Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, September 14, 2026. It's good to see you all back after August recess. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. I

Paul Cunninghampledge allegiance to the

James Featherflag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Paul CunninghamThank you.

Paul NaptystaffDid I come back?

James FeatherWe're back. Okay, thank you. Our next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued last week as required. Are there any comments, changes, corrections, amendments to the proposed agenda?

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move we adopt the agenda as presented.

James FeatherSecond. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. the sleeve. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening and I believe we have one person who would like to address the commission at this time. Yes, we do. Welcome.

Speaker 1Okay, honorable commission. I hope this speech I've prepared isn't too much in opposition to your effort. Yeah, I hope I'm not opposing your efforts too much here since I have full faith in the commission to make the right decisions when it comes to planning. But one of the most powerful sentiments I heard at September 2nd's open house came from a George Mason student who was just a few years older than myself. He expressed that he is not optimistic about being able to secure affordable housing in the future city of Fairfax, and I somewhat agreed with him. However, he and perhaps the only ones in the room without view due to the fact that everyone else was an adult. Indeed, they were mostly older adults present and these are the people who are most

likely to own single family homes in the city. Therefore, I am concerned that the comments collected at the open house over represent current adult homeowner's views, largely reflecting the medium density status quo. Thus, I heard opposition to the amendment due to concerns about traffic and local business in the character of old town and even the possibility of bicycles And now I'm not sure how much these comments influenced the recent changes to the zoning amendment proposal, but I have to say that from my perspective those changes seem to make it slightly harder to achieve what I think is necessary, which is more affordable housing. So really what I have to say is that I think the commission should try to better balance

the views of current and future Fairfax City property owners and maybe don't hesitate to recommend the things that will make the city stronger in the future rather than trying to completely accommodate for everyone living here now. What's even better is I think current residents will drop their opposition once they see the good that comes out of building a new development which happens quite often with different urban projects worldwide. That's all I have. Thank you very much for your consideration.

James FeatherThank you for expressing a very important perspective. We seldom hear. And just for the record, his name has been provided to the clerk of the meeting so for the public record. Thank you. next order of business is consideration of the minutes from the july 27th 2026 meeting those again were issued ahead of the time are there any comments or corrections proposed for those

Kirsten Lockhartmr chair i move that the commission adopt the meeting minutes from the july 27 2026 regular meeting as presented

James Feathersecond and moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Next to our business public hearings, we have none this evening, so we'll recess our regular meeting and go into our work sessions. First item on the work session is continuing our discussion on potential zoning text amendments related to the adopted small area plans. Good to see you back to mr. Napty

Paul Naptystafftake it away thank you chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission the Planning Commission is I'm sure familiar with this effort we've had numerous work sessions over the past two years on this project the most recent being in July when we reviewed the second full draft of the proposed zoning orders amendments related to smaller your plans with you Since that time, we have been considering some additional revisions based on feedback received both from the Planning Commission and the City Council during those work sessions in July, as well as as a result of the community meeting that the speaker just mentioned that was held on September 2nd. We have also continued to receive feedback on this effort online.

We are tentatively scheduled to have a public hearing with the Planning Commission on October 12th. That will set us up for a public hearing with the City Council on November 10th. We have a new draft at this time. We're still working on these changes. However, we wanted to have a conversation with you about them to make sure you're aware of them and to see if there's any feedback that you can provide that can help guide us as we finalize these changes. These are also a few changes we think are significant enough. We didn't want the first time you see them or to be aware of them to be at the public hearing. There are numerous other changes that are going to be proposed in the revised draft. Most of the other changes are more minor in detail,

involve language and structure and those types of things. So I'll go through these items with you today. Again, we'd appreciate any feedback you can provide on any of these that are of interest to you. We still are at a point where we can continue to make revisions because we have not finalized the draft yet. And so please keep that in mind as you provide comments. Just as a quick refresher on the structure of the proposed amendments, we are proposing establishment of a new district called the Activity Center District. this would not be proactively rezoned so anybody who is seeking to use it in order to support residential or mixed-use development activity centers would still have to seek a rezoning and receive support from the Planning

Commission and the City Council within that new district if it is used the following standards are proposed to apply we have dimensional standards which primarily relate to height and density with that through a community benefits program additional height and density can be received beyond the base requirements of the zoning ordinance in addition we have standards related to frontages which primarily relate to how buildings relate to the street in terms of dimensions designs and uses we have recreation and open space which defines what types of open spaces can contribute towards minimum requirements also the definitions or the amount of open space provided can allow for additional density through

the community benefits program if it exceeds the minimum requirements and then lastly we have circulation and parking there are general standards in these areas regarding circulation this is another item for which community benefits can be received for providing contributions to the publicly accessible multimodal transportation network so we won't go through all those items tonight only those that we are going planning to make changes to and so I'll go through each of those this is an overview of the primary changes that we point from the draft that you saw in July this includes changes to how this new district would relate to the overlay districts in Old Town provisions for additional height you may recall that we asked the planning Commission about

thoughts about supporting additional height potentially beyond what the recommendations of the smaller your plans are general density revisions in terms of how density is calculated and what the total development amount can be commercial incentives we've heard a lot about the desire for more commercial to be included in mixed-use development projects so we're looking at ways to improve that a general citywide reduction to requirements for office parking this is something we also mentioned to you before we now have a more specific standard that we're going to be recommending and then applicability of special exceptions this is something we have not discussed before but special exceptions are a tool in the zoning ordinance where

an applicant can request deviations from the general standards of the zoning ordinance. And so as we include these new provisions in the zoning ordinance, we'll be having to think about which ones of these we might want to accommodate special exceptions for. Certainly in most cases, we prefer to have development happen without special exceptions, but we need to be cognizant of situations where there might be unique factors that should be taken into consideration. So I'll go through each of these and then to explain them in more detail. we'll be seeking feedback from you in the end. So the first item related to changes to the relationships to overlay districts. As you may recall, the new activity center district can only be used in defined activity centers,

and these will be mapped in the zoning ordinance with the map shown here where we have adopted small area plans. One of the items that we have been working on is how this new district would relate to our overlay districts, particularly in Old Town. we have the historic overlay district which is in the core of old town and the transition overlay district that surrounds it the recommendation that we made you in july is that the new district would supersede the recommendations of the transition overlay district again the overlay district that surrounds old town not the core of old town we're now recommending that the new district would replace it to avoid any concerns about conflicts or confusion about having both

districts in the same place and then the new district would continue to be superseded by the standards of the historical overlay district again when we say supersede it only means that where there are conflicting provisions in each district in this case a historic overlay district would apply if there's a provision in the new district that does not exist in the historic overlay district then that provision from the activity center district could apply

James FeatherCan I interrupt for a question? Yes. Are there areas that are part of the transition overlay district that are not in the activity center?

Paul NaptystaffYes, there are. Actually, there are a couple, and they are primarily properties that have rezoned to it over the course of lenient activities over the past couple of years. So this wouldn't change that. also properties that are within the activity center boundary that are within the transition overlay district that don't go the rezoning also would maintain it at some point in the future we might want to think about if we want to continue to have it or turn it into something else that's not something we we think we need to do at this point but it certainly will be open in the future thank you so related to this you may recall in July we also suggested that we the boundary of the historic overlay district because the extent of that

district extends well beyond the boundary of the National Register historic district and for those properties that are within that area there are different provisions that might not be as applicable to the type of development that we expect to see with the activity center district particularly outside of the core of Old Town we are still proposing to make these changes however However, we're recommending that we defer on these changes until after the changes that would accommodate the activity center districts are supported if they are approved. If they are not approved, we wouldn't necessarily have to move forward with this. The reason for that is that with the changes with the activity center district, we're not proactively mapping that anywhere.

So we're not changing the standards for any existing development. So we don't have to worry about things like nonconformities. If we were to change the boundary of the historic overlay district, those types of things might come up. We'll have to examine each property individually that would be affected. So in the timeline that we are working to move forward with the proposed amendments, this is something that we think would be too much of a sidetrack and it could raise some other issues that need to be dealt with. So we'd rather do that as its own effort. again we're still proposing to do this or go through this effort but to do it as a separate effort

Matthew Riceafter the other amendments are completed the

Paul Naptystaffsecond item was related to additional height as you might recall from our discussion in July we asked the question of whether there would be support for at least being able to consider development proposals that provide a height that is taller than area plans as you might recall the proposed zoning amendments establish a variation in height limitations based on the recommendation of the small area plans and we share these two images here because we have projects that are being proposed as well as projects that have been approved that meet this condition and they the cases where they've been approved the Planning Commission or City Council who approved them saw some value to the city that made it worth it

to allow that additional height to occur and so we did receive some positive feedback about this with the caveat particularly from the Planning Commission that there be some kind of specific and measurable benefit to the city if we are going to accommodate that so with the draft in July the bullet points under here were some kind of general standards that we have proposed at this time we're now proposing more specific standards that somewhat relate to the the bonus density provisions that we have the community benefits program so what we're proposing is that up to two stories beyond the recommendations of the smaller plan can be considered but in order to request that an applicant must provide at least 20% of the land area as open space the base requirement

in the proposed activity center district is 10% and at least 400 square feet of commercial space be provided per residential unit this is starting to get feedback that we got saying that we really want to encourage more commercial development also we heard from both the Planning Commission and City Council and members of the public that that commercial uses provide more value to the city it provides places for people to go and so we want to encourage that and so I'll go through a couple of examples of what that means and so can I ask one question on that or should I hold my questions go ahead

Tassos McCarthy400 square feet is that for the units above and beyond that would go into the extra two stories or literally for every single unit in the project

Paul Naptystafffor what we're proposing is for every single unit in the project so a 250

Tassos McCarthyunit building would have to put a hundred thousand square feet of commercial a Walmart footprint

Paul NaptystaffI have to check my math on this I'll show you some projects that where the supplies okay I

Tassos McCarthyI like the general idea of it. doing something yeah and that's the kind of feedback we want to receive

Paul Naptystaffbecause we can still work on these numbers okay finalize it can i

Kirsten Lockhartask one other question too yeah for purposes of this discussion open space is that undeveloped space would parking lots count as open space can we what are we what's the definition of open

Paul Naptystaffthis would have to meet the definitions that are in the activity center district and you might recall from the previous discussions there are list of open spaces that can contribute and there are definitions for them for how they function how they design those types of things so things like parking law others wouldn't apply there are various types of open spaces some have more of an urban plaza type conditions some are more passive some have storm water functions and those types of things they also have weighting factors and so the more valuable ones count as more if the less valuable ones to the city would count as less and those weightings would would be factored into this 20%

Matthew RicePaul, could you remind me if there's a coniguity measure built into those open space things within the activity center? We've had a couple things that come in with very long linear spaces that don't really seem to be open space as much as they are just buffers or overflow from a parking lot.

Paul NaptystaffThere are standards. There are design standards that are not dimensional requirements. So if we were to have a very long linear place space potentially it could count if it were designed so that it's usable. If it were just a buffer between a parking lot and a building or something like that in most cases that would not be able to apply or if it would it would be a low value type type open space. There are some in there for just standard landscape areas that have a low weighting factor.

Paul Cunninghamhow does the linear park on the example you have in front of us on the screen fall is that useful open space since it's intended to be extended across adjacent streets and into another area to be longer or how does that figured in that it's not green on our picture showing it as open space but it is part of what was described as the linear park

Paul Naptystaffso one of the things we'll talk about in a little bit is the um how open spaces are defined in the smaller air plans um count or have a weighting factor we're proposing changes to that as well and so what we're proposing would be that the area that's within was defined as a linear in the small area plan on this plan. The only areas that would contribute toward that would have to meet one of the open space definitions. There are open space definitions for what we call low impact of elements stormwater measures. And this proposal does include those types of measures along the streetscape. So there'd be some small areas that would be able to contribute toward that requirement where that function is occurring.

But in general, the way the activity center district in the streetscape being required sidewalk the tree planting zone or the street itself do not count toward open space requirements even if they are defined as a linear park in the smaller plan okay so before I give some examples here I just want to mention there there there are some concerns about this idea of having language in these in this district that specifically sports supports building heights that are taller than what's recommended in the smaller airplane because our goal with this effort is really only to recommend what's in the smaller airplane and not deviate from it if we want to make deviations as we've mentioned we are we are looking at doing a small airplane review beginning next year and we can make those kind of

changes in the smaller plans themselves and then adjust the zoning ordinance accordingly however we did hear a lot of requests for this a lot of interest and so we're putting it out there There are alternatives for how this could work if we do not specifically include language that supports taller building heights. One is special exceptions. We will talk again more about special exceptions for all the provisions in this section later. But related to height, if we allow special exceptions for height, then an applicant could request a special exception if they are going beyond the height requirements. One of the concerns we've had, one of the reasons we're doing these amendments is because nearly every applicant for residential mixed use development in these areas is requesting

special exceptions because they have to really because our current structure does not accommodate the recommendations of the smaller plant including for things like height. And so what would be different with this is that we would be accommodating the height that's recommended in the smaller plant so if somebody were requesting a special exception that this is different from what's in the smaller plans and we should be looking for some kind of benefit. That being said, the special exception process does not specifically define what should be considered a benefit. There are very loose standards to it. And as the planning commission might be aware, this planning commission doesn't actually have a defined role

in providing recommendations for special exceptions. You can comment on them during the land use review process, but you're not providing a recommendation to city council on that. So there are some drawbacks as well to that. Another alternative shown here is if we do, if we don't accommodate either, we don't have special exceptions for height and we don't accommodate the language, there is still a path that applicants could use by rezoning to one of our planned development districts. These are districts that have loose standards that an applicant can essentially write their own standards for the development provided certain benefits are met. there is a structure to this process and it's intended to allow for development

that provides more benefit to the city than a standard development would and there is a minimum open space requirement of 20% so we would be achieving that goal however the downside of that again is we would not be able to have these other benefits such as was shown here with the commercial requirement also we really want to encourage properties in the activity centers to use this new aside from just the benefits there are design provisions related to frontages and other elements that really help reinforce the recommendations of the smaller plans and so by not doing that then we are losing some of the strengths of these new proposed districts so just two things to keep in mind two alternatives that we could keep in mind if we if we are too concerned to include

the specific language about about height so on those two provisions I just want to provide some examples here we looked at all project all development that have been approved in activity centers in the last 10 to 15 years. And the only one that would have met this 20% threshold for open space was the NorthFax West development. The first couple of phases that are now finishing up construction for that. And part of the reason for that is because they had a large section on the northwest side of that that was open space that now was a trail and has provided a connection to the neighborhood and those types of things. They have a few other open spaces in there that contribute with that, is a big piece of that.

From the commercial standpoint, we also went through all those projects and this is a list of the projects that we looked at that have been approved. All those that are shown with the number on the right on red are those where the amount of commercial space provided falls short of that 400 square feet per residential unit threshold. Those in green provided more. So you'll note that the two in here in green, neither of them are very large in terms of providing a large number of units. project that provided 79 residential units and about 45,000 square feet of commercial space so that exceeded that threshold the pathway homes development in an old town was really repurposing a building that only had 15 units and just a ground floor commercial and that was able

to pass that threshold so to Commissioner McCarthy's point if we have really large projects it becomes very difficult for them to to meet the threshold the next item to discuss is density we heard a lot from the community meeting on on September 2nd as you heard from the speaker earlier with concerns about residential density we also heard some feedback from City Council about this when we met with them in July. And so we began looking at ways that we could adjust the standards in the proposed activity center district to see if we should limit the density that can be achieved to a reasonable extent. And just to kind of summarize this, there's no set maximum density that's proposed with this district.

We have a base density, but then as we mentioned, And additional density can be earned through community benefits and other provisions. And so we had to really, when we're looking at changes, we had to kind of run some estimates based on existing developments to see how they would turn out and what the likely impact would be on the type of development that we're receiving proposals for. So the first change that we're proposing is lowering the base density from 48 dwelling units per acre to 40 dwelling units per acre. the reason we're hovering around in that range is that in the comprehensive plan there are recommended dense there's no recommended density for the activity center place type itself where a smaller plan is adopted and the smaller

plans themselves don't have recommended densities density is expected to be limited by the building envelope that can be achieved when you factor in the building height where open spaces are and where streets are and those types of things so this would be adding a numeric value to that but in the for the picket and main activity center and for the mixed-use place type which was added with this most recent comprehensive plan those do have a recommended density not to exceed 48 dwelling units per acre so the reason where we're hovering in this range for a base density is we want to encourage development in activity centers particularly those with smaller plans more so than those without smaller plans or in

district they're really our core areas for where development should be occurring and so we don't want to push the base density too much lower than what is shown in those other districts at 42 on is per acre we already have provision and zoning ordinance for participation the affordable dwelling unit program which is required for any development with over 50 units and they essentially achieve a 20% bonus density for that so any development with over 40 with over have a starting point of 48 dwelling in its per acre if the base is 40 before we get into the new provisions of the activity center with the previous version it was 48 and the starting point was really around 57 you know 20% on top of

48 so that's why we're proposing that change there the second meant we mentioned earlier the waiting factors for open space and those open spaces that are identified in the small area plan with the last draft we we added a WEIGHTING FACTOR OF 2.0. YOU MAY RECALL FROM PREVIOUS DRAFTS THAT THE ONLY WEIGHTING FACTORS WERE 0.5 FOR THE LOWER VALUE OPEN SPACES LIKE UTILITY AREAS AND THOSE TYPES OF THINGS. 1.0 FOR THE KIND OF STANDARD OPEN SPACES AND 1.5 FOR THE MORE DESIRAL PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE OPEN SPACES. WITH THE LAST DRAFT WE ADDED A WEIGHTING FACTOR OF 2.0 FOR THOSE THAT BOTH HAD THE HIGHER WEIGHTING FACTOR BEFORE AND ARE SPECIFICALLY IDENTIFIED IN THE SMALL AREA PLAN. What we found is that when we applied that 2.0 weighting factor, some of the developer

proposals had such a high calculation of open space that it really exceeded what we felt they were really conveying in terms of a benefit to the city. In addition to that, we started to think about how this would be applied, and we think there could lead to disagreements about what is specifically identified in the smaller plans. As a reminder, the smaller year plans are intended to be kind of high level and vague. And so the extent of the boundary of the open space or specifically is it on one site or the next site could lead to some concerns. And then lastly, if we end up changing the smaller year plans that we were discussing doing, if we do change the smaller year plan while a development application is midway

through review following the standards of the zoning ordinance, then essentially that's changing the standards midway through the review for that proposal, which is something avoid so our recommendation is to remove that provision these areas would still receive a 1.5 weighting factor which is still beneficial but it brings down some of the kind of excessive open space calculations that we were seeing which contribute to bonus density the third change we recommend is to remove or reduce the land assembly incentive we've been discussing this incentive from the beginning of this effort there's been a lot of support for it from for many people this is designed to encourage property owners to consolidate with

properties around them to achieve larger sites to try to avoid leaving smaller properties behind that can't redevelop and so with the first draft we had the standards are shown here in gray allowing up to a 30 percent increase in density for property owners who participate in this with the last draft we had reduced that so the maximum that could be achieved was 20 percent in looking at our review of the development proposals that we've received for the past couple of years we still feel like this is creating a a large density bonus compared to some of the other factors and it may not provide as much benefit to the city as other things such as publicly accessible open space so our recommendation is to remove this if there is concern about removing another

there's still desire to encourage consolidation then we would recommend reducing this rate I also wanted to point out that we looked at some of the some of the projects where discussions about consolidating additional properties has come up and whether this would make a difference for encouraging those properties to to consolidate so one of those is scout on the circle this was approved back in in 2014 project project is built but everyone is aware that sits on the corner there and anyone who is around or in discussions of that project might recall that property owner was encouraged to try to acquire the Dunkin' Donuts. They claim that they did and they didn't have any success with it. But looking at whether this incentive would help there, this may have been some encouragement

for them because while that was a large site on its own, it did not go through a consolidation process and they would have to go through a consolidation process just to participate in this program so they wouldn't get any density just for the size of the site on a loan. Another example, the point at Camp Washington, there were some adjacent smaller properties where they were encouraged to consolidate. In that case, this would not have made a difference because they did go through consolidation to create their assemblage and they resulted in a large site that exceeds five acres. So there was no incentive for them to go any bigger by trying to acquire additional property. So there would have been no incentive for them on this one.

And then the last one I want to mention is the gallery. This is one that's still under review, but I wanted to bring it up because this is a recent discussion. I think all of you around as this project started to move forward, there was a property at the south end of this site that was not in the original proposal, and the applicant was encouraged to try to include that property in their proposal, and they were able to come up with a deal with that property owner. So that is now in the proposal that we have. In looking at these provisions, if we were to have an incentive, it's good that they'd move forward and were able to include that property, but the question is if this would have been an incentive for them.

As it turns out, the assemblage that they had fell in the threshold of two to five acres, and by adding that property, they were still in the threshold of two to five acres. So they wouldn't have had that incentive, and they were already assembling, so they would have already received some density for this. So I just want to share those three examples because, yes, in some cases this would help. It wouldn't help in all cases to incentivize. And, again, we're looking at increased density or bonuses for developers that we think are more suitable for direct community benefits to the city. And then the last change in density recommendations, this one is actually an increase. going back to the feedback we've heard about the desire to support or encourage additional commercial space.

In addition to the amount of commercial space that would be required to have the bonus site, we're recommending that commercial space be included as one of the general community benefits that allow for additional residential units to be built. As a reminder, the other two are publicly accessible open space beyond the 10% requirement contributions to the publicly accessible multimodal transportation network. So this would be a third one. And what we're proposing is that any development that provides commercial space could earn their ability to develop one additional residential unit for each 1,000 square feet of commercial space that's provided. And so looking at the developments that have been approved, these five here shows the amount

of commercial space that were included in approval and the resulting amount of additional residential units that would be earned if this were to be included now when we get to the end of this i'll i'll kind of share this on a broader perspective so you can see how how all the density additions add up and how that compares between our previous draft and this draft

Kirsten Lockhartquick question is there a metric that we can include under the umbrella of density or maybe it belongs somewhere else more appropriately but that talks about unit type mix unit size my concern is that we're seeing a lot of properties that almost exclusively offer studios and one bedroom apartments which i understand the economic incentives for developers to do it that way but it doesn't really address you know the broad spectrum of housing housing needs in the city so if you look at and you know a townhouse development that also offers two over two condos or an apartment building that offers two and three bedrooms can we incentivize that in some way shape or does it all just boil down to a unit as a unit as a unit?

Paul NaptystaffThis has come up as a question in the past, and I believe our concern has been that the way we measure residential units and zoning orders is just a unit as a unit. We don't break down by bedroom except for when calculated parking. It doesn't mean it's something that could not be included. I think there are also concerns about market fluctuations what's actually in demand but certainly this is something that is important we could we could look at including it

Matthew Riceit does seem like we could potentially be gamifying that bonus density by accepting a development with small units I think I tend to agree that that may be an issue. I don't feel so strongly about it that we need to rewrite things, but it's definitely a potential problem.

James FeatherThank you.

Paul CunninghamQuestion. When we begin to relate things, for instance for every thousand square feet you get one additional unit how does that factor into the concept of reasonable development for a parcel of land when you think of scout on the circle 88 000 square feet would have been residential units they would have 88 density bonus units how many additional floors does that have to be if there's no footprint to put it on and reasonably add it within the rest of the the metrics we've set up for approving and development When I look at these and we were talking Davies with 10,000 square feet, it would be 11 additional units. We started with Davies with 450 units or that and ended up with 300 and some units, I believe.

And in the other metrics, we're seeing that Davies really probably should be in the neighborhood of 280 units for the type of site and to get the rest of the metrics in so that you're neighbors to build sidewalks and other things because you're not including them. How does this directly relate then to the appropriate development of a site?

Paul NaptystaffSo on the next two slides, I'll go through how all of these densities add up and kind of summarize to what could be achieved. but a kind of a summary answer to your question is the thought is that as all of these things come together and they add up on top of each other you reach a point where the development as it's is trying to earn additional density as you said the footprint can only go so much and so the densities that are earned aside from the commercial space are through provisions for the transportation network and for open space land for that and so you're taking away from their ability to spread their footprint

Matthew Riceas

Paul Naptystaffthey're adding density so at a certain point you you reach equilibrium and so that's why we are running tests on existing projects to see how that falls i think in some of these they would be able to fit a little bit more but it won't reach a point where the density that can be received is infinite because it's it's all balancing itself out you have the footprint you have the height that are giving you the density itself which also take up space whether it be commercial space open space or transportation infrastructure

Paul Cunninghamokay then in a project like the botanist where we've got 5 000 square feet and we're going to give five additional residential units we had discussion on the fact that there are three or four or five residential units on the ground floor adjacent to that commercial space that we would recommend actually be turned into commercial space instead of residential space. So when we're trying to balance this back and forth, is there a direct correlation from this standpoint, or is this just a mathematical exercise? This

Paul Naptystaffis what we're looking at today. It's just a piece of the larger structure of these amendments. This is a way to set some numeric standards for how density is achieved. There are other things that are in these proposed amendments. For example, that you provided under the frontage standards, there are locations where there are requirements for a certain percentage of a ground floor to have a commercial or retail use. And that would apply in the example of the botanist. and so they would receive bonus density for that commercial use but in that case we're saying specifically where it should occur. There might be other locations where the small area plan doesn't recommend commercial be in a certain location and an

applicant could still propose commercial and receive this bonus density but the other types of values that are identified in the small area plan have other ways of ensuring that they occur through these amendments. Okay, I guess I'm still challenged

Paul Cunninghamby some of this where the botanist when you look at size and 5,000 square feet and the amount of residential that's in the structure already, it's keeping it relevant as we move back and forth between the different things. We'll move on. Thank you.

Paul NaptystaffYeah, so these examples and this is kind of getting to what you're talking about. Can

Tassos McCarthyI ask one more question before we move on? Yeah. was the basis from 48 dwelling units an acre to 40 was that like did how did we get to that number

Paul Naptystaffwe recognize that the language in the comprehensive plan for those other place types that we mentioned suggested up to 48 dwellings per acre and as I mentioned we didn't want to go really below that because activity centers we want to encourage development but the thought is if we go down to 40 through the affordable dwelling unit program which is something you're getting back to 48 okay thank you so this chart is now looking at some examples of approved projects again on the bottom this is one of them to Commissioner Cunningham's comments and so the the top section there where it says approved we have units and density shows what was approved on each of these sites the number of units and the resulting density for that the second

two bars show what could have been supported through these amendments with the draft that we share with you in July so in for the bond is looking at that as an example that was approved with 260 units resulting in 87.8 dwelling units per acre but the draft that we share with you in July we believe that 215 units could be achieved resulting in 72.5 dwellings per acre with the draft the proposed amendments that we're talking with you today again we're bringing down the base density and some of the those other standards but then allowing for the additional units that could be earned through commercial that would then be 191 units or sixty four point six units per acre so when we're looking at all those additions of density we were just looking at them

independently we weren't looking at how they compared to what was approved or anything that's happened in the past we're looking at the how they would be reviewed today and we add all of it together this chart is summarizing what would happen so in that case the the resulting development would have to be smaller than what was approved and some of these others they could be larger and we went through a series of tests and tried to find a place with equilibrium and on that same note this is now showing a more comprehensive review looking at everything that has been approved or submitted to us or we've briefing on in the activity centers and we've kind of summarized it on this chart as we can see where trends are so we had a version of this in July but I'll

explain it again so I know it's a little confusing we have two charts here that they're showing kind of the same thing the one on the left showing the conditions based on the results from the draft in July the one on the right showing the results if we were to include the revisions that we are recommending the The blue circles show existing or proposed or approved development. The orange circles show what would occur with these amendments. And so we're looking at the horizontal axis shows each of these properties by the site area. So the more to the right you are, the larger the site is. The more to the left, the smaller the site is. And then the higher you go on the vertical axis, the more dense in terms of dwelliness per acre the project is.

So the higher it is, the more dense it is, the lower it is, the less dense it is. And then the size of the circle shows the resulting number of units. So looking at the blue circles, you'll see on the two charts the blues are the same because those are all what's been proposed or approved. You can see that in both cases for the smaller sites, we tend to see the orange circles are lower, meaning that not as much density could be achieved. with the July draft as we get to the larger sites more density could be achieved and this is for for a couple of reasons one being that with that land assembly incentive for the larger sites they were able to get significant increases in density and so those what could be approved for the sites is

actually much larger than what is either proposed or has been approved before in addition to that the larger sites tend to have more space for accommodating space and providing new streets and so they're able to get additional density a little bit easier than the smaller sites looking to the chart on the right you can see the circles on the right are come down a little bit a little bit closer to what has actually been approved or is proposed and I'm looking to the left we had there's been some changes some of the the the more dense sites have come down a little primarily because of removal of that consolidation incentive but for the most part those are still in in the range I'd also note that with the

commercial incentive we believe that this would be an opportunity for the smaller sites if they are falling short of what they need to be able to achieve to be financially successful the commercial incentive is giving them a tool if they don't have the land to provide open space or contributions to the transportation network so that kind of summarizes what we see on those two charts I'll stop there and see if there are any comments oh just one thing I want to mention in summarizing all of these we looked at the average density for all of the proposed and approved projects and they average out to 76.9 dwelling units per acre in the in the real world conditions if we model them based on a July draft that would be 73.4 dwelling units per acre as an average

and then based on the proposed changes that would be 63.7 dwelling units per stepping down a little bit from where we were in July. And I'll stop there if there's any questions. How does

Paul Cunningham76 stepping down to 63 compared to the 40 we talked about a minute ago?

Paul Naptystaff40 is our starting point. And so the additional units that can be achieved through the community benefits program is what gets us up to the average of 63 or 73.

James FeatherI'm not sure what's your point. What's your point? What's your question?

Paul CunninghamMy question is I'm seeing a lot of numbers. I'm having a challenge relating them to what the meaning of this development is these numbers and how they translate to communication with the development community, with the residential community where most of the people live who have comments on this and the rest of it for getting a reasonable discussion on concept going about what this actually means. because one of the items that I hear picked up on very quickly is 11 stories. Well, what does 11 stories mean? And then when we had our young gentleman there and we talk about they're mostly studios and one bedrooms, is that the affordable housing that George Mason students and others entering the workforce are looking to live in when they come out

as close to affordable housing as we get in any proposal we have going on and how do we bring these to the raw numbers addressing what the issues are that we've got and that's where I guess I'm I'm being challenged a little bit by this. Are we after larger, denser proposals? Or how do we move between these to get a vision that is workable or acceptable or communicable to the bulk of the population that wants to comment on it and has a comment on it. Because I think the development community being what it is professionally will figure it out as to what's in their best interest. So between those two communities, it's the communication back and forth with some of this as we're trying to move it and change it.

how did these two graphs change this enough for the planning commissioners here at this dais to understand what it means when we see a project? That's my question.

Paul NaptystaffAnd that's why we're using examples of projects that we think most everybody is familiar with because, as I mentioned, there's no set number for this proposed district as to how many units or anything like that. There's a calculation process, and the intent of these amendments, as a reminder, is it's not just about how much development. It's about what's included in it and what benefits the city, because that's the vision of the small area plans. It's providing places for people to go, providing open spaces, providing a better connected street network. And those are the things that we're including as a tradeoff for developers to earn densities that are within the range of the telepropatizer projects that we've been receiving proposals for anyway.

The purpose of this chart is to see how that would pan out in comparison to projects that we're familiar with. And we hope this is what will give people a perspective and what this actually means. Because I understand that just looking at the numbers and the calculations, you're not going to be able to understand what that means for what's happening around us.

Paul CunninghamWhen I look at City Center West, proposed is 154. July draft is 135. The actual approved is 79. That seems an inversion of what we're talking about to encourage greater density. When I look at the actual proposal that came in and we approved, it was the type of units that fit with the commercial space that was put into the building and all of the elements came together in that building to give you a mixed-use building with a set of residential units that hit an affordability target that was commensurate with what the entire building and the envelope of that entire development structure was supposed to be. So 79 would be a good number of units. 154 I don't see translating to the type of development was there without really radically

changing the size of a building and its purpose. So when we look at developments I feel like they have to be more than statistics. They have to be entities that fit the situation and how we get there. really were trying to incentivize City Center West to add another 70 units. Right.

James FeatherThey were filling a

Paul Cunninghamdifferent housing. They were filling a different housing need. Which is not what most people want to. So when we apply our statistic to it, how do we translate that to the kind of need that's being presented in the statistics? So

Paul Naptystaffthis is showing what the zoning ordinance could support for any given development. Just because the development earns 150 units doesn't mean they have to build 150 units. In many of these cases, none of the projects here, but in some of the projects that we have proposed or elsewhere, there are townhouse components, which significantly brings down the density. And so they wouldn't necessarily be dependent on the densities that could be achieved here to build those kinds of developments. But, again, this is just one piece of what's in this ordinance. So there are still stronger open space requirements and stronger frontage requirements. And so those developments will still give us more of what the city envisions to the small-air plans than they would without it,

even if they aren't earning the density. And the city center west is a good example. There's no townhouses there. It's all multifamily. But, as you said, it's a specific product type. And we can't write the zoning ordinance to accommodate every single possibility that's out there. but they could achieve certain things here that they might not necessarily take advantage of and so they wouldn't need that we still think these amendments would make that project better because there are other design elements about how the building relates to the street and those types of things that they would have to take into account even if they're still only building 79 units

Paul Cunninghambut but the botanist and davies then by scaling them down we make them better projects

Paul NaptystaffIf they were to go through this process, they would have to earn those densities through providing community benefits. So those are two cases where, you know, we don't know what the result would be. Would the application not move forward or would it move forward with revisions to make them more, to be able to be, you know, marketable and successful? We don't know the answer for that, but we are trying to provide something that is not allowing too much for the sites that didn't need that kind of density, but not taking away too much from those that do need that kind of density. And so that's why we see some of these could earn more than they actually needed. Some of them can't quite get to the density that they actually needed to get approved.

Paul CunninghamOkay.

Matthew RiceThank you. Mr. Rhodes. So I love the graphics. Whoever had the idea of doing graduated circle plots on two axes, I think I have a suspicion about which of our senior long-term planners may have had. Oh, maybe not. So I think it's very, very helpful. And obviously seeing things like this opens up a whole bunch of ideas and discussions. I definitely see a separation between things that are generally happening on two and a quarter acres and things that are between eight and ten. That by itself is inherently useful. So more innovative stuff like this, please, like every meeting. This is really quite good. Also, seeing those graduated circles moving a bit does directly communicate the dynamics of what's being proposed.

I think there are two views. One, you could look at this as a way of kind of politically appeasing a certain constituency that wants lower density, that wants to think of this as the, you know, humble city of Fairfax, you know, small town. It also perhaps is a way for us to generate some floor space to negotiate those things that we want and that, frankly, we're no longer allowed to extract through proffers. I think that's actually helpful. This both creates an opportunity for developers, and it also allows us to prioritize things that are helpful for the community, open space, transportation improvements, and so forth. I'm not really afraid of higher densities, but I think information like this is inherently useful.

I really like the fact that you're looking at proposals that came in and what-ifs. We have no other useful data. we could conjecture about what might happen in the future, but no, we can actually look at what did happen and what could have been different. And I think that's really useful in the context of a comment I made repeatedly. I may not always be the most insightful person here on the stand, but I've worried a great deal about developers sort of figuring out how to optimize their path through this process to end up at some unusual goal that is allowable by our rules, but which we didn't anticipate. So I think gamifying our density bonuses or our kind of options for them to get things in return for commitments of other types

could be a very positive thing for us. it could also be something that you know based on things we may not predict entirely may have results that we don't anticipate the only way we're going to figure that out is by doing the sort of analysis that you've been doing so frankly it's not always super easy to understand but I think what you presented tonight is useful nonetheless and so thank you

James FeatherMr. McCarthy

Tassos McCarthyTwo quick things One, and I understand you have the example of Dunkin' Donuts where they just don't want to play ball. I think of growing up vetoes in the city of Falls Church. Yikes Look that one up if you don't know it I do think that maybe a reduction is in order but I don't think that you should fully get rid of the I understand like the benefit to the community and that's maybe one that kind of you don't think about as a benefit But then you end up with the Dunkin Donuts on the corner So I would I would recommend you not wholesale remove that I would prefer you leave it the way it is But at a minimum if you want to do anything just a reduction then the second point To mr. Cunningham's thought was when you have like the Davies

project for example that would get considerably throttled down right are the density are the bonuses that we've talked about such that if they were to provide enough public benefit that they can get back to or near what they originally had because if not you know thinking about you know the treasure the 10-year treasury just hit five percent just not having development in the city you want to make sure that deals are able to move forward because because you know any community needs that but when when we do bend a little bit that we're getting that need back from them so so do those bonuses could you get anywhere near where you were with all the bonuses

Paul Naptystaffit's It's very difficult to tell because we would have to make some assumptions about redesigns to accommodate additional community benefits. But to your last point, that is something that we are aware of. That's why I don't want to push this too far. But certainly with each of these, you know, for any of these developments that are just a little bit short of what they actually achieve, I do think there are ways that they could – there are probably some simple things they could do if a certain open space was designed a little differently to achieve a different value they could probably get a little bit more out of it if they're way off is it is more difficult to tell I think that we you know the only the only way to tell what that is

to kind of see what happens I also want to point out that since we've had a draft that had these estimates and then we haven't received feedback from the development community we had several people from the development community were very involved at the beginning of this process and so we have more recently reached out to them and you know asked them to take a look and even said that we could you know sit down with them and kind of walk them through it and so we expect that we'll hear some of that and so we want to kind of gauge that and and see what the with the long-term impacts

Tassos McCarthycertainly and i and i know it's tough and i'm not saying every you know every project needs to have 275 276 units but i just look at that and you know without modeling it or doing a pro forma if it was 179 units i wonder if that building would even be being built and if it was i bet you it would be all one bedroom units thank you

Kirsten Lockhartdoes the city maintain any recourse for development that incorporates a substantial amount of commercial space that is then never utilized like we could be looking at a development that achieves pretty much double the entry-level density based on essentially a little less than a third of it being commercial. But if that commercial is never utilized, we have ended up with extra density and extra floors on a building for no good reason to the city. I'm also thinking of the breezeway redevelopment where we had incorporated commercial square footage into the development approval, but here we are years later with no development. Right.

Paul NaptystaffYeah, so there's been no situation that I'm aware of that has been a holdup with commercial uses so long, at least in a mixed-use building. In the case of something like the Breezeway, they could come back with a revision to the land use plan and propose something else. It's not as much of a challenge there. But when you have a mixed-use building that has a commercial component, it's hard to do something else with. We haven't had that issue come up yet. most of our projects are fairly new and for the most part they've been pretty successful with retail and also this is not just retail this could include office but so you know I don't really know how we would handle that kind of situation certainly our economic development department we would get

involved and try to support them yeah

Kirsten Lockhartbecause again to the game of flying the math right we heard from the botanist that that was the maximum amount of commercial space that they felt comfortable incorporating from a financial perspective but you could hit a point where adding a floor of of residential units, and that cost benefit outweighed ever having to worry about the commercial stuff that you

Paul Naptystaffbuilt. Yeah. And so, I mean, our hope is that developers wouldn't want to do that. Certainly, you want to get the additional density, but there's other ways that they could earn it through this process and that they would want to be reasonable. They don't want to have a bunch of vacant space either. In addition to that, the way we've written this is we've tried to be pretty loose with what constitutes commercial. Again, it's not just retail. It could be office. And so a lot of places where we see the most struggling empty ground floor retail spaces is where there are strict stipulations on what can occupy that space. By opening this to essentially all commercial means if, you know, they can't get a coffee shop to go in, a dentist's office could.

It's not the best thing in the world, but it's commercial space and the city needs commercial space and so still has value.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamAre we getting input from the Community Development Office in terms of the kind of spaces that we should be looking to be put into some of these places? Are we coordinating with them on that? The EDA? the kind where if we've got young incubator graduates looking for space in the city if we've got small businesses are we only looking for restaurants or very small business dentist office and things like that or are we coordinating with the kind of businesses we would like to see incorporated into to some of these buildings with this kind of space as to what looks whether you could build a space in a residential building where you were only growing aquatic plants so you could sell vegetables from the production of that

you know and being compatible with different kinds of space since we had that as a recommendation come through to be discussed sometime in the past the unusual type of spaces and how are we putting something that gives a sense of what the kinds of commercial opportunities should be that we're looking for and that we would expect developers to be looking for in addition to just looking at the density of our residential?

Paul NaptystaffThe Economic Development Office has started to get involved in the review of every development application and provides that type of input about the types of spaces that are most valuable to them in terms of finding space to suit tenants that are seeking to move to the city where we might be short and so that's part of the reason I was just mentioned that we tried to be more broad we're not just trying to incorporate retail into these areas because their statement to us has been that they are struggling to find spaces for companies to locate here for of things. And so that's why we're more broad with that. But on a case by case basis, they tend to get involved and they provide feedback to development applications about where there's

interest at the time and what types of spaces they can provide to accommodate the things that we are short on in terms of spaces that are available to the range of users that are trying to locate here.

James FeatherOthers? A couple of things from my perspective. I think there's directionally some very good proposed changes here. It starts to scratch some of the itches about the density that we've seen. Question some of the degrees of freedom we really have. I'm trying to make sense out of 400 square feet per unit of commercial to get additional commercial to get additional density, how these things line up and what our degrees of freedom really are. So I'm not sure how to run some of those models, but somebody smarter than I can probably do that and see where the constraints really lie and whether something needs to change and those brought into some other kind of alignment. I'm a little concerned with two

stories of additional height. It's a blanket. There are certainly places we do not want to think of the gallery example. We don't want to be incentivized six stories now right across the street from the Breckenridge community. So there still have to be some constraints in the small area plans that govern height adjacent to residential, adjacent to historic structures or whatever it is. So we need to be careful about how we phrase what that's going to look like as well. So again one of the things we're trying to incentivize is the right development and we don't want to stifle development. Some people probably want to stifle development but I don't think that's wise from achieving some of the other things we'd like to do is

get rid of some of our asphalt jungle parking lots and turn it into more useful more productive space, more tax generating spaces, yes, demand on city services, but if it's done right, it should come out an economically favorable or at least neutral sort of redevelopment. So I think we still need to continue to work on this to incentivize the right development, but there are still going to be constraints like height in certain areas and the perceptions, and some of them still are perceptions of traffic impacts. There's going to always be disagreements about what the impacts could be despite the studies that are done and the models that may say one thing, but you still have to deal with perceptions.

Getting the density down is probably directionally good. I hope you have folks a better feeling for what it would look like. change some of the models though. So many other comments. I'd like Ms. Lockhart's question about housing mix type, especially as we look at multifamily options. But how we do that's a good question. I'm struggling a little bit and maybe we can have a sidebar conversation on your slide 12. yeah trying to understand how the math works on some of those just look at the first line 10 density increase gets maximum 63.4 we're starting with 40 we might get 48 with affordable dwelling

Paul Naptystaffyeah this is based on i'm trying to figure out previous draft so we started at 48 and it got to 57.6 i think it is with the affordable dwelling and then 10% on that is what gets you to 63.4. So this would, if we had the lower base, all these numbers would look different.

James FeatherOkay. I just want to make sure what those were trying to tell us. Okay. And I don't care. You explained that one. You explained that one as well. Okay. I think those are my questions and comments. Anything else?

Paul NaptystaffWell, I'm sorry, but we're not quite done. That's

James Featherfine. Okay. Anything else on this part? Okay. I realize that.

Paul NaptystaffMove on. Okay. We are almost done. The next thing is the parking reduction for general office. As you may recall, we went through a series of ideas about how we want to accommodate parking in the new district. What we settled on was maintaining the base citywide rates for all of the primary uses, being multifamily, retail, and general office, but allowing up to a 20% reduction through incentives. I won't go through what the incentives are now. We talked about them last time, but essentially it's things like providing bike parking, preserving trees, structured parking, those types of things. but in addition to that through the various sources that we looked at when trying to figure out what to do we realized that our current citywide office requirement is substantially

higher than our peers and what our observed uses are and so at the july meeting we asked the planning commission of their support for considering a separate citywide reduction to office parking which there was and so we are now proposing a reduction from the the current rate uh shown on square feet to one space per 400 square feet we considered reducing it even further to one space for 500 square feet we're not necessarily recommending that and we'll explain why in a minute but just to show you how this relates to some of the comparables that we looked at when you translate one space per 300 square feet to spaces per thousand square feet that's how most people measure their parking so we had to kind of make a translation that equals 3.33 spaces

per 1 000 square feet if you were to achieve that maximum 20 reduction which will only be available in the activity center district that would be 2.66 spaces if the rate were one per 400 it would be citywide rate of 2.5 spaces per 1 000 square feet if they were to achieve that maximum 20 percent reduction it'd be 2.0 spaces for 1,000 square feet looking at the chart to our right you can see how that would compare to standards in the county Fairfax County has different rates based on the size of office buildings so larger office buildings have a lower parking requirement per square foot smaller office buildings have higher ones they also have different rates based on where it is in the county and so you might recall from earlier

discussions as we had compared our activity centers to the county's revitalization districts these are the non-metro accessible older commercial areas where they are supporting redevelopment with residential and mixed use incorporated into the commercial mix and so we're showing those rates for the base rates and the revitalization areas and what you'll notice is with the citywide recommendation to reduce the rate to one to four hundred equaling 2.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet that's it's right in the middle of the county base requirement for the large buildings and the small buildings and then when you look at the revitalization area this is where it says county REV the amount of 2.0 spaces for 1,000 square feet is right in the middle of the large building

at 1.6 and small building at 2.4 we have the institute for transportation ears parking generation manual recommendation of 2.0 2.4 spaces per 1000 square feet as an example and then also wanted to share from the old town parking study that was done about two years ago there is observed usage of about 1.54 spaces per 1000 square feet for strictly office properties in the Old Town area and this was adjusted to account for vacancies and so I want to share that last number just because if you look at the alternative of reducing the rate to one to five hundred if a applicant were able to add the twenty percent reduction on top of that through incentives that would get them to a rate of one point six spaces per one thousand square

as shown on the chart to the left, and that gets very close to what was observed in Old Town. And that's an average among all the properties that were looked at. So some of them have usage rates that were higher than that. So we felt that that was getting a little too close for comfort, and so we're recommending that we make the adjustment to 1 to 400 while allowing the additional reduction in the activity center district through incentives. And then the last thing I wanted to mention is special exceptions. So just for planning committee's knowledge, and I expect you have not memorized the zoning ordinance, but there are two sections where as we start to integrate these amendments into the zoning ordinance,

we're not just going to pick everything up and plop it in the middle of the ordinance. It gets kind of dispersed into appropriate locations to where it fits. And there are two sections where the majority of these recommendations are falling. one is an article 3 which has the general zoning districts and regulations this includes things like dimensional standards and uses the second is article 4 which are site development standards which include things like parking requirements signage standards landscaping standards and those types of things and so the way the ordinance is set up with special exceptions and again Special exceptions is a tool that applicants can use to request deviations from the ordinance

requirements. They are not applicable to all of the standards in the zoning ordinance, only specifically where the zoning ordinance says they can be used. The zoning ordinance says that special exceptions apply to all of the standards in Article 4, which again, this is the site development standards, landscaping, parking, and those types of things. You'll see at the bottom of this chart here where we have the different sections. Those last three are Article 4. And so we are recommending we allow special exceptions there just to be in line with what the zoning ordinance allows everywhere else. In Article 3, which are the uses and the density standards and those types of things, the zoning ordinance allows special exceptions for certain provisions, but not all.

And we have some flexibility with how we organize our standards within this section, whether we want to allow special exceptions or not. And so what we're proposing to you is that we do allow special exceptions for some provisions. I'll explain why and not for others. I want to see if you have thoughts on that. Based on that, that will help us inform where we locate some of these provisions within this article. So looking at those in Article 3, starting from the top, the approval process, this is where we say that this is only applicable in activity centers. You had to go through the rezoning process. We're proposing special exceptions there because those are the base standards. Obviously you want to stick with them.

The second one is development frontages. We have an example of the types of standards in here and the graphic to the right. We are proposing that we allow special exceptions here because this gets into some of the nitty-gritty about sidewalks, about the space between the front of the building and the sidewalk and those types of things. And things can come up such as utility poles and that can kind of create weird situations and we wouldn't want to hamper development to move forward just on something like that. The next two, density and building height, obviously are very important for these amendments. And we feel through the community benefits program that we are accommodating density, that there are ways for that to be flexible to an extent.

And so we are not recommending opportunities for special acceptance to density. For building height, the same thing. though I did want to point out if we decide not to include those provisions for the additional two stories that we've been talking about that we we would want to support special acceptance for height here as we mentioned we've had proposals come forward and be approved we have hundreds others that are under review and there are aspects of some developments where the city has decided that it's worth it to allow additional height for certain things so we wouldn't want to specifically exclude that so we have a no here assuming that we have that standard for the two additional stories included if we decide not to include that we would suggest that special

exceptions be permitted recreation and open space this is something that's very important the smaller plans very important to this district we would not recommend allowing special exceptions here we think that every development should be able to accommodate what was shown in the recommendations. Access is similar to development frontages. The standards in here discuss how new private streets should be laid out, how pedestrian pathways should be laid out, getting again into the more nitty-gritty details. And this is also the type of thing where, you know, strange things could come up with topography or utilities and those types of things that we wouldn't want to get in the way of development. So we support special exceptions

there. And lastly, community benefits. This is where the proposed amendments specifically say you can earn this by providing this, and we want to make sure we're getting what we want through this, and so we would not support special exceptions there. So we wanted to get those in front of you, make sure you're aware of them, hear your thoughts if there are some we think we should be more open to, or others you think we should be more tight-knit on. One thing I want to make clear though is with special exceptions we have heard throughout numerous conversations during this process a lot of people say you know development comes and it is a little bit taller than the development that came before or a little

bit more dense than the development came before and we keep heading in this directory in this trajectory how do we how do we do something about that and by limiting opportunities for special exceptions that's the tool we have to stop that from happening and kind of saying this is this is the standard and continue living with this standard. That being said, you should also be aware that when we don't allow special exceptions, then if there is a development that is dependent on any of these things, we do not have the ability to review it or even consider it for approval if they don't have the tool to have that special exception. So we need to be cautious of this. We have competing needs here, and so we want you to be aware

of what those needs are before we settle on anything. But I'll stop there and see if there are any comments.

Kirsten LockhartSlogger. Quick question, not to complicate the issue, but is there a possibility that if there were something that were truly unique, beneficial to the city, that they could still obtain a parcel-specific recommendation for their proposal within the activity center?

Paul NaptystaffThe parcel-specific consideration is only a tool through the comprehensive plan. And actually, since you mentioned that, that is, it's not applicable to activity centers. The one thing I will say is that there may be a way around this, again, going back to the planned development districts. The only stipulation is there is that the minimum 20% open space has to be provided. But if there's something, an application where they're able to do that, and something else in here just won't work and they don't have a special reception tool, that is something they could fall back on. but the parcel specific considerations would not be able to be applied here

James Feathercan

Tassos McCarthyyou go back to the parking chart so it seems like you know we're leaning towards alternate one but alternate two is effectively in line with the observed i'm reading that correctly

Paul Naptystaffuh yes the the average observed demand in old town yes

Tassos McCarthyokay um and i know this is always like a tough thing but a couple points just you know are we forcing parking that the market isn't demanding um parking that developers have to bear the cost for and just looking at Fairfax County revitalization. I don't know. I think we need to be thinking about tomorrow, not today. And I think the alternate one, while better, kind of says, yeah, we need to be better about this, but we know everyone's still going to drive. We have multimodal projects with the Q bus. I think we need to be forward-thinking in that. and I would if it was my vote alone I would at least want to take a strong strong look at a alternate to that's that's really the only thing I have on

that

James Featherit's

Paul Cunninghamone of these things where you've got the county and you've got square footages on buildings and things like that one of the things that I remember in architecture is that form follows function and tell me if I'm right or wrong because this is based on building size. If I have a data center, how much parking do I need? If I have Costco, how much parking do I need for the same size building because of the activity at that building? They might not be the same. when we have in the city storage units on Draper Drive how much parking does a storage unit need even though it's three or four stories high and that kind of thing and how much parking does Schrader Joe's in that corner of a shopping center need where you have a very high activity level

going back and forth if it's based solely on size do we have the provision to to let form follow function and scale it appropriately.

Paul NaptystaffYeah, this revision is only proposed for general office uses, so it wouldn't apply to data centers or Costco or Trader Joe's. Those will have their own, you know, Costco and Trader Joe's or retail. Those parking rates tend to be higher, and from our review earlier in this process, our retail rates are not that out of line from other areas. is only general office, meaning office buildings, where you have companies that have employees and those types of things. And so this is specifically applied to those types of uses.

Paul CunninghamAnd the adjustment that's made when the Mosby building goes from being a totally commercial building to a residential building but they don't intend to change the footprint of anything is handled how?

Paul NaptystaffI had to look at the specifics of that proposal but in general on a per square foot basis office parking office requires more parking than residential so in that case I assume they would not have to provide additional parking but I don't know the specifics of the proposal yet.

James FeatherOthers? Nothing more for me. One of the things you've achieved was one of my objectives is managing special exceptions that the Planning Commission doesn't get to weigh in on even though they're very important to the overall vision of activity center redevelopment. and I think this scratches a lot of that itch for me. So thank you.

Paul NaptystaffThank you. Well, one last thing I wanted to say. Mr. Form is about to present another set of amendments to the zoning ordinance to you, a separate topic, but generally following along the same schedule as these amendments. And so item 9A on your agenda, there are two separate motions to consider initiation for both of these efforts. We could talk about more of that when that comes. but just wanted to give you a heads up. Same agenda item, two separate actions we're asking you to consider. They could potentially both be back in front of you on October 12th.

James FeatherOkay. Thank you. Which is the segue to our next item. Mr. Foreman, discussion of potential zoning text amendments regarding affordable housing on tax-exempt properties, noise standards, carports, and other miscellaneous amendments. Good to see you back.

Mr. ForemanstaffIt's good to be back. And like Mr. Nabte mentioned, this is another work session on another different set of amendments. This is a little bit less complicated than the first work session on amendments. No bubble charts, unfortunately. I'm sorry to disappoint. Also, this does involve a series of potential amendments to the zoning ordinance, and this is a bundle of amendments. It covers a variety of topics. The topics are not related to each other. Instead, there are items that staff has identified as subjects that may warrant zoning text amendments. Some of these have been identified due to legislative changes and others just trying to resolve some inconsistencies within the zoning ordinance or items that just warrant additional clarification in the zoning text.

And as always, all of us on staff will be happy to answer questions if they come up. As you likely know, our zoning ordinance is routinely amended. It's been amended at least once per year since the ordinance was rewritten back in 2016, most recently in July. So as I had mentioned, these amendments include a few topics, and we've got some of them here. So first are amendments related to legislation that was passed by the General Assembly this year. legislation pertains to the construction of housing on properties that are owned by churches or by other tax-exempt organizations. And this item here is the most complex of the topics we'll be talking about tonight. And really just because the legislation itself is complex, and I'll explain the legislation

briefly and, of course, what kind of zoning changes would be necessary for the purpose aligning our zoning ordinance with this new requirement, with the state requirement. The second group of amendments tonight relate to the city's noise ordinance and not creating any new noise-related policies, but rather removing references to noise that are currently in the zoning ordinance. And just because those provisions are now covered elsewhere within city code and the existing regulations that are in the zoning ordinance are duplicative. And also we've got a few other amendments that just help with administration of the ordinance. So we'll discuss the affordable housing on tax-exempt properties topic first.

And like I said, this is the most detailed of these topics, and it pertains to a bill known as Senate Bill 388. This was passed by the General Assembly, was signed by the governor this year. SB 388, like it says here, this bill requires localities to allow by right residential development on certain properties that are owned by religious institutions or owned by 501c3 nonprofit organizations. So the General Assembly's intention here was to promote the construction of affordable housing units, and there are some standards that must be met for a landowner, and the landowner, keep in mind, is a nonprofit organization, for the landowner to take advantage of this bill. We'll briefly go over these standards tonight,

and really the reason for going over the bill, even though this has been signed into law, The reason for going over this is because it will make the zoning changes make more sense, because this leads up to just why we're recommending changing the zoning ordinance. So a notable standard here is in the green box, and that's the requirement for a certain amount of affordable housing. So specifically, at least 60 percent of any housing units constructed in these cases, these cases being development on church or tax exempt property land, 60% of the housing units must be considered affordable. And affordable is described in the state legislation, like it says here as being under 80% AMI, AMI being area median income,

under 80% AMI for rental housing or for ownership housing. that number is under 120% AMI, and this is all from the state legislation. Now, aside from the affordability provisions, there are other standards, and a lot of these standards have to do with the kinds of dimensional and development measurements that are typically created or crafted by localities. In this case, the state is mandating these standards on localities instead. So that becomes important when thinking about interaction with the zoning ordinance. So these standards that you see on the screen here, these apply to projects that are built on qualifying properties, and that meet the affordability guidelines that we just talked about.

The major dimensional mandates are shown here. So projects that are built according to this bill, they can be up to 45 feet tall. 45 feet is about three or four stories tall. The projects may be as little as 10 feet set back between the building and any property line. Localities have to allow projects that are built to this standard to be up to 20 dwelling units per acre. And localities cannot require more than one parking space to be provided per residential unit. Now, the way that the state legislation is written, localities must allow development that meets these standards. So must allow it regardless of any local standards and regardless of any properties zoning classification. So most churches in Fairfax City and other nonprofit owned land is located in residential

districts or in residential zoned property. residential districts tend to have less intensive zoning standards than what you see here. So that's the reason for the zoning amendments that we're discussing tonight, because we need to make allowances for this kind of development that's now compulsory due to the state legislation. Now, developments that are built under this legislation, they may be entirely residential. they're allowed to be entirely residential, or they may include some non-residential uses. And again, the legislation stipulates conditions for that. And you see that on the right side of the screen. The main element here is that residential uses must comprise at least 70% of the project's gross floor area.

Any space that's non-residential can be a religious worship space, or it could be space to house nonprofit organizations, or any uses that are considered ancillary to any of those uses. So the full bill, and it's a long bill, is provided in your packets. We're not delving deeply into it right now, but these are the most significant dimensional standards and operational standards. for understanding just what kind of changes need to occur in the zoning ordinance to account for this. Now, there are some other standards written into the legislation as well that are relevant in the context of zoning administration. The first one here is very important because like it says here, development that meets all of this bill's standards must be allowed to be built.

The state granted no discretion to localities on this. So again, that's an important point from a zoning standpoint. And as far as what kinds of organizations are able to apply for development under this bill, this applies to land that's owned by 501 nonprofit organizations. So that includes tax-exempt religious institutions and any other organization that's incorporated as a 501c3. Importantly, it says here in red near the bottom, an organization must own that land for at least five years before applying for development under this bill. And at the bottom here, this shows that this bill, so SB 388, becomes effective on January 1st, becomes effective New Year's of 2027. And right now, there's a sunset date of January 1, 2031.

So as it's written now, the bill is set to be effective for four years. Now, the reason we're discussing this tonight in the context of the zoning ordinance is because because our ordinance needs to be amended in order to create a provision for development that's permitted under this state act. So the draft amendments that you see before you, these create a new zoning ordinance use for development that's constructed to meet this bill's standards. Now you may have noticed that the amendments, the draft amendments, do not specifically that we discussed in the last few slides. So instead, the amendments that you have before you refer to the relevant state code sections instead. And the reason for that, like it says down here,

is to provide flexibility. And that's something that's common when responding to very detailed state requirements or regulations like this. And what's meant by that is that by referencing the state code section, if the General Assembly modifies any of this bill's provisions, that the city would not need to update its own zoning ordinance every time that happens. So this bounces the zoning ordinance user back to state code, and it's as amended so the state code will still prevail in the zoning ordinance. And these are the amendments that are proposed. packet and what we're proposing is to add a definition to article 9 of the zoning ordinance and that definition would be for something that would be

called nonprofit affordable housing slash mixed use and again this references to state code directly it says that this use is defined as a site constructed to accommodate the provisions specified in the Code of Virginia and gives the relevant section number pertaining to affordable housing on certain property owned by tax-exempt organizations. So the draft amendments also propose adding a use description and dimensional standards to section 351 of the ordinance and that's the section for residential use standards and also the amendments add a notation to the principal use table in indicating that uses may include this new use of nonprofit affordable housing mixed use and again references state code so the amendments themselves are relatively

modest because it you know introduces this as a use and bounces back to state code. But with these amendments, the state requirement here can be implemented and can be implemented without any conflicts from our zoning ordinance. So that is the affordable housing mixed use component of the proposed amendment. So we can, if you all have any questions, we can talk about that before we move on.

James FeatherQuestions? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. practical application here if we look at the presbyterian church we dealt over a number of years with the construction of of affordable housing how does this relate and what does the 70 percent mean that 70 of the new construction of residential must be residential or 70 of the construction on the entire site must be residential because they've got a pretty big building and even with the number of units we put on it I don't know where you mix those standards coming in so what's the practical application there and then secondly what's the application potentially at the Lutheran Church that is proposing to build affordable housing on their site these kinds of things that we would actually have to deal with fit in here somehow?

Mr. ForemanstaffSo the practical application with the Presbyterian project that's under construction, this would not apply to that because it's already been approved, it's been subdivided, and it's under construction. For the Presbyterian church, the Lutheran church, or any other church that is interested in building to these standards, there's a few options. the current facilities could be demolished and could be replaced by a new facility that's built to these standards. If that's the case, if there's a non-residential component, that non-residential component, so in those cases that would be worship space and any church office space or any other ancillary uses, that non-residential space can account for no more than 30% of the total footprint.

In the case of new construction, that new construction can be built. My understanding is that the new construction would have to meet this. So if a church were to build housing on its property as of now, that new construction would have to keep to that 70%. it wouldn't, the existing space wouldn't count towards the non-residential space.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartDo we have any indication if ANOVA plans to pursue building under this statuette on their property?

Mr. ForemanstaffI'm not aware that ANOVA does, but ANOVA is a 501c3, so that's an example of a non-religious property that could be built to these standards.

James FeatherOne of my questions is, well, what other 501c3s are in the city that have property could take advantage of this

Mr. Foremanstaffin in over is the most significant that i'm aware of the american legion is not a 501 c3 american legion is a 501 c6

James Featheras is the i will put up the national pest management association also a 501 c6 but mr

Matthew Ricemccarthy

Tassos McCarthyso we're like taking away the normal zoning process a lot of discretionary stuff certainly don't want to circumnavigate you know state code what what tools do we retain to be able to like buffer transition I'm thinking about you know so a poor person that owns a house that a four-story building is gonna put get put ten feet off their property line

Mr. Foremanstaffthere's very little in in that case as as far as nonprofit property that borders residential property uh there's there's really no kind of transitional capabilities that we would have uh you know they we the not all properties might be built up to that 10 foot setback but if a landowner wants to do that then they have the ability to do it under this legislation and

Tassos McCarthythere's no you know trees along i mean i i imagine that a developer would or you doing this project would try and consider that but like we have no mechanisms there's no wow thank you

Matthew Riceothers mr rice i think the same issue actually is problematic you know in my in my mind a 10 foot setback is very very little especially if the height that's a lot is there um it would be very useful if there was some way or mechanism for us to figure out which parcels in the city or in this category if

Mr. Foremanstaffwe if we come back for a public hearing we can have that information for you

Tassos McCarthyyeah

James Featherothers you mentioned most such eligible properties are in residential districts are there any in commercial districts because right now the zoning ordinance requires special use permits for a lot of these residential uses in commercial districts would that eliminate not the whole provision as well

Mr. Foremanstaffit would I'm not sure if there are any qualifying properties in commercial district I'm trying to think can't think one off the top of my head but if there would be one this supplants any so the the only zoning cut off the only zoning regulation i'm aware of in the state code is is that it wouldn't apply to industrial sites i

James Featherdidn't read that

Mr. Foremanstaffyeah but the commercial would apply to One other thing I'll add, not really from a zoning standpoint, but the housing that's built in accordance to this would be taxable. It would not be non-taxable.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyJust thinking on the question he said, and I'll caveat the point of residential, but thinking about, and I don't know if there are any, but in an activity center, they're setting minimums. Do we retain any power to go up from there? Because I guess the point I'm trying to make is I would hate for a church or nonprofit that had the ability to do that in an activity center where it potentially made sense, and I don't know if that exists, at the site too.

Mr. ForemanstaffIn that case, a church or another nonprofit that's developing housing is not obligated to keep to these standards. So if it's in a district that actually permits more intensive development, there would be no reason not to just pursue it under the... But

Tassos McCarthythen they would have to go through the normal... Correct. So wouldn't it behoove them to just go by right and make the So that's my question. Depending on what that difference is, it may. So my question is, and I don't know if we would be allowed to do that, but is there some mechanism where if it makes sense is in the right area where we could mandate something above that?

Mr. ForemanstaffLocalities are permitted to do that. Now, that would have to be through another zoning tax amendment, but there is a provision in the state code to allow localities to permit higher density development in these cases. Okay. I

Tassos McCarthyknow I'm speaking out of both sides

Mr. Foremanstaffof

Tassos McCarthymy mouth, but I think they're relevant on both sides. Sorry.

Paul CunninghamHow would the Wesley housing development at the corner of Fairfax Boulevard and Campbell Avenue fit with this proposal?

Mr. ForemanstaffSo that would not be affected again because that's already under control. I know that it's already done. But

Paul Cunninghamit is greater than 45 feet, I believe, and it is somewhat more dense with-

Mr. ForemanstaffAnd that's a good example of something that might, for the developer, might make more sense to pursue through regular zoning as opposed to going through this avenue.

Paul CunninghamIt doesn't mean this kind of housing can't be developed under other rules. It just opens an area where they have by right the ability to explore proposals. in the past and what might be done in the future is perhaps relevant. Others?

Mr. ForemanstaffOkay. Okay. Move on, please. The rest of the amendments in this bundle are a bit easier to explain than the housing bill. The next series of amendments, these pertain to the city's noise ordinance. So like I mentioned, this isn't creating, it's not changing any standards, but instead it's really concluding an aspect to the noise ordinance that city council had adopted back in May. Council's noise ordinance that was adopted, it revised the city's existing noise standards, and those standards had been contained both in Chapter 38 of the city code and in the zoning ordinance. standards now are contained entirely within chapter 38 and what that means it is that most of the noise standards that are currently in the zoning ordinance

are now superfluous because they've been moved those standards have now been moved to another section of the city code when City Council approved the new noise ordinance it was mentioned in the staff report that a follow-up step would unneeded noise regulations from the zoning ordinance, and that's what these amendments do. So specifically, if you look through the ordinance, through the zoning ordinance right now, there are about two and a half pages of what are called operational performance standards relating specifically to noise, and they cover things like maximum permissible noise levels or details about how to measure noise, to the noise standards and so on. So these types of items, these are all now contained

with the rest of the noise standards in chapter 38. So these amendments recommend deleting these specific standards and deleting the definitions that relate to them from the zoning ordinance. So there are still a few references to noise or to sound that are recommended to be retained in the zoning ordinance. Just very general references to noise, so things like descriptions of what's allowed with home occupations, for instance, or use standards for things like kennels or special events. These things are recommended to remain in the ordinance. But specific measurements, specific standards are now covered elsewhere. So that material is recommended just to be removed from the zoning ordinance, again, because it's superfluous.

So any questions about the noise amendments? No noise. So the next item is something that just clarifies an inconsistency in the zoning ordinance text. So the ordinance's standards for accessory structures permit detached carports. So similar to how detached garages are permitted, detached carports are permitted in accessory structure standards. Now that seems clear cut if you read it, but there's a definition of carport that's in section 9.3, and that definition defines carports as being an addition. a house. So these amendments just make it clear that detached carports are allowed. So this just clarifies the carports are typically treated just like garages from a regulatory standpoint. The amendments do this by changing that definition just to make clear that carports

can be a structure as well as an addition. And also the amendments take some of that detail that's currently in that section 9-3 definition and moves it to a line item that's in the permitted encroachments table because that line item deals specifically with attached car ports in cases where attached car ports are allowed to be closer to the lot line or permitted to be an encroachment closer to the left lot line than the main house so these two amendments just make that intent of the ordinance much clearer, clean up that inconsistency about detached carports.

James FeatherQuestion? Yes. When I look at the definition for carport, it says used for the shelter of motor vehicles.

Mr. ForemanstaffCorrect. Can it be used for something else? It can be used for something else.

James FeatherPeople can park in their cars in their driveway and use the carport for the barbecue,

Mr. Foremanstaffthe lawn equipment.

James FeatherSo we don't feel we need to tweak that while we're tweaking?

Mr. ForemanstaffYou know, we can look into tweaking that language. I'm not saying that's necessary,

James Featherbut since you got us looking at it.

Mr. ForemanstaffYeah, it hasn't been problematic up to this point with garages or carports, but we can look into changing that language.

Kirsten LockhartWell, by definition, a carport would need to be accessible from the street, right? Just like a garage would. Yeah,

Mr. Foremanstaffthat's right. So this would treat a carport just identically to a garage.

Kirsten Lockhartso you can't build extra storage and call it a carport if it's not connected right

James Featherit's got to be able to accommodate a car or camper mode okay

Mr. Foremanstaffso there are a few miscellaneous amendments in this bundle so you can see them summarized here in the sections of the ordinance dealing with non-conforming lots and non-conforming structures. There's some imprecise language in these sections, so references to lot and building regulations where the meaning of those specific terms just isn't explained. These amendments standardize that language just to take away any potential confusion on those. The middle item here relates to standards for residential accessory structures and specifically the footprint standard for those structures. So this amendment just ensures that it's clear that detached accessory dwelling units, ADUs, so these are the types of units that were recently approved by city council.

This ensures that it's clear that detached ADUs are included in this provision, just like other accessory structures. And finally, there on the right, there's an amendment that clarifies that zoning permits are equivalent, are considered equivalent to building permits for the purpose of maintaining the validity of approved special use permits. So what that means is that when a special use permit, when an SUP is approved, that SUP automatically expires after two years unless some kind of action is taken by the property owner, and, for example, that a building permit has been issued. And that's what it says in the zoning ordinance, that the SUP expires unless a building permit is issued. The problem is that not all SUPs require building permits.

So this amendment adds the phrase or equivalent zoning permit so that those types of SUPs aren't caught in some kind of gray area where their status is uncertain. So a property owner acquiring a zoning permit for an SUP is equivalent to acquiring a building permit, and it ensures that the SUP remains active. So those are the three administrative type or housekeeping amendments in this bundle. So that is staff's presentation on the amendments themselves. And as you all know from previous amendment processes, this work session is the beginning of a process for zoning text amendments. Now, the Planning Commission does have on today's agenda a motion to initiate text amendments covering this series of potential topics.

So typically that's something that's done a little while after a work session. The reason that this is being considered now is due to the nonprofit housing amendments. It would be desirable if those amendments could have a chance of being enacted before New Year's, and New Year's is when the bill that they relate to becomes effective. If Planning Commission chooses to initiate the amendments at tonight's meeting, these amendments could come before city council at a public hearing before the end of the year. Now, city council is set to hold a work session on the series of amendments at their September 22nd meeting. It's next week. So that is on the calendar right now, but any public hearings on these amendments would occur later in the fall.

So that's the work session at City Council that's next week, and then any amendments later on down the line. And with that, I'd be glad to answer any questions on the process or any of the amendments.

James FeatherAnything further? Okay, thank you, Mr. Foreman. We will reconvene our regular meeting and go to our next agenda item, which is items not requiring a public hearing, and we do have motions to address two items this evening. Mr.

Matthew RiceFlutter.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that in accordance with good zoning practice and in support of the public interest in general welfare, the City of Fairfax Planning Commission initiate amendments to Chapter 110 of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia as part of the regular review and maintenance of the zoning ordinance, articles and sections contained therein, including but not limited to introductory provisions, zoning districts and regulations, site development standards, development review, non-conformities, and definitions. I further move that a public hearing be scheduled for consideration of these amendments.

Matthew RiceSecond.

James FeatherMoved and seconded. And any discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that in accordance with good zoning practice and in support of the public interest in general welfare, that the city of fairfax planning commission initiate amendments to chapter 110 of the code of the city of fairfax virginia to improve alignment with the recommendations of adopted small area plans as a component of the comprehensive plan articles and sections contain therein including but not limited to introductory provisions zoning districts and regulations and definitions and i further move that a public hearing be scheduled for consideration of these amendments

James Feathersecond the movement seconded uh any further discussion on the motion say aye aye opposed abstentions passes unanimously thank you very much for all the great discussion this evening we are ready now to move to the staff report mr. napty

Paul Naptystaffthank you terrified members of the planning commission I hope everybody had a good August recess going back to the last City Council meeting before the August recess on July 28th City Council held a public hearing ordinance amendments related to detached accessory dwelling units and approved those. Those were reviewed and approved or recommended for approval by the Planning Commission on June 22nd. They also held a pre-application briefing for the proposal at 3541 Chainbridge Road. The Planning Commission received on June 22nd and a work session, a post-application work session on Courthouse Plaza. Also the Planning Commission received on June 22nd. at their first work session in September September 1st the City Council had pre-application briefings

on the Circle Gateway proposal North Facts West phase four and the conversion of the Mosby building the Circle Gateway proposal was presented to Planning Commission on July 13 and the other two were presented to Planning Commission on July 27 they also had a work session on a level of service study that is wrapping up this will ultimately result in a policy to help guide contributions that developers can make to offset impacts to capital facilities for their developments while the Planning Commission doesn't have an official role in developing this policy we do plan on presenting the summary of recommendations to the Planning Commission and sharing the background data as well at their meeting last week the sorry yes September 8th City Council

had public hearings on the proposed University Drive bike lanes during that discussion or as a separate item they canceled the University Drive intersection project as a planning commission may recall this was as part of the University Drive bike lanes project a proposal to develop or install a signal at the intersection of University Drive and Layton Hall Drive. Planning Commission at the time several years ago through the capital improvement program process recommended against that improvement but supported the bike lanes. So that project has moved in that direction. For tomorrow's meeting, the City Council will just have a special meeting to appoint members of boards and commissions. Note that as everyone noticed Commissioner Chakari

unfortunately had to vacate his position on the Planning Commission due to conflicts with his job And then at the next City Council meeting on September 22nd They'll be having a public hearing on the Highlands and at Mitu a proposal that the Planning Commission Recommended a poop before in July they will also receive the presentation you received tonight on zoning text amendments related to affordable housing and non-profit properties and noise standards and other provisions for the next planning commission meeting on september 28th at this time we are not planning on holding this meeting unless any uh particularly urgent items come up we do plan on being back in front of you on october 12th potentially with public hearings for some of these zoning text amendments

aside from that i just want to mention the september 2nd community meeting related to the smaller plan zoning amendments thank you to the planning commissioners who attended that was a very well attended meeting and we got lots of good feedback from that also typically in september we have one of our implementation our conference of plan implementation meetings focusing on the fairfax circle smaller plan will be not be holding that meeting this month partially so we can focus on other efforts but also because there aren't a whole lot of activities at least from a public investment side that have changed very much in that activity center since we met last year there are some things going on there but there is a lot of advancement so our

proposal is to combine that with the Camp Washington update in December we'll be having a but a implementation being on both of those activity centers lastly If you haven't received it yet, you will be receiving a code of ethics that was adopted by city council. It will be applicable to all board's commissions. I want you to receive it. Please take a look and let us know if you have any questions. That's all for the staff report today. Thank you.

James FeatherAny questions for staff? Okay. We shall move to commission comments. Mr. Rice, anything?

Matthew RiceCommission? Parks and Recreation is busy. With lots of big projects. There was a public announcement about Tice Park and some of the realignment that will happen I'm frankly very very confident in the city leadership and the parks and recreation leadership to get that project moving forward the contractor involved was insured and so there are a lot of mechanisms for the city to push forward quickly with regard to that project. So there are multitudes of other projects happening, and it is compelling every time we have a meeting to see the long list of things that's going on. Nothing else notable, but when there are announcements about a possible opening of Tice Park or perhaps any public information about Old Town Hall's renovation

perhaps a public viewing of some of the changes I'll announce those and but they will have already been announced by parks anyway so that's it

Kirsten Lockhartjust a thank you to staff for all their preparation and hard work for the open house it was a great event great feedback so thank you

James Featherno comment and from my perspective and I also want to acknowledge mr. Kricarji's departure and his contributions the short time he was with us. He told me he's off to North Carolina for career change. The Board of Architectural Review actually meets this week. The way the meetings line up, they happen to be the same week as Planning Commission, so we'll be attending that. And that's two public hearings on the docket. One is for repainting of the Lehigh Motel, the one that got painted purple and white. They're coming back with a proposal to change that. And the second is public hearing for the courthouse plaza design. There have been some changes to the architecture of that since we last saw it. So I'll report on that when

James Featherwe meet again in October. Glad to have you all back. Small as we are, we're a potent group and I appreciate all the effort that you put in as well as what the staff does And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.