Here’s the story so far. After 1000 signatures on an anti-MAC petition, and more than 100 citizens standing up to speak against MAC in various meetings, the Mayor and Town Council have:
- suspended MAC (no new applications accepted after 9/30/2018).
- probably until after the next Town Council election,
- so that they can pretend to modify the law via a “visual preference survey”.
- but not actually consider issues like traffic or make substantive changes.
So, while that charade plays out, not one, but two new MAC projects were submitted prior to the deadline. In fact, every MAC project that was in the pipeline managed to beat that deadline. What a coincidence!
So, 380 Maple West has been submitted.
And Sunrise Assisted Living (Maple and Center) has been submitted.
And 444 Maple West/Tequila Grande is still in process. Town Council will vote on 10/29/2018. If I had to bet, I’d bet that will pass.
And Marco Polo/Vienna Market has been approved, but construction has not yet started.
And the Chic-Fil-A, complete with 62′ tall tower, is already under construction.
The new owners of the Giant Food shopping center have not publicly revealed their plans yet. But it’s a good bet that’s in the works. And yet a different assisted living provider is looking at the current BB&T bank site on Maple Avenue West.
Those of you who think this doesn’t matter, that these buildings aren’t very different from what we have now — you are objectively wrong.
Maybe you’ll figure that out after you see the 62′ tall tower on the Chic-Fil-A dwarf the McDonald’s next door:
Maybe when the Marco Polo project smothers an entire block in condos, you might wake up to the fact that these new buildings are a little different from what we have now:
Maybe it’ll take a building bigger than a football field, at the corner of Nutley and Maple (444 Maple West), to wake people up:
Or maybe seeing this right next door to the Vienna Inn might get you to say, wait, is that Vienna?
Or this one, 380 Maple West, just down the street from Nutley and Maple:
Oh, and there’s this, a block off Maple on Mill Street. The Town is actually using your tax dollars to make sure this gets built:
Now look at the people in the pictures above.
Do you have to squint to see them? That’s the point. That shows the scale of the buildings that are going to replace your current downtown.
See the little guy at the very left edge of the picture above? That’s you, two years from now, looking up and saying “what happened to my town?”.
But by the time you wake up, and realize these buildings have nothing to do with preserving “small town Vienna” …
At that point, the small town Vienna that you knew will be dead and gone.
If you don’t want to see this happen, then make your voice heard. Write to the five pro-MAC Town Council members and let them know that you object to this.
Linda Colbert: linda.colbert@viennava.gov
Laurie DiRocco: mayor@viennava.gov
Douglas Noble: douglas.noble@viennava.gov
Carey Sienicki: csienicki@viennava.gov
Tara Bloch (Tara Voigt): tara.bloch@viennava.gov
You might also drop a note to the two Town Council members who are not in lockstep over MAC and who are willing to consider genuine and material changes in the law:
Pasha Majdi: pasha.majdi@viennava.gov
Howard Springsteen: hspringsteen@viennava.gov
