Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, March 9, 2026. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me.

Matthew RiceI

James Featherpledge allegiance to the flag of

Matthew Ricethe United States

James Featherof

Matthew RiceAmerica

James Featherand

Matthew Riceto the republic

James Featherfor which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Our next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of time as required. Any comments on the agenda?

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

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Third order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening, so if anyone from the public would like to address the commission at this time, you are free to do so. Seeing none, we will move on. We have a couple of items not requiring a public hearing. This evening we're very pleased to welcome students from the Catherine Johnson Middle School to present their ideas for development at both our North Facts area and Courthouse Plaza. I'll begin by recognizing Ms. Alam, their faculty advisor.

Faiz AlumGood evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here again. start with saying that you know it's a pleasure to work with Paul and Amy who have worked on many other presentations with our school and I think being a city school and having this opportunity for our students to be in real life is amazing and then last but not the least the students are amazing and the parents support and I also would like to introduce Miss Conley who's here Miss Conley is a teacher with the leadership class where they started this project and and presented the maps that this is something that is up for redevelopment, so what's your vision? So it was introduced to them in the leadership class, and they worked after school and at other times

during advisory and their own time to build their design and to present it to you all. So they're super excited. I'm going to call North Facts first. And I just want to just say that the breaking for the fast, there's some people here who are fasting at 7-11. You might see some of us just drinking something. Please bear with us. All right, group, come on up.

Matthew RiceYeah, let's be clear. Okay.

Speaker 5Good evening, members of Planning Commission. I'm Claire. I'm Mohana.

HalimaAnd I'm Halima.

Speaker 5And we're here to talk about the redevelopment proposal for North Facts. So here, as you can see, there are two maps. On the left side is an outer border outline of Northfax, which sits on Fairfax Boulevard and has Route 123 passing through the middle. On the right is the same duplicated map, but you may be asking, what are the brown spots on the map? Well, those are sites that are not going to redevelop. These sites include assisted living, Mazda's dealership, a motel, Amazon Fresh, and office buildings. Amazon Fresh has currently closed down so we will be putting something else in its place that we will talk about in a few moments. And the Mazda's dealership has recently redeveloped so they will not be redeveloping.

Speaker 6As a community, we need to dream big, set goals and take action. As we can see, there are three environmental issues here to address. First, we have storm water management. Impervious surfaces leads to runoff and flooding. Heat island effect, increase in temperature, air, and water pollution, which I'll be talking about more in the next slide. Second, car center designs. In this map, we can see that there's too much concrete and few greenery. This increases carbon emission and also runoff. It's also difficult for people to walk safely around these roads. Third, we also have lack of greenery. As I mentioned, there's few trees here, there's few trees in this map. This leads to heat exposure, lack of carbon emission, and lack of calm and friendly atmosphere.

As we can see, there is a lot of concrete and asphalt in North Fax. The regions with these surfaces are called heat islands. As we can see, in the yellow region, it's cool. In the orange region, it's hot. In the dark region, it's the hottest. Since the shopping center takes place in the dark red region, we understand that there's a lot of large roads surrounding that place. Since the heat from the sun absorbs into the asphalt and rises into the air, who breathes the air? Us! So let's break down some terms. What is urban planning and zoning and why is it so important for the city of Fairfax? Urban planning is a process which decides how land, roads, buildings, and public spaces are used in the city.

It also helps us organize where buildings like houses, schools, businesses, and transportation should go. This process also keeps the city growth organized, safe, and efficient for everyone. For us, for Fairfax, it preserves city character and protects green spaces overall. It also reduces traffic towards the local economy and keeps it community friendly and accessible. So how do we manage storm water and runoff as the area redevelops? We need to use green infrastructures like rain gardens, bioswills, green roofs and permeable surfaces. In this picture, this is an example of a bioswale. These green infrastructures also reduce flooding, stops run up and stops run up before reaching the streams.

We can also plant more trees which reduces erosion and cools the area down generally. How can we improve pedestrian safety in the area? We need to have proper sidewalks, shared use paths with bike lanes for bikers, improve crosswalks and intersections so people are not harmed and are safe, a slow down vehicle traffic and enhanced traffic calming, better aligning and signage for people to be able to see in the dark, ADA access for people who need it and also increased community awareness and enforcement. So

Speaker 5how

Speaker 6lastly how can we facilitate a strong local economy? We need to support a mixed-use development plan that involves residential units commercial sites and offices on dining venues network that is walk friendly for everybody um provides access to transfer services underground parking and also promoting the small and locally owned businesses so

Speaker 5I'm gonna talk about our idea so this is some things that we want to propose to Northfax adding more pervious surfaces bringing this room above the ground, add more greenery to the area, and add more solar panels. So currently the stream is underground while the assisted living was in construction. There is a example photo of San Antonio, Texas where they brought the stream above the ground and they have added restaurants and places for people to enjoy while also enjoying the water. So this is the residential area. Here we would like to propose to put a gym, park, 24 essential stores, something like 7-Eleven, a wellness office for adults, trees, and sidewalks where cars can also pass on. So the brown area that you can see on the map is the sidewalks where cars can also pass on,

so it will have pervious service. There's an example photo of pervious service parking lots, which reduce runoff and heat, like said earlier. So some reasons that we want to add a gym here is so gym and wellness office is so that people who want to work out can work out But people who want to work out and do uncompleted finish Unfinished tasks can also do it while working out at the same time So the park will be split into two and this is where the stream also comes into The stream will the park will be split into two one where kids and adults can enjoy and another where dogs and pets can run around and have fun. So the essential store I think is a good thing is because you if you need something at night and there's not a lot of stores open there's one right next to you and

it's very convenient. So this is the Amazon Fresh area. Like I said earlier the Amazon Fresh has currently closed down. They are focusing more on whole foods so we would like to propose to add whole foods there including dessert and coffee shops, restaurants, and lots of previous parking. The restaurant will be kind of like a food court with three to four different types of restaurants and we would like to propose the same for the dessert and coffee shops. Either put one big one or add three to four small ones in a row. This is our green space area which is right next to the office buildings to the left. Here we would like to add smoothie bar, board game cafe, a yoga, art studio, salad or sandwich spot, bookstore, and definitely the grass area.

This area is where everyone of all ages can enjoy. They can have picnics, they can sit down, and they can also enjoy the fountain.

HalimaThis is our second idea of bringing the water on surface. We would like to add a sushi restaurant right next to the Mazda. As you guys can see, the Enspos, those are the pictures from Japan, and these are our inspiration. We will this by adding this, it will keep the place more appealing and beautiful. So, not if I should be for people, not just cars. Right now, it's too loud and hard to get around. We can fix this by adding more shade, adding more trees for shade, adding more lights so people can see at night, clearly marking sidewalks so people can cross streets safely, Bus stops, city buses are free, so it will be much more beneficial for people who can't afford it. And when there's buses, that means there will be fewer cars

which will reduce carbon emission. And adding real bike lanes will help kids and family away from fast traffic. By making those small changes can make Norfax a beautiful place where people can walk, shop, and work. Bus shelters with solar panels. Adding bus shelters will be very beneficial because when it's raining outside, you will have a dry place to sit in. Like I said before, fewer cars will help reduce carbon emission, better traffic, when there's better traffic, it will be easier for people to get around. And the streets will feel more like a community, not like a parking lot. And we would like to add solar panels on top of the shelter, the bus shelters, because it will generate power to light the area.

So solar panels are beneficial for residential and commercial. For residential, it will lower the bells. Instead of giving the money to the utility company, you can just keep it. property. It will have backup power even when the grid is down. For commercial, same thing, it will lower the costs. Green branding, it will attract eco-conscious customers who loves green shops, tax breaks, take advantage of big government incentive and write-offs.

Speaker 5So these are our global connections or sustainable development goals. So we have goal 11, 13, and 7 that correlate into our project. So these targets are sustainable cities and communities, climate action, and affordable and clean energy. So let's talk about how this is addressed in our project. For goal 11, we are planning sustainable urbanization, building safe, inclusive, and accessible green public spaces. For goal 13, we're reducing global warming by reducing heat, like the heat islands, and adding more greenery and trees. For goal 7, we're providing clean and efficient energy by installing solar panels. Reduce your carbon footprint. We ask that you please require green infrastructure standards in redevelopment, like enforcing

the green building policy which already exists but has never been enforced. Prioritizing walkable bike safe design elements and increasing tree canopy. Please establish youth consultation requirements before project approval. We bring essential lived experience and we are the future. We have outreaches to authorities in power, like you, members of planning commission that plan what to do with the city of Fairfax, the city school board who manage the four main city schools, and the city mayor and council members who are the final decision makers. bringing our voice to the redevelopment is a good thing so that you residents of city of the city of fairfax don't have to waste money time and taxes on implementing small site-based fixes later

we are the youth we are the future

Halimathank you for your time many thanks to miss conley um miss alam and miss denny

Speaker 6now that finished we appreciate any feedback and questions that you may have

James Featherthank you so much it's very timely you bring up north facts because in the not too distant future we'll we will probably be revisiting our small area plan so this is very valuable input and i appreciate your volunteering to be part of our consultation group and we may just call you on this i love your comment about we need to design our areas for people and not just cars and that's what we try to do in these centers is make them mixed-use desirable places to live and and conduct commerce and so forth so thank you for all your insights commissioners do you have any comments mr. rice

Matthew Ricewell over the weekend it's spring break at George Mason where I work so the schedules a little more flexible and I am very very busy with a program that miss Denny uses but what I have here is North facts I think you can outlines that you're very familiar with but we calculated the solar potential of every single small little pixel and it took about 10 hours to run on a very powerful server that we have at GMU and I've been remotely logged in all weekend and today processing this data for all of Northern Virginia so the Northern Virginia Regional Commission will get this data and then we'll deploy it throughout the region to show the very best places for solar panels and it's very very specific so

you can see doing analysis you can see where the sunlight is shaded by an intact tree canopy and those areas aren't quite as good for solar because they're in the shade but having that shade is obviously really really valuable and I think throughout the entire area that you've looked at it's dark red and that means there's no shade it's um an optimal area as you've already figured out it's an it's an optimal area to put solar panels some so I'm also calculating all the other jurisdictions and as you know we're a small little city in a very big region and the program that I'm using Miss Denny uses all the time and so I will share my data with her and then if she comes back to work with you again she'll have this and you can look at it in much

more detail but you've done a great job thank you

Kirsten Lockhartso one thing one interesting thing I've learned about city demographics recently is the average resident of Fairfax City is 38 years old so what's interesting about that number is that it's actually coming down age-wise we used to be one of the older areas within the region. And now, well, the rest of the region is getting older for starters, but Fairfax City is getting younger. So your point about encouraging more young people to be involved and to have their voices heard is very well taken. It's very important. You did mention increasing retail as a place to, as a reason to draw people to the area. Frequently, when we receive presentations from developers, they tell us that, you know, post-COVID or post-internet, that retail isn't really viable.

The folks that actually do business development in the city tell us otherwise, but frequently the builders don't see it. They don't have the vision that you guys have for shopping as a destination, for being able to support retail stores. If you guys were to wave a wand, you know, I saw you had bookstore and art studio. What would be attractive places for you to spend money in the city?

Speaker 6I think there should be like places for teens to be able to go there and enjoy themselves since especially like there is a lot of people who go to Norfolk but they're like a bit disappointed because in the area so I think we should add places that attract more teens like like younger retail stores, like younger clothing brands for teens to go.

Kirsten LockhartAnd how do you feel about new retail versus like vintage and consignment?

Speaker 6I think everyone would like be happy to go anywhere, but the newer retail stores, I think younger people would be more familiar with it because they've known that for a long time.

Kirsten LockhartThank you.

Paul CunninghamThank you. This area has been here for a long time. You've taken time to study North Vax. If you look back, it had a lot more cars parked on it than it has now. So over time, North Vax is a changing area, and that means that even though you're starting with a school project now, by the time you finish your high school projects and you finish your college projects, North Facts is still going to be here as an area to study and develop because it takes a very long time for some of these things to develop. And many times things are forgotten when you talk about the water feature and I want the stream to be above ground again. perhaps one of those things people don't remember is that before the stream went underground

we used to have flooding there you may not remember but if you go on the internet you probably can find it someplace that we had a big storm a number of years ago that caused flooding to occur all the way from North Vax down to Eaton Place. And one of the mechanics who was industrious and energetic at Oarsman took a big truck inner tube and blew it up to full size. And then he took that inner tube down to the intersection of 50 and 123, and he put it on the river that was running down, and he floated down the full length of 50 on a river until he got to Eaton Place. Now that's a cool water feature, isn't it? The only challenge with that water feature is that no cars were moving on 50 and no cars were moving on 123.

So sometimes cause and effect that comes in, that led to some of the planning that has undergrounded the water feature. But that does not mean that it can't be reversed and something like San Antonio with the Riverwalk, which I think you may have been referring to, can't become a really cool feature planned into an area. So I appreciate all the ideas you're bringing. You're going to be here much longer to have an impact on these ideas than I am, but they are valid. These are good ideas. They need to be developed, and then you need to talk to boards and commissions. So I appreciate your coming to talk to us. I hope you'll do it again and keep this project going because it's very instructive and very insightful.

Thank you.

Speaker 5Thank you, too.

James FeatherThank you very much. Anything else? Well, thank you so much. You've given us food for thought, especially as I said, we start considering small area plans again. You have some vision, and that's what's appreciated. it's easier for us slightly older folks to be entrenched and that's that's a difficult thing in the city sometimes people are comfortable with the way things are but we need your kind of vision to help us get out of our comfort zone so thank you for bringing these ideas to us thank you next

Speaker 7Good evening members of

Adele WisemanPlanning Commission. Today we're going to be talking about reimagining Fairfax the Courthouse Plaza. I'm Adele Wiseman.

Speaker 7I'm Henry Street. I'm Ilana Camilla. And I'm Camilla Michael.

Adele WisemanSo this is just the table of contents, everything we're going to be going through today. So this is the Courthouse Plaza Shopping Center. It's a very big parking lot. There's a few stores around the area, but it's mainly just a big amount of space. Most of it is parking. There's not much greenery around the area. There's a lot of asphalt. and it's just such a large space and we would love it if we could utilize the space and create something that could bring people together and give this area a nice warm community feel

Speaker 7all right so what is urban planning urban planning is basically the process of designing and developing areas in certain areas of a city basically urban planners have taken a lot of consideration on how they have to like build things. Basically they have to like take consideration into land use, transportation, economic development and environmental concerns.

Speaker 16You can see in our top left over there we have our land value legend. Land value just essentially means how high end or low end certain businesses on a certain part of land can be based off of the value of the land itself. As you can see, Courthouse Plaza is in the red, which is less than 20 percent. So we have to be mindful when we're redeveloping on, maybe we can't have as much high-end businesses, but with these redevelopments, hopefully we can maybe raise this land value and make some maybe nicer space for us to use.

Speaker 7All right, so basically zoning is a set of rules of where you're allowed to build certain example you would not want your house next to a factory because houses are meant for a residential area and factories are meant for a commercial use area. The zoning for a courthouse pralda is commercial use.

Speaker 16And I just wanted to further explain the difference between residential and commercial use in case some people didn't know already. Residential use is more for housing so like apartments, homes, and then commercial use is more for shops and boutiques. So in our designs that we're going to be proposing later on you're going to see that we don't have any housing and that's number one because Courthouse Plaza is mainly for commercial use and second of all there's also apartments really close by.

Adele WisemanWe also took building inspiration when we were imagining what we would do with the Courthouse Plaza area. As you can see we have a few shopping centers that you may know. For example we have the Mosaic district. The mosaic district has a lot of diverse shops. It's a very nice area. There's a lot to do. A lot of people are drawn to it and it's just a great area to be in. Tyson's Corner has a bunch of variety of stores. The stores are amazing and a lot of people go there just to hang out with their friends, hang out with their family and have a great time by themselves. There's also Fairfax Corner. Fairfax Corner is a smaller shopping center, but it also has a warm community-centered feel, and I enjoy going there myself. And the last place has a little bit of a story to it.

I used to live in Kenya. I lived overseas for two years, and in Kenya, they're very focused on environmental concerns. So the neighborhood I lived in for a year is the Grove, and the Grove had lots of pervious surfaces, lots of plants around the area. Anywhere where there was cars, surfaces and we never had problems with flooding or rainwater and it was just very nice to have that earthy natural feel to the area. There are also a few issues that we had to consider when we were thinking about the Courthouse Plaza. For example, stormwater and runoff. It's a big issue in our area especially with all of the asphalt and impervious surfaces so we wanted to do underground parking. We also wanted to put in stormwater detention systems so

It can capture, store, and slowly release the runoff, so then it causes less erosion and flooding. And we would also like to put pervious surfaces, so then there would be less flooding, and it'd give a more natural feel to the area. Also, pedestrian safety is a big issue. So we want it to be that the only way to get into the shopping center is through elevators. Maybe they could bring bikes or scooters up there, but we do not want any cars in the area. We want it to be fenced off. people don't feel stressed because cars do cause stress. And we also think that it just improved pedestrian safety in general. And lastly, we have to think about facilitating a strong local economy. So we wanted to do community-centered events, have partnerships with local businesses,

and create a vibrant walking space for people to be. Our biggest concerns are environmental ones. of impervious surfaces in the area so the problems with that is it leads to heat island effects excessive heat air pollution storm water runoff and flooding then again lack of green space has very similar problems with leads to heat island effects excessive heat lack of carbon absorption storm water runoff cause of flooding and erosion

Speaker 16i just wanted to further explain the heat island effect the last group elaborated on it a little It's essentially just when there's asphalt and concrete and the sun hits it and since black absorbs heat, it rises into the air, polluting the air, which is very bad for us to breathe in and very bad for the environment. As you can see, Courthouse Plaza is in the red due to the large amount of impervious surfaces and lack of trees and grass in the area. So with our designs that we're proposing, we wanted to make a change in this way. So what are some eco-friendly solutions that we could implement? Adele already talked about how we're managing stormwater and runoff as the area redevelops, adding more pervious areas so that the stormwater can soak into the ground instead of just laying

on top of it, and how we're improving pedestrian safety. I really wanted to put an emphasis on our Green Building Solutions policy implemented by the government for Fairfax. It essentially is just whoever's going to be building or redeveloping new spaces. If they add parts of the new space that will reduce emissions, then we have some incentives, such as tax reductions. Another emphasis I wanted to say is that Fairfax is part of a larger title, Green Tree USA, and we wanted to preserve that title by adding more green space to our already eco-friendly area. So what are some sustainable solutions that we could use to preserve that title and talk about the green building policies? Solar panels, there's a lot of wasted space on roofs and solar panels are a nice green,

eco-friendly power source. More pervious surfaces, as Adele was talking about, about the grove in Kenya, there was loft pervious surfaces, better for the environment. and then stormwater and runoff detention systems, which store stormwater runoff instead of just letting it lay on top.

Adele WisemanThis is one of the creative designs that we came up with. We did add specific stores, but these are not all set in stone. These are just ideas that we had. We wanted to add something for any age. As you said, there is younger people in Fairfax, so we wanted to add very popular shops for middle schoolers, high schoolers, and even college students. For example, Addicted, Brandy Melville, Aerie, and PacSun are multi-gender, really nice stores. A lot of people love going there. Some of them are more new, so they're very popular right now. There is already a Safeway in the area. We don't want to knock that down. We don't want to touch that because there aren't many grocery stores in the area, and it's just very convenient for everybody that lives there because there is people that live behind the courthouse plaza.

There's also for kids a skate and fun zone. I've been there before, super duper fun, and it was a great way to get my energy out when I was younger. The greens area in the middle is also for children. They can run around and play, and there's benches for parents to watch, make sure that their kids are safe. There's also some food areas for people to enjoy a nice snack. There's also Ted's Bulletin. Ted's Bulletin is pretty fancy, but it is not super expensive, and it's a nice area. It's big, and there's lots of people that like to go there. And there's also Capital One Cafe. It's an amazing place to study, especially for college and high school students. They have many spaces. They have many rooms.

They have outlets. on the side and coffee. We also added in local stores. So there's Bard's Alley, which is a very comfy, cute bookstore, and Fairfax Surf Shop. And I'm going to ask Kami to come up and talk more about Fairfax Surf Shop.

Speaker 16I just wanted to add and vouch for Fairfax Surf Shop because as a person that enjoys skateboarding, Fairfax Surf Shop has been a great center of community for the skateboarding community in Fairfax. A lot of the youth go there and support there. and it's been there for a very long time. It's a nice local business. Even my dad, when he was younger, he lived here. He used to go to Fairfax Surf Shop. So we should keep it. There's no reason in my mind to take it away.

Adele WisemanThere's some more ideas that we could get into are shuttle stops for people that live close to the area instead of walking or driving because it would reduce the amount of gas people are using. top of the shops to power the shops and make sure that everything is natural energy. Community gardens, there is greenery around the area. If we go back, you can see there is greenery around where the parking garage starts. Having people in the community come and plant that stuff would be a great memory and show our community as a whole. And it is also just an amazing way to use the space. And of course, water fountains drinking and to look at, which Henry will talk more about.

Speaker 16One of the things we really wanted to focus on when thinking of design proposals is how we can facilitate a strong local economy in Fairfax. So here are just some ideas I have. First a strong sense of community so we can do that by having more DIY independent small businesses so that a larger amount of money is being spent by residents staying in the community benefiting our local businesses. Second diverse businesses. There's a lot of different kind of people in Fairfax and there should be a place to go no matter who you are. Three job opportunities, as you guys were saying earlier, the ages are going lower and lower of the people living in Fairfax. And Fairfax has a very wide range of ages and a lot of them are in the teenage to young

adult zone and that's when you start getting into the workforce. So it'd be nice to have more job opportunities benefiting everybody. Developments I would like to see as a 14-year-old living in Fairfax. A music venue, possibly just a small venue for artists to play, giving people in my age range something to do. There's a lot of very talented orchestras and bands in schools nearby. There's Fairfax High School, there's George Mason. And it's not just limited to schools, though. We can make our own music, we can present that. People from out of town can present it. Our friends can present it. It could be a very nice opportunity to have. Some ideas I had of inspiration were Black Cat, which is in D.C.,

a smaller venue, maybe a little bit big for Fairfax, but still a nice place to have in mind. And then Jam in Java, which is in Vienna, which is more of a cafe by morning, music venue by night, but a very nice inspiration if we were to add a music venue. And then second, a youth center, because, again, there's a lot of different kinds of people in Fairfax, and a youth center is kind of a place where you can just hang out with your friends no matter what your interests are and stay off your phone, keep you out of trouble, create that further sense of community.

HenryThis is our second design. something I wanted to do with it was rename it because people might have a negative connotation with courthouse like oh it's a parking lot, wow so I was thinking Lord Fairfax Lord Fairfax Plaza would be good because Lord Fairfax was one of the original founders of this area as you can see on the plaque it's a very long time ago in like the 1600s Over on the left would be more of a restaurant area, like a food court. It would have public seating, pervious surfaces with tiles and grass in between because no one wants to walk on just mud. There would be different kinds of restaurants, more sit down meals, more fast food. There might be a Chick-fil-A because it's a very popular store or restaurant.

The Safeway would stay there because it's a great grocery store, as I said before, and it's one of the main revenue generators for Courthouse Plaza. Over on the right is a more unique area that would be little booths or tents for small businesses to rent out. For example, if I'm a small artist and I don't have enough money for a storefront, small booth and I can start my business from there, maybe work my way up to a storefront eventually. On the left and right of the main area would be different shops. They could be local businesses or chains such as Nike which shows shoes, clothes, sports equipment, all that stuff. At the bottom right would be elevators and on the left that bring you up from the underground

parking. It would have trees around it to help keep it cool, benches, and it would be glass all the way down so that you can see the layers. That would be really cool. I'd ride on that for hours. In the middle would be a green space. It would be a strip of grass with a fountain in the middle. You could just kind of have a picnic. Kids could run around. It would be a nice area. And along the sides would be mini trees.

Speaker 16Mini trees!

HenryWho doesn't love mini trees? And in the bottom left somewhere over there would be a bioretention pond. But instead of just being a fenced-off hole in the ground like most places, it would have boardwalks and a pavilion. So you could kind of chill out there. It would be a much calmer area compared to the shopping center. You could rent out a book or lend a book from the library, which is right next door, and read it on the benches, bring a board game to play with your family at the tables, The right would be a fountain, which not only looks and sounds nice, but also helps to keep the water moving, which helps to protect against mosquitoes, which like to rest and lay eggs in stagnant water.

Adele WisemanWe also had to do global connections from the United Nations website, Sustainable Development Goals. We used the same goals as the group before us, Goal 11, Goal 13, and Goal 7. Sustainable cities and communities, climate action, affordable and clean energy are the goals that we focused on and that apply to our project. For sustainable cities and communities, we wanted to build a safe, inclusive, and accessible green public space. So the sidewalks, the purview surfaces. For climate action, we're thinking of reducing the heat island by planting green cities, planting more trees, and making it a walkable area with low carbon emission. So just all the plants and growing stuff in the area that we want to add.

And for affordable and clean energy, the solar panels. Our ask for change is to increase the tree canopy and to get more into that it would add the shading and seating areas for people to be in. We also want inclusion for green infrastructure and pervious surfaces and we want it to be a safe area for people to walk and bike. This is because students are daily users of the space and people that live around the area and we want to bring essential lived experience to redevelopment decisions through our ideas. participate in these decisions as youth because we have a lot to say and to think about so it would be nice to have some Some kind of idea of what we want Not only are we talking to you guys

But we are also talking to the city school board the city mayor and council members Because we want to talk to as many people as we can to influence for change Thank you and now we're free for any questions and feedback

James Featherthank you commissioners mr cunyhan

Paul Cunninghamlet me start with one question you you talk to the groups that you're going to talk to you've outlined them there but one question i would have for you is understanding our economy and the way the world works. Right now we've got Courthouse Plaza. Somebody owns it. Is there any strategy for talking to the people who actually own product, own property, own places that we want to influence so that we can interact with them to get the outcomes that we want?

Adele WisemanAs you can see with the other group, they had a map where there was brown areas there could be redevelopment and the whole area of the courthouse plaza is open there is nothing that's off um bounds like there's nothing that we can't really think about or imagine but we haven't really gone into it as much as like asking

Paul Cunninghamwill anything happen if we don't include that group in our process and that's my odd question I mean if we get the City Council to agree to it and we get the Planning Commission to agree to it and all of the students and all the people in the city agree to it how do we still get it to happen

Faiz Alumand the

Paul Cunninghamowners have to be included in most of our processes and And it's one of the things that seems to be a challenge when we plan things is how do we include the people who can make it happen in our process.

Kirsten LockhartNow, that feels like a trick question because I did not know until I was on the planning commission how much development rights lie with the property owner versus the city in which the property exists. So that was a tricky one, Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamAnd that's because I'm an old guy. I have been here for a long time. But if you could learn that one at the start of the process, you might be much more effective than some of us have been at various times.

Faiz AlumYeah, they can go to the owners. I don't think this group is shy.

Kirsten LockhartI would, and I would encourage you to. I think that that would be really an interesting conversation for you guys to have. A couple questions of things that you brought up. So you have, in your examples and then in your presentations, you have a fair amount of high-end national retail, right, which I understand is attractive. you know, on paper, Mosaic and the Wharf and the Grove and all the, like, the Grove in LA, right? All of these places, they look fantastic. But what they do is they drive up rent for businesses themselves, for anyone who wants to live near there. And Courthouse Plaza, obviously, is hurting for development, right? People in the city have been asking for something new there for a really

long time. But what it does have right now is sort of incubator space for locally owned small businesses, the vet's office, the pickleball, the surf shop, Chubby Squirrel, you know, lots of are owned and run by people who live in this community. So how do you see that balance shaking out? You know, you mentioned Fairfax Surf Shop. I bought most of my snowboarding gear there back when it was a barn in the middle of the city, like before it moved to Courthouse Plaza. So that's a local institution, as you pointed out. But it's a small business. It's not going to compete with PacSun at the end of the day.

Speaker 16I just wanted to add in, those were mostly for example. But at the same time, I understand what you're saying about how the different businesses compete with each other. there can be a balance arranged by maybe there's I'm trying to I'm trying to think the word but Fairfax surf shop I know there's definitely different communities for different places you know so there's probably skateboarders go to the surf shop and then people that maybe into more trendy clothing stores will go to different places so I think that there's definitely space for different kinds of people that go to different places so I'm not sure if I'm like explaining this well but um I think that there's a way to even it out by just all

the kinds of people that live in Fairfax because as we said there's a lot of different kind of people that live

Kirsten Lockhartin Fairfax. Sure there can be space for everyone and I think you get on it too with some of your flex space like having pop-up events having spaces that are available and that's really important too. You also talked about getting more people walking and biking and using transit. As you know that housing development that's down there is predominantly college students. The city rerouted bus lines to get kids on the bus between the housing and a lot of them still drive. I would venture to say most of them still drive. So what's it really going to take to incentivize getting out of cars and moving around the city and that space in particular on foot and not in a car?

HenrySomething that I didn't know until recently was that the buses were free. So maybe more advertising about how they are free transit for everyone. It's not paid. There's no fare.

Adele WisemanAnd also just kind of telling people that it'd be helping our environment by using less gas, or just saying that's an easy way to get around. Especially with shopping centers, it's really hard to park, it's hard to get into places sometimes. So having a shuttle that could drop off a lot of people at once, maybe if it was advertised or if there's posters put up, people would be more influenced to try it.

Kirsten LockhartSo do you envision like a shuttle as an alternative to it was more direct fewer stops quicker turnaround yeah

Adele Wisemanit could be an alternative but it could also kind of work in partnership and

Speaker 16I just wanted to add in with our sort of proposals that we have for you guys we're trying to make it a more attractive looking space so there may be more reason for people to walk and bike anyways because they want to be near the new development not as much in transit.

Matthew RiceStories? Good. A book I read about why people walk where they walk suggests one of the most important things is to have a sense that the route that you're on is both safe and interesting. And so I think you've covered the interesting part. It's, I think, useful to have a mix of local businesses and bigger stores that are well-known, and it's also good to mix greenery and other things and benches. Things like that are very helpful. What would you try to do to make this area appear safer for people so that they'd be willing to walk?

Speaker 16With adding more, not high-end, but more trendy businesses, appearance, it can look more safe potentially because if there's more like undeveloped, maybe less attractive looking places, I think that the kinds of people that are going to be there are not there for as much of the kind of shops that are there.

Adele WisemanAlso sidewalks, walkways, and more on like the safety of it, it does give a more warm feel when you see plants or walkways where tons of people are so having the shopping center kind of be like a nice natural grassy area may give off a more safe feel and also with the parking garage and there being no cars on the actual shopping center it may be nice for people to just walk around good

Matthew RiceI want to promise all four of you my first question in almost every development review that we do is about walkability, about sidewalk widths, and about the connections between the grid of sidewalks and their development in the neighboring areas. I have the very same map from North Vax. All the blue and green areas are places with intact tree canopy. And so this area has some pretty spectacular green spaces close by. And I think the middle of it, obviously, is just a big parking lot, and it's all red. But red means potentially could be quite good for generating energy locally. The Willard Sherwood project, which I really hope the city builds and I'm excited about, has a whole bunch of solar panels integrated into the project,

and that energy is being used or it's planned to be used on site. they're not generating electricity just to appear green they're generating energy that will be used in the building which is quite a different thing than just generating it and then trying to sell it back to dominion um so i love what you're doing and i think this sort of exercise now is the second year is i had nothing like this i had a great high school it's a one of the best in the nation and we didn't have a class that introduced any concepts related to planning I'm a university professor and I do teach students about this because I think it's great but having this reach down in the middle school is fantastic and so I want to compliment your teachers and when you go from KJ up to

high school there are some really good instructors and classes that you can take at high school that would continue some of this work. Mr. Nabte knows all about those because he and I have kids that are going through high school and so we can tell you what's next in store for you. Thanks that's it.

Faiz AlumAnd the design that Henry made was, Henry do you want to talk about your design, how you made the design? What did you use?

HenryI used the Tinkercad to make a 3D design of what I had envisioned. Good

Matthew RiceI was going to guess you used SketchUp but yeah it looked good. that's a real tool. There are things like that that students use frequently for making things in the program that I have here uses things like that. It looks at every single branch of every single tree and it figures out throughout the entire calendar year where the sunlight and where the shadows are. And then it adds up energy over the entire year looking every 30 minutes as the sun travels the sky, all 365 days a year and it does some calculations so the program that you're using things like it that miss Denny could show you and probably has already those are really important tools used not just in urban planning but used throughout the entire region and so it's a it's exciting so continue learning

about this

HenryOne other thing I wanted to say about the sidewalks is that I recently wrote a letter to the mayor about her class project about walkability in Fairfax. And I had proposed different ways to make it safer and more inviting, such as more of those little islands. Like if you go over to like Old Town by where the old Jebeen is and that area where there's that big turn, there's that little island there where you can kind of walk and wait there for the next light or go the other way and I think that's a great idea to it's much more safe than a big long crosswalk in like in some places yeah

Matthew Ricevery good I know the mayor's a huge fan of things like that so I think she'll be very responsive to your ideas and may promote them herself one of the very best projects that we've done that's similar to that as a connection between the neighborhood she lives in and the shops that are on Fairfax Boulevard close to Panera 99 Ranch. That entire shopping center is now connected through the neighborhood with a sidewalk, with a bench, and green space. And that Hill Street connector is what we call it. It's a byproduct of people like you thinking about eventually somebody's saying why don't we why don't we do that so um good uh the sooner we turn over everything to gen z the better off we'll probably be uh thank you yeah

Kirsten Lockharti was just gonna say to that end i hope that you've enjoyed doing this project i was late to the party on how cool urban planning really is um you know i didn't know until i got involved with the city here in fairfax you know i'm i'm jealous that that amy lynn gets to start from scratch with this and and my age. So I hope that you found it interesting, like, seeing kind of behind the curtain of how this all works and that you stay involved.

James FeatherThank you. In your presentation, and I think both presentations, talked a lot about some of the retail opportunities that could appeal to a broad cross-section of our population. I appreciate that. Do your ideas contemplate additional residences in the area? You sort of showed the ground floor. but some of your sketches look like taller buildings. Did you contemplate more residences? To support the retail, of course, we need people to live there. Is that part of your vision?

HenryNot really. I had planned for the buildings to be one story because it's commercial and their house is right by ours, like literally right behind Courthouse. There's apartments. But also I want it to be low so that there's plenty of sunlight for not only the grass, but it's just more enjoyable. People don't want to be in a shady, kind of dark alleyway-looking area. They want to be in a bright, sunny, enjoyable area that's got lots of people hanging out, doing things.

Adele WisemanWe also wanted to do more with this project, too. We wanted to make 3D models, which would show more of what the infrastructure would look like. I'm sorry. This choked a little bit. But yeah, so we just want to build more on this. This project isn't over for us. We do want to keep on thinking about this.

James FeatherAnd I ask because some of the examples you raised, Mosaic, Fairfax Corner, it's a mix. It's mixed use, and that's a lot of what we're talking about. Residences to support businesses. I'm very pleased you captured really well the vision that's in our comprehensive plan, which is our city is a vibrant 21st century community and you use the word community supported by a strong sustainable economy. You've really captured the idea as well. There's a lot of food for us to think about as we consider there is active proposals now from the owner of the property at Courthouse Plaza. I love the idea of renaming it. It sounds kind of governmental with the current name, history I think is a very good idea and again your ideas from both groups to

that we should be considering how we appeal to all generations that live in the city you've given us more food for thought and we appreciate that this is excellent work I want to thank you for your time to your advisors this is kindly miss and miss Denny for assisting thank you anything else you'd like to say please but I understand we're going to have a photo op

Faiz Alumthank you so much for the time that you've given to the students this is just amazing I think this will be their biggest take away from middle school what do you say

Kirsten Lockhartyou

Faiz Alumdon't have to say it because I'm asking

Kirsten Lockhartthank you so much

James Featherwe

Faiz Alumwould love now another task for Paul and Amy is connect them to the owners they will present We would love to do that. Thank you for that idea.

James FeatherKeep an eye out for as this Courthouse Plaza redevelopment continues. We'd love to have you come and speak when we get to our public meetings. We'll keep track of what's going on.

Faiz AlumThank you so much again for your time. Thank you.

Speaker 1Thank you.

James FeatherThank you. Okay. Okay. Next item on the agenda, Ms. Nanny doesn't get a break, is the consideration of our 2025 Planning Commission annual report to the City Council as well as associated updates to our comp plan implementation guides and the small area plan implementation guides. Welcome.

Amy Lynne DennystaffStand by. We're frozen.

James FeatherWe're frozen. I was enjoying the day of not being frozen. 70 degrees was lovely.

Amy Lynne DennystaffI got nothing. I don't want to restart it. It's fully frozen. Will that mess something up? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I

Paul Nabtistaffdon't know.

Amy Lynne DennystaffI'm terrified that that's going to break the whole system. Should I?

James FeatherI have applause for a reboot or something.

Amy Lynne DennystaffIt disconnects everything, so the hole burns down. Didn't want to restart it and completely break the system, but we're like fully frozen. Like fully frozen. Let's see. I'm just working hard as well. That's all. Just gotta see when all your environments.

Speaker 1Go ahead and sign in again. It's for faxing, faxing.

Kirsten LockhartYeah.

Amy Lynne DennystaffThat's why we put it on the desktop. Beautiful. All right. Thanks.

James FeatherAll right. Here we go. What's going to do the implementation guides first?

Amy Lynne Dennystaffwe're gonna mix and match mix

James Featherand match mix

Amy Lynne Dennystaffand match so yes so good evening chair feather members of the planning commission third time's a charm we're finally here to talk about the implementation guides and the 2025 annual report implementation guides for the comprehensive plan as well as the four adopted similarity plans for old town northfax camp washington and fairfax circle and just to note these updates are as of january did not do further updates despite all the meeting delays so you have 105 of the 333 total actions have been updated since our last review in July 29 of the 69 total land use actions were updated this includes the level of service standards project which is underway and expected to be complete by about mid-year the affordable housing strategic

plan is complete and was recently adopted by council and the accessory drawing unit or zoning ordinance amendments are underway 21 of the 93 updated for multimodal transportation. Consultant procurement is underway for the Fairfax Circle transportation evaluation. Utility relocation is underway for the Blenheim Boulevard multimodal improvements with construction expected to begin later this year or early next year. The Germantown Road corridor improvements are in design and the 60% design public hearing was held in December. The Rust Road feasibility study has also begun and is in the process of procuring consultant a new live data dashboard showing bicycle and micro mobility information is nearing completion once live it will allow for continuous

monitoring of the bike share and micro mobility programs in the city and additionally the Warwick McLean intersection improvements are under construction moving on to environment and sustainability 16 of the 64 total actions were updated including the energy efficiency community block grant which has been received. This will provide public education and energy outreach coordinator and free energy audits for homeowners. The urban forest master plan was adopted in January and you will hear more in a few minutes about the tree conservation ordinance which is being done in conjunction with the small area plan zoning ordinance amendments and the rollout of the new trash and recycling carts is complete. In economic vitality, 10 of the 21 total actions

were updated. The Fairfax first program has been approved and this will provide free office BUSINESSES AND PROFESSORS AWAITING R AND D GRANT DECISIONS. THROUGH ITS PARTNERSHIP WITH ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, MASON COREA CENTER FOR INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS CREATING AN ALUMNI BUSINESS INDEX AND BEGINNING A PROCESS TO STREAMLINE KOREAN START-UPS LOOKING TO LOCATE IN THE CITY. AND THE OTFBA HAS COMPLETED THEIR ACTION PLAN. IN COMMUNITY SERVICES, 24 OF THE 86 TOTAL ACTIONS WERE UPDATED. THE FOUNDARY STUDY IS COMPLETE AND THE DESIGN FOR THE are underway. The new park facility updates for this go-round include replacement of the playground at Pat Rodeo, the Van Dyke preschool equipment, the Kuttner Park teen playground,

pickleball coming to Providence Park, and periodic tennis and basketball court resurfacing. And the wastewater collection system remapping effort is approximately 75% complete. So here we are at the annual report. This is just a summary that's on page three, I believe. So 65 of the actions have been identified with planning as having the lead responsibility. Of these, the majority are ongoing. There are 11 with the timeframe of 2026, four with the timeframe of 2028, two with the timeframe of 2030 and none with the 2035 timeframe. There are six actions not yet in progress. At this time last year, 17 actions were not in progress. The two actions in 2026 that are not yet in progress relate to providing district flexibility

for commercial industrial uses. status for 2028 is to evaluate benefits and feasibility of manufactured housing communities and the two 2030 actions relate to a TDM fund and creating commercial corridor block concept diagrams. Moving back to the implementation guides for our small area plans. In Old Town eight of the 41 action items were updated. This includes the completion of the retail viability study which supports increasing retail square footage in Old Town. Construction for the University Drive bike lanes which is anticipated for this year and a survey was included in the TDM commitments for Flats on University and that study was completed for the first time this past fall in Northfax eight of 45 action items were updated similar to

the findings in Old Town the retail viability study also supports increasing retail square footage in Northfax as I mentioned the intersection improvements at Warwick and McLean are under construction and lastly design discussions for the Northfax linear park have begun in Camp Washington seven of 43 action action items were updated again Germantown road corridor improvements are in design and the TDM survey for the point at Fairfax was completed along with the Flatsy University and moving lastly to Fairfax circle we have ten action items were updated the like I mentioned the intersection study for the circle is beginning and the flood study is underway and looking to be complete by the summer.

The Pickett Road connector trail is no longer on hold and is in design. And finally, Scout on the Circle also participated in that same survey with flats and the point last fall. And back to our annual report, this is the summary showing implementation status for the small area plan actions. As you can see, all of the actions in Oldtown and Northfax are underway, all but one in Camp Washington and 45 out of 56 in Fairfax Circle. and that is all I've got happy to take any questions

James FeatherCommission's any questions seeing none it's another great six months of progress the only question I would have probably about the annual report itself I presume you've all had a chance ahead of the meeting. Seemed like a fair summary of what we present to council. I've actually already signed it, so if we have to make a change, we can. But a lot of these statistics we're in, of course, our annual summary of meetings and so forth. But the only question I might have, when I looked at the comprehensive plan implementation guide, there are some items scheduled for 2026 in other areas that are not CDPs that are not started I think the ones that I noted are all in the sustainability area is there a way to communicate or understand what's going on or

Amy Lynne Dennystaffthose yeah there's the climate energy action plan resiliency plan zoning

Speaker 7for solid waste EV

Amy Lynne Dennystaffreadiness at least the three plans the EV readiness plan resiliency in climate energy action, they had made some level of progress on a year ago, and all of that progress kind of got halted because of the budget. So they are all aware, and it's all kind of still budget dependent. But they know. Okay.

James FeatherSo they haven't started. No current period updates. Right. Okay. Just wanted to be sure.

Amy Lynne DennystaffAnything else?

James FeatherWe don't need a resolution or something to adopt or issue that annual report, I believe. No, we haven't been. doing that

Paul Nabtistaffno it's informal yep carry forward yes as long as there's no objections as

James Featherlong as there are no objections the

Kirsten Lockhartmembership paragraph obviously has a new edition i guess that doesn't count for 2025 but it just says 202. oh whoops thanks you're good no i appreciate it this was okay no feedback

James FeatherThank you very much.

Kirsten LockhartAll right.

James FeatherOkay, moving on. Next to our business is public hearings, which we have none of, so we will recess our regular meeting and go into our work session, which will be a continuation of the discussion on potential amendments to the zoning ordinance related to the adopted small area plans. Mr. Napty and crew. Welcome.

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. Let me just get this started here. I am here tonight with Justin Wallace and Mark White from Whitesmith and Cosino, consulting firm who's helping us with this project as a quick background the purpose of this effort is to bring the zoning ordinance more in line with our adopted smaller year plans this effort is also specifically recommended in our comprehensive plan quick review of the process we began this back in mid 2024 we are now in the third and final phase where we have draft amendments that we're asking the planning commission and city council and others to review as we continue to refine that leading up to this our consultant led an initiation effort where they interviewed

stakeholders and held public outreach to get an understanding of what types of issues we were facing with our zoning ordinance and smaller plans in the second phase they developed a series of strategies to confirm what we should be working on as we actually prepared the text for the amendments and once we finish with that phase they've been spending the last several months actually preparing text to be considered to be incorporated into our zoning ordinance we're in the first draft for review we'll be back in front of you in a couple of months again to ensure that we're continuing to move in the right direction before we prepare any final amendments a a summary of the schedule that we're looking at for this review of the first draft as

reminder we began discussing this with you on February 9 with the staff report for that meeting you received the the full draft text amendments and we at that meeting went over the some a couple of the critical items with you provided you with a general outline we talked about the overall zoning structure which as to introduce a new zoning district that could be requested to be rezoned into to accomplish the desires of the smaller plans. We talked about dimensional standards and community benefits which relate to each other. Then moving forward, we had planned to talk with you on February 23rd about the circulation and parking sections and the separate tree conservation and landscaping efforts that city staff is working on that meeting was canceled and so we're going to be grouping

those items onto the presentation tonight but we're going to start with what we had originally planned to present to you tonight on the march 9 meeting and that is frontages and open space the two remaining sections of the draft that you received that we had not talked about yet and so the folks from wsc are here to help with that and also at the end of this we can circle back to some of the items that we already talked about. You've had more time to look at the amendments now. If you have new questions that have come up, if there's anything that is more appropriate to be directed to the consultant as opposed to staff, you can bring those up then as well. So with that, we will begin our discussion for tonight,

and I will turn it over to Justin Wallace.

Justin WallaceGood evening, commissioners. Can you hear me okay? Okay, I'm Justin Wallace. I'm with Mark White. We're here to answer questions about frontages, open space and anything else in particular with the zoning ordinance while we're here i'll start with the development frontages and just a quick refresh as to why we went this route this directly reflects what was in the small area plans development frontages were called out in the saps but also given the fact that fairfax has an overlay with design guidance already The development frontage was kind of a balance that we felt was the most appropriate approach for the activity center districts. So the purpose of the development frontage is to strengthen the relationship between the building and the street

and to reinforce more flexible design outcomes along the street edge. The definition that we have in the zoning ordinance is that it includes the various building and site components along the frontage of properties that contribute to the overall character, streetscape presence, spatial function, and pedestrian scale and comfort of elements along the street. So they, the development frontages regulate the spatial character along existing and planned future streets and public right of way. So if you'll notice, I believe figure two has maps that offer where development frontages are expected to occur within the activity center district and so that's how they would be applied. And so we have four main types of development frontages.

Those include priority retail, flexible commercial, open space, and then a residential frontage. So the priority retail reflects those areas in the SAPs that have a high pedestrian focus. And that includes uses such as restaurants, retail, and hospitality uses. those are preferred uses within priority retail the build to zone for priority retail requires that the building be pushed up closer to the street so 50 of the building is located four feet from the property line or back of sidewalk the remaining 50 may be set back to allow for outdoor dining pedestrian plazas landscaping and additional tree canopy for priority retail have visibility and transparency requirements the entries must be well

lit must be visible from the streets or sidewalk and there's minimum design treatment for those areas that are between the building in the street the second frontage is flexible commercial so these would apply along the major thoroughfares throughout the city of Fairfax when you think of the uses here conventional traditional retail big box stores so this allows more flexibility for those types of developments along those major thoroughfares this has a more relaxed built to zone so 10 to 20 feet with an active frontage that occurs in the front of the building this development frontage also has entry design requirements and wall plane variation requirements every 40 feet of the building the next frontage is open space and as you can guess this applies along parks natural areas

common space and urban trails this has a build to zone of 10 feet and that allows for a usable frontage and a transition area between the building and the open space this also requires an entry or outdoor gathering space that's oriented to the park or open space and a landscaped edge for where there is no entry or outdoor space there's also some minimum requirements for the upper portion of the building that's oriented to those open spaces and then finally we have an active frontage that applies to residential uses this has a minimum six foot setback and that helps to create a frontage yard for residential areas there's a maximum setback of 20 feet and so that allows some additional flexibility for residential uses.

That's an overview for the development furnages. I'll pause if you have questions for that or I can keep going and we can get through all the portions. Any thoughts so far?

James FeatherQuestions at this point? I

Kirsten Lockhartguess I'm still a little unclear on how this dovetails with our previously discussed green space and sort of space offerings, considerations for the same zoning, because it seems like a lot of that flexibility for a developer is going to be along frontage-type spaces, so street trees, entryways, things of that nature. I just want to make sure we're not setting ourselves up to be in conflict with our standards versus our what we can offer in terms of concessions. But maybe I need to just see it visually to understand better.

Justin Wallacejust so i'm understanding so your concern is that it's uh compatible with what is required out of the zoning ordinance in terms of street canopy and the require what's required today allowing for that flexibility

Kirsten Lockhartcorrect especially if it's one of the sort of levers that developers will have to pull is like offering more green space in the form of a canopy you know additional canopy in the entryway or in a you know along the frontage um but if then they're held to a different standard for what that frontage needs to look like are we are we cutting off an avenue to provide that that discussion area right

Justin Wallaceand that's been an important question and conversation that we've had with staff and with the urban forester is allowing more flexibility and so we have included flexibility for additional tree canopy within the frontage area because we realized that is a concern for developers and they're already kind of negotiating that space. And so we've tried to bake that into this flexibility, into the zoning ordinance.

James FeatherAnd it may dovetail with some of the landscaping things that we'll get into later, I presume. Somewhere they have to intersect.

Paul NabtistaffYeah, well, you know, when we get to that, I don't want to jump ahead too much, That's not going to get into specifics of streetscape requirements and things like that, which I think is what your question is more about. This is where we have two sections of the zoning ordinance that are addressing the same issue. And, of course, trees will be a part of that when we get into more detail on the tree ordinance piece. So I don't think we'll get too much detail on that with that piece. but I think hearing what your concern is, is something that as we move forward with this, we're going to be running some tests on the way things work, and that's one of the things that we'll have to kind of run through that test

and make sure we aren't enforcing something in one area that's detracting from what we actually want in another area.

Justin WallaceOkay. Okay. Okay, I'll move on to recreation and open space. This is another huge portion of the zoning ordinance text amendment. And so what we've drafted in more detail, it aligns with the values that we heard from community engagement process and from the small area plans. So when we think about a network of open space and the variety of scales and programs, activated open space, and resilient features, all of that is what we heard from community engagement. And so what we've drafted here is open space definitions and types that

Paul Nabtistaffreflect back to the small area plans. The

Justin Wallaceminimum open space required for the activity center district is 10%, which aligns with the commercial urban. But the difference here is that developers can use one out of the various types of open space that we've defined here. And that's on page 32 of the draft. And so the difference here is that we've weighted the open space types. And so some open space types naturally have more of a public outwardly presence that encourages an active street edge. Whereas other open space types are more residual space. They might be towards the back of the building or interior to the building. And so the weighted scale is based off the public benefit. And so what we've done is weighted, we've rewarded higher scales of open space for those

highly visible spaces. And we've disincentivized those other types that are inward or more residual space. And so developers can use a multiplier to either count more towards the open space or count less depending on the type of open space that they are proposing in their building. And so it's an incentive-based program and it's based off of Loudoun County, which is where we've previously worked in. And so we have a set of open space types and we've defined the qualitative aspects of those open space types and then defined the requirements for pedestrian access, ownership and maintenance, maintenance of open space and largely that is the main difference between the existing zoning ordinance and the new text amendment.

So any questions about how that is that strategy was approached?

James FeatherI think I have a question. I'm not sure if others do. if I understand it correctly you may not necessarily get more space you just may get credit for space depending on its use the example that's in the whatever page it was, 31 of your draft ordinance gives an example of 500 square feet of frontage amenity and a multiplier of one and a half that you may get for a community civic space equates to 750 square feet of total open space. You get credit for that, but you still only have an actual 500 square feet. Is that how we interpret how this is supposed to work?

Justin WallaceRight.

James FeatherWe're not actually getting more open space. We're getting credit for its use.

Justin WallaceYou'll have to, you can use multiple types of open space. The base minimum is 10%. And so, yes, there's some math behind And if you only get, per your example, 500 square foot for a certain type of open space, you might need to apply another type of open space to get to the 10% minimum.

James FeatherIt feels a little

Matthew Ricecomplex.

James FeatherWhen

Matthew RiceI look

James Featherat the

Matthew Ricenumber of

James Featherexamples in here, there's a very long list. some you get pinged for and some you get credit for but okay

Matthew Ricemr chair

Paul Cunninghamthis seems you know this is all new except that if we go back to the north facts small area plan we have a linear park proposed in the plan getting it actually built is going to be challenge because of the redevelopment of individual properties and the fact that it's on both sides of 123 and makes a 90 degree left turn going north and goes through what is now an active construction site so that would get a hundred and fifty percent credit for something that has been put in there moving along which would allow somebody to squeeze something else or is that what I'm envisioning getting 150% credit something like that that we have already put in and that we're working toward as opposed to any other kind of

open space that would be usable because this linear park is along the sides of sidewalk and street just to be amenity type space but its use is primarily visual not functional if you understand the difference between the two it makes the street looks nice but who uses that dog walkers people like that and if they don't pick up after themselves it may not leave the space in better shape than than the neighbors might have wanted it.

Paul NabtistaffIf I could address that one. I think the types of open spaces that are shown in the smaller airplanes that are intended to be contributions towards the community character are exactly the types of open spaces that are targeted through this program. By giving developers credit for open spaces that are actually public amenities and civic space, then they're more incentivized to do that as opposed to private amenities, open space that we get now aside from what we get through negotiations that'll give them the encouragement to to provide those types of spaces now as we refine this and we'd ask you to look in detail at the open spaces that are in the list that are in the draft amendments because as you said in some cases we have things there are portions of the linear park

for example linear park is a great example because it changes in character there are portions of that that really are just an enhanced streetscape and if we think that is something is not enough of a community benefit that it should have the 1.5 weighting factor then we should write our definition to exclude that but there are other portions of the linear park that actually are impacts to private sites that are intended to be public amenities that will serve the greater community and that's where we really do need some kind of incentive to get private landowners to provide those right now we're really trying to do that kind of thing through negotiations and it gets really complicated and you're trading things so if a developer understands

this kind of space for the community I get this benefit to myself for it then they should understand that that's what they're working toward but it's up to us to make sure we write it so that we're getting the types of spaces that we really want the most or encouraging those the most and not incentivizing those that we don't

Paul Cunninghamokay because we've got a crane in Northfax currently on a construction site and part of that is that interior to the building there was provided and that was the open space. But the linear park was supposed to run along the other side and I don't know how that fits in in the final drawings that we looked at when they went out of here for approval so to speak and now they're into construction and whether we're going to get the open space along the side, the balancing off. It seems to be getting very complicated with the trade off back and forth. But when I think

James Featherabout that example, something interior only gets 50% credit because it's private.

Paul CunninghamBut it should be twice as big then to get the credit that we want.

James FeatherSo one hopes it would incentivize the developer to put in some of the public accessible space too. Okay.

Paul CunninghamI'm trying to figure out if we're making something that's so complicated. It feels a little complex,

James Featherbut I get where it's going.

Paul CunninghamAnd I understand that what comes out of here and we think has been approved then moves beyond our control. And when we see what actually occurs down the road, there have been a lot of people involved that never paid attention to what we got agreement on. And the final product occasionally doesn't quite live up to the initial concept.

James FeatherExcellent staff to keep track of our developers, I hope.

Paul Cunninghambut it's not even our staff that follows it from here. It goes to a different staff that doesn't pay attention to us for the implementation part. So keeping something that's simple enough that it can actually be implemented is one of the challenges, I think.

James FeatherAny other questions?

Matthew RiceWell, just a comment that I think Mr. Navdee's summary that he provided You know is the point it's making sure incentivizing the sorts of developments we want and I think I expressed earlier maybe a month ago that I was a little worried that the complexity of this might incentivize some gamification of you know some Behavior that might be difficult for us to predict in advance but I think we'll need to commit to following this closely and to having staff provide us with feedback on things that may need to change in the future. We will make some decisions but we'll need to revisit this I think on a regular basis.

James FeatherOkay moving on.

Justin WallaceI'll quickly mention access and circulation before I turn it back over to Paul. This essentially requires a pedestrian path from the street to the main entry which is common which you find nowadays in design standards. It also requires a connected continuous pedestrian path to connect if there's multiple buildings to connect all of the entrances of those buildings and also parking areas, bicycle areas, transit stops, and common open space so that there's a continuous pedestrian path throughout the development. We've also included standards that address those types of uses that might have surface parking lots. So the access drives where you have surface parking lots requires what we're calling internal private access drives.

And these are to be designed as streets so that you have the sidewalk and the tree canopy from the street to the entry for those areas with parking lots. And so that helps create future blocks and some continuation of the street grid if it were to redevelop in the future. Any thoughts on that before moving on?

Paul CunninghamI have one, I guess. When we're looking at pedestrian path standards and street and driveway standards and some of that, we're looking at a community in which we're starting to get a greater mix of transportation capabilities. And I'm going to say this in reference to the fact that on a number of occasions recently, I have found myself in a motorized vehicle sharing a road not with a bicycle but with a motorized scooter who is not on the sidewalk, not on the right but feels he has full access to the driving lane and in two lanes of traffic that means both lanes and pulling back and forth as though he were a car and traveling with traffic through areas in the city. Once we get that, and I see more electric bikes on sidewalks or into the road, we're

starting to mix some of this in ways that potentially is going to become a safety issue or a bigger safety issue than it is now as I would see it. Are we catching that in this mixing of traffic that we're starting to do to make us all friendlier? Are we all actually slowing down enough to make this safe?

Justin WallaceThat's a great question. I know scooters are a concern for a lot of different cities, and different cities handle it different ways. Some have requirements for speeds of scooters. If you're a slow speed, you can be on a paved surface that's not a roadway. so that may be you know a policy thing to look at but as as it's written we've addressed pedestrian paths so that's what it's geared tailored to but certainly that that is an issue that is prevalent did you want to say I was

Paul Nabtistaffjust gonna say this goes beyond the zoning ordinance there are as Justin said this It's a type of issue that is affecting a lot of communities and people are trying to handle different ways. But zoning is not the way to regulate where people can ride scooters versus bikes versus cars. That's to come from other areas. We try to prepare our streets to be able to accommodate various things. And all the smaller plans that the zoning ordinance is striving to achieve include streets such as those in this example that are intended to have all modes of transportation that travel at low speeds. when things are happening on larger roads such as main street and fairfax boulevard we're we're not going to be able to count on private redevelopment to address how those streets

are designed they're just too big and outside the scope of what private development can do i think that's where we have more issues with whether they should be on the sidewalk or the main road or those types of things but and so until we hear otherwise if you know transportation starts to come up with ideal street designs that would separate bicycle and vehicle traffic on smaller streets like this this is what we're working towards and it would take that kind of guidance to kind of shift what we're doing in the zoning orders and what we're doing in the smaller airplanes

Paul CunninghamI guess my comment would be that in architecture it said that form follows function and in here the same thing or laying down a general design but it doesn't fit necessarily what's actually occurring is that our intention well

Kirsten Lockharti think i have a follow-up question or related question which is can we envision a scenario where what we actually want to we actually want to disincentivize internal vehicular circulation on a site or within a versus improve it or build it.

Paul NabtistaffAre you thinking of an example?

Kirsten LockhartI don't know that I have a firm example of, like, yes, we would love to get rid of this, but, you know, it has been a concern that's been raised about the courthouse plaza redevelopment. Is there too much vehicular connection inside the site? You know, it's been batted around for years. should the center of Old Town Fairfax be closed to vehicular traffic if it were to be redeveloped. So there's obviously arguments, you know, pro and con to both of those, but could we be holding intention to different goals depending on the zone?

Paul NabtistaffYeah, and actually, now that you mention it, that is a good point. And the Cardouse Plaza example is a good one because that is one where the Planning Commission raised the question, are we trying to encourage too many streets here? It's impacting our ability to get good open space. It's impacting good development. And that is something that we will need to address as we review the small area plans. But one of the benefits of this ordinance is that, and Justin might be able to speak to this more, with the street and driveway standards, there are spacing standards with the ideal spacing of what they should be in between them. And that's something that the smaller plans don't have. They really just show what it should look like on the map.

They saw where property lines are, development can occur, but these amendments will help us if we need to make an argument and say, okay, the smaller plan says we should have streets in all these locations. Maybe that's too much because this ordinance now says streets should be so many feet apart, and that could be a good target for us to kind of refine things as we move forward.

James FeatherOthers? I keyed in on your words about form follows function. I think what we're trying to do is establish the function, how we want it to work, which will drive the form. That may be the right way to do it. I was going to mention this in my comments at the end, but I'll mention it now. Since Courthouse Plaza came up, I watched the City Council work session on Courthouse conveyed the message that the Planning Commission expressed concern about the streets, which we've been talking about for a long time, internal streets and connections and so forth. But they didn't need a lot of explanation, so I actually wrote a note to council explaining what the concerns were, and exactly as Mr. Napdeep described it.

So I didn't get any further feedback from that, but at least they clarified the questions that we had at the time, the concerns. So we'll see where that goes. Yeah.

Justin WallaceI will say that we did have a couple of different options for the type of street to be designed for the internal system. So we included one option that's 10-foot wide sidewalk which might accommodate different types of modes and then another option for six-foot wide sidewalk on either side of the street. so although we don't say it directly there are a couple of options baked into the zoning ordinance I think we could be more direct in that

James Featherthe other thing we get frequently is a developer wanting to put sidewalks only on one side of a street and we're starting to lay out some parameters that might accommodate that if they're large enough but it still invites anything like this the more prescriptive we get still could invite special exceptions. We'll still have to figure out how we'll want to deal with those in the future. Mr. Kenyon.

Paul CunninghamAs, I guess, a way of an example to placate me, we redid the Breezeway property and the Fairfax Garden Apartments property, and we put in on one section of that a large number of townhouses with three, as I would call it, streets internally. Is that an internal street that would fit this definition? Is that what you're talking about for an internal

Paul Nabtistaffstreet? Most of those streets in that development are access ways to the townhomes. Cedar Avenue that goes to the middle of it is something that I think would be considered an internal street with this ordinance because that's contributing toward the overall network. The rest of them, I think, and I'll have to consult with WSC on this as well, and that may be a good example to look at. My interpretation is that those would simply be access ways for the private development and wouldn't be regulated by the zoning ordinance any differently than it is now. But we'll have to look more at that.

Paul CunninghamOkay, so those aren't internal streets then. Those streets were 26 feet wide, which was, as we discussed at the time, the width of a parking space because parking space lines as we talked at that time but if you're going to parallel park on a roadway those stripes are 26 feet apart to back in and park your car right but that was the width of the internal access ways or whatever and then there were no real sidewalks provided on either side there was merely just enough apron for cars to turn off of that into a garage and I presume being an internal development you have a street but people could ride scooters people can ride bicycles people push strollers all of the activity is going to occur within 30 or 35 feet 4 or 5 feet on

either side and within 25 26 feet worth of traffic with so that's the congestion that we're talking about with many of the internal streets that developers are bringing us so that they maximize the density of their developments. But is that what I should be envisioning here, or are we talking bigger, wider streets? Eaton Place was a private street when it was first constructed.

James FeatherIt feels to me we need to look at the small area plans again, what we're calling for as streets and otherwise what are just accessways, driveways. Okay.

Justin WallaceWe don't specify a width dimension, and we don't specify that it has to be public right-of-way. So these are private streets. and so the the widths that we do specify are the the sidewalk widths and the area that accommodates street trees so that's the dimensions that we specify we don't specify a traveling width

Paul Cunninghambut but this by definition is not then in falling into that because there's no way in that five feet on either side of the traveling that you're going to get either your setback your trees or anything else it was five feet to the front of the building and the garage and the entrance to the garage door

Paul NabtistaffI think this is something that we're gonna have to try to factor into this because this is something that we see a lot particularly with townhouse developments it's essentially their alleyways and so I think they should be treated differently than other streets so we need to think about with pedestrian access and those types of things and perhaps let them have their own definition in this

Paul Cunninghamso we're holding we're holding private streets to public street standards in effect okay

Matthew Riceyep

James FeatherAnything else? Okay. You can see some of the puzzling. We're trying to see where this is going, but that's why we're doing this, and this isn't the final product.

Justin WallaceSure, and we're here to answer questions as we continue.

Matthew RiceMr. Rice. Yeah, I also just want to remind folks that we had a discussion about some issues related to this with regard to a development proposal three or four years ago. And we looked at some internal streets and what emerged, I don't know if it was feedback from police, fire, public works, but they were like, these folks are not using their garages for traditional purposes. is they're storing crap in it. They're parking on the driveway aprons. That leaves us not with, you know, 26 feet in this internal street, but it's really more like 18 feet. You know, fire department's not pleased, and we can't do trash and recycling pickup because of the human behavior in these areas. And there may be some things we don't predict

that may be coming from sources like that that we're going to have to stop, you know, in a year and reevaluate some of the policies just based on things, maybe more than a year, but things that emerged that are, you know, how people are using that space and what problems or things that are being caused by it.

Kirsten LockhartWell, anecdotally, snow removal, that was a real pain point. Obviously, this was a weird snowstorm most recently, but there were a lot of neighborhood streets that are public streets that because of parking on both sides of the street were effectively rendered one-lane roads, which means there's nowhere to put snow. I would also encourage you to take a look as you drive through the city and see how many traffic signs were knocked over by snowplows. Which is a street design question, but also talks about how narrow really are these access ways that signs were at risk.

Paul CunninghamThere was one of the bump-outs on University Drive. Snowplow apparently hit the trust. I see a lot of traffic goes, a lot of broken concrete.

Matthew RiceYeah, I walked home from work. The majority of the bump-outs have massive curb damage. And, yeah, there needs to be some reconnaissance program that we do that looks at things like this so that when we make decisions, we can, you know, make those informed by how people use this space.

James FeatherOkay. Any more, Mr. Wallace?

Justin WallaceThank you. That's all for me. Thank you. He

Paul Nabtistaffmight be back a little bit later.

Justin WallaceOkay.

Paul NabtistaffOkay, so we'll now move into what we had planned to talk to you on February 23rd about. And these are the items, as I mentioned, that are what we're calling connected efforts because they relate directly to the smaller airplanes and the Enrollment Amendments, but they aren't necessarily so tied to them that they have to be adopted together. Ideally, we'd be able to carry all this together and be able to adopt it all at one time. but we are looking at them separately and they will be able to either be considered with these or earlier or later depending on how things go these are also efforts that are being led primarily by city staff because we're looking at different resources for them so the first one is parking

and one thing i'll point out is you'll notice in the draft amendments there is a parking section we began to work on this with wsc and they have provided some recommendations on how we CAN HANDLE THAT WE'LL GO THROUGH THAT WE'VE ALSO STARTED LOOKING AT SOME ALTERNATIVES PARTICULARLY BECAUSE OF SOME DATA THAT WE HAVE COME ON TO BECAUSE OF RECENT STUDIES THAT HAVE BEEN DONE THAT ALL THAT I'LL WALK YOU THROUGH THE SECOND ONE WE'RE CALLING LANDSCAPING ESSENTIALLY THOUGH THIS IS THE TREE CONSERVATION ORDINANCE THIS IS A RECOMMENDATION OF THE NOW ADOPTED URBAN FOREST MASTER PLAN BUT IT'S SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR A WHILE THIS This piece would apply citywide. However, we think it relates directly to this because there are a lot of recommendations

in the adoptive smaller plans that relate to how existing trees should be considered with new development and how we should be accommodating increasing canopy even in more intensive

Justin Wallacedevelopments.

Paul NabtistaffAnd then lastly, we will take a quick look at some recommendations related to the use table in the zoning ordinance with the introduction of a new zoning district which is recommended in your draft amendments we're looking at ways to encourage the use of that new district as opposed to some of the traditional ways that we have had mixed-use development come along but make sure we can still accommodate mixed-use development outside of activity centers where the new district could not apply as those cases arise so starting with parking firstly just wanted to point out there's a reason another reason we consider this a connected effort is because the smaller airplanes don't specifically say that we should look at changing our parking standards there's a

lot of discussion in the small your plans about sharing parking about a sure creating park once districts so that you can drive to one place and not feel like you have to move your car to go from one property to another but the smaller planes don't specifically say our parking rates are too high our parking rates are too low we should look at adjusting them that being our said does say that we should explore opportunities for reduced parking requirements in transit oriented developments and activity centers.

Kirsten LockhartQuick question. Yes. The small area plans do in some cases stipulate underground versus shared like above ground or centralized parking right?

Paul NabtistaffYes they do recommend underground or structured parking. Yes. So in your draft amendments there are a A couple of things that I want to point out relate to the existing ordinance and then a couple of new things that are introduced. First existing elements is there is currently in our zoning ordinance a maximum parking standard of 10% over what the minimum is that continues to be recommended. There are standards in about calculations, for example, rounding, how you calculate how many spaces are required when you're between two numbers. And there are exceptions in the historic overlay and the transition overlay districts. Those exceptions are there today. And we'll talk more about those. There's also recommendations to support shared parking and off-site parking, which our current

zoning ordinance does have standards and determinations on how those can be accepted. A couple of new recommendations, these are general recommendations, are that if a change of use is proposed for a particular site that results in an increase of parking requirement up to 5% citywide, that that could be a buy-write change. And if that type of thing were to happen in an activity center, that we would allow up to a 20% change. And the reason for these is that an issue we faced in the past is that you have minor changes to sites, you have businesses moving in that are different from the businesses that were there before, and it becomes very complicated when they can't do that just because spaces and so the intent here is to clean up that

Justin Wallaceprocess

Paul Nabtistaffbut then in addition to that the specific parking requirements that are being considered or that are recommended in the draft for the activity center district is to follow our current standards but allow up to a 25% reduction in this 25% reduction we would have to be requested through a series of incentives and the draft define what those incentives are I'll walk through those in a minute what staff is now looking at is rather than across the board 25% reduction is a custom reduction by use and we're really only looking at three of the main uses that we are seeing in our activity centers this being residential multi-family office and retail uses and we'll walk through our justification for this but to

summarize it essentially is that we believe our current standards are slightly higher than they need to be for multifamily and retail uses but they are significantly higher than they need to be for office uses and this could be jeopardizing opportunities for enhancing existing office properties and then another option is to have no change and just follow what our standards currently are a fourth one that we're not listing here but we will show you some numbers for as we go forward is to have a reduction by use as staff is recommending but then allow an additional reduction on top of that through incentives as is in the current draft. And so we'll show what that will look like. We'll also ask that you keep in mind as we look at the numbers that we have the ability

to adjust these. So if we feel like, oh, a reduction through incentives is a great idea, but I think 25 percent is too much, then we can, you know, look at adjusting those numbers as well. I also want to point out that we are monitoring state legislation. There is currently a bill that is still on the boards that is looking at having a maximum amount of parking that a jurisdiction can require in certain situations. At a first read of this, we believe that this situation would apply to all of our activity centers because it ties to locations adjacent to existing transit and bus transit would count toward that. make sure we we this would apply to us and we'll see if it goes forward or not but if it does go forward that the current recommendations in that bill

are lower than anything that we're looking at here so as is shown in the current draft as we mentioned up to a 25% reduction can be requested provided certain incentives are provided and this is a list of the incentives that are included in the draft those include providing alternative transportation AND OPTIONS. FIRST BEING THAT THE DEVELOPMENT PROVIDES CARPOOL SPACES. THIS WOULD APPLY TO OFFICE AND ADDUSTRIAL USES ONLY BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE CARPOOL SPACES MOSTLY APPLY. NOT SO MUCH TO RESIDENTIAL. ANOTHER OPTION IS TO PROVIDE BICYCLE FACILITIES. THIS CAN BE IN THE FORM OF ENCLOSED BICYCLE PARKING OR PROVIDING THINGS LIKE SHOWERS THAT WOULD ALLOW PEOPLE WHEN THEY REACH THE FACILITY to to to clean up another incentive is to to be based on transit and this could be by being within

a certain proximity to existing transit service or to for the development to contribute toward a new transit stop in the past we've had developments provide amenities such as shelters in front of their developments other incentives include providing shuttles to transit having proximity adjusting parking standards for the purpose of preserving trees. So this would be a case where a parking reduction is requested because that reduction would allow a development to preserve a particular area with trees. And the same type of thing could apply for open space and using parking reductions to provide additional open space.

Kirsten LockhartSo to go with that and actually to dovetail off my prior question, changing the type of park and provided be an option for a reduction so for example where we were assuming that the developer would propose structured parking and instead they propose underground which is more attractive for pedestrian circulation but they would build less

Paul Nabtistaffthat is not in the current draft i believe it is something we could do though and actually currently in our cu district there is a reduction a lot of up to 10 for structured parking as to expand that in this new district to further encourage underground parking as opposed to structured parking we could look into that as well

Kirsten Lockhartokay and then also publicly available charge incentive for reduction

Paul Nabtistaffuh i'm not sure if wsd has thoughts on this i think we'd have to check with the state code on that that's we can look into it though Okay, so those are the standards that are in the current draft that you have. I wanted to run quickly through some of the additional information that city staff has been looking at that has led to additional recommendation for a custom reductions based on certain uses. So first, we will share with you what our current standards are, focusing again on multifamily office and retail, and also point out some of those reductions that are currently allowed as just mentioned the 10 reduction in the CU for structured parking there are also reductions that are allowed in the transition overlay district in the

historic overlay district in 2023 Fairfax County completed what they call the parking reimagined study where they looked at usage of parking and standards across the country and came up with a whole system of parking standards that And this has become a really great resource for us because not only does Fairfax County surround us, but they also have different types of environments that are in line with different types of areas in the city. So in particular, they have standards that apply across the board across the entire county, but then there are reduced standards for areas that are redevelopment areas that are near transit and have other characteristics. And so we can pinpoint what types of areas fit mostly in line with our activity centers and see how we compare those.

So we'll talk a little bit about that. The Institute for Transportation Engineers provides a parking generation manual. This is a typical resource when looking at these types of things. Developers often refer to this as well when requesting exceptions. So we'll look at those standards kind of lightly. We also have a couple of internal observations that have come up recently. You might recall during Ms. Denny's presentation she mentioned the transportation demand management surveys that were sent to recent multi-family developments that included in their proffers that they would respond to this so we have some of those responses that will help give us some background also in 2024 you may recall that the city conducted an old town parking study the

purpose of the study was really to look at a couple of upcoming specific developments and how they would impact parking in old town but we got a lot of data out of that from the observations that were done by the consultant that can help us see how current parking, particularly on private lots, is being used in the Old Town area. And just to summarize these, as I said, I'll go through these in a little more detail, but to summarize what we're observing, as I said before, we are seeing that we seem to be slightly over-parking or have requirements that are slightly above what they need to be for multifamily and retail uses, but significantly high for office uses. So as I mentioned before we have our three alternatives and we have numbers for the fourth

that I'll include in some of our examples but the three alternatives we're looking at are the current standards you can see those standards for multi-family retail and office up here we also have the 25 percent reduction that's in the current draft again this would have to be applied for and achieved through those incentives that were shown so it might not be able to achieve the full 25 percent with every development or a custom reduction that staff has recommended we explore further because it allows us to customize how we're changing standards based on specific uses I will do want to point out you'll notice by this slide multifamily our standards are based on the number of bedrooms in each unit and a lot of the comparisons that we'll look at there is

just a flat rate per bedroom so it becomes difficult to to compare but approvals to show how we line up so that starting with multifamily looking first on the left side at what our requirements are the current standards are at the top showing the different requirements for each efficiency multifamily unit 1.25 parking spaces is required for each one bedroom 1.5 space is required and for each two-bedroom and greater 2.0 spaces is required as mentioned in the commercial urban district where structured parking is provided a 10% reduction is permitted in our transition overlay district the general standards there are that a 50% reduction in parking is allowed and we'll see how this applies significantly to our office and retail uses but for residential uses

this really only allow the standards specifically only allow two bedrooms to go down to 1.5 spaces per unit as opposed to two otherwise the standards are essentially the same in our historical overlay district the the reductions are much further and and less constrained that really only applies to a very limited area in the core of old town so we're not going to look at that too much as a comparison and then looking at these numbers the bottom three numbers there show you how these numbers would align if we had 25 reduction what we're proposing for a custom reduction and then lastly if we were to combine those two which would a further reduction what those numbers would end up being so we see certainly smaller numbers

per unit in each of those for a comparison sake in the middle column there for observations we have our five recent multi-family and mixed-use projects that have been approved in the city some of these were built some of them are still in the process and what they were approved at And then going back to that transportation demand management survey, this was geared essentially to residents, but as part of that, the property managers were also asked to respond to a survey. And some of the questions in those related to parking, we asked them to identify how many parking spaces they have, how many are used, and if there's a permitting process, how many are actually permitted. And what we found with those, as Scout in the Point specifically,

and you can see each of those were approved at 1.6 spaces per unit, that they're getting for the residential spaces is is coming out to be about 1.0 spaces per unit now again that's just for the residential spaces each of those also have commercial components and they have separate parking areas for those and so we'll see how those are a little bit different the flats is unique because that is student-oriented housing a lot of the units in that complex have two three and four bedrooms to them and so they actually when that project was APPROVED REQUESTED TO HAVE A LOT MORE PARKING THAN IS REQUIRED BY THE ZONING ORDINANCE SO THEY ARE APPROVED AT 2.68 PARKING SPACES PER UNIT BUT EVEN THEY HAVE FOUND THAT WITH CURRENT

UTILIZATION THEY'RE ONLY SEEING ABOUT 1.45 SPACES PER UNIT BEING BEING PERMITTED DO

James FeatherWE KNOW THAT SOME OF THOSE RESIDENTS AREN'T PARKING IN THE CORRIDAL SPLASA LOT WELL

Paul NabtistaffTHAT'S MY SENSE IS A UNIQUE ONE THERE AS WELL SO CERTAINLY WE'VE OBSERVED THAT AND I BELIEVE THAT SOME OF THEM are also pointing out that the the response of the survey indicated that they were only about 85% leased at the time of this survey and typically we expect multifamily to be about 90 to 95% least when we're looking at this kind of figure so I think that number actual utilization could be a bit higher if parking were enforced and they were fully occupied for other comparisons the The Institute for Transportation Engineers Parking Generation Manual has this document basically has observations from across the country. Different people contributed to it over time. And this is looking at actual observations, not requirements.

And so the average in that, again, this is across the country and over the course of a long period of time, they have observations going back to the 1980s. So when you average all that out, your observation for multifamily and non-transit accessible areas, transit being fixed, transit like Metro Rail, that wouldn't apply to us. What they observed there is about 1.3 occupied spaces per unit. Then looking at the Fairfax County Parking Reimagined standards, as I mentioned, they have different standards that are based on different types of areas. showing here are the three least intense areas in terms of density and proximity to transit so the base standard that applies citywide or countywide they have a flat rate of 1.45 parking spaces per unit that is

required what they call a suburban center which includes areas such as the office areas in Oakton that are north of 66 some of the areas of the Fairfax center area west of the city that are more intense and single family development but still more suburban. The rate there has a reduction from 1.45 to 1.31 spaces per unit. And then there are revitalization areas which we believe are the most comparable to our activity centers. These are older commercial areas that are now redeveloping. So examples are places like Annandale, the core area of Fairfax Center, downtown McLean. So these areas do not have direct access to metro, but they are older commercial areas that are developing kind of a similar pattern to us.

And the flat rate there is 1.23 spaces per unit. In your staff report, you'll see a couple of other areas in there. They have two types of transit-oriented development areas. There's also a special area for Tyson's Corner, and the parking rates there get very, very low. but we don't think any of those areas really apply to us, particularly because they all have direct access to Metro. So what does this mean? As I mentioned, it's difficult to compare when we're looking at our standards, which are based on the number of bedrooms versus flat standards. So here we are looking at those five recent developments, what they were approved at, the number of spaces per unit, and they're all calculated differently

based on the number of bedrooms in each unit. requirement as it would apply in the commercial urban district as we mentioned that allows a 10% reduction this also doesn't say on here would include a reduction into transition overlay district as we mentioned two bedrooms in the TOD are only required 1.5 spaces per unit as opposed to two in the TOD the only property here that applied to is Davies as you can see that has a slightly lower lower number than the others actually would apply to the flats as well where only 1.3 spaces would be required. Then the next column looks at if we were to apply a 25 percent reduction as is shown in the current draft what those numbers would end up being for each of those.

I will point out here that this number does not include the 10 percent reduction that is allowed in the CUV. This would be a separate reduction. And then the next item is the custom reduction that we showed on the first slide for, or Again, those numbers could be adjusted any way we want. That shows what the numbers end up being. And then lastly, if those last two were to be combined, being if we had a custom reduction and then applied an additional 25% reduction through incentives on top of that, you can see the numbers there get much, much lower. So again, this is just for comparison purposes to see how we would end up. So moving on to retail, the requirements are shown on the left hand side.

Our current requirement is one space per 200 square feet or five spaces per 1,000 square feet. In the TOD, as we mentioned, for retail and office, up to a 50% reduction is permitted. And so that gets us down to 2.5 spaces for 1,000 square feet. If you were to apply the 25% reduction to the 5.0 spaces, it would end up with 3.75. for 1,000 square feet. We're recommending custom reduction of 4.0 spaces for 1,000 square feet. And if we were to combine those last two, it would get us down to three spaces for 1,000 square feet. For comparison purposes, some recent developments that included commercial in them, you can see what the numbers ended up being there for those properties. Scout, the point in Willowood, all are very close to that 5.0.

Scout, I think, is below it just because of a rounding purpose. It should be about 5.0. So Willowood was approved after the CU district was implemented, and so they are able to receive a 10% reduction by having structured parking. So that number is slightly lower than others. And then Davies was able to apply the 50% reduction because it's in the transition overlay district, so that number is significantly lower. Some of the recent figures that we have access to now through the Old Town parking study, There are a lot of retail properties that were included in that study. However, we limited this to the two larger shopping centers because some of the other properties are smaller and the core of Old Town are likely depend on some of the public

parking and shared parking around there. So these two, while they're close to Old Town, we feel pretty much stand on their own. And so what that study found was at Main Street Marketplace, which is a shopping center that has TJ Maxx and noodles and company 3.7 spaces for 1,000 square feet are provided this was achieved through a special exception request when that project was approved so five spaces would have actually been required there but they requested the special exception the maximum utilization that was found during the observations in Old Town which were taken in the fall of 2024 or the course of several days including weekdays throughout the day and weekends throughout The maximum utilization at that site was 2.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

Courthouse Plaza has 8.4 spaces per 1,000 square feet provided. This is well above what our requirements are. It's well above what the requirements were when that project was approved over 50 years ago. I'm not sure of the reason for this exactly, but that helps explain, I think, why it seems to be so vastly over-parked. And the observations there were that at the maximum observation over the time that the counts were taken is that 2.1 spaces per 1,000 square feet were being used.

Kirsten LockhartDoes that include both restaurant flats, too? Because the fact that one of them has been unused for over a decade might contribute to the massive overflow.

Paul NabtistaffI'll have to look at the chart for that again. I believe they were included in the same, or we consolidated them. For other comparisons, we did not look at the Institute for Transportation Engineers manual for this, because for retail there are so many different characteristics and standards, it's hard to find something that fits across the board with what we're looking at. But we did look again at Fairfax County's new standards with the study that they did. And one of the oddities here is that Fairfax County separates retail parking for general retail and restaurant. that but it was it's another one of those things were became very complex if a restaurant want to move into a retail space often they couldn't because of the

parking issues and so we've kind of averaged out our standards to accommodate both retail and restaurant and so you'll see here the retail requirements particularly in the revitalization areas are lower than it's definitely lower than our current standards even lower than what we are proposing for reduction however the restaurant requirements are higher and so we're trying to find a medium between the two and then lastly looking at office here our current rate is one space for 300 square feet or 3.33 spaces for 1,000 square feet TOD reduces that by 50% 25% reduction we get you to 2.5 spaces for 1,000 square feet and the custom reduction that we're proposing everything is 2.0 which is lower than 25% and that's because of some of the observations

that we have. If we were to combine those two we would get down to 1.5 spaces for 1,000 square feet. The point and the Davies both included office space, pretty small amounts of office space in them but these are the rates that were shown for those. The point, again, I think this is a rounding issue slightly below what our requirement is but it wasn't a through a special exception request. Davis was provided at what were based on the reduction that's allowed in the TOD. The footnote there that you don't actually see on the screen actually says that they provided a little bit more than this. So one of the main observations here is looking again at that Old Town Parking study that was done. It was completed in 2025 but the analysis was done in fall of 2024.

And what they found in that study is at the peak period of all the times that they counted over the course of several days, the peak occupancy of parking spaces on average for all the office spaces, all the office buildings in the Old Town area was 39%. And you'll see in the staff report, we have all the numbers for those breaking down. We pulled out office spaces or any development that has less than 50 spaces. And this was intended to, again, isolate those properties that are really close to Old Town on shared parking. We're trying to look at the more the buildings that are more on the fringe here and to that are tended to function on their own. What this translates to is 1.54 spaces per 1,000 square feet. I also wanted to emphasize that we also looked at the vacancy rate in Old Town

at this time and factor that in as well. So when we say 39 percent of all private off-street spaces That number is adjusted to account for about a 20% vacancy rate in the office buildings. And so we wanted to make sure that this is talking about basically means 1.54 spaces per 1,000 square feet of non-facant

Matthew Riceoccupied space.

Paul NabtistaffFor other comparisons, the ITE standards observed an average of 2.4 spaces for 1,000 square feet nationwide. And the Fairfax County standards, this one got a little bit more difficult to compare us with because they have separate standards for larger buildings and smaller buildings. And you can see that in the revitalization areas for smaller buildings, the requirement is 2.4 spaces per 1,000 square feet, but for larger buildings, it's 1.6 spaces per 1,000 square feet. So again, these are the three alternatives that we're looking at. A FOURTH ALTERNATIVE COULD BE THAT COMBINATION OF THE CUSTOM REDUCTION AND 25% REDUCTION. BUT I'LL STOP THERE AND SEE IF THERE ARE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT PARKING BEFORE WE GO ON TO THE TREATY ORDINCE.

Paul CunninghamTHANK YOU. IF WE LOOK BACK AT YOUR TWO OFFICE EXAMPLES OR TWO RETAIL EXAMPLES DOWNTOWN, Courthouse Plaza, by observation, I don't have any question in terms of it has way more parking spaces than are ever needed, even at its peak periods, and doing that. When we moved to the Main Street marketplace and we said that maximum use was 2.5 used at any one time, the question I'm going to ask is not the number of spaces occupied at any one time, but was there also the traffic study of the number of vehicles that came and went? how often was a parking space recycled, what is the congestion rate, things along that line. Because my experience in trying to use that parking lot is less than, I guess, stellar in terms of getting in,

avoiding cars coming in and out of cramped parking area and finding a parking space and then being able to get out reasonably because of the traffic congestions at the entrance and exit points and things along that line. So the circulation problem when you're getting in, and yes, there are spaces available all the time, but moving in and out of them, I think, is a challenge. So if you were to reduce that to the number of spaces needed at any one time, you exacerbate a problem that isn't discussed or touched on anywhere here of accessibility and safety and some of that. Yeah,

Paul Nabtistaffthis is strictly looking at the parking numbers. Right. But specifically for that reason, we are not proposing reducing the rate to what we observed as a peak usage. And actually you can see with the customer reduction rate that we are recommending for retail is still higher than what is existing at mainstream marketplace. And that is because of some of those reasons you talked about. The parking numbers can't control circulation issues. There might be other things we can look at in the zoning ordinance related to that, but that's a topic for another day. It can't control tenants because that will control turnover. but so we have to kind of find a happy medium try to find an average because we don't want to over

park too much but we also don't want to under park and so that's why we look at these numbers and there's no right there's no specific right answer we could just look at this and say oh we observe no more than 2.5 spaces for 1,000 square feet being used that's what our number should be that's not how we're using this which is why we have a number that's higher that because we recognize those anomalies are out there and there still be circulation issues they'll still be tenants that we don't anticipate that somehow attract a lot more users than another tenant of a similar type of space and so this is all focusing around averages on the kind of the big numbers that we have

Paul Cunninghamokay is there a way to factor that into the approval process when developers are asking for parking reductions to factor in what is the usage rate what are those kinds of factors that are also implied then in how it's going to function

Paul Nabtistaffthat's I think that's getting outside of the scope of this effort I mean we've looked at we've we've when we did the the zoning ordinance rewrite back in 2016 a lot of the things that were discussed were the different types of retail uses and I mentioned we combined restaurants into retail because the the side issue if you're trying to be too restrictive about who can move in who can't is that when you have turnover there are bigger challenges than a complicated parking lot now there are also design standards in the zoning ordinance for parking lots and if that's something that we want to look at separately that says we need to have different sized parking islands or different circulation patterns that's something that we can certainly look at

But I think that that's something that wouldn't overlap too much with this effort because we're looking at more, as we talked about earlier, circulation through new streets. We're not really trying to encourage service parking lots. And so there are other things that we're going to be thinking about. And we talked about circulation in streets, and that's something that we'll be looking and thinking about in detail with this. But the issues that we're dealing with specific shopping center parking lots, I think are things that if we want to bring them up as something to review, it has to be a separate because those are things that are happening outside activity centers.

Paul CunninghamOkay. And then talking parking, then, we keep talking about Davies and parking, but we talk about Davies and the commercial parking for Davies, and all of the commercial parking for Davies is located under the commercial area, which is along Chambridge Road, and yet the entrance to get to that parking is just off University Drive, Anybody using that parking has got to transit all of the underground residential to get to the specific parking. So form-following function, again, makes some of these interesting in terms of the numbers that you can have and how they're going to be used and how efficient or effective, I guess, they are.

James FeatherMs. Lockhart?

Kirsten LockhartI do think that when we are aware of development, that it's going to be predominantly restaurant. that needs to be considered specifically because it would be very easy to take an average of utilization in those types of lots and come up with a number that's much lower than what's actually needed. I, you know, swung by my old neighborhood in Arlington with my daughter on the way home from a swim meet at peak lunchtime and after 20 minutes of circulating gave up on trying to find a spot. So that might be fine if you're walking to that particular location, which is of course what we want to encourage people to do but restaurants are also determined you know their success is determined on people coming to them from outside the area and if you

can't park there during peak usage hours it's it's detrimental to business so you know i think there is a reason historically why those numbers differed as much as they do and finding that balance um when we know a development will become predominantly restaurants i mean the name the one where we couldn't park was shirlington which used to have a mix of retail and restaurant and now is almost entirely restaurant so it's it's tricky you don't know who the tenants are going

James Featherin fact I was thinking of the strip mall up on the boulevard I don't know the name of the mall but it's where the Taco Bell is going to be going and that's a place people perpetually talk about how difficult it is to park because it's pretty much almost all restaurant anymore but yeah that's exactly what it was thank you

Matthew RiceI agree strongly with my colleagues the restaurant use does different dynamic and I really do like the fact that you've reached out and looked at the county's usage in their numbers and I think that's extremely helpful if any way possible and you know the city us looking at what the neighboring jurisdictions are doing and starting there is you know a starting point that's real real helpful we certainly can never diverge wildly from what somebody else has already studied and found if you know if they've discovered that restaurants require a little higher rate we should consider I really like the idea of rewarding for the implementation of things related to mass transit. And so this is one of your previous slides.

The fact is that transit is going to change, and I believe it's going to change dramatically in the next 10 years. And just as we look at Courthouse Plaza and think of the absurd kind of over parking, we may be in a position sooner than 10 years from now to have people second-guessing decisions we are making. So I really do think that one thing we do need to build is a space for autonomous vehicles to circulate and for ride share to happen. There's so many times I'm heading southbound on the university. towards City Hall, you know, with cars stopped in the roadway, picking up, letting off. That's just a small evidence of a larger problem that we don't have a place for people to be picked up and dropped off.

We do have bus stops, but even the bus stops we have may not really catch the kind of usage that we'll have that will not just be, you know, Q bus and, you know, Metro and the Fairfax There will be you know vast fleets of other types of vehicles dropping off and picking up and I think if possible we need to keep that in the back of our mind while we're making these decisions that incentivizing a developer particularly developer with a big plan that recognizes the need for a transit hub within that development and Is willing to look at kind of forward-thinking ideas about that we need to do that I think we did mention the public charging stations and another issue that That we should be looking at in terms of figuring out how to incentivize so

Again, I think we'll make some good decisions here. I do like the custom standards some I think as Miss Lockhart mentioned the restaurant numbers We can't predict what's actually going to be there in 10 years and whether if it is restaurant it will need more parking as they noted debts fairly clear up on the boulevard but I think especially on this particular slide having some flexibility in terms of incentivizing access to transit will be a big deal and I think the more we allow things to happen in that direction with developers who sort of have an eye toward sustainability in 10-15 years in a completely different transportation environment that would be quite helpful there are supposedly Waymo vehicles

circulating now in the area and I know up in the mosaic they've been some experimentation with autonomous shuttles between the Metro and mosaic and it's going to happen sooner than we think. We are not built for it. And we need to figure out how to shoehorn that use into Old Town and into all of our activity centers. And I don't think other than the reference to it in the Camp Washington small area plans, we've not really done it.

James FeatherI only thought as we were thinking about the impact of restaurants and so forth is we I mean I could see there being a difference within an activity center if we're really going through true mixed-use development. Once we establish a lot of residential units in these places, you may not need as many parking places for a restaurant because people who we think will live there will be walking there. Not exclusively, obviously, but someplace along the boulevard might be completely different if there's nobody living nearby. So I don't know how you come up with the right strategy for all of those kinds of places, but the denser mixed use maybe could support these numbers, whereas something being redeveloped outside of an activity center might need something more

for restaurants. I do like the direction this is going, though. I mean, there's a very strong basis for these changes, so.

Paul CunninghamIf you had Chick-fil-A in that little strip next to that you were talking about across from fire station 33 can you imagine the current traffic with chick-fil-a if it were in that shopping center

James Featherdon't underestimate Taco Bell don't underestimate Taco Bell

Paul Cunninghamthen what are we looking at

Matthew Riceyeah yeah this is a final comment I apologize for interceding here I do think some of the poorly designed parking is getting in the way of us making progress towards reducing numbers some online people's certainly comment frequently on Main Street marketplace and and that the developer used the very same you know team of planners and developers that they used in some vienna places with a very similar problem it's just very very difficult to get in and out it's very difficult to navigate into parking spaces um it does disincentivize that as a place and so this you know this is not about analyzing design of parking but it definitely gets in the way of what we're doing because it kind of works against this notion that um you know that it's not 3.7

it's 2.5 or you know these uh numbers and poor design uh just confuse the public and the experiences in those poorly designed areas are not not great um so we do need to pick that up at some But, yeah, anyway, I like where this is going.

Paul NabtistaffOkay, on to tree conservation. And we come back to you to talk about this again. Ms. Stafford should be here to provide you a better description than I can. But I'll let you know where things stand now and hopefully get some direction on how to move forward. So the background on this is that the city's current tree canopy requirements in the zoning ordinance goes back to before the state code had any specific guidance on how we're supposed to do this. But it turns out that a lot of our regulations are in line in terms of tree canopy cover. The current zoning code has tree preservation and landscaping combined. And these are very different types of topics. for tree preservation there's a section in the current code about a tree management plan

about how to determine removing versus protecting specific trees protection measures and there's some blue standards on how much how much tree should be protected separately the landscaping section has requirements on new trees has standards for things like parking lot islands and transition yards and those types of things so different types of topics and a lot of what we see in the tree management area really is best suited to be separate from the zoning ordinance that's one of the things we'll be talking about as a recommendation the purpose of this discussion as relates to the small year plan amendments is to take better advantage of the what the state code allows us to do in terms of tree conservation and then fold that into our regulations regarding

things like street trees and other tree requirements. As we go through this, I want to point out some of the tools we're looking at that are shown on the right side of the screen here that are allowed in the state code. This includes establishing tree preservation targets, which essentially means requirements with some stipulations. Establishing a tree fund or a tree bank, and we'll talk more about what the difference is to those. having canopy credit multipliers similar to what we saw for the open space state code specifically identifies how we can calculate multipliers for how we handle different trees and then as mentioned having a separate tree conservation ordinance from our zoning ordinance so one of the things I want to point out

was that in order to allow having tree preservation targets which is something that city is very interested in doing we must accommodate a tree canopy fund or bank and we must accommodate canopy multipliers. So just keep that in mind. It's kind of a take it all or don't take any of it. To explain how the tree preservation target would work. So currently we have in each of our zoning districts a tree canopy requirement. And those are shown here. These are all in line with what the state code allows us to do. The state essentially establishes different densities and then says what your maximum tree canopy requirement can be for those densities so for example multifamily fits 16 units per acre the state says you can only have so much so we've aligned

that with all the different densities we have and it's lined up with what the state is allowing us to have or essentially maximizing what we can require in terms of tree canopy in addition to that there is a tree preservation target which we do not currently have and so the state says that whatever your percentage requirement is allowed for any type of canopy the tree preservation can have the same percentage of that percentage so what that means is for example look at residential low the top top row we have a 25 tree canopy requirement 25 of that 25 can be our tree preservation target so that new tree canopy 25 of the 25 can be required to occur through tree preservation and when you look at something like residential multi-family

or any of the commercial districts, we're looking at 10% of 10% or essentially 1% of the area of all of these sites we can require to be preserved existing tree canopy. I know it's a little bit funky, but this is what the state code is telling us we can do. So the way tree conservation works in the ordinance is that we have those standards, but a developer may request what they call a deviation. This is similar to an exception, a modification. lots of similar actions in our zoning ordinance. We can request a deviation if the target cannot be met. If they're going to request a deviation, they have to submit a letter by a certified engineer, and this would be an administrative approval. In most cases, in the case where there's a land use case, it could be part of the land

use case as well. So what does the deviation mean, and why not they just do that everywhere? So there's three standards that must be met, or one of three standards must be met. The first is that preserving existing tree canopy per those standards would prevent otherwise allowable uses or densities that are otherwise allowed by the city ordinance. The second one says that existing trees do not meet health standards or structure or risk factor, have a risk factor. They, for example, could be a danger for falling on a sidewalk or a structure. And then lastly, construction practices would impact trees to the extent that they would likely not survive. So the second two of these have a calculation to them.

They can be determined pretty easily. Urban foresters expertise could help determine if they're applicable or not. The first one is much more vague. We really rely on essentially negotiations between our urban forester and the developers to determine whether or not this tree preservation is actually impacting their economic value for the site. So unfortunately that one is pretty vague, but that is again a specific standard that the state code requires us to allow.

Kirsten LockhartWould number two also include invasive species or non-native species?

Paul NabtistaffI assume yes. The next item, as we mentioned, tree canopy multipliers, all of this is also defined by the state and that we could allow multipliers for different types of planting. The first two relate to preservation, where you would get a multiplier for preserving individual trees, a higher multiplier for preserving forested or larger communities of trees. The rest of these are new plantings that have specific benefits. and we would have to define what these are. Fairfax County has a resource that we think we would rely on to identify what these are, but all of these would also have a multiplier, such as water quality benefits, natives with different functions. Obviously, invasive species would not receive a multiplier,

and so these would each apply to our tree canopy requirements. The next tool is a tree conservation or a tree fund or a tree bank. So a tree fund is a fund that a developer can contribute funds to in lieu of providing new canopy on their site to meet our requirements. We have done this in the past. We did it at the flats and the more recently approved N29 apartments. This was done through negotiations so we didn't have a set standard but it is something that Therefore, those funds can then be used by the city for planting of trees elsewhere in the city, or they can be donated through the city to a nonprofit organization. Sometimes this has greater benefit because they don't have the costs that we have,

or they would eat the costs, essentially, of planting the trees and those types of things. And so it can go either way. The funds must be spent within five years per state code. And just to show what this might look like, we are looking at, again, Fairfax County standards. for what this is. The fee they have is a, the cost to plant and establish a two-year caliper tree. This is for each tree that is not planted on site. So that would be $1,113. This is in their 2025 figures. They update this, I believe, every two to three years. And so it's something that we could rely on rather than trying to establish our own. And then lastly, one of the recommendations is to, as I mentioned earlier, establish a standalone tree conservation ordinance separate from our zoning ordinance.

And so this would have a number of benefits. First of all, it would allow us to regulate our standards for both the public and private areas at the same time. Zoning ordinance, as you know, only applies to private development. It does not apply to our public right away. So this would allow us to establish similar standards for both. It would also allow us to have to go after future efforts that are not related to zoning including things like establishing a heritage tree program or establishing regulations related to running bamboo. These types of things cannot be regulated through zoning ordinance. And as we move forward we'll have to clarify what elements would remain in the zoning ordinance.

We have things in there related to street scape standards, other types of tree planting issues. Some of those we might want to keep there. We'll have to clarify that as we go forward. what is in there particularly related to tree management, we would recommend going into a separate ordinance. So that summarizes what is being recommended in relation to tree conservation. The outcomes, again, that we're trying to seek with this are to increase tree preservation on sites with existing canopy as well as establish stronger standards for new development. We want to note that preservation is often less feasible in commercial and urban areas. So our activity centers, for example, we'd expect to see a lot of deviation requests,

particularly from the preservation standards. That we seek to establish an administrative process for in-lead monetary contributions. This would have a set standard so that we're always receiving the same amount to find where we are using those funds. This essentially incentivizes quality over quantity of tree canopy. Right now all we have is our canopy requirement. So this gives us some more information to make sure we are getting the right type of canopy. And it emphasizes environmental protection versus just land use provisions. So right now we focus more on things like trees being in parking lots, trees being in right-of-way, and those types of things. Having a separate tree ordinance would allow us to focus more on the overall benefit of

Another bill in the state right now that we're keeping an eye on would allow localities to set higher tree canopy percentage requirements. As I mentioned earlier on, we are maximized in what the state is allowing us to do. If this bill goes all the way through, then that would give us some more flexibility. So we're seeing how that will affect this as we go forward. So lastly, these are the four options that we're looking at in terms of setting up a tree conservation ordinance. The first two basically mean that we should move forward with this, either as setting up a separate standalone conservation ordinance with this effort or to support some of those elements in the zoning ordinance and further research the other elements going forward.

The second two basically mean that we're not ready to move forward, either to keep standards as is or to wait on additional information, particularly with the upcoming state legislation, and determine how to move forward then. So I'll stop there for conversations on the tree conservation ordinance.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. where we're including financial figures in our zoning ordinance or things along that line do we need to put in language to index those for inflation if those are numbers that are going to be there and sit for a long time if you're going to put in you have to put in so much and we have to spend it within five years does that need to be

Paul Nabtistaffthis is one of the reasons I think we are tree conservation ordinance and not included in the zoning ordinance because we would want to adjust it. I think rather than have an inflation index we would actually want to determine how these types of costs are changing every year and change it and it's much easier to do that if we have a separate ordinance than to amend the zoning ordinance every year or two.

Paul CunninghamOkay thank you.

Kirsten LockhartOthers? I do think it makes sense to complete the draft ordinance until we in case there are new targets, but I think that should be the goal, obviously, to your point. Yeah, okay.

James FeatherIt's going to be interesting to see what happens in the legislature. I was just pulling up that House bill that you mentioned. Apparently something passed the House, went to the Senate, came out with a substitute, which was soundly rejected by the House. Okay. Just a couple days ago. But hopefully we'll still get some latitude that we want.

Paul NabtistaffYep. Okay, last topic is our use table. This should be quick. As you know, the draft amendments propose establishing a new zoning district that applicants are required to rezone to in order to provide development that is consistent with what is in our small area plans. So if we're going to be doing that, we also would like to be looking at our use table and our other standards to make sure we are encouraging this new district as a preferred venue for new development in activity centers and so some of the things we heard when we were talking to you last year we were talking about our best methods forward we asked the Planning Commission and City Council both if we wanted to lean more towards trying to achieve by right development

or if we still want to have some kind of review you heard overwhelmingly overwhelmingly that we still want to have review and so we think that should be distributed more equally with the Planning Commission and City Council than it is now and so we'll be looking at changes to our use table to accommodate that we want to limit options for mixed-use development outside of activity centers as a Planning Commission recalls we had a lot of conversation about this with a comprehensive plan where we are still supporting some mixed-use development outside of activity centers on a limited basis so we need to have some kind of venue to allow that but not necessarily make it an easier path than within activity centers.

And then we have some other more administrative recommendations particularly related to the district purpose statement. So the general recommendation is looking at our use table as it is today. You can see the S means special use permits, P means permitted, blank means the use is not permitted. In many of our commercial districts currently multifamily and upper story residential mixed uses are permitted with a special use permit this means that city council will have a review element of it but planning commission does not review special use permits with the proposed new district a rezoning would be required and so it would go to the all of these would go to the planning commission also you'll note that the s is remaining in the

commercial urban districts and through this the commercial urban district is an existing district that is not proactively mapped this would be the venue that would recommend for any mixed-use development outside of activity centers but it would still require rezoning and so it still come to the Planning Commission we are not showing the new AC district on this table yet we have determined if they'll be added to this table or if we'll have its own unique way of identifying what uses are permitted such as we currently have for Same would apply for our dimensional standards table. We remove all the options for residential and commercial districts except for the commercial urban. The 2024 means 20 units per acre is permitted.

24 units per acre is permitted through the affordable dwelling unit ordinance that we currently have. And that is the same as what is currently the current standards are for the commercial urban district. and then lastly we propose changing the purpose statement for the commercial urban district as it's currently worded that is the preferred option for our activity center so the language in here encourages use in those areas we are kind of flipping that upside down and saying that commercial urban is now the preferred option for mixed-use development outside of activity centers because the new activity center district is the preferred path within activity centers so there and see if there's any questions before.

I

Kirsten Lockhartdo have one question about that. One of the potential uses for, you know, examples of mixed use was a single building development with housing above a commercial facility. To me that doesn't match this definition of urban mixed use, but it would be a mixed use redevelopment of a property. like i we

Paul Nabtistaffcould strike the word urban yeah i don't think that would deviate from the purpose and i hear what you're saying that it's because

Kirsten Lockhartsometimes it is a one-off building

Paul Nabtistaffright

Kirsten Lockhartor a small

Paul Nabtistaffsmaller

Kirsten Lockhartsubset of buildings i

Paul Nabtistaffthink i think that would be an appropriate change

Kirsten Lockhartokay so just take the word urban out there. It's an urbanized use, right, to have retailer work below and housing above, but it's not an urban district. It's just a building.

Paul CunninghamCMUD.

Kirsten LockhartWe don't have to change the whole header, but just to provide a mixed-use development option. Let me look at that.

James FeatherWe're going to need something.

Kirsten LockhartIt's for the apartment above Woody's and the would-be apartment above Baskin-Wall Bay.

Paul CunninghamThat, but we were also talking then about the Gateway, the Gatewood building.

HalimaYeah.

Paul NabtistaffAnything else on this?

James FeatherI like where that piece has been going. Okay,

Paul Nabtistaffgood.

James FeatherYeah. Thank you.

Paul NabtistaffOkay. So before we wrap it up, I just wanted to remind you that the last time we met on this, we went over the zoning structure. We talked a little more detail about the activities in our district. We also talked about the dimensional standards, primarily being height and density, relates to the community benefits program since we have our consultant here tonight i just want to stop here now you've had more time to look at it if you have any more thoughts if you have any more questions that they could potentially help answer i want to open it up for any of those thoughts

James Featheranything else i spent a lot of time going through the however 58 page or whatever it is which i'll have a separate sit down with you on i certainly I won't bring everything up to my question tonight, but I'm glad we are where we are. I know it's taken a while to get here, but I think there's a lot of good opportunity here for doing what we're accomplishing. I mentioned earlier a concern I might have. The more prescriptive we get or some of the more options we have, I just need to be sensitive to whether we're still going to be inviting a slew of special exceptions in any case, I hope. not, or at least not that would get approved, because there is latitude and some formula or whatever to achieving some of the things we'd like to achieve, and still perhaps try

to address some of the concerns in the community of density and scale and so forth as well. So very optimistic where this is going.

Kirsten LockhartYeah, I think this has been a really great discussion, and I appreciate the work that's gone into it. I think this will also help clarify what is perceived as a arduous process for developers. You know, whether that's a fair assessment or not, it does seem, I can't argue with them when they point out that some things get through and some things don't. So the more clear and upfront we can be, the better.

James FeatherNext steps. Thank you.

Paul NabtistaffSo again, here is our calendar. we are wrapped up with planning commission discussions at this point but we're always happy to come back and talk at any time as we continue to work on this draft I do want to point out that our next steps do involve a community engagement open house that will be on March 26 at the Sherwood Community Center from 5 to 8 p.m. you can come in anytime we will have boards set up focusing on the different topics because you know there are a lot of different topics in this so you can kind of go to area is of most interest to you. And then following that, we will have actually starting in a couple of days, we will have the draft posted on our engage page with opportunities for comment there.

We'll have that open for about a month. Once we wrap that up, then we'll get back into working on the draft. I don't have a timeframe for coming back to you with the second draft, but we do anticipate going that going over that with you at least one more time before trying to schedule public hearings.

James FeatherTHANK YOU. THANK YOU, MR. BALIS, MR. WHITE, FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS AND SUPPORT OF OUR VERY CAPABLE STAFF. I KNOW THEY COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU. ALL RIGHT, WE WILL RECONVENE OUR REGULAR MEETING

Paul NabtistaffAND MOVE ON TO THE STAFF REPORT, MR. NAFTE. THANK YOU AGAIN, CHAIR FEATHER AND MEMBERS OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION. We have not met since February 9th, so I'll go back a couple of City Council meetings to recap. On February 10, the City Council unanimously approved adoption of the Urban Forest Master Plan that the Planning Commission recommended approval on. This document will likely result in necessary updates to some of our policies and codes. So thank you for your participation in that, and we expect to be talking to you about some of those, already are talking about also thank you for the planning commissioners who came to present the capital improvement program recommendations that will be a good resource for city council as they

Paul Nabtistaffcontinue the double deliberations on the budget february 17 city council had a special meeting to make up some of the items because they had some weather cancellations they at that meeting they supported the affordable housing strategic plan we'll be talking to you about some of the as well. They discussed the green building policy, did not at that time move forward with specific recommendations. They need to have some additional information. But one of the items that did come up in the discussion was whether we want to support having green building as one of the bonus provisions in the amendments that we're looking at here. And there was not a lot of support for that at this time. So we'll be moving forward assuming

that that is not something we'll be incorporating. They also, at that meeting, received their introduction on the small air plan zoning ordinance amendments, and we'll be continuing that with them tomorrow. The February 24th meeting, the city council received an update on the level of service study. This is an effort that staff has been working on for a little while, looking at standards to address impacts from new development on city capital facilities and how we can offset that. Planning Commission will be receiving an update on this project in April. They also receive pre-application work session discussions on the Courthouse Plaza proposal and the proposal at 10340 Democracy Lane that the Planning Commission received on February 9.

Tomorrow, March 10, City Council will be receiving another work session on the small area plan zoning ordinance amendments similar to what you received today. And just looking forward for planning commission, we expect at this point we'll be canceling your next meeting on March 26th. But we have a couple of things that are coming forward in April that we'll be getting ready for. Also wanted to mention in addition to the March 26th open house on the small area plan zoning ordinance amendments, on March 18th, which is next Wednesday, plan implementation group meeting. Those will be focusing on Norfax. It will be held from 9 a.m. to 1030 a.m. in the Willowood One conference room at the first floor of Willowood One which is at

103.00 Eaton Place. If anybody is interested in attending please email myself or Ms. Denny to let us know because we have a limited space in the room. That's all we have for the staff report today. Thank you.

James FeatherAny questions for staff? All right. Questions, comments from the commissioner? Mr. Cunningham, anything?

Paul CunninghamNo comment.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Lockhart. Nothing this evening. Thank you. Mr. Rice.

Matthew RiceSo I attended a Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meeting on the 12th of February after our last meeting and got an update on all sorts of things happening. complex portfolio of projects and responsibilities it's it's just mind-blowing how complex and busy they are across the hallway from us so I think Old Town Hall there's a you know progress being made on that obviously it's the buildings closed and renovations happening and so I have penciled here august to september uh as an opening um anyway i don't have enough detail on that but i'll certainly uh after i attend a meeting on thursday we'll have some more details on the schedule for the uh opening of old town hall um the uh tice park renovation um will have a field uh ribbon

cutting in June the actual fields themselves may not open until fall but there will be some facilities and things that will be open and there will be an event in June for that and I think for now there's a bit of thinking after the chocolate festival about what future chocolate festivals will look like in terms of spatial utilization and the balance between the Sherwood Center and events that happen

James Featherand

Matthew Ricethat's it as I mentioned in my comments with the students here I'm really quite busy with major revisiting of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission solar energy projections and those projections are GIS based and from a light our data survey that was done throughout the It became public about a year ago and we've been processing that light our data to create digital surface models that are used as Along with slope and aspect models used as a primary feature for determining what Rooftops and what facilities within the city would be good prospects for solar energy So when we finish that data and VRC will have a new rollout of their tools that they have but will also generate some data layers that will go directly into our enterprise GIS that will allow for staff to be able to use that information as they see fit.

I will probably have some informal access to those layers before NBRC's release, and we'll send those to Amy Lynn, to Maurice in the GIS office, and also to Patrick Ramson up in Public Works. And that's

James Featherit. Speaking of which, do you have any update on your students' projects on GIS Day?

Matthew RiceSo there's still some judging that's happening, and so we will defer further discussion about that until our next meeting.

James FeatherLooking forward to that group of students. From my perspective, I attended a bar meeting. They met last week for the first time since November. re-elected Heatherway as chair. And the only thing on the agenda of significance besides that, the elections and the remote participation policy review, which was required annually, was a public hearing for the Kia dealership facade changes, which went smoothly and without objection. Thank you for your endurance this evening. There's a little more on the agenda tonight because the last meeting was canceled partly because of me. But I appreciate your participation and sticking around. So thank you for that. With that, we are adjourned.