The minus one still cracks me up. See Post #364.
Town Council met last night to have their third briefing from Kimley-Horn on the Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study. I’m using this post just to get my audio recording up, in case anyone wants to listen to it, at this Google Drive link. There’s no accompanying “index” file for the recording. Continue reading Post #450: Audio recording, the 11/7/2019 Town Council work session on the traffic study
Four views of proposed Sunrise Assisted Living at 380 Maple West: First sheet: View from Maple Avenue, Wade Hampton; Second sheet: View from Glen Avenue, and adjacent commercial lot.
380 Maple Ave W - Sunrise view of four sides
Source: Plans posted by the Town of Vienna for the 11/8/2019 meeting of the Vienna BAR (.pdf), by Rust | Orling Architecture, Alexandria VA.
Continue reading Post #449: The 11/8/2019 BAR work session on Sunrise at 380 Maple West
Last year and current year Town of Vienna water and sewer rates:
Sec._1_13.___Schedule_of_public_works_fees_red lined-2The Town of Vienna quietly raised the water and sewer rates in July. Nobody paid attention at the time, but now it seems that a lot of people are figuring this out and a few seem upset about it.
And so, there seems to be a lot of nonsense going around about this, e.g., that our rates are twice as high as Fairfax County. To be fair, water and sewer bills are not straightforward. So I’ve seen a lot of mistakes like (e.g.) not factoring in the sewer rates.
But the key fact that many seem to overlook is that this is just the second year of a five-year plan to raise water and sewer rates in the Town of Vienna. I don’t think that’s widely recognized.
So I thought I’d do my best to get the facts down in black and white. The increase was done at the suggestion of a consultant. The additional money will, in theory, fund additional (and apparently much-needed) maintenance on the Town’s water and sewer pipes and other infrastructure. Taking that at face value, we have relatively little choice in the matter but to ensure adequate money to maintain the pipes.
The bottom line is that, right now, our water/sewer bills are about the same as everybody else in the area. In particular, for a typical family, you’d pay about the same here as you would pay for water and sewer in Fairfax County. That was the Town’s goal.
But looking forward, our bills are going to continue to rise, at about 10%/year, for the next three years. The upshot is that the FY 2023 (starting summer 2022) bills will be about 50% higher than the FY 2018 (starting summer 2017) bills were. Continue reading Post #448: Water/sewer bills, waiting for the other three shoes to drop.
The title is the most polite thing I can say about the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA), and paying for Vienna’s parking garages. But I think it tells us something about Town of Vienna government as well. Continue reading Post #447: NVTA, fix your cost-benefit calculation
What is wrong with this picture (Page 30, Town of Vienna Capital Improvement Plan (.pdf) as of October 21, 2019).
This is a tough post to write, so let me get to the point, with a set of simple declarative statements below. I’m going to provide just enough detail to show you what’s wrong with the picture above.
Continue reading Post 446: Patrick Henry commuter garage, reductio ad absurdum
I didn’t attend. I caught most of it via streaming, but this review is based on the Town’s video recording, which is already posted at this link. I think that sets a new record for timeliness. (FYI, I need to use Chrome to watch those Town recordings, YMMV.)
Times listed below are offsets within the Town recording linked above.
My summary report, below, is not an exhaustive list, just the items I thought were most relevant to me, and things that I post here. You can find the agenda for the meeting at this link (.pdf) or shown in the box below:
Town Council 2019-11-05 agenda
Continue reading Post #445: The 11/4/2019 Town Council meeting
There are several public meetings this week with some relevance to MAC zoning.
Monday, 11/4/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, Town Council will hold a meeting that includes several MAC-related items.
1) They will hold a public hearing on extending the MAC moratorium through June 30 2020. Citizens are invited to speak. Three minute time limit.
2) They will consider a resolution to request grant funding for a three-story parking garage/library to replace the current Patrick Henry library.
3) They will examine (and likely approve) the modified rear facades of the Marco Polo/Vienna Market MAC project.
The relevant materials can be found here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=716363&GUID=DC46C9A8-009B-49C0-93BE-A2BB7BFFB61B&Options=info&Search=
Thursday, 11/7/2019, at 7:30 PM in Town Hall, Town Council will hold a work session to obtain their final briefing on the Kimley-Horn “Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study”.
The relevant materials can be found here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4213345&GUID=7038D400-8A10-4B9D-AE3D-8F5E05930CAB&Options=&Search=
Friday, 11/8/2019 at 8:00 AM (AM), the Board of Architectural Review will hold a work session on the new building proposed for 380 Maple West, a Sunrise assisted living facility.
The relevant materials can be found here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=735324&GUID=CEE00DFC-1728-44FD-B567-C1B14E4BA0D5&Options=info&Search=
The Town reserves the right to change or cancel meetings on short notice, so check the Town’s general calendar before you go, at this URL:
https://www.viennava.gov/Calendar.aspx?NID=1&FID=220
On the Monday Town Council meeting, I would have expected the extension of the MAC moratorium to be cut-and-dried. Would have, except that it was anything but that at the preceding Planning Commission meeting. The actual discussion was in fact for more convoluted than I said in my brief writeup (Post #440), and included some legal arguments to block any consideration of an extension of the moratorium
Also, the Town Council is being asked to approve a grant request for funding the largest parking structure option that the Town’s consultant offered them. I had not realized that the Town had made the affirmative decision to go with that option. If that’s a done deal, I certainly wish they would reconsider (e.g., Post #367, Post #369, Post #371).
Separately, the Town is also going to ask for about $240K in grant funding for Capital Bikeshare bike racks. I’ve already expressed the sentiment that this is almost sure a near-total waste of money, given the lack of use of these rental bikes in Tysons and other remote suburban near-Metro locations (Post #387).
On the Thursday Town Council work session, to me the big question is how they’ll deal with the estimated traffic impact of MAC development. The rest of the items — the proposed projects for the Town to undertake — seemed fairly weak to me. You can see can see my analysis in Post #358 and subsequent posts to Post #364. It is worth bearing in mind that the traffic impact analysis does NOT use current traffic as baseline, which is why (e.g.) redevelopment of the currently empty BB&T site was estimated to reduce traffic on Maple in that study.
The Friday BAR session is a bit of a puzzler to me, as it is not clear to citizens that (e.g.) Sunrise has actually signed a contract with the current owner of 380 Maple West, and so on. This is due, in part, I think, to the fact that this isn’t a MAC application. Formally, it’s a request for changes to the existing, approved MAC building. (I.e., new building, new owner, new purpose, new conditional use permit and so on, and yet all done within the context of the land already having been rezoned to MAC instead of standard commercial development.)
I think everyone in Vienna is familiar with Whole Foods. Whether you shop there or not, you recognize it as yet another one of our 1960s era commercial buildings. Built in 1965, it’s a single-story brick building surrounded by surface parking.
We could reasonably disagree over the aesthetics of the building. MAC advocates seem to scorn this low-rise-plus-open-parking-lot arrangement as “ugly 60’s-era shopping centers”. But to me, buildings like this are inoffensive — well away from the street, not blocking the view of the sky, and small enough to allow the trees behind them to be seen. The sky view and greenery are what mark this as a small-town scene, in my mind. Despite the tacky power lines and ubiquitous cars.
But this post isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about functionality.
We probably don’t fully appreciate how ridiculously easy it is to shop there. As long as the parking lot isn’t full, you can typically park within 150′ of the door. The parking lot has two entrances/two exits, so if you don’t want to hassle with Maple, you can use Park. And it’s probably the most bicycle-friendly establishment in Town, with ample, convenient rack space.
We don’t appreciate it because we think it’s normal. With few exceptions, the entire south side of Maple is built to that standard. It was built from scratch to be automobile friendly. Drive up. Walk in. Shop. Leave. No choke points, no hassle.
This is why I suggest you take a field trip to the next-nearest Whole Foods, on Westpark Drive in Tyson’s Corner. This is a new, modern Whole Foods, occupying the first floor of a mixed-use building. Getting into and out of that Whole Foods is a different experience entirely. And it’s one you’re going to have to get used to, as MAC converts Maple to mixed-use buildings.
Start by lining up at the sole entrance to the underground parking garage. With the predictable result that, when the store is busy, you wait in line just to enter the parking garage.
The line moves slowly because you have to get your ticket. Because of course you need a ticket. This is a densely-built mixed-used building, so parking is tight, and precious enough to be careful about. And you’ll need to have this ticket validated in Whole Foods. But if you stay more than 90 minutes, you’ll have to pay for your parking.
After parking in the underground garage, you need to locate and walk to the entrance. Obviously you can’t see the entrance from where you parked, because your view is obstructed by the typical concrete pillars. So you follow the signage.
Once you find the entrance, you take the escalator up to the store. And commence shopping. The interior of the store is everything you’d expect from Whole Foods. Then schlep your groceries to your car, find the exit to the underground parking, and leave.
Parking garages are a central feature of the proposed mixed-use redevelopment of Maple Avenue under the current MAC statute. You can’t cover the lot with a building unless you put the parking under the building. (But “parking garage” is apparently too tacky, so you have to refer to it as “structured parking”.) And MAC provides numerous “incentives” allowing developers to skimp on parking, relative to our existing standard for what constitutes adequate parking for retail businesses. The plausible result will be that barely-adequate garage parking will be the new normal for Vienna.
If you want to see what the new normal is going to look and feel like, I suggest you take a field trip to that new Tyson’s Corner whole foods. On some sunny Saturday afternoon, say. If you’re agoraphobic, I suppose it’s a plus, because you can do your entire shopping trip without ever being exposed to the open air.
To be honest, I hate parking garages. I particularly hate closed-sided underground garages. I find them claustrophobic, ugly, noisy, and inconvenient. To me, it’s just another unpleasant bit if urban life that you have to put up with.
When MAC advocates talk about how ugly our parking lots are, all I can think of is, yeah, sure, but they aren’t half as ugly as the parking garages that will replace them. But the parking garage interiors are tucked away out-of-sight. So as long as you don’t actually use the building, the ugliness and inconvenience of “structured parking” is somebody else’s problem. It’s only if I actually shop in a place with garage parking that I end up muttering “if I’d wanted to live like this, I’d have moved to DC”.
Parking garages are certainly efficient, in terms of using scarce land area. If you want to cram a lot of additional development onto the same amount of land, that’s what you have to do. And if you judge them purely on how they look, from the outside, they are just dandy.
But if you actually have to use them, I’d say that parking garages reduce your quality-of-life, relative to the open surface parking that is currently the norm in Vienna. Particularly underground and enclosed structures. They take more time, and they definitely inject an extra bit of urban ugliness into your shopping experience. But you’d better get used to it. Skimpy enclosed parking garages are the future of Vienna under the current MAC statute.
Note: I accidentally posted this before I was finished. As of 12:20 PM 11/1/2019, the post is now done.
The picture above is what I would term a typical AM rush hour on Maple, looking down 123 toward Oakton. The blocky gray building is the (then) unfinished Chick-fil-a-car-wash. And this post is my plea for the Town of Vienna to contemplate this picture for one minute, and then re-think its entire approach to “open space” under MAC zoning.
Continue reading Post #442: Open space: There has to be a better way.
When we last left our intrepid lawyers, the Town had filed a motion Craving Oyer and Demurrer in response to the Sunrise $30M lawsuit (see Post #353). Then the initial hearing was postponed (Post #405).
Well, that Craving Oyer thing seems to have boomeranged a bit. To the lay person (me), it appeared that the Town wanted to burden Sunrise with a significant documentation burden. Turns out, the court says that’s the Town’s problem, not Sunrise’s problem.
Here’s part of Post #353 describing “Craving Oyer”.
The first part of the Town’s filing is “Craving Oyer”. They are asking that Sunrise be required to supply (many) supporting documents for their allegations. ... (including) a copy of the relevant video or audio recording, the minutes from that meeting, any staff materials provided in that meeting, any other previously-undisclosed internal staff memos that were generated on that topic prior to that meeting, and so on. And so on. And so on. ... So that’s the first Alice-in-Wonderland aspect of this. The Town is asking the Court to require Sunrise to ask the Town for recordings that only the Town has, and then provide them to the Town (and the Court), in order to verify that what Sunrise says was said, was said. Before they’ll even consider discussing what was said.
I assume that was mostly about burying Sunrise with burdensome documentation requests. And it did seem just-plain-nuts that the Town owned the documentation, but was asking Sunrise to provide it.
Either I misread the original request, or the judge saw it more-or-less the same way I did. On 10/25/2019 the court issued an order requiring the Town of Vienna to provide all that stuff. And then for both parties to get together and agree that this does, in fact, represent the relevant legislative record.
(Kudos to Shelley Ebert for getting a copy of the order from the Fairfax County courts.)
I included a picture of the actual court order above because it makes a point. It’s legible, but only just so. In fact, I am struck by how much it reminds me of an old-fashioned physicians’ prescription. It’s a pre-printed form, with a blank on which some highly-trained professional hand-writes the orders.
I don’t think physicians do that any more. Prescriptions are now mostly done electronically. And so, outside of writing a check — itself a dying art — I can’t recall anything in the past decade or so where the legibility of somebody’s handwriting actually mattered. Or where it was deemed proper to have somebody jot down an important order, hand-written, rather than type it in.
(If you know what a cancelled check is, raise your hand. You, with your hands raised, you are now officially old people. )
Perhaps its more efficient. It’s certainly quaint. And it requires someone with a legible hand, so that everyone involved knows what the order actually says.
Which brings me to my point. A lot of that “legislative record” consists of video and audio recordings. Having spent the last year making audio recordings and dealing with the Town’s audio and video, in my opinion, the Town ought to be required to provide certified transcripts of the recordings.
This is for two reasons. One, members of our Town boards and councils are frequently almost unintelligible. Some, like the Town Manager, are simply soft-spoken individuals. Others have poor microphone discipline, particularly in meetings where they must manually activate and de-activate their microphones as they talk. And everybody slacks off for work sessions. Without an official transcript, it’s going to be hard to get agreement as to what, exactly, was said. I can’t imagine the lawyers in this case working directly from the audio file.
Two, the recordings themselves are almost useless if you want to find particular items within a meeting, because there’s more-or-less no “index”. There’s no “word search” function in an audio file. That’s why I type notes as I record the meetings, along with the time, so that I have some written “index” that I can word-search to find items.
Anyway, without a transcript, not only can you not find items within the recordings, I’ll bet there will be disagreement on exactly what was said. If they are serious about using this stuff, I think they need a transcript. They need a pro to work through all the barely-intelligible stuff and write it down.
Killing two birds with one stone. And, as I noted in an unrelated posting, I think that showing Town Council members the transcript would be a good teaching tool. My experience is that when you are confronted with a literal transcript of your own public blathering, you quickly learn to be more succinct in your speech. And that, by itself, would greatly shorten our Town Council and other public board meetings.
