Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, February 9th, 2026. It's good to have everybody back after our snow day break at the end of the month. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me as you're able. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Sorry for the slight delay. We just had a joint special meeting with the Economic Development Authority, which was a very good discussion. First order of business first this evening is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued last week ahead of the meeting as required. Any comments on the agenda?

Mr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have one public hearing this evening, which is on our recommendations to the City Council on the capital improvement program. If anybody would like to address the Commission on any other matter on our agenda or not, you're welcome to do so at this time. Okay. Seeing none, we will move on. Next item is consideration of January 12th meeting minutes. Those were also issued last week ahead of this meeting. Any comments, discussion on those minutes?

Mr. Chair, I move that the Commission adopt the meeting minutes from the January 12th to 24th. The meeting minutes from January 12th, 2026 regular meeting as issued. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. We have one item that does not require a public hearing. That is final consideration of the urban forest master plan. I'll first recognize Mr. Napty. Thank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. This presentation will be a led by the City's urban forest manager, Anna Safford. But before she starts, I just wanted to clarify the reason the Planning Commission is having a discussion on this this evening.

This is, this report is going to be considered by City Council tomorrow night for adoption. And while not required to have a formal recommendation from the Planning Commission, we wanted to bring it for you to give a formal recommendation before they consider it for adoption. The reason for that is there are numerous recommendations for the Planning Commission. The plan that will likely have some kind of an impact on the comprehensive plan when we begin to review it again or even if we take a proactive approach and make changes ahead of that. And because of that, we don't want to bring a report that the Planning Commission didn't participate in and force the Planning Commission to incorporate those recommendations into the comprehensive plan without having any input into it. So you did receive a work session on this. A

a couple of months ago? impact on the comprehensive plan when we begin to review it again or even if we take a proactive approach and make changes ahead of that and because of that we don't want to bring a report that the Planning Commission didn't participate in and enforce the Planning Commission to incorporate those recommendations into the plan into the comprehensive plan without having any input into it so you did receive a work session on this a couple of months ago that was very close to the final draft so there aren't a whole lot of changes you'll notice but we did want to bring it back to you one more time just to give you a formal recommendation to Council before they consider it and as I

mentioned we will be discussing many of the items in this plan at some point in the near future as I believe it will result in some changes to the comprehensive plan thank you all the Miss Stafford okay Okay. Good evening, Planning Commission. As Paul mentioned, I am here to provide a presentation on the final Urban Forest Master Plan. Tonight during the presentation, I want to provide acknowledgments for those that participated and assisted with this planning effort. I'll also provide a higher level overview of the project background, including the project's goals and timelines. And then we will jump into an overview of the Urban Forest Master Plan itself. And then we'll wrap up with a discussion specifically on the implementation. There were

a lot of questions and discussion in the December meetings around implementation, so trying to address those questions. And then I'll open it up for any other discussion and comments you may all have. So this project has been going on for 18 months. Everyone that has been participating, it's been a collaborative effort. The project team was led by myself, but supported by Paul Napty with his planning expertise, and Sophia Chapin with community engagement. We had a robust steering committee, including the director of community development planning, Brooke Hardin, director of public works, David Summerfield, and director of parks and recreation, Stacy Summerfield. Our two city arborists, CJ Crabtree and Christopher Fleming. Our sustainability division, Stephanie

Kupka and Melissa McDonald. Our public works program manager, Satoshi Ito, and Rusty Russell from the environmental sustainability committee, who's also the liaison to the Parks and Rec advisory board. I thank boards and commissions for their feedback and involvement throughout the process, including you all. And our project team was led by DV resource group, our community engagement by Marcel Day, and wetlands studies and solutions, WSSI, provided technical and local expertise along the way. And of course, many thanks to the community. As we know, the urban forest is very loved by the community and their involvement was much appreciated through this process. So taking a step back and looking at the project's background, although the project kicked off 18 months

ago, this project was a concept that started in the 2035 comprehensive plan in the natural environment goal action to develop and implement an urban forest management plan. At the time when this action was included, the city did not have an urban forester on staff. And so the planning division led by the sustainability coordinator provided or led a urban forestry program evaluation study in 2021. This study identified two top recommendations. It reiterated the need for an urban forest management plan, and then also identified the need to hire an urban forest manager to both lead and implement said plan. It identified the stormwater utility as a funding opportunity in order to do so, which the city was able to move

forward with in 2022. Shortly after I was hired in 2023, the city had an opportunity to apply for a federal grant through the U.S. Forest Service, to which the city applied and was awarded to support the Sprout Initiative. The Sprout Initiative was developed using those key recommendations from the 2021 urban forestry program evaluation report. And it was directly to develop and implement an urban forest management plan, which I'll touch on touch on again later, but wanted to provide context now. So again, as you're aware, the project has produced the city's first ever urban forest master plan. The goal was to create a 20-year roadmap for the stewardship of Fairfax's urban forest through protection, regulation, growth, and management. The project included assessing existing conditions,

engaging the community, identifying the vision, goals, and priorities of the urban forest, developing objective strategies and actions, and providing implementation guidance. These five elements helped ensure that the plan accurately represented existing conditions, as well as captured the community's views and priorities and creating actionable recommendations for the city. The project was broken into two phases. Phase one focused on information gathering and community engagement. It kicked off in June of 2024 and completed in early 2025, where we moved into phase two, the development of the urban forest master plan itself. We are now here, not in January, but in February of 2026, with a final plan, and we'll be presenting to city council, like Paul said, tomorrow night for their consideration of adoption.

The project had public engagement throughout both phases of the project. The project was a project. At project events, we engaged directly with 150 stakeholders, but many more throughout the projects, updates to boards and commissions, tabling events. We had a survey and poetry contest, and then we had over 2,700 unique visitors to our engaged Fairfax webpage, where folks provided comment and were able to review documents. The public's role, of course, the public's role, of course, played a big part in shaping the urban forest master plan. The chapter, What Do We Want? Provide outlines the community's input. And appendix D was provided as a summary of the engagement process. All engagement activities were tracked throughout the project in a database, which then was provided to staff as a resource to use in the future.

So that's the project background. Now moving on to highlighting the urban forest master plan itself. It is organized around the adaptive management process, which includes four main phases. Each of the chapters answers one of these four main questions. The first being, what do we have? It established a baseline for the planning process. Second, what do we want? It seeks stakeholder input to develop the vision and guiding principles. And then three, how do we get there? This outlines objectives, strategies, and actions, also known as the implementation plan. And then four, how are we doing? This determines the progress metrics and assessment timelines to evaluate success and how we need to adapt

as we move through the process and start the process over. As we move through the next few slides, it's important, again, to keep in mind, this is a 20-year planning horizon, as well as, again, an adaptive management process. The intent is for the plan to be a living and active document. So going into a few details of each of these chapters, the first being, what do we have? Establishing the baseline. The six components for the urban forest master plan included an analysis of the city's land cover data. It reviewed the 2023 public tree inventory. It did an assessment of non-native invasive species on public land. It benchmarked to similar cities and estimated urban forest benefits using the U.S. Forest Service iTree calculator.

Notably, it found that tree canopy cover makes up 40% of the city's land area. It found that the city's urban forest operations are largely reactive and in response to staff observations or resident requests. And it estimated that Fairfax's urban forest provides an approximate $1.2 million of annual benefits, benefits as well as, of course, contributing to mental and physical health, community character, property values. Second, what do we want? Again, this is looking at creating long-term vision and goals. Public engagement was really critical to understand what the community wants in the urban forest. Throughout the process, a few themes emerged to a, and these included a strong desire for stricter tree preservation,

consistency and transparency in city decision-making, improved inter-departmental coordination, dedicated city resources for the urban forest, a desire for expanded outreach efforts, and a consistent interest in learning more about the urban forest and how to get involved with it. These key takeaways help shape then these goals on the slide. We have three goals to champion and sustain a resilient and equitable urban forest in Fairfax, increase Fairfax's capacity to care for trees, and three, strengthen the community's support and involvement in the urban forest. We have three goals to be able to achieve that. Then the third step, how do we get there? Again, this is the implementation plan of the urban forest master plan.

It ties the information from the first two chapters, the existing conditions, and the vision and goals for the future into objectives, strategies, and actions to be implemented. The objectives are the key outcomes to achieve, the strategies are the approaches, and the actions are specific tasks. The urban forest master plan has five objectives. Protect, strengthen tree and forest conservation, regulate, enhance city policies to protect and expand tree canopy, both in content and process, grow, create space, plant, and care for new trees, manage, establish a dedicated urban forestry division for all urban forestry activities, and engage, foster community stewardship for Fairfax's urban forest.

And, again, each of these has many strategies and actions to help facilitate the implementation. For example, manage has an objective or strategy to scale internal capacity through a centralized urban forestry division. This strategy includes actions such as consulting the 2024 operations review, and supporting staff development. All the actions throughout the plan are organized into short, mid, and long-term time frames. We identify existing capacity and partners, resource demands, and metrics for internal tracking. And then appendix F is a bit more of a simplified implementation plan that uses existing staff capacity and identifies supports and lead roles in order to do so. And then the final step of an adaptive management process, how are we doing?

Pour it? it recommends progress assessment timelines and provides key performance indicators or KPIs and they are mapped to the plans three main goals the plan has 13 KPIs one example is to increase or to have a 5% increase in canopy cover in low canopy areas by 2035 and another is increased survival rate of newly planted trees to greater than 90% the progress assessment timeline includes an annual review to be reported out in the state of the urban forest report and then a five-year review to and to use a progress report and addendum that adjusts and adapts to the the changing conditions after over four different five periods you come to the 20-year planning horizon where you then would start the process over and

develop a new urban forest master plan so touching on some of the revisions we've made since the December presentations we received some great questions asking about how to predict changes to the urban forest particularly around climate impacts invasive species and other urban forest health impacts in response to this we added an action to strategy 1.2 strategy 1.2 is around conserving connecting and expanding tree canopy the new action recommends partnerships with regional jurisdictions to help support urban forest forecasting and modeling around canopy and climate change canopy change and climate change we recognize the urban forest master plan itself cannot actually forecast or include forecasting of these changes a lot of that data is usually done at a county state or regional level and so in addition we also recommended partnering with the COGS regional tree action plan integrating with the city's comprehensive plan and other long range

planning documents so using multiple planning and strategies at different scales in order to assess the impacts of climate change of climate change and then lastly we heard again a lot of questions around implementation so I thought I'd take a moment to to kind of address what's next after the urban forest master plan is adopted we recognize there's concerns around budgeting there's a lot here in the plan as I've presented over the past slides there's five main objectives 21 strategies and 171 actions and so it is a lot of work I do want to point out a lot of them are or would become ongoing tasks that would get integrated to staff and everyday work we have identified over 40 of the action items are already underway underway

and we recognize that we recognize there's concerns around budgeting there's a lot here in the plan as I've presented over the past slides there's five main objectives there's five main objectives 21 strategies and 171 actions and so it is a lot of work I do want to point out a lot of them are or would become ongoing tasks that would get integrated to staff's everyday work we have identified over 40 of the action items are already underway and so it's a plan that is already in motion by staff's current work to a certain extent and I wanted to touch on and use some of the points from the project background slides of some of the projects and how it relates to the urban forest master plan moving forward so first being again that urban forestry program evaluation report that was done five years ago and I think it's important to highlight

how much work has been accomplished over the five years since that report first came out and this plan helps provide that strategic roadmap moving forward it provides transparency as to how we are doing work and how are we trying to achieve the communities priorities as well as still meeting those urban forest needs and then second reiterating the sprout initiative again it was designed to not just develop an urban forest master plan but but it was designed to implement the urban forest master plan it's not coincidence that it touches on all five objectives of the plan it the foundation of it includes community engagement and stewardship it's initiated an all hands approach for non native and invasive species management it prioritizes tree plantings to maximize community benefits and it's all done rooted with strategic planning and more importantly communication both internally and externally

to the public so the the importance is that we are already doing much of this work and we have we're making sure that the city is agreeing upon a roadmap as we continue forward and then lastly I want to also note the project does include deliverables besides the plan itself to help with activation and so we have started developing an annual work plan drafting guidance on what a natural areas assessment would be drafting workflows and materials around priority policies and then as Paul mentioned trying to identify the integration into the comprehensive plan or other city plans that we hope to bring forward to you all in the near future so with that I just want to say it is a big milestone to adopt a urban forest master plan and we I think it's a good step forward for our urban forest and so with that I'll open up to any other questions or comments you all have

thank you very much just one introductory comment we'll open up to the commission for for comments you mentioned that impetus to do this was one of the action items from the comprehensive plan but when you look at the urban forest master plan as a whole it ultimately is going to address quite a number of other action items in the comprehensive plan so we're not just fulfilling one objective here really or action item there's going to be maybe a dozen and they all relate to this and they all relate to this urban forest master plan and they all relate to this urban forest master plan it's culmination of a lot of activity effort an important a milestone for the city and thank you for your your and your team's leadership in getting us to this point

uh commission any questions or comments or discussion make it easy we have seen it of course a few times so yes thank you thank you thank you mr rice yes so the coordination with regional partners i think is a key a key item uh in particular there may be data that we can get access to for monitoring that is available to our large neighbor that surrounds us a lot of their analysis uh includes our jurisdiction so i think um to maximize the benefit that we have as a little island within a larger um neighbor that we uh help share data costs or at least 150th the cost which is our share of geographic area and population um so the issue is frankly that the lidar data which we would use to really get a very good biomass estimation only shows up every four or five years through the usgs 3d elevation program and

and that data is fantastically good and i'm processing it right now but it was captured in december 2022 and so that delay that more than three year delay in getting actionable information is unacceptable and um counterparts at fairfax county have spoken uh to my students at the university and others about this lag that we have in making timely decisions with good data so to the extent that we can leverage these uh connections to improve the monitoring and prediction that we do through this plan i think we should do that and we should lobby for that to be included as a budgetary item um that's a regular one and i'd be happy to come and testify about that if needed thanks thanks thanks thank you others

thank you thank you mr dapty uh i believe there's a draft motion in your packet uh mr chair i move that the planning commission recommends that city council approve the urban forest master plan in the draft dated december 2025 second okay it's been moved and seconded uh uh any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye opposed abstentions passes unanimously go forth and do good thank you so much thank you for all your hard work on that our next item on the agenda is a public hearing for consideration of a recommendation to the city council on the proposed capital improvement programs for fiscal year 2027 to fiscal year 2031 mr nappy thank you chair feather and members of the planning commission

uh this is the last in our series of discussions on the fy 27 to 2031 capital improvement program uh looking at our schedule as you recall your reserve first received a presentation from the interim city manager at the time uh in november of the draft cip we've had multiple discussions over the course of the last couple months the last one being on january 12 when we had representatives from parks and recreation and the fire department here to address some of your questions uh we were scheduled to have this public hearing on january 26th uh that meeting was canceled due to the weather uh and then we're also scheduled for the planning commission to present to city council uh on february 3rd uh we had to postpone that because we couldn't have our public hearing on the 26th

so we're here now for the public hearing um and then as a planning commission is where you're scheduled to present your recommendations uh to city council at tomorrow night's meeting february 10th uh what you're being asked to consider tonight is a resolution uh that has a recommendation of support for the capital improvement program uh with a list of specific items for the city council to consider so i'll briefly go through those and then turn it over to the planning commission uh to see if you have any other discussion items before we consider the resolution um we are able to make amendments to the resolution um tonight if you would like to do that you can uh make an adoption uh with um with um with changes

uh just a quick reminder on the role of the planning commission in reviewing the capital improvement program uh your role is defined as determining conformance of the projects uh within the uh cip with the comprehensive plan uh advise council on city priorities among proposed projects this has become more of an issue as there is competition for resources and to lastly to anticipate future considerations uh and do this by looking for uh potential upcoming projects in the comprehensive plan um that may not yet be identified in the cip uh and then following the series of discussions we've had over the last couple of months this is the list of recommendations that are included in the recommendations that are included in the draft resolution that's in your packet the color code here is to separate those comments that are specifically about um identified projects those are shown in orange and then the more general capital comments are shown in blue

uh and i will summarize those uh for those that are related to specific projects uh planning commission asked to include comments um about uh the property yard feasibility study um and encouraging support for what comes out of that recognizing that there are ever increasing floodplain issues on the current site uh regarding fire station three their recommendation to support that project uh due to the condition and issues uh with the current facility uh and to further consider uh other needs of the city and opportunities to use the fire station site uh in the redevelopment effort uh for that project uh and then lastly the uh recommendation to support uh the willard sherwood community center as that supports a full range of users

and strengthens investments in the adjacent van dyke park continuing with project specific recommendations uh planning commission asked to support the west drive property yard acquisition uh opportunities for acquiring new properties in the city are very rare and then lastly to support the uh uh proposed new turf fields at katherine johnson middle school uh with uh three benefits from this being um improving access and dealing with environmental issues uh supporting middle school athletics programs that are have ever increasing criteria on their facilities uh and integrating um the fields with kutner park uh and the camp washington the camp washington activity center uh along with adjoining with the germantown road improvement project

and then uh lastly the general capital comments are shown here uh and those are to um to seek to continue to seek non-property tax related funding sources uh for projects where available um to look at cross-functional uh for city facilities to leverage city owned properties to offset costs for other projects to consider long-term plans and cip discussions uh by focusing investments away from uh properties or facilities that may be going undergoing renovations anyway um account for revenue opportunities and new projects uh and then to invest in what makes people want to live here uh so that's a quick summary of the draft resolution uh as we mentioned you are able to make changes to that tonight if you would like to do so

um by uh using the sample motion to adopt the resolution with modifications um and you just have to cite to us what those modifications are uh and then as a reminder you are scheduled to present these recommendations to the city council tomorrow and at that time you'll also have opportunity to explain the reasoning and some of the background behind some of these recommendations that might not be as so apparent uh because they are very short statements um so that concludes this presentation and happy to answer any questions before we open the public hearing are there any questions or comments for staff at this point okay seeing none we will open the public hearing uh this is an opportunity for the public to address uh

uh the planning commission's proposed recommendations to city council on uh the resolution that was published ahead of the meeting uh which includes the priorities that we identified that mr napty included in his staff report uh for those who may be here who have looked at cip if there are other priorities you think we should add or consider or perhaps not consider uh recommending the council you're free to speak on those topics as well is there anybody from the public who would like to address the planning commission on our cip recommendation madam secretary had anybody signed ahead of time okay thank you uh anybody in the room would like to address you're welcome to come forward at this time

okay seeing none we'll close the public hearing place further uh discussion of this in the matter in the hands of the commission um many other comments mr rice yeah so we um received an email just with information regarding the wording of our recommendation for fire station 3 um i think i wanted to save my comments for an open meeting and avoid any um statements of my own that might be considered deliberative um most of all i think that the accreditation of the fire department and the police department carry a fairly significant price for us in terms of insurance that we pay as a city um so there are several ratings and things that the city holds that make a fairly big impact financially you know the bond rating is the one we talk about the most

but i think having an up-to-date facility very much does feed into accreditation which has a very direct financial impact so it's always great to have a new fire station it's always great to have a new school it's nice to have you know new facilities but very few facilities have a direct connection to a financial cost like this and so i think um supporting a station that can function as a 21st century fire station is relatively important if just from a financial perspective um we did talk during our last meeting about the um where we had the assistant chief here as a guest about the uh coverage of the fire department and their service area and the cooperative agreement that we have with the county to service residents in the county um what it comes down to is i think this is a priority is um

um sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of much more than just the readiness and the response times it really is there's a financial side to this that i think is important that um and we won't have the chance to go in depth tomorrow uh when we make formal recommendations but i think at least um having a verbal reassertion by one of us that there is a financial side to this it's not just about a new facility it's about um a five-year accreditation cycle that will uh coincide with a new facility being built and i think um it's important for us to try to maintain um the city services that we have with the lowest cost that we can have and part of that cost for fire and ems is the insurance and the accreditation which feeds into that cost thanks that's it

uh is there any change or something you might suggest with the resolution i'm not sorry that was that was a real long-winded way of just saying we need tomorrow just to assert the financial cost associated with um that that we will have some costs associated with not supporting that part of the cip and i do want to have a discussion and then when we come to a final agreement on the resolution about how we'll present tomorrow as well which we can either do as part of this discussion or later in just our general commission discussion but ms lukard anything um i just wanted to raise a question that was brought to me before this meeting from a school board member of course they're in their own session right now um but the question was

why we were not more explicit in our um resolution about the remainder of these school uh projects that are listed in the sipper this year i know we sort of went back and forth on some of the smaller ones about risk assessment and timeliness of of the recommended um investments they don't really rise to the level of the huge capital projects that i think we're discussing here so i'm comfortable with leaving it with katherine johnson but i do think in terms of a voice track that keeping our schools safe and updated and ahead of any potential risks or dangers to children are part of number nine what people want to live here so i think we can speak to that um to the remainder of the school projects under that header but if that's something that we feel like we need to revisit more explicitly

you know certainly i can carry water for that as well questions or thoughts on that mr cunnyan uh... a thought as it bears on both of those projects as mr rice has indicated the fire station is significant from what i read in the email uh... in order not to jeopardize the certification of the fire department it needed to meet the requirements all the code requirements at the time it was built which i believe it did because they've been certified since then what is lacking in that statement is that if you really get old enough uh... the current code and standards is a great distance removed from what was originally approved and that's the area i think we're getting to on the fire station that we are reaching sufficient age in that

that is important if we're going to maintain a city that we maintain adequate facilities to meet the need so our support for the fire station as i would view it is to meet the need does that mean we have to build a new fire station next year no two years three years no we need to build a new fire station next year no we need to put it into the hopper and put sufficient emphasis on it that the planning is moving forward so that we're taking action in this area the exact timing of that action is not as important as i view it as that we are taking action and making progress in reaching the goal so it's not intended to drive this year's budget or next year's budget it's intended to be put in the hopper so that the adjustments can be made and we ensure that it stays in the

somehow somehow somehow somehow somehow somehow somehow somehow And I think much the same is with Willard Sherwood in moving forward on that as we have recommended improvement and as we're going to have two work sessions coming up and I'll have additional comments there. I think the changing playing field that we're dealing with, it makes it imperative that we continue with projects like Willard Sherwood in order to meet the future needs, not only as we see them today, but as they are going to change. So from that standpoint, I can support what we have put in here, not to minimize schools and all of their important things, but this is a budget exercise moving forward to say what adjustments and changes need to be made there.

And that's City Council's prerogative in the long run so that these are important things I think that we've identified and the council will put their own stamp on it and deal with it as appropriate. Thank you. Others? I'm comfortable with the recommendation as drafted. I think it reflects generally the priorities we discussed and I just want to say thank you to Mr. Nabdi for synthesizing them for us. Mr. Nabdi for synthesizing them for us. Just addressing the schools as well. One of the things, when I go back and look at the current FY 2020, the next year's CIP, a number of items that are in there, certain things that are security related are in the prior year. Prior fiscal year projects that are already approved in the works and we don't need to

reemphasize those. Even one that's called security enhancement, all schools lists the budget but doesn't show anything for 2027 or in the out years. So I'm not sure what that means. Otherwise, the other programs, restroom and entrance enhancement, softball fields and turf replacement. Those aren't rising up the same kinds of things I think we're talking about as well. So just to put it in context of the others. Yeah. I think we can express blanket support for school investment under the livability threshold. That's right. Is there... I think they will have to make some decisions too about the high cost of the, some of the fuel replacements with turf and what the real remaining life is. But yeah.

So is there interest in modifying item number nine to include a comment at the end and make a reference to support for schools? I think we can take that up in words. I like the brevity of that and I think it drives home a key message. Okay. Anything else? Ms. Lockhart. Mr. Chair, I move that the Planning Commission adopt resolution number PC-26-01 as shown in Attachment 1, identifying that the Planning Commission recommends that the City Council approve the Capital Improvement Program FY27 to FY31 as proposed, subject to the following considerations. considerations as discussed this evening. Does that pass? Mr. Necessary to read all of them in its entirety? No, they're listed in the resolution so I think that's, I think it's okay.

Okay. They are. Second. Thank you. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you for walking us through this process. Every year is a little different. This year I thought we had some particularly meaty discussions. I'm glad we did them the way we did. And perhaps we'll talk at the end of the meeting just about staging for tomorrow evening's presentation. Yes, Governor's purpose is the agenda. Any agenda tomorrow? All right. All right. So we will now recess our regular meeting and move into our work session. We have three work session items this evening. First is pre-application briefing for potential multifamily residential development located at

10340 Democracy Lane. Welcome for the staff report. Let's try it. Let's try it. Let's try it. Let's try it. Pull that up. Good evening, Chair Feather, members of Planning Commission. First up for the discussion tonight is a potential redevelopment of 10430 Democracy Lane. We're currently in the pre-application phase of the development review process. Staff have held concept meetings with the applicant, but a formal application has not yet been submitted. The purpose of this briefing tonight is to gain initial feedback from the Planning Commission on the concept. The site is located in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center. And for this specific site, the small area plan recommends new construction, residential, commercial, or mixed-use building with a six-story height limit.

And new, publicly accessible open space to be coordinated among property owners and the city. The site is located south of Layton Hall, adjacent to the Flat Zone University to the west and north of Democracy Lane. The site is zoned CR Commercial Retail and the future land use designation is the activity center place type. The site is located in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center. The site is also located in the future transition overlay district. And that just means that when the site is rezoned, it'll fall under the transition overlay district. The applicant is proposing to rezone the site to PDR, planned development, residential. These are the existing conditions on the site. There is currently an approximately 60,000 square foot office building on 3.22 acres.

The photo on the left is of the existing office building. And then the photo on the right is looking at the site if you're standing close to the flats on University. And I also want to mention that I took these photos last week in the snow. And so all the snow you see there, that's parking. That's a parking lot. That's not like grass or something. So just wanted to be clear about that. It's not super clear from the photos. Okay, moving on. Okay, so here's a couple more photos of the site. The photo on the left is looking at the site from Plaza Drive. And the existing building is there on the left-hand side of this photo. And then the photo on the right is looking down Democracy Lane at the site.

And you can see, once again, the snow-covered parking lot and then the office building there on the left-hand side of the photo. So this is the concept plan. The potential applicant is proposing 260 to 280 residential multifamily units in a six-story building, 458 parking spaces and structured parking, and approximately 28,000 square feet of open space. The existing 60,000 square foot office building would be replaced with 434,000 square feet of multifamily if this proposal were to be approved. So this is the layout of level one. I just wanted to point out here the garage entrance is on the right of this image from Democracy Lane. And this would be levels two through five. And then this would be the top floor, floor six.

So staff met with the applicant and provided preliminary feedback. Staff recommends, following the small area plans, recommended six-story building height for the site. Staff also recommends incorporating the connected open space envisioned in the small area plan, incorporating new active street street sections on all streets surrounding the site. 26-foot travel lanes would be required on at least two sides of the building. The sidewalk along Layton Hall would need to be improved and widened. A full tree inventory would be required. Parking garage access should be oriented away from corners, aligned with other driveways, or be offset further away from driveways on adjacent sites. And the applicant should have a plan to retain existing office tenants or have a plan to relocate current office tenants somewhere else in the city.

The potential land use requests would be rezoning from CR commercial retail to PDR, planned development residential in the transition overlay district. A master development plan, a special exception for height, and a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping. So a city council briefing has been scheduled for February 24th. And then after the briefing, staff would expect a formal application submittal. Then work sessions with the Planning Commission, City Council, and the Board of Architectural Review. And then finally a public hearing with Planning Commission, City Council, and the Board of Architectural Review. And that concludes my presentation. I'm here to answer questions, and then the applicant is also here and available to answer questions as well.

Mr. Slugger. I didn't see anything in the presentation about the unit size mix. Based on the parking numbers, it seems like perhaps they're more like two-bedroom, larger units, or...? I would defer to the applicant, the potential applicant on that. Mr. Pritchard. Good evening. Evan Pritchard here on behalf of the applicant. Great question. We are early enough in the process that we are still determining what the final unit mix is going to be. In our initial conversations with staff, you know, and having worked on the botanist at Eaton Place, we know that there's always interest in the unit mix in terms of how many families, i.e. school kids, are going to be in the building. So we're still looking at that.

We're thinking at this point we're going to have primarily ones and twos and a smaller number of threes. The number of parking spaces we're proposing for the maximum number of units would come out to about 1.63 parking spaces per unit, which is, you know, more or less in line with the zoning ordinance requirements. Okay. And while I've got you, is there any consideration to accessible units within the facility? So accessible units I think is TBD, but I think we'll be providing, you know, the standard number of, I mean, that will be sensitive to that and providing, you know, a proper amount of accessible units. We will be providing, you know, adhering to the city's affordable housing requirement of 6%.

And I know that some percentage of those will certainly be accessible. But it's early days, but, you know, we do plan to make accessibility a big part of the proposal. A line of sight from Layton Hall. Apartments sitting 70 to 75 to 80 feet from the roadway. Massing six stories in the southern part of the sky is a much different thing than massing six stories elsewhere. What could you do, if anything, to minimize the line of sight, sunshine, and some of the visibility concerns with tall buildings? Yeah. So, well, first off, as Ms. Schweiger mentioned, the small area plan did consider such issues. And we are adhering to the six stories, but I totally get the question. The flats next door are, of course, five stories.

So we would use architectural techniques to try to lessen the feeling of mass. We'll certainly do sight line studies and shadow studies to make sure that there won't be any negative impacts on Layton Hall. But at this early stage, I don't know that we can commit to any kind of interest in doing step backs or anything. But we'll try to design the building so that it definitely doesn't feel massive and blocky and minimizes any kind of tendency to loom over the Layton Hall apartments to the north. Good. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. that breaks their view of that southern sky that's kind of critical but um i think we're early

enough in the process that it's appropriate to have no commitments and just to have this be a discussion at this point but i think every other development within the city at least that i've been a part of voting to approve has involved some sensitivity about the heights of the surrounding structures either by stepping back or by recognizing that a certain side of the development needs to go down a story or two and then step up so i do want to compliment your group on submitting a proposal that has green space and sidewalks on all four sides and it shouldn't be unusual that we compliment that but the dedication of open space on the west side is a big deal and we don't know what's going to happen on the southwest corner that's not owned by you but at least the message is there that a

center block corridor that may stretch further south ideally all the way to old town square could be very very helpful in this area having a connection for residents to walk down to commercial you know resident retail grocery restaurants and not have to get in their car to do that drive that's real valuable for us as a city and so maintaining that open space on the west side and then thereby encouraging neighboring development to also treat that corridor as a passageway for people who are walking that i think would be great but we'll see what emerges anyway thank you for your presence here tonight thank you others mr mcgregor mr cunnyham thank you you can have a seat for a moment if you would like to i'm going to start i guess not on this specific project which i will get to

a little bit with the concept of context and part of this is going to be the history lesson that everybody expects from me but i'm going to start that in the year 2000 we had a mayoral election one of the key points in that mayoral election was that we had built a large housing development right next to downtown and this was a monstrosity that was out of character for the city and i'm talking about providence square seems to be well accepted today a lot of nice people live there it doesn't seem to be too big but part of the outcome of that was discussion of one mayor or another in the context of whoever was mayor was going to get to decide who would redevelop the old post office site and the gas station next to it

and it was felt that the existing mayor was going to bring in something that was too large a structure for our downtown area and as such there was an administration change and what you see down there is from the follow-on administration it was squashed down to be look nice but it wasn't as economically viable as it was going to be originally envisioned but i'm talking about the first large uh multi-family building in the neighborhood of downtown since that time we've had a few more concepts coming through and this is where we're going in an area that is essentially all commercial now there were individual houses down there that had been residential but had been turned into businesses uh with that came the appropriate the approval of latent hall april latent hall apartments and while

that has been constructed it was approved as a larger denser residential area next to that following that we have the flats now the flats was designed for college student housing and a specific purpose and moving forward but it did bring 800 students so to speak into downtown increased the residential component of what we have downtown then we had approval of city center west which was supposed to be upscale on the west side of downtown and again hasn't made progress and has run into some speed bumps following that we have approval of the davies property which is now going to be several hundred more residential units with a small amount of commercial space that's coming into the downtown area that we're talking about

with that we have a group coming through called the christopher group that is looking at the property just north of the davies property and that is going to be primarily residential from the thing come the recommendation coming through with again some commercial in it uh after that we now have democracy lane which is going to be purely residential as we are building in our old town area from that we're going to move on to courthouse plaza which is right next door which wants to come through and rezone so that they can build the residential portion of redevelopment of the overall property and add additional housing in our downtown area and i'm going to follow that with another proposed residential area downtown which is the old united bank building and the mason enterprise

center which is going to be a block that is going to be primarily residential and where oxhill properties intended to move their affordable housing units from city center west into that complex in order to streamline the project now all of this is residential that is being built on our commercial downtown and the character of the old town how many individual residential units am i talking about here how many people am i talking about bringing into this area what is the nature of the character of old town once we get down even after we construct the south street extension and do some things to try to make it easier to transit that area how much traffic are we bringing into this area and what is the overall impact of this going on i recognize that there's a need for affordable housing

construction there's a need for housing but the way we do it from my perspective is important and with all of this being brought down into the old town area i think we need some better concept of what we're doing as we're looking at individual projects because every one of them we'll stand very nicely on its own merit it will have good architecture it will have good justification for what should be done but when we get back to the context of how many we get done and if we just did all of these if we just did all of these there's still room downtown to build more and people will say yeah but i've got a precedent you've already built all of those why can't i turn this lot into something four five six stories high in an area

that used to be two and three stories maximum so one of my challenges with this whole thing is not going to be that this isn't economically viable it's not good but how does it fit with the context of what we're trying to get in the redevelopment and character of old town as we're moving forward for the next 25 or 50 years and what i just started with is only 25 years ago but that concept of downtown and keeping it small and unique and that seems to have gone in 25 years to all of this is acceptable so that seems to be the direction we're going as i would read it now i don't know that i want to speak any more to a specific project down here what i want is some resolution to the context of what we're doing

because it's been said for a long time it's outlined and as we have rewritten our rules we have made it possible for all of these things to come in again with this uh if we're going to put that many projects downtown what do you think the need for a community center that's right next to all of these people is it's an amenity that they're going to need so it justifies the building of a community center and says we need to find the tax base to put those kind of structures in to handle what we're proposing going into the future when we look at consolidation i don't know that we have a map but if we look at the map of this property and then we look at the combined properties property i believe we've got a small string of business townhouses between the two

if combined properties doesn't consolidate that what happens to it in the future is there enough parcel to have a small string of townhouses to redevelop that in a reasonable manner to have it fit the context of what's going on so without some consolidation that's another challenge that i would see in and how are we putting the pieces of this puzzle uh back together to get a cohesive downtown that people want to look at and we had comments in the meeting that we just had before this with the economic development authority uh with people saying boy do i like the sense of downtown the sense of a small town the sense of a small community the sense that we can get around and we have some history

and those kinds of things and by the time we get all of these projects in the downtown area at six and seven stories what do we get is that that is that the old town that we wanted to have as a historic downtown or do we have a couple of very old buildings in the middle of a whole bunch of new modern construction that's of a greatly different scale so that's that's my overall context dealing with these two properties and all of the other ones on my list where we started from one place and we're going to another how do we make it work my question and my comment don't expect the staff or the applicant to answer the questions admittedly yep um i mean it's really a question for the small area plan which we have the concept of revisiting

our small area plans down the road uh my observation is when i look at the land uses in old town what's being proposed is consistent with what we've currently got in the small area plan which is residential in that block so we can't say it's inconsistent with what we said at the time when this was developed we realized the small area plan is a little dusty at this point it's five years old now maybe something six yep and things have changed um the economics have changed climate's changed uh public sentiment is changing i think but uh what we're seeing proposed here is consistent with what we've asked for the green space that was noted as welcome addition um clearly you'll get into the details

in the future as to what the plan development uh requires in terms of open space and all kinds of other amenities and so forth i'm sure that's on your radar i know moyer mcgill is familiar enough with our zoning ordinance requirements that you'll see your client is aware of those but uh just a lot of art uh just curious since the applicant is here is there a reason why commercial was not proposed for this particular project i'm sorry could you repeat the question i'm sure um since the small area plan says um residential or mixed use is there a reason why you opted in to do purely residential for the project uh yes so um we did mixed use on um the the botanist and and as you may recall from going through that

process um you know providing a a mix of uses you know can can sometimes be challenging we feel like this is not the strongest um area for for retail so we feel really good about it um you know being all residential and sort of dovetailing with mr cunningham's points we think that this is going to provide um some additional rooftops to support the uh the retail um that's still going to remain regardless of the what happens to the south of us um and and also old town so uh it's definitely where the market's at right now where we see um a strong desire for residential units um not necessarily a strong desire for for ground floor retail um in every spot in every spot which wasn't contemplated in the small area plan either uh i am intrigued by the staff comment about uh existing office

uh tenants uh mr pritchard perhaps you know what what what the occupancy is currently so my understanding is the occupant the building what's that what's that challenge look like to the applicant well potential applicant yeah so so it's it's an interesting um issue um on on other projects i've worked in worked on over the years and in the city and elsewhere um there's been definitely been sensitivity to mom and pops in in a retail context getting um displaced um i'm less familiar with this concern of of office tenants um you know uh requiring you know work from the applicant um we identified this this project because it's it's available the office building is on the market it's my understanding that uh the the building is only half uh occupied um at this point and uh there there's

threat of that is trending in the in the downward um direction we would certainly um you know work with the seller and and work with the existing tenants um to try to keep them in the city we in no way want to uh have them go to the you know go to a neighboring jurisdiction um but but that's about all i can say uh at this time on that subject okay thank you thoughts any further thoughts from y'all so thank you for the presentation i mean clearly there are aspects that are consistent with what the current small area plan calls for continues to be concerned with uh the scale and impact on the uh based on its proximity proximity to the historic old town this is not in the historic part itself but it's in the transition and and transitions are important in transition districts so how that would

look and the impacts that will have certainly are considerations for all of us i think going forward but any other summarized comments from y'all okay do you think you have sufficient from your perspective yes from my perspective that was sufficient at this stage sure okay thank you thank you thank you okay okay next item on our work session is a pre-application briefing for a potential redevelopment of the courthouse plaza shopping center at 10300 willard way and 3922 blenheim boulevard swire again yes all right moving on so yes we'll be discussing the potential application for redevelopment of the courthouse plaza shopping center we're currently in the pre-application phase of the development review process staff have held concept meetings with the applicant but a formal

application has not yet been submitted the purpose of this briefing tonight is to gain initial feedback from the planning commission on the concept the site is located in the old town fairfax activity center and for this specific site the small area plan recommends a six story height limit a grocery store anchor new publicly accessible open space above grade structured and underground parking retail frontage oriented towards new streets and public open space the site is located south of layton hall north of north street and is bounded on the west by university drive and on the east by blenheim boulevard the site consists of two parcels parcels parcel a is zoned cr commercial retail and parcel b is split zoned cr commercial retail and cg commercial

general in the transition overlay district the site's future land use designation is activity center and the site is located in the old town fairfax activity center the potential applicant is proposing to rezone the site to pdm plan development mixed use i did have a error on the slideshow that was posted online but this is correct they are proposing pdm plan development mixed use existing on parcel a is safeway and other commercial retail on 8.73 acres and then on parcel b are two standalone commercial retail buildings on 1.61 acres pad building one is the new layered restaurant and pad building two is the former joe's pizza and soon to be teapot restaurant coming soon um a total of approximately 92 000 square foot feet of retail exists on the entire site

parcel a um just want to give you a little background on this so parcel a was subject to a land use application last year the application for redevelopment included 315 residential units ground floor retail structured and street parking and a small green space in between the new building and safeway and that's the plan that you see here on the left the proposal was denied by city council in october of last year and that was following staff's recommendation staff's main concerns with the previous proposal more consistency with the small area plan specifically the road network pedestrian and vehicular connections open space and um just the fact that this was a non-phase development the plan would have left the majority of the site undeveloped and it would have stayed um

the eastern portion of the property would have stayed as it exists today and then on the right is phase one of the new proposal and i'll um i'll go into more detail on this in a moment but the most notable difference here is that parcel b to the south is now included in this potential proposal so once again on the left is the previous proposal that was denied and then on the right is phase two of the potential plan so you can see here that the potential applicant is now proposing a phase development bringing in the rest of the site into the application the applicant provided this demolition plan so everything in the pink on this slide would be demolished and everything in green is existing and to remain on the site with phase one

so this slide shows phase one of the potential proposal um phase one would include a six-story mixed-use building with 315 upper-story residential units 12 500 square feet of ground floor retail 743 parking spaces provided in structured and service parking facade improvements to the existing retail that is to remain in phase one new vehicular and pedestrian connections green space in between the new building and remaining grocery store and at the eastern edge of the remaining retail and then at the end of phase one there would be a total of 79 000 square feet of retail this would be a net loss of approximately 13 300 square feet of retail on the site this slide shows the potential pedestrian connectivity plan and this was an issue with the previous plan that was denied last year

so most notably here is the pedestrian connection east to west and through parcel b to the south this slide shows the potential vehicular connectivity plan this was also an issue with the previous plan and this image here shows the vehicular connections east to west and then also north to south north to south and then this is showing phase two of the potential proposal so phase two would include another mixed-use building with 300 additional 315 additional upper story residential units 50 000 square feet of ground floor retail and then on the pad building one would be 3559 square feet of retail on on retail pad building two would be 6 000 square feet of retail increased open space expansion of a new street network and

um approximately 74 000 square foot feet of retail would be provided at full build out so this would be a net loss of approximately 18 000 300 square feet of retail on the site once it's all said and done so this is the potential phase two pedestrian connectivity plan you can see increased north to south connections with the expanded street network and this is the potential phase two vehicular connectivity plan similarly you can also see increased north to south connections with the expanded street network as well for vehicles so the next few slides are renderings this would be looking at the potential mixed-use building from university drive and proposed street one this is from the corner of university drive and democracy lane

this shows the reface and facade improvements to the shopping center and then this is showing facade upgrades to the former bank drive-through so those would all be the improvements to the property during phase one so staff met with the potential applicant to discuss the proposal and we had some preliminary comments the sidewalk along blenheim should continue in front of parcel b the feasibility and impact of the signal relocation and new curb cuts should be studied so the potential proposal indicates that the signal at blenheim and willard way would be relocated and so we've just asked that they they study the relocation of that signal all new buildings need 26-foot fire access on two sides of the building

a sanitary sewer capacity study would be required and staff requests more information on the timing of the reface and development of phase one compared with the full build out of the site so here are the potential land use requests they would be requesting a rezoning from cr commercial retail to pdm plan development mixed use in the transition overlay district master development plan special exceptions including height parking sidewalks street trees lot coverage and specific use standards for upper story residential and a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping the next steps in the application process are a city council briefing which has been scheduled for february 24th

and then submittal of a formal formal land use application after submittal work sessions with the planning commission city council and the board of architectural review and then finally public hearings with planning commission city council and the board of architectural review Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons and the Pourtons? That concludes my presentation. I'm here for questions, and so is the applicant. Thank you, Ms. Weir. Comments, questions? Mr. Rice. So there's a section of the renderings that has kind of an ambiguous future open space designation.

So this might best be seen about halfway through. The future open space designation, I think the idea there certainly would complement what we saw in the first phase, which is kind of a center block passageway. As you well know, we did not give feedback to the proposal last time, and unfortunately that only makes the job harder because typically our input is from a good place and from residents that love the city, and I'm uncomfortable with the idea that there was not enough vehicular passageway through that proposal. If we could look at another rendering where it shows the vehicular connectivity plan in blue, in this case, there's a whole lot of vehicle passageways and traffic through, and the sort of ambiguous future open space no longer exists.

It is underneath kind of... Actually, I should restate that. It doesn't exist yet because the kind of east side, which hasn't been redeveloped, would contain part of that open space. But my thinking generally here is that I don't frankly prefer a huge amount of inter-parcel vehicular connections to the extent that some of the renderings show. I would love instead to see some aspect of this pedestrianized, so to have larger plazas, larger corridors. In our small area plans, those are all sort of a bright yellow color and shows those plazas scattered throughout this kind of northern section of the Old Town small area plan, and it does provide a place for people to move through the Old Town area

without needing to use vehicle trips. I think the other recommendation that I always try to insert into everything we're considering is to have some sort of transit-oriented hub within this area of the city so that the buses that used to go on Blenheim Boulevard by the library and now go up on Layton Hall, that there would be a convenient place for a bus or a shuttle to circulate within this north side of the Old Town small area plan. So I'd really like to see that at some point. I don't know if it'll emerge. I do think the other priorities, the passageways around buildings that are large enough for the fire department to quickly gain access, and then, of course, open space and sidewalks that will encourage walkability.

And those elements, to some degree, are in here, but I think they're overshadowed a bit by the vehicle connections that seem to dominate some of these future endings. I think those are my only comments at this point. I recognize the small area plan didn't have an explicit connection all the way from, you know, the Van Dyke Park area all the way down through to Old Town Square. But I think the more we think about a central block passage through here, at least one that could be facilitated on the north side, directed toward the south side as the streets, Blenheim Boulevard, and University converge a bit, that would be at least a feature that would make this area of the city a lot better. I think I'll leave it at that.

Thanks. Others? Mr. McCarthy. I think in the last form that I saw this, there were supposed to be 19 affordable units that came with it. Has there been any discussion on what that looks like now, if any change? There hasn't been any discussion on that. They're required to provide 6% affordable units, and I'm assuming that they'll provide that, but you can speak to that if you want to for the affordable units. Welcome to Novotny. Sure. Good evening. My name is Molly Novotny. I'm an urban planner at Curata Partners, and I've represented combined properties for the past 15 or so years. Yes, there will be 6% affordable units as required by the ordinance in both phases. And then, just thinking, you know,

it seems like a very dense site and thinking about putting all those units, is it safe to assume that the future building, too, is similarly like a wrap product with parking on the inside? Yeah. Thank you so much for that question. So this plan really shows a block diagram plan for Phase 2, and I think this also gets at Commissioner Rice's comment about kind of vehicular connectivity and through the site. Yes, we would be coming back with Phase 2 for an amendment to the plan to give you the same level of architectural details and open space and all of those kind of more engineering details when we control that portion of the property. Today, that earlier application that we filed really only affected

the portion of the property that combined controls. And what I mean by that is there's Safeway that has an existing lease on the property. They control the parking lot, but they don't control the area that's Phase 1, and so that's why we were able to come forward with that application, but this application now is able to look at everything together, but in that phased plan. I hope that helps. Mr. Cunningham? Thank you. I think continuing in that vein from past discussions that we've had, I believe Safeway's lease runs until 32 or 33, ballpark. When we're starting to talk Phase 2 and Safeway controls it until that time frame, is there any sense that it would be Safeway moving forward, or when the lease evaporates,

we're talking of a grocery store, is that just open it that we're going to look for a grocer to come in? It would be nice if Safeway did, but if they chose not to, then what? Right. All really good questions. This site, our commitment is that it will remain grocery anchored. That's a goal of your small area plan. We would love it to continue to be Safeway, but you are correct. Their lease expires in 2033. Traditionally, before leases expire, you want to start figuring out how that property is going to get repurposed or redeveloped, so we would anticipate those conversations would begin in earnest at least two years prior to 2033, so 2031 around then, to try to figure out if they're going to be part

of the redeveloped portion. Recognizing the history of grocery stores within the city, it's not that far away that when we redeveloped a shopping center, Harris Teeter came in and didn't last that long. Then there's another shopping center on the north side of town in which we intended a grocery store and Fresh Market or that came in and has, or Amazon Fresh came in and now that's vacant. So, Fresh Market. Yeah. So, I'm assuming that we would like to get another tenant like Safeway when they first started their lease, but arrange the terms so that it was more economically advantageous than the changes to both sides over the long term, but that doesn't seem to be the case as things are moving on now.

So, by developing one part, we are hoping to get the other part and I think you described underground parking. So, how do we fit the parking needs in a Phase 2 with soft specifics on what it might or might not be? Yeah, so there's a lot in that. Let me first start with the grocery business. It is a challenging business and so we've been very lucky that Safeway, for good or bad, has been this tenant and has had such a long-term lease. But Combined Properties at its core is a retail company so they have a vast history of working with grocery stores throughout Northern Virginia and whatnot. And so we do feel good about that prospect of getting either Safeway or another grocery store here. In terms of parking,

we planned to structure park it. It was in Clara's presentation that the small area plan says it should be structured or underground parking. The economics would not work for underground parking here. Okay, so structure is going to be part of the... It would be wrapped very similar to Building 1 where it's all internal. To the future Building 2. Yep. We're talking about losing 50,000 square feet from your previous applicant who was just here. Now we're talking another 25 or more thousand square feet of commercial or business-oriented space disappearing while we're putting residential into all of these areas. I presume Safeway would not be the only tenant in a building to what is the rest of the character

as we have a footprint there of how that building would be utilized. Right now, with a strip mall, you can see all of the different buildings going. This gets a more consolidated footprint for the kind of building. So how would it be laid out to be complementary for all of the businesses to fit and function? Right. And so that level of detail has not yet been decided here. However, Combined Properties obviously developed the Scout on the Circle which has the grocery store next to inline retail with multifamily above. They have another project in South Alex that also integrates a grocery store as well as inline retail. So they have done other projects in the region that have successfully integrated groceries

with inline retail and multifamily. So we'll look to those projects as well as others as we design building two. Okay. Why don't we contemplate then the traffic layout here? I assume with Street 1 on the south side there's an elevation change down to the lots just to the south of them so putting that street in is close enough that you don't have major grade changes coming from there moving in and the amount of dirt being moved will make those streets easily accessible from the road as the main entrance is now because it goes away. Can we go back to the Phase 1 slide, Clara? So Street 1 is our new street that runs along the bottom of our new building one and that will wholly be on our property.

So yes, there is a grade change just to the south of our property when that site if that site redevelops they would adjust the grade to be able to match the Street 1 and then they would complete their side of the streetscape so the sidewalk and the street trees over there because of the grade we can't do that portion but we will be completing all of our frontage improvement along Street 1 if that answers that question. I think the question is you're taking away the main entrance it goes away because it comes through the middle of your parking garage and it's not demonstrated here for the shopping center. So that main entrance goes away and you're moving a street to the south end of the property

and right now that's not a good grade change to go from the street up into your parking lot. so a lot of dirt is going to be moved to make that street grade accessible from the street as a main entrance. Got it. I understand your question better now. We will have a retaining wall along our southern property line to help with that grade and yes we are shifting the main entrance our main entrance to the south but yes there will be a retaining wall there. Okay. Additionally I will note there may be good of these too if you don't mind there was a comment in the staff presentation about the traffic signal and the relocation of the traffic signal. So I just want to note that in the middle of our building 2

there is the existing traffic signal. Your small area plan calls for that traffic signal to go away and to shift to the location that we've shown it. So we've designed our site to match the small area plan but we recognize and we've been very clear with staff that we are not the sole controllers of that signal because it provides access to the folks across the way so that it's something that we're going to need to work through. So the existing Pad 2 building you're saying that that intersection moves just a hair I guess southwest or moves a hair west or because it's not aligned and then you've got your other entrance down it's the street along the east edge of the property that right now is a right in right out

but has no access to cross the road. At our pad site? No at building 2 on the east side the far right hand side you have a road that's existing that goes Democracy Lane that goes Democracy Lane back in there but that has no ability to cross Blenheim Boulevard. It's a right in right out and it stays that way so that you're just moving the stoplight short a short distance on street 1. That is what the small area plan calls for and that's what we're showing here that would be to marry up with the small area plan. Okay. In that long list of residential developments that I went through I took notes Layton Hall was approved but has never been constructed and that was due to circumstances with the ownership.

That sets me up for the fact that just because we approve phase 1 phase 2 even though it's well intentioned is not a given because if stuff happens there's a reason that we'll come in and say we can't do that right now we need to make major changes. How do we get the highest probability of a unified plan out of this that meets the long term goal if we're going to do it piecemeal? Yeah. And that's really why we're back before you all right? So with our first application we weren't able to even really talk about phase 2 and the issues that Clara kind of reminded everyone of staff's issues were the phase plan the pedestrian pass and the vehicular routes. We're able to solve the pedestrian pass and the vehicular routes

with this plan and we're able to start that conversation about phase 2. With any development it's all dependent upon the market right? But what we're able to show now which we weren't able to show before is the commitment to make those upgrades to the existing retail. So even if phase 2 gets pushed out to a time period longer than we want we will have the plans or the retail facade that exists today will have already been upgraded to reflect and match what's there with building 1. So it sets us on a path much more directly than we were able to be on before. Okay. Then one question that I asked in relation also to the previous applicant between their property and your property is a string of office townhouses

if you will. Office townhouses may not be the building of the future. But is that site big enough that something constructive can be done with it or should we be talking about have you considered consolidation which we've talked about in several other areas moving forward so that that site and we can get a unified project out of this instead of small pieces that suddenly have significant pieces that actually don't quite fit and nobody knows what to do with them. Right. Clara, do you have the small area plan vision? I know you had it on their exhibit or their presentation. That's what I have. Right. So what's outlined in red is our property. I know. Right. And so if there is redevelopment north of that

it was always planned to operate separate and apart from our property. Combined owns the 10 acres that are these two parcels today and those you are right they're office condo townhouses. They have multiple owners and so a redevelopment of those properties is outside of our scope. But your small area plan did kind of look at our two parcels as one planning block and didn't incorporate those into it. Our small area plan which is a creature of the 2019 comp plan so before that we didn't have any guidance and we were attempting to get some kind of guidance for dealing with these areas looked at this and when you look at that it has a beautiful unified drawing on how it would fit together if all of the pieces

were to work and I see that the office condo has been built into two buildings. One of those small buildings that I see there is going to have six stories on one side and seven stories on the other. With that small piece am I building a small tower or I'm seeing that our best intentions may or may not be coming together in some of this. How do we address that when we're approving the major pieces without getting something that is an unintended consequence in the long run? Right. And I do think that that is an aspect of when cities start to redevelop. Right. There's no more greenfield development and so it is that redevelopment and how does the city want to start to set itself on its path to achieve its vision.

Right. The small area plan called for 1,250 residential units in this area. It calls for right sizing the retail. It calls for you know the pedestrian and vehicular connections that really create the site that make the site more porous than it is today. And so we have an application before us that that allows us to really start seeing that vision. It's not going to be able to solve or meet every objective or every goal especially for properties outside of the boundaries but it is it's something that we wrestle with and I understand that you guys wrestle with too and that's why we're excited to be able to put forward kind of a bigger picture vision for the land that all of the land that combined

controls in this area. When I had my fingers waving in the breeze before and you just said 1,200 units in this area how many with those nine projects that I just outlined come to 1,200 units or are we in the ballpark? Because when your units are added to this along with the rest where does where do we count? I have not done a recent count but when we were before city council before we were still under that threshold. Okay. That's one of the reasons that I made my list before because I think if we go back and look at summing this and if we're going to be significantly beyond 1,200 units and the number of people where does where does the city going forward say what do we do now? What do we put off

to get the city's vision or is everything by right just going to be approved because it fit a small piece and then the sum of the pieces when we're done is not the vision. I don't know what you mean by by right because there's such little by right development downtown here. No but sort of what we're saying is that if we if we put our residential in now then all of the rest of it will fit and it's the last person in then you say no to or if you get to the number or is it building the structure so that you get the units in the right place to keep the character and is that what we're getting? Right and that's always a question right when any jurisdiction picks a number out of the air it's always a question

of is it now a race to develop and so what I what I think when I look at redevelopment projects I look at what's available what is before me and how closely are they matching the vision that we've established and yes I heard you you know it's five six years old but this is the vision that governs your this part of the city and so this applicant has come forward to say we understand your vision and we're moving forward with that vision it's not only a question for you so don't take it personally it's a question for our staff and for our elected leadership and for the rest in the context of what the planning commission is trying to do moving forward so in commissioner Cunningham it's it's relevant

especially as you guys move in to start discussing this special activity zoning district that I'll just point out it identifies different types of streets than your small area plan does right your small area plan calls for our retail streets to be as we've shown them in red here your special activity is now calling those open space streets so yes there is some marrying of all documents that's part of the challenge I have with with dealing with several of the developments we have coming through because you're right it's construction du jour and residential right now is the hot hot redevelopment part and all of it is occurring on what commercial office industrial whatever space we have as we're letting

that go and in the future if there's a change right and I will note what does set ours aside is we will still at the end of the day have 74,000 square feet of retail here it will be repurposed all brand new retail at the end of phase two and even with phase one we're losing about 12,500 square feet of retail but all of the retail the existing will all get a facelift and I'm sure you are all familiar with Turnpike and Pickett if you were here 10-12 years ago those centers looked very differently than they do today we redid those centers and those now attract phenomenal tenants in the city and so this project is not just a residential play thank you I think I've exceeded my time thank you could I ask a follow-up

question on that topic actually what is combined's relationship with the current tenants and how that might be reflected or not reflected as the case may be in these phases and I do have Aisha Hill with combined property here we have our whole team here so she can jump up and add to this answer if she'd like but the tenants from Safeway to the left those are all short-term leases because once the CVS vacated and the Pickler went in those were short-term leases because we already had these development plans under works with the other existing tenants from Safeway on those leases all vary to different points but they are all kind of tied up to that Safeway lease as part of our plan we've already met

with economic development and we are working on kind of a retail I don't want to call it a retail replacement but a retail strategy that would help these tenants find other space in the city while we're redeveloping the site so really to be able to work in partnership with the tenants again combined is uniquely positioned with four properties in the city all of which have retail space to be able to hopefully relocate folks while the development is going on anything else? Mothers? a couple questions for staff you recommended staff recommended denial of the previous application what is your position based on what you've seen today of this one of this potential application? I don't think I have enough

to be able to make a recommendation tonight I'd have to see what they end up submitting when they come in for a formal submission I mean by and large it looks a lot like the last one honestly I mean phase one the same building basically the same street layouts the difference is there's a phasing plan now maybe not totally that we'd like to see but there's more substance to it which I think is a good improvement does the proposal to rezone have any impact or influence as well? it pleases me because it's now as a planning commission we get a voice in this and I'm actually excited to see that this applicant potential applicant in this case is so committed to this site that they're willing to come back

so quickly to try to move something forward that meets what we're asking for and upgrades an important piece of property in the city yeah so since the beginning of the last proposal they had we had asked them to rezone to a plan development so that they could do a phasing plan because they did tell us from the beginning as well that they weren't able to develop the whole site and so we urged them to proceed with a phasing plan the only way they can do that is with the plan development and so that does make a difference here to that end how much detail is required to be successfully kind of applying under a phased development plan so it varies I and I don't know that we've had too many examples

of this in the city but the applicant will be required to have specific commitments with their plan and so they'll make commitments and then they'll basically one of those commitments will say that they can't make any changes without prior approval from the city council and so it's not like they could do this and then totally go through with like a different plan in the future they have to make those commitments and they have to be specific and we would hope that they would have like some timeline as well with those commitments if I may I'll offer that with our last application we had been staff had provided us the north facts plan as an example as a phased plan that plan included one building

block and roads a building block and a storm sewer and so we've modeled but gone above and showed in our open space and other things like that to do that phasing plan and then chair feather you had asked about you know I'm not going to put words in Claire's mouth about would staff support this or anything but I will note some of the reasons additionally to the not not rezoning the property some of the reasons that staff couldn't support our last application was we were unable on our development plan to commit to the vehicular or pedestrian connections through the site and we are able to do that now in the first phase so I will note you say it looks very similar maybe we could go to phase two

or phase one would be great you say it looks similar and that is because our first building that plan is great our first building is the same we did receive unanimous approval from the BAR for the design of that building but what you can see on the left side is you can see the left image the trees at the bottom they don't provide a connection point to blenum and that was a sticking point for staff they said we really want street one to connect all the way through the site it may not look like a big detail but it really is significant and so we've been able to provide that with phase one on the right side which is our plan now as well as there's a pedestrian path that will bring folks all the

way through the property as well I was thinking about the vehicle connectivity and Mr. Rice brought this up as well in the phase I guess in the phase one and the phase two there's a road that comes off of street one and comes out the blended boulevard between existing pad sites one and two and I know there's a connection out there today I wonder if actually that makes sense to maintain in the future particularly in phase two it starts to look a little choppy and a number of entrances pretty close together even if they're right in right out I'm not sure those are all necessary they may exist I'm not sure if it adds anything and then in the phase two case there's an extension shown on existing

pad site two which turns that into an even funnier jog I'm not sure that future pad two extension if it makes sense economically or not it's probably something shown in the comp plan but you know the future street I do wonder about the parking too by adding that building do we lose the ability to have sufficient parking there at the same time it's having enough green space so I think that probably needs to be looked at as we phase it down the road yeah that's yeah that's something that staff will look at I'm not the expert on traffic but when we get the full plan set in that's something that we'll be looking at as staff right was there something you wanted to add on that just in case yeah okay

I'm trying to think if nothing else the phase one retail space is that the same as the previous proposal as well there's still ground floor amenity space for residents and so forth because when I again look ahead to our next work session topic when I read through some of the changes we talk about ground level space that may now be able to include amenity space for occupants in the building too to provide sort of a street level presence so even if that number hasn't changed the basic uses could potentially comport with a future vision for what ground floor looks like in our mixed-use buildings right we've got a minimum of 12,500 square feet of retail space and then in addition we have leasing

and amenity space on the ground floor as well that's right okay I think this is again I'm delighted this is now coming to the planning commission I think it provides another perspective that you may find helpful appreciate the comments of the rest of the commissioners have you gotten sufficient feedback at this point notwithstanding the big picture that I think we'll have to have some further discussion with staff about phasing for capacity for all the proposed development in the area which is outside the bounds of this particular project so yeah I was trying to find the number I know I have it somewhere what the total number of units are for all of those proposals but I couldn't find it okay

yeah it would be very useful to have a counter of some sort that you can refer to but it's also the metropolitan Washington council on governments you know estimates for what we need to provide and the internal estimates that we have I mean there are a couple of moving numbers there at least that would be great to have periodical there was a recent article I read I don't recall whether it was in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal about how some of those estimates are come up with and there's any case there are cases that say we're not we're not out of we don't have a huge outing shortage in our area at this point so that was one of the recent articles so again it's so I have a sort of

random question but it is somewhat related Jason might know the answer is there an off ramp for the flats if they're unable to rent to a sufficient threshold with students that they can open up to other residents they're not okay some of it would be a little unusual just because you have four bedrooms here in your kitchen but you know a studio for example anyone could rent that today okay I do have some base numbers they're not up to Mr. Forman's standards Dr. Rice so I hope not to disappoint here I was crunching numbers as I was sitting back there so he sets the bar and I'm not meeting it tonight but what we have in the small area plan is it has a target of an additional 1250 units above what

exists or had been approved at that point in time it's units we have approved 276 at the Davies site 79 at City Center West which is 355 total or 28% of the 1250 if my math is right proposed there are three applications before us if you want to consider it the two you just have presentations on if they become applications and that would be a total of 595 units between the two of them and the Christopher company's project just north of Davies is 395 units the Christopher project puts that at 750 and 60% I hadn't had the opportunity to crunch the numbers on the two you just met on but it gets you close City Center West was 79 units yes I think your number for tonight only counts phase one though right

not phase two it does not count phase two because I didn't have any numbers to put in there but I believe with the Christopher capital city and the combined projects you get very close to that 1250 number it's actually 1345 according to what I'm calculating here but I could be could be off yeah anything else before we move on okay thank you thank you for being here thank you Mr. Thanks the third and final work session is an introduction and discussion on draft small area plan zoning ordinance amendments the long awaited discussion for getting our zoning ordinance to catch up with our small area plans Mr. Napty Mr. Sutton we converted a building we converted a building from commercial to residential

down up the corner of Sager and yes university the permit support housing it does that would be 15 units good catch Mr. Cunningham told you I wasn't up to Eric standards tonight I'm the one unit of woodies and woodies don't forget woodies all right please let's move on thank you chair for other members of the planning commission I'll give you a quick refresher on the background for this project and then get into some of the more details as we are at the point where we have a initial draft from our consultant still a lot of work to be done on this still a lot of unresolved issues but we were at a point where we wanted to bring this before the planning commission and city council make sure that

we between 2020 and 2024 small area plans were adopted for four of those five activity centers which provide guidance for public investments and private development which there has been progress on since that time this effort will focus on private development as it process the process has been followed has run into hiccups as there are often inconsistencies between the small area plans and our existing regulations also a lot of the benefits that are intended to come out of the small area plans have to occur through negotiations with developers which means that the results are often inconsistent and there are also direct conflicts between the small area plans and the zoning ordinance so the purpose

of this effort is to bring those to more aligned and set up processes where the benefits of the small area plans can more easily be applied on a consistent basis a quick review of the small area plans as basis this is a refresher on presentations that the planning commission and city council received in early 2025 from our consultant just a refresher that land use policy that comes through the comprehensive plan and associated documents such as the small area plans is really a first step in our process it establishes the visions and goals it establishes the direction we want to head into and help us with decision making but it is not regulations the zoning ordinance on the other hand is regulations

it's the law it's usually developed based on our policies that are developed through things like the comprehensive plan and control specific elements such as those that are listed here so the smaller plans focus on the land use policy side we're now focusing on the zoning ordinance side to take it to the next level of that which was April 2025 we're in phase two where our consultant was developing a list of strategies that could be used to implement the recommendations of the smaller year plans before that they had done some initial outreach to get background information and understand where they were coming from so since April of 2025 we've been working with them on developing the draft that

we has recently been shared with you and as I mentioned it's still a lot of work to be done but there's a lot of details that had to be worked out so it's taking quite a bit of time and we want to do a check-in as we continue to revise that draft one reminder of where we left off last April when we were talking about strategy developments before we had put any pen to paper or written anything this was a slide that the consultant presented toward the end of that process where they identified the strategies and issues that they were going to try to work through as they prepared the text and so that includes establishing a zoning district framework the structure and how this will fit into the zoning

ordinance set a baseline for height and density and then allow bonuses to be exchanged for community benefits and that would remove some of that negotiation process facilitate and make sure it's guided towards where it's specifically recommended in the smaller plans and that reasonable expectations for what should be provided are identified in the zoning ordinance and this is done through the next item introducing development frontage types which have not just a use component as we talked about with number three but also a design component which you'll see in this draft has recommendations on terms of how buildings are designed to establishing minimum criteria for defined open spaces this would

go beyond what we typically have in the zoning ordinance and that we're defining what open spaces should be not just how much of it we should have offer flexibility for alternative compliance for minimum tree canopy and street replacement so these two red bars are not showing where they are supposed to be on the screen one should be circling this item there are this is going to city council to be considered for adoption tomorrow has recommendations about establishing a tree preservation ordinance and so this is something that the city was going to start doing on our own anyway and you might remember saying that some of these efforts we have already started to work on this is one where we asked

her to start early on because it would fold into this ordinance and this to consider whether to adopt these amendments this is a topic that can either be considered on its own or can be bundled with these amendments it depends where we are at that time in addition to that we should be looking at some issues we've been facing with street tree requirements in the current ordinance this is really just conflicting numbers and some unclear information and so this will be an opportunity to clean that up the next item number seven require master development plan this references the plan submission that is required currently for our plan developments and this we thought would be important because we're

going to be asking for unique elements in these areas and so we're not looking to have our standard submission materials from applicants you'll see in the draft it's not called a master development plan it is called a unified development plan because we already have the MDP and it has its own criteria for plan developments this new type of plan will have its own criteria which will be designed to fit specifically with these amendments the next item balancing and incentivizing small scale infill development and encouraging land assembly when we get to this we'll show you how the consultant is proposing on handling this there's a lot of discussions about what we can do legally in Virginia which

is hampers us a little bit here but staff has questions about how much we want to push for this particular item and the last item number nine right size parking standards in activity centers this is where the second red bubble should be this is item where our consultant prepared some draft amendments to us to our parking standards and city staff started looking into some data and are going to be proposing our own recommendations there and there's another item that can be done separately from this or combined with it and we'll see what makes sense as we go through the process so in reviewing our first draft we have a structure set up and I'll go through a calendar with you for that because there's

a lot of information there's too much to cover in one night I don't expect that any of you have read the entire thing by today although some of you might have it'd be great if you did but the intent was that you would recognize we're only talking about specific topics tonight and that leaves you more time to go through the other items also in the end we can circle back on some of these early discussion topics I for dimensional standards and community benefits that relate to each other frontages and open space and the connected effort are the ones that staff is leading on our own use tables parking and landscaping as we mentioned and then I'll go into a little bit more information on the use table

in just a minute for the schedule we are having our first two meetings tonight and tomorrow night with city council we're introducing these and again as I mentioned there's a lot of information and it's kind of a long document and so with city council tomorrow we're just going to really provide them an introduction and an outline and then give them a couple weeks to take a look at the document and go back to them in March and then go get into more detail at a work session for you all we have ask that you take a look at some of the materials we're going to cover some topics tonight we're going to get more to the weeds with you because the planning commission is really the initiators of this topic

and so tonight we're going to give you a rough outline but then we're also going to talk about the zoning structure and the dimensional standards and community benefits program at your next meeting on February 23rd we will talk about some of those staff led efforts the parking and access is something that is associated with that that was prepared by our consultant and in landscaping this relates to the urban forestry information that the urban forest manager is working on and at your following meeting on March 9 that will be our final meeting in this session we will with City Council for those two meetings March 9 and March 10 our consultant will be here and so if there's any questions that I

can't address or outside any issues that we want to circle back on they can help with that and we'll make sure we leave some time on March 9 to bring up other items as we have a community meeting that is being scheduled for March 26 details that are still being worked out but we'll get that to you as soon as we can and then once we get through all of that we will begin working on the second draft and then schedule work sessions and another community meeting on those when the time is right no timeline for that it all depends on how much we hear this time and once we get through that we hope we're at a point where we can go towards public hearings if we need to go through additional drafts we can

do that but ideally we'll be at a point then where we could head toward public hearings how does this align with or potentially supersede our efforts to define mixed use as a zoning category into itself because I know we've gone back and forth on what the process for that is going to be what that looks like in terms of codifying into the comp plan does this need to be aligned with that or these two different things so that is the topic I'm about to talk about right now okay and so as I mentioned we'll go through some of the I'll give you an outline of the topics that plan to talk about tonight so the first one is what you just mentioned looking at our use table and associated topics as the planning

commission is aware in certain areas now in the zoning ordinance residential and mixed use development is allowed with a special use permit in commercial districts the idea is that with these amendments we would have a new zoning district which I'll talk more in detail this one more detailed topics for tonight but we would want to steer people toward this new effort and so our proposal is to remove those opportunities for special use permits in commercial districts for those types of uses with the exception of the commercial urban district as planning commissioners where the commercial urban district is a district that is not proactively mapped and so applicants have to request a rezoning to

go to that special use permit will be able to apply to those and since our proposal is that these changes with this new activity center district will only be able to be applied in activity centers the CU district would remain as an opportunity for those areas that are outside activity centers such as the ones that we talked about recently in the comprehensive plan we can add others there might be unique opportunities it really limits wouldn't be able to be applied does that answer your question so we would still need to address the on ramp but it would only be for those things that are truly outside of activity centers correct yes to be clear that the mixed use discussion was a land use it wasn't

a zoning district we were talking about but the application comes through commercial urban correct that's the way it could the February 23rd meeting is going to focus on the topics that staff has taken the lead on the overall use table second is parking and you'll see in the draft there is a section on parking and this came from our consultant where a general up to a 25% reduction can be requested through incentives and they have some elements in there that we'll go through another night about how you can receive that 25% reduction but they were really steered in that direction by staff as opposed to changing our general parking standards and what we've realized we have some data that has become

available to us since then and what we've realized is that our parking standards might be high for some uses in some cases just slightly higher than our peers and what general 25% across the board reduction wouldn't make sense when really we should be looking at stronger reductions in some places and lower reductions in others and we'll get to that in more detail on that night for landscaping as I mentioned Anna Safford will be here to explain what they're looking at with the tree conservation ordinance and essentially they canopy requirements as green infrastructure and look for opportunities to establish a tree fund you should be aware that there are changes that are always under consideration

in our state code and so she is tracking that and we'll let you know how those might modify what we're looking at here and also as I mentioned this is an opportunity to clean up some of the conflicts we have with our street requirements right now the following meeting March 9 we'll be talking about frontages and just at a high level as you look at your draft there are four types of frontages that are proposed you might recall from the smaller plans that there are two types of commercial frontages that are shown priority retail is where a high concentration of street front retail is proposed flexible commercial is where commercial ground floor is proposed with a more flexible opportunity for office

uses and other types of things and also lower design standards and then it wasn't until we developed the Fairfax circle smaller plan that a open space frontage what they call a green frontage was introduced and so our consultant looked back at the other smaller plans where the language supported this type of frontage and those were added to the map and we can go through those in more detail and decide if those are in the right places or not but the reason that we were comfortable in changing what's in the smaller plans for that type of frontage is because the open space frontage isn't specific about uses we didn't want to change where certain uses are recommended without going through a more

in-depth process this focuses more on design and how buildings should address open spaces and treat them differently than streets and so it doesn't get into whether the ground floor should be residential or commercial or anything like that and then lastly to accommodate other streets that are not shown on here they have what's called the residential frontage and that primarily focuses on design standards as well also on March 9th we plan to talk about the open space section at a high level what is proposed in the draft amendments is a base requirement of 10% open space this is essentially in line with our other commercial districts and what is allowed by the state what is different is that they

are establishing definitions for different types of open spaces and so in order to qualify toward this 10% a open space would have to meet a definition and a series of definitions are listed in the draft in addition there is a table of hierarchy on what our preferred open spaces are and an applicant can receive credits for open spaces that are more desirable those would be things like publicly accessible open spaces and those that contribute towards an ecological benefit and those types of things and so for example a 100 square foot open space that was in that criteria would receive a 1.5 weighting factor and count as standard open spaces in the middle and less desirable spaces that would still

qualify that would receive less credit and so their amount would count as half as opposed to one or one and a half and those are all defined in the draft ordinance lastly and we'll talk about this more tonight because we're talking about community benefits is that open spaces that go beyond the base requirement and that meet specific design standards can be used to achieve bonus density and we'll talk about that more in detail tonight so that is just kind of a summary of the topics that we won't be discussing for the things we're talking about tonight the two main things are the zoning structure and then the second part of that is dimensional standards and the community benefits program which

we're treating as one because they relate to each and then we'll go through the dimensional standards and community benefits so first looking at the zoning structure what is proposed is a new zoning district that does not exist in our ordinance now that we're calling the activity center zoning district this is not going to be proactively mapped similar to our commercial urban district so an applicant will have to request it and go through a rezoning process which means they have to go through the planning commission and city council for review what's different from the commercial urban district is that this district would be have limited applicability to defined activity centers and those would

be mapped activity centers are not currently mapped in our zoning ordinance so they would either be added to our zoning map or be have a separate map in the ordinance we're not sure how that will work yet but essentially you cannot request your site be rezoned to an activity center district unless you are in one of these areas if you're outside one of those areas the CU will be an option and there's a separate process for that proffers are permitted through this process because they are in our activity centers where we have small area plans makes them exempt from the state legislation that makes proffers challenging and so that is something that we'll be thinking about with this process what

is yet to be determined is how these defined areas relate to our existing overlay districts primarily the historic overlay district and the transition overlay district and which regulations would take precedence over others whether we want to try to combine them with the overlay districts or adjust our boundaries to match still to be determined the process of submissions as we mentioned there will be a unique submission process for this district primarily because there's unique information that is required in order to allow the review some of the elements in here are similar to what is required through the plan development submissions so in addition to our standard plan sheets shown on the right

so we typically receive with an application the elements on the left are shown that would include a narrative that explains how the proposal relates to the small area plan how they account for transitions to areas outside the activity center boundary and how the community benefits program is being used to provide benefits to the city in exchange for development bonuses the plans themselves we would have additional or unique requirements for the recreation and open space plan to show how each open space is defined and connected and contributes towards the open space requirements if they are seeking bonus density for those open spaces it would have to show which spaces are being applied to that

and how they meet those criteria there would be an overall tabulation of uses and calculations for how they are gaining additional bonus density through the community benefits program as well as any other relevant information I did want to mention that the draft also has language about the pre-application process but that is essentially the same as the pre-application process for any other proposals you have a briefing like you did tonight for the other two proposals there's a section in this new zoning district for alternative compliance we wanted to have a way to accommodate any unforeseen circumstances recognizing this is a new district for us and there's a lot of things we're working through

maybe at some point we can get to the point where we wouldn't need to allow this but the way it is set up now is that an applicant can request for alternative compliance by reducing parking requirements or adjusting from the frontage standards we're going to suggest that apply to height as well we've had a lot of issues with how height is calculated based on topography we have unique uses and I have unique demands and those types of things and so those types of outlets will still be there but as part of that process they have to justify why they need that alternative compliance and can't achieve what they need through the other opportunities that are provided through these amendments so that's

all I have for the zoning structure I want to stop and see if there's any questions or thoughts before we get into the dimensional standards and community benefits questions comments Mr. Cunningham I have one if you would go back two pages to the there the lower right hand picture in Fairfax Circle when we're talking zoning in that when I look at that picture the thing that jumps out to me is the lower right quadrant where I see a big white indentation come in from the south and I see a lot of white indentation that travels all the way down to just that gray area and then I see a little blue through the center of that and then when I look to the left of it which is all the way to the west I see

a huge amount of blue that causes us to talk about stuff for a is the choke point that causes all of that blue to the left to occur because the white going south and the white going north from either side of that when we look at zoning is you know it's stuff that's not impacted but all of that blue behind it that's impacted by that one little point when we're talking zoning we're talking about a residential housing area we're talking about a need to move a property yard we're talking about flooding on a golf course we're talking about flooding on a shopping center that's behind it all of that seems to come down to that one little choke point and if we put some emphasis on that one little choke

point and fixing that I bet a lot of that blue to the back which has huge cost implication and safety implication might be addressed but over the years we've talked about it it never seems to come to that we keep talking about zoning we keep talking about everything except we don't talk about that one choke point if you made it a little bigger would you get rid of most of the issues that it impacts as we're going on so things that pop out of discussion about zoning and floating zoning and how we're going to change things and constructing things in floodplain and constructing things in recessed protection area or all of those things come down to what is that area and what are the impacts or what

are the things that affect that area so that's one of the things when we put a map like this in here that causes me to look and say is this something if we put some attention there might impact the rest of what we're doing with our zoning stuff and make it easier to work with yeah that's that little corner is gateway regional park that's not part of the activity oh no the blue that goes up no the little triangle piece yeah I know yeah I mean I think I'm saying the white that comes down on the north side of it and the white that comes up comes down to one little blue thing that goes across and connects the left and the right side there's a lot of white on the page it's a bridge that I'm talking

about that is backing up water to cause us to move the property yard for flooding purposes that is that is something that there is a project that our public works department is looking at with that bridge to see if there's ways to adjust it to alleviate that and let more water go under it so it doesn't back up behind it the flood planes these were all acknowledged and we were developing the small area plans that they can move on a property by property basis we've been talking but every once in a while something like this pops up that brings that up as a focal point again of why haven't we done something about this before and why are we pushing it off to the front while we're trying to deal with

the zoning and the rest of the things that it impacts so that's my only question going through this I don't have any problem with the zoning and the rest of the process and what we're working through I try to understand the connection to the zoning ordinance right it's just the connection to who and how we're going about zoning all of these things we're dealing with detail when we've got a major thing that if it were fixed might help make some of the rest of this easier to deal with is this something in the transportation CIP already I mean it's an interesting point we're talking about the CIP tonight I don't know if it's not in the CIP because it is still a study when a study completed might

recommend a project that will turn up in the CIP let's move on if we were to move forward with this would it have to apply to every small area plan or every activity center it wouldn't have to that's up to us if there's concerns about specific ones the way the wording is it would apply to activity centers with adopted smaller plans but it would not apply to Pickett and Maine until such time that happens but if there are concerns about other activity centers we'd like to hear that you raised a question about overlay districts so the question is is there something that may be maybe separate activity center for old town activity center you look at our zoning ordinances and there are some fairly

specific zoning districts or zoning around specific very relatively small areas stand alone the other activity center guidelines may well be appropriate for the circle north facts or camp Washington or we just might have more tolerance for variability in some versus others yeah I think that's right yeah Mr. Mr. McCartney can I ask though and maybe I'm dumbing this down too much but this almost like feels like another overlay without calling it one like how is the proposed activity center framework like meaningful meaningfully different from an overlay district in practice and I have a follow-up question to that but I don't want to get too far down the road it's the main difference is that typically

in an overlay the requirements apply to both there are standards in the overlay district and then there are standards in the underlying the base district and the standards from both apply usually one will take precedence so that if there's something in the overlay district that says the height should be this and then in the underlying district it says the height should be this and the language says the overlay district takes precedence then that the overlay creates a requirement however overlays often don't apply to all standards and so they only apply to certain things and then you turn to the underlying district for others in this case we are asking applicants to rezone to a new district that

will replace their underlying district and this district will apply to all standards okay I think I'm following that so then how is that hierarchy codified like do we need to figure that out or yeah yeah so in the place where we have overlay districts we need to figure that out and we have not done that yet what you're calling alternative compliance is that just a aka special exceptions yes yeah okay it's a yeah I mean one of the things gets us into a lot of trouble optically if nothing else is the large number of special exceptions right is this going to fix that well ideally yes in two ways first we hope there will be fewer needs for special exceptions because there's a process now and in a

few cases where something might come up that is not fit in with these ordinances we don't use the term special exception because alternative compliance wouldn't require a separate request we have something similar with our plan districts where modifications are listed in the plan development and then if the plan development is approved those modifications are all approved with it without having separate requests this would work similar to that reminds me of another comment I was reading I actually did read the document but I think we need to start putting in some definitions with general development plan master development plan now unified development plan in the definitions area so we come apart

they're embedded somewhere else in the ordinance but anyway so sort of like rudder steer here is our goal with this to make applications cleaner from a reviewing perspective or is our goal to make applications more likely to conform with our intentions for these small area plans yes yes it is both cleaner is the main goal however as we've gone through this and you know our consultant has done a really good job at identifying issues we didn't even realize we had and that's where this community benefits program came forward and we'll see when we get later into it how the calculations are being tested and how we can modify them before we finalize this that can be a way to communicate more clearly

small area plans are intended to communicate clearly to developers what we want but when we get it into code that will be a way to show you know you cannot do this unless you accommodate these specific things and so the added benefit is that we would get we think better development that is more in line with what the vision of the smaller plan is through a cleaner process okay because I mean the feedback that we got via email that was basically like council has never met a boundary that they weren't willing to overlook when it comes to development projects it might have been hyperbolic but it wasn't false if you look at ! a lot of development projects in the city there's a lot of rules that have

been broken for major projects so how do we do we want to be hardline I think is our question and if so does this help us do that or do we just have no intention of being hardline and this is just going to make it easier for us to get to the end state and how hardline you want to be is up to you and the council and so this alternative compliance is the only way to allow for that now and so we are recommending it especially as I mentioned this is something new for us we have a lot of untested types of processes that are involved in this and so if we don't have a way out we run the risk of having development proposals that would really benefit the city that we have no way of approving and so but if

the planning commission and council really wanted to just say we're sticking with this and we'll take that risk we can certainly do that and just you know as those applications come we may have to modify the ordinance in the future two comments related to making rules and sticking to them and applicability I guess a couple of years ago federal government and the state came down and said we had to change our rules because of the Chesapeake Bay Act and so now we put rules in that if you disturb more than 2,500 square feet you've got to go through large engineering processes to make it worthwhile there is one situation ongoing today in which a homeowner on a fairly small lot in an area not very

close to creeks in an old house wants to update his house and as such he's going to end up disturbing more than 2,500 square feet this is not a big expensive house but a small lot in an area there his having to go and get a certified engineering program on the impact this is going to have has delayed him at least a year and a half and cost him a lot more money on a small house in an individual area that really is pretty removed from most of what Chesapeake might be after so we have made it extensively difficult for this process to proceed and he's trying to work through it and has been for a long time but at much more expense and that in relation to what he's trying to do with trying to update

housing in the city the second one is development proposals and how do we get proposals through and what do they cost a long time ago we required a developer to go all the way through and at the very end on the 11th hour 59th minute as it was about to be approved the vote went against him but in three or four years of development he was required to spend millions of dollars in engineering costs in architectural fees and all of that with the intention of getting a development approved and then have the rug pulled who bear the cost of that that's one of the things that affects the city's reputation on approving things where we sit right now is if developers come in they come in with a concept and part

of the question is how much with all of the detail we have in all of our regulations do you expect developers to produce in detail and cost without having any sense of whether there will be a return on it and this is a current developer going through who got three binders worth of corrections to what he needed to do which is essentially a huge amount of detail work that everybody wants answered before a process can go forward how much detail in the concept and development process is required because with most of this developers want to spend what they have and that's where they get artists to give us great looking buildings that the bar will love and they bring in the development but when they submit

the initial as we went through tonight for looking at what they need how much work has to have been done and how much detail because if you just sit down and look at a core proposal coming in and go through all the regulations we have as they say it was possible to provide three full binders worth of specific detail that had to be answered for this to come forward and most of this gets to very costly legal time engineering time drafting time and all of the rest of that for somebody to come in and be able to ask the question is this something I can go forward with reasonably or not because when they put all that effort in and it hits the end of the process and somebody says oh it's a 3-3 vote

I vote no and it's all washed out for all of that effort coming in so developers are looking for one thing coming in and all of the rules that we're writing here are targeted at developers or people who want to do something and we have an extremely complicated set of rules to try to get to an end state as I so think I heard described can you distill this to what you're asking for what I'm asking is we're getting into this and as I think I just heard is with this zoning ordinance what are we throwing out what are we getting are we making the process easier or are we just making it more complicated because of our vision today for how the rules should be structured the intent is to make it easier

we are asking for more material than we do for our typical processes but a lot of that is simply identifying and defining things like open spaces and showing how you meet criteria the trade off is that we are more clearly stating whether or not a proposal is going to be in compliance with what we are trying to get it's removing some of the negotiation process and so by that aspect it's making a more simplified process for applicants the fact that they have to provide some more information helps us get to that point so yes there is more drawings they have to do but the trade off again is a more clear path ideally for them we can't guarantee they are going to get the NMB improved we are trying

to make the expectation clearer yes Mr. McCarthy yeah and I think what I'm hearing is this is just about aligning zoning with the small area plan right and I think everyone would be generally supportive of that I would imagine so and I just the question that I have for this and I think what he's getting at is we're all for doing that but is this process actually making that easier and is that the only way to do it because the point I referenced like it sounds like another overlay district to me is that is this the best way and is it the only way that's just the question I have for that it is not the only way with the last process which you weren't here on planning commission then this was April

of last year in the earlier phase the consultants before preparing a draft they went through a bunch of different processes that we could use to try to accommodate that and I can share this with you offline as well but they basically created a chart that showed all the things we were trying to achieve and highlighted in which example we could achieve each one and which ones work best and which don't and the idea of coming up with this new district and using these bonus densities and community benefits ended up being at the time what we thought was the best approach I still think it's the best approach based on that analysis we obviously didn't write up all the text for all the other alternatives

but this seemed to be the best way to get where we want to go and yeah there's a lot of history there there's concepts of form based codes and all sorts of things I'm actually pleased to see it going this direction obviously there's a lot of t's to cross and i's to dot yet but I think we're heading the right direction and this also helps address one of the long-standing concerns of this commission particularly in redevelopment in the activity centers we've been excluded from a lot and yet we're supposed to be the stewards of the vision of the city and whether things conform to it we're creating a platform here where that's more and more driven by the code so okay move on okay so dimensional standards

and community benefits this is two different topics in the draft but we combined them together because they interrelate so much and the way they do that is that there there really aren't a whole lot of dimensional standards for this district because smaller plans don't get into a lot of detail about that they're intended to be flexible in a lot of ways but the two elements that are most important here are height and density and the reason those are important is because those are ways developers can receive incentives for providing community benefits and those community benefits are listed on the blue tile to the right the focus we'll be talking about today is providing open space primarily publicly

accessible open space and open space beyond the base standards and contributions towards the transportation network there are several other items that came up in our review of the smaller plans that may be able to apply here the city attorney has concerns about overusing bonus density and community benefits and so he asked us to pare it down to these two I'll go through those other topics and if any of them really stand out as being critical then we can look into them some more but we felt these two were the most important and these are tested in Virginia so there's less concern about them some of the others aren't quite as tested can I just pause I'm surprised not to see affordable housing affordable

housing is a separate topic we already have that it's an ordinance that sets a specific amount yes but a community benefit would be more would it not it could be and we can talk about that in Fairfax County for example they have workforce housing which the affordable housing ordinance doesn't apply for and so that's something we could hear from if we want to do something more with that that isn't specifically discussed in the smaller plans though so we didn't suggest it in this draft but again this is a tool that we can use for other recommendations so on dimensional standards the other items on there aside from height and density transitions there is quite a bit of language about how we transition to

uses that are outside the boundary of the activity center within the activity center we have less concerns the idea is that we don't want to transition we want it to feel like one cohesive environment but at some point we reach the edge and the conditions on the edge can vary from industrial to single-family housing and the last item consolidation I'll talk about that in a minute we heard a lot during the early phases of this that incentivizing consolidation of properties to allow for a larger more cohesive development is important and so there's a recommendation for some bonus that can be applied for that as well staff still has some concerns about this but we can discuss that as well so in looking

at dimensional standards what is proposed in the draft ordinance it focuses on residential we don't have commercial density standards in our other districts so that's not recommended here if that's something that we want to look at we can certainly do that just because we don't have it now doesn't mean we can't add it and I think it was discussed earlier today you know just because residential seems to be what we're getting the most of it doesn't mean like that's going to be it forever and that's all we'll get so we might want to be prepared for other things as well but for starting this discussion we're looking at residential was proposed as the base maximum residential density is 48 dwelling units

per acre that is consistent with what is recommended in the comprehensive plan for activity centers where there's no overlying small area plan with the recognition that the smaller plans may be able to accommodate more this number is also applied before the existing affordable dwelling unit ordinance bonus is applied and so that applies to any development with over 50 units and it is required so you cannot do it so if there's a proposal with 50 units or more then their base density automatically becomes up to 57.6 20 units per acre they're not required to use that but that's what they will be allowed to achieve so with that as our base that density can then be further increased through the lot assembly

incentive which we'll talk about in a minute or the community benefit program which is the program that provides bonus for open space and contributions to the transportation network as we talk about density just for context I want to share the density residential density of some recently approved and recently built projects in the city and you can see the kind of variety that we have been working with the two older ones scout on the circle and the point were both around 46-48 dwelling units per acre more recently those also were both approved before we had small area plans more recently the N29 Willowwood project was approved at 88 dwellings per acre and Davies at 102 dwellings per acre so we're

not recommending anything here this is just for context as you look at what our resulting densities could be so the land assembly incentive what is shown in the draft is that depending on the size of a site based on consolidated properties density can then be increased with larger sites achieving higher allowable densities the caveats are that first of all this is not applicable in Old Town we wouldn't recommend that because they're concerned about not necessarily wanting to incentivize larger parcels in Old Town because that could detract from the and also that in order to apply to this parcels have to be newly assembled after the adopted date of this ordinance so it's not intended to apply

to somebody who happens to be sitting on a large site now they have to go through the effort of assembling properties and achieve these figures through that time and so the way it's worked is it's graduated for a site that is assembled to achieve 0.5 to 2 acres they receive a 20 percent bonus 2.1 to 5 acres 25 percent bonus and 5.1 or more acres a 30 percent bonus and you can see based on that base we have increasing that assuming affordable dwelling unit ordinance would apply and applying these numbers on top of that the numbers in that right hand column are what the resulting density would be so again this is we still haven't gotten to our bonus or community incentive program yet so this is

still a starting point before that however I think this is pretty limited where this would be applicable especially if it only applies to properties that are assembled after the adoption of this ordinance so our question is how important is this to the city this is not specifically identified in the smaller plans as a need it is something that we heard a lot in our earlier phases of this project that there's a desire to incentivize larger parcels the other thing I want to point out is part of the reason for the concerns that we've had is that we've had cases where new developments create what we call orphan properties so the issue isn't necessarily the size of the property that's being developed

but the fact that there is a smaller parcel we talked about that tonight with the property between the two proposals we heard tonight that property is left that is in a condition or a size that makes redevelopment in the future more challenging there's language in the draft that you will see suggest that we try with state code that could force this and so it's really something that we could end up with larger parcels but this tool could not be used to avoid smaller parcels being left and not being part of or being left out of future development so I'll stop there for a second I feel like this might be incentivizing the wrong reason for combining properties too like we might see a case where combining

two properties allows for a site to contain retail where it might not have previously so it's not really so much the density of residential that is the benefit of combining the properties it's egress or it's additional use or it's making space for the open space so purely incentivizing it on housing density might be solving for the wrong problem I think so yeah the context behind consolidation most of if you consolidate then you can make more contiguous open space so maybe that's part of that community benefit bonus that if they do that so yeah to me it's not about residential it's about those other considerations okay yeah and hopefully you know applicants would see benefits of trying to incorporate

additional properties and achieving some of the benefits that we'll talk about a minute that will be other ways for them to get more another project but I think this is one case where I want to point out that as much as we're trying to codify everything and make it very clear there are some issues we just can't resolve that are going to have to continue to be conducted through them and Davies and they went ahead and incorporated in their project they're able to come up with an agreement but that was done through negotiation and again it would be nice to be able to address that through this ordinance but that is just one issue I don't think we can fully tackle with this well and we've seen applicants

who've made a good faith effort and have just not able to okay so now we'll talk about the community benefits program the other way that density can be increased as I mentioned the two ways this can be achieved is through additional open space and through providing transportation infrastructure I mentioned earlier we looked at some other recommendations of the smaller plans to include in this those are listed here that includes green building and actually I should mention the green building policy is going to be discussed by city council tomorrow night this is an effort that was underway a year or two ago and there was no real conclusion about the best path forward and utilizing bonus density

was an option that was not fully explored because there wasn't a clear understanding of how it could fit within an overall ordinance and now with this structure by having a program where multiple types of topics are being green infrastructure is a lot of the plans recommend things like bioswales and surface green infrastructure and that seems like a good way to incentivize that would be through bonus density we couldn't find any examples in Virginia where people do this and so that's when we have concerns about trying to push it too much the last two were based on recommendations and specific smaller plans adaptive reuse would be focusing on providing some kind of additional bonus density for

reusing an existing building doesn't necessarily have to be historic because we have ways of protecting our historic buildings if they're in a historic overlay district but this would be another tool for other buildings that might be classified as important in the smaller plans but not necessarily historic another one we struggle to find good examples of and a community space is one where space would be provided for specific uses within a building and this could be things like daycare which is one that we had concerns about one that has been tested is arts uses the state allows us to create an arts district and through those provisions we can allow bonus densities for uses provided inside a building

for something such as a gallery or something like that Alexandria has one that's been very successful but there's another layer to that we had to create the art district it's not something we just do through this and that would be more in line with recommendations particularly the old town activity center I don't think it's something we would want to apply everywhere so and then the last point I'll get to in our future slide so I'll stop there see if there are thoughts on those I did hear perhaps we should explore additional affordable housing measures something we can look at what about municipal use like if they were to build out office space for city use as part of their commercial or office

designation that's something I think could fit into this community space program we can look into it I don't recall seeing anything like that through a bonus program I know something has been negotiated before in the state but we can look into that I'm thinking there's like in Alexandria they have community policing stations that are in convenience stores but there's a precedent for co-locating municipal functions with commercial okay so this is just to kind of help with your review as you look at the community benefits program I wanted to point this out that the community benefits are described in multiple locations so you might get to one part and read it and think everything has been covered

and something is missing but it shows up a couple times first there's a purpose statement for the two community benefits then there's eligibility section that talks about what the base requirements are for an applicant to qualify then there's a bonus matrix that shows how additional units that can be achieved are calculated and then there's design and performance requirements that provide more information about how the elements have to be designed in order to qualify so we'll talk about a little bit those but I just wanted to make sure you're aware of that because again as you read it it might not be clear that you feel like you've finished reading about the community benefits but more will come up

later so be aware of that so the two elements again open space and transportation infrastructure the first one we'll talk about is open space the base requirement is that any open spaces that qualify for this have to generally align with locations identified in the small area plans and as we saw in our discussions today for example the Old Town small area plan has depictions of where preferred open spaces are so this would have to align with that and then the design elements are that these spaces would have to include trees or shade structures and they may include public art water feature sustainable landscaping or programmable space a couple things to point out about this I should also mention

the bonus that an applicant can receive for this and it's similar to for the transportation infrastructure piece it's not going to be measured in terms or not proposed to be measured in terms of dwelling units per acre it's measured in terms of dwelling units period the reason for that is that if an applicant is providing a certain amount of open space on their site they get bonus density it shouldn't matter how large their site is how much additional development they should get it's really just qualifying you get this much open space you get this many units if you do it by dwelling per acre larger sites will get community benefits than a smaller site would if that makes any sense so for example

for open spaces the way it's worded in the draft ordinance is that spaces would have to meet a certain definition which is provided in the open space section and for each space that meets that definition they can earn eight dwelling units so that's not eight dwelling per acre that's eight units period and so if they had two spaces that made those definition they get 16 dwelling units one question we have here is how this should be limited as is written now in the draft a bonus could be achieved for any open space that meets a definition that's in the table in the open space section as I mentioned some of those open spaces are less desirable this could include things like areas where there's utilities

or where there might be a required setback or something like that and so those open space table get less credit and so the question is here would we really want to apply bonus to one of those open spaces that we already saying gets less credit because it's not desirable or should we limit this only to those most desirable ones the ones that provide a public amenity or some kind of public service and we can add language about that another thing about this is that it defines how the additional units are earned by number of spaces not by how much space and so somebody could provide a really large open space and still that's only counted as one so I can see us getting some discussions with applicants

about that we might recommend looking at it more at a sliding scale getting certain number of units per area and then I'll come back to that in a minute but I just want to share both of these with you at once so you can see how they compare transportation infrastructure is the other one that we have set up in here an applicant would receive benefits for providing contributions towards a street network the requirements are that it connects to the overall network both the current and future proposed network as shown in the small area plans it should meet or exceed the small area plan network so if a property on the small area plan has two streets going through it and the developer is only proposing one

of those streets that they shouldn't be able to qualify for this benefit and that it should include sidewalks and street trees a separate element is pedestrian paths so there's different benefits for a street and a street with pedestrian paths and the way that's defined in the plan is something I think we still need to work on they don't necessarily meet what is shown in the smaller area plan so there's a I believe it's a four foot wide path it doesn't qualify as a pedestrian path and so a developer would receive two dwelling units for every 100 feet of street that doesn't meet that standard if they provide the full sidewalk which is a I believe it is a six foot sidewalk and landscape area on the

edge and they would get four dwelling units for 100 linear feet but as I mentioned neither of those really meet within the smaller plans in most cases we're calling for a six foot landscape strip and a six to ten foot sidewalk and so we'd want to find a way to adjust that and make sure we're getting what the smaller plans actually call for in addition we have a lot of cases there's an example on the courthouse plaza you saw tonight where a street is proposed along a property line and many times the city staff will support that and the applicant only providing part of that street recognizing that future development will provide the other side so we would also like to find a way to adjust these numbers

so if someone's providing part of a street they get partial credit but not the full credit so again those numbers are two dwelling units for 100 feet of street that doesn't have the full pedestrian path four dwelling units per 100 feet of street that does meet the full sidewalk and landscaping requirements so I'll stop there for a minute in the end of this we have two test fits that I'll show you that will show how these numbers end up adding up compared to some recent approvals but before we get to that I just want to see if we had any any questions on this just a brief comment I the cynical side of me takes over and assumes that developers may try to gamify a little bit of this and try to figure out

which benefits they can stack on other benefits or you know introduce something you know with certain features that you know anyway I guess the point is we don't have experience implementing a program like this we do need of course to watch carefully and make adjustments as we go I think perhaps in discussions about this staff should have an appropriate level of cynicism that there may be attempts to sort of push the boundaries of which benefits can be gained so there's a part of this that recognizes the great benefits that we could get with you know a good acting partner who wants to you know offer a community connection you know wider pedestrian path or some street connections of a certain quality that

we hope they would offer anyway but they'll offer it in exchange for some tangible benefit and that at some point it's kind of a game of pluses and minuses and I guess what I'm suggesting is I just don't know based on assuming an intention of maximizing profit or benefit by a developer what this sort of program will turn into that's not a helpful comment but I think just thinking through the what ifs when we implement something like this may be important because ultimately we'll see you know good actors and we'll see developers that want to push the limit to try to figure out what they can get we don't want them doing what I've done with retailers in the past and stacking my digital coupon with

my paper coupon with my existing you know good customer discount and ending up walking out with a free item it happens and we don't want to be in a position where we're giving something away that we hopefully would be able to get under some negotiated circumstance anyway okay moving on the other part of dimensional standards is height and so what is recommended in the draft is a general maximum height of five stories with bonus being allowed for this as well and I'll get to that in a minute and the five stories would also be 65 feet there is language in the in the draft about transitions as I mentioned earlier this is transitions to the edge of the activity center only not within the activity center

except in the cases of where it's adjacent to the historic district in old town and so the language about transitions is to have step downs in height to single-family and historic structures also so there are recommendations for transitional yards an example shown on the right this is in our existing ordinance so those these would be included on the periphery and then there are general design recommendations for portions of buildings that are closest to the edge of the site particularly adjacent to single-family homes and historic structures language about building massing design details to break up massing and using things like access roads at the periphery to push the buildings away from the property lines

the step downs primarily recommend a maximum height of four stories in those areas that are closest to the adjacent areas outside those boundaries so the height as I mentioned the maximum base height is recommended at five stories however this can be increased through the community benefit program so unlike density however there is no measure for there's no sliding scale about how additional height can be achieved so if a single community benefit is achieved then the full additional height can be achieved and the maximum height that can be achieved follows that that is in the smaller plans we would have maps that are taken in from the smaller plans brought into the zoning ordinance so they are they

become code as the planning commission might be aware in most cases smaller plans recommended maximum height of seven stories that tapers down around the periphery of many of them in Old Town it's either five or six stories in Fairfax circle there are some locations where maximum height up to nine stories is supported so those are all the maximum as I mentioned an applicant all they have to do per this draft is participate in the community benefit program which means they're providing some improvement that qualifies and gets them some kind of density increase no matter how small it is and they can reach these maximum thresholds the reason that is recommended that way is that the smaller plans are already

identifying that we are comfortable with these heights in these locations and that by allowing additional height even if an applicant is only receiving minimal additional density or no additional density then they are fitting more uses into a smaller building footprint which leaves more room for other things like open spaces and those types of things so as we didn't see it as something that we would want to disincentivize but we wanted to have a base height and have you have to earn the ability to achieve the taller height zone in the small area plans even if it's through a minimal effort by at least contributing to the community benefits program it should be noted that the transitions and step downs and

height are still recommended so no more than four stories adjacent to a single family and question to be remained is how to handle those locations where the smaller plans recommend a height that's smaller than five stories in some cases along the peripheries is four and even three in a couple of locations so something that we are still working through so I'll stop there before we go on the latter problem just sounds like wording where it's already prescribed I guess right the which problem sorry that how to handle max is already oh yes less than five yes it doesn't seem like it would be difficult but exact wording I'm sure the city attorney will have to weigh in on but yes mr. cunningant you really don't want me

is there any correlation between the lower right chart down here where I see seven stories on the south end of it and the previous chart that I brought up for discussion that showed all of that blue which makes it flood plain the you mean where it tapers from showing seven stories to tapers to white with nothing I'd have to look at where those lines are I don't know for sure I'll have to check on that as I remember blue going all the way across the street up into the housing area across from it I've got to believe that a lot of that is in the blue area in the floodplain and the flood plain so we're seven stories is fine in the floodplain nine stories I guess if you just get up out of it oh well well yes it's not necessarily

mean that seven stories allowed in the floodplain the floodplain as I mentioned earlier can change applicant can make improvements to their site to adjust the floodplain and usually that means giving up portions of their site to contain water water and so that's the Fairfax circle smaller plan it includes those recommended heights at those locations for that reason have we correlated our maps with the floodplain or each one of the maps is sort of independent and they may overlap the yeah the height the height shouldn't call it with the floodplain it's the white area at the bottom I should be keeping properties out of the resource protection area because that cannot change but as I mentioned that this the focus of the Fairfax circle small area plan looked at this a lot and so showing those heights there was intentional

yeah I interpret this drawing as sort of you know a theory about height that could be built and not addressing the actual mechanics of building on a floodplain we did force or at least encourage us to where views toward the way that we did force or at least for the future where views toward the stream and sort of green space where the feature not the thing to avoid and so I think housing that does with and respecting the fact that we do have neighbors south of this small area that may not want seven stories but at least emphasizing that some of the development that may be retail commercial restaurant space housing to look south toward that stream and prioritize that is the feature the two neighbors to the south of that are army navy country club which is open space and the city's property art

okay so the and so I'm thinking of Ridge Avenue doesn't it's on the it's on the other side of the far okay of the other side of the line of the road right so the streams the feature I suppose regardless of which neighbors on the south side the feature which is going through there we can we can look at we'll look at the map in the smaller plan and make sure this correlates with that it should not correlate with the floodplain but we may be getting it and I recall from the Fairfax Circle smaller plan there is an intentional buffer in that area and we can make sure that it is accommodating that but I think Mr. Rice's point is right if you were to be able to manage the rest of it this is the height you would be willing to tolerate correct

yeah but you still have to deal with the floodplain okay okay so as I mentioned we we ran a couple of tests just to show how this might have worked out with some recent approvals and I should caveat these tests were run just based on the dimensional standards and community benefits as we talked about today it this is not include frontages or standard open space requirements or other things that we'll be getting at with few future topics as we as we go on we'll continue to look at this so the first test is the n29 willow wood project which is under construction now was approved about two years ago and just to use this as an example the site area is 2.95 acres as a planning commission may recall this was subdivided from the existing office park

and so based on that we assumed that the the lot consolidation bonus could not be applied here they did not consolidate in fact they were unconsolidating so just as an example of how that works the height approved was seven stories what would be supported in the new activity center district with the bonus would also be seven stories so that's consistent the approved project had 260 residential units in it looking at what would be supported in this district without the bonus program would be 170 residential units but the way they can make up some of that difference is through the community benefits program looking at open space what was in the approved project keep in mind here we have different definitions for open space so they have what they call 31 percent of essentially of impervious

impervious cover which would not all qualify as open space underneath definitions with the new district more strictly following the definitions of the new district it would actually be more like 12 percent which still exceeds the requirements of 10 percent minimum 10 percent is what is proposed we estimate based on the uses and the different types of small spaces are shown on the site that they would be able to make an argument that there are two spaces that qualify for the bonus program again the way the language program again the way the language is now it is written as number of spaces that meet the definition if we reworded this to be based on area then we would be measuring it differently but just based on that they would be able to achieve 16 additional units again not 16 units per acre 16 units in addition to the 170 that would be approved or that could be supported in the base district

for streets uh for streets uh this site is providing approximately 1000 linear feet of new streets that are all shown in the smaller plans uh it's a lot for this site this size it's basically surrounds the entire building and it contributes to a larger street network if uh development to the site to the west ever occurs then the student network would continue in that direction uh and so based on that um they would be able to receive uh four units for every 100 feet or 100 linear feet which would total 40 additional units um as i mentioned uh this is one of those cases where they are uh the streets are on a property line and so um particularly the street on the west and so they would if we were to change that they might only get partial credit for that but the way it's worded now

um they would get full credit so combining those the 16 units for open space 40 units for new streets they would get 56 additional units uh so i realize there's a math error there adding that to the 170 should be 226 units not 206 units and that should equal 77 dwelling units per acre uh where 88 is what was approved so this is not to say that the applicant on this property couldn't achieve the 88 i think if they knew this is what was expected going in um they could make adjustments uh add additional usable open spaces provide additional amenities to get additional bonus density and possibly get to what was it was ultimately approved but based on what is in the draft and what uh is in the design that was approved it would be

approved at 77 dwellings per acre as opposed to 88. so if they converted one bedroom to two bedroom units would that drop their numbers while keeping the same footprint of the building say they can convert a one bedroom to two bedroom yeah so there are 260 units is predicated on how many they reported right of a mix of sizes one bedroom studio and two bedroom right um that is what is in their proposal this density program the number of bedrooms wouldn't wouldn't be factored in not as written right but that's what i'm saying they come up with 260 and it's a mix of sizes right but if they combined two one bedroom apartments into a two bedroom that would lower their number of units total that they're proposing oh yes without

changing the footprint of the building correct so they could achieve that number just by making larger units within the same building correct okay yeah could you um just quickly articulate the how the open space is calculated is there a coniguity measure that's used to uh say this really is open space and this little sliver next to the roadway doesn't really count yes so um we we had to make some estimates here because uh this proposal didn't have to go through the submission process that this new district will so they didn't have to define the open spaces for us and explain how they fit so we made some assumptions we looked at uh the first thing was that the spaces that contribute to the bonus have to be above and beyond the 10 percent base requirement so we had the two

percent area to work with and i don't have the exact square footage was but we looked to see if there was two spaces uh on the site that would um meet one of the definitions of the open spaces in the open space table and the two that stood out were this is working this space here um that is a publicly accessible space it has seating it has plantings it has amenities in it uh and so we assumed that counted as one and the other was down here uh now this is a smaller space and this is where we might want to be more restrictive about what we contribute but there is a particular type of open space in the definition table that uh is geared towards outdoor seating for restaurants and those types of things it actually has dimensional standards to it

which are pretty small recognizing it's outdoor seating and that type of thing but this would fit in that definition so as it's worded now those two areas would fit if there's a concern with that we could kind of adjust that and make sure yeah i think as long as there's some latitude to um reject things that are clearly just engineered to be impervious and not really contributing to quality of life at all yeah it's something imposing yeah correct right in imposing some coniguity measure some compactness criteria to define the kind of shape that that is i think would be a useful way of looking at it um again sorry late at night just imposing a little cynicism like you know what could they try to get away with and let's try to write that out of our rules right um

i'm gonna jump in with just one other observation real quick and paul's going to show you another example also but as we're looking at projects of the scale uh that they go back several hundred feet they're going to require fire lanes um so so one practical consideration is the the bonus provisions for streets if that street's required as a fire lane anyway are they really providing something above and beyond or is it there because it has to be and this one was hard because we said we recognize you know something's going to happen on the west side of this one your streets are going to probably join together and you know the geometry is going to change and so um i think again if privately up in a conference room if there's a little kind of analysis that imposes a little

you know what if in a cynical way you know what what could be done with this you know if the intentions aren't perfect um and just trying to write those out would be helpful you know street wits um green space that's not real green space um a sidewalk that may be six feet but maybe you know not passable or accessible from ada compliance points of view things like that that street on the west is also supposed to be part of the north facts master plan linear park uh the next example um this one is the point formerly known as the moxley um over in camp washington now this we had to take some liberties with because this was approved a while ago before there was a smaller plan uh under older zoning ordinance standards uh but we wanted to look at something that was that was a

little bit different so this site is 8.32 acres and we wanted to see what would happen if the assembly bonus applied um now as i mentioned that would only apply if assembly happened after the date of this ordinance um there was some assembly that happened with this property um way back when 20 or 30 years ago um but there was an effort to bring multiple properties together to create a cohesive development so assuming that started a couple years from now as opposed to 20 years ago this is how we would read it um so based on that assumption um it received the maximum uh density bonus under that which is 30 percent because it's more than five acres uh so right off the starting point for density is higher

the height of the of the approved project that was built is five stories or 69 feet uh with the new district uh this could be up to seven stories because that's what's shown for this location in the small area plan um and they will be providing some community benefits number of residential units provided uh the approved plan is 403 units um just looking at the uh the base density affordable dwelling unit program and on top of that this assembly bonus um the number of units that could be supported under this district would be 623 units on top of that then we have the uh community benefits so the open spaces in the approved plan there's 35 percent we call non-coverage area this is what they call it open space

um but under the definition definitions that are provided in the draft um activity center district only 15 percent of that would actually apply to what's considered open space uh and we estimate again per uh commissioner rice's questions uh we looked at the various uh spaces that are provided throughout the site including various amenity areas seating areas a dog park those such things all meeting definitions that are in that table um per the current language and estimated there are five spaces that can contribute toward this bonus uh which would allow for 42 units and then for streets approximately 600 linear feet of of um publicly accessible streets are provided in this plan uh which uh would allow for 64 additional bonus units

so adding those numbers up the 623 base 64 for transportation 40 for uh open space that would accommodate 727 units or about 87 20 units per acre or 48 is what was initially approved and built so this is on the flip side from the previous one where this uh draft would provide uh less than what was approved this would provide significantly more there are a lot of assumptions here that may not have actually happened today uh so this this might be um uh kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of extreme example that wouldn't actually pan out but we just wanted to kind of show the other end of the spectrum on what could potentially happen okay uh we can we can certainly do others yeah i think as we go on we'll we'll find that other projects provide

better examples of the different types of things we're going for so is this the case where one algorithm fits all uh it might not we had to figure out what components of it don't fit i mean just for these examples it looks like the defining green space or open space is the tricky part so i'm just worried that when we find out something that doesn't fit we may be far enough along that somebody's going to be doing something that you know that by right based on the rules that is really quite objectionable and they'll just make a good argument that hey you know these are your rules and we've applied them in this fashion and this is what we're allowed to do anyway what you're already getting from the four examples you've had here the first two

were thoughtful negotiated developments that aren't serving their purpose at a reasonable density the last two are 10 pound bank 14 pounds into and so they have pushed the limit of what there was in in doing that so that's what that's the practical nature of what happens whenever you write rules and then everybody outside figures out how to get around them or they have to get around them or make them work to their benefit maximum benefit whether you intend it or not law of intended unintended consequences kicks in yeah with all the negative comments though i i do admit that this avenue of work is preferable to the other options that we discussed um um i think this will get us closer to what we want i think you need to scale down the things with which

you give dents that you give bonus for instead of trying to find all of these little things that people are just elements that people play with let's let's get something that actually makes a difference with one or two or three items that are substantive yeah i believe that's what staff has done working with a consultant focusing on things like open space um i mean the alternative to not doing it is doing what we're doing today tons of special exceptions subjectively applied inconsistently applied this gets us closer to something a little bit more objective the definition of open space no i no we've already that points already well yeah already been well expressed it also pushes more applications to us which is

another thing we've been lobbying for so yes i just commend you and i know now i know why it's taken so long to get to this point thanks for the perseverance and and tonight we're just talking about part of it so uh so yeah that includes the the discussions on the structure dimensional standards and community benefits our next meeting 23rd we will talk about uh access circulation and parking as i mentioned there is a piece on that which i encourage you to read that is the consultant provided staff is going to be providing an alternative at changing our numbers instead of the reduction but still worth working looking at and they also have some language in there about access what has some recommendations

about how streets could be should be configured and then landscaping as well um we will have a summary of that um i forgot actually anna safford will not be here but we'll have some material from her to share um so that uh summarizes i appreciate your feedback on this so far and i realized this this we i think we covered the heaviest stuff on the first day but i felt like we had to go through these because as we get through the other items questions will come up that relate to these so when we get to the end we can circle back and re-discuss uh any of these items as well after you've had more time to absorb the draft so um that's all i have from the staff i really appreciate it thank you so very much

okay we will reconvene our regular meeting and move right to the staff report if mr napty hasn't talked enough he's going to talk some more uh thank you chair feather members of the planning commission um um the let's see uh city council also had a meeting schedule or meeting canceled the same week you did because of the snow um and so some things had to get moved around um as we know you were supposed to present to them on the third a couple items that happened on the third they had a joint meeting with the environmental sustainability committee which primarily talked about general efforts and some of the the items that um council would like them to work on also there's a presentation on the solid waste uh

management plan uh this plan primarily talked about operational items doesn't overlap a whole lot with the planning commission it's still pretty interesting though so i encourage you to take a look if you have a chance tomorrow city council meeting uh they will be having their public hearing on the urban forest master plan um they will receive the presentation from you on the um capital improvement program recommendations uh and they have a work session on the willard sherwood community center project uh for your next meeting uh february 23rd um in addition to continuing our discussion on the smaller plan zoning orders amendments uh one of the items that was canceled uh the january meeting was the

discussion on your annual report and update on implementation guides we didn't want to move that tonight because we had enough going on so that will be happening on the 23rd instead i mentioned the public meeting that has been scheduled for march 26th on the small air plan zoning orders amendments that is going to be at the sherwood center we're still working on other details and we'll get that to you as soon as we can um let's see uh let's last thing is uh oh uh chair feather mentioned that we should discuss the plan for the presentation uh tomorrow night too on the capital improvement program so um we can go ahead and do that now before we get to commissioner comments works for me i'm not sure if you've already drafted something would we for presentation tomorrow

i just don't know whether you thought we'd be using slides or just talk to the um the resolution i don't think we want to sit and read the resolution to yeah they will they've had an advanced copy uh they have anticipated to be approved yes uh so they they did receive an advanced copy uh with the stipulation that could be amended tonight so we can tell them it hasn't been amended um we have not prepared our presentation but i think we can do that pretty quickly tomorrow we have all the material um and i can i can share that with you i mean just a couple of slides yeah not a huge number of slides yeah the couple you used to highlight the issues we're going to talk about yeah i think the the items

we wanted to emphasize that was excuse me as much interested i don't want to do all the talking i'd like to be able to pass off well mr mccarthy i know you will not be there tomorrow mr cunningham will you be there i can be i was planning on okay but i can last i checked it is the first work session item first work session right uh so the river forest master plan is before it as a public hearing but then the world of sure where discussion is after it okay yeah just because you've each had some some of your own thoughts and insights on some of the things that are on the list and why they're on the list and i would prefer you express them than me to try to to do that for example mr uh mr rice you've talked a

lot about the fire station you have some well articulated thoughts on that um i think we all have insights into the willard sherwood center and miss lockhart i know you've expressed some of those very well um so i just wanted to figure out how to how to share the the joy i shouldn't be the only one to do the talking i know when the when the environmental sustainability committee meets with them they go around the room and they each have something to say and i'd like to continue that we did some of that last year so um do you expect it to occur before eight o'clock that we would be up before eight no well i don't maybe around eight if we're lucky i don't think it'd be before there's a lot of things on the consent agenda i don't know that any of those would get pulled what you can't

predict are the public comment section yeah right i just i believe there will be a lot of public comments comments on the willard sherwood presentation before they get to the work session so i don't think it's or what is after us but that's not a public hearing so any comments we made during the public comment section of the meeting which is going to be before the work session yes so i don't think it would be before eight honestly i know a number of people already planning to speak but on that just that just that topic tomorrow so well we'll see you understand okay anything else for staff okay commission comments mr mccarthy anything from you god bless you sir thanks for all that tonight thank you

coming in no comment miss luckhart thank you for all your work thank you to the city's work for putting forth the chocolate festival again um i am mostly recovered from running in negative two degree wind chill um but no appreciate as the prep for both meetings this evening they were both really useful and valuable so um we received very some very good entries for a proposed uh student map contribution to the um fact book and so we've set up a kind of an evaluation rubric and we'd like a few staff members um perhaps miss denny um your fearless interim director um to help us with some of that evaluation um and so we're in the process of organizing that it'll be take perhaps two weeks of you know some loosely coordinated evaluation and then within two weeks we'll have a winner to present

um anything from parks and rec oh um i know our parks and rec meeting is going to fall um a few days after this one and um nothing super big to report after 10 30 at night okay thank you um as for me thank you again for all the effort and leading that um exercise on the zoning ordinance and addressing some of the concerns that we've had all um uh board of architectural review has not been meeting i guess there's been nothing coming through last meeting or two have been cancelled and the next one is uh is being cancelled as well so i have nothing to report from the from the bar and it's what the greatest appointment yeah for me to serve in that capacity sorry there were a few approvals on the fig but there still remains money to be distributed um

because there were some applications that were deemed ineligible or that did not meet the threshold for an award so if you know of any local businesses that could use some assistance from that program there are still funds available for the year um also this afternoon at lunchtime miss lockhart and i spoke at the rotary club of fairfax to give an overview of the planning commission's role in the city and and approvals and you know what we do and talk about how we engage the public um i think that was reasonably well received it's an interesting organization but by golly at 130 they we were done so but that's okay um it was it was a good exercise i appreciate mr napty's effort in helping provide

some material i can use put some slides together although they weren't able to use them because they're in a new venue and hadn't arranged audio visual um projection facilities or whatever but i borrowed the um future land use map and had a physical copy of something to look at even though we didn't talk much about it um you'll see there are five of us here we have two vacancies now on the planning commission so certainly would encourage you to encourage others that you may know who might um be in a position to serve and have the capacity for what what's required uh to apply i think there are a couple that the council have before them to consider i don't know they've made it have made no appointments as of yet so

if there's nothing else we are adjourned thank you you you