Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, July 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,

Paul Cunninghamwith liberty and justice

James Featherfor

Paul Cunninghamall.

James FeatherThank

Paul Cunninghamyou.

James FeatherNext order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of time as required. for discussions or changes to the agenda.

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

Tassos McCarthySecond.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously.

Matthew RiceNext order of business is presentations by the public

James Featheron 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.

Matthew RiceMr. Harris. Mr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes of June 8, 2026. and June 22nd, 2026.

James FeatherSecond. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes of the June 8th and the June 22nd 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. This is a pre-application briefing on Circle Gateway proposal located 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.

FrederickstaffGood 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. 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 smaller 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 a 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 applicant has submitted a concept plan for an 11-story mixed-use building with approximately 16,530 square feet of 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. 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 Pickett that leads into the parking structure.

The applicant has also proposed some water 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 there so this is P1 on the right

Paul Naphtistaffcorner

Frederickstaffhere in this location here this is parking level one and this is a 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 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. 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 permit for an upper story residential mixed use building special exceptions for height and density special exceptions may be required based on the application once we receive an application we'll have a idea of what are the 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.

James FeatherCommissioner, questions for staff?

Matthew RiceMr. Royce. 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?

FrederickstaffFire Marshal has participated in the preliminary review and has provided comments to the applicant.

Matthew RiceOkay. 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?

FrederickstaffWell, 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 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

Matthew Riceokay so I assume that the tower ladder would have to approach the building from the backside that's

Frederickstaffcorrect the backside which right now is a parking garage that's

Matthew Ricecorrect

Frederickstaffand the there we'd have to evaluate the plan and also work with the adjacent properties to work on a street design but the lighter truck would be able to to set up in the rear of the building and also in the front of the building and the street up 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,

Matthew Ricesure. 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 Seitz or Acting Chief Dunstan here just to comment.

Speaker 9Noted.

Matthew RiceAnd 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 viewshed 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? between this parcel and what's going to be happening to the south

Frederickstaffthat's a good question that I don't know the measurements Paul do you know

Paul Naphtistaffthe extent of the Blenheim Boulevard improvements go as far south as Ridge Road which is just estimating distance probably six or seven hundred feet from from the site

Matthew Riceokay so what's happening there is gonna 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 want to make sure that what's happening here is at least somewhat acknowledging the fact that this will become a major thoroughfare but I think I'm encouraged that sidewalks 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?

James FeatherMr. Tassel?

Tassos McCarthyAll 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 it's it's come to light with the Davies property and others and we were at the linear meets a stakeholder meeting and it was something that was 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 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 um which which would become in the small area plan i believe a campbell pass through um 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 builder they're saying it might be a lead building which is terrific I do see some trees but considering the proximity to a catink 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.

James FeatherThank you. Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. Do you intend to get any comment from the applicant tonight?

James FeatherYeah. There are all few comments from the applicant as well. So if you want to direct something.

Paul CunninghamThen I will wait until the applicant has made his comments and

James Featherthen

Paul CunninghamI'll bundle them together.

James FeatherWell, they'll be able to respond to questions, but there will be no presentation by the

Paul Cunninghamapp. Okay.

James FeatherSo go ahead.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Okay. With that and short-term concerns, long-term concerns, yes, come up if the applicant's going to make a statement or has anything they would like to make a statement.

James FeatherYou made the right questions to the applicant.

Paul CunninghamYeah, and questions. One, you're higher and drier because there's a lot of floodplain in this area. But I think you're at the area that you're 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. If that's correct. So height, underground parking, and some of those things, when we talk about two levels of underground parking, when you dig down below a floodplain right next to a floodplain or in a floodplain, you would expect you get some water in there potentially. It's not cheap. It's not cheap. So it's easy to keep it out. That would be one thing in consideration. I think height is another thing in consideration.

to 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. 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?

Speaker 9I 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.

FrederickstaffAnd

Speaker 9so when the application does get represented or gets presented, I'll be a second time, we will be able to do this ourselves in its entirety, from the interior looking out.

Paul CunninghamOkay, 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.

Speaker 9Yes, sir. 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 Lothar 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 the equipment can be supported. You know, while we're undergrounding everything else, it's on front of Blenheim Boulevard as well.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Have we got more parking than we need in the building? dealing with three or four layers of parking. We don't have more. I wish we had a little bit more. We have no excess parking or anything along that line. We've got to keep it because it appears 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.

Speaker 9It does on level three. It does. And the 460 proposed parking spaces is right at the minimum requirement and meeting code. we don't anticipate requiring or requesting any kind of special exception for a parking reduction.

Matthew RiceOkay,

Paul Cunninghambut 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

Speaker 9the mass. Yes sir it does and it unfortunately the geometry you know a bit for for this is really tough so the efficiency in this in this garage also drives the costs, you know, as well. But we are able to park the entire development in and of itself on the site.

Paul CunninghamOkay. 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.

Speaker 9We 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 40 years from now with this gateway feature that kind of just sparks everyone's interest to say, hey, what is happening here behind the southwest quadrant?

So I think to Mr. McCarthy's commentary, we've got to continue this discussion, and we'll do a better job. and I've vowed 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, what's good for the market. Okay.

Paul CunninghamThree 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

Speaker 9subterranean and a superstructure you've

Paul Cunninghamgot superstructure parking so that really residential doesn't start till four floors up correct

Speaker 9it's on the fourth

Paul Cunninghamand three

Speaker 9ten is residential

Paul Cunninghamand 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 around amenity?

Speaker 9I'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 into deep into the fall. And it's not so much more for that. I would expect people to be, you know, in the pool itself, but it's certainly a great place to, again, share a drink, have your meal with your neighbors.

James FeatherOkay.

Paul CunninghamWithin a half a mile of this structure, there's an even taller residential unit. It doesn't happen to be in the city, 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?

Speaker 9Well, 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 four through 10 are where the residents are. 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 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. and they'll watch 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 put units on the fourth floor.

Paul CunninghamOkay, 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. We would

Speaker 9absolutely love it. Right now it's not planned for retail because our retail, we're very focused on creating active energy on the ground floor plane. And that ground floor plane, because of the nature of the parking structure behind it, You know, those are 20-foot, you

Speaker 4know,

Speaker 9ceilings, 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 very worried and we're very cognizant of the fact of the building height. One of the problems, again, we only have rent paying properties on 4 through 10, and there's 38 units on a floor plate. So if we lose 38 units, just slop off a floor 10 or something, 18% of the value of the project goes with it. And then all of a sudden it becomes very tough to make work.

Paul CunninghamI 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 with an amenity or something? we catch the rest of the the open area the open space the green space the fact that you want we don't want necessarily uh to pluck a building out of downtown manhattan that is surrounded by skyscrapers so there's no possibility for anything growing there uh and and take advantage of the open space we've got here to keep it green and accessible and...

Speaker 9Well, 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 for you 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 uh coming to fruition and and we hired you know uli we the city hired uli to come in and and get the input and so we uh we viewed it as you know i'm gonna 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 Bold America does the same thing, turns it inside out and adheres to the plan that we're all thinking about.

Paul CunninghamOkay. I think those are the principal questions I've got for the applicant.

Speaker 9and making it as

Paul Cunninghamfriendly 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

Speaker 9does, Mr. Cunningham. Like you said, having grown up here, my mother taught at Leighton Hall for 30 years, and so I'm personally excited about this project. But what was Circle Towers in

Paul Cunninghammy day

Speaker 9is probably 35 feet, 40 feet taller than what we're asking. We're probably 15 feet taller than the Scout at the end of the day. So from a skyline perspective, 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

Paul Cunninghamelevation 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 correct we certainly are and you're certainly shorter than the Massey building was when it was in downtown so that there are pluses there but

Speaker 9well as you know I mean again you know this but But 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 can't afford to scrape it down and redo. So we really have to be thinking that far out.

Paul CunninghamThank you.

Speaker 9Okay.

Speaker 4Mr. Cartier. 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 a right that if someone's walking down there, they'd be looking at the parking? Like a

Speaker 9parking wall? Maybe you can pull that back up, that rendering. Yeah. So you are right. 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 enough room to have you know a 60-foot bay you know on the front side and 60-foot bays on the on the south side. So which one do we try to activate? I wish I could say it's that simple as to deactivate south side or you activate blenum. And the smaller plan speaks you know to both you know about the importance of

blend them as well. Um, not just as a thoroughfare, um, but as a flexible, um, you know, route. So the parking probably the geometry, 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 blend them. You know, it's, uh, this is just the way it could fit. 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 the streetscape is there for the trees, for the sidewalks. You're not going to be storefront shopping, window shopping on that side. But you still have pedestrian walks and walkability to what will be a better venue.

Speaker 4So are you saying that the small area plan isn't feasible with retail on

Speaker 9Blenheim and on South Street? I think for the geometry of our building, 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 back side of the retail thread, it's about 80, 60 feet deep. Yeah, right there, a little bit, right there. All the way across is all retail bay. 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.

Speaker 4Yeah.

Speaker 9Yeah. 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, because now I'm really talking about some sort of switchback. Okay.

Speaker 4And how wide is the sidewalk you're proposing on that side of the building? 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

Speaker 9needs to be a little bit bigger. Okay. We'll look at it again. And I don't have that dimension off the top of my head, but I do think 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 own the property next door and that we could, we could make

Speaker 4this all work, you

Speaker 9know, but, but we don't.

Speaker 4All 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 side of the building if I have that right?

Speaker 9It does. So we have an existing egress and ingress easement 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 by the way, the, the, the pass through for circle get way, the elevation is high enough to support the ladder trucks. we,

Matthew RiceI

Speaker 9think it's 18. I'd have to go back and look.

Speaker 4Fred, 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. I can feel that

Speaker 9or you could take

Speaker 4it.

Speaker 9Yeah.

Speaker 4Yeah. No, well,

Speaker 9I don't think he's seen it. He just told me you gotta hire your traffic engineer and really study this one out. So we've studied it out and it'll be a sheet within our generalized development plan, a traffic signal concept plan. But it does align. We can get the alignments with the heads. 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 end up proposing to do the same thing that we did over on the Camp Washington side as you come off the south side into T-bone Main Street there right up against the T-Mobile stores there's pedestrian level 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, we'll be able to put in existing easements on the Home Depot corner and on the office building corner. So you'll see that. You haven't had to see that yet. Looking forward to it. Yeah.

Speaker 4That's all for me.

James FeatherOthers? A couple of questions. 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 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? I'm guessing not to serve the purpose that we're seeing as a Campbell Drive Extension across Fairfax Boulevard and on in the old Pickett Road So I think that probably will need to be considered in light of what our road requirements may be for this kind of street to serve the purpose that I think we want it to be. I 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 understand your concern and the way you've described it. But if nothing else, I think we need to relook at the sidewalk. 5 feet is not going to pass muster, I think, by a lot of people who are looking at this.

Matthew RiceThe

James Feather11 stories, that is all above gray. That's not counting the subterranean parking. Is that correct?

Speaker 9Correct.

James FeatherOkay. Small area plan clearly specifies nine stories maximum. Could you explain that? Yes. You're asking for this?

Speaker 9I'm asking for what, sir?

James FeatherYou're asking for 11 stories instead of nine the smaller area plan calls for? Correct. If you've been watching any of the other reviews going on in the community, 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 small area plan even calls for is kind of a bold request. Could you address that?

Speaker 9Yes, sir. And, again, the geometry of this particular site, our ability to be able to actually put this in production and make a realization of it during our lifetimes, you know, requires the parking to be, you know, what we're proposing, the two levels of subterranean and the three levels of superstructure parking, such that we don't get any income generating short of the retail, which doesn't move the needle, quite honestly, for the residential uses. And so we think that this request, and like I mentioned, it's 10 stories plus a penthouse. by code because it's occupiable and we're conditioning the amenity area. It does make it an 11-story structure, but 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 this provides for

James Feathercome on feel a little bit like the tail trying to wag the dog the dog being the smaller your plan that it establishes our vision I'll just leave it at that what is the existing square footage of retail or commercial space in these spaces today.

Speaker 9There are two buildings the old Lotte which is now a and the old 7-Eleven which is now a cabinet showroom

James Featherand

Speaker 9there it's probably thirty nine thousand in the old Lotte building and then approximately I know we have it it's 2,200 or so.

James FeatherSo we may have about 40 today and we're going down to 16,500. Pardon me? So a round number is 40,000 square feet today and we're going down to about 16,500?

Speaker 916,500?

James FeatherAs far as

Speaker 9the retail? Yes, sir.

James FeatherSo we're losing 24,000 square feet of retail COMMERCIAL DISTRICTS OF THE CITY. ALSO NOT SOMETHING WE'RE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH IN THESE ACTIVITY CENTERS. OKAY. I WILL SAY THAT THIS SITE IS ONE OF THE CLOSEST WE HAVE TO THE VIEENA METRO. to put some fairly good residential districts right on the Q bus line. That could be very helpful. It may, in fact, reduce the amount of parking that may be required. We are discussing parking requirements as it stands today for multifamily residential. We may be talking about that a little bit later in the meeting. I'm not sure. 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.

FrederickstaffI think

James FeatherI had a similar question about the loading area. You've answered that. Thank you very much. You have an easement that gives you access from the adjacent property. So I had a similar concern. Okay. That is taken care of. That's taken care of. All right. I think you've heard my comments. concerns and those of others. Anything else from the commission? Mr. Cunningham first.

Paul CunninghamIn the renderings where we're looking at the space on top of the building, is that all on the front section of the building? Because I presume that the area above the pool floor remains open all the way going up. Yes sir. 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 canopy over that open space. No sir, that's open to sky. It

Speaker 9is on the front.

Paul CunninghamIt's just the front and that would then, if it were going to be public space and used 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

Speaker 9think if it truly became retail, as contemplated with the elevator shaft, as you all know, it's one of the first things you end up laying out on these things. Whether or not we could control security through software and the cabs themselves, I'd have to get smarter on for that particular program that you're talking about. put in another elevator shaft dedicated just to getting to the rooftop, we would have to look at and see how that impacts the number of losses of units and the like.

Paul CunninghamSo anything like that would have to be contemplated in advance of it going forward for future use because once you have put in that basic use, modifying the building to accommodate it would be impractical

Speaker 9again 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 um and and there's ways to do that there's there's ways to do that I'm sure um 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 love where you're going with the idea of I'm not saying monetizing the community space up there but but if I could put fabulous you know if I could relocate Artie's I'd do it in a heartbeat

Tassos McCarthyyou

Speaker 9know up there and I'm sure they would go well I don't know if we need a space big enough for them there but we will we will evaluate over before the application comes in and see

Paul CunninghamOne of the concepts

Speaker 9we had long ago

Paul Cunninghamwith 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 restricted space if you will the residential in 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 whatever public use it could have had for access 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 is valuable and do that, what you're taking away on the ground floor, you're at least giving back some opportunity to maintain the commercial base, the public base, the rest of the common area base 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 going away. And that's one of the reasons for some of my questions, I guess, along this line, is 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? It's got to work both ways, I guess, from my perspective, that the people who live in the community have got to be adding value to what we're doing, as opposed to just having another place to live where we can make it more dense, package more people in a smaller space because the economics dictate it. 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.

And those are things that I have concerns with in some of 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.

Speaker 9No, I appreciate the commentary and look forward to exploring that more with you. Because 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. Okay. But I do appreciate that, yeah.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyAll righty. Well, this has been fun. Three things. We're talking about Spring Street. was to become you know a thoroughfare as well it's currently listed as a private road on your property in the drawing that I saw is that something that have you all contemplated either making that a permanent public easement and or like you know

Speaker 9we'll definitely have public easement over it the reason we would are proposing to be private is because of the maintenance obligations associated with being underneath the gateway feature itself is not something that I believe the jurisdictions would take on. So we're willing to maintain, repair, and operate that

Tassos McCarthyroad. Okay, so this development isn't going to stonewall that road in 15 years.

Speaker 9No, so it would be public easement to be granted outside

Tassos McCarthyplan approval. Great, all right, so that's enough of that then.

Speaker 9Because we also have our stormwater management filtration devices underneath that road system as well.

Tassos McCarthyTerrific. he touched on the garage 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 have you all contemplated property management security programming as most you probably know that area experiences a lot of loitering we've had a couple sad incidences in the last couple days one yesterday right across the street from there so have you all thought about that because I fear having an open garage right there could exacerbate an issue and then secondly we certainly wouldn't want to be something that just push the issue further into the neighborhood so have you have you all thought about that at all

Speaker 9well certainly I mean on one bar below that We will have a transportation demand management program, both for the commercial, tailored to the commercial use, and then one tailored towards the residential

Tassos McCarthyuse. So it will not be an unattended garage?

Speaker 9I don't know. We don't have currently plans for a gated but not a guardhouse feature where somebody is standing there. Now, having said that, we are putting building services and leasing right as you drive into the garage on the right-hand side. So that will be staffed. I don't know if it's going to be staffed 24-7 yet.

Speaker 4I

Speaker 9find that hard to do at this point. But security is, as anybody would tell you that's in our position, is utmost. You can't have one bad Yelp review when it comes to security. you know, certainly certainly have your family.

Tassos McCarthyI'm not writing your pro forma. I'm not one of your investors. No, it's just the truth of the matter. It's something

Speaker 4that you

Tassos McCarthyshould 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 came in here asking for 11, I understand the top is largely mechanical, et cetera. My point of view on that is if someone's gonna come in, anyone and ask for a variance or an exception, that it should be doing so with the understanding that it's checking every other box, right? It becomes a necessary evil of sorts. and you know if you came in bigger you'd probably take a lot of flack for that too

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 pushback i think that if you presented uh if we 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'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.

James FeatherYeah.

Paul NaphtistaffIt's 13 is pretty high.

Matthew RiceUm, 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 picket unfortunately they're going to see the tank farm as well they're going to see the akatink 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 tradeoff. And it's something that's commonly done in D.C. The elevator issue has already been solved probably 25 years ago. and if there was just an expeditious way to have the public check in, provide an ID, and then head up to a viewing area and look 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 I think it's a great idea. But I live on the south side of the city and I'm going to be looking a little bit further down at you. Yeah, it's a lot of height. It's, you know, it's going to be the tallest thing in that, you know, area.

But anyway, I think the other folks have made a lot of great points and I hope we'll be able to continue talking and figuring out how to make this even better.

James FeatherAnything else? Okay. Thank you. I'm going to address Mr. Frederick. Mr. Frederick, do you have sufficient feedback from us? Thank you. One feedback item for you, if I can. 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. You're including the staff reporter attach the presentation as well to the agenda. Thank you Okay our next work session item is Discussion of the second draft of amendments the City of Fairfax zoning ordinance related to the adopted small area plans.

James FeatherMr. Napty. Thank you.

Paul NaphtistaffThank you, Chair Cutler and members of the Planning Commission. As a quick background, as the Planning Commission is aware, the 2035 comprehensive plan

Frederickstaffidentified the need to develop small area plans

Paul Naphtistafffor 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 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 the small area plans. This is an issue because the small area plans 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 having to request special exceptions in order to be in line with the recommendations of the small area 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 plans. So with this understanding, the city with the adoption of the Fairfax Circle Smaller 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 small air plans. This process began in the middle of 2024 with a phase that resolved around gathering information about getting feedback from various stakeholders on the types of issues that we're facing with

related small area plans, and then turned around in spring of 2025 with our consultant, preparing a report that summarized those types of issues and providing an outline of recommendations on how to address them through amendments in the zoning ordinance. Once receiving confirmation that they were 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. amendments was ready for us to review in early 2026 as you may recall we had discussions with the planning commission city council in the 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, once we get through this review of the second draft, to finalize our recommendations and come back to you to make final consideration in the fall. And 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 each had multiple work sessions on this we had the community

meeting and then our engage page was open uh for a couple of months and 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 in your 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 as attachment two. There's also a summary sheet that summarizes the high-level changes that have occurred between draft one and draft two because a lot of the changes that are shown in the markup, there's a significant amount if anyone tried to read through it it's it's more red than black but a lot of that is also more minor administrative language

touch-ups and those types of things so the the summary is intended to help you guide you on what the more significant changes were so the purpose of today's work session is to go over the more significant changes that are proposed in the draft and get your feedback on how we should be proceeding we won't go through too much on the original background on what was included hoping to speed on that so first i just wanted to remind you what the the basic elements are that are in the in the proposed amendments and 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 we get to tree conservation the staff is now recommending that we hold off on those amendments 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 how these proposed amendments administratively will fit within the zoning ordinance. And as you may recall, the proposal 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 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. so any properties outside of these areas would not have the opportunity to use this district. There would be other opportunities for trying to achieve mixed-use development for those types of sites such as using our existing commercial urban district or the planned developments. One significant change that 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 particularly in Old Town. And so with this draft the language states that

within the Old Town area the activity center zoning district 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 what all three of these elements mean 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

Again, this is the area where the historic overlay district would supersede the standards of the activity center district. So those would continue to function as is. Note that the blue, that this area goes beyond the extent of the activity center boundary. So those areas would just continue to function as is. All the areas outside the blue dash line that are within the colored area of the activity center boundary would fall within the transition overlay district. 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, the transition overlay district standards would no longer apply.

We were showing this overlay over the height map from the small area plan because height is really the most significant standard that people think of when they think about our overlay districts in Old Town because the 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 based on the color codes that are shown here, anywhere up to six stories in some locations. So in looking at this, you can see that within the blue area, where the height recommendations of the new activity center district would not apply, 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. 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 a recommended maximum height of three stories so even with the new activity center district that would be the the maximum height it's only the areas outside

Matthew Ricethat that

Paul Naphtistaffwould

Matthew Ricemake a change

Paul Naphtistaffi 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 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, street trees, 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 full width standards. There are no requirements for street trees in the historic overlay district.

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 I just want to point that out as there are other characteristics besides height that we should be considering with this. I also want to mention parking. Each of the current overlay districts allow reductions to our parking standards. Within the Historic Overlay District, there is a 50 to 100 percent 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 percent reduction allowed. However, this does not apply to residential uses where a minimum of 1.5 spaces per residential unit is allowed 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, but we are proposing up to a 20% reduction in parking through parking amenities. 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 in the transition overlay district, some of these, the difference wouldn't be that much because most of that reduction would apply to commercial, not residential in the current situation.

Another key element of the zoning structure is a section for alternative compliance. Alternative compliance is something that we are introducing to this district as another way of accommodating special exceptions. Special exceptions in the zoning ordinance are broadly applied to any of the dimensional standards and any of the site development standards. 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 supported. 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 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 because we are accommodating that reduction of parking through incentives, as I mentioned earlier. So the first more significant standards or more detailed standards in the activity center district are the frontages. frontages are included in the small area plans for designating the types of characteristics along certain streets and so those are being carried forward into the proposed zoning ordinance amendments there are three types of frontages that are mapped here there are five types of frontages total that are proposed in the zoning owners amendments in the current draft the three that are

mapped are those that come from the smaller plans directly those are priority the more tight-knit shopfront-type retail areas that are intended 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 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 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 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 are flexible on whether these streets that are shown with the black lines have commercial

Matthew Ricefrontage or residential. It could be either or.

Paul NaphtistaffWe'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 these locations could occur on any street that is not mapped here. 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 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. Some of the changes, we also added a little more clarity to what's called the frontage zones. It's also called in the Ordinance Amendment as the build-to line. 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. We currently don't have any standards for this area. And so the various frontage areas have different standards for what this should be. The actual design and use of the frontage zone can vary. It could be primarily landscaping. It could be past 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 dimensions are shown on the top half of the screen. These are minimums and maximums. So, for example, for a priority retail frontage, there's a minimum frontage zone of 5 feet, maximum of 10, and the others have minimum 10,

Matthew Riceup to 20, and so on.

Paul NaphtistaffA couple other frontage changes, more administrative changes, clarifying our language for the uses that are supported in the priority retail frontage zone. Removed entry design requirements for flexible commercial frontage, focusing more on architecture for that section. And then we added 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

Matthew Riceunits. I

Paul Naphtistaffalso want to mention here, this is another place where we've added an 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. 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 a front of compliance clarified they had to be designed in a certain way. And then also to allow service drives in the frontage area floor, the flexible commercial frontage only. This is the type of commercial that fronts on the major roads. So this would allow something such as you see in front of the building at Scout.

In some cases, we've heard that developers really need to have that access, easy access for retail to be successful. So this is the way that we're being flexible there. 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 reference on particularly the residential frontage you might recall from the previous slide the proposed minimum maximum frontage zones 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 along oak street that dimension is 14 to 16 feet is again the building face to the back of the

sidewalk some portions of the boulevard 6 development we get as little as six feet in other areas they are larger than that and then the two examples on the right show multi-family situations the one i want to point out the north facts west the brightview street frontage is shown at eight feet a little bit shy 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 individual unit stoops and the steps that 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 minimum required open space proposed in the new district is 10%,

which is similar to 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. 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 in the review of the first draft about adding requirements for the contiguity of open space, making sure it's connected. like this in our planned development districts. There's a thought to bring that over. So a requirement for 60% of the open space that contributes towards the minimum requirement

be connected or contiguous. Also there is an alternative compliance for this. It's just a new standard that allows a reduction of upper 20%

Matthew Ricebased on certain conditions such as site configuration.

Paul NaphtistaffWe also adjusted maintenance standards based on feedback we had. And as I mentioned, a couple of the changes to the open space table came from this blue 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 to clarify what each of these means. but then some specific changes are to the to the open space table and also just as as another reminder 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 and the less preferred types of open spaces count as less space so some of the primary changes are that we previously allowed for stormwater facilities that at the low weighting 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 stormwater 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 definitions and sections that would apply to the entire zoning ordinance if 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 a 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, but the difference here is that those that are specifically identified in the small area 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. The tree conservation ordinance, as I mentioned earlier on, staff is now recommending that we hold off on changes related to this.

the planning commission might recall in their first draft 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 um 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

Matthew Ricetheir city would not benefit from that.

Paul NaphtistaffAt the time, we knew that the state was considering legislation that might have changed this. When that 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 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.

There's an opportunity for one of the parking reduction opportunities is through protecting trees and additional tree canopy. Those standards we believe we can apply. 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 adoption. On to parking. As I mentioned earlier, we are proposing up to a 20% reduction in the base parking requirements from current standards through certain amenities. And just to refresh on what we discussed with the first draft, At that time, we were weighing something in between a flat parking reduction for this district and just changing the parking standards and allowing a reduction through incentives.

We are moving more now towards just allowing the parking reduction through incentives. But then having a special consideration for office uses, as you might recall, during the parking reviews that we did as part of the process for the review of draft one, office parking standards seem to be out of date and much higher than they need to be. So assuming that a development could achieve the maximum 20% reduction, how this would apply to multifamily 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 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. 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 think we have some room to go lower there, and we think there'd be some benefits to 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. And then I also just want to summarize the types of incentives that are now included

that can support parking reductions 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 at the request of our transportation department because we really want to encourage people to use Q, especially since it's free and it serves all of our activity centers. We didn't see shuttles as a good amenity. and then also continuing on parking in order to provide a comparison for residential uses particularly multifamily 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 projects 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 observed about 1.0 spaces per unit for permits that were given out to or that were requested by renters.

And then in Fairfax County, the current standards are countywide are 1.45 spaces for residential unit. And in the revitalization areas, which are the non-metro accessible, older commercial developing that have the most similar characteristics to our activity centers, the parking rate is 1.23 spaces per residential unit. Moving on to our dimensional standards. So there are two primary dimensional standards in the proposed district. One is density and the other is height. And so a couple of the changes that have been made since the first draft, the first relates land assembly program. Planning Commission might recall that this program allows property owners to achieve bonus density for acquiring properties to allow more consolidated, cohesive development

opportunities. 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 the path we took was to continue to include it but reduce the density increase that could be achieved through the land assembly program. And so the gray boxes show where we were with draft one, 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 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, the standards in the first draft were that there's a base maximum height feet and through the community benefits program developers could achieve higher 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 that continues to apply however we have inserted an alternative compliance for this at this point it's still something that's pretty tight and it says that additional height can be approved for specific reasons,

primarily being for 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. And there's no allowed increase in the number of floors. And so looking at some past and current that are under review. We realize that the Planning Commission and City Council should be aware that if we're too strict on this, you would not be able to even consider development proposals that exceed this. And so we want to make sure this is something that you want to do. And if not, our alternative, we have Texas 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 when additional height can apply, and we'll continue to work on process standards. But we just wanted to get this out there. We're still thinking about height. We know this is important, 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. And then lastly, the community benefits program. There's a base density requirement for this proposed district and there are potential increases through the consolidation program and then separately through the existing affordable dwelling units program.

But then in addition to that, 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 multimodal transportation improvements, including both streets and pedestrian infrastructure. With the first draft, we were much more vague in how we were calculating these. We now have more specific standards, and for open spaces, that equates what is proposed is eight residential units per 3,200 square feet of open space, again, beyond the base requirement of 10%. And for transportation infrastructure, four units per 7,200 square feet of land dedicated towards this use, or four units per 100 linear feet.

This is something we're still working on how to address. the language that's in the current draft is set up so that we're trying to avoid unnecessarily wide street widths that would are just provided to allow for additional residential units so the 7200 square feet was added as a way to kind of control that rather just rely on linear feet but it's something that we'll start we're still working on and so in a couple of slides I'll show you some examples of how this ends up working out this is very difficult to kind of figure this actually means in terms of development, particularly because this isn't talking about, when we say eight units per 3,200 square feet, we don't mean eight units per acre. That just

means eight units flat. And the more space they provide, the more units they can get. I did want to mention that during the review of the first draft, there are some suggestions for other things that we should look at providing bonus density for, including additional retail, additional affordable housing, additional tree canopy, and structured or underground parking. The last two were two of the elements that were added for our incentives for parking reductions. And so we thought they made 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 including this in this section because it could end up making us deviate from state code.

For additional retail, there are some concerns with state code. but if this is something that we really want to pursue, we believe that we could write something into our standards, maybe not relying on density, but another way of incentivizing

Matthew Riceadditional retail.

Paul NaphtistaffSo then going back to the bonus density, we wanted to 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 based on development proposals that have happened over the years in our activity centers, 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. But what this slide shows us is all of the development proposals in our activity centers that have included a multifamily residential component in the past couple of years.

And 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. on rough estimates of areas. If we actually had this ordinance in place, these developers would be provided to show these calculations for us and specifically show which areas would count towards these benefits. And so what we're showing here is not exact. The arrows on the left show that the green arrows that are pointing up show that the proposed amendments would allow a development amount or density that's equal to or greater than what is proposed or was approved. show those that the current draft of the amendments would support something that is less than what was approved.

And what this means on kind of a broader scale, rather than just looking at the individual projects, we wanted to kind of map it out from a bigger perspective. So these two charts show all of those development projects that were on the previous screen are shown as one of the bubbles here. The left shows what was approved or what is currently proposed for each of these projects. The chart on our right shows what we believe could be supported through the draft amendments as currently written. The horizontal axis shows the site size in terms of acres. 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 charts 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 were approved or proposed or could be approved in the new district on the right and then the vertical access shows what the 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 the proposals or the approved projects the majority of them are shown as something that is what we believe could be supported in these amendments as currently written. For those that are larger, they tend to be a little bit lower, and we believe that they could be supported a little bit more as currently written. We don't know for sure, but the speculation is that the reason for this is that the smaller

sites tend to need more density in order to be feasible, and also the larger sites have more opportunity to provide amenities such as contributions to the transportation network 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

Speaker 4is is landing

Paul Naphtistaffand just for comparison's sake also we looked at numerous uh development projects in fairfax county again areas developments that occurred in those designated revitalization areas these are non-metro accessible areas of the county that are outside that are older commercial districts that are redeveloping. A lot of the development that's happening in the county these days is in the metro accessible locations. They tend to be much more dense than this, but these we thought were more comparable

Matthew Riceto

Paul Naphtistaffus. So just for reference, you can see the density column 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 for example the one that's 30 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 and then for a 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 similar range and the average density from 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 so again this is just food for thought 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 achieve the visions of the small area plans. So that sums up this presentation. We would love to hear feedback on any of these topics. In particular, we are very interested to hear your thoughts on the proposal to change or consider changing the boundaries to the historic overlay district that we talked about earlier in the presentation, and also your thoughts on the resulting densities for the last couple of slides we looked at. But again, anything from the presentation, Thank you. Wow.

James FeatherThank you. Did you take a breath in any of that? Commissioners, any thoughts? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you,

FrederickstaffMr. Feather.

Paul CunninghamThoughts, I guess. If you want to go back to page 21,

FrederickstaffI love your description of it.

Paul CunninghamI'm going to go to the fact book and it tells me that between 1950 and 1960, we built about 3,300 detached single family dwelling units to create the city of Fairfax. And along that same time pane, primarily in the 60s, it looks like we put in 1,300 to 1,400 multifamily 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 3,939 units that we are putting in four small areas where we are now concentrating housing and doing that. And that doesn't include the Breezeway Project.

That doesn't include Paul VI. That doesn't include discussion of Main Street and Burke Station Road, where we have a proposal to consolidate the commercial property and then use the space that's freed up to put in additional residential. 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 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 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 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. We're bringing in residential, but I don't see us bringing in any jobs. So the people have to work everywhere. where 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'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 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. 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 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 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 local residents were forced to in order to make their life and weigh in the community. And yet when I look over that same time period at the density that 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. 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 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 meeting a vision for us moving forward? and that's one of the main challenges I have with all of the rules. 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 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 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

Paul Naphtistaffokay um so the part of this is the small year 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 and provide more detail um some questions came up about these zoning amendments and whether or not they should be occurring before we do that review. And our response was that the small area 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 hope we won't be missing on those things that are envisioned in the small area 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, depending on how much they change, but 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 if specifics of it change. But with what we're doing here today, the part of the goal is to ensure that the things that are invented in the small area 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.

James FeatherGo ahead. Okay, others?

Matthew RiceMr. 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 capture the essence of the change in the overlay districts? Looking through some of the GIS data layers here, there's a complexity of at least three There's even an Old Town Historic Future overlay district layer. So the National Register Historic District in black, the local one in blue, and then our small area. So we've got three things on this slide, but there appears to be some other things going on as well. Yes.

Paul NaphtistaffOkay. Okay, so starting with the National Registered Historic District, this is what is recognized as our defined historic area where we have structures that contribute to the historic past of the city. This is the federally recognized area. There are no local limitations on it. There's no zoning restrictions through it that are unique. It's really properties in this area, if they qualify, can qualify for certain grants to help with retrofits to make sure they're still in line with historic standards and those types of things. The regulating part of that is the blue line, the local historic overlay district. And so that was put over our historic district boundaries. actually it was actually put in place before we had a national register historic district

so it was originally kind of like an estimated area on where we wanted to protect 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

Matthew Riceis which is why there's kind of a discrepancy there

Paul Naphtistaffthen outside that area we have the activity center here this map which i think you're familiar with 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 the was actually when the National Register of Historic District was put into place. 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 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 there were concerns at the time about some of the properties that were more far removed from the core of a bull town about limitations that that this was putting on their sites and their rights their rights on their existing development and so the response was that 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 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 historic and then national would be kind of one body.

Matthew RiceOkay. I am looking at the future transition overlay district that goes almost all the way down to Mason. Sorry for not perceiving all the nuances super quickly here. What is the purpose of specifying a future overlay district?

Paul Naphtistaffthat 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 and so that's why the future transition district doesn't change anything the sites is there it's only if they want to redevelop then they're expected to become part of the actual transition district

Matthew Riceokay what are we being asked to give an opinion on then given all the things you've just explained

Paul Naphtistaffi'm sorry what was that

Matthew Ricewhat are we being asked to provide feedback on with regard to these

Paul NaphtistaffSo we're not asking you to dig into the transition district and the future transition district. That's a discussion for, I think, another day. What we're asking primarily is whether we should consider adjusting the blue line on this map to be more in line with the black line. Again, the blue line having the regulatory standards, the black line being the federally recognized district but doesn't have any regulatory standards to it.

Matthew Riceportions of the black that fall within the blue so conceivably there are parcels that are both

Paul Naphtistaffyes that's correct okay yeah the blue includes the black but then extends beyond it in some cases

Matthew Riceexcept for the bit in the county

Speaker 4that'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

Paul Naphtistaffuh 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'd be more expectations on providing deeper setbacks, street trees, and full width sidewalks.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyAll right. pack here 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 if we had these as empty lots we could do most of what we're talking about. So I don't think we should be lowering that. I think that needs to be rewarded. That's one piece. I like this general idea. For me, the big question is not, like, should we do it, but does this framework prevent us from what I would say is effectively, like, picking winners and losers? of of late um so like to me i'm asking myself will this make projects more predictable

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 and then lastly like preserving City Council discretion without making like these written standards meaningless and that's I think gonna be very difficult to do but when I think about that and think about the presentation we had before and other projects 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

Speaker 4you know

Tassos McCarthythe 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's just mixed use podium build ground floor retail a bunch of apartments above we're gonna 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 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 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 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 years before. So changes come in 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.

Speaker 4i 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 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, and 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 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.

Paul NaphtistaffSome of the elements you described are the intent of these amendments is to answer some of those questions. Yeah, I get it. I just don't know if this will be

Speaker 4through the ordinance or, you know.

Paul NaphtistaffRight, but some of those things are identified in the small area plans. It's just that when it comes to actually implementing them, we get pushback on a lot of them. 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, they are in the smaller plans, and it is our question. Some of the examples you gave I don't think are fully ironed out yet. The character of the greenway, you know, I agree. 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 area 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 had these amendments in place. And they can certainly be amended again when we have more detail, you

Matthew Riceknow,

Paul Naphtistaffwhen the smaller

Matthew Ricearea plans are

Paul Naphtistaffupdated.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham. Thank

Paul Cunninghamyou. 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 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 was to talk about a vision for redevelopment of this area and that's what I think the in looking at it. So if we can get a green way 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 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 to the best 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, 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 drugstores in one period of time. Several of them have been repurposed now. 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 measuring and making it easier for a developer to get what they want, but making it easier, as

Speaker 9my

Paul Cunninghamcompatriots 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 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 caught the totality of the game with the extra things that have to go with it.

James FeatherOthers? A few things. We've lamented for a long time the fact that 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 to all 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 what do we want to do? If projects come through, loads of special exceptions, the optics are terrible. So trying to create the framework that we can work from today going forward, and I think we need to continue on this path.

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 in these things, that's the reality would we like to see more retail? yes, I would like to 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 in commercial properties, retail restaurants or whatever. Yep, we continue here from the economic development.

They're looking for good quality space for retail tenants. People want to bring business to the city. And there's a disconnect there. If we can incentivize it in some way, I think that would be good. It would be nice to be able to work further on what those potential state constraints may be. So I'd like to see maybe a little more energy there. as to the historic district without knowing what it really looks like to change the boundaries 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

It does not create a very good look. There may be some reason to keep the broader boundaries to protect the environment, atmosphere, image, or whatever of the historic things with some reasonable distance. 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. There may be some reason to make some changes at the margins. the stuff well outside the older part of the city. 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 table, current development compared to the activity center standards. I did similar math to what Mr. Cunningham did on the 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 4 500. that's a huge difference now i realize part of it's because using these guidelines could turn things like excuse me park road townhouses from a townhouse multi-family building although that's not what the act the smaller plane 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 what it is and what it could be the 3541 Chambers Road that I'm not sure that even called for residential there but they're bringing in townhouses rather than building another big multifamily building there.

But when I look at a potential going from 3,900 to 4,500, it's scary. So I think we need to be very careful about what the small-year plan looks like and what it calls for and mean what we say when we put a presidential-type community there.

Paul NaphtistaffCan I make a quick statement on that? Yep. That's another caveat I meant to mention in that some of these projects, and the park or townhomes is a good example. I mean, 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. 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 50,

Matthew Rice67

Paul Naphtistafftownhomes on that site. And so that development would look the same. Correct. And so I think a lot of these others would kind of fall into that same bucket. The intention here is more to look more broadly at

James Feathermaking

Paul Naphtistaffsure 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.

James FeatherYeah, 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 multifamily dense building there. And that's why we need to be careful about when we relook at the small area plans, what they may look like. A lot I think we probably got right. But as I am apt to do, I went through in some detail the draft that you had. I'm not going to cover everything in this meeting about what 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 that you have a path forward or what you'll do with it. You've heard the concerns. You tell me. Do you have any specific questions?

Paul NaphtistaffNo, I think the big things that we wanted to hear about, we heard about. So that's good. I think if anybody has, you know, additional comments that you think of after, feel free to shoot me an email, copy Chair Feather on it, and we'll continue to collect that feedback. a community meeting in September as well. Once you get information on that, we'll share that with you. So I encourage you to just as you continue, if you continue to have comments, then just keep letting us know.

James FeatherI do think, by the way, some of the changes that you made 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. some of those things are definitely going in the right direction, notwithstanding the potential benefits of being very generous and getting even 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, but yeah. Mr. Rice, you had some more?

Matthew RiceYeah, I think Mr. McCarthy also mentioned how hard it can be to consolidate, and And I think the only element that I would relook at is that consolidation decrease, the bonus decrease. Putting together parcels to avoid these weird geometries that end us up in a place that's not favorable.

James FeatherPerhaps we could

Matthew Riceincentivize 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.

Paul CunninghamAnd we have major property owners in the area who, 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 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 be 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.

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, 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

James Featherall right thank you final thoughts okay

Speaker 4can 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 public benefit is clear and demonstrable.

Paul NaphtistaffYeah, I appreciate that because also, I mean, the bonus that we looked at in there were also primarily based on density. Yeah. I had that one slide in there where I said that we're still not really sure where to go with height, especially when it comes to 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 saying that they are going above and beyond any of the other standards, then maybe there's a threshold where we can't accept the taller height. So, it was a work of how we can define what that is to make sure it's clear.

Speaker 4I 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. That's how I feel, at least on the last handful that have come through here. So, if this allows us to hold the bare 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

James Featherright

Speaker 4a 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

Paul Naphtistaffreading this right no you're reading

Speaker 4it 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

James FeatherMr. Rice, did you have another one? Your finger was close. It

Matthew Ricewas. I just, 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 I like that.

Tassos McCarthyAll right. This is like three sentences. It wasn't discussed. I don't know if it's out of bounds for us. TIF, like tax increment financing or tax abatement. been explored mosaic would not have happened without it might be an avenue to look at

Paul Naphtistaffyeah 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

James Featherokay our 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

Dennystaffokay 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 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 fund be used to support affordable housing preservation and development.

For multimodal transportation, 21 of the 98 total action items have been updated. The Blenden Boulevard multimodal improvements are under construction and the Far Avenue and North Fax Street components of the North Fax West Street Network are complete. The Pickett Road Connector Trail is in design. There are several projects aimed at improving accessibility for transportation including Sager Avenue and John Trammell Court as well as a number of intersections along Main Street. And then lastly the Pickett 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 timeframe 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 timeframe for that completion moved from 2026 to 2030 the second action is SI 132 which is enhancing to solid waste. The completion date for that went from 2026 to 2028. And then the third action is SI151, developing an EV readiness plan. That completion date changed from 2026 to 2030.

And then one other action, SI131, which is implementing the solid waste management plan, changed from a completion date of 2026 to ongoing because that plan has been adopted. Then in 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 Arts strategic plan is complete wastewater and stormwater condition assessments are ongoing with assessments of 70% 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 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?

James FeatherOne of the things I didn't see in your report, and you may not know the answer now, how many of all these action items do we consider complete? That's a good question.

Dennystaffessentially none of them because a lot of things that are complete we tend to make ongoing but I can look at what we could truly consider complete I can look and see might be a subjective line to draw but I can look at it

James Featherand 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

Dennystaffuh 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 any progress one of which is for a 2030 completion deadline the 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

James Feathersounds like it's something you just wait for something specific to come along

Dennystaffyeah and due to unless

James Featherwe have to change the zoning ordinance or something

Dennystaffthere's that's kind of tbd um there's certainly buy-in and interest in looking at it yeah we've

James Featherbeen talking about this one for a little while

Dennystaffyep 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 And then the last one with CDP as a lead and this one is a co-lead is with transportation as developing TDM fees for in lieu TDM fees. And again, that falls under all those TDM actions that are just kind of on pause due to staff capacity. Yep.

James FeatherOne other thing. A number of the items have sort of marginal notes with proposing either removal of the action item or changing the wording. Is that something that we need to take any action on or are you just going to do that? Like, for example, MM1.1.6. Support Fairfax County in pursuing improvements to Braddock Road to facilitate its operation as a critical regional corridor. 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?

DennystaffThose come from when I meet bionnally with staff, hearing feedback on a lot of this action is no longer because that Braddock is completely out of the city. We really have nothing to do with that. Those notes come from conversations with staff and that's kind of TBD if we do a package of removing and editing those or if we just wait for the next five year review. That's what those notes are.

James FeatherA couple hands full of those throughout. Just wondering what we're going to do with those.

DennystaffSo right now we're just tracking. Just

James Feathertracking.

DennystaffOkay.

James FeatherVery 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.

Matthew RiceYep.

James FeatherOkay.

Speaker 4Mr. McCarthy. You said the Old Town Circulation Study and then MOVE Fairfax, a different study? What's the difference between those two?

DennystaffI'm

Speaker 4trying to understand what that is,

Dennystaffwhy they're delayed and all that. Yes, because it's complicated. 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. Pedestrian Master Plan, Safety Action Plan, citywide plans that talk to each other and whatnot. 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 citywide and a little bit higher level versus Old Town Circulation Study is very in the weeds.

Speaker 4Got it. And that's the one that's delayed

Dennystaffuntil next year? Yeah, delayed a little bit, yeah. The original intention was to have all three at once, but it's looking like that'll be a little later.

Speaker 4And then that'll give us the vision on the connection of South Street or West Street. I was getting confused.

DennystaffTo complete

Speaker 4the circle? That will be a product of these studies? Okay. Looking forward to those.

James FeatherAnything else? Thank you for all this. I know it's a lot to keep track of. And thank you for sending the spreadsheet so I can do the digging that I like to do. I appreciate that.

DennystaffThank you so much.

James FeatherYeah. Okay. Okay. We shall reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff report. Mr. Naphti.

Paul NaphtistaffThank 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 last meeting. They received a presentation from the Northern Virginia Transportation Administration about the Bus Rapid Transit Action Plan. This is 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 I say upcoming when that when that time comes Because it does have potential routes that

Matthew Ricethat do come into the city

Paul NaphtistaffAt 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 without included in the adopted version City Council also discussed the potential smaller your plan reviews similar to the discussion that we had at the Planning Commission essentially gave the okay to move forward with various components of feedback and questions we plan to come back to both the planning Commission City Council with a more defined scope for those efforts in the fall they also

had a brief work session that night to explain the Northfax linear Park design guidelines we have a committee that met on July 9th thank you Commissioner McCarthy for participating in that City Council does not have a representative them a kind of an overview instead we do expect to have a work session with the planning commission on this project as it proceeds though on july 7th city council had a work session on the gallery at city center project on july 14 tomorrow they will have a item to request a circuit court to authorize a ballot measure to allow a 1% sales tax increase to support schools and public transportation. This is something that's newly allowed in the state code, specifically for schools and public transportation.

The way the city would attend to this initially would be for schools. And while these types of financial issues are not usually the purview of the planning commission, I thought this was important because it would support some of the more significant

Matthew RiceCIP items that you guys have discussed related to schools.

Paul Naphtistaffthe same work session on the smaller plan zoning ordinance amendments 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 uh site from uh office use to residential and a public hearing on the highlands and mantua uh townhouse project this is something you may or

not recall it's been a long time since we talked about it proposal for i believe it's 13 or 14 townhomes off of picket road

Matthew Ricein the montana into a professional park

Paul Naphtistafflastly i wanted to remind the planning commission that the city will support you of participating in the virginia certified planning commissioner training there are a couple of updated 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. The dates are July 23rd and 24th and September 10th and 11th. It will be both of those sessions. And my understanding is there is like a working period in between that you do at home. Alternatively, there is a virtual option that is August 13th to 14th and October 29th to 30th. If you are interested in either of these, please reach out to me. That's all I have for the staff report today.

Thank you.

James Featheryou 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. race would

Matthew Riceattest to so so

James Featherplease consider that I attended an in-person session but the virtual ones are I'm sure very valuable so all right Commission comments from comments many mr. McCarthy

Tassos McCarthythank 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

James Featheryou for representing us

Matthew Ricethere no

Tassos McCarthycomment

Matthew Ricemr. rice I've attended a parks and recreation advisory board meeting and so three big projects they always have complex large Old Town Hall is being remodeled, repainted, windows replaced, and a few other things, some new bathrooms built, and much of that is done. and there's some interior items that still need to be done. The windows on the second floor are 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 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 um 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 I think most of that will be spring and there's been some discussion about the contracting and some other things of the project but everything seems to be positive generally for the parks and rec folks They're doing summer classes and summer activities for kids, and 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 August, everybody goes on recess. Our great staff still come to work in August. But anyway, I just wanted to comment about Paul and Amy Lynn and Tina and all the great staff that we have.

I think we show up once or twice a month and make decisions, but I have a lot of respect for the expertise that all of you have and for the help that you give to us. And maybe the thing I like the best about the city is 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. That's a great thing to be able to do. And that's it for me. Thanks.

James FeatherThank you. 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 till sometime after the August recess so nothing from the bar that with nothing else we are adjourned thank you Thank you.