Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood 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

Matthew Ricethe

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

Paul CunninghamI move the agenda be adopted as presented.

James FeatherSecond. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye.

Paul CunninghamAye.

James FeatherOpposed? 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. But 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? Ms.

Kirsten LockhartChair, I move that the Commission adopt the meeting minutes from the January 12, 2026 regular meeting as issued.

Tassos McCarthyChair Greg Musil. Second.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Chair Greg Musil. Opposed?

Matthew RiceAbstentions? Passage unanimously.

James FeatherWe 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.

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. This presentation will be 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 requires to have a formal recommendation from the Planning Commission we want 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 in this 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

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 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 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.

James FeatherThank you. Welcome Mr. Stafford.

Anna SaffordstaffOkay. Good evening, Planning Commission. As Paul mentioned, I'm 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 and 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 the everyone that has been participating. It's been a collaborative effort. The project team was led by myself but was 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 DB our community engagement by Marcel Day and the wetlands studies and solutions the USSI provided technical and local expertise along the way and of course many things 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 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 it also identified the the need to hire an urban forest manager to both lead and implement said plan it identified the stormwater 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 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, 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.

At project events, we engaged directly with 150 stakeholders, but many more throughout the projects, updates to boards and commissions, 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 played a big part in shaping the urban forest master plan. The as a summary of the engagement process. An engagement, 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, 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 US Forest Service ITRE 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 dollars of annual 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 and these included a strong desire for stricter tree preservation, consistency and transparency in city decision-making, improved interdepartmental 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 support and involvement in the urban forest 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 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 This strategy includes actions such as consulting the 2024 operations review, aligning staff responsibilities to this new division, and supporting staff development.

All the actions throughout the plan are organized into short, mid, and long-term timeframes. 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? In this chapter, it recommends progress assessment timelines and provides key performance indicators or KPIs and they are mapped to the plan's 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 use a progress report and addendum that adjusts and adapts to 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 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 you're using multiple planning and strategies at different scales in order to assess the impacts of climate change.

And then lastly, we heard again a lot of questions around implementation. So I thought I'd take a moment 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's everyday work. We have identified over 40 of the action items are already underway. way. 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 community's 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 it was designed to implement the urban forest master plan.

It's not coincidence that it touches on all five objectives of the plan. The foundation of it includes community engagement and stewardship. It's initiated an all-hands approach for non-native 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 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 road map 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

Clara Schweigerstafffuture so

Anna Saffordstaffwith that I just want to say it is a big milestone to adopt an urban forest master plan, and 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.

James FeatherThank you very much. Just one introductory comment, and we'll open up to the commission for comments. You mentioned that impetus to do this was one of the action items from the comprehensive plan. 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 urban forest master plan. It's a culmination of a lot of activity, effort, an important milestone for the city, and thank you for your and your team's leadership in getting us to this point. COMMISSION, ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS OR DISCUSSION? WE'LL MAKE IT EASY. WE HAVE SEEN IT, OF COURSE, A FEW TIMES.

THANK YOU.

Matthew RiceMR. RICE. THE COORDINATION WITH REGIONAL PARTNERS I THINK IS A KEY ITEM. 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 includes our jurisdiction. So I think to maximize the benefit that we have as a little island within a larger neighbor that we help share data costs, or at least 150th the cost, which is our share of geographic area and population. 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 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 actionable information is unacceptable. And counterparts at Fairfax County have spoken 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 connections to improve the monitoring and prediction that we do through this plan, I think we should do that. And we should to be included as a budgetary item that's a regular one and I'd be happy to come and testify about that if needed thanks thanks

James Featherthank you others

Anna Saffordstaffthank you

James Featherthank you I

Paul Nabtistaffbelieve there's a draft motion in your packet

Kirsten Lockhartmr. chair I move that the Planning Commission recommends that City Council THE DRAFT DATED DECEMBER 2025.

Tassos McCarthySECOND.

James FeatherOKAY. IT'S BEEN MOVED AND SECONDED. ANY OTHER DISCUSSION? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR, SAY AYE. AYE. AYE. AYE. AYE. AYE. 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. NAPTY.

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. This is the last in our series of discussions on the FY27 to 2031 capital improvement program. Looking at our schedule, as you recall, you first received a presentation from the interim city manager at the time in November of the draft CIP. We've had multiple discussions over the course of the last couple of months. The last one being on January 12th when we had representatives from Parks and Recreation and the Fire Department here to address some of your questions. We were scheduled to have this public hearing on January 26th. That meeting was canceled due to the weather. And then we were also scheduled for the Planning Commission to present to City Council on February 3rd.

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. And then as a planning commission is where you're scheduled to present your recommendations to city council at tomorrow night's meeting, February 10th. What you are being asked to consider tonight is a resolution that has a recommendation of support for the capital improvement program 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 to see if you have any other discussion items before we consider the resolution. We are able to make amendments to the resolution tonight. If you would like to do that, you can make an adoption with changes.

Matthew RiceJust a quick reminder

Paul Nabtistaffon the role of the Planning Commission in reviewing the Capital Improvement Program. Your role is defined as determining conformance of the projects within the CIP with the comprehensive ADVISED COUNCIL ON CITY PRIORITIES AMONG PROPOSED PROJECTS. THIS HAS BECOME MORE OF AN ISSUE AS THERE IS COMPETITION FOR RESOURCES. AND LASTLY, TO ANTICIPATE FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS AND DO THIS BY LOOKING FOR POTENTIAL UPCOMING PROJECTS IN THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN THAT MAY NOT BE IDENTIFIED IN THE CIP. 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 draft resolution that's in your packet. The color code here is to separate those comments that are specifically about identified projects.

Those are shown in orange. And then the more general capital comments are shown in blue. And I will summarize those. For those that are related to specific projects, the Planning Commission asked to include comments about the property yard feasibility study and encouraging support for what comes out of that, recognizing that there are ever-increasing floodplain issues on the current site. regarding fire station three their recommendation to support that project due to the condition and issues with the current facility and to further consider other needs of the city and opportunities to use the fire station site in the redevelopment effort for that project and then lastly the recommendation to support 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, planning commission asked to support the West Drive property yard acquisition opportunities for acquiring new properties in the city are very rare. And then lastly, to support the proposed new turf fields at Catherine Johnson Middle School with three benefits from this being improving access and dealing with environmental issues, supporting middle school athletics programs that have ever-increasing criteria on their facilities, and integrating the fields with Kuttner Park and the Camp Washington Activity Center, along with adjoining with the Germantown Road Improvement Project.

And then lastly, the general capital comments are shown here, and those are to continue to seek non-property tax-related funding sources for projects where available, to look at cross-functional planning for city facilities, to leverage city-owned properties to offset costs for other projects, to consider long-term plans and CIP discussions by focusing investments away from properties or facilities that may be undergoing renovations anyway, account for revenue opportunities and new projects, and then to invest in what makes people want to live here. So that's a quick summary of the draft resolution. AS WE MENTIONED, YOU ARE ABLE TO MAKE CHANGES TO THAT TONIGHT IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO SO BY USING THE SAMPLE MOTION TO ADOPT THE RESOLUTION WITH MODIFICATIONS.

AND YOU HAVE TO CITE TO US WHAT THOSE MODIFICATIONS ARE. 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 BECAUSE THEY ARE VERY SHORT STATEMENTS. SO THAT CONCLUDES THIS PRESENTATION. HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

James FeatherBEFORE 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. THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE PUBLIC TO ADDRESS THE PLANNING COMMISSION'S PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS TO CITY COUNCIL ON THE RESOLUTION THAT WAS PUBLISHED AHEAD OF THE MEETING, which includes the priorities that we identified that Mr. Napty included in his staff report. 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, recommending to 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?

Paul CunninghamOkay, thank you.

James FeatherAnybody 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 discussion of this in the matter in the hands of the commission. Any other comments? Mr. Rice.

Matthew RiceYeah, so we received an email just with information regarding the wording of our recommendation for Fire Station 3. I think I wanted to save my comments for an open meeting and avoid any statements of my own that might be considered deliberative. 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. 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 where we had the assistant chief here as a guest about the coverage of the fire and the cooperative agreement that we have with the county to service residents in the county. What it comes down to is I think this is a priority is 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.

And we won't have the chance to go in depth tomorrow when we make formal recommendations, but I think at least 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 a five-year accreditation cycle that will coincide with a new facility being built, and I think it's important for us to try to maintain the city services that we have with the lowest cost that we can have EMS is the insurance and the accreditation which feeds into that cost. Thanks. That's it.

James FeatherIs there any change or something you might suggest with the resolution? No.

Matthew RiceSorry. That was a real long-winded way of just saying we need tomorrow just to assert the financial cost associated with that, that we will have some costs associated with not supporting that part of the CIP.

James FeatherAnd I do want to have a discussion 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. Ms. Lockhart, anything?

Kirsten LockhartI 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. But the question was why we were not more explicit in our resolution about the remainder of these school projects that are listed in the SIP for this year. I know we sort of went back and forth on some of the smaller ones about risk assessment and timeliness of the recommended 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.

I think we can speak to that, 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, certainly I can carry water for that as well.

James FeatherQuestions or thoughts on that? Mr. Cunningham?

Paul CunninghamA 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, in order not to jeopardize the certification of the fire department, it needed to meet the requirements, all of 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, 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 it's important if we're going to maintain a city that we maintain adequate facilities to meet the need.

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 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 there. 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 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?

Tassos McCarthyI'm comfortable with the recommendation as drafted. I think it

Evan Pritchardapplicantreflects

Tassos McCarthygenerally the priorities we discussed. I just want to say thank you to Mr. Nabdi for synthesizing them for us.

James FeatherJust addressing the schools as well. One of the things when I go back and look at the current FY 2020, well, 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 it doesn't show anything for 2027 or in the out years, so I'm not sure what that means. Otherwise, the other programs, restroom 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.

Kirsten LockhartYeah, I think we can express blanket support for school investment under the livability threshold. That's

James Featherright. I think we'll have to make some decisions, too, about the high cost of some of the field replacements with turf and what the real remaining life is.

Matthew RiceSo is there interest in modifying item number nine to include a comment at the end and make a reference to support for schools?

James FeatherI 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.

Kirsten Lockhartthe 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? Necessarily read all

James Featherof them in its entirety?

Paul NabtistaffNo, they're listed in the resolution, so I think that's okay.

James FeatherOkay. They are.

Paul NabtistaffSecond.

James FeatherThank 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.

Kirsten LockhartCan I ask him to ask this is the agenda?

James FeatherHmm? Any agenda tomorrow? 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.

Clara SchweigerstaffGood 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. 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 a mixed-use building with 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 reason the site to PDR plan development residential these are the existing conditions on 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 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 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. So the potential land use requests would be a rezoning from CR commercial retail to PDR plan 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 that concludes my presentation. I'm here to answer questions and then the applicant is also here and available to answer questions as well.

James FeatherMs. Lecker?

Kirsten LockhartI 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?

Clara SchweigerstaffI would defer to the applicant, the potential applicant on that.

James FeatherMr. Pritchard?

Evan PritchardapplicantGood evening. Evan Pritchard here on behalf of the applicant great question we are early enough in the process that we are are still determining what the final unit mix is going to be in our initial conversations with staff you know and 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 ie 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 more or less in line with the zoning ordinance requirements.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. And while I've got you, is there any consideration to accessible units within facility

Evan Pritchardapplicantso accessible units I think is TBD but I think we'll be providing you know the the standard number of except 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 six percent and I know that some percentage of those will certainly be accessible but it's it's early days but you know we we do plan to make accessibility a big part of the proposal

Matthew Ricea 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

Evan Pritchardapplicantyeah so well first off is miss Schweiger mentioned the the small area plan did did consider such issues and we are adhering to the six stories but I totally get the question the the flats next door of course five stories use architectural techniques to try to lessen the feeling of mass. We'll certainly do sightline 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.

Matthew RiceGood. the folks that live there may not be you know mobilizing high dollars and you know people to oppose a development that that breaks their view of that southern sky that's kind of critical but 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 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

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, um, 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. emerges. Anyway, thank you for your presence here tonight.

Evan PritchardapplicantPage Page Page Page

James FeatherPage Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page

Paul CunninghamPage Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page I'm going to start, I guess, not on this specific project, which I will get to, but 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. I'm talking about Providence Square. It 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 originally envisioned. But I'm talking about the first large multifamily 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. With that came the approval of Layton Hall Apartments. And while that hasn't 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 increase 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 recommendation coming through with again some commercial in it. 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 Ox Hill 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. 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 will 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 anymore to a specific project down here what I want is some resolution to the context of what we're doing 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 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 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 when you have a small string of townhouses and office 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 how are we putting the pieces of this puzzle 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 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 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 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.

James FeatherDon't expect the staff or the applicant to answer the questions

Paul CunninghamSome are rhetorical, I understand

James FeatherAdmittedly, yep 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 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 plans a little dusty at this point it's

Paul Cunninghamfive years old now maybe something six

James Featherand things have changed. The economics have changed, climate's changed, public sentiment is changing, I think, but what we're seeing proposed here is consistent with what we've asked for. The green space that was noted as welcome addition. Clearly you'll get into the details in the future as to what the plan development requires in terms of open space and all kinds of other I'm sure that's on your radar. I know Mayor McGill is familiar enough with our zoning ordinance requirements that you'll see your client is aware of those. Ms. LaGarne?

Kirsten LockhartI'm just curious since the applicant is here, is there a reason why commercial was not proposed for this particular project?

Evan PritchardapplicantI'm sorry. Could you repeat the question?

Kirsten LockhartSure. Since the small area plan says residential or mixed use, is there a reason why you opted in to do purely residential for the project?

Evan PritchardapplicantYes. so we did mixed use on the the botanist and and as you may recall from going through that process you know providing a mix of uses you know can sometimes be challenging we feel like this is not the strongest area for for retail so we feel really good about it you know being all residential and sort of dovetailing with We think that this is going to provide some additional rooftops to support the retail that's still going to remain regardless of what happens to the south of us and also Old Town. So it's definitely where the market's at right now, where we see a strong desire for residential units, not necessarily a strong desire for ground floor retail in every spot.

James FeatherWhich wasn't contemplated in the small area plan either. I am intrigued by the staff comment about existing office tenants. Mr. Pritchard, perhaps you know what the occupancy is currently? So

Evan Pritchardapplicantmy understanding is the building

James Featheris about... What's that challenge look like to the applicant?

Evan PritchardapplicantPotential

James Featherapplicant?

Evan PritchardapplicantYeah, so it's an interesting issue. On other projects I've worked on over the years in the city and elsewhere, there's definitely been sensitivity to mom and pops in a retail context getting displaced. I'm less familiar with this concern of office tenants you know requiring you know work from the applicant we identified this this project because it's it's available the office building is on the market it's my understanding that the building is only half occupied at this point and there there's threat that is trending in the in the downward direction we would certainly you know work with the seller and and work with the existing tenants to try to keep them in the city we in no way want to have them go to the you know go to a

neighboring jurisdiction but but that's about all I can say this time on that subject.

James FeatherThank 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. It continues to be concerned with the scale and impact on the, based on its proximity to the historic Old Town. This is not in the historic itself, but it's in the transition and transitions are important in transition districts. How that would look and the impacts that we'll have certainly are considerations for all of us I think going forward. Any other summarized comments from y'all? Okay. Do you think you have sufficient from your perspective?

Clara SchweigerstaffYes. From my perspective, that was sufficient at this stage. sure okay

James Featherthank you

Evan Pritchardapplicantthank

James Featheryou okay next item on our work session is a pre-application briefing for a Redevelopment of the courthouse plaza shopping center at one zero three zero zero Willard Way and three nine two two Blenheim Boulevard Which wire again?

Clara SchweigerstaffYes. 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. 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 an error on the slide show 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 teapot

Anna Saffordstaffrestaurant coming soon.

Clara SchweigerstaffA total of approximately 92,000 square feet of retail exists on the entire site. Parcel A, 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 were consistency small area plan, specifically the road network, pedestrian and vehicular connections, open space,

and 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, the eastern

Anna Saffordstaffportion of the property would have stayed as it exists today.

Clara SchweigerstaffAnd then on the right is phase one of the new proposal, and 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

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 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 3,559 square feet of retail on on retail pad building two would be 6,000 square increased open space expansion of a new street network and approximately 74,000 square foot feet of retail would be provided at full build-out so this would

be a net loss of approximately 18,300 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 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 1. 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 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 and 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 submit all of a 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 and that concludes my presentation I'm here for questions and so is the applicant

James Featherthank you miss Weir comments questions mr. rice

Matthew Riceso 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 uh you know from a good place and from residents that love the city and i i'm uncomfortable with the idea that there was not enough vehicular passageway through that proposal it if we could look at another rendering where it shows the vehicular connectivity plan in

blue yeah 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 rendering 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 tried to insert into everything we were 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 you know 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 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 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 millenar 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

James Featherothers I

Tassos McCarthythink in the last form that I saw this there was supposed to be 19 affordable units that came with it. Has there been any discussion on what that looks like now, if any change?

Clara SchweigerstaffThere 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

James Featherfor

Clara Schweigerstaffthe affordable

Molly Novotnyapplicantunits.

James FeatherWelcome to Novotny.

Molly NovotnyapplicantSure. Good evening. My name is Molly Novotny. I'm an urban planner at Curata Partners, and I've represented combined properties for years on yes there will be six percent affordable units as required by the ordinance in both phases and

Tassos McCarthythen just thinking you know it it seems like a very dense site and thinking about it putting all those units is it safe to assume that the future building to is similarly like a wrap product with parking on the inside

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah thank you so much for that question so this plan Really shows a block diagram plan for phase two 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 two 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 a safe way that has an existing lease on the property they control the parking lot? But they don't control the area that's phase one

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.

Paul CunninghamI 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 two 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? be nice if Safeway did, but if they chose not to, then what?

Molly NovotnyapplicantRight. 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

Paul Cunninghamrecognizing 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 marketer that came in and has our Amazon fresh came in and now that's vacant so

James Featherfresh market yeah

Paul Cunninghamso I'm assuming that we would like to get another tenant like Safeway when they first started their lease but arranged the term 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 two with soft specifics on what it might or might not be?

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah, so there's a lot of 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 plan 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

Paul CunninghamOkay, so structure is going to be part of

Molly Novotnyapplicantit would be wrapped very similar to building one where it's all internal

Paul Cunninghamto the future building, too Yeah 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?

Molly NovotnyapplicantRight. 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.

Paul Cunninghamokay well why don't we contemplate then the the traffic layout here i assume with street one 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

Molly Novotnyapplicantcan we go back to the phase one slide Clara so Street one is our new street that runs along the bottom of our 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 one and then they would complete their side of the streetscape so the sidewalk and the street because of the grade we can't do that portion, but we will be completing all of our frontage improvement along Street One if that answers that question.

Paul CunninghamI 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 up into your parking lot so so a lot of dirt is going to be moved to make that street grade accessible from the street as a main entrance got

Molly Novotnyapplicantit understood your 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

Anna Saffordstaffokay

Molly Novotnyapplicantadditionally I will know there may be good at these two 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 to 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 that is something that we're kind of going to need to work through

Paul Cunninghamso that the existing pad two 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 has no access to cross

Molly Novotnyapplicantour pad site

Paul Cunninghamno at building 2 on the east side the far right hand side

Molly Novotnyapplicantyou

Paul Cunninghamhave a road that's existing

Molly Novotnyapplicantdemocracy lane goes democracy

Paul Cunninghamlane

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah back

Paul Cunninghamin there but that has no ability to cross Blenheim Boulevard okay it's a right in right out and it stays that way

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah that

Paul Cunninghamyou're just moving the stoplight short a short distance on Street one

Molly Novotnyapplicantthat is what the small area plan calls we're showing here that would be to to marry up with the small area plan

Paul Cunninghamokay in that long list of residential developments that i went through i

Molly Novotnyapplicanttook notes

Paul Cunninghamuh leighton 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 one, phase two, 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.

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah, 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 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 two gets pushed out to a 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 and with building one so it sets us on a path much more directly than we were able to be on before

Paul Cunninghamokay 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 pieces that actually don't quite fit and nobody knows what to do with them.

Molly NovotnyapplicantMS. Right. Clara, do you have the small area plan vision? I know you had it on their exhibit or their presentation. MS. That's what I have. MS. Right. So what's outlined in red is our property. MR. I know. MS. 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 with 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 but your small area plan did kind of look at our two parcels as one planning block and didn't incorporate those into it.

Paul CunninghamOur 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. 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

Evan PritchardapplicantI'm

Paul Cunninghamseeing 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

Molly Novotnyapplicantright and i do think that that is an aspect of when cities start to redevelop right there re there it's there's no more greenfield development and so it is that redevelopment and how does the city want to 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

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

Paul Cunninghamwhen i had my fingers waving in the breeze before and you just said 1200 units in this area how how many with those nine projects that i just outlined come to 1200 units or are we in the ballpark

Molly Novotnyapplicantwhen we because

Paul Cunninghamwhen your units are added to this along with the rest where does it you know where do we come

Molly Novotnyapplicanti have not done a recent count but when we were before city council before we were still under that threshold.

Paul CunninghamOkay. 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 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

Molly Novotnyapplicantdon't know what you mean by by right because there's such little by right development downtown here no

Paul Cunninghambut but sort of what we're saying is that if we if we put our residential in now then 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

Molly Novotnyapplicantright 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 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 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.

Paul CunninghamIt's not only a question for you, so don't take it personally. No. 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.

Molly NovotnyapplicantIn Commissioner Cunningham, 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

Paul Cunninghamthat'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 we have as we're letting that go and in the future if there's a change.

Molly NovotnyapplicantRight. 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 2. And even with Phase 1, we're losing about 12,500 square feet of retail. But all of the retail, the existing, will all get a facelift. 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.

Paul CunninghamThank you. I think I've exceeded my time. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartCould I ask a follow-up question on that topic, actually? What is Combine's relationship with the current tenants and how that might be reflected or not reflected, as the case may be in these

Molly Novotnyapplicantphases and I do have Aisha Hill with combined property here we have our whole team here so she could 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

James FeatherAnything 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

Clara Schweigerstaffdon'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

James Feathermean 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 yeah it pleases me because it's now there's 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 and upgrades an important piece of property in the city

Clara Schweigerstaffyeah so since the beginning of the last proposal they had we 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.

Kirsten LockhartTo that end, how much detail is required to be successfully under a phased development plan

Clara Schweigerstaffso 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're all basically one of those commitments will say that they can 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

Molly NovotnyapplicantI 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 and 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 know 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 know you say it looks a lot 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 that plans 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 real 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

James FeatherThinking 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

Paul Cunninghamroad

James Featherthat comes off of street one and comes out the Blenheim 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

Paul Cunninghamin phase two.

James FeatherIt 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. exist. I'm not sure if it adds anything. And then in the Phase II 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 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 uh as we phase it down the

road

Clara Schweigerstaffyeah that's yeah that's something that staff will look at i'm not the expert on traffic um but when we get our the full plan set in that's something that we'll be looking at as staff

James Featherright was there something you wanted to add on that just in case I'm trying to think if I had 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 read through some of the changes. We talk about ground level space that may now be able to include amenity space for occupants of the building too to provide sort of a street level presence. 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.

Molly NovotnyapplicantRight. We've got a minimum of 12,500 square feet we have leasing and amenity space on the ground

James Featherfloor as well. Right, right, right. Yep, 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? I

Clara Schweigerstaffthink

James Featherso, yes. Standing 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

Clara Schweigerstaffyeah, 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 Mr. Sotfahn

Matthew Riceis here. 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 Government's, 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 periodically.

James FeatherThere was a recent article I read, I don't recall it, whether it was in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal about how some of those estimates are come up with, them there's any case, there are cases that say 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.

Kirsten LockhartSo 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 like open up to other residents? Yeah. They're not restricted. They're not restricted. They're not. Okay. Okay. No.

Speaker 11Some 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.

Kirsten LockhartOkay.

Speaker 11I do have some base numbers. They're not up to Mr. Forman 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's right Proposed, there are three applications before us, if you want to consider it. The two you just had 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

Kirsten Lockhartthink your number for tonight only counts Phase 1, though, right, not Phase 2? It does

Speaker 11not count Phase 2 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.

Matthew RiceIt's actually 1345, according to what I'm calculating here, but it could be off.

Speaker 11We don't do math.

Matthew RiceYeah. All right. We're a few minutes shy of nine.

James FeatherAnything else before we move on? Okay, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mr. Weir.

Clara SchweigerstaffThanks.

James FeatherThe 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.

Paul CunninghamMr. Napoli. Mr. Sushman, we converted a building from commercial to residential down at the corner of Sager and Yess University.

Speaker 11The permit is for housing. It does. That would be 15 units. Good catch, Mr. Cunningham.

Kirsten LockhartTold

Matthew Riceyou I

Speaker 11wasn't up to Eric Sanders tonight.

Kirsten LockhartI'm the one unit of woodies.

James FeatherAnd woodies. Don't forget woodies. All right, please, let's move on.

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Chair Feather, 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 an 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 are headed in the right direction before we work out all the details. background this project is a result of adoptive smaller plans planning Commission is aware the 2019 comprehensive plan recommended smaller plans be developed for the five activity centers shown on the future land use map

between 2020 and 24 2024 smaller plans were adopted for four of those five activity centers which provide guidance for both public investments and private development which there has been progress on since that time this effort on private development as it relates to the zoning ordinance and most private development that occurs in these areas goes through a land use process because it requires a rezoning or plan developments as we discussed tonight or special use permits in the current process the process has been followed has run into some hiccups as there are often inconsistencies between the smaller plans and our existing regulations also a lot of the benefits that are intended to come out of the smaller

area plans have to occur through negotiations with developers, which means that the results are often, again, inconsistent. And there are also direct conflicts between the smaller plans and the zoning ordinance. So the purpose of this effort is to bring those two more aligned and set up processes where the benefits of the smaller plans can more easily be applied on a consistent basis. A quick review of the smaller plans as was recommended in the comprehensive plan. The bullets on the left side of the screen are what were recommended in the comprehensive plan at that time for the smaller plans to include. But the key components to recognize that we are focusing on most are the mix of uses, street connections, and open spaces.

This is a refresher on presentations of 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 smaller 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 helps 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 controls specific elements, those that are listed here. So the the smaller your 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 detail. For this project specifically we are now in the third phase when we last met which which was April of 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 your 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 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 them 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 DEVELOPMENT. THIS WAS 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 THE 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 baselines for height and density and then allow bonuses to be exchanged for community benefits and that would remove some of

that negotiation process facilitate mixed use development and make sure it's guided towards where it's specifically recommended in the small area 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 in terms of how buildings are designed to the ground floor not just what the uses are establishing minimum criteria for defined open spaces this was go beyond what we typically have in the zoning ordinance and that we're defining what

spaces should be not just how much of it we should have. Offer flexibility for alternative compliance for minimum tree canopy and street tree placement. So these two red bars I apologize are not showing where they are supposed to be on the screen. One of them should be circling this item. There are two items that we identified that city staff would take the lead on as we started this process with our consultant and this is one of them. The urban forest master plan you just discussed tonight 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 bourbon staffer

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 will apply citywide not just to activity centers so we we took that from the scope of just this specific project and applying it citywide when it comes time to consider whether to adopt these amendments this is a type of be considered on its own or can be bundled with these

Matthew Riceamendments. It depends where we are at that time.

Paul NabtistaffIn 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. This will be an opportunity to clean that up. The next item, number seven, require a master development plan. This references is 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 hampers us a little bit here, but staff has questions about how much we really want to push for this particular item. Last item number nine, right-size parking standards in activity centers. This is where the second red bubble should be. This is an 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. 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 would be great if you did. But the intent was that you would recognize we're only talking about specific topics tonight and went to those topics. And that leaves you more time to go through the other items.

WE CAN CIRCLE BACK ON EARLY DISCUSSION TOPICS AND REVISIT THEM IF YOU NEED MORE TIME TO ASORB THEM. WE WILL DO SOMETHING SIMILAR WITH CITY COUNCIL AS WELL. I WANTED TO POINT OUT THE WAY THESE TOPICS ARE COVERED IN THE DRAFT THAT YOU RECEIVED, IT'S ALL PUSHED TOGETHER IN ONE AREA. BUT YOU HAVE TO RECOGNIZE THAT IN THE ORDINANCE ITSELF, THESE AREAS MIGHT NEED TO BE DISTRIBUTED IN VARIOUS AREAS. And so before we get to the final consideration for you to consider for adoption, we'll have a markup of the actual zoning ordinance so you can see how all of this

Matthew Ricefits.

Paul NabtistaffSo the topics that we'll be talking about, including the zoning structure, dimensional standards and community benefits that relate to each other, frontages and open space. And then the connected effort are the ones that staff is leading on our own. That is the use tables, parking and landscaping, as we mentioned. and then I'll go into a little bit more information on the views 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 march and then go get into more detail at a work session for you all we have asked that you at least take a look at some of the materials we're going to cover some topics tonight we're going to get more into 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 then the dimensional standards and community benefits program at your next meeting on february 23rd we will talk about some of those staff-led The parking and access is something that is associated with that that was prepared by our consultant.

And in

Matthew Ricelandscaping, this relates to the urban forestry information

Paul Nabtistaffthat 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 talk about frontages and open spaces, the two remaining topics. The following night, we will have the full work session 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, then they can help with that. And so we'll make sure we leave some time on March 9 to bring up other items as well. After we go through this phase, this is just a review of the first draft. We are going to open this up for comment from the public as well.

This will be posted on our engage page shortly. 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 SCHEDULED 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 TOWARD PUBLIC HEARINGS. If we need to go through additional drafts, we can do that. But ideally, we would be at a point then where we could head towards public hearings.

Kirsten LockhartPaul, can I ask a quick question? How does this align with or potentially supersede our efforts to kind of define mixed use as a zoning category into itself? Because I know we've kind of gone back and forth on what the process for that's going to be, what that looks like in terms of codifying into the comp plan. And does this need to be aligned with that? Or are these two different things?

Paul NabtistaffSo that is the topic I'm about to talk about right now. And so, as I mentioned, we'll go through some of the, I'll give you an outline of the topics that we're not going to discuss tonight. And this is one of them. And I'll give you kind of a high-level overview of how that will fit. And after that, I'll go through the more detailed discussions that we 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. It's one of our 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 Plenty Commission is aware, the commercial urban district is a district that is not proactively mapped. And so applicants have to request a rezoning to go to that. And so the special use permit will still 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 would really provide an outlet for unique situations where these amendments wouldn't be able to be applied. answer

Matthew Riceyour question?

Kirsten LockhartSo we would still need to address the on-ramp but it would only be for those things that are truly outside of activity centers?

Paul NabtistaffCorrect.

Kirsten LockhartYes.

James FeatherTo 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 the commercial urban zoning.

Paul NabtistaffCorrect. That's the way it could be implemented. The second topic on here, this is our connected efforts. Sorry, I should have started with this. The February 23rd meeting, as I mentioned, is going to focus on the topics that staff has taken the lead on. So that was one, the overall use table. The 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 on 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 the demands may be. In some cases, they are significantly higher, particularly for office uses. And so having a 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

Matthew Riceon

Kirsten Lockhartthat night.

Paul NabtistaffAS I MENTIONED, ANNA SAFFORD WILL BE HERE TO EXPLAIN WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING AT WITH THE TREE CONSERVATION ORDINANCE. ESSENTIALLY THEY ARE LOOKING AT ESTABLISHING STANDARDS TO STRENGTHEN TREE PRESERVATION THAT IS LACKING IN OUR CURRENT CODE. RECOGNIZE THE CANOPY REQUIREMENTS AS GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO ESTABLISH A TREE FUND. YOU SHOULD BE AWARE THERE ARE CHANGES THAT ARE ALWAYS UNDER CONSIDERATION IN OUR STATE CODE. SO SHE IS TRACKING THAT AND WE'LL LET YOU KNOW HOW THOSE MIGHT MODIFY WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT HERE. AND AS I MENTIONED, THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO CLEAN UP SOME OF THE CONFLICTS WE HAVE WITH OUR STREET CREATURE 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 types of commercial frontages that are shown. Priority retail is where high concentration of street front retailers 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 Small Air plan that a open space frontage. What they call a green frontage was introduced. And so our consultant looked back at the other smaller airplanes where the language supported this type of frontage.

So those were added to the map. 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 airplanes 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

Speaker 11or commercial or anything like that.

Paul NabtistaffAnd then lastly, to accommodate other streets that are not shown on here, they have what's called the residential frontage,

Matthew Riceand that primarily focuses on design standards as well.

Paul NabtistaffAlso 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%, an open space would have to meet a definition,

Matthew Riceand a series of definitions are listed in the draft.

Paul NabtistaffIn 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. For example, a 100 square foot open space that was in that criteria would receive a 1.5 weighting factor. It would count as 150 square feet. And then we have some kind of standard open spaces that are in the middle and then some less desirable open 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 in more 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 other. So I'll go through the proposed zoning structure and then stop and then we can open it for questions 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 that they would 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, as we talked about earlier, the CU will still 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. It 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. 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, 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 smaller your 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, They'd have to show which spaces are being applied to that and how they meet those criteria. There'd be an overall tabulation of uses and then 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.

being like you did

Matthew Ricetonight for those other two proposals.

Paul NabtistaffThere's a section in this new zoning district for alternative compliance. We wanted to have a way to accommodate any unforeseen circumstances, recognizing that this is a new type of 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 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 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.

James FeatherOkay. Questions, comments? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamI

James Featherhave

Paul Cunninghamone if you would go back two pages to the lower right-hand picture in Fairfax Circle. 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. Then 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 long time. But those two big white things that come down to that one small area, to me would be something that just jumps out of a picture like this

that says that that 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,

Evan Pritchardapplicantwhen we look at zoning, is

Paul Cunninghamstuff 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. 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 things that pop out of of discussion about zoning and floating zoning and how we're going to change things and constructing things in flood plain 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 that's one of the things when we put a map like this in here that 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.

James FeatherDr. That little corner is Gateway Regional Park. That's not part of the activity

Paul Cunninghamsite. Dr. Oh, no. The blue that goes up above that is… Dr. No,

James Featherthe little triangle piece. Dr. Yeah, I know.

Paul CunninghamDr. Yeah, I mean, I think… Dr. But 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

James Featherand the right side. Dr. There's a lot of white on the page, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Paul Cunninghamtalking about that is backing up water to cause us to move the property yard for flooding purposes

Paul Nabtistaffthat 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

Paul Cunninghamlet more water go under it

Paul Nabtistaffso

Paul Cunninghamit doesn't back up behind it to flood either right

Paul Nabtistaffbut that being said i mean the floodplains these were all acknowledged and we were developing the small area plans that they can they can move on a property-by-property basis. We've been talking,

Paul Cunninghambut 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 in going through this. I don't have any problem with the zoning and what we're working through.

James FeatherI was trying to understand the connection to

Paul Cunninghamthe

James Featherzoning ordinance here.

Paul CunninghamIt'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.

James FeatherIs there something in the transportation CIP already? I mean, it's an interesting point. We're talking about the CIP tonight. Is it in the CIP? It's not in the CIP.

Paul NabtistaffBecause it is still a study. When a study is completed, it might recommend a project that will turn up in the CIP. Let's move on.

Kirsten LockhartIf we were to move forward with this, would it have to apply to every small area plan or every activity center?

Paul NabtistaffIt wouldn't have to. That's up to us. If there's concerns about specific ones. I did want to point out, I should have mentioned in the beginning, the way the wording is that it would apply to small activity centers with adopted small area plans. TO PICKETT AND MAIN UNTIL SUCH TIME THAT THAT HAPPENS. BUT IF THERE ARE CONCERNS ABOUT OTHER ACTIVITY CENTERS, WE'D LIKE TO HEAR THAT.

James FeatherYOU RAISED A QUESTION ABOUT OVERLAY DISTRICTS. SO THE QUESTION IS, IS THERE SOMETHING THAT MAY BE A SEPARATE ACTIVITY CENTER FOR OLD TOWN ACTIVITY CENTER? YOU LOOK AT OUR ZONING ORDINANCES, THERE ARE SOME FAIRLY SPECIFIC ZONING DISTRICTS, or zoning around specific, very relatively small areas, standalone, the other activity center guidelines may well be appropriate for the Circle of North Facts or Camp Washington.

Kirsten LockhartOr we just might have more tolerance for variability in some versus others. Yeah, I think that's

James Featherright.

Kirsten LockhartYeah, Mr.

James FeatherMcCartney.

Tassos McCarthyCan I ask, though, and maybe I'm dumbing this down too much, but this almost, like, feels like another overlay without calling it one. Um, like how's 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

Paul Nabtistaffthe road. Um, it's the, the main difference is that typically in an overlay, the requirements apply to both their standards in the overlay district. And then there are standards in the underlying, the base district. 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 an underlying district that says the height should be this and the language says the overlay district takes precedence then that the overlay creates the 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

Tassos McCarthyI think I'm following that so then how is that hierarchy codified like do we need to figure that out or yeah

Paul Nabtistaffyeah so in the place where we have overlay districts we need to figure that out and we have not done that yet

James FeatherWhat you're calling alternative compliance, is that just a, aka special exceptions? Yes.

Paul NabtistaffYeah. Okay. It's a, yeah.

James FeatherI mean, one of the things that gets us into a lot of trouble optically, if nothing else, is the large number of special exceptions. right

Paul Cunninghamis

James Featherthis going to fix that

Paul Nabtistaffuh well ideally yes in two ways uh first we we hope there will be fewer needs for special acceptance because there's a process now uh and in a few cases where something might come up that is not fit in with these ordinances i'll kind of 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 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.

James FeatherReminds me of another comment was 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

Kirsten Lockhartsort 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?

Paul NabtistaffYes. 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

Kirsten Lockhartokay 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 the development projects in the city, there's a lot of rules that have been broken for major projects. So how do we, you know, 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?

Paul NabtistaffAnd 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

Speaker 11approving.

Paul NabtistaffBut if the Planning Commission and the 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.

Paul CunninghamTwo comments related to making rules and sticking to them and applicability, I guess. A couple of years ago, the 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 in relation to what he's trying to do with trying to update housing in the city. The second one is development proposals get proposals through and what do they cost. Long time ago we required a developer to go all the way through and at the very end, 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 of the regulations we have, as I 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 He 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

James Featherasking for?

Paul CunninghamWhat I'm asking as 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

Paul Nabtistaffto make it easier. We are asking for more material than we do for our typical processes. 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. It's 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 tradeoff, again, is a more clear path, ideally, for them. We can't guarantee they're going to get the NMB improved.

We're

James Feathertrying to make the

Paul Nabtistaffexpectation

James Featherclearer. Yes. Mr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyYeah, and I think what I'm hearing is this is just about aligning zoning with the small area plan, right? 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.

Paul NabtistaffIt 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 whole 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 that we're trying to achieve and kind of highlighted 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.

James FeatherYeah, there's a lot of history there. There's concept 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 teeth to cross from the ice to dot yet, but I think we're heading the right direction, and this also helps address one of the longstanding 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

Clara Schweigerstaffokay

James Feathermove on

Paul Nabtistaffso dimensional standards and community benefits topics in the draft but we combine 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 the 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 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 to 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

James Featheri just pause i'm surprised not to see affordable housing

Paul Nabtistaffoh affordable housing is a separate topic we already have that um it's

James Featheralso

Paul Nabtistaffan

James Featherordinance this sets a certain a specific amount

Paul Nabtistaffbut

James Feathera community benefit would be more would it not?

Paul NabtistaffIt 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 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. Actually, the ideal 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 uh it focuses on residential we don't have commercial uh 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 the just because residential seems to be what we're getting the most of it doesn't mean like 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 your 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 billion 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. work. As we talk about density, just for context, I want to share the residential density of

some recently approved and recently built projects in the city. 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 dwellings per acre. More recently, those also were both approved before we had small area plans more recently the n29 willowwood project it 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 what 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 are concerned about not necessarily wanting to incentivize larger parcels in Old Town because that could detract from the character with historically being smaller parcels 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 just 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'd receive a

20% bonus 2.1 to 5 acres 25% bonus and 5.1 or more acres a 30% bonus you can see based on that base we have increasing that assuming affordable dwelling unit ordinance would apply and then applying these numbers on top of that the numbers in that right-hand column or 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 SMALL AIR PLANS AS A NEED. IT IS SOMETHING THAT WE HEARD

A LOT IN THE EARLIER PHASES OF THIS PROJECT THAT THERE IS A DESIRE TO INCENTIVIZE LARGER PARCELS. THE OTHER THING I WANT TO POINT OUT IS PART OF THE REASON FOR THE CONCERNS THAT WE HAVE HAD IS THAT WE HAVE HAD CASES WHERE NEW DEVELOPMENTS CREATE ORPHAN PROPERTIES. SO THE ISSUE ISN'T NECESSARILY THE SIZE OF THE PROPERTY THAT IS BEING DEVELOPED BUT THE FACT THAT THERE IS A SMALLER PARCEL AND WE TALKED ABOUT THAT TONIGHT WITH THE PROPERTY between the two proposals we heard tonight, that a 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 suggests that we try to avoid this, but there is nothing that we could come up with

that would be in compliance 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.

Kirsten LockhartI 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, you know, an additional use or it's making space for the open space. So, like, purely incentivizing it on housing density might be solving for the wrong problem, I think.

Matthew RiceYeah, the context behind consolidation, most of those discussions have been, oh, if you consolidate, then you can make more contiguous open space. So maybe, you know, 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.

Paul NabtistaffYeah, 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 in a minute that will be other ways for them to get more in other projects. 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 negotiations. Similar to the Christopher proposal you've heard about, they heard a lot from the Planning Commission and Council about incorporating that one property that was between them and Davies. and they went ahead and incorporated in their project they're able to come up with an agreement

so but that was done through negotiation and again it'd 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

Kirsten Lockhartwell and we've seen applicants who have made a good faith effort and have just not been able to connect for whatever reason with a property owner so we don't want to penalize good ideas because they can't reach an orphan property to your point.

Paul NabtistaffOkay. 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.

Matthew RiceI mentioned earlier we looked at some

Paul Nabtistaffother 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 used to achieve a single increase in density, it might be something that works here. 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. It 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 struggled 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 arch 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 has been very successful but there is another layer to that. We have to create the arch district. It is not something we can just do through this. And that would be more in line with recommendations particularly the Old Town Activity Center.

I don't think it is something we would want to apply everywhere. So, and then the last point I'll get to in our future slides. So I'll stop there and see if there are thoughts on those. I did hear perhaps we should explore additional affordable housing measures, something we can really look at.

Kirsten LockhartWhat about municipal use? Like if they were to build out office space for city use as part of their commercial or office designation?

Paul NabtistaffThat'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.

Kirsten LockhartI'm thinking there's like in Alexandria they have community policing stations that are in convenience stores. But there's, you know, a precedent for co-locating municipal functions with commercial.

Paul NabtistaffOkay. 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 then think everything's been covered and something's missing but actually shows up a couple times. So first there's a purpose statement for the two community benefits. Then there's an eligibility section that talks about what the base requirements are for an applicant to qualify. Then there's a bonus matrix that shows how the 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 of 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 finished reading about the community benefits, but more will come up later, so just 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, MOVABLE SEEDING, PEDESTRIAN SCALE LIGHTING. and that they may include or they should include at least one of the following, that being public art, water

Speaker 11feature, sustainable landscaping, or programmable space.

Paul NabtistaffA couple things to point out about this. I should also mention the bonus that an applicant could receive for this, and it is 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 dwellingness per acre, larger sites will get more benefits by providing

no more community

Matthew Ricebenefits than a smaller site would, if that makes any sense.

Paul NabtistaffSo, for example, for open spaces, the way it's worded in the draft ordinance is that open 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, again, that's not eight dwelling units per acre. That's eight units, period. And so if they had two spaces that made those definitions, 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 defined or 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 in the 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 a certain number of units per area. And then I'll come back to that in a minute, but I just wanted 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 provide, would receive benefits for providing contributions towards a street network the requirements are that it connects to the overall network, both the current and a 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 should include sidewalks and street trees. A separate element is pedestrian paths. So there's a 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 plan. So there's a, I believe it's a four-foot-wide path. It gets you, 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,

then they would get four dwelling units for 100 linear feet. But as I mentioned, neither of those really meet within the small area plans. In most cases, we're calling for a six-foot landscape strip and a six to 10-foot sidewalk. find a way to adjust that and make sure we are getting what the smaller plans actually call for. In addition, we have a lot of cases. There is an example on the courthouse plaza you saw tonight where a street is proposed along a property line. 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 is 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 uh the full sidewalk and landscaping requirements so i'll stop there for a minute um 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 questions on this.

Kirsten LockhartJust

Matthew Ricea brief comment. 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 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 um 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 a you know wider pedestrian path or some street connections of a certain quality um 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 um 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 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.

Paul NabtistaffOkay. 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. would also be 65 feet. There is language 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 there are recommendations for transitional yards. An example shown on So 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

Matthew Ricelines.

Paul NabtistaffThe step-downs primarily recommend a maximum height of four stories in those areas that are closest to the adjacent areas

Matthew Riceoutside those boundaries.

Paul NabtistaffSo 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 recommend a 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. ALL THEY HAVE TO DO PER THIS DRAFT IS PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITY BENEFIT PROGRAM, WHICH MEANS THEY'RE PROVIDING SOME KIND OF IMPROVEMENT THAT QUALIFIES AND GETS THEM SOME KIND OF DENSITY INCREASED NO MATTER HOW SMALL IT IS AND THEY CAN REACH THESE MAXIMUM THRESHOLD. THE REASON THAT IS RECOMMENDED THAT WAY IS THAT THE SMALLER PLANS ARE 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 stone 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 area plans recommend a height as smaller than five stories.

In some cases, along the peripheries is four and even three in a couple of locations. So working through. So I'll stop there before we go on.

James FeatherThe latter problem just sounds like wording was already prescribed, I guess, right?

Paul NabtistaffThe which problem? Sorry.

James FeatherThe how to handle maxes already less than five. It doesn't seem like it would be difficult, but the exact wording, I'm sure the city attorney will have to weigh in on.

Paul CunninghamMr. Cunningham. 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 floodplain?

Paul NabtistaffThe 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

Paul Cunninghamdon'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 so we're seven stories is fine in the floodplain nine stories i guess if you just get up out of it

Paul Nabtistaffoh uh well well yes it's not necessarily mean that seven stories allowed in the floodplain the floodplain as i mentioned earlier can change an applicant can make improvements to their site to adjust the floodplain and usually that means giving up portions of their site to contain water and so that's the fairfax circle smaller plant it includes those recommended heights locations for that reason.

Paul CunninghamHave we correlated

Tassos McCarthyour maps

Paul Cunninghamwith the floodplain or each one of the maps is sort of independent and they may overlap?

Paul Nabtistaffthe height that 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 the Fairback Circle small area plan looked at this a lot and so showing those heights there was as intentional yeah

Matthew RiceI interpret this drawing is sort of you know a theory about height that could be built and not addressing the actual mechanics of building on a flood plain um we did force or at least encourage a switch where views toward the stream and sort of green space were the feature not the thing to avoid and so i I think housing that does, and respecting the fact that we do have neighbors south of this small area that may not want seven stories, but at least I'm emphasizing that some of the development that may be retail, commercial, restaurant space, housing, to look south toward that stream and prioritize that as the feature.

Paul CunninghamThe two neighbors to the south of that are Army-Navy Country Club, which is open space,

Matthew Riceand

Paul Cunninghamthe city's property yard.

Matthew RiceOkay, so I'm thinking Ridge Avenue doesn't...

Paul CunninghamIt's on the other side of

Evan Pritchardapplicantthe

Paul Cunninghamline of the road.

Matthew RiceRight, so the stream's the feature, I suppose, regardless

Paul Cunninghamof which neighbors

Matthew Riceon the

Paul Cunninghamsouth side. The stream is the feature, which is going through there.

Paul NabtistaffWe can 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. As you recall, from the Fairfax Circle Small Air Plan, there is an intentional buffer in that area, and we can make sure that it is accommodating

James Featherthat. 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. But you still have to deal with the floodplain. Yep.

Paul NabtistaffOkay, so as I mentioned, 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. This does not include frontages or standard open space requirements or other things that we'll be getting at with future topics. As we go on, we'll continue to look at this. The first test is the N29 Willowood project, which is under construction now. It was approved about two years ago. And just to use this as an example, the site area is 2.95 acres. As the Planning Commission may recall, this was subdivided from the existing office park. And so based on that, we assumed that the lot consolidation bonus could not be applied here.

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 LOOKING AT OPEN SPACE, WHAT WAS IN THE PROJECT, WE HAVE DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS FOR OPEN SPACE. THEY HAVE 31% OF IMPERVIOUS COVER, WHICH WOULD NOT ALL QUALIFY AS OPEN SPACE UNDER THE DEFINITIONS WITH THE NEW DISTRICT.

more strictly following the definitions of the new district, it would actually be more like 12%, which still exceeds the requirements of 10%, minimum 10% is what is proposed. We estimate, based on the uses and the different types of small open spaces that 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 is now, it is written as number of spaces that meet the definition. ordered this to be based on area, then we'd 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, this site is providing approximately 1,000 linear feet of new streets that are all shown in the smaller plans. It's a lot for this site this size. It basically surrounds the entire to a larger street network if development to the site to the west ever occurs, then the street network would continue in that direction. And so based on that, they would be able to receive four units for every 100 feet or 100 linear feet, which would total 40 additional units. As I mentioned, this is one of those cases where they are, the streets are on a property line. And so particularly the street on the west. If we were to change that, they might only get partial credit for that, but the way it's worded now, 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. 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, 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, they could make adjustments, add additional usable open spaces, provide additional amenities to get additional bonus density and possibly get to what was ultimately approved. But based on what is in the draft and what is in the design that was approved, it would be approved at 77 dwellings per acre as opposed to

Kirsten Lockhart88. one bedroom to two bedroom units, would that drop their numbers while keeping the same footprint of the building?

Paul NabtistaffSay that again, convert a one bedroom to two bedroom?

Kirsten LockhartYeah. So their 260 units is predicated on how many they reported, right, of a mix of sizes, one bedroom studio and two bedroom, right?

Paul NabtistaffThat is what is in their proposal. This density program, the number of bedrooms wouldn't be factored in, not as written.

Kirsten LockhartRight, 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 without changing the footprint of the building.

Paul NabtistaffCorrect.

Kirsten LockhartSo they could achieve that number just by making larger units within the same building.

Paul NabtistaffCorrect.

Kirsten LockhartOkay.

Matthew RiceYep. Could you just quickly articulate how the open space is calculated? that's used to say this really is open space and this little sliver next to the roadway doesn't really count

Paul Nabtistaffyes 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 requirement. So we had the 2% area to work with. I don't have the exact square footage. But we looked to see if there were two spaces on the site that would meet one of the definitions of the open spaces in the open space table. And the two that stood out were, is this working, this space here. That is a publicly accessible space. It has seating, it has plantings, it has amenities in it.

and so we assumed that counted as one and the other was down here 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 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.

Matthew RiceYeah, I think as long as there's some latitude to reject things that are clearly just engineered to be impervious and not really contributing to quality of life at all. Yeah. It's imposing. Yeah.

Paul NabtistaffCorrect.

Matthew RiceRight. Right. 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. 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.

Speaker 11I'm going to 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 that go back several hundred feet, they're going to require fire lanes. So one practical consideration is the bonus provisions for streets. 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

Matthew Riceand 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 could be done with this, you know, if the intentions aren't perfect. And just trying to write those out would be helpful. You know, street wits, green space that's not real green space, a sidewalk that may maybe six feet, but maybe, you know, not passable or accessible from ADA compliance points of view, things like that.

Paul CunninghamCHAIRMAN BRYANT That street on the west is also supposed to be part of the North Facts Master Plan Linear Park. MR.

Paul NabtistaffOkay. Okay. Okay. The next example, this one is the point formerly known as the Moxley over in Camp Washington. Now, we had to take some liberties with because this was approved a while ago before there was a small area plan under older zoning ordinance standards. but we wanted to look at something 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. Now, as I mentioned, that would only apply if assembly happened after the date of this ordinance. There was some assembly that happened with this property way back when, 20 or 30 years ago 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 we would read it. So based on that assumption, it receives the maximum density bonus under that, which is 30% because it's more than five acres. So right off, the starting point for density is higher. The height of the approved project that was built is five stories or 69 feet. With the new district, this could be up to seven stories because that's what's shown for this location in the small area plan, and they will be providing some community benefits. Number of residential units provided, the approved plan is 403 units. Just looking at the base density, affordable dwelling unit program, and on top of that, this assembly bonus,

the number of units that could be supported under this district would be 623 units. On top of that, then, we have the community benefits. So the open spaces in the approved plan, there's 35% what we call non-coverage area. This is what they call it open space. But under the definition, definitions that are provided in the draft, activity center district, only 15% of that would actually apply to what's considered open space. And we estimate, again, per Commissioner Rice's questions, we looked at the various spaces that are provided throughout the site, including various amenity areas, seating areas, a dog park, those types of things, all meeting definitions that are in that table per the current language.

And estimated there are five spaces that can contribute toward this bonus, which would allow for 42 units. And then for streets, approximately 600 linear feet of publicly accessible streets are provided in this plan, which would allow for 64 additional bonus units. So adding those numbers up, the 623 base, 64 for transportation, 40 for open space, that would accommodate 727 units or about 87 dwelling 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 draft would provide less than what was approved. This would provide significantly more. There are a lot of assumptions here that may not have actually happened today. 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.

Speaker 11We can certainly do others. Yeah.

Paul NabtistaffI think as we go on we'll find that other projects provide better examples of the different types of things we're going for.

Paul CunninghamIs this a case where one algorithm fits all?

Paul NabtistaffIt might not. We had to figure out what components of it don't fit.

Kirsten LockhartI mean, it looks like the defining green space or open space is the tricky part.

Matthew RiceI'm just worried that when we find out something that doesn't fit, we may be far enough along that doing something that, you know, 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.

Paul CunninghamThat's 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 Zinda. And so they have pushed the limit of what there was in doing that. So that's the practical nature of what happens whenever you write rules and then everybody outside figures out how to get around them their benefit maximum benefit whether you intended or not law of intended unintended consequences kicks in

Matthew Riceyeah with all the negative comments though I I do admit that this avenue of work is preferable to the other options that we discussed I think this will get us closer to what we want

Paul Cunninghamlike you need to scale down the things with which you give density 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 get something that actually makes a difference with one or two or three items that are substantive.

James FeatherYeah. I believe that's what staff has done, working with the consultant, focusing on things like open space. I mean, the alternative to not doing it is doing what we're doing today. Tons of special exceptions, subjectively applied, inconsistently applied. something a little bit more objective.

Paul CunninghamThe definition of open space.

James FeatherNo, that point's already been well expressed. It also pushes more applications to us, which is

Kirsten Lockhartanother thing we've been lobbying for.

Paul CunninghamYes.

James FeatherJust commend you. Now I know why it's taken so long to get to this point. Thanks for the perseverance.

Paul NabtistaffAnd tonight we're just talking about part of it. So yeah, that includes the discussions on the structure, dimensional standards, and community benefits. Our next meeting, 23rd, we will talk about 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 looking at. And they also have some language in there about access, what has some recommendations about how streets should be configured. And then landscaping as well. have a summary of that. I forgot, actually, Anna Safford will not be here, but we'll have

some material from her to share. So that summarizes that. I appreciate your feedback on this so far. And I realize this, 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 any of these items as well after you've had more time to absorb the draft. So that's all I have from the staff. I really appreciate it.

James FeatherThank 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.

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. Let's see. City Council also had a meeting canceled the same week you did because of the snow. And so some things had to get moved around. As we know, you were supposed to present to them on the 3rd. A couple items that happened on the 3rd, they had a joint meeting with the Environmental Sustainability Committee, which primarily talked about general efforts and some of the items that the council would like them to work on. Also, there's a presentation on the solid waste management plan. This plan primarily talks 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, they will be having their public hearing on the Urban Forest Master Plan. They will receive their presentation from you on the Capital Improvement Program recommendations. And they have a work session on the Willard Sherwood Community Center project. For your next meeting, February 23rd, in addition to continuing our discussion on the smaller plan zoning ordinance amendments, One of the items that was canceled at 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 ordinance 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. Let's see. That's last thing is, oh, Chair Feather mentioned that we should discuss the plan for the presentation tomorrow night, too, on the capital improvement program. So we can go ahead and do that now before we get to Commissioner comments.

James FeatherWorks for me. I'm not sure if you'd already drafted something for a presentation tomorrow.

Paul NabtistaffI

James Featherjust don't whether you thought we'd be using slides or just talk to the The resolution I don't think we're sitting read the resolution to yeah, they will they've had an advanced copy

Paul NabtistaffThey have

James Featheranticipated to be approved

Paul Nabtistaffyes, so they they did receive an advanced copy With the stipulation that could be amended tonight, so we can tell them it hasn't been amended. We have not prepared our presentation, but I think we can do that pretty quickly tomorrow. We have all the material, and I can share that with you.

James FeatherI'm just a couple of slides.

Matthew RiceYeah, not a huge number of slides.

James FeatherYeah, the couple you used to highlight the issues we're going to talk about. The items we wanted to emphasize. I was, excuse me, as much interested in, 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?

Paul CunninghamI can be. I was planning on it. Okay.

Paul NabtistaffLast I checked, it

Speaker 11is the first work session item.

Paul NabtistaffSo the River Forest Master Plan is before it as a public hearing, but then the Will or Sherwood discussion is after it. I will do my best. Yeah,

James Featherjust because you've each had 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 do that. For example, Mr. Rice, you've talked a lot about the fire station. You have some well-articulated thoughts on that. I think we all have insights into the Willard Sherwood Center. and Ms. Lockhart, I know you've expressed some of those very well. So I just wanted to figure out how to share the joy. I shouldn't be the only one to do the talking. I know 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.

Paul CunninghamDo you expect it to occur before 8 o'clock, that we would be up before 8? No.

Paul Nabtistaffmaybe around eight if we're lucky I don't think it would be before

James Featherthere'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

Paul CunninghamI

James Featherbelieve there will be a lot of public comments on the Willard Sherwood presentation before they get to the work session but that's

Paul Cunninghamnot

James Feathera public hearing will be made during the public comment section of the meeting, which is going to be before the work sessions. Yes. So I don't think it would be before 8, honestly. I know a number of people already planning to speak on just that topic tomorrow. So well, we'll hope to see you. I understand. Okay. Anything else for staff? Okay. Commission comments mr. McCarthy anything from you

Tassos McCarthyGod bless you sir. Thanks for all that tonight

Paul CunninghamNo comment it's luck art

Kirsten LockhartThank you for all your work Thank you to the city's work for putting forth the chocolate festival again I am mostly recovered from running in negative two-degree wind chill I know I appreciate the prep for both meetings this evening they were both really useful and valuable

Matthew Riceso we received very some very good entries for a proposed student map contribution to the fact book and so we've set up a kind of an evaluation rubric and we'd like a few staff members perhaps Miss Denny your fearless interim director to help us with some of that evaluation 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

James Featheranything from parks and rec

Matthew Riceoh no our parks and rec meeting is going to fall a few days after this one and nothing super big to report after 1030 at night. Okay thank you.

James FeatherAs for me thank you again for all the effort and leading that exercise on the zoning ordinance and addressing some of the concerns that we've had all along. Board of Architecture review has not been meeting. I guess there's been nothing coming through. The last meeting or two is being canceled as well. So I have nothing to report from the bar. And it's one of the greatest appointments yet for me to serve in that capacity.

Kirsten LockhartSorry, there were a few approvals on the FIG, but there still remains money to be distributed 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.

James FeatherAlso, this afternoon, At lunchtime, Ms. Lockhart and I spoke at the Rotary Club of Fairfax to give an overview of the Planning Commission's role in the city and approvals and what we do and talk about how we engage the public. I think that was reasonably well received. It's an interesting organization, but by golly, at 1.30, we were done. But that's okay. It was a good exercise. I appreciate Mr. NAPTI's effort in helping provide some material that I can use to 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 projection facilities or whatever. But I borrowed the future land use map and had a physical copy of something to look at,

even though we didn't talk much about it. 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 might be in a position to serve and have the capacity for what's required to apply I think there are a couple that the council have before them to consider they have made no appointments as of yet so if there's nothing else We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.