Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, July 13, 2026. First order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of time as required. Any comments or discussions or changes to the agenda? Mr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening, so this is the opportunity for anyone to address the Planning Commission who would like to do so. Seeing none, we will move on. Next order of business are the consideration of the meeting minutes from July 8, 2026 meeting as well as July 22, 2026. Those also were issued ahead of time. If there's any comments, I would entertain them. Otherwise, I'll entertain a motion to adopt both of those. Mr. Eads. Mr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes of June 8, 2026 and June 22, 2026. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes of the June 8 and the June 22 meeting as presented.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. We have no items not requiring a public hearing this evening, nor do we have any public hearings, so we will recess our regular meeting and move into our work sessions. The first is a pre-application briefing on Circle Gateway proposal located at 3226 and 3250 Blenheim Boulevard on the west side of Blenheim Boulevard, south of Fairfax Boulevard, north and east of Fairfax Circle Shopping Center, and west of the Home Depot and Old Pickett Road. Welcome, Mr. Frederick. Good evening, Chairman Frederick, members of the Planning Commission. This is a pre-application briefing on a potential development proposal for 3226 and 3250 Blenheim Boulevard.

This is the first step in the current land use review process, intended to advise Planning Commission of interest in developing property in the city. This presentation will be relatively brief and primarily for informational purposes. The potential applicant is here to answer any questions and also to discuss the proposal. At this point, the potential applicant has met with staff and received very high-level feedback. The subject property is located on the west side of Blenheim Boulevard and south of Fairfax Boulevard. The site is two parcels for approximately 1.64 acres with direct access to Blenheim Boulevard. The property is currently zoned commercial retail in an architectural control overlay district and is also within the activity center place type.

The subject property is also located within a circle gateway small area plan. The surrounding area has commercial retail zoning with activity center place type. The small area plan was adopted on July 23, 2024. The top left corner shows the development plan for the circle gateway small area plan. The near-term development schedule shows approximately 950 units within the first 10 years of the adoption of the plan. Also, 616,000 square feet of retail, 115,000 square feet of office. The image to the bottom left corner of the screen depicts Spring Street, which is a new main street, which in the small area plan is to the south of the subject property. Looking at the building frontages, the image to the right, top right on your monitor shows the building frontages.

The proposed site has Spring Street to the south, Blenheim Boulevard to the east, and a street just to the west of this property. So, the site is bound by an active street and also a flexible corridor frontage. And finally, the building heights for the subject property is a maximum of nine stories. The concept plan, the applicant has submitted a concept plan for 11-story mixed-use building with approximately 16,530 square feet of ground floor retail. Ground floor commercial uses and up to 261 apartments with structured parking. The proposed building height is 118 feet with a mixture of one and two bedroom units. The proposed density is approximately 159 dwelling units an acre. The applicant has proposed 16 affordable dwelling units within the building.

And once again, the ground floor retail, residential lobby, leasing office, and loading and parking spaces on the ground floor. So, the image in front of you shows the layout for the ground floor. The image in front of you shows the layout of the proposed fourth floor. So, what you're looking at is a five-foot tree planting zone along Blenheim with a 10-foot shared use path along Blenheim Boulevard. Plantings on the level four and the parking deck area. And the applicant is proposing a 24-foot wide street that aligns with Old Picket that leads into the parking structure. The applicant has also proposed similar to management on site, and it may include filtration and green roof systems. So, in terms of the parking, it's a five-story parking structure with approximately 460 parking spaces.

Two levels of parking would be subterranean parking. The garage entrance is shown at this location here on level one, that ground floor, and also to the rear of the building at that location. The applicant is proposing 83 dedicated commercial parking spaces on level one and P1. So, this is P1 on the right corner here in this location here. This is parking level one, and this is the ground floor parking. So, the applicant also proposes parallel spaces on the new private street on both sides at that location, and two loading zones at the rear of the building. So, here the applicant has provided some renderings. This is a view looking southwest on Blenheim Boulevard, the face of the building. Here's a rendering looking close-up of the building from Blenheim Boulevard.

And here's a view looking to the northwest along Blenheim Boulevard. Within your packet, staff has provided preliminary comments. We're happy to discuss those comments if there are any questions at the end of the presentation. The potential land use requests. The applicant would be seeking a rezoning from commercial retail to commercial urban while retaining the architectural control overlay district. Special use permits for an upper story residential mixed-use building. Special exceptions for height and density. More special exceptions may be required based on the application. Once we receive an application, we'll have an idea of what other additional exceptions may be required. The applicant will be seeking approval of a general development plan

and also a major certificate of appropriateness for landscaping and architecture. The next steps, the applicant will be, there will be a City Council pre-application meeting September 1st with the applicant and then followed by any potential land use applications and starting a development review process. Again, the applicant is here and I'll stand by for any questions. The applicant is here to address Planning Commission if there are any questions for the applicant. Thank you. Commissioner, questions for staff? No, that's not. Mr. Rice. So the fire department went through an accreditation about 18 months ago. It's required about every five, about every five years. As part of their analysis, one of the critical items is the structure risk associated with taller buildings.

Has the acting fire chief Dunstan or the fire marshal sites, have they looked at this and have they given any feedback on it? Yes. The fire marshal has participated in the preliminary review and has provided comments to the applicant. Okay. Is the height of the pass-through from Blenheim Boulevard on the private street adequate to allow the tower ladder to pass through to the back of the building without having to navigate around to the other side first? Well, the concept shows the private street leading into the parking garage. It doesn't – I think you're referring to the previous application that it went through the building and it led out to – potentially out to Fairfax Boulevard. But the applicant has discussed it with the fire marshal and I believe that he doesn't have any concerns with the openings either on either the front side or the back side of the building in terms of a ladder truck getting into the building.

I don't believe that he had any additional comments related to the height of the openings. Okay. So I assume that the tower ladder would have to approach the building from the back side. That's correct. The back side, which right now is a parking garage. That's correct. And the future would be a street there. We'd have to evaluate the plan and also work with the adjacent properties to work on a street design. But the ladder truck would be able to set up in the rear of the building and also in the front of the building. And the street to the south would also be in place to set up as well. So I think the fire marshal would be okay with the design. And, of course, we would have more discussions with the applicant going forward.

Sure. Sure. I think if this were to go forward, having chief sites here and available to speak directly about it would be advisable. Given the fact that this happens to fall within the critical area of their capabilities, the analysis within their accreditation notes, non-ambulatory facilities. In other words, the jail, nursing homes as being a particular challenge during emergencies and structures and the height of the structure in particular. We don't have anything like this in the city. Nothing approaching this height. And although it's not completely inconsistent with what most of us are thinking about in terms of the small area plans and the height of buildings just to the northeast. But it is breaking new ground.

And I think discussion would merit having chief sites or acting chief Dunstan here just to comment. Noted. And I think I want to just emphasize that one thing in the small area plan, at least for me, that emerged is the importance of the view shed to the southwest toward the creek. And the possibility that that creek and what would become kind of a natural area in a corridor could become a great feature. It could become something that the developers here as well as in the parcel to the south that currently houses the bowling alley and a few other places. Is that the fact that they're adjacent to an unbelievably beautiful area of the city is an amenity? It's a feature. And I'd want to make sure that all of the proposals somehow acknowledge that.

Final question, Mr. Frederick, is how close to this particular development are the improvements that are going to be happening first on Blondon Boulevard? What's the gap between this parcel and what's going to be happening to the south? That's a good question that I don't know the measurements. Paul, do you know? The extent of the Blondon Boulevard improvements go as far south as Ridge Road, which is just estimating distance probably 600 or 700 feet from the site. Okay. Okay. So what's happening there is going to be a fairly significant change in the roadway and the shared use paths and the widths of kind of allocated to bicyclists, pedestrians, and other things. And I'd want to make sure that what's happening here is at least somewhat acknowledging the fact that this will become a major thoroughfare.

I think I'm encouraged that sidewalks at 10-foot widths are in the plans as opposed to what we sometimes get, which is totally unacceptable. Acknowledgements to the fact that a sidewalk is there, but it's 60 inches or 72 or something less than that, 10 feet is significant. And the fact that just to the south, a couple hundred feet is going to be a magnificent new corridor for folks to travel through. I think we'll need to look at that connection. And obviously with a bridge in between, there's not a whole lot that can be done to directly connect the developments. But at least acknowledging this will be a corridor people pass through I think is important. So that's all I have. Thanks. Others?

Mr. Tossos. All righty. So I share the, you know, just general thought on the height. I think that would be the biggest building in the city of Fairfax. To be fair, I do think that of all the small area plans, that's probably the most appropriate area to do so. But the one point I would make on that is, you know, if we're saying we want to be at nine, you know, does 11 stories produce a better planning outcome for the residents of the city? Or is it simply more units? Something that really struck me and, you know, it's come to light with the Davies property and others. And we were at the linear stakeholder meeting and it was something that came to my attention, North Facts that is, is that these small area plans are very much about connectivity when I look at them.

And I think that, you know, we've probably already made some mistakes on ensuring that that happens to the fullest extent. And when I look at this, and this probably isn't the best rendering for it, but it looks like they have the private entrance on which will, which would become in the small area plan, I believe, a Campbell pass through. And I wonder about that remaining a private road, what that means for that. And to further that point, when you go to the other side, that's, that's Spring Street, right? Where that would effectively, yeah, Spring Street extension. Am I correct in that? That's correct. To just have a five foot sidewalk there. And I don't know, I didn't see a rendering or a massing of that side of the building.

But I would be nervous that we were just saying that was going to be the person next door's problem. And we would end up with a situation where, you know, something that was at the core of the plan doesn't actually end up happening. So I think that's, that's a big thing for me. And then secondly, much of that small area plan talked about green fingers, tree canopy. And that's certainly addressed to some degree. It's a lead, or they're saying it might be a lead building, which is terrific. I do see some trees. But considering the proximity to Akatink, what's going to be happening with the multimodal plan on Blenheim, I'd love for that to really be thought of. And again, like Spring Street kind of sticks out to me as an area where you might want to think about that.

And I guess just at its core, all of these points kind of get to, we're looking at all these projects now. And my concern is that we're approving things or looking at things that we might regret in the future because they don't fully encapsulate the core of what's at the small area plan. And I just want to make sure that as we're approving these, obviously they won't happen all at once, that we're leaving a true path to make sure that we have that cohesion and connectivity that was sought out in the small area plans. That's it. Thank you. Mr. Cunningham. Thank you. Do you intend to get any comment from the applicant tonight? Well, yeah. There are all some comments from the applicant as well.

So if you want to direct something. Then I will wait until the applicant has made his comments and then I'll bundle them together. Well, they'll be able to respond to questions, but there will be no presentation by the applicant. Okay. So go ahead. Okay. With that and short-term concerns, long-term concerns. Yes, come up if the applicant is going to make a statement or has anything they would like to make a statement. You may have questions to the applicant. Yeah. And questions. One, you're higher and drier because there's a lot of floodplain in this area. But I think you are at the area that you are just on the north side of it. So floodplain is not as much of an issue as the redevelopment between all of the buildings between the proposed site and the creek.

That's true. One, two, a major question I would have is connectivity. When we look at the plans that are laid out in the small area plans, the intention is to provide the ability to transit an area. And the intention in the previous applications was to rationalize the intersection at Old Pickett Road and Blenheim Boulevard and take it straight across. Because right now, the driveways don't line up. Does this line up? And is there enough discussion and work with the adjacent property owner, Mr. Lothrop, so to speak, and that to put a street through and have a traffic connection through the building as it was in the past? Because the current depiction doesn't indicate that. The, I mean, certainly the intent and Mr. Lothrop's properties, we have laid out that street, what we call a new private street, will align with Old Pickett Road and does afford us the opportunity to connect across the Lothrop property and then on to Campbell.

So we have designed it with that layout in mind. Now, our application and our proposal is limited to what we can do. And one of the, we're very deliberate about this, is that we remain in control in our ability to do this. And so when the application does get represented or gets presented, you know, I'll be the second time, we will be able to do this ourselves in its entirety, constructed from the interior looking out. Okay. And it will offer the opportunity then to put the connection through if Campbell were to be routed as the small area plan indicates to provide access, whether it's traffic or just bicycles and pedestrians, a connection through there to use a rationalized intersection. Yes, sir.

As, as, as shown there on that ground floor plan, we currently are just showing it bending into, because our property line is on the top there, bending into the garage. But that same street section can go through and connect onto the Lothrop property and then connect onto Campbell. So we've given plenty of thought. Our traffic engineers have done a great job aligning that intersection as best as possible. We have new studies for traffic signal concept plans to make sure that the equipment can be supported, you know, while we're undergrounding everything else that's on front of Blenheim Boulevard as well. Okay. Have we got more parking than we need in the building? I notice we're still dealing with three or four layers of parking.

We don't have more. I wish we had a little bit more. We don't, we have no excess parking or anything along that line. We've got to keep it because it appears that when you get up to parking levels three and four, that the parking level crosses the road over to the building on what I'm going to call the northeast side. It does on level three. It does. And, and the 460 proposed parking spaces is right at the minimum requirement and meeting code. So we don't anticipate requiring or requesting any kind of special exception for a parking reduction. Okay. Okay. But we are going to take parking up that far, which again pushes the height of the entire building on at least that end up and increases the mass.

Yes, sir. It does. And, and it, and it, unfortunately the geometry, you know, a bit for, for this is, is really tough. So the efficiency in this, in this garage, um, uh, also drives the costs, you know, as well, but, uh, we are able to park the entire development in and of itself on the site. Okay. Okay. When it comes to green space or open amenity, it doesn't appear that there is a lot on the site, that most of that would be, open space would be around the site. If we're going to have a significant number of residential units there, people can either be in their unit, they can walk into the office and bother the rental office on the first floor, or they can go out into the community. We hope, you know, personally we have a bit of a mantra that we say our apartment is our bedroom and our building is our home.

And we try to foster that type of culture such that, you know, our residents, yes, they may cook their meals in their room, but then they're going to take it to one of the common areas or up to the pool deck that you see on the fourth floor, and that's where they'll share their meals with their neighbors and things like that. Yes, they will be walking down to the area restaurants as well, especially when the whole Southwest Quadrant gets built out. And so we're really, really trying to be relevant, you know, 40 years from now, you know, with this gateway feature that kind of just sparks everyone's interest to say, hey, what is happening here behind, you know, the Southwest Quadrant? So I think we, to Mr. McCarthy's, you know, commentary, we've got to continue this discussion, you know,

and we'll do a better job and I've vowed, you know, to friends people, our responses will be quick and they'll be complete this time. That's on me. And, but we keep these discussions going. And I do think the truth presents itself, you know, what's good for the community, what's good for the city, and what's good for the market. Okay. Three or four levels of parking from ground floor is going to be somewhat accessible to people, although there is parking on ground floor. There's two levels of subterranean and three levels of superstructure parking. Then you've got superstructure parking so that really residential doesn't start until four floors up. Correct. It's on the 4th through 10th is residential.

And amenities. I notice a pool here, and one of the questions I've asked any number of developers, is this a seasonal pool, a three-month pool, because it's going to be out in open space, or is this a structure that is a year-round amenity? I'll be honest with you. We haven't gotten that far in kind of the programming, you know, of that building. Whether it's fully heated can be, you know, 12 years or 12 months a year, I don't know. But certainly, you know, we would lean into the spring and then lean also deep into the fall. And it's not so much more for the, I would expect people to be, you know, in the pool itself. But it's certainly, you know, a great place to, again, share a drink, you know, have your meal with your neighbors.

Okay. Within a half a mile of this structure, there's an even taller residential unit. It doesn't happen to be in the city. No. But it's tall, and it has a view out to the Blue Ridge. It does. If you get to the top end of that. At 11 stories, do you have that type of amenity available? Well, I'm afraid if we can pull up one of just the renderings. You know, we're talking about, that one's great, 11 stories. Well, since we originally submitted this several years ago, the project hasn't changed appreciably, other than it's gotten smarter, you know, based on the code requirements that staff has presented to us. It's always been this. There's always been, you know, floors 4 through 10 are where the residents are.

Those caps that you see on the north end there and there's another one on the south end, that's what we're talking about is the 11th floor. And that is where we are screening all the mechanical equipment and the elevator overruns and the like. The fact that we, when we looked at it, we said, okay, we've got to box this out and make it aesthetically pleasing because it's going to be visible. What if we put a roof on it and made it an amenity space? And so on the south side is where you have that open amenity space for our residents. That's where they'll go and they'll watch, you know, the fireworks and everything else from the high school. And on this side here, we moved the management office up to that north corner

so that we could, you know, put units on the fourth floor. Okay. And I guess that's one of my questions. With heightened advantages, is it possible to take advantage of amenities not only for the residents but a rooftop restaurant or something that would be a greater amenity for the community in a building such as this? Absolutely love it. Right now it's not planned for retail because our retail, we're very focused, you know, on creating, you know, active energy on the ground floor plane. And that ground floor plane, because of, you know, the nature of the parking structure behind it, you know, those are 20-foot, you know, ceilings. So it's going to be fabulous with the storefront glazing that you've got there.

We'll be able to pull up to the circle, look to the left, and kind of see the energy that's happening there, you know, and hopefully in time to make a turn to get around and go. Could we put – it might require the expansion of the usable area on top of that, which we have the room to do, but we're, you know, we're very worried and – not worried. You know, we're very cognizant of the fact, you know, of the building height. You know, but one of the problems, again, we only have rent-paying, you know, properties on 4 through 10, and there's 38 units on a floor plate. So if we lose 38 units, just slop off a, you know, floor 10 or something, you know, 18% of the value of the project goes with it,

and then all of a sudden it becomes very tough to make work. I guess my question is with a lack of surface-level green space, is it possible to gain green space either on top of the building that would be public, you know, with an amenity or something? How do we catch the rest of the open area, the open space, the green space, the fact that we don't want necessarily to pluck a building out of downtown Manhattan that is surrounded by skyscrapers, so there's no possibility for anything growing there, and take advantage of the open space we've got here to keep it green and accessible and... Well, the hard part, I understand what you're saying, and we'll go back and continue to give this more thought and push this more,

but is it possible, Fred, to see the fourth floor plan? So, you know, we worked very well early on with the city and the community when the small area plan was coming to fruition, and we hired, you know, ULI, the city hired ULI to come in and get the input, and so we viewed it as, you know, I'm going to call it free help if you want to, because you've got some great resources, as we have on staff, to give us their ideas, you know, to make the project better. And so during that process, you know, we were pleased, as we pushed our project, you know, to and fro, that this is what got adopted in the small area plan. So that opening that you see to the ACOTINK is very, very much part and parcel as to why we think we can get premiums on our rents,

you know, just on the viewshed alone. And it de-risks our project when we're talking to our investor groups because that concept, Mr. Rice talked about, is proven up and down, you know, the James River. You can go anywhere in Richmond, Rockets Landing, on down through Lynchburg, and everybody has turned their developments towards the river to take advantage of that lifestyle. And so we are too. And I just hope, I really hope that Bowl of America does the same thing, turns it inside out and adheres to the plan that we're all thinking about. Okay. I think those are the principal questions I've got for the applicant in making it as friendly a building as it can be, because I still have some concerns in terms of the height and the massing getting here

because of what's going to go in around it, where density doesn't overcome everything else. It does, Mr. Cunningham. And we've, you know, like you said, you know, having grown up here, and my mother taught at Leighton Hall for 30 years, and so I'm personally excited about this project. But what was Circle Towers in my day, you know, is probably 35 feet, 40 feet taller than what we're asking. I mean, we're probably 15 feet taller than the Scout at the end of the day. So we're, from a skyline perspective, you know, I think we're right where we need to be, not just today, but 25 years from now. You know, we're right where we need to be. Elevation-wise, you're at the low end of the city. Pardon me?

Elevation-wise, you are at the low end of the city. We are. That is correct. We certainly are. And you're certainly shorter than the Massey building was when it was in downtown. So there are pluses there. Well, I mean, again, you know this, but, you know, you build these things, and they've got to be relevant for 40, 50 years. They really do. Nothing's worse than seven years later after your hold period and your investors are looking at you and all of a sudden this no longer fits the needs of the community. That's a travesty because then nobody else will come in, and, you know, you can't afford to scrape it down and redo. So we really have to be thinking that far out. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Mr. Carty. Sure. Yeah, I'll echo everything my fellow commissioners have said and not repeat, but I was curious about the Spring Street side of the building because I think in the small area plan that's envisioned to be the new Main Street. Do I have it right that if someone's walking down there, they'd be looking at the parking? Like a parking wall? Maybe you can pull that back up, that rendering. Yeah. So you are right. So here's the challenge, again, with the geometry of retail bays need to be about 60 feet deep, you know, maybe 80 on preference, you know, if you're a national credit tenant. And the geometry of the parking structures you saw in that parking plan, it's really difficult. There's not enough room to do 60-foot retail bays on the south side of this building and still have a parking garage.

There's not enough room to have, you know, a 60-foot bay, you know, on the front side and 60-foot bays on the south side. So which one do we try to activate? I wish I could say it's that simple. Do you activate south side or do you activate blenum? And the small area plan speaks, you know, to both, you know, about the importance of blenum as well, not just as a thoroughfare, but as a flexible, you know, route. So the parking probably, the geometry of the parking probably drives this more than being able to say, I wish I could put the retail in the south instead of off of blenum. You know, it's, this is just the way it could fit. But now we can maybe do a better job when we get to the architectural review panel side of things on how to address that.

And we'll look for those. But, but, but the streetscape is there, you know, for, for the trees, for the sidewalks to, you're not going to be storefront shopping, window shopping, you know, on that side, but, but, but you still have pedestrian walks and live and walkability, you know, to what will be, you know, a better venue. So are you saying that the small area plan isn't feasible? Not at all. With retail on blenum and on south street? I think for the geometry of our building, it's, it's not something that we can do. And if you look even at the first floor floor plan, there, if you could draw your cursor on the backside of the retail, Fred, it's about 80, 60 feet deep. Yeah. Right there. A little bit right there.

All the way across is all retail Bay there. And so if you see, if I tried to go 60 foot deep on the south side, I would lose all that parking. So it's on the first floor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And not just that. I mean, now all of a sudden I don't know how you get a ramp to go around, you know, the inside the parking garage. Cause now I'm really talking about some sort of switchback. Um, okay. And how, how wide is the sidewalk you're proposing on that side of the building? Um, five feet. I feel like that would be something that if we're going to make it a nice looking walkway, even though you're next to a parking garage, I feel like that sidewalk needs to be a little bit bigger. Okay. I will look at it again.

I, and I don't have that dimension off the top of my head, but I do think, um, we are probably that property line is, is we're probably five feet inside that property line right now. Um, and so, you know, yeah, I wish that we owned the property next door and that we could, we can make this all work. Yeah, exactly. You know, but, but we don't. All right. What about the, the parking and the loading dock? How's that going to work? Sure. It seems like it's right butts up against the parking surface, parking on the other side of the building. If I have that right. It does. So we have an existing egress and ingress easement. Okay. Um, on the outside of that, and, and we will submit as part of our general development plan, the auto turn analysis for not only the fire trucks, but all of our delivery trucks, moving trucks and such.

And it all stays within that existing easement. Okay. So we're, we're, we're confident on that one. And, and by the way, the, the, the, the pass through for circle get way, the elevation is high enough to support the ladder trucks. We, I think it's 18. I'd have to go back and look. Um, Fred, I know you guys had some comments on that traffic light that would be there. Is there anything you can elaborate on there? Cause I'm curious how that would work if you're driving underneath the building and then trying to turn on to blend them. Oh, I can feel that. Or you could take it. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. No, well, I don't think he's seen it. He just told me you gotta hire your traffic engineer and really study this one out.

Yeah. So we've studied it out and it'll be a sheet within our, um, generalized development plan, a traffic signal, um, concept plan. Um, but, uh, it does align. We can get the alignments with the heads. Um, and, and I'll let this out of the bag. You have, and Fred, I haven't told you this, so don't say no way. I'm protecting him. He hadn't seen this. But I think on either side of the, of the circle of the gateway feature itself, we'll, we'll probably end up proposing to do the same thing that we did over on, uh, the camp Washington side. As you come off the South side and you T bone, uh, main street there, um, right up against the T mobile stores, there's pedestrian level, uh, signals. On there.

And, and the concept here looks, looks great. And then we can reuse all the new bigger poles and all that stuff. Uh, we'll be able to put in existing easements on the home Depot corner and on the, uh, the office building corner. So you'll see that you haven't had to see that yet. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Well, that's, that's all for me. Others? A couple of questions. Um, the, what you call a private driveway, 24 feet. I think almost everything we've seen lately has been required to be at least 26 feet. Um, and if this is going to be a future, as it's described in the small area plan, neighborhood street, the question is, is that big enough? Um, I'm guessing not to serve the purpose that we're seeing as a Campbell drive, um, extension across Fairfax Boulevard and on in the old Pickett road.

So I think that probably will need to be considered, um, light of the, what our road requirements may be for this kind of street to serve the purpose that I think we want it to be. Um, have similar concerns about the spring street extension side of the building. Clearly called to be an active street and this looks nothing like an active facade. I get, I understand your concern and what you've described it. But, um, if nothing else, I think we need to relook at the sidewalk. Five feet is not going to pass muster, I think, by a lot of people who are looking at this. Um, the 11 stories, that is all above gray. That's not counting the subterranean parking. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. The smaller your plan clearly specifies nine stories maximum.

That's the guidance. Can you explain that? I forgot, yes. You're, you're asking for this? I'm asking for what, sir? You're asking for 11 stories instead of nine that the smaller your plan calls for? Correct. You'll also have seen within, if you've been watching any of the other reviews going on in the community, uh, a lot of concern in the community about the scale of things in the city that are being proposed. Going for two stories additional to what the smaller your plan even calls for, uh, is kind of a bold request. Could you address that? Yes, sir. And, and, and again, the, the, the geometry of this particular site, the, our ability to be able to actually put this in production and make a realization of it during our lifetimes, um, you know, requires, uh,

the parking to be, you know, what, what we're proposing that the two levels of subterranean and the three levels of superstructure parking such that we don't get any income generating, you know, short of the retail, which. It was not, doesn't move the needle, uh, quite honestly, um, for the, the residential uses. And so, uh, we think that, you know, this request, and, and like, as I mentioned, it, it's 10 stories plus penthouse. It, by code it, because it's occupiable, you know, and we're conditioning the, the amenity area. Um, it, it does make it an 11 story, uh, structure, but the, the, the GFA that's on that 11th story is probably, if I'd have to look up on the application, but maybe 12,000 square feet.

Total. So it's not a full blown story. But even at 10 is more than the guidance that the small area plan is provides for. Come on. Feels a little bit like the tail trying to wag the dog. The dog being the small area plan that establishes our vision. I'll just leave it at that. What is the existing, uh, square footage of retail or commercial space in these spaces today? There are two buildings. Yep. The, the old Lotte, which is now a, um, and, and the old 7-Eleven, which is now a cabinet showroom. And there, it's probably 39,000 in the old Lotte building. And then approximately, I know we have it. It's a 2,200 or so. So we may have about 40 today and we're going down to 16,500. Pardon me? So, so it's a right and round number is 40,000 square feet today.

And we're going down to about 16,500. 16,500. Is that what you said? As far as the retail? Yeah. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Okay, so we're losing 24,000 square feet of retail in one of the key commercial districts of the city. Also not something we're trying to accomplish in, uh, in these activity centers. Okay. Okay. Um. I will say that, uh, um, this site is probably the closest, one of the closest we have to the, uh, Vienna Metro. So this is a great location to put some fairly good residential districts right on the Q bus line. Uh, that could be very helpful, um, and may in fact, uh, reduce the amount of parking that may be required. Uh, we are discussing parking requirements as it stands today for multifamily residential.

Uh, we may be talking about that a little bit later in the meeting. Um, I'm not sure, but, uh, so there may be some opportunities as well for parking reductions. I know we have the standard, but we're looking at changing our standards as well. So, um, I think I had a similar question about the loading area. Uh, you've answered that. Thank you very much. You have an easement that, that gives you access. Yes, sir. From the adjacent property. So I, a similar concern. Okay. Uh, that, that is taken care of. That's taken care of. All right. I think, I think you've heard my comments. Uh, and, uh, concerns and those of others. Anything else from the commission? Mr. Cunningham first. Uh, in the renderings where we're looking at the space on top of the building.

Uh, is that all on the front section of the building? Because I presume that the, the area above the pool remains open all the way going up. Yes, sir. So, so if you're putting penthouse, it's either on the front section of the building or the back or the central portion, so to speak. But nothing is going over as, as canopy over that open space. No, sir. That's open to sky. It is on the, the, the front. It's just the front. Mm-hmm. And that would lend. And that would lend. If it were going to be public space and used to meet. That way you'd have to have some form of access vertically to get people up to it. Is that a major impediment that would keep it from becoming an amenity that was public amenity as opposed to just amenity for the building?

A restaurant or anything that was up there taking advantage of the view? Well, I think if, if it truly became, you know, retail, the, as, as contemplated, you know, the elevator shaft, as you all know, one of the first things you, you end up laying out on these things. Whether or not we could control security, you know, through software and the cabs themselves, you know, I'd have to get smarter on for, for that particular program that you're talking about. The ability to put in another elevator shaft dedicated just to getting to the rooftop, we would, we would have to, to, to look at and, and see how that impacts the number of losses of units and the like. So anything like, anything like that would have to be contemplated in advance of it going forward for, for future use.

Because once you have put in that basic use, modifying the building to accommodate, it would be. Right. Largely impractical. Again, then we'd be looking at elevator cab software and security. So if I walk in, you know, how can I make sure that I can only go to the rooftop and not go to any of the other floors? And, and there's ways to do that. There's, there's ways to do that. I'm sure. Just trying to see how cumbersome it would be for the resident. You know, we want to keep everything as simple as possible for them. But, but I, I, I love where you're going with the idea of, I'm not going to say monetizing the community space up there, but, but if I could put fabulous, you know, if I could relocate Arties, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

You know, up there. And I, I'm sure they would go. Well, I don't know if we can get a space big enough for them there, but we, we will, we will evaluate over before the application comes in and see what we can. One of the concepts we had long ago with all of the commercial space in what was called the five nodes or now the five small area plans or those kinds of things is that if you can leave community access on the ground level, so that everybody in the community could access the ground level throughout all of that space, then you could hang the housing in the sky above it. And that would work. What we have found, at least, or what I have found is that we're putting all of the, uh, the restricted space, if you will, the residential and that on the ground floor,

allocating 5,000 square feet in the corner to retail. But that, that means that none of that space is available anymore. What we're doing is giving up what was common space for either business or retail or, uh, whatever public use it could have had for access in our, in our retail space. And so at this point, trying to monetize or my question comes with, if you could get the higher space, if it has, is valuable and do that, what you're taking away on the ground floor, you're, you're at least giving back some opportunity to maintain the commercial base, the public base, the rest of the common area base, uh, that we all want to be able to use, as opposed to continuing to build things where we're walled off and we have to go around or it's inconvenient to get there anymore,

or those kinds of things for accessibility are, are going away. And that's one of the reasons for some of my questions, I guess, along this line, uh, is that, that everything that's coming in with residential in supposedly this open space is merely reducing it. We're not going to get it back in the future. And when we give it up to residential, that might be good for the residents in the building. What are the residents in the building doing for the community? Uh, it's got to work both ways, I guess, from my perspective, that the people who live in the community have got to, to be adding value to what we're doing. As opposed to just having another place to live where we can, we can make it more dense package, more people in a smaller space because the economics dictated it doesn't make the lifestyle any better for the residents who are here.

And we don't seem to have a grip on the kind of residents that are coming in to live this space and how they're going to integrate into the community. Uh, and those are things that I have concerns with in, in some of the, the preponderance of large multifamily buildings and not sticking with some of the principles that still give us flexibility to move forward over the next 25, 50 years. Even though that's not my problem. No, I, I, I, I appreciate the commentary and, uh, look forward to exploring that more, uh, with you. Because I, I understood it for a bit and then it got really high level and I lost it and then I've got to come back to it. So, okay. Um, but I, but I do appreciate that. Yeah.

Mr. McCarthy. Alrighty. Well, this has been fun. Um, three, three things. We're talking about Spring Street in the event. Campbell was to become, you know, a thoroughfare as well. It's currently listed as a private road on your property, uh, in the drawing that I saw. Is that something that, uh, have you all contemplated either making that a permanent public easement and or like, you know, we'll definitely have public easement over it. The reason we would, we're proposing to be private is because of, uh, the maintenance obligations associated with being underneath the gateway feature itself is not something that I believe, uh, the jurisdictions would take on. So we're willing to maintain repair and, and operate that.

Okay. So this development isn't going to stonewall that road in 15 years. No. So it would be public easement to be granted outside. Great. All right. So that's enough of that then. Because we also have our stormwater management filtration devices, uh, underneath that road system as well. Terrific. Um, he touched on the garage. Um, and I know this is kind of down the road, but, but thinking, you know, into the future. And as a resident and someone that lives within walking distance of there, um, have you all contemplated, um, property management, security programming? Um, as most of you probably know, that area experiences a lot of loitering. Um, we've had a couple, uh, sad incidences in the last couple of days.

One yesterday, right across the street from there. Um, so have you all thought about that? Cause I, I, I fear having a, an open garage right there, um, could exacerbate an issue. And then secondly, we certainly wouldn't want it to be something that just pushed the issue further into the neighborhood. So have you, have you all thought about that at all? Well, uh, certainly, certainly. I mean, on, on one bar below of that, you know, we, we, we will have a transportation demand management program, you know, both for the commercial tailored to the commercial use. And then one tailored towards the residential use. So it will not be an unattended garage. I don't know. We, we don't have currently plans for a, um, it'd be gated, but not a guardhouse.

Understood. Feature where somebody is standing there. Now, having, you know, said that, you know, we, we are putting, you know, building services and leasing right as you drive into the garage on the right hand side. Um, you know, so the, that will be staffed as honest, I don't know if somebody staffed 24 seven yet. I find that hard to, to do at this point. Um, but security is, as anybody would tell you, that's in our position is utmost. You, you can't have one bad Yelp review when it comes to security and, you know, certainly, certainly have your family. I'm not writing your pro forma. I'm not one of your investors. No, I know. It's just the truth of the matter. And it's something that you should consider.

Yeah. Um, and then, and then the last point, um, we've talked about the height a lot and we've gotten a lot of emails recently about height at other buildings. It seems to be a major concern for residents. Um, but, but a point I would want to make, and I'm certainly speaking for my, myself on this, um, is that, you know, you came in here asking for 11. I understand the top is largely mechanical, et cetera. Um, my, my point of view on that is if someone's going to come in anyone and ask for, for a variance or an exception, um, that it should be doing. So with the, with the understanding that it's checking every other box, right? It, it becomes, uh, a necessary evil of sorts, certainly understand the geography.

And, you know, if you came in bigger, you'd probably take a lot of flack for that too. Um, but just, uh, you know, as I think about, you know, I'll be able to see that building from my house. Probably I live close. Um, I would much rather personally in that specific area. Anyways, kind of the gateway to the city from DC close to the Metro have a taller building. That was able to get the retail on spring street that was able to activate Campbell and had the green space, the canopy and checked all those other boxes. Then have an 11 story building that didn't meet any of them. And I know that's hard. And a lot of people don't want to hear that, but, um, I think real estate is a thing of trade-offs.

And while there might be a pushback, I think that if you presented, uh, if we were 10 or 15 years into the future and residents could walk down spring street and it was green and there was retail and they could take the elevator up to the restaurant on the top and watch the fireworks that they would all forget that it was 13 stories. Um, and I, I, I, I, I'm not trying to throw a wrench in here, but, um, there's trade-offs in this and, uh, that's something I would consider. Good for us. Yeah. It's 13 is pretty high. Um, but very much true. I'd completely forget that it's 13. If I was up there at a restaurant, um, having. The ability of the public. To ride the elevator that's going to be close to that, uh, loading bay.

All the way up to. What will be the 11th floor to a viewing area adjacent to some green roof infrastructure that you may be able to put up there. They're going to be able to see. Army Navy country club all the way to pick it. Unfortunately, they're going to see the tank farm as well. They're going to see the. All the way across the city. That elevation up there on the 10th floor. Is almost precisely the same ground elevation that we have here at city hall. So they're going to be looking and seeing virtually everything. All the way across the city. And frankly, that would be a massive. Trade off. And it's something that's commonly done in D.C. This is the elevator issues already. It's been solved problem 25 years ago.

And if there was just an expeditious way to, uh, have the public, you know, check in, uh, you know, provide an ID. And then head up to a viewing area and look, you know, expansively across the entire city. That would be unique. It would be special. And it would be something at least in that area that would be a magnet. And frankly, that would cover up a lot of other sins. And, uh, I think it's a great idea. But, um, I live on the south side of the city. And I'm going to be looking a little bit further down at you. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot of height. Um, it's, you know, it's going to be the tallest thing in that, you know, area. But, um, anyway, I think the other folks have made a lot of great points.

And I hope, uh, you know, we'll be able to continue talking and, um, figuring out how to make this even better. Anything else? Okay. Thank you. Uh, just, you know, that's, I'm going to address Mr. Frederick. Mr. Frederick, do you have sufficient feedback from us? Thank you. Uh, one feedback item for you, if I can. Um, it would have been very helpful to have the presentation before the meeting. You've had some drawings and renderings in there that we did not have access to in the staff report, which I would have liked to have been able to refer to. So if we can make that happen for future reviews like this, that would be very helpful. Thank you. Either include them in the staff report or attach the presentation as well to the agenda.

Thank you. Okay. Okay. Our next work session item is discussion of the second draft of amendments to the city of Fairfax zoning ordinance related to the adopted small area plans. Mr. Napty. figure thank you chair cutler and members of the planning commission as a quick background as a planning commission is aware the 2035 comprehensive plan identified the need to develop smaller plans for each of the city's five activity center and since that plan was adopted in 2019 the city has proceeded with developing and adopting four of those small area plans and with those plans adopted they have served as guides for informing both public investment in projects and as well as informing private development projects and as well as

as well as informing private development projects as we just went through that process tonight the issues that have come up with private development projects however is that the city's zoning standards have not been updated to be more in line with the adopted smaller plans this is an issue because the smaller plans are serve as policy and guidance they are not code and they are not requirements and so oftentimes when reviewing development applications we end up with developers with developers having to request special exceptions in order to be in line with the recommendations of the smaller plans and it also puts the onus on the city to result or resolve in significant negotiations with developers in achieving some of the amenities that are desired in the small area plans so with this understanding the city with the adoption of the favorite circle smiley plan in 2024 which was the last of the four

the city began an effort of updating our zoning ordinance to be more in line with the adopted smaller plans this process began in the middle of 2024 with a with a phase that resolved around gathering information about getting feedback from various stakeholders on the types of issues that we're facing with development review related small area plans and then turned around in spring of 2025 with our consultant the planning commission to summarize those types of recommendations on how to address them through amendments in the zoning ordinance once receiving confirmation that they're headed in the right direction through conversations with city staff the general public and the planning commission city council the consultant then began developing the actual proposed text amendments the first draft of these amendments was ready for us to review in early 2026

spring we also had a community meeting and had our engage page open for public feedback on that draft during that time we also had several internal city staff meetings for the various staff who were involved in development reviews to get their feedback as well so now since that time we have prepared a series of amendments to draft one and we are here to go over the second draft of this with you the goal for this project is to uh once we get through uh once we get through this review of the second draft to finalize our recommendations and come back to you to can make final consideration in the fall and um we'll be asking city council for final consideration at that time as well a quick review of the first draft review as i mentioned the planning commission city council uh east had multiple work sessions on this we had the community meeting and then our engage page was open uh for a couple of months

uh we had staff focus groups that uh prepared comments as well uh through this effort uh we are now working on our second draft and i wanted to mention that uh in your uh staff report you have the complete formatted second draft as attachment one and then there's a markup of all the changes that have occurred since draft one um as attachment two there's also a summary sheet that uh summarizes the high level changes that have occurred between draft one and draft two um because a lot of the um changes that are shown in the markup um there's a significant amount if anyone tried to read through it it's it's it's more red than black but a lot of that is also more minor administrative uh language touch-ups and those types of things so the the summary

is intended to help guide you on what the more significant changes were so the purpose of today's work session is to uh go over the more significant changes that are proposed in the draft um and get your feedback on how we should be proceeding we won't go through too much on uh the original background on what was included uh hoping that you are all up to speed on that uh so first uh just wanted to remind you what the the basic elements are that are in the um in the proposed amendments um and uh those are broken up into these items here and so as we go through this we'll go through these topic by topic did want to mention when we get to tree conservation the staff is now recommending that we hold off on those amendments um and we'll explain the reasoning for

that when we get there so the first of these elements is the zoning structure the zoning structure is essentially uh how these proposed amendments administratively will fit within the uh the zoning ordinance and as you may recall the uh proposal uh in the first draft as continues in the second draft is that we develop a new zoning district called the activity center zoning district that have all the standards that we'll go through later as we go through the presentation this district could not be proactively mapped so if a developer or property owner was seeking to use the standards of this district they would have to go through a rezoning process meaning that they would have to uh seek support from the planning commission and approval from city council

the applicability of the proposed new district would be limited to defined activity centers and those are the boundaries that are in our smaller plans these would be carried into the zoning ordinance um so any properties outside of these areas would not have the opportunity to use this district um there would be other opportunities um for trying to achieve mixed use development for those types of sites such as using our existing commercial urban district or uh the planned developments uh one significant change that um is included in the second draft that was not in the first draft is at the time of the first draft we did not have clarity on how this proposed new district would relate to our overlay districts particularly in old town uh and so with this draft uh the the the language states that

uh within the old town area the um the the activity center zoning district uh standards would supersede the standards of the transition overlay district however the historic overlay district standards would supersede the standards of the activity center district and along with this staff is recommending that we consider adjustments to the boundaries of the historic overlay district to better align with the national register historic district so i'll explain in more detail with well all three of these elements mean uh so looking at this map to the left the um the entire area that's colored in with the gray boundary is the old town activity center so this is the extent of where the activity center district

could apply the area within the blue dashed line is the our local historic overlay district again this is the area where the historic overlay district would supersede the standards of the activity center district um so those would continue to function as is um note that the blue that this area goes beyond the extent of the activity center boundary so those areas we just continue to function as is uh all the areas outside the blue dashed line that are within the colored area of the activity center boundary would fall uh fall within the transition overlay district and so in these cases the new activity center district would supersede the standards of the transition overlay district so essentially

as property owners rezone to this district um the transition overlay district standards would would no longer apply um this we were showing this overlay over the uh the height map from the small area plan uh because height is really the most significant standard that people think of when they think about our overlay districts in old town uh because the uh maximum height in the historic overlay district is 36 feet or three stories and the transition overlay district is 48 feet or four stories whereas within the activity center they vary uh based on the color codes that are shown here um anywhere up to six stories in some locations um so in looking at this you can see that within the blue area where um the the height recommendations of the new activity center district

would not apply there are some places where there are height recommendations of up to five stories in the small area plan and so in order to accommodate this this is why staff is recommending that we consider adjusting the boundaries for the historic overlay district to better align with the actual national register historic district boundary which is what is shown in black that is where our designated historic properties are where all the contributing structures are um there are some areas that are outside the black boundary that are still within the core of old town but you'll note in this map that all those locations are shown with their recommended maximum height of three stories so even with the new activity center district um that

would be the the maximum height uh it's only the areas outside that that would make a change i also want to point out that height is not the only issue that's associated with these overlay districts although it's often referred to as the most significant one there are other characteristics um of the um of the activity center district that we think are more applicable to some of these properties that are within the local historic district but outside the boundaries of the national register historic district this includes things like the front setback uh street trees uh and sidewalks and so it's recognized at the core of old town where most of our historic structures are we're very limited on space many of our sidewalks do not

meet the the full width standards uh there are no requirements for street trees in the historic overlay district uh and so as we start to get away from that core area in old town there's more space where we can implement those things and we expect new development to be able to provide the complete sidewalks street trees and the setbacks as is recommended in the activity center district so uh we just want to point that out as there are other characteristics besides height that we should be considering with this also want to mention parking um the each of the current overlay districts allow reductions to our parking standards within the horse historic overlay district uh there is a 50 to 100 reduction in some

places there is no parking required this depends on the exact location within the historic overlay district within the transition overlay district there is also up to a 50 reduction allowed however this does not apply to residential uses where a minimum of 1.5 spaces per residential unit is is allowed uh regardless of the other reduction so most of this reduction could occur through commercial development the activity center district as we get to parking later we'll talk about this uh but we are proposing up to a 20 reduction in parking through parking amenities um and so assuming this full 20 could be achieved it's not quite getting to that amount of reduction that we are seeing in the existing districts but as i mentioned

particularly the transition overlay district um some of these uh the the difference wouldn't be that much because most of that reduction would apply to commercial not residential in the current situation uh another uh key element of the zoning structure is a a section for alternative compliance so compliance is something that we are introducing to this district as uh a another way of accommodating uh special exceptions um special exceptions in the zoning ordinance are broadly applied to any of the dimensional standards and some or and any of the site development standards uh the idea for alternative compliance is that within the activity center district it would only apply in certain situations and would have limitations to how it can be um to how it can be supported and so

we're not going to go through all these right now as we get through each of these topics in the presentation we'll explain uh the alternative compliance that's included i did want to mention though that we between draft one and draft two removed proposed alternative compliance for parking uh because we are accommodating that reduction of parking through um incentives as i mentioned earlier uh so the first uh more significant standards or more detailed standards uh in the activity center district are the frontages as you may recall frontages are uh included in the small area plans for designating the types of characteristics along certain streets and so those are being carried uh forward into the proposed zoning ordinance amendments uh there are three types of frontages that are

are mapped here uh there are five types of frontages total that are proposed in the zoning ordinance amendments in the current draft the three that are mapped are those that come from the smaller plans directly those are priority retail frontages which are the uh the more um the more tight-knit uh shopfront type uh retail areas that are intended to to front onto retail type streets then there are flexible commercial frontages which are those that front onto larger thoroughfares and have more loose design standards and more loose use restrictions and then we have open space development frontages which are those that have design standards uh to uh that are based on their frontage along various open spaces in the small area plans

there are no use restrictions in the open space development frontage some of the changes that we are proposing since the the first draft is that we previously were mapping residential development frontages rather than do that we are now showing what's shown here is just planned future streets and this indicates where any future streets should be designed per the standards that are shown in the in the parking and circulation standards of these proposed amendments so these are the streets that should be designed with on-street parking street trees full sidewalks and setbacks and those types of things and the actual type of frontage that applies can be flexible on these streets provided it is either

a flexible commercial frontage or a residential development frontage the residential development frontage has standards related to ground floor residential even though it's not mapped because we we are flexible on whether these these streets that are shown the black lines have commercial frontage or residential it could be either or we've also added an alley frontage type this would apply only in locations that are not mapped on here with any other frontage types and the idea here is that we felt we needed to accommodate the type of back of house service type elements in some form in these ordinance amendments and so um these locations could occur uh on any street that is not mapped here um and so a developer could propose

a street that's not necessarily mapped if they need to have a service area then that's where they could accommodate it and there are no uh well there are very minimal design standards for these areas they don't have to have street trees they don't have to have setbacks and those types of things they're really there to provide service but again these could not be applied on any of the streets that are mapped here regardless of the color a little more detail on frontage standards uh some of the changes we also added a little more clarity to the what's called the frontage zones uh it's also called in the ordinance amendments as the build to line that's the area that's shown uh with a blue square in the graphic to the right is the area between

the face of the building and the back of the sidewalk uh we currently don't have any standards for this area and so the various um frontage areas uh have different standards for what this should be the actual design and use of the frontage zone can vary it could be uh primarily landscaping it could be past the spaces it could be more active spaces such as outdoor dining however it is indicating that there needs to be some kind of separation between the face of the building and the sidewalk and so that varies based on the frontage type and those uh dimensions are shown on the top half of the screen these are minimums and maximums so for example for priority retail frontage there's a minimum frontage zone of

five feet maximum of 10 and the others have minimum 10 up to 20 and so on a couple other frontage changes more administrative changes clarifying our language uh for the uses that are supported in the retail priority retail frontage zone uh removed entry design requirements for flexible commercial frontage focusing more on architecture for that section and then we added uh requirements for ground floor access for residential frontage this is where we want to ensure that any ground floor residential has direct access to individual units i also want to mention here this is another place we've added a alternative compliance piece from the earlier slide the two alternative compliance options that are in the

frontage design standards are that the frontage zone area can increase in depth it can't decrease uh and this is intended to allow things like courtyards and more creative front area designs larger outdoor dining areas and those types of things and the standards for alternative compliance clarified they had to be designed in a certain way uh and then also to allow service drives um in the frontage area floor the flexible commercial frontage only and this is the type of commercial that fronts on the major roads uh so this would allow something such as you see in front of the building at scout um in some cases uh we've heard that developers really need to have that access uh easy access for retail to be successful so

uh this is the way that we're being flexible there again that's only for the flexible commercial frontages the priority retail frontages the front on the more narrow streets do not have this option uh and as a just as a as a reference on particularly the residential frontage um you might recall from the previous slide the proposed uh minimum maximum frontage zones uh standards there is 10 to 20 feet and we have some questions on what that actually looks like in comparison to some of our recent projects so there are some shown here uh for example at the overlook along oak street um that dimension is 14 to 16 feet this is again the building face to the back of the sidewalk uh some portions of the boulevard 6

development uh we get as little as six feet in other areas they are larger than that um and then the two examples on the right show multi-family situations uh the one i want to point out the north facts west uh the brightview street frontage uh is shown at eight feet a little bit shy of of the minimum that we're proposing but i want to identify this one because it shows how even within eight feet there is room for the the the individual unit stoops and the steps to come down and some landscaping so our minimum recommendation would be two feet wider than this and it could go beyond that if desired regarding recreation and open space as a reminder the uh the minimum required open space proposed in the

new district is 10 which is similar to uh many of our commercial districts the difference is that in order for an area to qualify for the open space it has to meet one of the open space definitions that is shown in the open space table and the proposed amendments uh and so we have a couple changes to that table which i'll get to on the next slide but a couple more minor changes that are shown here we had a lot of feedback uh in the review of the first draft about adding requirements for the contiguity of open space making sure it's connected we have standards like this in our planned development districts there's a thought to bring that over so a requirement for 60 percent of the open space that contributes

towards these the minimum requirement be connected or contiguous also there is an alternative compliance for this this is a new standard that allows a reduction of upper 20 percent based on certain conditions such as site configuration we also adjusted maintenance standards based on feedback we had uh and as i mentioned a couple of changes to the open space table um came from this uh blue uh square here that says a lot of the feedback we heard on the open space table was to ensure that our standards are well defined i think there were some concerns as people were reading the open space table that there was a lot of blending between definitions and some things weren't really clear so a lot of language in

here has been tightened up uh to clarify what each of these means uh but then some uh specific changes are to the to the uh open space table uh and also just as as a another reminder uh each of the open space types in the table has a weighting factor so the more preferred types of open spaces can count as more space um and the less preferred uh types of open spaces count as less space so some of the primary changes are that we previously allowed for storm water facilities that are at the low weighting uh if they are designed as an amenity to have a regular average weighting or no weighting as opposed to a negative weighting this has been expanded to apply to all utility easements and the reason here is that if there is an easement

or storm water area on a particular site we don't want it to kind of have that base minimum design we don't want the easements to be just to flat grass areas if a developer can put some effort into designing it then we certainly want them to encourage them to do that and make it a usable area there's a lot of confusion with the first draft about the difference between natural resource areas conservation areas and chesapeake bay preservation areas we have clarified the definitions of those and actually added them actually natural resource areas and conservation areas to the definition sections that would apply to the entire zoning ordinance this is adopted chesapeake bay preservation areas would fall

into one of those two other definitions depending on the specific conditions the difference between these two is now that conservation areas are specifically meant for those areas that have some kind of a natural resource function that is not otherwise required and so if somebody is providing this on their site they're doing it at their own will as an additional benefit what's called natural resource areas would have the same kind of function but is otherwise required so somebody would have to do it this is previously shown as a low weighting factor but we felt that these areas are important enough even if they're required anyway that somebody should get regular weighting for that instead for the conservation areas which again are not otherwise required and are being provided voluntarily

there's a higher weighting for that and there's also a new higher weighting of up to 2.0 in terms of the calculation for the open space area that has been added where if a conservation area has a conservation easement on it then it can be expanded up to that area the other element that is shown in the in the highest weighting factor now is linear parks and greenways that are specifically identified in the smaller plan and are publicly accessible these types of spaces that are shown in just the regular high weighting area are already considered to be or already have to be publicly accessible to qualify for this uh but the difference here is that those that are specifically identified in the smaller plan are

really the most important areas for us to achieve through development and so the idea here was that we're encouraging developers to participate in the small area plan vision uh the tree conservation ordinance uh as i mentioned earlier on staff is now recommending that uh we hold off on on changes related to this uh the planning commission might recall in their first draft uh we were recommending that the city consider adoption of a separate tree conservation ordinance that would bundle all of our tree conservation standards into one section whether it be in right of way or on private property so it would be removed from the zoning ordinance and then establish more parameters about tree protection the concern at the time was that the state has very specific standards

about how we can do this and when it came to um establishing these types of standards one of the elements that we're supposed to include was what's called a tree bank and this is where we would allow developers to offset um situations where they're falling below our tree canopy requirements by contributing toward a tree bank where they are doing improvements off-site and the way the state code is written that off-site could mean outside of our jurisdiction and so there was concern that their city would not benefit from that at the time we knew that the state was considering uh legislation that might have changed this uh when that through and went through and passed it didn't quite change it to the extent that we felt

it would have benefited the city however the state is now establishing a committee that's going to review these standards and provide recommendations for further changes next year so staff will be monitoring this and we recommend holding off until we have a better understanding of what the state will allow us to do and come back with those changes later when thinking about how this impacts the new activity center district the specifics of these standards we don't think will have a significant impact we do have some language in here about tree protection uh there's an opportunity for one of the parking reduction opportunities is through uh protecting trees and additional tree canopy those standards we

believe we can apply uh they won't they won't necessarily dictate how the tree protection is done and so those changes can happen but our standards we think would be able to stay the same if they move forward with this uh adoption uh on to parking uh as i mentioned earlier uh we are proposing a up to a 20 percent reduction in the base parking requirements uh from current standards through uh certain amenities um and just as a to refresh on what we discussed uh with the first draft at that time we're weighing uh something in between a a flat parking reduction um for this district and just changing the parking standards in allowing a reduction through uh incentives uh we are moving more nowhere now towards just allowing the parking reduction through

incentives um but then having a special consideration for office uses as you might recall during our the parking reviews that we did as part of the process for the view of draft one it was identified that our office parking standards seem to be out of date and much higher than they need to be so assuming that a a development could achieve the uh the maximum 20 reduction uh how this would apply to multi-family retail and office uses is shown on this chart our existing rates are shown on the left the proposed rates again assuming this full 20 reduction are shown on the right and then there you can see with the uh maximum parking reduction for office at the bottom at 2.67 spaces per 1 000 square feet we look

at our comparisons on the bubble to the right uh the fairfax county standards for office are 1.6 to 2.4 per 1 000 institute for transportation engineers recommends 2.3 and a recent study we did on old town observed peak usage of 1.54 spaces per 1 000 square feet of occupied space so we we think we have some room to to go lower there and we think there'd be some benefits uh to uh potential improvements to office space throughout the city if they have lower standards by providing opportunities for them to add amenities to their spaces even if they're not thinking about redeveloping um and then also just want to summarize the the the types of incentives that are now included uh that can support parking

reductions uh include long-term bike parking showers for non-residential uses bus stop improvements tree protection and increased canopy public parking and structured parking some of the elements that were included in the previous draft that we didn't think applied well to the city we took out such as carpool spaces and shuttle services and that was as a request of our transportation department because we really want to encourage people to use queue especially since it's free and it serves all of our activity centers um we didn't see shuttles as a as a as a good amenity uh and then also continuing on parking um in order to provide a comparison for residential uses particularly multi-family residential since our standards are broken down by bedroom and most other comparisons

are broken down by unit it's hard to make a comparison so we ran it through what the proposed maximum reduction would be based on the approved projects at four of our products that are shown on the left and you can see with the provided residential parking based on our current standards they typically fell to 1.5 to 1.6 spaces per unit range with the proposed maximum reduction that falls from about 1.3 per unit range and for comparison's sake institute for transportation engineers recommends 1.3 spaces per residential unit the survey that the city did on apartment managers at scout and the point uh observed about 1.0 spaces per unit uh for permits that were um that were given out to or that were requested by uh renters

and then in fairfax county the current standards are county-wide are 1.45 spaces for residential unit and in the revitalization areas uh which are the non-metro accessible older commercial areas that are redeveloping that uh have the most similar characteristics to our activity centers uh the parking rate is 1.23 spaces for uh residential unit moving on to our dimensional standards uh so there are two primary dimensional standards in the proposed district uh one is density and the other is height um and so a couple of the changes uh that have been uh made since the first draft the first relates to the land assembly program uh planning commission might recall that this program allows property owners to achieve bonus density for acquiring properties to allow more consolidated cohesive

development opportunities uh during that review we heard mixed opinions about this we heard some say that they really didn't think this was necessary that we should remove it others thought that it was very important so um we the path we took was to continue to include it but reduce the density increase that could be achieved uh through the land assembly program and so the the gray boxes show where we were with draft one uh density increases of 20 to 30 percent depending on the overall assembly size and where we are now is density increases of 10 to 20 percent and the resulting maximum density in terms of dwelling units per acre uh associated with that has gone down a little bit now we're going to get

to the community benefits program in a little bit and so this is kind of a starting point for that where developers can achieve additional residential density on top of this through the community benefits program for heights um the the standards in the um in the first draft were that there's a base uh maximum height of five stories or 65 feet and through the community benefits program uh developers could achieve higher um building heights up to the maximum height that is shown in the smaller plans and then those maximum height maps would be carried into the zoning ordinance so that would become direct code uh that continues to apply uh however uh we uh have inserted an alternative compliance for this

um at this point it's still something that's pretty tight and it says that uh additional height can be uh approved uh for specific reasons primarily being for uh unusual topography on a site or unusual or unique floor heights depending on the use in the building this is getting at things like performing arts institutional uses and those types of things and it's limited to 10 feet or 15 percent of the total height um and there's no allowed increase in the number of floors and so looking at uh some past and current projects that are under review um we we realize that uh planning commission and city council should be aware that if we're too strict on this you would not be able to even consider uh development proposals

that exceed this and so we want to make sure uh this is something that you want to do and if not um our alternative we have texas in the in the current draft is that we do allow additional flexibility for height the language in there has a purpose statement there are standards on on when additional height can apply um and we'll continue to work on process standards but we just want to get this out there we're still thinking about height we know this is important um and we wanted to limit ourselves to our smaller planes as much as we can we realize there are some situations where we could get more benefit through development if we provide more flexibility here so uh and then lastly uh the community benefits program as i mentioned the uh there's a base density

requirement uh for this proposed district and their potential increases um through the consolidation program uh and then separately through the existing affordable dwelling units program uh but then in addition to that um additional residential density can be supported by providing public amenities and the two amenities that were in the first draft that continue with this draft are land dedicated for publicly accessible open space beyond the base open space requirements and land dedicated toward multiple multimodal transportation improvements including both streets and pedestrian infrastructure uh with the first draft we are we're much more vague and how we're calculating these uh we now have more specific standards and for open spaces uh that equates what is proposed is eight residential

units per 32 3200 square feet of open space again beyond the base requirement of 10 percent and for transportation infrastructure four units per 7200 square feet of land dedicated towards this use um or four units per 100 linear feet this is something we're we're still working on how to address um the language that's in the the current draft um is is set up so that we're trying to avoid uh unnecessarily wide street widths uh that would are just provided to allow for additional residential units so the 7200 square feet was was added um as a way to kind of control that rather just rely on linear feet but it's something that we'll still work still working on um and so um in a couple of slides i'll show you some examples of how this ends up working out

uh this is very difficult to kind of figure out what this actually means in terms of development um particularly because this isn't talking about when we say eight units per 3200 square feet we're not don't mean eight units per acre that just mean eight units flat and the more space they provide the more the more units they can get i did want to mention that during the review of the first draft uh there are some suggestions for other things that we should look at um providing bonus density for including additional retail additional affordable housing additional tree canopy and structured or underground parking the last two uh were two of the elements that were added for our incentives for parking reductions um and so we thought they made some more sense there than for

additional residential units for affordable housing state code is very specific about how that's calculated and so there are concerns about uh including this in this section um because it could end up making us deviate from state code for additional retail there are are some concerns with state code but is this something that we really want to pursue uh we believe that we could write something into our standards maybe not relying on density but another way of incentivizing additional retail uh so then going back to the the bonus density uh we wanted to um run some tests to show you what this means for new development at least at a high level and so we have a couple of slides here to show you how this pattern fits uh based on uh develop

proposals that have happened over the years in our activity centers uh even those going back to before we had our small area plans i want to point out that these are just shown as examples they are based on rough estimates on areas that are dedicated toward those uses so please do not look at this and use it to judge any of these projects particularly those that are still under review this is just to give us a rough gauge on how things stand citywide um but what this slide shows us is um all of the uh development proposals in our activity centers uh that have included a multi-family residential component um in in the past couple of years and the uh the number of units and density that was either approved or is

proposed and what we think could be approved or supported under the amendments as they are currently written uh and again this is based on on rough estimates of areas uh if we actually had this ordinance in place uh these developers would be provided to show these calculations for us and specifically show which areas would count towards uh these benefits uh and so what we're showing here is is not exact the arrows on the left show uh that the the the green arrows that are pointing up show that the proposed amendments would allow a uh development amount or density that's equal to or greater than what is proposed or was approved those in red uh show those that um the the current draft of the amendments would support something that is less than uh what was approved and what this means uh on a

on kind of a broader scale uh rather just looking at the individual projects we wanted to kind of map it out uh from a bigger perspective quicker perspective so these two uh charts show uh all of those uh developer projects um that were on the previous screen are shown as one of the bubbles here uh the chart on the left shows what was um approved or what is currently proposed for each of these projects uh chart on our right is uh shows what we believe could be supported through the draft amendments as currently written um the uh the horizontal axis shows the site size in terms of acres uh so all of these proposals were either less than four acres or greater than eight acres and you'll see that the same

on both both charts um because it's the same sites on both sides and then the size of the bubble shows the number of residential units that could be approved uh were were approved or proposed or could be approved in the new district on the right and then the vertical access shows what the uh resulting residential density would be for each of those so one thing we want to point out here is that you can see particularly for our smaller sites um the proposals or the approved projects the majority of them um are are shown as something that is higher than what we believe could be supported in the um in these amendments as currently written uh for those that are larger um they tend to be a little bit lower and we believe

that they could be supported for a little bit more as currently written i we don't know for sure but the speculation is that the reason for this is that um the smaller sites tend to need more density in order to be um to be feasible and also the larger sites have more opportunity to provide amenities such as contributions to the transportation network and to open space so they're able to get more uh residential out of it um so this is uh we don't have any recommendation on this at this point we just wanted the planet commission to be aware um and think about this as we think about how this is is landing and just for comparison's sake also we um looked at numerous uh development projects in fairfax county uh again areas uh developments that occurred in those designated revitalization areas

these are non-metro accessible areas of the county that are outside uh that are older commercial districts that are redeveloping um a lot of the development that's happening in in the county these days is in the metro accessible uh locations they tend to be much more dense than this uh but these we thought were were more comparable to us uh so just for reference you can see the uh the density column um range there going from 30 units up to 90 units per acre a lot of this depends on the design of the site and what's included on it so um for example the one that started units per acre includes an office building that's remaining on the site so not all the areas being redeveloped some of these include townhouse components

as do some of our developments um and then for comparison with us the the range of density on what could be supported through these amendments goes from 57 to 92 dwelling units per acre so kind of a a similar range and the average density from um the the city projects that we reviewed was 70 units per acre again this is what we could be believed could be approved not what was actually approved uh so again this is just food for thought uh to be thinking about as we wrap these up we want to make sure we're we're doing something that is still feasible for development to occur while still trying to achieve uh the visions of the small area plans uh so uh that sums up this presentation um we would love to hear feedback on any of these topics in

particular um we are very interested to hear your thoughts on the uh proposal to change or consider changing the boundaries to the historic overlay district that we talked about earlier in the presentation uh and also your thoughts on the uh resulting densities uh for the last couple of slides we looked at but again anything from the presentation we'd we'd love to hear feedback on thank you wow thank you did you take a breath in any of that commissioners any thoughts mr cunningham thank you mr feather thoughts i guess if you want to go back to page 21 i love your description of it uh i'm going to go to the fact book and it tells me that between 1950 and 1960 we built about 3300 detached single-family dwelling units

and along that same time pane primarily in the 60s it looks like we put in 1300 to 1400 multi-family units now i'm going to go back to the page that we have up here and i appreciate your discussion on all the intricacies of all of that because all we're dealing here is with residential but if i drew a line under the bottom of the approved proposed units i come up with 3939 units that we are putting in four small areas where we are now concentrating housing and doing that and that doesn't include uh the breezeway project that doesn't include paul the sixth that doesn't include discussion of main street and burke station road where we have a proposal to consolidate the uh the commercial property and then use the space that's

freed up to put in additional residential the commercial what i am finding in this is that we have jumped wholeheartedly into the promotion of exceptionally dense without being exceptionally outstanding residential development in the city which led to a statement i think i read a week or a month ago that said that fairfax city is now the fastest growing jurisdiction in the state of virginia and what that means is that we're very small so it doesn't take a lot for us to be a percentage leader we're not in raw numbers going to threaten fairfax county with a growth rate but on a percentage basis who and what are we doing in proportion to the area the city of virginia as we are bringing in all of this residential and i know we've talked about it and i know

we've talked about the need to have too much retail space and so we could put residential above retail and do that while trying to maintain character of of the city but this number of spaces and that and i don't think this list is exhaustive i think there's plenty of land left in these nodes so that more proposals come come in and we will fill them in so we're building an architecture or a set of rules that allows developers to come in and almost have by right by just navigating our rules the ability to put in what they want without regard to what does the city need and and where are we going which led to my discussion a short while ago with the previous applicant who was here as to what value are we adding to the city by increasing the number of people tremendously

increasing the density clogging the roads uh we're bringing in residential but i don't see us bringing in any jobs so the people have to work everywhere we're going to have more than our surplus of people and in all of these things as we're getting bonus density and all of the special exceptions to pack more stuff in what's the vision for the city what what's our goal in doing all of this is it to stay economically vital vital is it to maintain a commercial tax base that will help offset the burden on the real estate tax base to provide for all of the goods and services that the residents want while still meeting the commercial needs in terms of safety so that fire trucks can get in we can pick up

uh medical services and do all the rest of the things like that each one of these numbers is good when you're defining the small area it's playing in but i've lost my sense of a big picture for what's happening in the city of fairfax with where this has snowballed and appears to be going the city of fairfax with the city of fairfax with the city of fairfax with the city of fairfax and i don't know if that's a good view looking to the future or if it's something that i'm just hearing as i'm talking to some of the longer-term residents of the city who are beginning to ask that same question as to you know what is happening and when i go back and fall back on some of the historical things we talk about i will say that two decades ago one of the primary things the planning commission

dealt with were george mason students i mean these were people who lived around here they grew up they went to high school they went to george mason to get a degree and then they came and talked to the planning commission about the fact that when they graduated there was no way that they could move back into the city and afford housing and there was no way they could find a job in this area so when they finished their education program the the local residents were forced to go elsewhere in order to make their life and and weigh in the community and yet when i look over that same time period at the density that has has occurred we have had significant density we have had a significant increase in the

cost of housing so that housing affordability has become a major issue uh what has happened that we've driven out the people that were here and brought in a whole new set that's on a different economic plane all all of this while i find it good begs the question for me of what are we doing and why are we doing it and do we have a focus so that all of the hard work that you all are doing is is meeting a vision for us moving forward and that's that's one of the main challenges i have with all of the the rules and the i've got a grandson who played pokemon as he tried to explain it to me it's an extremely complicated and complex game some of the rest of this is for us in the game of life we're hoping to simplify it so that we can navigate it and i don't know that everybody here wants to

play the complex game unless we have a simple game that goes with it and i guess that's my my comment in in looking at the processes we're moving forward and can we get the process that we can get some simplification that that points us in a direction that that we can get common agreement on that this is good for the city that's my question okay um so the part of this is the smaller plans themselves and we talked to you a couple of weeks ago about the small year plans review i think there's some acknowledgement that we um need to to open those up again and update them and provide more detail um some questions came up about these zoning amendments and whether or not they should be occurring um before we do that review and our response was that we the smaller plans as they are

has provided us a high level of guidance this step if it goes forward will provide a little more detail on how things can happen and so as development occurs we we hope we won't be missing on those things that are envisioned in the smaller plans because as i said in the beginning this is all happening right now through negotiation on every element of it so more of it that's in here in the code and that's part of the reason it's complicated because there's a lot that's in the smaller plans that's now getting carried into the code the better we think development will be at least in the interim and then when the smaller plans are updated we depending on how much they change but we most likely the overall vision the concept of mixed-use development and pedestrian friendly areas will

most likely be in there and these amendments will continue to support that but they can be adjusted or tweaked um if specifics of a change but uh with what we're doing here today the part of the goal is to ensure that the things that are envisioned in the smaller plans that people supported are being carried forward in a better way and more consistently than they have been through the process we've used in the past okay others mr royce i think most of the things you've presented make sense in terms of details density height and so forth could you just very very briefly um capture the essence of the change in the overlay districts i looking through some of the gis data layers here it's there's a complexity of at least three or four

different there's even a old town historic future overlay district uh layer so um the national register historic district in black the local one in blue and then our smaller so we've got three things on this slide but there appears to be some other things going on as well yes okay so starting with the the national register historic uh district this is what is recognized as our uh defined historic area where we have structures that contribute to the historic past of the city this is the the federally recognized area there are no um local limitations on it there's no zoning restrictions uh through it that are unique it's really uh properties in this area if they qualify can qualify for certain grants to help with

um with with uh retrofits that make sure they're still in line with historic standards and those types of things um the regulating part of that is the the blue line the local uh historic overlay district um and so that was put over our historic district boundaries uh actually it was actually put in place before we had a national register historic national register historic district so it was originally kind of like an estimated area on where we wanted to protect um the core elements of the city once we had the national register historic district there were some minor modifications but that was primarily left as is which is why there's kind of a discrepancy there then outside that area um uh we have the activity

center here this map which i think you're familiar with that's identified in the comprehensive plan but what's not mapped here is the transition overlay district and the future transition overlay district these districts were added i believe in the 1990s as um the was actually when the national register historic district was put into place um they they shrunk the boundaries of the local historic district slightly but then added the transition overlay district with the argument that this new transition overlay district was intended to provide a kind of a step from the historic core to the more traditional suburban uh community around it and so that's why there's kind of the four story height limit but there's also

standards about buildings being close to the road and those types of things yeah okay the future transition overlay district was added because there were concerns at the time uh about some of the properties that were more far removed from the core of a bold town about limitations that that this was putting on their sites and their rights um their rights on their existing development and so the response was that uh outside of a certain area the city designated the future transition district so that if a property were to redevelop the city would expect that they zone into the transition district and then follow the standards at that time and that way avoided any complications with new standards on existing sites

so over time it's kind of looks like a patchwork now because some properties have gone through that process and others haven't our proposal with the new activity center district is that we wouldn't have the need for the transition district anymore and so over time we would be able to eliminate both of those potentially it's not something we're proposing to do right away but that would clean things up we would just have the activity center district and then the local uh historic and then national register district would would be kind of one body okay um i am looking at uh the future transition overlay district that goes almost all the way down to mason sorry for not perceiving all the nuances super quickly here um what is the purpose of specifying a

future overlay district uh that again is when when they were putting the transition district in place the city wanted to extend to kind of these far outreaching areas all the way down to the southern border pretty far west and those sites of things some property owners in those areas had concerns that the transition overlay district had standards that did not were not in line with their current development and that there'd be repercussions for them uh and so that's why the the future transition district doesn't change anything the sites that's there it's only if they want to redevelop then they're expected to become part of the actual transition district okay what are we being asked to give an opinion on then given all the things you've just explained

i'm sorry what was that what are we being asked to provide feedback on with regard to these um so we're not asking you to dig into the transition district in the future transition just that's a discussion for i think another day what we're asking uh primarily is whether we should consider adjusting the blue line on this map to be more in line with the black line i get the blue line having the regulatory standards the black line being the federally recognized district but doesn't have any regulatory standards to it okay but there's portions of the black that fall within the blue so conceivably there are parcels that are both yes that's correct okay yeah the blue includes the black but then extends beyond it in some cases except for the bit in the county that's correct okay so

paul what do we lose if we shrink the blue line to match the black line like what are we giving up there it depends what you mean giving up i think if i was a property owner in that area i would feel there's benefit that i could achieve additional height what i'd be giving up is that there might be increased parking requirements and that if i were to redevelop there would be better more expectations on uh providing deeper setbacks street trees and full width sidewalks uh mccarthy all right a lot to unpack here uh first on the on the land assembly piece i imagine that that's probably not being utilized very often but from a real estate standpoint i think that's probably like fragmented ownership is probably one of the biggest barriers to properly executing these

small if we had these as empty lots we could do most of what we're talking about so i i don't think we should be lowering that i think that needs to be rewarded um that that's one piece i like this this general idea um for me the the the big the big question is not like should we do it but um does this framework prevent us from what i would say is effectively like picking winners and losers of late um so like to me i'm asking myself will this make projects more predictable um um will they effectively require meaningful public benefit right and will it avoid routinely forcing what seems like every viable project that we see for the most part into asking for some major exception um and then lastly like preserving city council discretion uh without making like these written standards

meaningless um and that's i think going to be very difficult to do um but when i think about that and think about the presentation we had before and other projects um i personally think the the greenway in old town is going to be a amenity for the residents of those properties not a city-wide amenity i was at the northfax linear park meeting i think if if that's not done well that will effectively be a glorified sidewalk and not in fact a linear park and in that i would hope that by doing this and doing it well you could make a stringent set of guidelines where if you're coming in here and we said nine stories and you're asking for whatever you're asking for 10 11 12 whatever it may be that you're providing massive and meaningful

public benefit you know the the 10-year treasury yields up 70 basis points since march it remains elevated over the you know the long run it's tough to develop now um and i think if somebody comes in here with a boilerplate building they should not be given any exceptions but if someone comes in here and kind of to my point before about the height maybe 13 stories is a bit egregious but if they can come in here and provide a meaningful not just you know we all these buildings there's townhouses but a lot of it is just mixed use podium build ground floor retail a bunch of apartments above we're going to be here 20 years later saying wow that was so 2005 why are all these why are all these sites like this

so if we can engage these developers and put clear guidelines if you put a a civic center in the bottom if you provide that top floor restaurant if residents can utilize the ground floor of this complex here are clear guidelines and here's the extras we will give you to make this project viable i think that's the value in doing this and i think if you don't do this well not i effectively think this is relatively meaningless and you'll be doing the same rigmarole with people coming in here asking for different exceptions because of the geography of their site or you know whatever the soup du jour of the day is um so i'd ask you guys to look at that like what what what can these people do if they're

going to ask for more how can you check every other box and how can you make clear you're giving us this so you're getting this not just additional retail or additional the very structured so when someone sends a an angry email about height or the city council approved something that maybe people didn't want that we can reasonably point to and say we understand your concern but the city achieved x y and z to mr cunningham's point you you want to take care of the people that live here and i empathize with anyone that's been here for 40 years and isn't getting what they want through this but i would ask them to look back and think well should you knock over your house and should we turn it back over to an apple farm because

that's what it was 40 years before so change is coming one way or the other let's make sure that when that change comes it's providing true community benefit and to be able to do that you will have to bend to the developers and i'm asking that you clearly outline what public benefit is to us and how far we're willing to bend and clearly delineate those lines that's what i think this should do i agree with you on principle i think that's extremely difficult to execute in code and at least in my time being here it's not clear to me what those lines are what we hold the line on in the small area plan versus what we concede so like should we do this in conjunction with refreshing the small area plans

i think yes because i think we collectively need to decide what that looks like and then codify it so that when we come in here we know the lines that we just drew because i can tell you right now i don't feel like i know where those lines are you know we're getting we're granting a parking exception here but not here we're granting a sidewalk exception here but not here these guys we have a main street vision we're going to let them have a three-story garage wall right like i don't know what the plan is i guess to mr cunningham's point like what is the vision i think we need to settle that first before we start codifying stuff in the ordinance and then we're we're getting people coming in and

saying well it says i can do this so we lose the power to negotiate like i get that it's one off but to me that gives us more control as to what we're willing to bend on and not versus i guess to your point if we codify it the wrong way we lose that discretion and we lose that control but i think finding that perfect balance is going to be very difficult for the staff to do without us collectively agreeing as to what the vision is for each of these small area plans and given that it's been six years since they were developed i feel like we should do that first some of the i mean some of the elements you described are the intent of these amendments is to answer some of those questions yeah i get it

because some of those things are through the ordinance or you know right but some of those things are identified in the smaller plans it's just that when it comes to actually implementing them we get pushback on a lot of them yep so these amendments will make it so you cannot there's really no discretion on whether we accept them or not and so it's really enforcing what's currently in there because some of the examples you said that they are in in the smaller plans and it is our vision um some of them that some of the examples you gave i don't think are fully ironed out yet the character of the greenway you know i i agree that's i don't think everyone is on the same page on what that means but certainly where we're saying there's retail and the plans that's in there and that's

what these amendments would enforce so you know i think anything that happens over the course of when we are reviewing the smaller plans in the meantime we would at least have more direction and less room for people to kind of push back on what we're saying if we have these amendments in place and they can certainly be amended again when we have more detail um you know when the the smaller plans are updated mr scottian thank you part part of i think this is one in the questions that are asked one is why if we look at the small area plan for downtown and say the transition is coming south why do we have a sea of parking lot between here and sager avenue and when you look at the why we have it it's because

downtown fairfax was the core of fairfax county government the massey building all of the functions of fairfax county government were done right here in downtown when we became a city and thereafter and all of these buildings that we're dealing with and all of this parking lot fit that need then so so why do we have the sea of parking lot because it hasn't been redeveloped and people have let it economically trickle down in its usage over a long period of time it is now ripe for redevelopment and one of the goals of the small area plan that's what i think the groups are working for uh in looking at it so if if we can get a greenway up the middle if we can do some of these other things as this area is ripe for redevelopment if we can get

consolidation which we've talked about for a long time those kinds of things point to what what for the community should be done they don't point to it for developers necessarily because there's not an individual profit motive in each one of these unless you get the right developer who can use it to the best uh means and ends and when we can get that then we win for the city but until that time we're looking at what's the construction du jour uh and and what's going to fill in because if i can get it done now and this is the current thing then that's what they're going to live with in this area so residential has been construction du jour for a long time we have a sense of what we want we don't have a ceiling on

that sense that i'm aware of when we start with that whole list of projects they're all residential we don't have a comparable list of commercial projects that are competing with it and we don't have a ceiling to say that that list can't double in size as individuals look at their property and say well everybody else is doing it that's a good thing for me to get out of my older property now rebuild it and so we end up with what happened at that time and we've gone through that cycle in the past and i know that it's been noted we constructed a whole bunch of little bank buildings in a small period of time several of them have been repurposed now we constructed a whole bunch of drug stores in one period of time several of them have been repurposed now we constructed and these things

have come because that was the right thing to do at the time and so the list that we're trying to do here doesn't have a ceiling once we get done with this there's nothing to say that we don't have more projects coming through that are all residential because that's what can be funded now and the number of thousands of people we're putting in we had forecast roughly in our five-year plans in the small area plans but we didn't cap that number of people and watching this number of people grow says if we don't catch this in the cycle there will be nothing for another cycle coming that's going to fit so how are we how are we measuring and and giving making it easier for a developer to get what they want but making it

easier as my compatriots have said to lay out rules that we get what we want i.e the city gets what it wants moving forward to have the ability and the flexibility in the future to make the adjustments we need to keep it livable fairfax and i've seen that sign livable fairfax on a lot of different documents is it lip service or is it is it something that's meaningful and alive and what does it mean for livable fairfax and that's i think what we're talking about here so the rules that we've got are streamlining it and making it that way but i don't think they've they've caught the totality of the game uh with the extra things that have to go with it others a few things um we've lamented for a long time the fact we've had small area plans and we never had the zoning ordinance

keep up with it now we've got the zoning ordinance keeping up with it and we're complaining that the small area plans are wrong and we shouldn't do that until the others we need to create the framework that we're talking about here so that we can move forward and get to the next step we don't have the capacity to do both at the same time i think that's a reality so um what do we want to do with living with projects come through loads of special accept exceptions the optics are terrible um so trying to create the framework that we can work from today going forward and i think we need to continue on this path um we can talk about you know what existing city residents want or see the voice we're missing

are the people who want to live in the city that can't what we're missing is the ability to better control creating the community that we say we want these activity centers to become we want these to become communities that means residences that means some density we're not going to be building single family houses and these things that's the reality um would we like to see more retail yes i would like to see see us to be able to incentivize more retail i'm not sure what the constraints are but we continue to get pushback from developers on putting in uh commercial properties retail restaurants or whatever yep we continue here from the economic development that they're looking for good quality space

for retail tenants you know people want to bring business to the city and there's a there's a disconnect there if we can incentivize it in some way i think that would be good it'd be nice to be able to work further on what those uh potential state constraints may be um so i'd like to see more a little maybe a little more energy there um as to the historic district without knowing what it really looks like to change the boundaries um it's kind of hard for me to pass judgment because there's certainly concerns for me and it's a word i used a couple years ago in a city council meeting about unharmonious adjacencies you get too many things too close to the old stuff that are new and it creates you know it

does not create a very good look there may be some reason to keep the broader boundaries to protect the uh environment atmosphere image or whatever of the historic things with some reasonable distance and so without maybe some examples of what it would look like to shift that boundary i'm not sure i can say that we should make that change um there may be some reason to make some changes at at the the margins you know the stuff well outside um the older part of the city but you know of old town but without knowing what it could look like i'm not going to make a judgment or make a recommendation there i thought it was interesting looking at the uh the table concurrent development compared to the activity

center standards um i did similar math to what mr cunningham did um on the approved proposed units for that particular list came up same number 39 39 but i also added up the estimated number as well if we were to apply these changes almost 4500 that's a huge difference now i realize part of it's because you admit using these guidelines could turn things like excuse me park road townhouses from a townhouse community to multi-family building although that's not what the act the um a small area plan called for so i'm not sure it's good to throw those in because we actually called for townhouses there so you make you know that makes it a little more scary perhaps than uh what it is and what it could be the

3541 chambered road that i'm not sure that even called for residential there but they're bringing in townhouses let's i'll take that as a blessing rather than building another big multi-family building there but when i look at the potential going from 3900 to 4500 is scary so i think we need to be very careful about what the small area plan looks like and what it calls for and and mean what we say when we put you know a presidential type community there can i make a quick statement on that um and that that's another caveat i meant to mention in that some of these projects and the park road townhomes is a good example i mean that's they that was proposed as a townhouse development because that is what's

shown in the small area plan that is what that developer wanted to do there um and so that proposal ended up with what it ended up with in terms of density even though these amendments could allow more density that would not likely be utilized because you could not fit uh 50 67 townhomes on that site and so it probably that development would look the same correct and so i think a lot of these others would kind of fall into that same same bucket um the intention here is more to look more broadly at right making sure that some of these were kind of fitting in the window but then recognizing that some of them are currently outside that window and we need to be cognizant of yeah but when we consider

what's across the street the residences that are there right we're not going to want a five-story even right multi-family dense building there so and that's why we need to be careful about we when we relook at the small area plans what what they may look like a lot i think we probably got right but um as i am apt to do i went through in some detail the uh the draft that you had i'm not going to cover everything in this meeting about what you know notes and things i made but i think we've had a pretty good discussion about where we're headed i'm not sure if you've heard enough um that you have a path forward or what you'll do with it before the concerns um you tell me do you have any specific questions no i

think the the big things that we we wanted to hear about we we heard about um so that's good i think if if anybody has you know additional comments that you think of after feel free to uh shoot me an email copy chair feather on it um and we'll continue to collect that feedback as i mentioned we're going to be having a community meeting um in september as well once again information on that we'll share that with you so um encourage you to just as you continue if you continue to have comments then just just keep letting us know i do i do think by the way um some of the changes that you made um in terms of decreasing a little bit some of the incentives or bonus is probably good i think some of that may

have come from things you may have heard also from city council as well so some of those things are definitely going in the right direction um notwithstanding the the potential benefits of being very generous and getting even more more benefits but i appreciate your comments mr mccarthy about holding fast to get what we really want to grant these exceptions and stick to it um but yeah mr rice gets more yeah i think mr mccarthy also mentioned how hard it can be to consolidate and i agree with him and i think uh the only element that i you know would relook at is that consolidation decrease of the bonus decrease um putting together parcels to avoid these weird geometries that end us you know end us up in a in a place that's not favorable perhaps we could incentivize working harder to

consolidate and a couple of developers have come to us with some impressive consolidations and i think we should try to reward that where it makes sense and do it at a level that is acceptable to everyone and we have major property owners in the area who when they acquired adjacent properties some time ago said they intended to incorporate them into the redevelopment because it would give a better footprint for a major redevelopment and then in moving forward aren't including them in the redevelopment and are are saying if you let me do this now maybe i'll do that in five years but if i don't do it all now 20 25 years it will never get done and so we're left not with a clear path forward but with a stumbling path

forward to if a maybe b if a and b are delayed a little bit maybe c at some point and there's no path forward in understanding what we're approving or what the ultimate outcome is uh so between that there is consolidation that goes on and then there's consolidation goes on without follow-through and that's not something that we have any control over that's control of the property owner uh the business owner the people who have the critical mass to actually make things happen and they will do it for their best benefit and our benefit if it aligns in the long run and that's what we're trying to work toward i think all right thank you final thoughts okay can i have one final thoughts okay just to

echo mr mccarthy's point i really like the idea of like this is our hard line but we're willing to budge if you do these things that clearly have a public benefit i think that's what one of these slides was trying to do with the i'll call them the bonuses if you add more green space you get more units that kind of thing yeah i think we just need to collectively align on what are those incentives that we really care about for the city that would allow us to move off of what the ordinance would say but i think that that as a framework makes a lot of sense because we can be flexible if the public benefit is clear and demonstrable yeah i appreciate that because also i mean the the bonus that we look at in there were

also primarily based on density yeah um i had that one slide in there where i said that we were we're still not really sure where to go with height especially when it was a height exceeding the recommendations of the smaller plans but i think based on what you said if we and we're not sure if we can do this or not but we'll look into it if we can get something in there that's that's saying that they are going above and beyond um any of the other standards then maybe there's a threshold where we can accept the taller height um so we'll just work out how we can define what that is to make sure it's clear yes i feel like the proposals we've seen we're being asked to make a whole slew of exceptions and we're not

really getting anything for it you know um that's how i feel at least on the last handful that have come through here so if this allows us to hold the bear line like the bare minimum and then they have to go above and beyond to get what they want and therefore we get what we want i think that that's that's right a good approach um and then one just quick thing on the historic i know it's late um if we were to move the blue line to match the black line then that pedestrian area once we complete the traffic circle i'll call it that would all that would be two different districts correct which would seem odd to me like i would think we'd want that entire nine block to be part of the historic in my opinion am i reading this right no you're reading it yeah yes that feels awkward to me

if the vision for that is to be the nine block pedestrian precinct that's in the small area plan so for that reason i would i would hesitate on moving that blue line too far uh anyway that's my final thoughts mr rice did you have another one your finger was close to the it was i'm i just he my colleague here always has good ideas all of us you know i keep thinking as we're going but i really do like the fact that you're ratcheting down that density bonus for just interior courtyards that aren't a public benefit and expanding them at the relevant rates and frankly reconsidering and shuffling and getting feedback i mean this is a product of consensus and i think the multipliers that you had in your chart do hit about the right place where i would put them

so um so i like that all right this is like three sentences it wasn't discussed i don't know if it's out of bounds for us tiff like tax increment financing or tax abatement i don't know if that's been explored mosaic would not have happened without it might be an avenue to look at yeah that is outside the bounds of the zoning ordinance certainly a discussion that we can have with economic development i think we'll have opportunities for that okay a final work session item is a presentation of updates the implementation guides related to the city of fairfax 2035 comprehensive plan and small area plans welcome miss denny okay good evening chair feather and members of the commission this presentation will cover the

implementation guides for the comprehensive plan and the four adopted small area plans old town northfax camp washington and fairfax circle so since the last review in january 88 of the 333 action items have been updated that january update was presented to you in march due to all of the snow so it's been a little bit of a shorter turnaround so for land use 20 of the 70 action items have been updated including the affordable housing strategic plan which was adopted this spring and h cab is working on refining guidelines for the housing trust fund and they have recommended that the existing funds in the trust fund be used to support affordable housing preservation and development for multimodal transportation 21 of the 98 total action items have been updated the blend and boulevard

multimodal improvements are under construction and the far avenue northfax street components of the northfax west street network are complete the picket road connector trail is in design there are several projects aimed at improving accessibility for transportation including a crosswalk at sager avenue and john trammell court as well as a number of intersections along main street and then lastly the picket road safety audit is anticipated to begin this august moving on to environment and sustainability 24 of the 64 total action items were updated including the hiring of the energy outreach coordinator using the energy efficiency community block grant the urban forest master plan was adopted and invasive removal efforts continue in our parks now for this the environment and sustainability section

three actions the time frame for completion for three of the actions was changed due to discussion with city council at a work session in june on the sustainability project prioritization so those three actions the first is any 131 which is developing a climate and energy action plan the time frame for that completion moved from 2026 to 2030 the second action is si 132 which is enhancing regulations and standards relating to solid waste the completion date for that went from 2026 to 2028 and then the third action is si 151 developing an ev readiness plan that completion date changed from 2026 to 2030 and then one other action si 131 which is implementing the solid waste management plan changed from a completion date of 2026 to ongoing because that

plan has been adopted economic vitality seven of the 21 action items are updated the office conversion analysis has been expanded and economic development continues to assess possibilities and they're also working with mason to develop to conduct a target industry study and on top of that partnership they also continue to foster other partnerships with mason including the mason consulting group mason korea and the long-standing partnership with the mason enterprise center in community services 16 of the 86 total actions are updated city council adopted a resolution to proceed and approved financing for the willard sherwood health and community center the commission on the art strategic plan is complete wastewater and

stormwater condition assessments are ongoing with assessments of 70 percent of the city maintained wastewater and 52-ish percent of the stormwater network being complete and there are also several parks projects improving accessibility including old town hall which should be open this fall tice park which should be open by september and pat rodeo which is complete then moving on to our small area plans in old town three of the 41 action items have been updated the construction of the university drive bike lanes should begin soon we are just awaiting vdot authorization and then the old town circulation study should be complete by next spring the pedestrian master plan and safety action plan components of move fairfax are anticipated to be

complete by the end of the year but the more detailed analysis and evaluation of alternatives for the old town circulation study have pushed that to slightly a longer timeline for hopefully in the spring then in north facts eight of the 45 action items have been updated this includes the warwick and far intersection improvements which are very clearly under construction and the linear park design guidelines which are in development and then to camp washington five of the 43 action items are updated this includes the germantown road corridor improvements which are in design and government center parkway which is very very close to completion but is open to drive on at least and then lastly in fairfax circle six of the

action items have been updated this includes the fairfax circle intersection study which is in the consultant procurement phase and the flood study is underway and should be complete by this fall and then again the picket road connector trail is in design and that is all i have happy to take any questions questions for staff one thing i didn't see in your report and you may not know the answer now um how many of all these action items do we consider complete it's a good question probably essentially none of them because a lot of things that are complete we tend to make ongoing um but i can look at what we could truly consider complete um i can look and see might be a subjective line to draw but i can look at it

um um and just keeping track of our keeping track of you how are things that community development planning are responsible for is a lead how's that going uh that is good there are four actions where cdp is the lead i guess technically five one of them is shared with transportation that do not have uh any progress one of which is for a 2030 completion deadline the uh other two for that have a completion date are 2026 which is allowing flexibility for commercial industrial areas and vice versa and then that almost sounds like it's something you just wait for something specific to come along yeah and do the unless we have to change the zoning ordinance or something there's that's kind of tbd um there's certainly buy-in and interest in looking at it yeah we've been talking about this one for

a little while yep yeah and then the other cdp action is monitoring the certificates of appropriateness to ensure that the design guidelines are effective and that one might just be blank because it's hard to write a status for that uh and then the the last one with cdp as a lead and this one it's a co-lead is with transportation as uh developing tdm fees for in in lieu tdm fees and again that falls under all those tdm actions that are just kind of on uh on pause due to staff capacity yep and one other thing a number of the uh uh items have sort of marginal notes uh with proposing either removal of the action item or changing the wording is that something that we need to take any action on or you're just

just going to do that like for example mm1.1.6 support fairfax county pursuing improvements to braddock road to facilitate its operation as a critical regional corridor the note says propose removal of that item but it's still on the list is this going to do that or how are we going to deal with those so those are those come from when i meet bionnally with staff uh hearing feedback on a lot of the of this action is no longer because that braddock is completely out of the city has we really have nothing to do with that so those notes come from conversations with staff and that's a kind of tbd if we do a package of removing and editing those or if we just wait for the next five year review but those that's what those

notes are yeah there's a couple hands full of those throughout just wondering what we're going to do with those okay so right now we're just tracking just tracking okay very good how did those get in the first place we thought it was a good idea at the time like small area plans we thought it was a good idea at the time right yep um okay okay mr carter can you just refresh me on the you said the old town circulation study yes and then move fairfax a different study it's what what's the difference between those two yeah just help me i'm trying to understand what that is yes because it's complicated okay so move fairfax is the broad kind of project as a whole with three major components the three being

the pedestrian master plan safety action plan and old town circulation study okay pedestrian master plan safety action plan city-wide plans that talk to each other and whatnot the third being the old town circulation study which is just for old town and more detailed so they're all under the broad umbrella of move fairfax but the difference being those first two are city-wide and a little bit higher level versus old town circulation study is very in the weeds got it and that's the one that's delayed that's yeah delayed a little bit yeah the original intention was to have all three at once but it's looking like that should that'll be a little later and then that'll give us the vision on the the

connection of so south street or west street i was getting confused but it yeah complete the circle that'll be a product of these studies okay looking forward to those anything else thank you for all this i know it's a lot to keep track of um and thank you for sending the spreadsheet so i can do the digging that i like to do but appreciate that thank you so much yeah okay we shall reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff report mr napty thank you chair feather members of the planning commission a quick look back at city council meetings going back to june 23rd which was the day after your your last meeting they received a presentation from the northern virginia transportation administration about the bus rapid transit action

plan this is a a regional effort to identify a vision for bus rapid transit in the entire northern virginia area and this will likely be something that comes into play in our upcoming review of the comprehensive plan um i say upcoming when that when that time comes um because it does have potential routes that um that do come into the city uh at that night the green building policy was adopted as a reminder this included base standards of lead silver or equivalent for a private development which i think is more applicable to the planning commission's role there was previously discussion about potential either bonus density or tax incentives for going higher than that but that is not would not included

in the adopted version uh city council also discussed the potential smaller plan reviews uh similar to the discussion that we had at the planning commission essentially gave the okay to move forward uh with various components of feedback and and questions uh we plan to come back to both the planning commission city council with a more defined scope for those efforts in the fall uh they also had a brief work session that night to explain the northfax linear park design guidelines uh we have a committee that met on july 9th uh thank you commissioner mccarthy for participating in that uh city council does not have a representative on that committee so we gave them a kind of an overview instead we do expect to have a work

session with the planning commission on this project uh as it proceeds though uh on july 7th city council had a work session on the gallery at city center project um on july 14 tomorrow uh they will uh have a item to request the circuit court to authorize a ballot measure to allow a one percent sales tax increase to support schools and public transportation uh this is a something that's newly allowed in the state code specifically for schools and public transportation the way the city would attend to you this initially would be uh for schools and while these types of financial issues are not usually the purview of the planning commission i thought this was important uh because it would support some of the more

significant cip items that you guys have discussed related to schools uh we're going to have this same work session on the smaller plan zoning ordinance amendments uh they will have a update of the urban forest master plan implementation and a discussion on the housing trust fund or a process for determining how to review funding requests for the housing trust fund this is not related to having any kind of ongoing funding source for that and then for your last meeting before august recess july 27 you're scheduled to have a pre-application briefing for proposed development on northfax west phase four this is the uh the the empty area it's in front of the brightview senior living a request to convert uh the mosby tower

site from office use to residential and a public hearing on the highlands and mantua uh townhouse project this is something you may or may not recall it's been a long time since we've talked about it proposal for i believe it's 13 of 14 townhomes off of pickett road um in the montantua professional park lastly i wanted to remind the planning commission that the city will support you of participating in the virginia certified planning commissioner training uh there are a couple of updated uh upcoming sessions that may be of interest this might be too soon but the next one is in person at the virginia museum of history and culture in richmond uh the dates are july 23rd and 24th and september 10 and 11 it would be both of those sessions um and my understanding is there is like a working

period in between that you do at home alternatively there is a virtual option um that is august 13th to 14th and october 29th the 30th if you are interested in either of these please uh please reach out to me that's all i have for the staff report today thank you and i recommend you attend one of those even when i attended i wasn't too happy with it but i still learned a lot and then subsequent sessions were better as mr rice would attest to so um so please consider that i attended an in-person session but the virtual ones are um i'm sure very valuable so all right commission comments from comments from mr mccarthy thank you for inviting me to the north facts linear park stakeholder meeting it was fun i felt

like i was back at george mason in the real estate program doing the charrettes i brought some big ideas to the table hopefully you can get them across the finish line thank you for representing us there no comment mr rice um i've attended a parks and recreation advisory board meeting and so three big projects they always have complex large expensive things to do um old town hall is uh being remodeled repainted uh windows replaced and a few other things some new bathrooms built and much of that is done and there's some interior in interior items that still need to be done the windows on the second floor complex and the rebuilding of those windows is a specialty item being done by a craftsman in ohio that

doesn't rush his work and so um having a historic structure and having it cared for in the right way involves hiring people like this that can do very unusual work and so old town hall still moving along um there are a number of projects at rackliff park that are um being fixed and being revised and being done and then tice park uh as well under construction and still sort of on track for a spring open there were some things that were possibly hoped for in the fall um i think most of that will be spring and there's been some discussion about the contracting and some other things with the project but everything seems to be positive generally for the parks and rec folks um they're doing summer classes and uh um summer uh

summer activities for kids and um they typically ramp up for the july 4th events and then let out a collective sigh of relief once those things are over and then um august everybody goes on recess our great staff still come to work in august but um uh anyway i'm um i just wanted to comment about paul and amy lynn and uh and tina and all the great staff that we have i think um uh it's um we show up once or twice a month and make decisions but i have a lot of respect for the expertise um that all of you have and for the help that you give to us and it's um maybe the thing i like the best about the city is um the really really exceptional staff and the fact that we can walk in and head up to the second floor and eventually talk to some of you um that's a a great thing to be able to do um and that's it for me

thanks thank you um as far as the board of architectural review is concerned both meetings in july were canceled so i have nothing to report so there will not be another meeting until sometime after the august recess so nothing from the bar that with nothing else we are adjourned thank you you