Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, July 14, 2025. Please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We do have a quorum this evening. We're shy a couple of commissioners due to various circumstances, but we are in a position so we can conduct our meeting. First order, second order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda which was issued ahead of the meeting as required. Any comments, proposed changes to the agenda? Mr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

Second. Moved and second to adopt the agenda as presented. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We do have one public hearing this evening pertaining to proposed zoning text amendments. If you'd like to speak to that, you'll have the opportunity at that time. Otherwise, if you'd like to address the commission, now is your time to do it. Madam Clerk, has anybody signed up prior to the meeting? No. Okay. No sign-ups? Anybody in the room who would like to address the commission is welcome to do so at this time. Seeing none, we will move on. Next item is consideration of the June 23rd, 2025 meeting minutes for the Planning Commission.

Those were issued again ahead of the meeting. Any comments or corrections to those? No? Mr. Chair, I move that the commission adopt the meeting minutes from June 23rd, 2025 regular meeting as issued. Second. It moved and seconded to adopt those minutes as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion passes unanimously. Next item is items not requiring a public hearing. We have no such items on the agenda this evening. So we move on to item six, which is public hearings. This is proposed amendments to the Code of the City of Fairfax, Chapter 110, zoning for portions of the articles and sections contained therein, including zoning districts and regulations, site development standards, development review and definitions relating to accessory dwelling

units, occupancy, reducing special use permits and other miscellaneous amendments. Mr. Foreman, good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you very much. Good evening. This agenda item is a public hearing. It's for a series of zoning text amendments, and these cover several topics. So as you see here, the main topics include removing some of the restrictions pertaining to accessory dwelling unit occupancy. Also reducing the need for certain types of businesses to apply for special use permits. And we also have other amendments, and they help out with the administration of our ordinance, things that clarify inconsistencies, simplify the text, or just correct typographical issues. And all of this has the overarching goal of making our zoning administration more efficient

and helping us to realize some of the goals that have been set forth in the comprehensive plan. So staff discussed this series of amendments with the Planning Commission back in May. City Council discussed these amendments in a June work session as well, and both bodies did have some comments. I'll note those comments during tonight's presentation. I won't go into quite as much detail today as I had in the May work session, but I'd be glad to expand on anything that might need additional explanation, and any of us on staff would be happy to answer questions as well. So first up, we'll discuss the potential ADU accessory dwelling unit occupancy amendments. And as I had mentioned in May, staff has been asked to examine ADU standards in total, and

that would include some big topics, would include things like physical characteristics of accessory dwelling units or where and how they're permitted. But there's also some existing standards on ADU occupancy. And that particular topic is reasonable to address separately from the bigger issue. And the reason is it's a relatively minor regulatory change. What's being proposed here does not involve changing the physical standards of ADUs. This particular amendment, it's limited to removing what some folks consider to be an outdated regulatory hurdle for ADU occupancy. And I know we've been over this before, but just in the context of this discussion, I think it's helpful to quickly go over again just what is an accessory dwelling unit.

The zoning ordinance definition is right here in the box. In everyday terms, the definition says that an accessory dwelling unit is basically a full dwelling unit that's part of another house. And it's subordinate to or accessory to the main house, meaning that the ADU is significantly smaller than the main house. Now aside from this definition here, there are also use standards. The use standards appear in section 355. And they set standards for accessory dwelling units. And these include a number of physical standards, so things like measurements. But they also include some standards for occupancy. And it's those occupancy standards that we're discussing tonight. So there's three main occupancy standards in the ordinance right now.

And you see them here. And it's really the middle one, so the one that's highlighted here that we're discussing tonight. And these are considered age and disability requirements. And what these mean currently is that either the main house or the accessory dwelling unit must be occupied either by someone who's age 55 or over or someone with a disability. Now at our planning commission, city council work sessions this spring, at our ADU community meeting in the fall, at our amendment work sessions, there was support for removing these requirements. And the thinking is that this is unnecessarily restrictive. It creates a hurdle for both landlords and for tenants. And all without really providing an overall benefit for the city as a whole.

Now, before I move on, and I'll get to the details just in a moment, but before I move on, we are also recommending one other change. And it says here at the bottom that currently the ADU and the House are counted together as a single household for determining total occupancy. And this would be in the cases of overcrowding. In the case of theдедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедеде

Number one up here is the existing provision that either the ADU or the main house must be owner-occupied. And that provision remains here. You see there's no changes. It's not something that's proposed to be changed. Now under number two, here is where you see the age requirement, so that is under Romanet one. And you see the disability requirement, and that's under Romanet two. And this amendment proposes to strike all of this language, to delete it, which is shown on the slide as read, strike through. And that is how the age and the disability requirements are proposed to be removed from the ordinance. So rather simple, had a bit of background explanation, but the proposed ordinance itself is rather

simple. Now there is a Romanet three in this subsection here, and that involves what I had mentioned about measuring occupancy. That the house and the ADU are counted together for overcrowding standards. And I mentioned that we're proposing to revise some outdated language in the current text, and here's what's meant by that. We'd gone over this at the May work session. But again, this is what it entails. This subsection here again says that the combined occupancy of the house and the accessory dwelling unit is considered to contain one household. And that's a procedural type of subsection. However, the term that's used here is family, not household. Now there's a reason for that. It's because the term family was used in the definition section of the ordinance prior to

the 2016 rewrite. That rewrite of the entire zoning ordinance changed a lot of things. One of those many things was changing that term in the definition section from family to household. And the text in this subsection here in 355 was just simply overlooked at the time as far as updating it. So this amendment would change that term to household, and you could see it at the bottom. So that is a term that's in agreement again with the definition section. Also eliminates the second part of that subsection, which describes what a household entails. And the reason for that is there's no reason to duplicate the language. This is the language from the definition. A duplicative language often results in problems.

So this instead simply refers the reader to the definition as well. So this does not change any policy. Doesn't change any way of doing things. It simply, like it says here, revises language that's considered outdated at this point. So those are the proposed changes for the accessory dwelling unit occupancy standards. It's a decent time to pause, see if there's any questions on this before we move on to special use permits. Thanks. Just to confirm, that text box there with the three bullets, that is the definition of household now? That's the abbreviated version of the definition. The actual version is kind of wordy, so I broke it down into three bullet points. The household can contain any number of people related by blood, marriage or adoption.

Can contain up to four unrelated people. And that subsection three, the group homes, that's a state defined term for homes with people with mental illness, intellectual disability and so on. But A and B are mutually exclusive or they can be combined? No. No, they can be combined. So there could be a group of related people who have three tenants, for example, who are unrelated. So that would constitute one household. Okay. So you could have. Yes, that's correct. So this doesn't change. And the age and disability limitations do not change any of the other standards as far as ADUs. Yes, that's correct. So this doesn't change. And the age and disability limitations do not change any of the other standards as far

as ADUs. Thank you. Eight people. Is that eight people who are in service or is that six people in service and two people who are there to help supervise? Is there a. That is eight residents of the group home. I believe this isn't something that I deal with regularly. I think there is a provision for a live in resident. And this is something that's not specific to the city. This is a state statutory group home. I believe there is a provision for a live in resident. I think that that is one person in addition to the eight group home residents. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Now we can move on to reducing special use permits. So I had mentioned we're proposing to revise some of the standards here. All really with the purpose, like it says here, of reducing the need for these special

use permits for certain types of businesses. So just to provide a orientation for this discussion. So all uses are listed in the principal use table of the zoning ordinance. There's essentially three types of uses. So there's permitted uses, which are allowed in a given zoning district. Permitted uses aren't necessarily a free for all because there are frequently used standards that go along with those. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are uses that are not permitted in any given zoning district, which is self-explanatory. But right there in the middle, that in-between category is the special use permit or a special use. So essentially, a business wishing to operate as a special use would file an application with

the city. And ultimately, that ends up in a public hearing before city council. Now that process of a public hearing, it's justifiable in a lot of cases because the purpose of special use permits is to give city council the opportunity to exercise discretionary powers in considering whether or not to allow certain uses that just due to their characteristics might have adverse impacts, adverse impacts on either adjoining properties or the city overall. But requiring that kind of permitting process for businesses that operate largely unobtrusively, that's something that's considered really to just set up barriers to business creation that don't necessarily need to exist. So this series of amendments, there's three types of businesses in general that we're talking

about. These businesses require special use permits, but they tend to be rather unobtrusive uses. And staff feels that the permitting process would work better in these cases without these being a special use. And like we had talked about in May, these are cases really where the business models, common business models have evolved from where they were just a few years ago or from a decade ago. So we'll take a look at each one of these. So the first one here involves a use that's known as indoor recreation. So the use interpretation, and this here in the box is from Section 3-4. This describes indoor recreation as amusement or recreational activities carried on wholly within a building. And this was intended to apply to big facilities, so things that could really well have those

unusual operating characteristics or large crowds that the special use permit was really designed to handle. So things that would really warrant that special use consideration. Things like bowling alleys, skating rinks, big gyms, and so on. But what we've seen over the last few years is an increase in smaller types of businesses in this use category. So things like day spas, for instance, or small gyms. And there's quite a few of these that we have now that operate in office condos or operate in shopping centers and so on. And those businesses tend to be unobtrusive in their environments. They tend not to attract large crowds or have disturbances. And one other thing about this use that's caused some problems in zoning administration is that

the nature of these businesses frequently overlaps with what's considered to be personal services in some of these categories as well. And that's something that leads to complications for the zoning administrator trying to figure out just what category a particular business would go into. So the amendments here, what they seek to do is to remedy this situation and set a minimum size threshold for a use to be considered indoor recreation. This sets that threshold at 30,000 square feet. Now this amendment would maintain the current SUP status for larger uses in this category, so something over 30,000 square feet. So that would include bowling alleys, would include skating rinks, larger gyms, and so on.

But those smaller uses, so those smaller gyms or mixed martial arts studios or day spas and whatnot, those would simply be considered personal service uses. And with being considered a personal service use, those businesses would not be required to go through special use permit process. They would not be required to have a public hearing before city council in order to open up. So, as you may notice in your packets, these amendments contain a few other text changes, but it's really that size threshold that's the substantive change here. So, again, with the intent, as all of these three special use permit series of amendments are, with the intent of just smoothing out the business process. Any questions on indoor recreation?

One, a sense of proportion. The CVS next to the Safeway downtown in the square was how many square feet? Ballpark. 12,000? 12,000, so it would have fallen in without needing a special use when it closed and converted to an indoor pickleball court. Right. So that's the scale we're talking in special use permit where something like the gym down at the corner of Pickett and Main that is a major facility, I believe, is significantly over that, would still come through for uses. Correct. Okay. I think that gives a sense of what this is talking about. Thank you. Others? The first bullet, draft amendment sets 30,000 square foot minimum for this use. This is for anything considered indoor recreation?

Correct. And then there's a square footage cut point for small and large where the special use is not required? So something that would be under 30,000 square feet would be considered personal services. So a small gym, for example, would be considered a fitness center. And we're not going to call those recreation any longer. Yes, that's correct. So it doesn't really split it out. It would just say all of these terms under indoor recreation have some kind of equivalent under personal services. So a gym would be considered a fitness center. A day spa could be considered massage therapy or whatever the equivalent would be. Okay. Mr. Rice. 30,000 square feet is really still pretty big. 170 by 170 feet.

Is there a standard or a method or a citation for that particular figure as a good cutoff point? There's a few things that we considered. We took a look at all of the businesses that could fit into this category and sort of judged where a logical cutoff would be about what would be considered large. And the other thing, the numerical aspect to falling on 30,000 square feet is that's also the threshold for what the zoning ordinance considers to be large format retail. So large format retail is likewise a special use, whereas retail that's under 30,000 square feet is not. Yeah. Okay. We can move on to item number two. So this involves another example of setting a minimum size threshold. So this one is medical care facilities.

The use interpretation of medical care facilities is up here, and we had talked about it in May, but it is helpful not just to see the use interpretation, but to see how this use fits in with other medical uses. So what's known in the ordinance is medical care facilities. This falls between medical office. So medical office is doctors and dentist office and so on. Those doctors and dentists, those are permitted in all commercial and industrial zones. So that's a permitted use. So medical office is an intense use. On the other hand, on the right side of the screen here, we have hospitals. Hospitals is an intense use. Hospitals are considered a special use in industrial zones and in some of the commercial zones.

What we call medical care facilities in the ordinance, this falls right in the middle. And like the interpretation in the box here shows, this includes things like urgent care centers, includes surgical centers. And those kinds of uses can be more intense than a doctor's office, but not like a hospital. And as a result from that, right now medical care facilities are permitted in industrial zones and in the CG zone. But these are considered a special use in CO and CR. And those are the two zones that really constitute the bulk of our commercial zones. And it's really urgent cares that have become noteworthy here. So not too long ago, urgent care facilities were considered similar to an emergency room.

So a really rather intense medical type of use. But really, over the past decade or so, urgent cares have become where a lot of people go for everyday medical care. And we're in a situation now where urgent cares really operate very similarly to a doctor's office. And doctor's offices and urgent cares have really blended together somewhat as well. A lot of doctor's offices and pediatricians offices have urgent care functions. So given all of that, it really doesn't seem beneficial to require that urgent care facilities go through a special use permit when similar doctor's offices do not. So similar to indoor recreation, so this draft amendment that sets a minimum size threshold for a, used to be considered a medical care facility.

So in this case, the threshold is 10,000 square feet. So the reason that that number was chosen was, again, because it's really urgent cares that we're looking at. And the use of urgent cares tends to be about 4,000 square feet on average. The biggest examples, the biggest urgent cares tend to be standalone facilities. And those tend to be about 7,000 square feet or so. But that 10,000 square foot figure would comfortably include urgent cares. And, uh, similar to indoor recreation, there's no change that's preferred, that's, uh, that's proposed for larger uses in this category. So urgent cares or surgical centers that are over this threshold would still be considered special uses. Uh, but the benefit here is that this amendment would reduce a barrier for what's become a common type of business.

And again, kind of reduce some of that confusion from the zoning administration standpoint, trying to figure out what would be classified as an urgent care and what would be classified as a doctor's office. Uh, so before we move on to the last of the special use permits, are there any questions about medical care facilities? Commissioner? Commissioner? Ms. Lerner. Ms. Lerner. Ms. Lerner. Not to gild the lily, but I'm concerned that the language of this rewrite is still a little bit confusing for an applicant because we refer to both medical care facilities and offices several times in both definitions. I mean if this passes muster with the planning staff, I'll support it, but it does seem to

me to be a bit circular in the definition. Are you referring to the use interpretation or, so the use interpretation being the part that's in the box here or? Ms. Lerner. Oh, the actual text of the amendment to the zoning language. Okay. So, was that the last sentence that says medical care uses under 10,000 square feet would be considered medical offices? Well, so first it says urgent care facilities or surgical centers and then surgical centers is actually defined and then medical care facilities does not include hospitals or offices, but medical care under 10,000 feet is an office. It's just a bit circular in the wording. I'm just wondering if maybe we say too much. It seems circular in the wording because all of this stuff has the word medical in it and

that's not a word that's used in casual conversation. You talk about doctor's offices or hospitals or urgent cares or whatever, but the wording tends to be confusing because we're talking about defined terms of medical office and medical care facility. So, it does wind up being a bit confusing. We have our zoning administrator. We work with our zoning administrator in writing this. So, it's okay if there are specific things. Well, mostly I'm just the fact that we reference urgent care facilities as being an example of the larger facility, but the intent is to allow for urgent cares in the smaller. I guess that's the biggest one. No, that's definitely true. And what we've seen over the past decade or so is we've seen doctor's offices that have

opened up that come in with a proposal and their sign says urgent care, but their application says doctor's office. So, there is just no easy way around it. I absolutely understand what you're saying and especially because urgent care is one of the two things that's called out in the use standard for this use. So, it is a little bit confusing, but it was considered important for things like big urgent cares or surgical centers for them really to remain a special use permit. Someday maybe we'll have a zoning ordinance that reads a little bit better. But they all read like this. It's not just us. Animal care facilities. And I wish this read better than medical care facilities, but it doesn't. So, animal care facilities, this is a current use in the zoning ordinance.

It's called animal care facilities. Nice, simple sentence up here. A place where animals are cared for. Turns out, see this is why we run into problems because it turns out this nice simple sentence is too simple. And I'll explain that in just a moment. Right now, these facilities are permitted in industrial zones and in the CG zone. It's a special use again in CO and CR. And again, those are the main commercial zones. So, the problem with this simplicity is as it's currently written, this is a really broad use. And what we found is that this encapsulates two kind of different types of businesses. And those types of businesses have different intensities or different impacts. So, like it says here, those two types really boil down to facilities that involve boarding

animals and those that involve veterinary care. So, this creates a situation where two uses with very different impacts end up both being special uses just because they're grouped into the same category. So, these amendments, what these do is this separates animal care facilities into two new uses that have two new use interpretations. Also updates the current commercial use standards for animal care. And what this all means is making veterinary clinics, which is really the less intense of the two uses, making this, like it says on the right here, permitted in most commercial and industrial zones. Animal boarding, which it tends to be a little bit more intense, we would consider that to be kennels, basically.

This would continue to be a special use in the more intense commercial zones. And this would continue to be permitted in industrial and in CG as well. The real meat of the matter here is getting veterinary clinics out of that special use permit. So, here is the use interpretation for kennels. This is what is proposed. So, you see that use interpretation there. I know we talked about this last time, but one thing that I'll mention a little bit here, that first line says that this is related to boarding of dogs. So, the reason for that language is that dogs obviously have certain characteristics that can cause adverse impacts on adjacent properties. So, barking, an odor from waste. I mentioned in May that we were recommending that this kind of a use of animal boarding for other animals,

and we specifically had cat daycares in mind. Cat daycares wouldn't have the barking, wouldn't have the waste issues that kennels do. So, we would really consider a cat daycare to be a less intense use. We do not currently have a cat daycare in the city, but it's something that is a use that's gaining in popularity. So, it really ought to be addressed. We had recommended language in the first draft that we talked about in May to add a phrase to general services that would include the boarding of animals other than dogs. And our intention was for that to be cat daycares. In our city council work session, council questioned whether that phrasing could potentially be considered to include large animals as well,

and large animals especially being horses. That certainly was not the intent of staff to make horses a permitted use. So, we reworded that phrase to be the boarding of common household pets other than dogs. So, the reason for that was to make it known that this is not something that would include large animals. So, that is a change from the previous version of these amendments. It's in your packet, even though it's not up here on the screen. Again, long way of saying that cat daycare would be permitted as general services in most commercial and industrial zones. It's a lot of effort for cats. So, here is the draft use interpretation for veterinary clinics. And you can see it's an establishment where animals are provided with medical or surgical care.

And again, like it says here at the bottom, vet clinics would be a permitted use in a bunch of the common commercial and industrial zones. So, CO, CR, CU being commercial urban and industrial zones and CG as well. So, this would eliminate the requirement for vets to go through a special use permit process. And one more slide on animals. I had mentioned a few slides ago that this draft recommends updating the animal care use standards, which would now be kennels and vet clinics use standards. We went over these standards individually at the work session. What you see here are summaries of the actual standards. So, the full text is in your packets. I'll go over them briefly here. There are use standards to require a certain amount of sound mitigation measures.

Also, a requirement that the operator control animal waste that's generated on the site by the business's customers. Those two have been common conditions in special use permits. So, these weren't brought out of thin air. These are things that were frequently applied to vets and to kennels as well. There's a physical standard to require these facilities to include ventilation that would control off-premises odors. And that really is for a multi-tenant kind of situation. And also, standards down here at the bottom regarding outdoor areas if they're provided. So, what these standards say is that those kind of areas, like outdoor exercise areas, they need to be 300 feet from the nearest residence.

And this is taken from the current zoning ordinance and can be used during certain hours. In our earlier version, this condition read that outdoor exercise areas could be used only in daylight hours. Now, the reason that phrase was in there is because that's what's in the zoning ordinance right now. Again, the reason for that is to minimize impacts on nearby properties. City Council commented that the daylight hours seemed a bit restrictive. We've adjusted the hours in this version to be between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. The reason for choosing those hours is because that aligns with another similar sound mitigation measure that's in the zoning ordinance. And that is noise generated from lawn and garden equipment.

So, it's similar. So, it's a commercial use that's limited in hours to avoid impacts on residences. So, that is one change from the previous version. And I think that concludes the vet and animal boarding use standards. So, if there's any questions on these, take them now. Nothing. Thank you. Okay. So, those are the major topics in this whole bundle of amendments. But like I mentioned earlier, there are a few other amendments proposed. And these are proposed mostly to simplify the ordinance or to clarify what's being meant in some sections. This here is one. This involves the use interpretation of restaurants. The use interpretation of restaurants is unusually long. It takes off an entire page in the ordinance.

And you see it up there. And it describes many different types of restaurants and their characteristics. All of that detail just is not needed any longer. There's no difference to how different types of restaurants are administered from a zoning standpoint. So, the draft amendment here simplifies the ordinance text. It removes all of these details about various restaurant types. What we're left with is a much more concise paragraph of explanation. The full text is in your packet. But it eliminates 80 or 85 percent of the text in this use interpretation. The next topic is another example of simplifying or clarifying. So, these types of donation containers are currently permitted under certain conditions.

And they do have a whole host of use standards. However, the problem became is that throughout the ordinance, different terms are used to describe these same things. So, sometimes they're called containers in the zoning ordinance, sometimes boxes, sometimes facilities, and so on. So, that added some confusion for folks who were trying to understand what the city's standards really were on these. So, these amendments standardize all of that text. So, it calls them consistently throughout the ordinance, donation drop-off containers. And part of the issue with this is that there's no definition. So, we are adding a definition, which is here. So, this definition explains what a donation drop-off container is and what it is not.

Now, in May, at our Planning Commission work session, the Commission recommended that we rethink that very last phrase of recycling containers. We said at the end here because some of these containers wind up being labeled as recycling, to recycle your old household goods and whatnot. So, to clarify that, we added that parenthetical phrase at the end of the definition that says recycling containers, such as for paper, plastic, glass, and similar waste materials. The reason for doing that in a parenthetical phrase as opposed to coming up with a different term is that that term of recycling containers is used elsewhere in the ordinance, and it's used in the screening section of the ordinance as far as landscape screening.

So, we felt it made sense to keep that term, and it's used in the ordinance. So, it's used in the ordinance, but in this particular context, to add more explanation, so it's not confused with other things. And finally, there are some even more miscellaneous amendments. So, there are some incorrect references in section 610, which is tree removal permits, and this takes care of those references. We have a revision to the public notice timelines in the zoning ordinance, and this makes the ordinance language consistent with state legislation that passed this year and last year, in fact. And also some typographical formatting, alphabetical issues and whatnot that we're addressing here as well. And that concludes the presentation for tonight.

So, as for next steps, as it says here, City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on this series of amendments next week at the July 22nd hearing. And with that, I'm glad to answer any questions on these last items or anything else that we talked about tonight. Any further questions or comments from the Commission? Thank you. So, this is a public hearing. We'll open the public hearing. If anyone from the public would like to speak to these zoning text amendments, you're free to do so at this time. Please come forward, state your name, and address for the record. Hello. My name is Evan Ramey. I live in 5722 Crownley Court. I'm a George Mason University student. This is my tuba, the MAC-BASS 410-NC.

And I personally really love the idea of being able to rent out an ADU, especially a detached one. I understand that isn't quite what we're talking about here. But I think it would be really fantastic if the age or disability requirements were removed from the ADU ordinance so that I would be able to rent a place that I wouldn't have, you know, suite mates next door or, you know, in a townhouse, they're still shared walls. Like, my current neighbors can hear me when I practice and I don't practice enough as is. Having to think about my neighbors and practice as well, I, there are very much legitimate reasons why someone who doesn't have a disability, is able-bodied and young, would want to live in an ADU.

I, I really hope that you'll pass these forward to City Council. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any others who would like to address the Commission? Seeing no one, we will close the public hearing. Place this matter in the hands of the Commission. May I ask one more question before putting forth a motion? Um, you did mention that, uh, Council is still recommending a wholesale revision of the ADU contents and ordinance, right? Do we have a timeline for that at this point or? Uh, we're, we're hoping for a community meeting on, on that sometime in the fall. And, and with, with that meeting, build on the previous meetings, uh, to have some recommendations for if Council would be interested in detached ADU, what some of the recommendations would be to,

uh, go forward with that. Okay. The reason I ask is we won't necessarily see sort of ramifications of this zoning change by the time the issue comes forward again, right? This zoning change as far as the age and disability? Mm-hmm. Uh, no, no, we, we wouldn't. Although the, you know, the number of accessory dwelling units is relatively small anyway. And, and we don't track proactively who it is who live, lives in each one. So it's, it's something that would be a little bit difficult to measure. Okay. Thank you. It is outside the scope of zoning ordinance change, but I presume there'll be some kind of communication about these changes to the community for folks who may want to either create them now for the kind of cases we've heard testimony about this evening or others, uh, to help support

some affordability of housing in the community. So I would hope that falls out from, from this as well. Mr. Rice. Yeah. I think capturing Evans use case and others like that that may originate from GMU, there are some unique things students are busy with, you know, whether it's a fine art student that needs certain lighting or, you know, space and obviously, uh, um, practice issues. I studied music and had the same problem. And I think, uh, trying to capture a few of these would be quite useful before the community meeting, uh, starts. Okay. There's nothing else. A motion, please. Mr. Chair, I move that the planning commission recommend that the city council approve the proposed ordinance amendments, chapter 110,

zoning of the code of the city of Fairfax, Virginia, to amend portions of articles and sections contained therein, including zoning districts and regulations, site development standards, and development review and definitions. Second. It's been moved and seconded to, uh, recommend approval of these changes to the council. Is there any further discussion? If not, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Extensions passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Foreman. Okay. The next item on our agenda is to recess our regular meeting and go into a work session. Um, we have, uh, two work session topics this evening. First is a pre-application briefing for proposed mixed-use development at the Fairfax Square Professional Center located at 9840 to 9946 Main Street.

Welcome, Mr. Sutton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm filling in for Mr. Frederick tonight. Uh, before I get started, I just wanted to, uh, uh, alert you that we had some gremlins in our computer systems, uh, some minor technical glitches with some of the files that were online. The correct versions are up there and I'll be covering that tonight. Uh, but I just wanted to apologize for anyone tracking along if you saw anything that was glitchy in any of the previous files. Where are we with this? It is not an application. Uh, the property owner has engaged staff and presented a concept for initial feedback. We did hold a series of meetings with the, uh, potential developer and they received feedback from various city agencies. Uh, should the property owner choose to proceed

after, uh, receiving feedback from planning commission and council. The, the application, formal application would be submitted as the next step, which would put us in that second column. There would be an expectation that there would be community outreach on the developers part. Formal applications file goes through technical, uh, review of all the various city, uh, and state provisions, uh, which would then move along to formal work sessions and eventually public hearings. The location of the site is at the northern intersection of main street with Burke station road. It spans west to the neighboring shopping center, which is a conglomeration of individual parcels. A little, a little odd and a little hard to follow here, but this is a shopping center, uh, and stonewall to this south end.

I believe it's the, uh, bolt pins slash Bolton village across main street diagonally at the, uh, easternmost, southeastern west corner. The area that shows the approximate 14 buildings that exist on the site. The larger multi-story office building is in the back, which has been recently renovated by the property owner. That building, along with, uh, this building that I'm hovering over now, which is a bank building, they are proposing in their concept to keep the other remaining buildings would be eventually demolished through various phases of the project. Subject site outlined here in red, uh, is shown as commercial corridor, the future laying use map of the comprehensive plan. You can see that it is surrounded by a residential multifamily to the north,

which is, uh, uh, was developed, uh, alongside this. A few year time difference in between the construction, but it is maintained under the, the similar ownership. To the west is that shopping center. To the south is primarily, uh, commercial uses, mostly auto body. And then there's a government facility the county has on the corner there. The future laying use recommendation, uh, is, is in two parts here. Uh, there is a recommendation in the parcel specific consideration section that comes at the end of the laying use chapter, which identifies this site along with a number of other sites, uh, for potential reuse or redevelopment, noting that the markets have changed and that the existing infrastructure of some of these sites is dated.

What we see here in this, what should be purple is reading is more of a pink on my screen is an mixed use designation, which would accommodate for a mixture of commercial and residential uses, which is suggested as a potential, uh, a potential for the site and the comprehensive plan. Moving on to the zoning, it is on CR commercial retail today. Uh, most of the properties that surround it are similar except for the multifamily to the north and east. And again, the Boltons across the street diagonally from this corner. What we have explored with the, uh, property owner is a plan development, mixed use designation, given that the site is just over 10 acres and they propose a mixture of uses, uh, that, that district

would accommodate best their scheme with, uh, note that the plan development districts really are the districts that set forth standards and are receptive to a phased approach of development. We'll skip over that just so I can get to the plans and let you focus on those and I'll, I'll highlight some of the items here. Uh, as you can see, the site, uh, does currently exists in a master planned, uh, fashion. It, it dates from the late 70s, early 80s. Actually quite a lovely site to walk. Uh, they put a lot of thought into the, the building organization as a campus feel with very lovely garden areas, landscape areas in particular. Uh, it is the headquarters of the van meter companies, again, a 9900. You can see that it, it, it's a perplexing site. There's a, a huge

grade shift. The, the site's almost in a bowl in the center there. The grade goes steeply to the east and to the west. A number of the buildings are only accessible from one side. Other tenant spaces are either lower or higher depending on where you are. So you can see there's a number of address ranges that, that depict this. And the proposal is for again, keeping buildings number one and two, which is an existing bank in the office building. Uh, the phase one focus would be for demolition in this area, construction of a new commercial building which could relocate tenants down. Uh, there is a goal by this property owner to retain tenants here and actually increase the commercial square footage at the site.

Following on the heels of that, uh, would be construction of this north western quadrant of, of, of, of, uh, multifamily in two buildings. Then a future phase, uh, three, I believe is, uh, building a commercial building at the south east corner of the site, which would allow for, uh, moving some of the tenants in, in this area over, then to be followed by, uh, the easternmost residential component. Eventually here in the parking lot of, the front of the back and forth, uh, additional commercial buildings to be constructed. Uh, the proposal would take the commercial square footage up from just under 130,000 square feet to almost 132,000 square feet as it's, it's on the concept now, uh, which is roughly about 2,500 square feet in total area.

The existing density, just for context of the surrounding Fairfax square, which is on approximately 25 acres and at 406 units is roughly 16 dwelling units per acre. What's proposed here is 293 units on 10.47 acres, which comes out to roughly 28 dwelling units per acre. Again, this site is its own site. It's not, uh, being combined with Fairfax square, uh, being combined with Fairfax square, but you may have the same question that I did. What would be the total density of the 35 acres, uh, that would be roughly 20 units per acre for the entirety of the, the combined sites. Now this just shows, uh, some, some traffic and pedestrian circulation staff had some concerns about how traffic, traffic would flow through the site.

Uh, the applicant has been working on consolidation of some of these access points. Uh, staff also asked that they explore in a very early stage before any submissions are even, uh, presented that our fire apparatus can get through these very tight 90 degree turns. Some of these are, um, very tight and they have been exploring that. It just has not been fully engineered yet. We're still in a conceptual stage. Preliminary staff comments and feedback that have been provided to the applicant focus certainly on the guidance of the comprehensive plan and the designation, uh, from the zoning ordinance relating to the district that may best carry out, uh, the proposal with the phasing that is being considered. Uh, there have been discussions on tree preservation, tenure canopy, uh, the need for

street trees throughout the site where there are private streets and certainly along main street, uh, that we have, uh, asked them to look into a shared parking study as a way to conserve resources. As you noted in the plan, uh, there is surface parking that is shown along main street, uh, staff has asked that they evaluate this, uh, to be in fuller conformance with what the comprehensive plans goals are and not having, uh, a sea of parking that fronts a street. The modification of the affordable dwelling unit ordinance is one that they, uh, would need, they, they are considering a dedicated building of, of units which would, uh, both exceed our minimum percentage, uh, but provide more units than is required, uh, to do so. It triggers a, uh, modification of our provisions of the ordinance.

Uh, there, there is not a mechanism for proffering into or conditioning, um, any provisions outside of what the ordinance allows. So, the modification would be the path of getting there. Uh, certainly requires a major certificate of appropriateness for the new buildings and the landscaping. A trip, a transportation impact study is needed. We do not have data on that yet. That would be forthcoming. Should they choose to submit an application number of aspects from our transportation team again, uh, highlighting pedestrian access, vehicles, vehicular access, and parking locations. Already highlighted fire. And then just to, to wrap up on that, uh, there were a number of conversations relating to the phasing and how that relates back to storm water in particular, but other

utilities throughout the site and how those would be managed and constructed through a phased approach. Here are some rendered, uh, perspectives that give a glimpse as to what the intended design feel architecture, uh, of the buildings would be. Again, these are the proposed buildings. The two, uh, off the office and the bank building would remain in the center. Uh, this image again is for illustrative purposes, but it is one that staff had focused in on, uh, with the question to the property owner slash potential developer of, uh, are those streets along that main promenade, uh, adequate for a pedestrian realm. We urge them to think about things such as areas for cafe seating, uh, and other areas that may or are typical of these types of, uh, development projects.

Again, uh, if the applicant chooses to move forward, we would anticipate a comprehensive plan amendment, which is consistent with the parcel specific recommendations. And this would be for mixed use. Rezoning from CR to PDM, which is a plan development district. Coinciding with that, a master development plan modifications would be expected if they choose, uh, to go the path with the ADUs. And I'll say affordable dwelling units, because you just had a conversation on accessory dwelling units. And, uh, certainly traffic studies, parking studies, parking studies, and a major certificate. Uh, we do, we are targeting city council's briefing September 2nd, and then would await, uh, meetings or feedback from the property owner on whether or not they're moving

forward. Welcome. Any thoughts or questions? The property owners group and representatives are here tonight to hear your feedback. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Commissioners, comments, questions for staff. Is there a historical precedent for a project that was similarly executed in phases and maybe some lessons learned for the city from that? Uh, most recently, the one that comes to mind for me in, in a still under construction is North facts West where that, uh, rezoning was sort of three phase. One was critical infrastructure with the culverts in the streets. And then you saw the townhouses get underway, released portions of it. Uh, then the assisted living went up. The rest of the townhouses are

under construction and then it left the commercial pad sites for future development. In that case, the critical infrastructure was put in, uh, at the beginning of the project, which sets the skeleton of the future redevelopment ability. Uh, it wasn't necessarily planned to the level that this one seems to be heading and that they did not have, uh, art specific architecture arrangements on each of those pads or anything of, of that more specific nature. Um, as far as something that's more, uh, uh, planned, you know, I think back to maybe, um, we had an area that was called the Yorktown Jaguar project. Right now has, uh, a townhouse development that is sort of sitting across the street from the

cemetery and the post post office on judicial drive. And then up front, there's another portion of towns. Uh, originally, and this predates me probably by a couple of years to the very early 2000s, uh, there was a concept for multifamily where the townhouses in the back sit now, which did not come to full fruition. That ended up going back for a subsequent rezoning to change that use out. Uh, anything at a larger scale than those two projects, I keep PVI, maybe Mr. Cunningham brings up, although that has more or less developed all as one. Um, the developer of the, or should say the owner of the school building is securing permits for the tenant fit out of that. So it's kind of wrapping up all as

one and sort of developed all as one. Okay. My other question was if there was an engineering or architect architectural reason for the sort of distribution of the buildings, as opposed to consolidating to create a little bit more workable space around the different proposed structures. That certainly is a good question. It's one that we've asked of the applicant. Um, so they have based a lot of their design on the ability to maintain space for tenants and then transition them over. Uh, but I think certainly some of the highlights that we've made is you may have an opportunity to increase the usable open space, consolidate some of those, uh, vehicular points and make it, uh, flow a little better if you were to evaluate that.

Mr. Rice. Yeah. Can you speak to the, uh, comment about the allocation of parking behind as opposed to in front and the various benefits to the developer of parking in the front versus what the city would prefer, which would be to move it further back? Yes. So what we were, maybe I can go to the plan sheet that shows this the best. Uh, I think this one will work for our purposes. What we were looking at from a minimum standpoint was ensuring that the landscape buffer, uh, along with the recommended 10 foot sidewalk could be provided along main street in certain areas. It seems to be pinched and it would not provide for the full standard through there. Uh, as you see on the screen, the, the buildings to the right, uh, B and C,

if I'm reading that correctly, present more of a street section with parallel parking, which would be expected in more of an urban setting or a town center setting. As we head west to the site, particularly around building D that becomes a bit more of a challenge for a pedestrian in the environment. Someone that may be heading, uh, from the west into the site, there's a, a lot of parking that is along the frontage with minimal landscaping there. Certainly, um, do appreciate the open space that's programmed in, in front of building D. It's kind of a unique aspect. Uh, but we do question if that building is in isolation, perhaps with too much parking, we would expect there to be some, uh, rationale provided by

the applicant if they do submit. There were some comments. There are comments during our last discussion about lighting from the main building that houses the van meter off offices and the projection of that lighting beyond to potential residences either in the, uh, Fairfax square area behind or to, uh, people living close by. Can you speak to anything you might see in this proposal that could create challenges with regard to lighting? Sure. There's a couple of things that will need to be evaluated here. We would expect a full photometric plan with, uh, adequate site lighting in the parking areas, which it, it doesn't necessarily have today given the age of the site. It is approaching 50 years of age. Um, we would expect

that there would be street lighting on the private streets and along the public street, may be less of a need for flood lights and, uh, other types of lights that have been used through the years of the site, if the site's adequately eliminated per the ordinance standards. We also have standards in our ordinance for shielding and screening and things that exist today that would be captured. The, uh, slide that shows a parallel parking against, uh, um, I think the building. Yeah. Okay. So when I see this, you know, the immediate reference is Fairfax, uh, corner and, um, that's designed with buildings kind of spaced apart a bit. And it is, Fairfax corner is an attractive place to walk. There are some public amenities, you know, fountains,

areas to gather. Will there be any purpose for people to walk here and gather? Um, if so, sidewalks, which could accommodate seating, uh, street furniture, full width, soil volume underneath for street trees would be, would be very welcome. Um, I do appreciate the extent to which there is open space within this and it's, um, refreshing. The big benefit, um, of having wider sidewalks, uh, would certainly be the attractiveness. It certainly adds a huge amount of value economically to the, to the units that should, uh, be generating the residential portion, um, to have this be a very walkable place. Um, has there been any comment about this as a, sort of a, not a small area within itself where this is outside of the small areas, of course, um,

be careful here. We're, uh, on some major thoroughfares. So we've got Berg Station Road and Main Street. Um, we do have populations adjacent. There is a commercial center just to the west and commercial centers across the street. Um, to what extent does this become kind of a destination or a place for people to walk and gather? Yes, that's a very valid point. Uh, I think with reprogramming commercial space, uh, making it both more attractive and, and easier, friendlier to use for people of all abilities, the property is certainly going to invite, uh, both new tenants. Uh, it will definitely provide new tenant space. So, so obviously it will provide for new tenants, but also folks that'll be coming here because there's, there's different or

new experiences. Um, I think there's an opportunity for synergy with the surroundings also, uh, to draw in from even the other portion that's owned by Van Meter to the north, um, with the existing apartments. There's, there's a reason to be there. There's already a signalized intersection there, you know, marked crossing points. Uh, this does have a lot of advantages, uh, with regard to what's to the south. Is there an intent at all to provide any connections to the west, to the shopping center there, um, to allow both residents and others to, uh, cross, uh, to the shopping center that already exists, which has a lot of businesses in it that are thriving? I don't know yet. Uh, we would be eager to see the grade differentiation there. Um,

if I go back to the, I mentioned there was an odd assemblage of lots on that shopping center. Let me see if we've got a good image here. Well, you can see this, uh, sort of red peninsula of land that, that jots up as part of that, uh, overall property, uh, to the west. There's an access road that comes in today, sort of along that property line, uh, that's, that's up in the air several feet above the parking lot. So access to the site, which is shown in blue here is several feet above the actual parking field. And then the grade changes from that to the shopping center itself. So we would be eager to see what opportunities may exist. Uh, there is a gas station that separates part of that property line, but it seems like there could be a potential to, um, touch the back of that shopping

center if the grade is accommodated. There is a requirement in the ordinance they would have to justify otherwise if they can't provide for that inter-parcelial access. Yeah, it's, it's really steep. I've walked it. I biked it. Um, it's not an easy traverse, but figuring out how to make that connection really would add a huge amount to this. Um, it would be worth actually spending time to figure out what that future travel pattern would be. And it really would be unfortunate if all the residents living in the back had to come all the way to main street to, uh, find their way over to Duncan or into main street shell. William. Thank you. I guess a couple of areas. One, uh, when you look at the housing for this,

which is in the back of the commercial that provides a good buffer with the street, uh, are there amenities for the residents in there that are tied into this development or will the amenities be shared with the slide you've got up there now, uh, in the Fairfax square apartments, I see a swimming pool that appears to be just outside. Is that something that would be a shared use for all of the residents of both developments? Or is that something that, uh, is restricted to the apartments and what, what kind of amenities then are there for the residents we're going to put in the back end of this property as it develops across the past? That's a very good question. It's one that's not been detailed in full, uh, at this point with the

conceptual plans. Um, I think too, maybe to add to that point is, uh, and it's hard to read on this screen, but there's a, there's a road that, uh, is just off of this property that also has steep topographical issues, um, with maybe not the best existing pedestrian connections between the two sites. So it's something that the applicant's going to have to detail them, uh, greater efforts if they move forward with the application. Okay. That's something that I would be just interested in. When you talk about a sea of parking along our main travel ways with the slide you've got up there, I see a sea of traffic. Uh, I see two parking lanes or, or four, four parking lines with two streets and we're bringing it down to the line that's along main street. Uh, when you look to the right, you see that

the townhouses are set back from the road. When you look to the left, you see the shell station has an awning that comes out. But aside from that, you have a sea of parking on that parking, uh, or in that commercial activity. When you go across the street, you notice that you have parking along the road. Uh, when you go up a block just off the corner to the Southwest, you know that there's a restaurant with parking along the road followed by a flooring location. Uh, when you come across to the property yard, you don't see anything along the road. And when you get to the Boltons, the houses are set back with a tree line along the road. So having a single line of parking on both sides, either parallel or,

nose in along the street while taking out that second line for use would seem consistent with the character of the road in that area. So I would think that would be something that, that would stay where it would seem almost incongruous if you were going to move the buildings up to the road and put all of the parking behind. This would be the one area you'd come into that suddenly you'd have all the buildings on the road, uh, and everything on either side of it or across from it moves back. Uh, so I think they've, I think there's some good thought and, and the design they have, in that area aspect fits, uh, with what exists in the area. When we talk about modifying the ADU or the housing, it would seem to make sense if you can build one building that provides, uh, additional

affordable housing to be able to do that rather than try to architecturally fit units into existing buildings, uh, and scatter them throughout in a development like this. I don't know what advantage you give you with that, but I can see an advantage architecturally if the quality of the building remains the same for the building that's going to have the ADU, uh, units to the rest of the complex to doing that. So I would think moving forward with modifying the ADU ordinance to accommodate something like that, uh, would be useful along with the affordable housing ordinances, uh, for keeping that. It's, it's one of those things where, as in the previous briefing, when we had a public hearing and talked about making modify modifications and changes because the old language doesn't quite make

sense that this again is one of those areas where it makes sense to make some adjustments to accommodate good development rather than trying to to fit development into the the rules that seemed like a good idea at the time. So from that standpoint, I think that's an area that that can be pursued and go forward. Uh, when it comes to walkability and the rest, you've probably got better access to the site even with the grade changes under the new design than you have presently because presently when you try to walk that site, if you're not familiar with it, you're running a maze and it's easy for us rats to get down the wrong alley at times, uh, and have to backtrack and figure out where we're going. So from that

standpoint, it is a much simplified design for how you access the buildings and I think that's an improvement uh going forward. Uh architecturally, I know the board of architecture review will be looking at some of the schematics and it's easy to sell. Uh, it's easy to sell the look and say that scout on the circle that is, uh, West coast design or whatever, but it is, it is a good selling point in that is pleasing to the eye to look at the differences in the heights of the buildings that complement each other and whatever facades you have and come in. I think if it's walkable such as Fairfax corners is for the residents there. And also if it is accessible with the commercial buildings across the front for the rest of the

city to be able to use those commercial entities to keep them viable, that that is a good, a good layout in use of the commercial along the street and the residential behind it. So when I look at the overall aspects of what is here, uh, I think it is an improvement on the use of the site. Uh, it is greater density than we have now, but I think in this area it is well warranted. Those are my comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Others before I comment? One more quick question. Um, does the applicant so far or the proposal, uh, speak at all to retaining and transitioning any of the existing businesses that are occupying the site? Yes, they actually do have a goal of retaining as many of those businesses, uh, as

they can. And that's one of the reasons they're going with the phased approach. It's not been fully ironed out yet. Uh, but they, they have delved quite far into the phage, the phasing and, uh, just kind of flipping back through a little bit. They are specifically targeting certain buildings to be constructed at certain sequences that can then take tenants to move them over. Um, and again, they have some other thoughts about how they may populate the, uh, existing bank building with different uses or how they may occupy the additional square footage, but yes. Okay. Could you move one more slide? That's the sort of completed plan. Thank you. Um, I echo Mr. Cunningham sentiments about the parking on main street. Um, they're removing some of it and

moving, putting some green space and so forth. The other thing that struck me was of course, since the existing building two was going to remain, it would seem odd to have, um, that one remaining set back and the other set forward. I think it created more concerns for emergency services to navigate fire trucks through, uh, uh, uh, things like that. So I don't have any objection to what's shown here. Um, I continue. I have some concerns about the, uh, uh, uh, modifications that may be requested to the portable dwelling unit ordinance. Uh, you know, one of the reasons that was written the way it was, was to fully integrate people of a certain income level with the entire community, not to set them apart.

Um, they're every bit entitled to some of the same, um, kind of neighbors that the rest of us enjoy as well. So I don't quite understand the logic for doing that. The other thing in the ordinance, of course, it requires units to be essentially equivalent to what the, uh, the base units are in terms of features and construction and distribution of sizes and so forth. Um, and I, I'm not sure I understand why that couldn't be incorporated in the buildings that, um, where the rest of the masses will live. So I think we need to hear more to support that justification. It would also enable us. I mean, that was one of the later stages in, uh, the development would also move forward to, if we fully incorporated them, it would move some of those affordable dwelling units up in the timeline and

make them more available earlier, uh, to those who may need them. So I think we need to hear a lot more to support that justification. The other concern or question that I would have, and it's for city staff, presumably to address with the county who administers a lot of our program, if they would actually support, uh, something like that as well. We had a case recently where there were requests to put affordable dwelling units for one project somewhere else or set apart, if you will. And the county would certainly not support that and, and administer the program under those conditions. We need to confirm in this situation if there's a similar concern, the way our ordinance is currently written.

Um, but I will say I like the concept. I like the responsiveness to the vision that we had for creating the mixed use place type. This site we specifically identified for that. It's relatively unique in the city where it's placed. And this, uh, uh, proposal very much fits, I think was with the vision we had and, um, I would love to see it move forward. Any other comments or questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Mr. What's the timing of the phasing? I know we're phasing, but from the time the project would start until the last portion is completed, how many years are we talking about? Is this a reasonably short time frame? I know the, well, I mentioned Paul the sixth earlier, they were talking about building half of the condo

building, depending on the market receipt and then building the second half at a later date. and I gather they got enough activity that they built the entire thing as one unit, but they have phased townhouses, single-family houses, and that over several years. Are we talking the same thing here? Are we talking an extended period like a decade, or are we talking five years? Do we have any sense of the phasing? From recollection, and certainly at the discretion of the Planning Commission, if they would like to entertain that question to the team that's here tonight, for my recollection, there would be constant construction happening to move phases along so that they can move the tenants around the site,

along with some critical infrastructure needing to take place as they go through this. I don't think there would be a period of time where you would see a pause or wait after one of the phases or sections are completed, but I would certainly have to yield to the applicant on those specifics. Okay. I think that would be useful to know that there is a phasing thing for construction to move a project through to completion rather than we're going to do the first two, and then economics or whatever happens with the calendar, we'll wait six years before we start the second part. So that would be useful to just have discussion-wise. I think that is a fair thing to bring forward. As you think about the redevelopment going on at the breezeway site, for example,

that was approved without a plan for the commercial space along the boulevard, approved by city council against the recommendation of this body. But nevertheless, it was kind of open-ended, and it would be beneficial, I think, for the applicant and for the community to see what the plan might look like. There are similar concerns, really, for the courthouse plaza redevelopments being proposed, which this commission does not get an opportunity to weigh in on, where it's a full site anticipated to have a full redevelopment plan, but one is not forthcoming. And it doesn't look like there is one yet, but at least they're showing the remodeling piece now for the existing site. So there's definitely interest in seeing a more fully developed plan.

And this is a full plan. We just don't understand the timing. And I think that's really beneficial in my eyes and a good thing that the potential applicant may bring forward. I would add, too, they will have to outline, if they move forward with an application to a plan development, the phasing in greater detail, as there are provisions on how much you could occupy, for instance, of the residential, without having completed construction of the commercial portions. Okay. That's a good question. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I hope that was beneficial to staff and beneficial to those on the part of the applicant who are here, potential applicant. Our final work session item is presentation of the much anticipated 2025 City of Fairfax Factbook.

Welcome back, Mr. Foreman, and welcome, Ms. Denny. Well, thank you. Much anticipated, so the anticipation ends now. And I annually await... That's right. Mr. Rice's very supportive comments about the case. So hopefully this will be an enjoyable work session. Not that discussing zoning text amendments and new developments isn't enjoyable, but this is a little bit different. So we're taking a look at one of the publications that the city prepares annually, so the City of Fairfax Factbook. And I say hopefully it's an enjoyable presentation because we try to make the Factbook interesting for folks who like digging a little bit deeper into facts and figures. And we're always happy to share some of the new updated figures

and information and charts with the Planning Commission. So the Factbook is an effort. It involves a number of people on staff. So the three of us who put this publication together are all here tonight. So in addition to myself, we have our Planning Division Chief, Paul Nabte, and our colleague, Amy Lynn Denny. And tonight, Ms. Denny and I will be looking at a few select figures from the Factbook, so sort of the best of the Factbook from this year. And for folks who don't know, this is the Factbook here. This is one of the rare printed copies. And so we, the Planning Department, first prepared a Factbook during one of our comprehensive plan review processes in the last decade, and it was well received.

So we've prepared new versions each year for a few years, and there's over 120 figures in this book, so it's on a whole bunch of different topics. And every year we try to include some new charts or maps or other data, so tonight we'll take a look at some of that new material and also some of the figures that are particularly interesting in how they change year over year. And the Factbook is available online, so it's that red link down there. And like the bottom bullet says here, really the reason we prepare all of this information is to help people, policymakers, city residents, whoever is interested to better understand information that's relevant to the city. The Factbook spans a wide array of topics.

So figures are arranged by subject area, and there's quite a few subjects covered here, as you can see. And because of that information from the Factbook, it's gathered from a number of different sources, so we have some Census Bureau information, some State of Virginia information, private data sources like some of the economic data, and plenty of data from the city itself, so GIS data, budget information, and so on. With information coming from all over the place, there is absolutely no perfect time during the year to release the Factbook, because something is always going to be almost outdated as soon as it's released. Spring is probably the best time for this, so several data points like real estate assessments

are released in the spring, and in the spring, that end-of-year data is still relatively new. So this year, the Factbook was released on April 1st, which is no joke. It really was released on April 1st. And as predicted, a few things became very quickly outdated, so we'll take care of that tonight because we'll update some of those data items that were released in April and May, so you've got kind of an updated version of that as well. So to start with, one of the first figures in the Factbook is this one, and this combines past population trends with future estimates. So this tracks the city's population from each decennial census starting in 1960, and that's on that green line going up to 2020,

and then after 2020, we have the annual census estimates after that. And this figure right here, that 26,340, that's the 2024 census population estimate. That's the most recent population estimate for our city. And we can see that the city's population trajectory has increased significantly since 2020, and that reflects the large amount of new residential construction that's been built over the past few years. Now, that orange line there, so that represents the latest population forecast from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Those forecasts are complicated, how they come up with that. It's not done every year. It's done every few years, but this is the latest version, which dates from, I think, 2022 or 2023.

And conveniently, what we are really proud of is that these two lines actually line up. So the way that the city's population has tracked since 2020 kind of meets that projection, that forecast that was made a few years ago. And so this is an important chart, which is why it's first. And this is a good example also of charts that are updated annually. All of this information is available to the public. It's just difficult sometimes to dig up current information or past information or in this case, forecasted information. So what we like to do with the fact book is to put information that's already out there, but to put it together in a format that people can look at at a glance and kind of understand,

get a better picture of what's going on in the city. So staying on the theme of population. So this chart here shows our city's current population, that 26,000 or so people, broken down into five general age categories. And since this kind of data tends to be more interesting if we have something to compare it to, this looks at our data by percentage in these age categories and compares the city to Northern Virginia as a whole. So just at a glance, we can see that we're largely similar to the overall region. But one age category that's particularly interesting is that one on the far right, that 65 plus population. This is in terms of percentage of the overall population. Fairfax City has traditionally

had a much larger proportion of seniors than most places in Northern Virginia. And you can see here, our senior population is still a bit higher proportionally, but it's much, much less pronounced than it was a few years ago. And I think that there's two trends that are overlapping here. So one is that our own rapidly growing population, so that population increase that we saw in the last chart is really diluting our existing senior population in terms of proportion of the overall city. The other thing that's going on here is that the rest of Northern Virginia is catching up to us. So most other jurisdictions in Northern Virginia are seeing their senior populations increase as existing populations get older.

It's less pronounced here in Fairfax City, and those two things combine to actually bring that proportion of 65 plus population closer to each other than they really have been in quite a while. So this is one of those charts. You might not find it interesting just glancing at it quickly, but each one of these charts does have an interesting story to tell in some way or another. So we can shift to talking about some housing-related figures. It's a topic that obviously generates a lot of interest in the city, and these are examples of charts that really have changed quite a bit over the last few years that we've been doing this fact book. The pie chart on the left represents our existing housing units.

So this is as of the end of 2024, and what's notable here is that you can see about 36% of our housing units are multifamily units. The detached units is under half of our housing units, and what's interesting with this is that how this has changed over a relatively short amount of time. So not too long ago, in 2019, when we first started doing the annual fact book, 28% of our overall housing units were multifamily in the city. Now it's 36%. That's a big change over a few years. And back then in 2019, well over half of the city's housing units were detached. So this, again, is one of those benefits of the fact book that you can see information like this as it transpires. Again, all of this is publicly available information.

It's just that we put it together in a format that's easily understood here in the fact book. Now this chart to the right here, this shows the same information, but also includes units that have been approved by city council to be built but have not been built yet. And this, again, shows that those trends that we've seen increase since 2019 are continuing or expected to continue over the next several years. Now in the fact book, we present housing information and other information in different ways. And this chart, you may have seen this chart elsewhere. This makes a few appearances at city meetings every year. And this takes a look at housing units that have been built in each decade and breaks out those housing units

into types of units, so detached, townhouse, multifamily. And we can see here, again, in those two right-hand columns, we can see that recent development surge. One of those columns is the houses or housing units that have been built in the five years of this decade. The other is that approved units. And we can see that unlike previous decades, for one, we've had more housing units constructed or approved than we have in any decade since the 1960s, but also that it's overwhelmingly multifamily. And that's the orange color here. And this is what resulted in those pie charts from the previous slide changing in a relatively short amount of time and also that population from that first slide going up.

So you can see that all of these sort of fit together to make a story. And another chapter of that story, so back before that recent development surge, so in the development of the last comprehensive plan in the later part of the last decade, one of the comments that folks often made was that the city's stock of multifamily housing was too old. So back when we were drafting the comprehensive plan in 2016 or 2017, the orange section of this type of chart comprised about three quarters of the city's multifamily stock. So that means that the orange section here is housing units, multifamily units built in the 1960s. And folks looked at that and said, wow, almost all of our multifamily housing is really kind of aged

at this point. Now the city has added a lot of multifamily units. And due to that, you can see that big slice of the city's multifamily units on the upper left there, the 2020s. Just in this portion of a decade alone, that accounts for a third of our total multifamily housing stock. So again, different way of looking at housing data, but it all falls together to tell a story. Factbook takes a look at some figures related to housing cost as well, and this is one of them. This looks at the estimated market value of housing units in the city. Now market value here, there's a number of ways of figuring out market value. We take a conservative approach to this chart, and we add 10% value to the assessed value.

You can be a lot more aggressive with this in a number of different ways, but we kept this pretty conservative. And this looks at overall price ranges, and it shows for each price range and generally in $100,000 increments, it shows for each price range what percentage of those housing units are detached or townhouse or condominium. And a few observations just from looking at this. You can see that the lower price ranges are very heavily condominiums, so housing units that sell for under $500,000 in Fairfax City are almost all condominiums. And most of those detached duplex, that blue bar in that $400,000 range are duplexes in Ardmore. So you can see what the composition is of those very small,

of those lower priced units, I'm sorry. Another interesting thing, you can see that the biggest chunk of housing units right now tend to be priced in the $700,000 and $800,000 range, and these are heavily detached homes. You can see those columns right there in the middle that are heavily blue, and blue is the detached color on this chart. Another interesting thing, if you take a look at the right-hand section of the chart, which are the costlier price ranges, you see a lot of townhouses in there. If you add up all of the price ranges over the $800,000 range, so $900,000 and above, add all of those up, about 23% of those housing units are townhouses. So a lot of folks don't realize that. A lot of people think the townhouses

are a lower cost housing option, but these townhouses are recently constructed and tend to sell for a million dollars or so. And sometimes folks are surprised about that, but that's one of the things that this chart shows is that that kind of housing stock is out there and is relatively abundant right now. So kind of interesting. It's also a case here, as you can imagine, where this chart changes a bit, a good bit year over year. And if you go back and if you look at last year's Factbook, and actually it's a good point to make that all of the, if you go to that website, to fairfaxva.gov slash Factbook, we have an archive of the Factbooks going back to 2019, so you can easily do this. But if you take a look at this from last year,

and last year was the first year we included this in the Factbook, you'll see that these prices have shifted to the right somewhat noticeably just over a one-year period. So that's interesting as well. And housing prices, this is one of the biggest areas of conversation that we have these days, as you can imagine, and it's well known the prices are going up. This chart shows that, shows it in somewhat of a unique way. So this compares the sales prices for different types of housing units, so for detached townhouse and multifamily, further breaks it down into newer, which we define as being 1980s or newer or older established units. And this chart takes a look for those six categories, takes a look at the sale prices each year

since 2008, and compares that to the assessed value of those housing units at the time. So assessed values in Virginia are updated annually, so it's a good way, if you take a look at a whole mass of information at the same time, it's a good way to gauge how quickly housing prices may be escalating to see how, in total, housing prices sell relative to assessed values. So 100% here is in the middle. This indicates the housing unit's assessed value. Not too many houses sell below this in a typical year. It's unusual for a house to sell below assessed value. In a robust year, we would expect houses to sell, let's say, in the 110% range, so that most houses would sell at about 110% of assessed value.

That would be considered a decently good year if you're selling. What we've seen over the last few years is that sale prices are averaging even higher than that. So in these categories, we see a number of these categories where the median sales are 115% or 120% of assessed values. And keep in mind, I mean, those are median, so that means that a lot of houses are selling for much more than, even than that. And last year, about a fifth of our housing sales in the city sold for more than 25% of the assessed value. So that indicates a very strong, very accumulating housing market, which is pretty amazing. Now, we talked about this chart at last year's Factbook presentation. Planning Commission asked

if we would be able to present this in kind of a different format as well, since we know that looking at things in a different format can reveal some interesting patterns. So this is looking at that data in a different way. So this is the same data source. So this compares sale price to assessed value, but this plots individual sales. So there, last year, oh, I think there were 270 sales in the city. So this plots all of them, or just about all of them. And just three categories here to keep it a little bit easier to understand. There's detached townhouse and condominium. And you can see how they're marked differently. But the benefit here is that we can see the relationship of price to the percentage that something sells

above assessed value. It's an interesting one aspect of that. Take a look at the expensive housing units, let's say over a million dollars. And you see that a lot of those houses sell for way more than the assessed value. So that, in and of itself, seeing that kind of thing visually is interesting. This is also interesting because it illustrates a few of the things that I had mentioned a few slides ago. So for example, you see the townhouse prices. So townhouses here are the blue squares. So you can see where townhouse prices fall on this continuum. And you can see that there's a lot of townhouse, and these are resales, so these do not include new housing unit sales. So you can see there's a lot of townhouses

that sell for over $800,000, and they tend to sell pretty robustly as well. Now, house prices, I mean, this is one of those issues that changes very rapidly, as we discussed a few slides ago. So for today's meeting, I thought the commission might be interested in one more thing as well. So seeing this equivalent information, so this is all from 2024. But the question becomes, well, how are things doing this year as well? So this, and this next chart is not yet in the fact book, but this is updated for 2025. This is all of the housing units that have sold from January to June of 2025. And what jumps out at me, and I'm gonna do some pretty advanced graphics here and flip back and forth. It took a lot of effort to figure this one out.

What jumps out at me with this is the percentage sold above assessed value. It's a little bit diminished from 2024 to 2025 in the first half. And before I go on, I'm gonna just park it here for a minute. It's not unusual for sales in the first half of the year to be a little bit less in that regard than the second half, because if prices are increasing, you would expect prices in the second half of the year to be a little bit more than in the first half. But that said, we see a noticeable dip, but I'd say it's really more of a slight tempering of the housing price appreciation, not a marked decline in prices. And in the beginning of this year, there were a lot of folks who were very concerned

that we would see a very rapid decrease in house prices. So far, seems not to be happening. I mean, definitely is pulling back a little bit from what we saw last year. But just looking at these two, we don't see anything that indicates, you know, really falling apart of the housing market. So we'll keep an eye on this as we go forward. We'll, you know, keep this up for next year. I think folks who look at this tend to find it's pretty interesting. And it's one of the new charts for this year. So at this point, I'll turn it over to Ms. Denny. So she'll talk about some transportation. Yes. One question. Yes. Last year and this year, and you're showing charts, are we looking at the first half of last year

as opposed to the first half of this year to see if the number of sales is comparable in terms of the timing of sales? Is there a case where you had a strong spring and now things are falling off and by the end of the year, you know, we may see a different trend where just comparing the two saying one thing is coming down doesn't say what's happening volume-wise. The number of sales is down a little bit. So in the first half of 2025, there were 121 sales. Doubling that would lead to about 240 sales if you were to just double that. Last year, there were 270. So we have seen a decrease in the number of sales. That's one of those things that is elevating prices because the supply just isn't there.

Nobody's been able to figure out just why. I mean, there's lots and lots of reasons out there why. But that is one of the reasons. I don't have an exact percentage of that off the top of my head, but that 121 and 270 are numbers that I recall. So that gives you a rough idea of what's going on. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So Ms. Denny, he will talk about some more information, transportation, environment, budget, and other exciting stuff so we can move on. All right. So moving on to transportation. This chart shows traffic trends on major roads over the past decade. Just to note, this chart only goes to 2022. The data from 2023 had some discrepancies, so we're still evaluating that. But as you can see here,

traffic volumes are generally approaching or at their pre-pandemic levels with Fairfax Boulevard being that runaway yellow line being the section to reach its pre-COVID levels the quickest. The volumes on Main Street east of Old Town and 123 south of Old Town are still down almost 10,000 daily trips with the southern end of 123 still approaching downward. Next slide. So this map shows the average weekday boardings for Q in FY24. So as you can see, hotspots are Mason, the Metro, Germantown Road, and Leighton Hall with much fewer boardings on Pickett Road and Warwick Avenue. Some of you may know the city is currently updating its transit development plan which will provide a framework for improvements

for the Q bus system with a 10-year planning horizon. So ridership data is one of the many factors that's being evaluated to determine any potential updates to the system. So this map was new to the fact book last year. It shows the priority stream segments for stream restoration and I will mention again that it is important to note that the restoration prioritization for a segment does not necessarily correlate to the health of that segment. But since the completion of the report at the end of 2024, seven potential project areas were identified, circled here. And then after further analysis and community engagement, three priority projects have been identified at Daniels Run Park and the accident creek

as I run through Fairfax Circle. So the western half behind Fairfax Circle Shopping Center and the eastern half by the property yard. All right. So here we have data from the... Oh. Sandy, can I ask one question before you go on? Of course. Go back. One slide or two slides. When you look at... No. The stream restoration slide. Next one. That one. When I look at the period, the area between Chambridge Road and University Drive and see that it's a primary candidate for restoration or a good candidate for restoration, does that take in the account that it has been restored once already and so now it's candidate again? And what is the implication of that? I am not sure. I... If you had asked me six months ago,

I probably could have listed off the metrics they used in their report, but it has since fallen out of my brain. I'm not sure if that was considered, but I know that Satoshi Ito just presented to City Council at a work session identifying the priority projects, the seven circled priority projects. It did not cover why University Drive was not considered one, but that could be a reason why that it was restored previously. Okay. That would be a question I think going forward if we're doing stream restoration projects, do they have a lifespan and what is the total impact of doing something along that line over the long term? Thank you. That was just an observation and a question I had in looking at the map.

Thank you. All right. So... Mr. Rice, did you have something? Look how you're getting close to it. I was on the edge of interjecting. Usually I try to hold back a little bit. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board had a presentation from Mr. Ito and Mr. Remsen and it was fantastic and I'd highly recommend that if, you know, there's space and an agenda to have them present that to us. I know it's not quite as central to what we do, but it was extremely informative and maybe a recording of their presentation to council, you know, should be directed to us or something. It was quite helpful and I think the thoroughness of the kind of reasoning and the sophistication of the field work and the assessment

that they're doing is stunning. It's just really so far above and beyond what a city our size normally does to assess stream channel quality and restoration priorities. It's really impressive work so it would be worthwhile for us to hear more about it. There are recordings of perhaps that briefing being given but not ones we could ask questions during. Okay. We will move on. So here, this data comes from the Virginia Department of Taxation and is based on sales tax receipts. It shows the taxable retail sales by store classification and compares the percentage of sales for each classification in Fairfax City and in Northern Virginia as a whole. So the food and drink category which is basically supermarkets

makes up 27% of total retail sales in the city and 26% in the region and the category with the biggest difference between the city and the region is general merchandise. These are general retail sales like Walmart and stores like Walmart and Target and regionally these types of stores account for 17% of retail sales however in the city that's only 1%. We do have quite a few strengths. The building materials sector which is mostly Home Depot and Lowe's is more heavily represented in the city than the region and our restaurant sales percentage is slightly higher than the region overall. All right. So this chart showing the retail vacancy rate is new to the fact book this year and as you can see

the city's retail vacancy rate has always been relatively close to the regional rate and slightly above the counties. However, in the past few years the city's rate has dipped below the county's rate and as of 2024 the city, the county, and the region are all pretty much identical. The biggest thing to highlight here is that all of the rates are very, very low which shows that the fears of high retail vacancy that arose during the pandemic have not come to pass. So here we have general fund expenses by category dating back to 2008. This is helpful as Mr. Foreman indicated that all this information, all of the budgets since 2008 are out there but this lies it all out in one chart to see the bird's eye view

of the budget over an extended period of time. Great. And then here we have the student yield ratios which show the number of enrolled students per housing unit. These have been, these are another figure that's been updated since the figure that's in the published fact book. This has been updated with the numbers from the 2024-2025 school year. So student yield ratios are used to assist the school board in future planning, in planning for future needs as well as informing the fiscal impact of proposed residential development projects. So just for a little more background on that previous slide, the thickness of each line here indicates how many students we have in the city from each housing type

and these housing types match those on the previous slide. The thick green line at the top is established, detached established neighborhoods like Mosby Woods, Country Club Hills, Westmore, etc. And that is where most of our student population comes from. So a few things to note, the detached established has declined over 10 years which is long enough a period of time that that seems to be a trend. And this is important because like I said, this is where the majority of our enrollment comes from. Detached new shows a strong decline. It's unclear if this is natural due to existing families aging out of the school system or if it reflects changing demographics or education preferences. And then garden apartments

have gone significantly up this year with no clear reason as to why but garden apartment student population often jumps around due to tenant transiency. Townhouse new shows an increase from when we started looking at this 12 years ago which is what was predicted. And then the thin red line represents the mid-rise apartments. So even though this is a new type of dwelling in the city and the enrollment numbers are relatively small this is important because this type of unit represents most of the city's growth and a lot of the efforts at forecasting student ratios revolve around these apartment complexes. So student generation for this past school year from the two main mid-rise apartments Scott on the Circle

and the Point at Fairfax formerly the Moxley was 90 students. So and Can I sure understand yield ratio of .1 means .1 students per dwelling unit or Yes. Is that what that is? Yes. And a clean timed question because that is all we have so we are happy to answer any more. Any more. Mr. Rice. So figure 111 is super valuable for us. I think this figure and the following one normally we are just depending on developers to tell us what they think will happen. We don't need to do that. We have staff that are so capable of accurately forecasting that we can make projections about how much it is going to cost us into the future. And it is impressive that we can do that. And so I think not just the value

of this whole fact book which stuns me that a city of our size can do this but the fact that we have such great staff that have the capability to do things like forecasting student enrollment based on the proportion of housing type being built that is unusual. Nobody does that. That is not a common thing to have happen in a small city. And so there is also this kind of great tradition that we now have that goes back to Kelly O'Brien and Lindsay Cluart and many other people who contributed to this effort that are no longer employed by the city but it's kind of the crown jewel information resource that we have. You're getting hits right now if you ask the IT folks from students in my summer GIS class

and I make them go in and look at the fact book and dissect at least one of the figures and find information in the open data portal to see whether they could reconstruct it. they've been reconstructing one of the figures I'll tell you about it later but they're rebuilding these figures just as an exercise. It's not just important for the city it's become an important resource that I point to for educational purposes and that's unusual too. So thank you all for doing incredibly valuable work. Always my favorite day of the year when you introduce the new fact book to us. So thank you that's all I have. I'll just add one more thing my heart goes out to anyone who selects the budget charts to dissect.

Others thank you again well done very important resource for the city so thank you thank you okay that concludes our work session we'll reconvene our regular meeting and go to our staff reports Mr. Napty thank you chair for other members of the planning commission quick review of recent city council meetings the meeting on June 24th which immediately followed the planning commission meeting on June 23rd there was an agenda item added during the meeting to recap the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority Bus Rapid Transit Action Plan which was adopted in June city council has a member or two members that serve on that board and they wanted to share some of the findings if you have a chance

take a look at that plan I will send a link out to you but it's something that will certainly inform some decisions we're making in the future in particular it recommends that BRT type service be considered two corridors that go through the city one being Fairfax Boulevard the other being Cambridge Road what this means isn't necessarily that it has to be separated lanes as you see on Route 1 in Alexandria but there would be some kind of upgrade in service additional amenities and the request is that jurisdictions that are covered by NVTA consider this in future comp plan updates and so this is something we'll certainly be looking at again what that means for future roads or how we want to accommodate

that will be up to us in future discussions but there's certainly interest from the council in moving forward with this July 1 we had our joint work session with city council on move Fairfax City so thank you to commissioners Lockhart Cunningham and Briggs for attending as mentioned before commissioner rice will serve on the move Fairfax committee and the first meeting is now scheduled for August but again to those three commissioners we appreciate your participation and comments during that meeting the July 8th meeting the city council receives an update on the picket road trail as a planning commission might recall the city council asked to put this trail on hold until further discussion can be held

there were no decisions made at that time but additional information was provided by city staff related to that trail which is specifically shown in the comprehensive plan and the city council plans to hold a future discussion on whether or not to proceed with that for the next meeting of city council on July 22nd they have three items of interest to the planning commission all three are public hearings first is a public hearing on the davies proposal which the planning commission recommended denial on at your june 23rd meeting the next is a public hearing on the courthouse plaza redevelopment proposal as a chair noted earlier this project did not come before the planning commission because it did

not include any rezoning requests and then a public hearing on the zoning text amendments that the planning commission recommended approval on at tonight's public hearing for your upcoming meeting on July 28th the last meeting before the August recess we anticipate receiving a presentation on our implementation guide updates as received twice yearly and a presentation on the urban forest master plan that's all we have for the staff report tonight thank you any questions for Mr. Napty okay time for commission comments Mr. Cunningham I would like to thank everyone for great attendance the 4th of July parade I hope everyone had a great day at the parade and the fireworks show and celebrating the

country's birthday it seemed to have gone very well and we had absolutely excellent weather this year so somebody was watching out for us and with that thank you Mr. Rice thank you I attended a parks and recreation meeting just this last week as I've mentioned before there are a huge number of projects that are happening in the city all of them kind of happening under the direction of Stacy Summerfeld and she's coordinating millions of dollars of revisions Tice Park is on time and on budget and the fields should be open in March 26 which coincides with a normal spring opening after the fields have time to develop over the winter the splash pad is to open soon and I think in a previous meeting I

suggested it was July and so there's some testing and the equipment has been turned on and is being tested and there's a little troubleshooting going on but those should be in place soon there are a couple of applications coming in for positions to join the parks foundation which is an organization that will be able to raise money and receive donations for the parks in the city and so there are some applications that we'll be considering as a parks and recreation advisory board before the foundation is able then to operate on its own with its own board of directors I don't have any other notes about things taking place but the parks and recreation advisory board membership changes on a frequent

basis it's relatively large and we have contributors from Nova Parks me from the planning commission school board senior center the schools it's a thriving and very busy body so our meetings are usually held on the second Thursday of every month and it would be great to see people at the meeting just to get involved with what we're doing and that's all for me okay thank you for once I have nothing to add so we will adjourn thank you you