it's feasible for us to do an 18-foot or a 20-foot right away. We can do something here that connects the county's trail infrastructure to the city's infrastructure, and we can do it the right way. And if you've ever tried to walk on the WNOD trail, it's just aggressive cyclists, high-speed. Separating uses really is the magical thing to do. We have enough space to do that here. So is it practical along the entire stretch within the small area to separate pedestrian and bicycle use along the creek?

Lee QuillapplicantWe've done many different configurations of these types of paths, some separate, some combined. They normally end up being combined because the right-of-way, in order to get the traffic through, when you add in the different paths if you want to try to keep it out of private ownership it you know that that sets a dictum as far as how wide here we are trying to have minimum impact on the property owners adjacent to the right-of-way so clearly we could go to 12 we're at 10 now we could go to 12 with minimal impact on property owners there would be some because we'd be going going into a little bit more private property. Sorry,

Matthew Riceisn't almost this entire area in the floodplain? I just pulled up the floodplain map. I forced my students this last week, not very kind for a professor to do, but I made them download the elevation contours and look and download through the open data portal the city runs, the RPA. And so no one's going to be building there. it's not even possible given the flooding risks that exist can't we take that area that's already in the RPA already in

Lee Quillapplicantthe Amy can you bring up the floodplain map but before you do that go I'm sorry I did want to answer mr. Rice your question about the crossing time that we were talking about earlier and if you see the red line on this slide existing conditions at the circle that travel time was about four minutes and 15 seconds and the distance was about 500 feet so that's what we were talking about is literally you had to cross to the center from you know from the scout side you had to cross to the center traverse the portion of the circle then cross to the island that was with the slip ramp and then you had to cross fairfax boulevard then you had to wait a little island and then cross the slip ramp to go into plenum and all that

you know at a good day would be about four minutes 15 seconds or with ideal light timing yeah that's that's that's with good traffic so part of what our our work and what the city's been interested in majority

Matthew Riceof that is wait time yeah

Lee Quillapplicantright so I just wanted to bring that up because you had the question and that's in the data that we submitted if Amy you go to the floodplain actually the floodplain does it it's it's bad but it's not crushing the whole area here so if you see it obviously on the eastern end of the site it moves up into the park area and up toward the apartments Foxcroft but then it drops down through the asphalt plant and actually because terrain is has minimum impact around the Home Depot and Chang's but then swings back into the Fairfax Circle shopping center area but that particular area by minor changes in grade and how the development could happen is that area can be addressed by a minimal change grade and therefore reshaping the area obviously it's going to as you see it in

this plane you've got this long stretch of an office building right now and where you see in the plan there's a building where basically Artie's and ski shop and everything is right now then there's a plaza and then there's a scoop in I mean area for the creek to accept the water in a different and then it scoops back out toward the creek so that what you're basically doing is reworking the flood area in this particular area to some degree. So based on the discussions we've had with the developer and their engineers, they do believe that they can redevelop in that area where the existing building is right now. So that's why that has been pursued. so the area that would be impacted for the trail is only that little area on Blenheim

and then of course down on Fairfax Boulevard but again we could increase the width of the path slightly without too much of an impact on the property owners adjacent and I think that they would probably see it as a benefit to them also but Paul has mentioned also that this is you know it's got to be looked at from a citywide right perspective yeah

Matthew Riceso in the report there was a reference to W&OD Trail and you know a brewery that's right on the trail my students remind me about that constantly I've never been to it but it's a compelling example and I think we can set an example here I'm sorry not to be pedantic here which I tend to do the floodplains available you can you can navigate all the geographic data in the city seamlessly through a very familiar and comfortable user interface the only pinch point in that entire floodplain is where it goes underneath Blenheim Boulevard that's the narrow point and it's over a hundred feet so carving out 18 feet which would be eight plus eight plus two carving out feet shouldn't be a monumental task here and I really would like to see an

emphasis on that because it really would be you know the keystone here it would get people in and out the focus on the creek a rehabilitated Creek a cleaned up Creek a Creek that doesn't have trash and debris in it I just think it would be an opportunity for us and I like the plan and I think generally the idea of doing a little bit more in this area is a very good idea and we've heard it from the public and I'm advocating for it and I think others would agree

Paul Naptystaffokay can I ask a point of clarification yeah when you're talking about the 18 foot width with the shared use path in the separate pedestrian facility are you talking about a path that is along the creek along the south side or the one along glenna boulevard i

Matthew Ricerecognize we'll coxswain trails already on the south side so this would be something on the north side that would be integrated with the plaza and i think clearly we don't need to redundantly build trails on both sides and overdo it in that way but there may be a way of directing some traffic down one path and other traffic i lived in an area in a previous employment circumstance where the municipality spent three decades about 30 years acquiring easements so that they could split bicycle traffic from pedestrian traffic and within this area you can bike 15 miles up and down the Pacific Coast without even stopping lots of underpasses we're already doing that in fact under Blenheim Boulevard so some of the things that exist the only thing

we're not doing is really ramping up the widths and separating the uses which I think would be a great thing so recognizing there already is a trail on the south side and more that could be done on the north side I'd really like to see if we could do that

Lee Quillapplicantthanks for the clarification I was thinking you were talking about Blenheim which is where you have the road right-of-way right and you've just clarified that so on the creek that's a lot easier to accommodate a larger path than along parallel to you know a major artery or something so thank you for clarifying that i was talking when i was talking about the encroachment i was talking about blenheim not the creek so um yes okay okay so your request is much easier to accommodate

Matthew Riceyeah sorry not speaking perhaps as clearly as I could if I

James Feathermight just interrupt for a second but our public comment was about the other uses as well along the Boulevard along Blenheim so you're not off the hook

Lee Quillapplicantright well that that's what I was gonna say to 12 foot that the gentleman we received his email

James FeatherZachary I'm trying to remember sure thank you

Lee QuillapplicantI saw riding his bike in this this evening and we said hi as we were coming in we understand exactly where you're coming from there we have worked on plans where we have a high-speed bike path because of people that are putting in helmets and spandex as opposed to those who want to ride like in Denmark so this can be obviously looked at as the plan evolves into application and I know that that Paul and and broken the team or look it would look at that more in detail as well as wendy and we do have some opportunity to to widen that for sure whether it goes into 20 or 18 feet wide uh could be discussions with property owners i guess and discuss but uh 12 would be easier again assuming it can work with the rest of the city yeah

Paul Naptystaffyeah i would say you know our concern there is the impacts to properties we we want to be reasonable as far as what we push them on. This is an area that would be dedicated by individual properties as they redevelop. Not likely something the city would be proactive in investing in, although it is a possibility. So the idea of separate facilities along that area, I think, would be a significant impact. The idea of widening from 10 to 12 feet, probably something that could be accommodated, but something we would want to look at on a citywide basis if we want that to be our standard. Our standard for shared use pass right now is 10 feet, and so we should consider if there's a benefit to 12 feet,

perhaps that's a political, not just a Fairfax circle, but citywide. Yeah,

Matthew Ricegood. If I could, the outreach to the Foxcroft folks, absolutely essential, and they're shouldering the burden, horrible burden of the worst flooding situation in the whole city. It's half of their property is covered by the newer floodplain calculations, and it just something needs to be done to sort that problem out significantly. And I think I was a little alarmed to have asserted that there was no outreach to their HOA or to their board. And if, you know, perhaps that it's been attempted or something, but some sort of connection to that group definitely needs to happen. They are active. I interact with a resident on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, advocates for their interest and the flooding things there are pretty bad.

And so there are effects that happen because of that. It's the displacement of unhoused people into kind of the Foxcroft condo that happens because the water's physically displacing them out of where they're sleeping and they're looking for a dry place to sleep. And so there are lots of different impacts. I think we'll maybe hear from Satoshi Ito a little bit more at some point about what might be able to be done there to either increase the capacity of the passage underneath picket to try to get more water to shed a little quicker. again I made my students download elevation contours and find a low elevation point which involves sorting a table and selecting some rows and then looking at what is highlighted on the map

and that's the elevation low point every single drop of water other than the southwest corner flows down straight into the Foxcroft property and so at least changes that may happen to the Gateway Park and some other things that may emerge that may improve that would certainly help but I think that needs to be an area of concern and something that we do to reach out to the people that will be impacted by that the only other thing I wanted to ask is whether the places in the drawings and the plans that were shown tonight that show amenities associated with kind of widening points where the Akatink could perhaps flood a little bit or could accommodate a stormwater surge whether those areas coincide with the natural

drainage patterns as they exist now and there were two there was one kind of east of Blenheim Boulevard and one to the west of one and Boulevard both places where it kind of ballooned out a little bit is that a real artifact of the topography or is there an idea that we might change the topography? If we were to do something that I assume would be in the ballpark of having to go to the Corps of Engineers or FEMA to get permission to do anything like that. Any comments on the future of the creek? We change it?

AdamThe larger design for Gateway Park expanding as well as Akateek Plaza is in direct response to the current floodplains where we do anticipate there needed to be some absorption, some flood mitigation in those areas. But really throughout the report, we provide sort of a kit of parts because all of this would require a deeper flood study, work with the individual property owners as well as with FEMA and other organizations to get into the nitty-gritty of those details. but in general that is the anticipation is that there each of these sites will have to have some sort of performative moment to absorb that stormwater and if you're going to put that infrastructure investment to protect Foxcroft to allow you know the existing businesses like

Home Depot to remain it might as well also have a economic aspect of driving visitors amenities to the community that can then have it do double duty.

Matthew RiceYeah, it's a great idea. I like it in the plan. I don't think it's even a second too soon for the folks who are doing the implementation to start figuring out what the administrative hurdles would be to building some of this infrastructure and what we would need to do as a city to make it happen. We absolutely have the best stormwater. Very impressive staff that do stormwater stuff in the city. you know, some of my favorite people to visit because they're really good. Figuring out what we need to do to make that work would allow us then to figure out what we need to do to implement it. Because it would be attractive. Well,

Lee Quillapplicantwe're trying, as Paul and Mr. Feather were talking about earlier, Jeremy Feather, this is a guide to try to help provide guidance for efforts that are proceeding. And as you know, Gateway Park is getting ready to or has just started. showing imagery in this area and the idea is for this to hopefully become if you all accept it as a plan that this is where we as a city want to go so that that becomes a little bit more leverage for them to say purely pay attention to this. And the idea again we did not present to you this document which is and this doesn't have the appendix on it so we didn't present 150 pages to unite we just basically kind of told you where things were adapted and where we listened and and modified

some of the plan so that the mr. rice the things we talked about of clearing out areas underneath the bridges remember there was the height where the paths were we could lower potentially those things the kit of parts that Adam talk to that's all still in here um and we do believe that that's really important to look at those and of course in talking to satoshi and and and paul and brook and amy lindon the staff you know we know there's a lot of work that still needs to be done with all the fema and the flood plain work but we need to give guidance and again this is a guidance um we can just leave it and LET IT FLOOD OR DO THINGS TO HELP PROTECT AREAS AND USE IT AS A RESOURCE. TURN IT INTO SOMETHING THAT IS A POSITIVE RECREATIONAL AND VISUAL ASSET LIKE AT THE PLAZA,

LIKE AT THE PARK. AND WE ALSO LOOKED AT IS IT POSSIBLE TO GO BACK AND DO A PARTY FLOOD WALL ARCHITECTURALLY and infrastructurally aesthetic flood wall, which we gave some examples in here for helping foxfroft. So that's going to take a lot more study with Satoshi and his group, but we wanted to get out ahead of that a little bit to make some suggestions.

Matthew RiceAnd certainly anyone interested in this, the files that we look at in preparation for the meeting are all public. Everything's public. This is public. You can go see it and look at it. I would like to suggest somebody fire this off to Nova Parks and make sure that they see it and because they have an interest in Gateway and doing that with the city and it's, you know, certainly it's never too soon to inform everyone else, Fox, Croft, HOA on the north side, Gateway and Nova Parks on the south side. It would be great to have them fully informed about this plan.

Lee QuillapplicantI also think it's great that you had your class look at reading a map floodplain map I can guarantee that that is a minority of the populace in the United States knows how to read a map or plan let alone a floodplain map so I think that's great because it impacts a lot of people and now they can go out and share that with some friends of theirs and we can spread the word on how to read you know maps

Matthew Ricewe'll see what the course reviews say I'll get in about two months but mentioning this was just to highlight that there's a huge amount of information that flows through an open data portal the city has. And you don't need special tools. You can just web browser and you can become an expert on floodplain and which businesses are impacted and which ones aren't. It's really quite valuable. And I want the city to continue investing in that because of how useful it is for things like this. I've monopolized a huge amount of time and I've asked a ton of questions. So thank you for your patience. And I'm done. Thank you.

James FeatherMr. Coleman, anything? I can come back to you. Ms. Briggs? We will potentially vote to make a recommendation to see. We will vote tonight to make a recommendation to City Council whether to adopt, modify or defer.

Betsy BriggsOn the circle.

James FeatherOn the small area plan. The planning document. Yes, that's right. Ultimately, the council has the approval authority to adopt it. We only make a recommendation.

Betsy BriggsDid we look at a lot of other options, you know, since I'm late coming in this?

James FeatherYou want to make sure your mic is on as well. There's questions, of course, but maybe it's worth describing some of the history of the process and timing, Mr. Napty, for the benefit of our newest member, Ms. Briggs.

Lee QuillapplicantIs that a question or a certain?

James FeatherIt's on the plan, the process.

Paul NaptystaffOther process for the whole plan or the circle intersection?

Betsy BriggsI only became involved with this in April or May, so I'm curious how many options were looked at to decide on the intersection being the one choice to change the circle to an intersection.

Paul NaptystaffThere was a precursor to this plan that was conducted around 2021-2022. the city had received funds from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. So we had a separate consultant that looked at, I want to say it was eight or nine options, and that study is posted on the Public Works website under transportation. That did include an option for a traditional traffic circle as well as a traditional traffic circle with an underground tunnel. The recommendation from that report was to move forward looking at three options. one was the traffic circle with the underground tunnel which was eliminated pretty quickly due to cost concerns and then the other two were looking at a traditional intersection similar to what's shown here and another one that

looked at a traditional intersection that was reconfigured to depend on some of the side streets connected streets that are shown in the small area plan to removed left turn lanes and those kind of things to kind of tighten up the intersection ultimately through this process we backed away from that one as well because there are too many uncertainties about when the other connecting streets would happen and whether or not they would actually end up relieving enough from the main intersection to eliminate the need for left turn lanes and that type of thing so that's how we ended up with the traditional intersection that being said i do want to point out that on the page of the report that has the intersection design on it, which

I will tell you in a minute, page 26, there's a footnote at the bottom that says, this concept is developed based on high-level planning analysis to help inform the small area plan. A full design will be determined based on detailed traffic analysis and engineering studies at a later date. The reason we wanted to put that footnote in this plan is because even through the previous study as well as the work that went into the smaller year plan, the scope of doing a full traffic analysis that would be required to actually come up with something that we know would work at this intersection wasn't within either of these studies. They're both still very high level. And so before we can commit to something like this traditional intersection, we do need

to do that full scale traffic analysis. And the result of that may say just stick to the circle design that's there with some minor modifications. It may say that this works. It may come up with something else. But for the purpose of this plan, we had to make some assumptions to think about, you know, what's going to happen around it with land use and that type of thing. So what we see in this plan with this traditional intersection, I know we heard some concerns about it. We still have concerns about it, and we're not willing to commit to it yet. But it is shown in this plan for those other reasons. and one of our next steps when we develop our implementation plan will be to do this full traffic study and hopefully come up with what the ultimate result will be.

Betsy BriggsDid we look at overpasses for pedestrians?

Paul NaptystaffFor pedestrians, no. Not in the initial study and not in the small area plan. The closest thing would be the circle design that had an underpass. So the main through traffic on Route 50 went under, pedestrians would still cross at the circle but it would be you know much fewer lanes to cross well

Betsy Briggsi definitely see the need for a way to walk around the circle by foot on foot but um i'm also wondering how much weight is given to businesses located on the circle in our decision making if it very much impacts them does that matter to us

Paul Naptystaffyeah that's a factor that's included And that's part of what led us to this design. I know we heard about some concerns about impacts, but I think this is less impactful than some of the other designs that were looked at. There were designs that looked at completely shifting the alignment of Blenheim Boulevard so that it met at a 90-degree angle, which would reduce some of the safety concerns there, but that had significant impacts on private properties. so things about like access points the more minor impacts those will have to be addressed at some point but first we need to figure out what our general idea is and then as they work through the final design they can figure out what to do about those kind of situations

Betsy Briggsif I was a business owner on the circle I would be very concerned about it moving forward because then it's out of my hands and into those future hands that's going to go. And access is very important for a business. So that's a concern of mine. And the intersection being more prone to accidents is a concern of mine. So those are my hesitations.

Paul NaptystaffI don't think, you know, this, I had to look back at the initial analysis, but safety was certainly one of the major factors in that design. So the concern about traffic accidents from what I recall from that report, this design is anticipated to have less of a concern about accidents than the current configuration. But I had to look back at that to confirm.

Lee QuillapplicantI think if you were to put forward in, you know, comments that go forward to city council, that the idea of access, just to highlight it even more, it's been in the discussions. and what you're seeing up there is no you know we we had conversations with mr farish and everybody we know about his concerns and this is not meant to cut him off so he has no access i mean he he has to have access i mean you you can't run a business without access having said that how that access whether there's a slip road that comes in off the side or something on the out ring for him or somebody else those are the things that would come out in this next study so i i don't think they're losing any control in fact they'll they'll be right at the table

because when you're honing things down if he's not going to sit there and just let things go he's going to be right there as if i would if i had that property i said hey look you know i this is a concern we need to address that and no one's saying uh forget it go away at all it's just how be done based on where this goes so if you were to say something make sure that access issues are addressed you know just a highlight for council i think that might be a way to address that the only other thing i want to mention on the overpass underpass for pedestrians we've been doing this a long time on busy roads and what we have found as and even on even busier roads than this that people really actually want to go across at grade where they feel safe and they're not stuck up or

in a tunnel at different times a day what they want to do is make sure that the light isn't you know short circuiting and they get out in the middle and then are stuck especially if you're older you're moving a little bit slower or your kid or with a baby stroller could be younger that's really on the timing of the light and as I said when you're coming into each one of these activity centers you're coming into a new I've used this term before you probably pedestrian precinct you're coming into an area where things are going to slow down if you don't want to go this rate you got an interstate just to the north of here but when you come in the city of fairfax when you come into our activity centers which are going away from a car oriented

to a pedestrian oriented a people place of bikes and and scooters and walking etc you're going to go through a little bit slower it's just like in washington dc our office in georgetown and we have m street you know all three lanes before the pandemic we had three lanes in and out every morning yet we have a traffic light that allowed at different breaks to get across it's just more of an urban condition people get used to it those who want to speed through go to a different route and those who understand it's going to take me a little bit longer to go through here but it has to be that balance we've got to move cars but what's the priority it's the people so that that's change and then when they um you know to get further east they can you know take off a little

bit quicker with a higher speed limit but i

James Featherthink we understand

Lee Quillapplicantthe challenge the opportunity

James Featherand perhaps have a suggestion to add some language perhaps to the paragraph mr knap that you mentioned to include property accessibility as part of the study explicitly yeah this only would address some of the concerns we've heard from the public as well that meet your need mr rice Okay, anything else, Ms. Burks? That's it. Mr. Coleman.

Anthony ColemanI think the one concept that I've just had a little trouble with and I think a lot of people have is, and you highlighted it very well, Chairman, is the fact that we're dealing in concepts, not contracts. And the fact that we do have an implementation guide where Mr. Farish would be able to and we would want his input greatly. And the fact that we do have, as Mr. Rice echoed earlier, everybody in the chamber tonight is incredible. Like, I wish every meeting was like this. It really would just be incredible to have the community here all the time. So the fact that this body is charged with forward thinking with the comp plan, with our small area plans and activity centers and whatnot is, I think we've done a really good

job and the consultants have done a good job with those concepts. I think the fine tuning that's been noted tonight, I think we definitely need to input that were to move forward with it tonight but I think just remembering that this is a concept not a contract is really kind of the key thing with these plans

James Feathermr. Cunningham

Paul Cunninghamthank you mr. chairman I guess I have a few comments one I'm going to start with the initial comments that led us into here from Mr. Lothrop and that regarding crime in the area and by way of history this is not a new problem this is a problem that's been around for a long time in fact the fact that there was a social need to serve people who are homeless or underserved started in the early 90s with the concept of a lamb center and it's in its third location now over time having moved along along with the concept that we have approved the construction of a building adjacent to our study area that is going to have to provide affordable housing or housing to homeless folks in this area means that there's a social portion of the society and the city that

believes that this population needs to be served. I think by the same token the comment that that population also needs to be lawful, not a total thorn in the side of the businesses and the population and the redevelopment of what's going to occur in that area is a common theme also. city can handle alone it's going to have to work with the county because not all homeless people served in this area live in the city or camp in the city but they camp in the county adjacent to the city and areas that make this a location so that's a problem I think where and law enforcement and other things need to be given more attention so that this area is an area that is ripe for redevelopment When it comes to the pedestrian traffic discussions, I've listened to Dr. Rice's comments and the other comments in response.

My one question was, how long does it take if I live at the Scout and the Circle to walk across the street to get fast food at Chick-fil-A? And when I look at those two right across the street from each other and the street that goes between them, that's not a friendly crossing. It's not a timely crossing and that's why I think we have so many cars stacked up every day in that It's a popular place People go there. It's a profitable business and as such Handling traffic in the mix with walking not only occurs at major intersections But occurs in some of the other intersections in our in our major areas when I hear Mr. Quill's comment about we're traffic calming in all of these areas if you want to go fast go to 66 in that I'm remembered reminded of any number of discussions I've been in

that when 66 has an accident 50 fills up 123 fills up 29 fills up all of the other roads become areas for people to cross and they really don't want to slow down because somebody wants to walk across the street from Scout to get to Chick-fil-A. They want to keep moving because that's their goal. And so the design on our major streets has really been to try to ease traffic through them. Maybe not faster, but more and more predictable so that we can handle greater volumes because the area has greater volumes of traffic. So that the traffic studies in the city that I've seen aren't talking about everybody now going around the city and our traffic is becoming manageable. Everybody talks about it becoming more dense and more unmanageable.

So that's, I think, one other challenge. When we have talked about other small area plans, we talked about North Facts. and Dr. Rice in particular has a predilection to saying can't people get over traffic, get under traffic, do something else, which I've heard the comment that that's not feasible. But my question is the city of Falls Church, the W&OD Trail, it's a major trail system in this area. How does the W&OD Trail cross Route 7 in Falls Church? An overpass, exactly. So overpasses aren't foreign to this area and properly designed. People, I think, use them. So throwing that out as a cost consideration only, that we're not going to do an underpass because it's too expensive. we're not gonna do anything but consider traffic traveling on the surface because

it's cost-effective doesn't really speak to the future of accessibility if somebody wants to ride a bike if somebody wants to walk if somebody wants to travel other than in a vehicle when when when our different systems you know Aren't working together but are working at cross purposes to make each of them more efficient But then they come into these natural roadblocks That's not really great planning from my perspective and that's not moving us to the future That we all talk about wanting so some of these other options need to go back to what? Mr. Waters said that the community needs to participate in this It can't be just left to private redevelopment with a with a great to have individual people implement all the pieces and come out with a coherent

puzzle with all the pieces present no pieces missing so from that standpoint I think we are going to need more civic involvement with the implementation of our plans and we may have a need to have the city have more skin in the game if you will in addition to just the transportation projects because those are the major projects that tend to get funded by other people's money be it from the state the federal government transportation funds someplace else other than the local funds we have because we keep our tax rate low I'm not saying that we shouldn't keep our tax rate low but we need to to do those bring us the critical mass that we're hoping to out of the plans. When we looked at the streets Mr. Farish alluded to those two blocks there was an earlier comment

tonight that perhaps we would have a street that would go through that area which was not part of the study that would align with the entrance to Draper Drive Park. Well, if you think about it Draper Drive Park is considerably further north than those two streets on the map So making that connection Sort of as a disconnect as we're cutting across the streets to what purpose? So part of that is that we didn't look at that northwest portion as a whole or as a unit and so some of the recommendations when they're in there probably should not be set in concrete or be brought back to say this is what we put down, this is what we're going to do. We should have some way of making them fuzzy enough that reality comes into play when it's time to do them.

And there are places where the city has had to move forward without it being private development. And I go back to Northfax. When we look at the streets in Northfax, the bulk of Northfax East was paved parking lot for used and new cars to be sold. And a shopping center got redeveloped, but a street got developed in there and another street is being in there. So most of this doesn't happen fast because that street net grid network was laid out in the 2005-2006 process of a charrette for the boulevard master planning process when a bid was formed. And here we are 18 years later, and we're still talking about the future of putting in a street. and it is going to have public transportation money

and other things to eventually make these things happen. So looking at our recommendations for the next 10 years I think is worthwhile, but I think we also need to look at a plan like this and say, are the bones good? I really like parts of this plan. I like developing the part along the creek to make it an amenity rather than something that runs through everybody's backyard they want to dump their trash in and if we can make those amenities I applaud the plan for doing that I applaud the plan for other things but I recognize that as it was recommended if you're going to put a road in it's going to have implications so it may not happen fast if you're if you're impinging on a property owner who needs that essentially to make his property work it

It may take a little longer for that. It may be a little shorter. But the suggestion of doing it is important because that's what gives the place a sense in the future. So there's a lot that I like about this plan. One question that I have, what is Fairfax Circle without a circle? what are we going to name it or are we just going to put little circles around and say see there's our circle I think the transportation area in that you know needs more discussion more study and I'm expecting that it will get it as we move forward through as we say getting rid of the getting off the high-level discussion on what a an intersection is that will improve the usage to down to what is something that is most functional for

making it work and how does it impact the area around it and it will take more work but that's beyond what we're trying to do here tonight so my sense is that at this point we have another skeleton we have another good bones infrastructure to start working from but we're not done in any shape or sense because implementation and the assembling of the pieces is what in the long run either makes it a great opportunity and activity or says it's just another plan that went on the shelf Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

James FeatherThank you. I might ask, when was the last time there was a camp at Camp Washington as well? We still call it that. Okay. Others from the commissioners before I go through my list? Okay. Pull up my document. I have a number of relatively specific things. I hope we can get through them quickly. You can pull up this page in the plan or the slide that shows the green finger concept. I have a question about that. It was either like your 10th slide or it was somewhere in. Yeah, that's good enough. I get the sort of tree-looking areas and things as the green fingers. What are the green arrows intended to depict?

Adamthe green areas are to are intended to depict implied green paths maybe narrower street trees with better stormwater infrastructure rather than to allow interpretation and it could move a little bit as needed it

James Featherwasn't clear to me how those could integrate with some of the roads they're going in because the roads aren't shown and the one to the east cuts right through farcroft colonies property where they have apparently some other infrastructure like a boiler and stuff so So make sure we understand what those are and what the concepts are. Do you have the small area plan document up? Is that what you've got? Not your presentation? Okay. Could you go to slide, page 34? I had a question. I thought maybe it was editorial, but Mr. Nappi suggested maybe it's something for the planning commission to discuss. 34. It's under goal 3. short term, a paragraph under retail, where it discusses how maybe a challenge for some of the redevelopment.

Given this economic reality, the plan encourages leveraging large infrastructure, redevelopments, and so on and so forth. I was wondering if the word leveraging is right, or do we want to actually make it a little stronger and prioritize that? I'm doing private.

Matthew RiceI'm doing a word search. It's

James Featheron page 34 in the short term paragraph under retail, the second paragraph. It's just a question of whether we want to be a little more directivist to what we'd prefer to see, which is let's prioritize doing this as opposed to maybe taking advantage of an opportunity if it's there. I'm not sure what the need is.

Matthew RiceSo would you replace encourages leveraging with prioritizing?

James FeatherYep.

Matthew RiceYeah, I agree.

James FeatherDoes that make sense? I don't want to see if it makes sense to you guys too. Yeah, I mean,

Adamwe've described infrastructure as catalysts on the same page, and I think that's in keeping with that idea.

James FeatherOkay, so that might be an amendment. In the long-term residential part, it talks about describing the plan proposes that in the long-term residential development will mostly take the form in mixed-use models that's our belief is that what we want do we want to say that it should take that form or do we want to what page again i'm sorry same page long term under residential i guess it's the expectation that it will will

Lee Quillapplicantmostly and if

James Featherwe if we think it should i don't know how else we get 950 units maybe we should say that maybe we leave our options open but

Lee QuillapplicantI'm

James Featherthinking about

Lee Quillapplicantyeah we could make that more well I

James Featherdon't know if it's the right word yeah but it's it's kind of a material change in terms of what we're yeah we can work but on the other hand we don't want to eliminate

Lee Quillapplicanton that yes sir

James Featheris

Lee Quillapplicantthat okay yes can you make

James Feathera little stronger yes this is under the just both on page residential. We can come up with maybe the language to be general enough just to be more directive without maybe mordsmithing it.

Lee QuillapplicantYes, sir. A

James Feathercouple things I think are very noteworthy in the plan that I completely agree with in terms of the insights into parking around related development and and you know the service stations but those are good insights questions about Fairfax Boulevard I think one of the public speakers brought it up in terms of that again access into what's north of the boulevard from eastbound Fairfax Boulevard there are currently turn lanes at Roanoke Campbell and spring I guess it looks like short term from the I can Also in the plan it talks about preserving turn lanes on the boulevard but some of the drawings suggest that maybe those turn lanes actually will not be preserved which limit access to those places and may make it particularly difficult for eastbound traffic to get into

that area. So what's the intent there?

Paul NaptystaffI can speak to that. The spacing of the intersections at Roanoke-Campbell and Spring doesn't meet current standards. And so if Fairfax Boulevard were to be designed today, those turn lanes would not be there. So ultimately, our goal would be that if there are other ways to access those streets, that those turn lanes could be consolidated at spring or through a U-turn at the Blenheim Boulevard intersection. That being said, that's one of those things that would require further study. This is likely further down the road. That's why it's shown in the long-term plan, not the short-term plan. that we did need to show improvements that meet current standards but are currently not meeting those standards

James Featherso it's understood if not said then that those impacts would have to be addressed as we reconfigured the boulevard

Betsy Briggsright okay

James Featherit does address a concern i think one of our speakers had um i had a similar concern i guess about the the secondary street called new street they're so close to the boulevard uh and it particularly shows i believe it shows on the short-term development goal. Maybe if you go back a page. I don't know if that makes sense in the short term. Maybe it's a long term. As well as the Spring Street extension east of Blenden Boulevard. It doesn't feel right that that's a short-term objective when we anticipate nothing changing east including the office building and the Home Depot site. So now we're just separating the parking nowhere.

AdamI can speak to the Spring Street extension. Why

James Featherthat short term as opposed

Adamto long term? The current alignment that you see is exactly the current drive aisles that are within the parking lot right now. The idea is we're also showing redevelopment on the ground floor of the office potentially, maybe an expanded lobby, an expanded street face. The idea is of this if that redevelopment changes to the parking lot design, it would be able to be transitioned into the long term better. Rather than, but keeping the access to Home Depot.

James FeatherIt's access, but it's not a street that we've said would preferably be a city street. Sorry. Maybe down the road long term, preferably it'll be a city street. Okay.

Lee QuillapplicantIf you look at Google Earth right now, Well, actually, the area we're putting orange on on the east side of Blenheim has a curb condition along. It's a little white concrete median along Mama Chang's side. And on the other side, it's a series of islands that are at the end of the actual parking spaces. The aisles themselves are open. But that edge of the street is also defined. so the idea was and then when you come down to next to Home Depot it's a similar condition along the edge the northern edge of their parking lot so the idea was to try to maybe delineate this a little bit more clearly through painted conditions things like this so that it starts to take on it is a road right now it's a street but it's in it's actually it's just a

as

James Featherit's like

Lee Quillapplicanta driveway to me okay

James Featherexcuse

Lee Quillapplicantme visually a little bit more appearing as a road or headed that way so people start thinking about it and again the alignment of that entrance I get it Blenheim was really the critical thing that we align it on the west side I

James Featherdidn't appreciate that we've already

Lee Quillapplicantconsidered

James Feathera

Lee Quillapplicantroad it wasn't meant to obliterate and get rid of it was an expression earlier of concern about getting rid of loading and things at Home Depot and that was that would that would even in the long run if home you put a stage on the first floor that would be worked out there would be most likely some loading right in front as well as other configurations around the side or something but Okay, thank you Page

James Feather52 this is one I think is editorial but Mr. Napty suggested we discussed it to make sure we're on the same page

Lee Quillapplicantpedestrian and bicycle network element page 52

James Featherthe text says as part of the overall small area plan 10 foot wide shared use paths separated by six foot wide tree line landscape buffer are recommended. I believe the tree line landscape buffer separates a 10 foot, maybe 12 foot path from a roadway, not from another 10 foot path. And that the image is what we're really are expecting to see. If that's the case, then I think the wording needs to be revised. We're separating the road from the path, not two paths with a buffer. Okay.

Lee QuillapplicantYou are correct.

James FeatherOkay.

Lee QuillapplicantMake correct that thank you

James Featherall right we've addressed that question address that question that question uh those address all my questions general questions um mr dr rice alluded to this um and maybe i'll put a question out there how have residents in the immediate vicinity been engaged foxcroft colony was one that was brought up earlier this evening particular scout nearby residents formally or just hoping we reach them at a public forum the owners of some of the major properties the business owners in the area for example

Paul Naptystaffmost of the engagement happened through our initial outreach at the beginning of the process where we did reach out to individual hoas and even individual property owners and we did have participation from for example from residents one of their board members was in those early discussions that's where some of the concerns about the floodplain impact on their property came up and some of the recommendations regarding that later on in the process there wasn't additional outreach there wasn't any individual meetings for example with us or the consultant team with any of those hoas at that point and so we really counted on those who were involved beginning to remain involved toward the end of the process.

James FeatherOkay. Just want to make sure we're comfortable that the bases have been covered. Any other questions or comments at this point before we go into deliberation? Okay. Just one more, maybe a closing comment or two before we receive a motion. A couple things have been raised this evening that I'm glad were brought up publicly. We've heard some things in written correspondence as well. For example, the concerns with crime in the area. I do not I will not make any assumptions about what will cause somebody to choose or not to choose to redevelop, but we need to be ready for when they do and I think it's important that this plan be in place for whenever that happens we know there's a homeless task force that has made recommendations or is making recommendations city council i think it's

one of their agenda items tomorrow evening i think we anticipate that those will be addressed but we want to have this ready to ready to go as well so i don't think that should inhibit us from considering or making a recommendation to to approve this um i think we've got enough on the discussion here and perhaps maybe some language and I will come up in our motion to ensure that some of the property accesses that have been raised are foremost for the current business owners particularly in the longer term as they make their own decisions about how they want to use or their own properties so I think that's good as well the circle design we've seen a number of courses meetings about what are the better options. I'm not afraid of rotaries. I think they work.

I think Mr. or Dr. Rice made a very good comment, though, very hard for the public to get across them because they're usually considered almost nonstop movement of vehicles. So the rotary probably doesn't make the most sense if we're going to consider all modes of transportation. So I have no particular concerns with that as well. But I think the work that's been done has been excellent. The community engagement feels like it's been pretty good. And the engagement of the Commission, I think, through this process, whether it's short or long term, is most appreciated and appreciate the comments. So with no further ado, Dr. Rice, do you

Matthew Ricehave a motion? So I'd like just one clarification on the wording change on page 34, which you I think pointed out the

Adamedits are to a the

Matthew Riceedits are to a paragraph that talks about residential and the long-term residential development there was a wording change in the second line the sentence reads the plan proposes that in the that in that long-term residential development will mostly take form in mixed-use models to maximize residential density while supporting increased commercial uses is that the sentence that you

James Featherthe the thought was to maybe change will to make turn it from an assumption into a recommendation but we don't have to agree to that either that it should take form

Matthew Riceso removes the word will mostly take form and just change it

Lee Quillapplicantshould take form

Matthew Riceit should take form yeah that was my suggestion okay

Lee Quillapplicantdid you repeat uh mr rice well you don't catch it the motion

Matthew RiceYes, if you give me 30 seconds, I've got the question ready.

James FeatherYes, sir. It will be replacing the words will mostly with should. It's a question of expectation or driving what we think we really want and should be there for the benefit of the community as well as a developer. greater density is going to be desirable.

Lee QuillapplicantClarity, yep.

Matthew RiceChair Feather, I'd like to make a motion. I move that the Planning Commission adopt resolution number PC-24-02, 2, approving the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan and recommending the approval and adoption to City Council in the draft dated June 24, 2024, subject to final approval of associated amendments in the update to the City of Fairfax 2035 Comprehensive Plan and the following modifications. Consideration for preservation of access to properties and businesses near Fairfax Circle, implementation of a transportation study that analyzes safety and access constraints for future intersection modifications Analysis of the possibility of increasing widths of walkways and shared use paths were feasible

to feature the pedestrian and multimodal transportation access at its page 34 paragraph 3 sentence 2 under retail to change the phrase encourages leveraging large infrastructure to prioritizes a large infrastructure. Edits page 34, paragraph 9, sentence 1 to change will mostly take form to should take form. And then edits page 52 to clarify function of the landscape buffer in separating a shared use path from a roadway in the context of the image contained on the same page. Second.

James FeatherAny discussion or further amendment? Ready to vote? Students by voice vote, we'll see how that goes. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Passes unanimously. Thank you so much. Thank you all.

Lee QuillapplicantGood luck

James Featherwith the City Council. Very much. We'll see you at the end of the month, right?

Lee QuillapplicantThank you.

AmyThank you.

James FeatherOkay. Next public hearing is proposed amendments to the code of the City of Fairfax, for portions of the articles and sections contained therein, including introductory provisions, site development standards, decision-making bodies and officials, development review and definitions. Mr. Ito, welcome.

Satoshi ItostaffGood evening, members of the Planning Commission. This agenda item is a follow-up to the work session item that we had a few weeks ago on the zoning ordinance revisions. uh the copy that uh that we presented here has not been changed since uh the work session uh we did not receive any comments from planning commission or city council uh that required any changes uh so just to recap um these divisions will um place the city's coding oh got it thank you We'll place the city's ordinance in line with the state code that went into effect on July 1st. The city has a municipal stormwater permit, and that requires us to have an erosion sediment control and stormwater management program. And those programs are delivered through plan review, construction inspections, and post-construction maintenance activities.

In addition to erosion, sediment control, and stormwater management, the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act requires the city to protect water quality by establishing the resource protection area, which is a 100-foot buffer from each bank of a stream. And all areas in the city that are not within the RPA, the resource protection area, are within a resource management area. Revisions have been made to the Chesapeake Bay sections of the zoning ordinance to be compliant with the new state code and the main changes are requirements to consider climate change, sea level rise, and ensure the protection of mature trees in development proposals that involve the RPA. The city's responsibility is to administrate these programs and DEQ provides oversight and

ensures that localities programs meet state and federal standards. One of DEQ's in sediment control and stormwater management because they have very similar procedures and requirements. The state code has combined these two groups and their certification requirements into a single section referred to as the consolidated regs. The revised zoning ordinance also consolidates these sections. In addition to numerous administrative changes, we've revised in the zoning ordinance to the new sections of state code and the updated design standards. And state code has several pages of new and revised definitions. These are referenced in the zoning ordinance rather than included as a copy. And to follow with DEQ's efforts to consolidate,

the city's Virginia Stormwater Management Program is now referred to as Virginia Erosion and Stormwater Management Program, or VESMP. As I mentioned before, one of the new changes to the Chesapeake Bay Ordinance is the requirement to consider climate change and sea level rise for any disturbance or development in the RPA. This only applies to the RPA, so it won't affect most projects since development in the RPA is already restricted. However, when the RPA is impacted, it will require an assessment of the impacts over a 30-year period and to mitigate those. DEQ has provided references to climate change forecast data that can be used for this assessment. While the need for this assessment is not expected to be common, it

will need to be considered in redevelopments within the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan, which proposes improvements within the RPA. These requirements will also need to be considered in future stream restoration, flood mitigation, and outfall restoration projects. The revised Chesapeake Bay Ordinance also includes protection of mature trees in the RPA and allows for their removal only when necessary. There's also requirements to mitigate any removal and restore the buffer area and its functionality. There are exemptions to the Chesapeake Bay Ordinance, such as for utilities, public roadways, and passive recreation facilities. And exemptions to the Chesapeake Bay ordinance would include exemptions to the requirements for mature tree protection and other performance standards.

So this zoning ordinance revision clarifies that tree removal permits and the associated performance standards are separate from Chesapeake Bay and still apply if an activity is exempted from Chesapeake Bay. The revised ordinance supports the tree preservation and planting guide, which is a set of design and development standards that is currently under development by the Urban Forester, and it includes mitigation calculations and supporting worksheets. A new stormwater handbook became effective on July 1, 2024. It consolidates and supersedes numerous design manuals from DEQ, including those going back as far as 1989. The new standards also include two new stormwater management practices that can be used to meet water quality requirements.

One of them is regenerative stormwater conveyance, and those are similar to small-scale stream restoration projects. and tree plantings are also creditable with some limitations. DEQ's requirements are that the credited trees cannot be ones that replace trees that have been removed and cannot be trees that meet any other state or local requirements such as canopy coverage. So they must be trees in addition to any other requirements. And one of the key changes is in how water quality standards are This is done through the Virginia runoff reduction method and a spreadsheet that DEQ developed. The current version is 3.0, and the new version is VRRM 4.1. And stormwater pollutants are measured in terms of phosphorus,

and the load limit, or maximum pollutant discharge, has been reduced from 0.41 to 0.26 pounds for all increases to impervious area. The requirement for a 10 to 20 percent load reduction from other areas on the site remains the same and that is dependent on the size of the development. The current version of VRRM includes three types of land cover that are used in the calculation. Those are impervious, managed turf, and forested areas. The new version adds a fourth, mixed open space, which is between a turf and a forested area. And the calculation of pollutants or loading that comes from these different types of surfaces has also changed. So calculated pollutant loads from impervious surfaces have been reduced by a factor of almost three,

and managed turf has been increased by about 50%. So the net reduction in load limits and the changes to load calculations is a more consistent pollutant reduction requirement across various types and sizes of developments. DEQ has implemented a one-year transition period where both versions of the runoff reduction method may be used by the developer. In some cases, the old version may be easier to meet compliance, and in others, it may be beneficial to use the new one. It is expected that the number of stormwater management facilities in the city will continue to increase with new development, and reducing runoff as opposed to treating created runoff has been and will continue to be a more effective compliance approach.

A new construction general permit, a statewide construction permit, became effective on July 1st, 2024, and it's issued by DEQ through the city for all developments that are one acre or larger. All existing permittees have received continued permit coverage under the new permit. There is a requirement under the new permit for operators to monitor turbidity when they're discharging sediment-laden waters from a site, so when they're dewatering, if they're pumping water out of a site. So they'll need to measure turbidity with a meter and keep those records. The city's responsibility is to ensure that the operator is conducting those tests and keeping those records. And this requirement, the turbidity requirement, applies to all watersheds that have a sediment-related TMDL, or pollutant reduction requirement.

And since all watersheds in the city have a sediment-related TMDL, this requirement applies to all developments one acre and larger anywhere in the city. So this is a summary of where we're at in the process. We had the work sessions with Planning Commission and City Council on June 10th and 11th. And staff is making a recommendation to forward a recommendation to City Council to amend the zoning ordinance. And we go to City Council for the public hearing tomorrow evening. the new ordinance will become effective immediately after adoption. And that concludes the presentation. I'd be happy to take any questions that you may have.

James FeatherBefore we do that, let's just hear from the public. This is a public hearing, so we'll open the public hearing. Madam Clerk, has anybody signed up to speak to this?

Speaker 8No one has signed up on it.

James FeatherOkay, thank you. Is anybody in the room who would like to address the commission? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and invite the commissioners now to comment.

Matthew RiceDr. Rice. We have one or two small areas on the south side of the city, one that is in the Chancery Park neighborhood that's come up a few times for Pratt, and lots and lots of issues and impacts to the Chancery Park neighborhood for that particular runoff if I'm not mistaken both that little segment and an additional segment near the Osher Institute on Roberts Road both of those during the south yes and so it's not the Akatink watershed it's a completely different watershed that follows a path southward you know joins with some GMU you know areas and heads south is what what is the functional difference for a construction project in those areas in terms of requirements and TMDL and so forth given that they're part of a completely different section of the

watershed

Satoshi Itostaffand in terms of the revisions to the zoning ordinance there will be no functional difference between projects in those smaller watersheds and projects within the Akatink watershed because they are all covered by a sediment TMDL

Matthew Riceokay so no differences there for all intents and purposes the same

Satoshi Itostaffthat is correct they are so they will be handled the same

Matthew Ricethat's all the

James FeatherCan I have anything? Others? I have one, maybe a specific question and one general question. It's only because I had a recently pressure wash or sidewalk at our home, which brings to the other watershed you were just talking about. The list of illicit discharges is significantly longer than it was in the previous ordinance, just by eyeballing it. Are those specific items that are listed in there straight from the Virginia Code, or are these our languages?

Satoshi ItostaffThey are identical to those in state code.

James FeatherOkay. I just noticed an inconsistency or two that I kind of wondered about. For example, there's an allowance for non-commercial car wash things, and folks can use detergents or whatever as long as they're not X, Y, or Z.

Paul CunninghamYes.

James FeatherBut if you're going to pressure wash your house, you can't use anything, any additive that may help remove detergent or whatever, or some kind of biodegradable phosphate-free cleaner to help you clean your house. And they have biological growth on them. It feels like an inconsistency. If it's the language that's in the state code, we have to adopt what they have. It just doesn't seem right because it seems like an equivalent sort of thing. to get biological growth off your house. I didn't, we don't have this problem, but here, our house in Maine, we got mildew or something growing on our side. We have to clean it off periodically. Fresh washing alone doesn't necessarily get it. But if this is the word language in the code,

maybe we need some allowances for future use.

Satoshi ItostaffThe non-commercial car washes was intended to allow charity car

James Featherwashes to continue. But for somebody who has to clean their house, that may need something other than just a fresh wash of water, these things are pretty tenacious.

Lee QuillapplicantWe

James Featherhave lichen on our railings up in our house in Maine. It's hard to get off just with water. So that's something that may have to go forward later, maybe some allowances. So that's kind of the specific things, but if these are the words in the code, they are the words in the code. How are we going to communicate these changes to the public? What's your outreach plan? And businesses as well? Because there are some pretty significant changes here.

Satoshi ItostaffFor the development community, we introduced these changes at an industry meeting, I believe it was earlier in June. For the construction site operators that will have to meet turbidity monitoring requirements, our inspectors have already been in communication with them about those requirements and we'll be educating them as time goes forward. I fully expect that we'll encounter operators that are not familiar with this. daily interactions we tend to educate them and update them so that they are in compliance these these requirements are also related to illicit discharges the illicit discharge program has a separate public outreach effort and so those will be committed communicated partly in partnership with NBRC but also through

Through our own communications, we do outreach, public education on illicit discharges at least once a year.

James FeatherOkay, thank you. Make sure people know what they can and can't do at their homes. It's a harder group to reach and get compliance, I'm sure, but it's important to do the education anyway. Well, thank you.

Matthew RiceAnything else?

James FeatherOkay. Okay, are we ready to present a motion? Dr. Rice.

Matthew RiceMr. Chair, I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the City Council approve the proposed ordinance amending Chapter 110, Zoning of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia, to amend portions of articles and sections contained therein, including introductory provisions, site development standards, decision-making bodies, and officials' development review and definitions. I second.

James FeatherI second them. Any other discussion, comments, or amendment? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Ito. We'll have a good discussion tomorrow night. That concludes our session on public hearings, so we'll recess our regular meeting, go into a work session. This is a discussion on potential zoning text amendments regarding urban agriculture. Good to see you again, Mr. Foreman.

ForemanstaffOh, good to be here again.

James FeatherUnfortunately, you always seem to pull the late straw. Yeah,

Foremanstaffthat's right. I'll try to peg this one a little bit between the time of our first public hearing and our second public hearing. So we'll see how we go. So this is a work session to discuss potential zoning text amendments that relate to urban agriculture, and specifically whether to create a new commercial use within the zoning ordinance to permit urban agriculture in the city's commercial districts. So our goal here would really be to provide greater flexibility within the zoning ordinance permitting a type of use that's just currently not permitted in commercial zones so the reason we're talking about this use in the context of the zoning ordinance is that when new uses come up they sometimes need to be just

expressly permitted in the zoning ordinance in order for them to be allowed in the city and and we'll get to just what this use is momentarily but this discussion originated with the city's economic development office economic development staff has talked with some companies that are in this field and those companies may be interested in locating in fairfax city and the economic development folks have taken part in some discussions on this topic including like it says here with the northern virginia soil and water Conservation District and they promote urban agriculture and this seems to be a use that would be complementary to the city. Last month City Council held a work session to discuss this use in very general terms and directed staff to

draft zoning amendments to permit urban agriculture within the city's commercial zones. So this use does warrant a little bit of an explanation since it's not necessarily intuitive what this means. Urban agriculture, as we're discussing it, is basically the process of growing agricultural products in an indoor environment. And being indoors means that it's a controlled environment. And among other things, that means fewer negative externalities than and that in turn means that it's something that could be well suited to commercial areas. Now if you're like me, if you grew up thinking that plants need soil to grow, then a little bit of explanation about some of this may be helpful. There are actually many different types of indoor agriculture or urban agriculture,

and these all go by several different names, but the image here is one of the more common. It's called hydroponics. Hydroponics involves cultivating plants, not in soil, but in a nutrient solution. In some indoor environments, this is done with grow lamps to replace sunlight. And down here at the bottom right, you see a very simple diagram of this process. This is obviously a very simplified diagram and on a very small scale example. But this can be done on a larger commercial scale as well. Here in the upper right, you see plants growing in a commercial setting, and this is more like what we're talking about as far as commercial urban agriculture. The reason for showing these images is just to give an overall idea of what this use could

be in a commercial context. Now this is a relatively new type of use. It's something that's not directly defined in our zoning ordinance. Right now, these types of firms would likely be categorized as plant nurseries and greenhouses. That is an existing use in the ordinance, and you see the definition here. But this is a relatively intense type of use, and for that reason, it's permitted only in industrial zones. It is also allowed by SUP in some residential zones, but the big takeaway is this is not a use that's permitted in commercial zones. right now. We're not the only ones who are in this position. Other jurisdictions are as well. Again, this urban agriculture is a relatively recent type of use. Zoning ordinances just

generally need to be amended in some way to allow for something like this. There are a few local jurisdictions that have modified their zoning ordinances regarding urban agriculture. The three jurisdictions that you see here have done that. Different approaches sometimes, and often that's dictated by the structure of the ordinance itself, but there are some similarities when looking through urban agriculture. Zoning amendments, whether here locally or nationally, usually there's a definition included. Usually there's some general use standards. standards. Use standards are important for limiting potential negative externalities of any kind of use, things that could adversely affect neighboring areas or neighboring properties.

The other important element here is listing the zoning districts where this use would be allowed. Now, at our work session with City Council last month, we took a look at some zoning ordinance excerpts from some of these jurisdictions, along with a general background on the topic. And as I had mentioned, council directed staff to proceed with amendments to permit urban agriculture in commercial zones, and that is the reason that we're here tonight. The best way to accomplish that within our zoning ordinance is to add urban agriculture as a use in the ordinance. And this wouldn't mean getting into a great amount of detail about the specifics of agriculture or different types of agriculture or directing the details of this use.

Instead, really just general types of terms, similar to what we see in other ordinances that enable this type of use. In the draft we're discussing tonight, this includes what you see here, a definition, The entry in the ordinance's principal use table, some commercial use standards, and a minimum parking ratio. So we'll take a look at each of these elements, and everything that we're discussing here is in your packets as well. The first element here in the draft is a definition. Definitions in our ordinance are found in Article 9, And this is obviously important because it describes just what this use is. Just the term urban agriculture itself isn't necessarily explanatory and how it's distinguished from other uses.

So like I'd mentioned, we want to avoid getting too detailed in the definition regarding specific operational items. And instead, this is a fairly general definition. It's really in two parts. The first part, it's highlighted in green here, is a description of the use. And this reads that urban agriculture, as it would pertain to our ordinance, is an establishment for the cultivation, retail sales, and distribution of agricultural products where such an activity takes place within a fully enclosed structure or on the rooftop of a structure. The second part right here is shown in blue, and this simply sets out some examples of urban agriculture methods. The reason for this is just to let the reader of the zoning ordinance know what kinds of

activities this is describing. And the examples here are hydroponics, aeroponics, vertical farming. These are all common methods or common terms within the industry. to just these, but this serves as guidance and serves as explanation. On to the principal use table. The principal use table itself, it's two pages long in the zoning ordinance. It lists what uses are allowed in which zoning districts. Since urban agriculture would be a new use, it would have its own entry here in the principal use table. Again, since this use would likely have few negative externalities, it's reasonable to make it a widespread permitted use. In this draft, we have urban agriculture listed identically, really, to general retail uses.

So that is, it's permitted, and the P here stands for permitted, which is by right. So it's permitted in the CR zone, so that's the biggest commercial zone, as well as the CG and CU zones, and is also permitted in the industrial zones. And again, this is identical to general retail uses and some other uses in the ordinance. As I had mentioned, zoning ordinances that allow for urban agriculture tend to have certain standards that are associated with that use. And again, this is a way, particularly for buy-write uses, to ensure that that use is as compatible as possible with neighboring properties or neighboring uses. There are four use standards in this draft, and as you see on the screen, these deal with making sure that urban agriculture does take place within an enclosed structure, has some limitations on animals, animal keeping within the business, controlling odors that are discernible off-site,

and also ensuring that urban agriculture businesses that are in commercial areas have some kind of a retail presence as well, that it's not just purely a cultivation type of business in a commercial area. So here is the full list of those standards. Again, this is all in your packets. Since there's just four, I'll go over these and I'll explain their rationale. I know it will take a few minutes, but I think it'll be helpful for understanding. Number one here states that all growing and production activities shall be conducted wholly within a fully enclosed structure or on the rooftop of the structure. Most urban agriculture zoning ordinances tend to have a standard like this, even like in this case, where similar wording is in the definition.

just an important point to reiterate that production activity really needs to take place indoors since agriculture itself is assumed to be something that would ordinarily take place out of doors. Number two here, this is an interesting one. The keeping of animals is an area where zoning ordinances on this use tend to be all over the place. In our three regional examples, they range from a hard no on any animals, including insects, to a general permissiveness to a maybe on the topic of animals. The draft language here permits animals as an accessory to the urban agriculture use. So, for example, if there are insects or worms, and yes, worms are animals, Or fish, for example, so fish such as in aquaponics that is mentioned here.

Aquaponics is the cultivating of fish and plants together in an integrated system. Those kind of uses would be allowed. But it seems that the actual raising of animals as a principal use might be more involved than the growing of plants. So this draft limits the principal use of urban agriculture to being cultivation rather than animal husbandry. So this was discussed a bit at City Council's work session. There was some discussion about whether, so for example, to permit aquaculture, aquaculture being basically the raising of fish or fish farms, to permit aquaculture as a principal use. City Council did not provide an opinion, didn't have that much of an in-depth discussion on this topic. So tonight, I think any advice or any guidance that Planning Commission can provide on this topic,

I think would be appreciated as we go on to our work session at City Council tomorrow. And I'll pause after this slide to see if there's any questions on these commercial use standards. standards. The third one here, waste and odors. These obviously tend to be potential negative effects of agricultural processes. This use standard itself stipulates that operations need to control odors that are discernible offsite. This language, it may seem familiar, this is identical language to a use standard in our ordinance for animal care facilities. And animal care facilities is another use that's subject to potential off-site odor problems. So it tends to be addressing the same kind of issue. And finally, number four, this is an interesting one as well.

This is the last of the use standards, and it reads that in commercial districts, for facilities located on the ground floor of a building, 25% of the building frontage associated with the subject use must be dedicated to retail purposes. So this type of thing is not uncommon for urban agriculture ordinances in commercial areas. So both Arlington County and Fairfax County have some sort of retail requirement similar to this in their ordinances. This is a way to make sure that there's a benefit to the public realm from this type of business in a commercial area. Would give us the retail feel that we would look for in a commercial area. And the first line up here says in commercial district. So this would not apply for example in a industrial district.

And would also not apply for facilities that aren't located on the ground floor. So if it's something that's located on a second or third floor, would not necessarily have to have that retail presence because it's not the public realm that would really be affected by it. So these are the four commercial use standards. I said I'd pause after this slide, so I will have a feeling there may be some discussion, so I'd be willing to take any questions about these.

Paul CunninghamWhat are the most profitable products produced in this type of situation?

ForemanstaffIn regionally, it tends to be produce. So it tends to be vegetables. This tends to be sold on a quality basis that it is highly controlled or generally more high-quality produce than one could ordinarily get at a supermarket, for instance.

Paul CunninghamOkay, is there a critical mass in terms of space and that needed to make this profitable? What size are we talking about in terms of facilities?

ForemanstaffI would say a few thousand square feet, so maybe three, four thousand square feet would probably be the minimum to be manageable, profitable. They do range in size and it's something that we had talked about on a staff level, whether there would be any operational difference between small facilities and large facilities, but they do tend to have a pretty good range.

Paul CunninghamDo we have a of facilities within the city that would meet this type of requirement?

ForemanstaffI think there would be numerous facilities one one of the advantages of this type of use is it could be retro or spaces could be retrofitted for it it's not something that a that needs a custom facility so regionally these have tended to go into flex spaces or into unused retail spaces or even office spaces. And that's the reason that these are sometimes permitted in office buildings explicitly is because it's something that could take place on the fourth floor of an office building, for instance.

Paul CunninghamOne thing that I think comes to mind is the principle way many of these things may have started and that's with production of a product to keep it out of the public eye so to speak. In other words, marijuana farms produced internally so that they didn't require it. Does that fit this requirement? Are all products there? Is there a regulation of the kind of products? What is the range, since nothing is mentioned here, of what would be permitted, what would not be permitted in terms of kind of product?

ForemanstaffRight now, as this draft is written, there is no limitation on the type of produce. I'm not sure if marijuana would be considered produce, the type of product produced. We looked at marijuana usage. Now, regionally, it's not something that's a big deal, but we looked at other states that have dealt with the marijuana issue for longer than we have. There tends not to be separate regulations for commercial marijuana facilities. I'm sure there are somewhere. Most of the examples that I came up with regarding cultivation that separated out marijuana was regarded security. And that security usually focused on non-commercial growing. So making sure that people growing the stuff at home didn't have it where others could access it, for instance.

I think it's presumed that a commercial grower would have enough security on site to be able to deal with that. But if it's the Planning Commission's wish and if it's City Council's wish, there certainly could be limitations on cannabis or on other kinds of products. It's just something that's not in the draft right now.

Paul CunninghamThere are elements, from my understanding, of marijuana, CBD oil, and other things that can be extracted from it which are legal and available. And then there are still some, and I don't know what Virginia statutes are right now, that are not permitted. So the balance in the regulation, is there any issue that comes up with regard to that?

ForemanstaffI don't know about the state law on this right now. Obviously, if it is something that is not legal, it would not be legal in the city. But again, I think if it's the governing body's wish to limit this in some capacity, it certainly could be included. There could be a sentence to say that urban agriculture does not include the growing of cannabis products, for instance.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Are there any other issues enclosed in this with regard to recycling or handling of the water or the other nutrients that are used or anything along that line in terms of discharge? If you've got water that you've included various chemicals in that will help a plant grow better, at some point they get recycled and either reused until the plants absorb them all or they get refreshed? Is that something that would require any special attention?

ForemanstaffFrom a zoning aspect, no, it would not. But I will check with, I guess, with Mr. Ito to see for for businesses that are intense, what are users, you know, what regulations might apply for that?

Paul CunninghamAnd doing that, since we were just talking about that subject, it would be one that I think would be useful. Those are my questions. Thank you.

James FeatherOthers? Dr. Rice?

Matthew RiceYeah, universities have a whole bunch of hoops to jump through when they discharge water or any sort of effluent facilities, whether it's a chemistry lab or a biology lab, and I assume we should be looking at the same thing. There's a lot of exotic things that will go not into the watershed, but into the sewer system that will need treatment at some point. And yeah, Mr. Ito probably should be consulted a bit, I guess. I think some of the wording here in the Code of Virginia for home cultivation of marijuana, has special writing about visibility, like you can't cultivate in a place that's visible to the public, which echoes the access issue that comes up. What do you mean in the wording in item one, which says fully enclosed? And does that

imply something that is, you know, full height, not visible? Is there sort of a definition of what sort of containment needs to happen for something being grown?

ForemanstaffIt means in a building with walls and doors. And this is actually the same phrase that's used for some other uses that tend to be, that have to occur within a building, but sometimes those buildings are partially open. car washes have to be within a fully enclosed structure, but any car wash has doors that are open all the time for cars to go in and out. So it's been determined that that satisfies the requirements of a fully enclosed structure. We've dealt with that before on a zoning basis, so we've borrowed that term to use here. So it could be in a building, for instance, that has large doors or windows that can open up. But as long as it is an actual structure that has walls, that that would satisfy this, that it wouldn't be, for example, a tent.

Matthew RiceOkay. I assume things could emerge if it's a rooftop operation. and I assume some of the kind of language that we apply to screening air conditioning units and things on the top would also apply in those circumstances.

ForemanstaffIt wouldn't have to be. So if something like a facility or a greenhouse were to be erected on the roof of a building, it wouldn't have to be screened from view because it's not mechanical equipment. But it would have to get BAR approval if it would be visible from the right-of-way.

Matthew RiceOkay. I think what's coming to my mind is Stanley Tucci episodes of cooking in Italy and going up on a restaurant, and the restaurant has a garden at the top, and they're cooking as they're harvesting basil from plants that are right there. and

Foremanstaffand and that's one of the reason that that rooftop of a structure is included in here to either permit that kind of activity or or to permit even as an accessory use for example to an office building the tenants might be able to grow things on the roof if the building allows but but just to allow for that flexibility

Matthew Riceit would be great for the city to have that happen and to feature it somehow and you know integrated kind of gardening with other structures I think is compelling and obviously good for urban heat issues to have plants up on the roof is a real great idea and that's that's all I have

James Featherothers a couple of questions um is a greenhouse structure considered a fully enclosed structure does this have to be a brick building with no

Foremanstaffa greenhouse would be a structure

James FeatherOkay. Because we have greenhouse elsewhere in the nurseries and greenhouses. Right. And that is a little

Foremanstaffbit confusing. That came up with the Planning Commission as well. The current mention of a greenhouse is a use. So it's called a plant nursery or greenhouse and it's used in a generic term. It doesn't necessarily refer to a glass building.

James FeatherOkay. One question on principal use table. I've had the opportunity to be involved in some of discussions with one of the city council members, EDA staff, others on the outside about urban agriculture and there's really interesting opportunities of some of the pieces of land in the city that could be contemplated for this are not in commercial districts. Here's one to think about was raised. The city doesn't own it yet, but the property over on west drive that is currently a property yard for the county it's zoned residential it's adjacent to a park the zone residential uh right now we're not showing any possibility of anything in the in a residential the residential low zoning district i don't know if we want to contemplate that

putting in at least for an rl kind of property uh that's special ums for example other others that have been raised are or is there land available on some of the school sites or whatever also not zoned commercial but maybe places for that so that's question is there some way we want to accommodate that in the ordinance as we're bringing this forward so

Foremanstaffyeah that that is a an interesting topic so right right now agriculture as in like community gardens would be permitted in residential areas it's the commercial agriculture and and the reason that this draft doesn't go into the residential districts it is just the topic of commercial use within residential neighborhoods and whatnot so if that it is something you know that could be contemplated at at some point this the this amendment has enough flexibility to go back and and modify relatively easily

James FeatherThere's some interesting intersections when you think about some of the things in our comprehensive plan about food accessibility and things. There certainly could be some public-private partnerships in this area of urban agriculture that start to look maybe commercial but aren't strictly residential. So something to keep in mind as we move forward on this. No one commented about aquaculture. I don't know if anybody has a comment. I'll make one. From what little I know about it, spending summers in Maine, these are huge consumers of water. And I don't know if we have the infrastructure to support such a thing anyway. I think managing animal waste in larger quantities is a different matter from what might be suitable for some of the aquaponics things.

feels to me like that's something we should just avoid and stick to plant-based diets as it were as opposed to entertaining aquaculture because to be I think useful any profitable form probably be a very large facility very large consumer water would have to come from the municipal water supply or or our natural water supplies probably not suited to that and after just having had a discussion about things that go into the watershed we probably don't want to do that anyway so that's that's my two cents worth on aquaculture a couple nodding heads

Foremanstaffokay okay we're not quite done yet we still have parking to to talk about uh this so this is the last element of the draft amendment package it's a minimum parking ratio So all uses in the zoning ordinance do have a parking ratio. So in this case, what's proposed is one space per 300 square feet of floor area. So like it says here, that's less than the general retail ratio. General retail ratio is 1 to 200. The 1 to 300 ratio is equal to the general office ratio. And what that means is that this, as a use, would be suitable for conforming sites in both retail settings and in office settings. So it's a flexible situation and would hopefully avoid the need for exempting out-of-parking requirements.

James FeatherAny questions on that? It's one of the most exciting for last. Mr. Fink.

Paul CunninghamIs that a number of convenience or is there some methodology behind that? I.e. number of employees needed to actually handle the operation, handle what's going on with it. The fact that there's supposed to be a retail element to all of these things means you've got to have people for retail as well as the industrial handling of the products as they're growing and being harvested. How has that number arrived at?

ForemanstaffIt's thought that urban agriculture has less activity per square foot than retail. So there is a retail requirement, but that retail requirement is relatively small. and the majority of the square footage would be cultivation. So it would be staffed, but you would not have as many people visiting an urban agriculture establishment as visiting Walgreens, for instance, because the retail component is relatively limited.

Paul CunninghamSo if you have 5,000 square feet, you need almost 20 parking spaces? for

Foremanstaff5,000 square feet yes that that would be correct but that would be less than a 5,000 square foot retail store

Paul Cunninghamokay so if the retail operation were part of the 5,000 square feet you would not expect that much traffic in and out of it and if there were no retail operation at that point with it being there that would be more than the number of spaces for what you would need people to take care of it?

ForemanstaffIf there were no retail operations so for example if something were to locate in an industrial area or take up a large amount of space in an office building again then yes that's that would be true

Paul Cunninghamokay I guess it's arbitrary but the

Speaker 8retail requirement

Betsy Briggsis to retail that product right yes

Foremanstaffthat's that's correct or or it could be accessory uses okay

Betsy Briggsand I don't know if this is right time to ask this but are in having marijuana grown in the city if that is an option or are we not interested that's

James Feathera good question

Matthew Riceso i think residential cultivation is legal uh under certain guidelines but i as far as i know i don't think commercial scale um or commercial is legal and i don't think there's a licensing program in place at the state level that allows it. And I could be completely wrong, but that was an issue in the legislative session that's passed. And as long as there's a disagreement about how to implement the commercial side of cultivation, I don't even know how the local medical retailers get their product. But what is clear is there's allowance for private cultivation. that's sort of out of the ballpark but i obviously it is we're thinking ahead to when and if it does become legal you know then how we deal with that

Betsy Briggshe said we could we could eliminate that as a use we

Matthew Ricecould

Betsy Briggsand my only concern is the city is small and i think it would have an odor even if they're supposed to contain it

Matthew Riceyeah i um you know spending a fair bit of time in dc daughter there's you know not much I think we'll do given that private home cultivation and use within home circumstances is allowable but

Betsy Briggslike 5,000 square feet of it yeah

Matthew Riceyeah I suppose when it becomes an issue we'll need to have another discussion about it but it'll be quite a different one about whether and and i'm not sure if um it's our place to decide that or initiate the conversation or if there will that'll come from city council or from some other source to ask us to

James Featherwe can reflect it was a point of discussion with no clear consensus and is it maybe a concern

Foremanstaffsince uh since the city council meeting is tomorrow the staff report has already gone out so what what i will do is I will verbally communicate Planning Commission's comments to to City Council it won't be in in the staff report itself since that's already published but we'll get City Council's feedback on the marijuana issue and and then if if we go forward to public hearings then that could be something the Planning Commission could opt to and insert if City Council has not directed us to do so.

James FeatherOkay. Did you have something else?

Matthew RiceYeah, I would be far more concerned about aquaculture issues and the sorts of massive nitrates and phosphates they produce as a byproduct. So the problems that we can encounter with some products, not just exclusive to marijuana, there's a stream of a whole bunch of other possible that may come up that we'll have to deal with. We're not close enough to a large body of water to have any legitimate aquaculture industry generated in the city, but there are things that will emerge that we don't anticipate. We'll deal with those when they happen.

James FeatherI have one comment on parking. I kind of agree with Mr. Cunningham's comment. The number feels a little arbitrary. Didn't we recently make some amendments to the zoning ordinance where we simply left it in the hands of the zoning yes we

Foremanstaffdid to establish the

James Featherparking

Foremanstaffratio so zoning administrator doesn't particularly like that so so so so those were uses that are relatively uncommon so technical and trade schools for example were one and and the reason that that was done is that they tend to be in all different formats they tend to be some in person some remote and and whatnot and and it's been our experience doesn't apply we talked about this with the zoning administrators owning administrator was comfortable with one per 300 because that would basically permit this in any commercial district and any commercial district you know with the exception of some sites that are already parking encumbered it it would be far easier on the zoning administrator than having him determine

based on a floor plan and floor plans can always change so that that was his opinion on on this

James Featherbut it does feel to me that if it's 5,000 square feet and not on the ground floor having to support retail the 20 spaces seems like a lot so that's I share that concern so anyway

Matthew RiceSo 1 to 300, 5,000 is only 16.

James FeatherOh, whatever.

Foremanstaff16.

Paul CunninghamWhatever.

James Feather2

Paul Cunninghamthirds are on the 17. It's not water.

ForemanstaffRight.

Matthew RiceWell,

James Featherfor how many hands you need to keep the plants watered is probably not that many.

Matthew RiceYeah.

James FeatherThat's what I'm saying. Without excluding retail I'm talking about. I think those are very low personnel required operations, my sense. Maybe a little homework on that, and perhaps this will need to be tweaked a bit. Okay. Thank you.

ForemanstaffOkay, so tomorrow we do have a work session with City Council, and we'll discuss these amendments and of course discuss your comments as well. Now if Planning Commission wishes to move ahead with this amendment package, the Commission can formally initiate a zoning text amendment, and that could occur as soon as the commission's next meeting. So if that does occur, or if city council decides to initiate the amendment on their own, actual public hearings on this type of amendment would occur following the August recess. So that is the schedule right now and I know we've had some discussion but if there's any other discussion we can certainly talk about it.

James FeatherI don't know what the urgency is in moving forward but I think it would be important for the Planning Commission to weigh in on this, to initiate the amendments because ties to our comprehensive plan, the business opportunity, economic development potential. ties into some of what we should be looking at long-term planning for the city but of course the city council is free to move ahead with without engaging us further but

Foremanstaffokay

James Featherokay we shall reconvene our regular meeting and move on to staff report

Paul Naptystaffthank you mr chair and members of the planning commission uh quick review on the items for tomorrow city council meeting they will be holding their public hearing for the willowood proposal uh this project was had a public hearing with the planning commission on april 22nd where it was supported uh the public hearing with the city City Council was delayed, as you may recall, due to administrative issues regarding their site plan. It seems to all be in order now, so City Council will finally be taking action tomorrow. They'll also be having their public hearing on the erosion and sediment control zoning tax amendments that you heard tonight, as well as their work session on urban agriculture that you just had.

On July 23rd, they will have their public hearing on the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan, as well as two items that may be of interest to the Planning Commission a work session on the current status of the city's green building policy as well as discussion on potential zoning tax amendments related to accessory dwelling units. For the Planning Commission for your upcoming meeting on July 22nd we do plan on having a one more work session on the comprehensive plan review before the August recess. At this work session, we will bring forward any new comments or feedback that have come up based on the materials that are posted that have come up since our last discussion. Also, at the last meeting, the Planning Commission gave staff some direction on some additional analysis to be done on the topic of residential and commercial areas, and so we'll bring that to you.

You will also have a work session on potential zoning amendments related to accessory dwelling units. and if depending on the conversation regarding urban agriculture with the city council tomorrow the planning commission could initiate joining tax amendments on that topic as early as your july 22nd meeting one last thing to mention the urban forest management plan is underway the first public engagement session will be an open house that will be held on thursday july 25th from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Sherwood Center. That's all we have for the staff report.

James FeatherGreat. Thank you. Any questions for staff? Commission comments? Mr. Coleman, anything?

Satoshi ItostaffThat's kind of great. The one concept that I just had to

Anthony Colemanget out of my own way was it's a concept, not a contract. So I'm going to stick with that.

James FeatherFeel free to use it freely.

Anthony ColemanI will. I'm stealing it.

James FeatherDr.

Matthew RiceRice. nothing thank you

James Feathermr. Cunningham

Paul Cunninghamthank you I hope everybody had a good time at the 4th of July parade and the fireworks display I understand they came off without a hitch and were very well received the fireworks this year were fired off from Army Navy Country Club in order to protect the new synthetic turf fields that have been laid down in the baseball area at the high school and from all of the feedback I have gotten everything went extremely well in both so I hope everybody had a great fourth and the city enjoyed the celebration thank you

James Featherit's Briggs I didn't enjoy the Fairfax fourth but I enjoyed with gas at Maine fireworks from the boat but looking forward to seeing you all next meeting there we are adjourned thank you Thank you.